manage it alone. But what that idiot can do you can do also.”
While Vi was helping her Lieutenant on to the tree, Rader, softly whistling to himself, his hands in his jacket pockets, went across the farmyard. He had eyes in the back of his head and thus saw in the shadow of the stable the person who wanted to pass him.
“Good evening, Fraulein Backs,” he saluted very politely. “Still about so late?”
“You, too, are still about, Herr Rader!” the girl retorted, but stopped.
“Yes. But I’m going home to bed. When do you get up in the morning?”
Amanda Backs paid no attention to this question. “Where did Fraulein go to with the gentleman, Herr Rader?” she asked inquisitively.
“Everything in its turn,” said the unyouthful Rader, pedantically. “I asked you, Fraulein Backs, when you get up in the morning.”
If Amanda had not been a true woman she would have replied, “At five,” and could then have required the answer to her own question. However, she said: “It can’t interest you, Herr Rader, when I get up,” and thereby prolonged the argument.
But in the end, after considerable dispute, Herr Rader learned that Amanda’s time for getting up was governed by the sun, because chickens wake at sunrise, and he heard that in July the sun rose about four o’clock and that Amanda had to be outside by five at the latest.
This he thought was rather early; he himself got up at six and sometimes later.
“Yes, you,” said Amanda rather contemptuously, for after all, a man who tidied rooms was, for that very reason, contemptible. And now he was expressing the opinion that she ought to be in bed. “Where was Fraulein going so late with the gentleman?” she asked sharply. “She’s only fifteen and she ought to have been in bed long ago.”
“I don’t know when Fraulein goes to bed,” said Rader. “There’s probably no time fixed.”
Amanda did not despair. “And, anyway, who was the gentleman, Herr Rader? I don’t know him at all.”
Rader, however, was of the opinion that he had done his duty. Fraulein must be, by now, inside the house with her Lieutenant. He couldn’t do any more to protect them from spies.
“No, you probably don’t know the gentleman,” he confirmed. “We have so many gentlemen visitors. Good night!” Before Amanda could put a fresh question he had gone on.
Angrily she stared after him, trying to make up her mind to go home. In spite of young Rader’s being so clever, she was beginning to feel that he had been pulling the wool over her eyes, and as Herr Rader had a good opinion of himself and rarely talked with her, he wouldn’t have fooled her without some end in view. There must be something behind it.
Thoughtfully Amanda walked on. She left the farmyard, turned the corner of the dark staff-house and stopped before her young man’s windows.
A short time ago those windows were open and had then been closed. A short time ago, when she looked for a moment across the farmyard, a light was burning in his room. Now there was no light. Amanda told herself that it was quite in order; her Hans was sleeping. It was better to let a drunken man sleep; and sleep, in view of her argument with Frau Hartig, would be better for herself, too. There was really no sense in stirring up any more strife—she was not like that. Frau Hartig wouldn’t take up again with her Hans—of that Amanda was convinced.
So she could let him sleep, and herself, too—she needed rest, a good rest. But she was itching with curiosity; she felt so worked up that bed didn’t attract her, although she was longing for it. At other times she knew what she wanted, but now, even though she wished to let him sleep, she nevertheless felt like tapping at the window, just to hear his furious sleepy voice, and know that all was well.… She wanted to and yet she didn’t.…
“Oh, well, I’ll tap,” she decided. And in that moment saw in Hans’s room a little beam of light, as if from a flashlight. Involuntarily she stepped aside, although she had seen by the light that the curtains were drawn. A similar beam had been directed at her a little time ago, when she was standing with Frau Hartig at the dungheap. Precisely similar!
She stood racking her brains, trying to puzzle out the connection between the torch, Fraulein and the unknown gentleman, and what they could be doing so late and so secretly in Hans’s room. She saw the beam of light move, go out, light up again, dart about.…
But she was not the kind of person to stand for long inactive and wondering. She went to the front door and cautiously pressed the handle. When she leaned against the door, it yielded.
Amanda tiptoed into the dark corridor and closed the door behind her.
V
The Lieutenant, through the gable room and down the loft stairs, reached the hall of the staff-house, where the beam of his flashlight showed him that the key, luckily, was in the door—he turned it, and Violet slipped in after him.
The office, it is true, was locked, but here Violet knew her way about: the double key lay in the little tin letterbox on the office door, and that was easily opened—a convenient solution for Meier. Like that, he didn’t have to get up in the mornings, if the foreman fetched the key from the office. The two entered. There was an overpowering stench in the office. Shining his lamp on the broken bottle, the Lieutenant said: “Chloroform or alcohol. I hope the fellow hasn’t done himself in. Don’t tread on the broken glass, Violet!”
No, he had not done himself in. Their ears told them that. Black Meier was snoring and wheezing terribly.
Violet laid her hand on her friend’s arm and felt safe in the disgustingly close room. More than that—she found this whole nocturnal excursion, this commotion over a letter of hers, “ever so interesting,” and thought Fritz “terribly dashing”! She was fifteen; her appetite for life was great, and Neulohe very boring. The Lieutenant, of whose existence her parents were unaware (she herself knew him only by his Christian name), had been met on her walks in the forest. She had liked him at first sight. This hasty, often completely absent-minded, yet generally cool and insolent man, from whose reserve broke now and again an ever surprising and consuming fire—this Lieutenant seemed to her the epitome of all manliness and silent heroism.…
He was quite different from all the men she had yet known. Even if he were an officer, he in no way resembled the officers of the Reichswehr who had asked her to dance at the balls in Ostade and Frankfurt. The latter had always treated her with extreme courtesy; she was always the “young lady” with whom they chatted airily and politely of hunting, horses, and perhaps of the harvest.
In Lieutenant Fritz she had as yet discovered no politeness. He had dawdled through the woods with her, chatting away as if she were some ordinary girl; he had taken her arm and held it, and had let it go again, as if this had been no favor. He had offered her his dented cigarette case with an indifferent “Like one?” as if the strictly forbidden smoking was a matter of course, and then, when lighting her cigarette, he had taken her head in his hands and kissed her—just as if it were all part of it. “Don’t make a fuss,” he had said, laughing. “I find girls who make a fuss simply detestable!”
She did not want him to think her “simply detestable.”
One can warn a young person of dangers and perhaps even protect her from them—but how about the dangers which, like everyday things, do not look at all like dangers? Violet never really had the feeling with Lieutenant Fritz that she was doing anything forbidden, that she was ever really in danger. And when
“Is
He was so different. Mystery and adventure hovered around him. All his faults became merits to her because others did not have them. His coldness, his sudden desire which disappeared just as rapidly, his off-hand manner that was only skin-deep, his complete lack of respect for anything in the world—all this was reality, frantic love,
