Dame Care Part 26

"Yes." he answered, and stared at the magistrate with astonished eyes.

So it was on Raudszus, then, that suspicion fell.

"Why did you dismiss him?"

He related the dreadful occurrence minutely, but took great care that the scene with Douglas, which had preceded, should remain as much as possible in the dark. Now, as the first danger was averted, he had found his tranquillity again.

The clerk took notes eagerly, and the magistrate raised his eyebrows, as if all were already clear to him. When Paul had ended, he made a sign to the gendarme, who turned round silently, and walked off on the way to Helenenthal.

"Now for your father," said the magistrate; "is he in a state to be examined?"

"Let me see," answered Paul, and he went into the sick-room.

He found his father sitting erect in his bed; his eyes sparkled, and on his features there were signs of ill-suppressed fury.

"Let them come," he called out to Paul; "it is all nothing but fiddlesticks--they do not dare to accuse the real one--but let them come in."

He, too, related the scene of the struggle; but just what Paul had concealed, from shame--the quarrel with Douglas, and the setting-on of the dog--he dwelt on before the strangers with boastful loquacity.

The magistrate scratched his head, thoughtfully, and his clerk noted everything down eagerly.

When Meyerhofer came to the moment in which he ought to have spoken of his son's interference, he was silent. He shot a glance at him, in which a world of defiance and anger flamed.

"And what more?" asked the magistrate.

"I am an old man," he muttered between his teeth; "do not force me to confess my own ignominy."

The magistrate was satisfied. When he asked the old man whether his suspicion had not already fallen on Michel Raudszus, he chuckled mysteriously to himself and murmured,

"He may have furnished the hand, the miserable hand, but--" he stopped.

"But?"

"It is a pity, sir, that justice wears a bandage over her eyes," he answered, with a sneering laugh. "I have nothing more to add."

Magistrate and clerk looked at each other, shaking their heads; then the examination was closed.

"Will Michel Raudszus be arrested?" Paul asked the gentlemen before they got into their carriage.

"Let us hope that has been done already," the magistrate answered. "He has made all sorts of suspicious allusions when drunk, and what we have learned from you is more than enough evidence to begin a trial against him. Of course many things will still have to be cleared up."

Then they drove away.

Paul stared after the carriage for a long time.

The last words of the magistrate had awakened his anxiety anew, and while weeks were pa.s.sing and the first steps towards the trial were taken, he sat trembling nervously at home, just as if the verdict would crush him and him only.

Paul, with his mother and sisters, received a summons to the a.s.sizes; it was only to his father that the choice was left whether he would be examined on oath at home for the last time, but he declared he would prefer to fall down dead in the court than to sit at home while the destroyer of his property was allowed to escaped scot-free. Whom he meant by this phrase he left unexplained--only that it was not the accused servant, he gave one plainly enough to understand.

The day of the trial came. Paul had made a portable chair for his father, which saved him walking a step. In this he was lifted into the cart and softly put down on a layer of hay.

It was a miserable rickety cart which brought the Meyerhofer family to the town, for the better vehicles had all been burned. Paul had made it as comfortable as he could. Over the truss of straw, which served for a seat, he had spread an old horse-cloth, which in the course of years had become torn and discolored.

With poverty all around him, the master of the house lay in the cart, groaning and scolding; his wife was enthroned above him, pale and wretched and hara.s.sed, as if she were the genius of this ruin. The ever-blooming youth, which even thrives on rubbish, laughed from two roguish pairs of eyes in between, and in front, as driver of this wretched vehicle, sat Paul, and looked sadly before him, for he was ashamed that he could offer no better conveyance to his dear ones, whom for the first time he took out for a long drive all together.

The faint beams of the November sun were lying on the yellow heath; the heather extended among thin yellow gra.s.s; here and there glistened pools of rain-water; and single leaves were hanging down from the crippled willows at the road-side like dead summer birds.

"Do you remember how, twenty-one years ago, we were driving along this same road?" Frau Elsbeth asked her husband, and threw a glance at Paul, whom she had at that time clasped to her breast.

Meyerhofer muttered something to himself, for he was no friend to memories--to such memories. But Frau Elsbeth folded her hands and thought of many things: it could be of nothing sad, for she smiled.

The nearer the cart approached the end of the journey, the more depressed Paul felt. He stretched himself on his seat and a s.h.i.+ver kept pa.s.sing through his frame.

That wild night of the fire stood before his eyes with awful clearness, and in the midst of his fear at having to stand and speak before strange people he was overcome with a feeling of happiness when he remembered how he had stood high on the steep roof, surrounded by smoke and flames, acting and ruling as the leading spirit whom all obeyed--the only one who in all the tumult had kept his head clear. "Perhaps I could still be as courageous as any man if it should be necessary," he said to himself, consolingly; but he afterwards sank into still deeper despondency as he contemplated his sad, oppressed, worthless existence. "It will never be otherwise; it can only become worse from year to year," he said. Then he heard his mother sighing behind him, and what he had just been thinking appeared to him as base, heartless selfishness.

"It is no question of myself," he murmured, and the cart pa.s.sed through the gate of the town.

Before the red brick law-courts with the high stone staircase and arched windows the vehicle stopped. Not far from it stood a well-known carriage, and the coachman on the box still wore the same ta.s.sel which had made such an impression on Paul at the time when he was to be confirmed.

When his father was raised up it caught his eye also.

"Ah, so the vagabond is there, too!" he cried. "I'll just see if he can stand a look from me."

Then Paul, with the help of a policeman, carried him up the steps to the room for the witnesses. His mother and sisters came after them, and the people stopped and looked at the melancholy procession.

The waiting-room for the witnesses was full of people, mostly inmates from Helenenthal. In one corner stood a small party of beggars, a woman with a bloated face, a gay red shawl tied round her waist, in which a little baby slept. A little troop of ragged children were clinging to the folds of her dress. They scratched their heads or secretly pinched each other. This was the family of the accused, who wished to state that their father had been at home that night.

Meyerhofer stretched himself out in his chair and threw defiant glances all around. He thought himself a greater man than ever to-day--a hero and a martyr at the same time.

The door opened, and Douglas appeared with Elsbeth on the threshold.

Meyerhofer cast a poisonous glance at him and laughed scornfully to himself. Douglas did not heed him, but sat down in the opposite corner, drawing Elsbeth to him. She looked pale and worn, and had a shy, timid manner, that might arise from her strange, unaccustomed surroundings.

She nodded with a slight smile to Paul's mother and sisters, and looked at him with a meditative glance, which seemed to ask something.

He lowered his eyes, for he could not bear her gaze. His mother made a movement as if to cross over to her, but Meyerhofer seized her skirt, and said, louder than necessary, "If you dare!"

Paul felt as if paralyzed. His knees shook under him; a dull weight pressed upon his forehead which rendered him incapable of thought.

"You will bring shame on her," he murmured incessantly, but without knowing what he was saying.

Inside the court the examination of witnesses began. One after the other was called.

First the workmen; then the public-house keeper in whose house Michel Raudszus had made the suspicious allusions; then the ragged little group in the corner. The room began to empty. Then the name of Douglas was called out. He whispered a few words in his daughter's ear, which probably had reference to the Meyerhofers, and then walked off with long strides.

Her hands folded in her lap, she now sat alone by the wall. A deep blush of excitement burned on her cheeks. She looked very sweet and timid, and her simple, truthful nature was impressed on all her features.

His mother did not take her eyes from her, and at times she looked across at Paul and smiled as if in a dream.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; then Elsbeth's name also was called. She threw one friendly glance at his mother and disappeared through the door. Her examination was not long.