Dame Care Part 29

"Across the heath."

"Did you pa.s.s the wood?"

"No; I ran two or three hundred steps away from it."

"Did you meet any one on your way?"

"I saw a shadow which moved towards the wood, and at my approach disappeared suddenly."

A prolonged stir went through the court; the accused man turned pale, and his eyes a.s.sumed a fixed look. The chief-justice did not take his eyes off him.

A few more unimportant questions, and then Paul was allowed to sit down.

His mother and sisters were called, but what they could tell was of no importance. The sisters looked round inquisitively, almost boldly. His mother wept when she had to speak about the moment of her waking.

Paul felt proud and happy that Elsbeth had not been compromised by him. He looked down smiling, and rejoiced at his courage. But when the witnesses were called for their oaths, and he had to lift up his hand, he felt as if a load of a hundred pounds were hanging on it, and as if a low, sad voice whispered in his ear, "Do not swear."

And he swore.

When he sat down, the voice said again, "Have you, perhaps, committed perjury?" Instinctively he raised his head. Then he fancied that a gray shadow flitted past him and touched his forehead lightly.

He knitted his brows defiantly. "And supposing I should have sworn falsely, was it not for her?"

For a moment his soul was filled with wild joy at this thought, but in the next already a dull weight lay on his breast, stifling his breath and binding him hand and foot, so that he felt as if henceforth he would never be able to move any more.

He heard the monotonous voice of the counsel, who began his speech. But he did not heed it. Once he started, when the counsel for the defence pointed towards him with his bunch of keys, and cried out in his shrill, querulous voice: "And this witness, gentlemen of the jury, who roams about mysteriously at night in strange gardens, and finds out all sorts of psychological and artificial subterfuges to hide the tender motive of his nightly excursions, can you put any reliance upon him when he says he suddenly saw a shadow appear and disappear? Shadows which, to put it mildly, can only originate in his overheated brain? What did he want in the garden, gentlemen of the jury? I leave it to your penetration, to your experience of life, to answer this question; and as for the witness, it is his lookout to accommodate his oath to his conscience."

Then he collapsed completely.

The jury returned a verdict of "Guilty." Michel Raudszus was sentenced to five years penal servitude.

At the same moment, when the president p.r.o.nounced the sentence of the law, a mocking laugh resounded through the court. It proceeded from Meyerhofer. He had got up in his chair and stretched out his maimed hand towards Douglas, as if he wanted to fly at his throat.

As he was carried out of court, he continually cried out,

"They hang the insignificant incendiaries, but the powerful ones are allowed to go scot-free."

The uncanny laughter of the helpless man resounded through the wide pa.s.sages.

CHAPTER XVI.

Winter came and went.... The heath was covered with snow and became green again.... The ranunculus lifted up their golden heads.... The juniper sent forth its tender shoots, and the warble of the lark sounded from out the blue sky.

Only to the dismal Howdahs spring would not come. Paul had, indeed, made it possible to procure corn for sowing, and a wooden building already stood erected on the place of ruin, but the hope for better times had still not come. Dull and joylessly he did his duty, and deeper and deeper the lines became traced upon his forehead. He brooded over things by himself more than ever, and the fear that he had committed perjury weighed heavily upon him.

Months elapsed before it was clear to him that his grievance was nothing but idle trifling which originated in his over-anxious stickling at words. He reflected thoroughly on the question which the president had addressed to him, and came to the conclusion that he could not have answered otherwise. It was, indeed, the first time that he had penetrated into his neighbor's garden; what had once taken place on a blissful moonlight night had happened on this side of the fence. What was that to the gentlemen of the law-courts?

"No; I am not a perjurer," he said to himself; "I am only a coward, a simpleton, who is afraid of the mere shadow of a deed. Ought I not proudly and joyfully to have sworn a false oath for Elsbeth's sake? Then I should be somebody; then I should have done something, while now I live on, torpid and discouraged, a farm laborer-nothing more."

And in the brain of this "pattern boy" arose the fervent wish to be a great criminal, just because he felt compelled to prove his own individuality. The hours which he had pa.s.sed on the roof and in the witness-box now seemed to him the ideal of all earthly bliss, and the harder he worked the idler and more useless he fancied himself.

His father was still kept to his chair, which to all appearances he would never again be able to leave, for his broken leg had healed badly.

Idle and grumbling he sat in his corner, turning over an old almanac without interest, and abusing every one who came near him.

Only for Paul he cherished a sort of involuntary respect; he grumbled to himself as often as he saw him, but did not dare to contradict him openly.

And his mother?

She had grown a little more weary, a little quieter, otherwise there was hardly any change perceptible in her; but those who observed more attentively could hear a rustle in the air, as though a vulture were hovering over the Howdahs and drawing its circles ever closer and closer, and preparing to pounce down one day on its prey.

She herself heard the rustle very well; she knew, too, what it signified; but she remained silent, as she had been silent all her life.

And happiness had not come yet.

At the beginning of April she took to her bed. "General weakness," the doctor said, and recommended a visit to a place where there were iron baths. She smiled, and begged him not to speak of a watering-place to any one, for she knew that Paul would work himself to death to make this course of treatment possible for her.

Such a course would not really help her. She knew very well what she needed; sunshine! Dame Care had shrouded her too closely with her sombre veil to allow a single ray of sun to penetrate into her soul.

It was now left to the twins to take care of the household. And the work was briskly done indeed; even Paul had to confess that. When they had broken anything, they laughed; when a walk was refused them, they cried; but the crying soon changed again to laughter, and the table was never so promptly served, the milk-pails had never been so bright.

His mother often observed that from her window, and thought, "It is a good thing that I should go away; I am no longer of any use in the world."

About Whitsuntide her sleep began to fail; then fever set in.

"Oh, how expensive quinine is!" sighed Paul, when the servant rode off to the chemist's; and he looked appealingly at "Black Susy," but she did not move. Often the work in the fields had to come to a stand-still, in order that they might earn a few groschen for the household by cutting peat.

His mother began to suffer from palpitations, and desired most earnestly that somebody would sit up with her at night. But the twins, tired out with their day's work, would fall asleep in the evening by the bedside of the invalid, and often sank down right across her bed, so that the feeble woman often had to bear upon her own body the weight of the two healthy girls.

Paul sent his sisters to rest, and took upon himself the office of watching.

"Go to sleep, my son," said his mother; "you need rest more than any of them."

But he remained; and in the May nights, when outside in the garden the flowers were whispering and the perfume of the lilac penetrated through every crack, the two would often sit hand in hand for hours looking at each other, as though they had wondrous things to impart. So it had always been between mother and son. The wealth of their love sought for expression in words, but care had robbed them of speech.

In the morning, when the sun rose, he dipped his head into icy cold water and went to work.

His presence brought peace to his mother, in so far that she could sleep at times when he was by. Then he used to go on tip-toe to his room and fetch down his books on physics, in which the construction of steam-engines was so learnedly and unintelligibly set forth. His head, tired with watching and unaccustomed to any mental work, with difficulty grasped the sense of the mysterious words; but he had time, and indefatigably he worked on, page by page, as a peasant ploughs a stony field.

If his mother opened her eyes, she would ask,

"How are you getting on, my son?"

And then he had to explain it to her, and she pretended to understand something about it.