In the Year '13 Part 15

I gave the message, and when I came back again with Struwingken and Johann and the bun, there were Miller Voss's cousin Heinrich and the Miller's wife and Fieka in Heinrich's cart before the Rathhaus; for, after all, the mounted Gensdarmes had found their way to the Gielow Mill at last and had cleared out the nest. Now the sobbing and crying began again, and the only one who remained quiet was Fieka. She asked her father softly,--

"Have you given up the money?"

The Miller pointed towards the court of justice, and said, "It lies there."

"Then be of good heart, father; G.o.d will not forsake us."

During the whole of this time, my father had been walking up and down the hall wrapped in his own thoughts. He cannot have been easy in his mind, for he constantly stopped for a moment and pa.s.sed his hand through his hair when he heard the wailing of the women, and once he went up to Herr Droi and told him he need not be alarmed as things did not look badly for him.

Herr Droi nodded his head and said, "Bon!" became a whole inch taller, planted one leg out in front of the other, and put one arm confidently akimbo.

It seemed now as if everything was ready for marching, for the Adjutant called the colonel out of my mother's room. When the colonel came out his face had become pleasant again, and he went, with the Amtshauptmann, towards the prisoners and ordered that Mamsell Westphalen and the two maids should be set free; and Mamsell Westphalen ducked three times by way of curtseying and said--"I thank you, Herr Colonel von Toll."

The Herr Amtshauptmann caught sight of his wife in the crowd, and set her also free and, scarcely had he introduced her to the Colonel and told her what had happened, when the Adjutant gave the commands to march and Miller Voss, Witte the baker and Herr Droz to bring out.

Fieka had taken her father's arm, and would not let it go. They forced her away from him, but she remained quite quiet and said, "Father, I shall stay by you wherever they may take you."

For the baker it was easier work; he spat three times, let off at random a few "rogues and vagabonds," told Johann shortly what he was to do, and went out. But, with the watchmaker the case was very sad: his wife and children hung about him, and cried, in French and German, till it would have moved the very stones to pity.

My father could now stand it no longer; he stepped forward, and asked upon what ground the watchmaker was to be led away prisoner. The man was a naturalised citizen, and had never in his life committed any crime. No one could reckon it as a crime that he had slept up at the Schloss, for the Herr Colonel and the Herr Adjutant had also slept up there. As to his having on the uniform, why that was natural, seeing that he had served under the French, and his still putting it on now and then could not be taken ill by them, for the man showed by doing so that he still thought with pleasure of the time when he had worn it in their ranks.

"He has abused the uniform!" shouted the Adjutant.

My father cried back that it was not true; that it was no abuse, when anyone got rid of a pack of thieves and rascals by an innocent trick; and the proof that they had had to deal with fellows of that sort was to be found in the Cha.s.seur's valise.

The Adjutant looked at my father savagely and spitefully, as if he would have liked to run him through the body, the colonel stepped up with a face in which a thunderstorm was gathering, and made a sign with his hand to lead away the watchmaker; but my father sprang forward and cried,--"Stop! The man is innocent, and if any one here is guilty, it is I, for it was at my command that he acted. If anyone is to be arrested for it, you must arrest me."

"Be it so," said the colonel coldly, "let that man free, and take this one here."

"My friend," cried the Herr Amtshauptmann, "what are you doing?"

"My duty, Herr Amtshauptmann," said the Colonel and gave him his hand.

"Farewell, Herr Amtshauptmann, my time is up," and so saying, he went out of the house.

The whole thing was done so quickly that the greater number of those who were there did not know what the question was. I least of all, for I was still but a little mite then; but I understood enough to see that my father had got himself into danger. Naturally, I now began to cry, and just as the little Droi's were drying their tears, mine were running down my cheeks. I followed close on my father's heels as he was pushed out into the street; the Amtshauptmann also followed.

"Herr Amtshauptmann," said my father, "comfort my poor wife. And you Fritz," he said to me, "go and fetch my hat."

I ran in, and got the hat, and when I brought it to him, he lifted me up and kissed me and whispered in my ear, "Tell your mother I shall soon be back again."

The procession now set off, two men in front and two behind and, in the middle, Miller Voss, Witte the baker, and my father. As they pa.s.sed by the engine-house, the door opened, and who should come out, but my uncle, the Rathsherr Herse, also with two men; for the colonel of artillery had had him locked up there on account of the escape of the peasants with their teams.

"Why, Herr Rathsherr, what has happened to you?" said my father.

"It's for the Fatherland, Herr Burmeister," cried my uncle Herse, "I entered into a conspiracy with Mamsell Westphalen; and now the Corsican dragon has got me in his claws; but it really is because of Miller Voss's horse and cart and the stupid old peasants."

They now briefly told each other their stories, and my uncle Herse marched down the street, with his c.o.c.ked hat and red collar, so majestically that he looked almost as if he were commanding the whole.

My uncle Herse was no coward; he was not afraid; he regarded this as a day of the greatest glory to him and, looking as if he had grown a couple of inches taller from the rain during the night, he walked along the Brandenburg road, greeting right and left, Christians and Jews. He winked to the Captain of the Fire Brigade not to betray what he knew; and put his finger to his lips as he pa.s.sed by Solomon's the Jew as a sign that he was to be silent. And scarcely was he outside the gate when old Stahl, the weaver, began telling everybody that the French had taken the Herr Rathsherr with them; they were going to make him a general,--but the others would all be hanged.

CHAPTER XIII.

Why Fritz Sahlmann fell in the mud; why Bank, the shoemaker, got a blow with the b.u.t.t-end of a musket; why Rathsherr Herse wished to set fire to all the mills in the country; and why the King of Prussia always kept a place at his table for the Rathsherr.

When our prisoners got outside the Brandenburg gate, they marched with their two men in front and two behind, across the bridge, along the Brandenburg lane,--for, though called a road it was only a lane, there being in those days no high roads in Mecklenburg,--and when they came to the narrow pa.s.s leading up to the Windmill hill to which the Stemhagen folk have given the names of, "Killhorse" and "Break-neck,"

the guard commanded "Halt," for they could go no further.

The whole of the artillery lay in the pa.s.s, and had sunk so deep in the mud that, if all the horses of the neighbourhood had been at hand--which they were not--they could not have pulled this heap of misfortune out of it. There lay the French now, and cursed and swore.

Labourers were fetched from the town with spades and shovels, and fresh horses were sent for from Jurnsdorf and Klaukow, and all the while it rained so heavily that no one could keep a dry thread on his back.

"Neighbour Voss," said baker Witte "what do you say to this rain?"

"Fine weather for late barley," replied the Miller, "if folks have sown any."

"My shirt is wringing wet," said the baker!

"And my boots are filling with water," said the Miller.

"Herr Burmeister, come behind me; my cloak will give you some shelter,"

said my uncle Herse, and he made himself a little bit broader than nature had already made him. "I am only glad that these 'slaves of the tyrant' will get a wetting through and through."

My father got under the cloak, but said nothing, for something had caught his eye.

Above, on the edge of the narrow pa.s.s a group of people were standing: labourers, servants and Stemhagen burghers, who had followed the procession in spite of the rain and bad weather, partly from curiosity and partly from sympathy, and amongst these people Fritz Sahlmann was slipping in and out, telling the whole story first to one and then to another of those who did not yet know it. When my father first caught sight of him, he was standing close by Inspector Brasig of Jurnsdorf, who had come on horseback, and had to ride alongside of the French army, lest he should never see his team-horses again.

The Inspector was an old friend of my father's, and my father could clearly see that old Brasig nodded to him and whispered something in Fritz Sahlmann's ear, when the boy told him of the sc.r.a.pe. Fritz Sahlmann now stuck his hands in his trowsers' pockets, and began whistling; whistled himself along the edge; whistled himself down the bank; when nearly at the bottom cleverly caught his foot in the root of an old willow; stumbled quite naturally towards the prisoners; and, when close to my father, fell in the mud as if he could not help it in the least.

My father bent down and raised him up.

"Watch the horse," whispered Fritz.

He could say no more for he was at once driven off by the French, and he climbed up the bank again.

If, before, my father had paid attention to the movements of the Inspector and the lad, he now did so doubly. He watched old Brasig get down from his horse, crack his riding-whip and give it into Fritz Sahlmann's hand; the boy now began to lead the horse up and down, but always a little lower on the bank, till at last he stood still under a willow-tree as if he were seeking shelter there from the rain. From this place he made a sign to my father, and my father, who stood under the cover of my uncle Herse's broad back, waved his hat three times as if he were shaking the rain from it.

Presently, a coach-and-four came round the corner where the Brandenburg Lane meets the Ivenack Lane and, in it, sat a general who had been quartered on the Graf of Ivenack the night before. It, too, drove up the pa.s.s and, when it came to the place where the transport had stuck fast, some confusion arose amongst the soldiers in getting out of the way, and no sooner did my father observe this, than he flew, as if shot out of a pistol, from behind the Herr Rathsherr's cloak, up the bank on the other side of the coach, to the willow-tree, s.n.a.t.c.hed whip and bridle out of Fritz Sahlmann's hands, jumped on to the horse, and--quick as lightning--was down the hill.

"_Feu_, _feu!_" shouted the French; "click, click," went the hammers, but no response came from the old firelocks, for the powder was as wet--as Stahl the weaver's coffee grounds.

For one short instant, it seemed as if the Stemhagen burghers, when they saw their Burmeister riding over hedge and ditch, were going to give him three cheers; and Bank the shoemaker was just beginning "Our Burmeister viv ..." when the b.u.t.t-end of a French musket applied between his shoulders clearly hinted to him that he had better be off.

His example was followed by the others and, in a twinkling, the place was clear of everybody except Inspector Brasig, who had stationed himself against a tree and was smoking a pipe with the greatest calmness.

Now, whether no one had observed that he had come on horseback, or whether the French had distinctly seen that he had had nothing to do with my father's escape, he having stood a long way off from his horse--whatever it was, nothing was said to him.

The other three prisoners, however, got a double guard, and were brought away out of the pa.s.s into an open field, and thence, to the old windmill from which the hill took its name, as it was a little drier there. Here they sat back to back on a millstone and talked together.