In the Year '13 Part 8

"He did not sleep here," said the old Herr.

"Yes," said the Colonel, "he did sleep here, he slept in that room,"

and he pointed to Mamsell Westphalen's room.

"Impossible," cried the old Herr, raising his voice as if to defend Innocence before the whole world, "that's Mamsell Westphalen's room.

She has been in my house twenty years, and do you mean to say she would let a man be in her room?"

"Corlin;" said Mamsell Westphalen in the kitchen, "give me a couple of blows in the neck, for I feel as if I were going to faint; and my head swims round."

The Colonel threw open the door, and there stood the watchmaker before them. The adjutant had just been examining him, and he had told the adjutant everything--except the truth.

The old Amtshauptmann was quite aghast when he saw the watchmaker before him. "This is inexplicable!" he cried.

The Colonel laughed scornfully, and said he hoped it would not long remain inexplicable; then he whispered a few words to the adjutant and asked for the keys of the state prison.

"I cannot give them out for this prisoner," said the Amtshauptmann, "for he has no right to the state prison; he is a citizen and must go to the town gaol."

"So much the better," replied the Colonel, "for there will be less opportunity there for connivance."

So Herr Droi was marched off between a couple of soldiers--for gradually the courtyard had got filled with French--and was transported to the Rathhaus.

The Colonel also went; but, when he reached the door, he turned round and said that, strictly according to duty, he ought to have the Herr Amtshauptmann arrested, but because the Herr was an old man, and more especially because of the hard words he had used, he should be left in peace. The Colonel would keep himself clear from the slightest suspicion of having wished to revenge himself for those bitter words; but if the presence of the Amtshauptmann or Mamsell Westphalen were necessary at the examination, they must come before him. The old Herr coldly acquiesced, and the Colonel went, but ordered a couple of gensdarmes off to the Gielow Mill, and looked sharply at the Amtshauptmann as he gave the order.

When they were gone, the old Herr went towards the kitchen, and Hanchen started back from her c.h.i.n.k in the door, for she thought her master was coming in. But all at once he stood still, turned round and said to himself: "What did the fellow say about 'connivance' and 'keeping himself clear of any appearance of revenge.' What a French Colonel can only talk about, the Amtshauptmann Weber can surely do. I too will keep my name clear. There shall be no appearance of connivance on my part."

And he went into his room.

CHAPTER VII.

My uncle Herse, what he was and what he did; and why Fritz Sahlmann had to whistle.

When the watchmaker was led off to prison, Fritz Sahlmann must of necessity go too, merely to see what would happen to the prisoner, and whether he would escape; but, in this last he was disappointed. The procession moved but slowly down to the Rathhaus, for they had to wind their way through all the carts and waggons which had been ordered up from the town and neighbouring villages for the transport of the baggage and cannon, and were now collected in the courtyard and along the road leading to the Schloss. They were surrounded by French soldiers, that they might not escape, for our old peasants had got wonderfully clever at that. The watchmaker marched along with his two guards, through the crowd, as quiet and patient as a lamb; for though at first he had been dreadfully frightened, and though the affair of last night looked decidedly awkward, yet during the interview with the adjutant, he had fallen into a state of apathy, in which he had seemed to say--"Talk away as long as you like; you may go on talking all day for what I care," and his answers had been few and far between. And, though he was not one of those wild spirits that fly at once at everything, he had been too long in the world, and had been in too many sc.r.a.pes before, to lose heart immediately now. He made up his mind for whatever might come. "What's to be the end of this I wonder?" he thought, as he was pushed in at the Rathhaus door.

"Fritz Sahlmann," said Rathsherr Herse, as the boy was about to return to the Schloss, "what's the meaning of this?"

Fritz now related with immense importance all that had taken place yesterday, how Droz had slept in Mamsell Westphalen's room and turned everything, upside down; and how he himself had smashed the Herr Amtshauptmann's pipes--he couldn't help it, though--it was Hanchen's fault;--and how the Colonel had been going to run the Herr Amtshauptmann through the body with his sword; and how Mamsell Westphalen was sitting in the kitchen, like a picture of woe. But he said nothing about the lump of ice.

Now, my uncle, the Rathsherr Herse, was an ardent patriot, but he kept it a profound secret. And he had his reasons. For, as he whispered to me many years afterwards when Buonaparte had long been dead, he belonged at this time to the secret society of the "Tugendbund." And I can believe it, for when he was in company he was always playing with a long watch-chain made of light-coloured hair--and Aunt Herse's was black--and he wore a large dangerous-looking iron ring on his finger, with which he once struck Hopner the locksmith's apprentice nearly dead, when he was behaving rudely in court. "Fritz," he said to me later on, "this light hair is that of an heroic virgin who had her head shaven for the Fatherland in the year thirteen, and the iron ring cost me my gold one. But don't talk of it; I don't like it spoken about." He was rightly therefore much given to secrets about the time of this story.

And it is possible, too, that his habit of looking at life from a commanding point of view and seizing everything as a whole without regard to details had something to do with his secret brotherhood, for while my Father had to plague himself day and night with the smallest squabbles and quarrels, in order that the government of the little town might not lose what small amount of life it had, Rathsherr Herse commanded Kutusoff to march to the right and Czeruitcheff to the left, and praised York, and blamed Bulow because he didn't understand his business; for he ought not to have gone to Berlin, he ought to have marched to the right of Stemhagen and fallen on Buonaparte's flank.--In short Uncle Herse was just the man to make a thunderstorm out of a sunshower. In every innocent French corporal he saw the Corsican monster, and if Luth, the Town Messenger, happened to get a blow in a peasants' row on Blue Monday, he made as much fuss as if the Duke of Mecklenburg himself had been struck.

"Hold your tongue, boy," he whispered impressively. "Do you want to scream out your sentence of death in the public market-place! I wouldn't give a groschen for the watchmaker's chance of life, for it is certain that the Miller and his Friedrich have murdered the French Cha.s.seur."

"Not the Miller," interrupted Fritz, "the Miller was made up of brandy and good-nature yesterday."

"Well, then, his Friedrich has. He's a Prussian. Do you know what a Prussian is? Do you know what the meaning of Prussian is? Do you know...? Blockhead! What are you staring at me for? Do you think I'm going to tell you all my secrets? But what I was going to say is--they'll send the old Amtshauptmann to Bayonne in France, where they also sent Graf Ivenacker's white horse, Herodotus; and Mamsell Westphalen--as far as I know the French laws--will simply be strung up, and you, my lad, will get a good flogging for coming down here."

Fritz Sahlmann now saw a sad prospect before him, and made a wry face accordingly.--

"But, Herr Rathsherr, not in a public place?" he asked.

"Wherever they can catch you. Though, if the matter is taken up in the proper quarters, everything may still be made right.--Can you be silent?"

Fritz Sahlmann replied that he could be most modestly silent.

"Well, then, come here, and put both your hands in your trowsers'

pockets, and whistle. That's it. And now look quite unconcerned as you do in summer time when you are knocking down the apples from the tree in the Schlossgarden, and you see Mamsell Westphalen coming. Yes that's right. And now, observe every word that I say; go with this face and with this look of child-like innocence through the French and peasants up to the Schloss into the kitchen, and take Mamsell Westphalen aside into a corner and then say to her just these words--'_help is near_.'

If she is not satisfied with this you can break to her gently what I have told you about hanging, and, if she's at all frightened at that, say she is to keep up her heart, for I, Rathsherr Herse, have taken the matter in hand. But first of all, she must at once shut and bolt the kitchen-door and the back-door leading to the garden, and she and the two maids and you must each arm yourselves with weapons, and on no account let any Frenchman in, and you must defend yourselves to the last man till I come. I will go at once and will come through the Schlossgarden to the back-door--I'll only get my cloak first for it's raining desperately, and my pa.s.s-word will be '_All's well_' and my war-cry 'York.' But no! She won't understand that. What do you say?

It's all the same--it's all the same. Well, my war-cry will be 'Pickled pork.' She'll understand that. So when some one comes, and calls it out, she is to open the back-door. Have you understood it all?"

"Yes, Herr Rathsherr."

"Well, then, now be off; and don't let anyone,--not even the Herr Amtshauptmann--know a word about it."

Fritz went, and the Rathsherr too.

My uncle Herse had, of course, had the blue Rathsherr uniform with red and gold collar made, as soon as he had become Rathsherr; and, as he was a fine, tall man he was very fond of putting it on, in order to command proper respect, whenever an opportunity presented itself, such as, for example, when the fire-engines were to be tried, or when the cows were first driven to pasture in the spring, or foreign troops were quartered in the town. Then, too, when my father was sitting in his grey coat at the court table writing till his fingers ached, Rathsherr Herse would march up and down in front of the table, keeping up the official pomp and dignity by the splendour of his appearance, and it pleased him mightily when a Frenchman by mistake addressed him as "Monsieur le Maire." My father had nothing to say against this, for there was generally a good deal of disputing to be done, and he gave this over, with the pomp and dignity, to the Rathsherr, taking the real business upon himself. In this way, they had divided the work fairly between them, and what with Rathsherr Susemihl, who on days when the court was sitting performed the onerous duty of a.s.sessor, and what with the zeal of Dohmstreich the Recorder, and the exertions of Luth the Town Messenger, and the firemen who every month took out their engines to try them, and Panner Hirsch, who used to drive the boys out of the peas-fields, I should like to know where you could have found a town or parish in better trim than my native town of Stemhagen. And all because my uncle Herse was fond of wearing his uniform!

When my uncle Herse reached home, he looked in his clothes-closet for his grey cloak,--for it was still pouring with rain,--and he caught sight of his uniform. "Ah," thought he, "now, to-day will be a good opportunity for me to put it on; and, who knows, perhaps it may be of use in this enterprise." So he put it on, and also the fine c.o.c.ked hat that we boys used afterwards to make a boat of and sail on old Nahmaker's pond. At this time it was in its best days, and, as the Rathsherr stepped out at the door, he drew the cape of his cloak over it so that it should not get wet; and then he looked like a French General when he reconnoitres the enemy's post by night. "Well," he said, "no one will know me now."

He went across the market-place, and then by a little roundabout way across the timber yard, where Farmer Nahmaker was looking after his horses, which the French had taken out of the stable and were now driving away.

"Good morning, Herr Rathsherr," said the farmer, "what times these are!"

"Hush!" said my uncle and went on.

Behind the timber-yard barns, Swerdfeger, the joiner, met him.

"Good morning, Herr Rathsherr."

"Hold your tongue!" said my uncle angrily, and went round outside the Schlossgarden.

"Good morning, Herr Rathsherr," said the son of old Harloff the actor.

Smack! The boy had a blow with the back of the hand on his mouth.

"Blockhead! Don't you see that I do not wish to be known?"

So saying, he entered the Schloss-garden and said angrily: "The devil take it! A public position lies on one as heavy as a curse."

CHAPTER VIII.

How my uncle Herse came with pa.s.s-word and war-cry; and Mamsell Westphalen refused to hide in the peat bog. How the Herr Rathsherr got into Miller's cart, and how he got out of it again.