An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (10 page)

Constable Gneis then hammered briskly on the door and shouted, “Police! Open in the name of the law, Herr Schlieker—or I’ll kick your old door to bits!”

In the meantime, the Professor was standing alone in the Schliekers’ garden. The departing wave of people had swept him out of the yard, and to avoid it he had stepped round a corner of the house. Here, in solitude, he felt at ease; again the whole affair was more than he could stand—the crowd and the shouting, the turmoil of events past and to come, in which he was so grievously involved.

He vaguely heard the hammering on the door, the policeman’s lusty shouts, then he sat down heavily on a bench that stood in an arbor of jasmine, lilac, and honeysuckle, placing his black clerical hat beside him. Vacantly he stared at the few surviving wild flowers by his feet, vacantly he listened to the rising hubbub from the yard.

A sudden sound from near at hand made him start. A back door from the house into the garden had opened, and a face peered cautiously out. Professor Kittguss knew that face and was afraid.

But it did not see the Professor in his arbor—

“Off with you, Marie!” said Frau Schlieker. “There’s no one here—the Schlieker family will be one too many for them yet!”

“Oh, please don’t,” cried an imploring voice that made the Professor listen. “The children might catch cold on the water.”

“Nonsense!—they can’t catch cold in half an hour! Do what I tell you for once in your life, Marie, and I’ll make it up to you, truly I will. I won’t have them all after us like this—the five sisters, the parish clerk, the
whole village, and now that pompous old fool of a policeman—they shan’t put it over on us. Now do as I say, Marie. We’ll hand over the children ourselves tomorrow, I promise, but not today, not to
these
brutes. . . .”

The girl seemed to hesitate and ponder.

“Now please, Marie,” urged the woman.

“And we’ll take them to the office tomorrow, for sure? You promise, Mali?”

“On my sacred word of honor, Rosemarie!”

“All right, I will. I’ve no use for any of them, not even the policeman, he just laughs at me. . . .”

The Professor got up.

Then followed a scurry behind the bushes, through the garden and down to the lake. He could hear suppressed voices, the clink of a chain, and the whimper of a little child.

As he stood irresolute, the woman again passed his hiding-place, and vanished into the house— What should he do—call the policeman?

The woman came back with another child on her arm. Unseeing and unhearing, she ran past him. He followed her through the garden and down to the water. Rosemarie, his godchild, sat waiting in a boat, and the children sat or sprawled in the bottom.

“Here you are, Marie,” cried Frau Schlieker. “You stay hidden among the reeds till it’s dark. And don’t let any of the children cry. . . .”

“Rosemarie!” cried the Professor in an agonized tone.

She looked up at him, and a flush grew gradually deeper over her face. . . . “Is that you, Godfather?” she whispered.

“What are you trespassing here for?” hissed the woman.
“I’m sick of the sight of you—you silly old man! Get along, Marie!”

And she gave the boat a kick that made it rock.

“I’m coming with you,” cried the Professor, his voice rising to something like a shriek. He jumped, bag in hand, soaring over a gap of water that looked very broad and perilous. . . . He landed somehow, staggered and fell. His body struck against something hard, and he felt a sharp twinge of pain.

“Come back! Throw the old fool out,” screamed the woman on the shore, grabbing the boat hook.

“Pull away!” cried the Professor. He sat in the bottom of the boat looking sick and yellow, gasping for breath, his hand to his side.

The girl saw the approaching boat hook, and bent to the oars. The boat shot out into the lake.

“What is all this disgraceful disturbance?” exclaimed Schlieker, with an air of vast surprise, as he opened the door, which the invaders were now battering with a crowbar and a handspike. “Officer, I protest against this damage to my property.”

He stood in the door, barring the way and grinning contemptuously at the infuriated throng. “Ah, Gottschalk, you old fool, you think you can stick your nose into everything because you happen to be the parish clerk. You’ll pay for my door.”

“That will do, Herr Schlieker,” said Constable Gneis angrily. “It is your fault we have had to stand here knocking and shouting. If there’s any charge to be made, it will be against you for resisting the law—and money won’t put that right.”

“Knocked, did you?” said Schlieker with a laugh, not budging an inch out of the doorway. “And shouted too? Well, Herr Gneis, I heard nothing whatever. I was in the cellar stopping up the old rat holes with glass and cement. You can’t hear anything down there, but that’s no reason for smashing a man’s front door. I know that much about justice and the law.”

“There!” said the constable, looking reproachfully at the sisters and the mayor. “Exactly as I thought. Exactly. But I’ve one thing to say to you, Schlieker my man, and I’ll take my service oath on it. You’re going to find this a bad day’s work.”

“Kindly address me as Herr Schlieker, officer,” grinned Schlieker. “I quite understand you’re more used to the society of criminals, such as the one handcuffed to you at present, but I must insist on your speaking to me with proper respect. Ah, Philip, my lad,” he said with sudden geniality, “glad to be back again, eh? You will be gladder later on, I can promise you that, on my solemn oath.”

“None of that nonsense, Herr Schlieker,” said the constable angrily. “We will deal with the boy’s case in due course. First, you hand over the five children at once. It’s a sin and shame that the sisters should have to toil up here, when you have been officially instructed three times to give them up.”

“But I have done so!” cried Schlieker in high astonishment. “My foster daughter went off with them early this morning, and they must have reached the office long ago.”

“That’s a lie!” said the red-cheeked sister indignantly. “I heard a child crying in the house!”

“Herr Schlieker,” said the constable confidentially, “what’s the use of such talk? I shall simply have to search the house—why bring all this unpleasantness on yourself? . . . Do be sensible for once, and don’t run your head against a brick wall.”

“I’m quite sensible. I tell you that the children started out at five this morning. If you want to look over the house, please do so, officer.”

And he stepped out of the doorway.

The others whispered for a moment while he watched them with a grin on his face. Then they started searching the house and, of course, they searched in vain. Most persistent of all was the large and bearded sister who knelt down and looked under every bed and rummaged in every cupboard and every basket as though a baby might be hidden among waste paper or dirty clothes.

“Try under the sofa, Sister Adelaide,” said Schlieker genially, and managed to give Philip a jab in the ribs unobserved. This he did as often as he could. The poor lad looked more and more woebegone, and his servitude to the Schlieker household seemed so terrible a prospect—especially as his friend Rosemarie was nowhere to be seen—that he mustered all the forces of his reason and whispered into the constable’s ear, “The boa-at.”

“What!” said the constable, who was on one side of him; from the other, Philip got a buffet that winded him for the moment.

“Try the beet-cellar, Sister Adelaide,” said Paul genially, and lifted the trapdoor invitingly. They were all now convinced that there was really no one in the house, and that Schlieker had fooled them as usual; but the rosy-faced sister went down none the less, and found nothing.

“The boa-at,” said the lad more insistently. Hell gaped for him, that he well knew, but those acquainted with its torments are often possessed of a courage hardly conceived of by people who live in less gruesome regions.

“The boat?—” asked the constable reflectively.

“What’s that?” shouted the farmer in sudden fury. “What’s that you’re saying? Hold your tongue, or . . .” And the alternative was a blow that sent the lad staggering against the wall.

“None of that, Herr Schlieker,” said the constable sternly. “The boat, of course. The poor silly lad has got more sense than the whole lot of us. Come on. . . .”

And they dashed off as though the lake were on fire, down to the landing stage, Peter Gneis in the lead, with the lad handcuffed to his wrist. Behind him ran the withered old clerk, muttering and cursing; and behind him, the five sisters, the old bearded one in front and the red-cheeked girl last, their little bags flying behind them as they ran. At their side ran Paul Schlieker and his wife Mali, who had suddenly appeared and whispered to her husband as she ran.

The lake lay before them, a broad green expanse under a pale blue October sky, with patches of reed and sedge standing motionless in the water.

The excited throng came to a sudden stop, and stared at water and landing stage as though there were something to see. But there was nothing, except the landing stage and the lake. God alone knew what they expected to find—possibly the babies lined up on the shore, having presumably dropped from Heaven. But there was nothing, nothing at all.

“And where is your boat, Herr Schlieker?” asked the constable, looking rather disconsolate.

“My boat? I’ve lent it to my cousin at Biestow. He uses it for carrying wood from Biestow.”

“Well, well,” said the constable resignedly. “You ought to know. However, you can depend on my going to have a look at your boat at Biestow this evening—Hullo, my lad, what have you got there?”

While he spoke, Philip had bent down as far as the handcuff chain would let him, and picked up something at the water’s edge. Behold—it was a small child’s shoe, of blue silk with little white dots.

“Will you kindly explain, Herr Schlieker, how a child’s shoe comes to be lying on your landing stage?” asked the constable solemnly, for now he had a piece of evidence.

This time Schlieker offered no explanation, this time his wrath boiled over, and he flung the mask aside.

“I’ll soon show you—damn you!” and he dashed at the wretched boy and belabored him until the lad nearly collapsed. And as Philip was linked to the constable, that functionary came in for a blow or two, whether intentionally or not will never be known.

The constable swore and prepared to retaliate. Gottschalk tried to restrain the combatants, but only made matters worse. The sisters shrieked, and the bearded dame unobtrusively set upon Frau Schlieker from behind.

Suddenly, a hand emerged from the scuffle and clawed at the constable’s face. He raised an arm to ward it off and the catch of the handcuffs slipped. The moment Philip noticed this he was off like a bullet from a
gun, knocking down some of the combatants, slipping between the legs of others. In a flash he had climbed a fence, dashed through the orchard and disappeared behind some bushes, nor did he reappear until he had reached the edge of the forest some distance away.

“Well, he’s off!” observed the constable, with something which almost resembled satisfaction.

“Stop him! Stop him!” roared the parish clerk.

“I’ll half kill him when I get him back,” bawled Schlieker, rubbing the shin which the boy had kicked as he fled, whether intentionally or not will never be known either.

“You’ll pay for my dress!” screamed Mali Schlieker to Sister Adelaide.

Then they stood and eyed each other in amazement. The boy had vanished into the autumn foliage, and not one of them had stirred a step in pursuit.

“Well, we shan’t see him again for a while,” said the constable solemnly. “And he’s taken away my evidence—the child’s shoe. No one’s got it, have they?”

No, no one had it.

“We will now go indoors, Herr Schlieker, and draw up a statement. It looks to me as if I should be using the handcuffs on you next.”

“I shall be interested to know what you can prove against me,” said the incorrigible Paul. “I sent the girl to the Welfare Office with the five little bastards, you can’t complain of that, can you? As for the shoe—well, what’s wrong with that? Marie Thürke is an untidy little devil!” He gazed meditatively over the lake. But he saw only the usual scene: water, reeds, a few ducks.

“Where shall we go, Godfather?” the girl asked the old gentleman. Some twenty strokes had brought the boat into a bed of reeds beyond the sight and hearing of the infuriated woman on the landing stage.

“Yes, where indeed, my child?” the Professor replied, with his hand against his aching body. “You see, Rosemarie,” he went on with an effort, “I am an old man, a very old man, and need rest and a certain degree of comfort. Half an hour ago I thought that everything would be nicely settled, and now everything is upset again. 1 really don’t know how or why. . . .”

He passed a hand over his forehead and sighed. Then he looked apprehensively at the other occupants of the boat, three of whom were crying already.

“And these children—” he sighed again. “And I don’t think I have ever been in a boat before.”

The girl could not help laughing at this display of helplessness. But she soon stopped, and excused herself: “I’m so sorry, Godfather, it has all been so different from what I expected. When I sent poor Philip, I thought I should get a man’s help and support. Dear Papa often told me how you kept whole classes of thirty or forty boys in order—and that must be fearfully difficult.”