Ugh, what a greedy expression she had now.

The fruit-picker stretched out her hand--there was a large shining silver coin--and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers closed round it tightly.

"Merci." A smile pa.s.sed quickly across the sullen face in which the corners of the mouth drooped morosely, her blunted expression grew animated for a moment or two. And then she prepared to trudge away, the shapeless bundle containing the child on one arm, the heavy pail on the other.

They now saw for the first time how poor her skirt was; it had patches of all colours and sizes. Dried heather and fir-needles stuck to her matted and untidy plaits, as they hung out from the gaudily spotted cotton handkerchief; she had an old pair of men's hobnailed shoes on her feet. They did not know whether she was old or young; her stout body and hanging b.r.e.a.s.t.s disfigured her, but that her face had not been ugly once upon a time could still be seen. The little one resembled her.

"You've got a pretty child," said Paul. To please his wife he started a conversation again with this woman who was so inaccessible.

"How old is the boy?"

The fruit-picker shook her head and looked past the questioner apathetically. There was no getting anything out of the woman, how terribly stupid she was. The man wanted to let her go, but Kate pressed up against him and whispered: "Ask her where she lives. Where she lives--do you hear?"

"Heigh, where do you live, my good woman?"

She shook her head once more without saying a word.

"Where do you come from, I mean? From what village?"

"Je ne co'pr nay,"[A] she said curtly. But then, becoming more approachable--perhaps she hoped for a second gift of money--she began in a whining, plaintive voice: "Ne n'ava nay de pan et tat d's e'fa'ts."[B]

"You're a Walloon, aren't you?"

"Ay[C]--Longfaye." And she raised her arm and pointed in a direction in which nothing was to be seen but the heavens and the Venn.

Longfaye was a very poor village in the Venn. Paul Schlieben knew that, and was about to put his hand into his pocket again, but Kate held him back, "No, not her--not the woman--you must hand it over to the vestryman for the child, the poor child."

[Footnote A: Je ne comprends pas.]

[Footnote B: Nous n'avons pas de pain et tant d'enfants.]

[Footnote C: Yes.]

She whispered softly and very quickly in her excitement.

It was impossible for the woman to have understood anything, but her black eyes flew as quick as lightning from the gentleman to the lady, and remained fixed on the fine lady from the town full of suspicion: if she would not give her anything, why should she let them ask her any more questions? What did they want with her? With the curtest of nods and a brusque "adieu" the Walloon turned away. She walked away across the marsh calmly but with long strides; she got on quickly, her figure became smaller and smaller, and soon the faded colour of her miserable skirt was no longer recognisable in the colourless Venn.

The sun had disappeared with the child; suddenly everything became grey.

Kate stood motionless looking in the direction of Longfaye. She stood until she shivered with cold, and then hung heavily on her husband's arm; she went along to the inn with dragging feet, as though she had grown tired all at once.

The mist began to conceal the bright midday. Cold damp air, which wets more than rain, made their clothes clammy. The stinging flies from the swamps flew in big swarms through the door and windows of the inn; a smouldering peat-fire was burning within, fanned to a bright flame by means of dry fir twigs, and the flies clung to the wall near the fire-place and to the ceiling--no, they would not die yet.

Autumn had come, sun and warmth had disappeared from the Venn, it was wise to flee now.

But outside, in the depths of the wilds above the highest point in the Venn, a lonely buzzard was moving round and round in a circle, uttering the piercing triumphant cry of a wild bird. He was happy there in summer as in winter. He did not want to leave.

CHAPTER III

The vestryman of the small village in the Venn felt somewhat surprised and embarra.s.sed when such a fine lady and gentleman drove up to his house and wished to speak to him. He went out to them, walking through the filthy water in his yard that splashed up to his knees. He did not know where he should take them to, as the little pigs and the calf were in the house and the old sow was wallowing in front of the door.

So they walked up and down the quiet village street from which the few farms lay somewhat back, whilst the carriage jolted slowly along in the deep ruts behind them.

Kate was pale, you could see from her eyes that she had only had very little sleep. But she was smiling, and a happy excitement full of expectation was written on her features, spoke in her gait; she was always a little ahead of the others.

Her husband's face was very grave. Was he not committing a great imprudence, acting in an extremely hasty manner for the sake of his wife? If it did not turn out all right?

They had had a bad night. He had brought Kate home from the inn the day before in a strangely silent and absent-minded mood. She had eaten nothing, and, feigning extreme fatigue, had gone early to bed.

But when he retired to rest a few hours later he found her still awake.

She was sitting up in bed with her beautiful hair hanging down her back in two long plaits, which gave her quite a youthful appearance. Her bewildered eyes gazed at him full of a strange longing, and then she threw both arms round his neck and drew his head down to her.

Her manner had been so strange, so gentle and yet so impetuous, that he asked her anxiously whether there was anything the matter with her.

But she had only shaken her head and held him close in a silent embrace.

At last he thought she had fallen asleep--and she was asleep, but only for quite a short time. Then she woke again with a loud cry. She had dreamt, dreamt so vividly--oh, if he knew what she had been dreaming. Dreaming--dreaming--she sighed and tossed about, and then laughed softly to herself.

He noticed that she had something on her mind, which she would like to tell him but which she had hardly the courage to say. So he asked her.

Then she had confessed it to him, hesitatingly, shyly, and yet with so much pa.s.sion that it terrified him. It was the child of which she had been thinking the whole time, of which she always must think--oh, if only she had it. She would have it, must have it. The woman had so many other children, and she--she had none. And she would be so happy with it, so unspeakably happy.

She had become more and more agitated in the darkness of the night, uninterrupted by a single word from him, by any movement--he had lain quite quietly, almost as though the surprise had paralysed him, although it could not really be called a surprise any more. What was her whole life? she had said. A constant longing. All the love he showered on her could not replace the one thing: a child, a child.

"My dear, good husband, don't refuse it. Make me happy. No other mother on earth will be so happy--my darling husband, give me the child." Her tears were falling, her arms clasped him, her kisses rained down on his face.

"But why just _that_ child? And why decide so quickly? It's no trifle--we must think it over very carefully first."

He had made objections, excuses, but she had pertinent answers ready for all. What was to be thought over very carefully? They would not come to any other result. And how could he think for a moment that the woman would perhaps not give them the child? If she did not love it, she would be glad to give it, and if she did love it, then all the more reason for her to be glad to give it, and to thank G.o.d that she knew it was so well taken care of.

"But the father, the father. Who knows whether he will agree to it?"

"Oh, the father. If the mother gives it, the father is sure to agree. One bread-eater less is always a good thing for such poor people. The poor child, perhaps it will die for want of food, and it would be so well"--she broke off--"isn't it like a dispensation of Providence that just we should come to the Venn, that just we should find it?"

He felt that she was persuading him, and he strove against it in his heart. No, if she allowed herself to be carried away by her feelings in such a manner--she was only a woman--then he, as a man, must subordinate his feelings to common sense.

And he enumerated all the difficulties to her again and again, and finally said to her: "You can't guess what troubles you may be preparing for yourself. If the affection you now think you feel for the child should not last? If he is not congenial to you when he grows older? Bear in mind, he is and will always be the child you have adopted."

But then she had almost flown into a pa.s.sion. "How can you say such things? Do you think I am narrow-minded? Whether it is my own child or a child I have adopted is quite immaterial, as it becomes mine through its training. I will train it in my own way. That it is of your own flesh and blood has nothing to do with it. Am I only to love a child because I have borne it? Oh no. I love the child because--because it is so small, so innocent, because it must be so extremely sweet when such a helpless little creature stretches out its arms to you." And she spread out her arms and then folded them across her breast, as though she was already holding a child to her heart. "You're a man, you do not understand it. But you are so anxious to make me happy make me happy now. Dear, darling husband, you will very soon forget that it is not our own child, you will soon not remember it any more. It will say 'Father,' 'Mother' to us--and we will be its father and mother."

If she were right! He was silent, thrilled by a strange emotion. And why should she not be right? A child that one trains according to one's own method from its first year, that is removed entirely from the surroundings in which it was born, that does not know but what it is the child of its present parents, that learns to think with their thoughts and feel with their feelings, cannot have anything strange about it any more. It will become part of oneself, will be as dear, as beloved as though one had begotten it oneself.

Pictures arose before his mind's eye which he no longer expected to see, no longer ventured to hope for. He saw his smiling wife with a smiling child on her lap; he saw himself smile, and felt a pride he had never known when he heard its soft childish voice lisp: "Fa-ther." Yes, Kate was right, all the other things that go by the name of happiness are nothing compared to this happiness. Only a father, a mother, knows what joy is.