CHAPTER IV

Like all the houses in the village, the Solheids' cottage stood quite alone behind a hedge that reached as high as the gable. But the hedge, which was to protect it against the storms that raged in the Venn and the heavy snowdrifts, was not thick any longer; you could see that there was no man's hand there to take care of it. The hornbeams had shot up irregularly; dead branches lashed by the wind from the Venn stretched themselves in the air like accusing fingers.

Ugh, it must be icy cold there in the winter. Kate involuntarily drew her cloak of soft cloth lined with silk more tightly round her.

And it must be doubly dark there on dark days. Hardly any light found its way through the tiny windows owing to the protecting hedge, and the roof hung low over the entrance. There were no steps, you walked straight into the room.

The vestryman rattled the iron knocker on the door, which had once been painted green but had no colour left now. The sound reverberated through the building, but the door did not open when they tried it. The woman was probably among the berries, and the children with her. The hungry screams of the youngest one was all that was heard inside the locked cottage.

The poor child--oh, she had left it alone again. Kate trembled with excitement, its screams sounded to her like a call for help.

The vestryman sat down calmly on the chopping-block in front of the door and drew his pipe out of the pocket of his blue linen smock, which he had hastily drawn over his working coat in honour of the lady and the gentleman. Now they would have to wait.

The husband and wife looked at each other much disappointed. Wait?

Kate had refused the seat on the chopping-block, which the old man had offered her with a certain gallantry. She could not rest, she walked restlessly up and down in front of the little window, trying in vain to look through the dark pane.

The child inside screamed more and more loudly. Old Rocherath laughed: what a roar that was to be sure, Jean-Pierre had powerful lungs.

Kate could not listen to the screams any longer, they tortured her both bodily and mentally. Oh, how they made her ears tingle. She covered them with her hands. And her heart trembled with compa.s.sion and anger: how could its mother remain away so long?

Her brow was wet with perspiration. She stared at the Venn, at the bare, treeless, tortuous path with burning impatient eyes. At last she saw some figures--at last!--and yet her breath stopped all at once, her heart ceased to beat and then suddenly went hammering on at a furious pace as if mad. There came the child's mother!

Lisa Solheid was carrying a bundle of f.a.gots on her back, which was fastened round her shoulders with a rope The load was so heavy that it quite weighed her down, bending her head forward. Three children--their small feet in clumsy shoes with big nails in them--stamped along in front of their mother, whilst a fourth was clinging to her skirt. It had also been looking for cranberries, and its little hands were coloured red like those of its older sister and brothers, who were carrying pails, measure and comb.

Pretty children, all four of them. They had the same dark eyes as little Jean-Pierre, and they stared with them half boldly, half timidly at the strange lady who was smiling at them.

The woman did not recognise the lady and gentleman again who had given her a present in the Venn the day before--or did she only pretend not to?

The rope which had kept the bundle together had cut deep into her shoulders and bosom, now she undid it and threw off the burden with a powerful jerk; and then, seizing hold of the axe lying near the chopping-block, she began to chop up a couple of big branches with powerful strokes.

"Hallo, Lisa," said the vestryman, "when you have chopped sufficient wood to cook the cranberries, just wait a bit."

She looked up at him for a moment. The strange lady and gentleman had gone a little aside--without previous arrangement. Let the vestryman tell her first. It was not so simple a matter as they had imagined. She was not very approachable.

Not a feature changed in the woman's reserved face; she went on with her work in silence, her lips compressed. The wood was split up by means of her powerful blows, and the pieces flew around her. Was she listening at all to what the man was saying to her?

Yes--the spectators exchanged a hasty glance--and now she was answering too in a more lively manner than they would have supposed, judging from her sullen appearance.

Lisa Solheid raised her arm and pointed to the cottage in which the little one was still screaming. Her speech--an almost barbaric dialect--sounded rough, they understood nothing of it except a French word here and there. The vestryman spoke Walloon too. Both of them became excited, raised their voices and spoke to each other in a loud voice; it sounded almost like quarrelling.

They did not seem to agree. Kate listened in suppressed terror.

Would she give it? Would he get it from her?

She pulled her husband's sleeve when n.o.body was looking. "Offer more, give her some more, a hundred thalers is much too little." And he must also promise the peasant something for his trouble. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a hundred times a hundred would not be too much. Oh, how the poor child was screaming. She could hardly bear to stand outside the door doing nothing any longer.

Little Jean-Pierre's sister and brothers--a beautiful girl with untidy hair and three younger brothers--stood with their fingers in their mouths, their dirty noses unwiped, and did not move from the spot.

Their mother spoke to them angrily, "Off with you!" And they darted off, one almost tumbling over another. They sc.r.a.ped the key out of the little hole under the door, and the biggest of them thrust it into the rusty lock, and, standing on her toes, turned it with all the strength of her small hands.

Then the woman turned to the strange lady and gentleman; she made a gesture of invitation with her thin right hand: "Entrez."

They stepped in. It was so low inside that Paul Schlieben had to bend his head so as not to knock against the beams in the ceiling, and so dark that it took a considerable time before they could distinguish anything at all. It could not have been poorer anywhere--one single room in all. The hearth was formed of unhewn stones roughly put together, above it hung the kettle in an iron chain that was made fast to the blackened beam; the smoke from the smouldering peat ascended into the wide sooty chimney. A couple of earthenware plates in the plate-rack--cracked but with gay-coloured flowers on them--a couple of dented pewter vessels, a milk-pail, a wooden tub, a long bench behind the table, on the table half a loaf of bread and a knife, a few clothes on some nails, the double bed built half into the wall, in which the widow no doubt slept with the children now, and little Jean-Pierre's clumsy wooden cradle in front of it--that was all.

Really all? Kate looked round, shivering a little in the cold dark room that was as damp as a cellar. Oh, how poor and comfortless. There were no ornaments, nothing to decorate it. Oh yes, there was a glaringly gaudy picture of the Virgin Mary--a coa.r.s.e colour-print on thin paper--a vessel for holy water made of white china beneath it, and there on the other wall close to the window so that the spa.r.s.e light fell on it the picture of a soldier. A framed and glazed picture in three divisions; the same foot-soldier taken three times. To the left, shouldering his arms, on guard before the black and white sentry-box--to the right, ready to march with knapsack and cooking utensils strapped on his back, bread-bag and field-flask at his side, gun at his feet--in the centre, in full dress uniform as a lance-corporal, with his hand to his helmet saluting.

That was no doubt the man, Michel Solheid as a soldier. Kate cast a timid glance at the picture--that man had been shot in the Venn whilst smuggling. How terrible! She heard the old man tell the story once more, saw the bleeding man lying in the heather, and the horror of his tragic end made her shudder. Her glance fell on the picture again and again, the usual picture of a soldier which told nothing whatever in its stereotyped inanity, and then on little Jean-Pierre's cradle. Did he resemble his father much?

Paul Schlieben had expected his wife to speak--she would of course know best what to say to the other woman--but she was silent. And the vestryman did not say anything either; as he had started the negotiations he considered it polite to let the gentleman speak now.

And Lisa Solheid was also silent. All she did was to drive away the children, who wanted to fall upon the hard bread on the table with ravenous appet.i.tes, with a silent gesture. Then she stood quietly beside the cradle, her right hand, which still held the axe with which she had cut the wood, hanging loosely by her side. Her face was gloomy, forbidding, and still a struggle was reflected on it.

Paul Schlieben cleared his throat. He would have preferred some other person to have settled the matter for him, but, as this other person was not there and the vestryman only looked at him expectantly, he was compelled to speak. With an affability which might have been taken for condescension but which was nothing but embarra.s.sment he said: "Frau Solheid, the vestryman will have told you what has brought us to you--do you understand me, my good woman?"

She nodded.

"It's our intention to take your youngest child away with us"--he hesitated, for she had made a movement as though she wanted to deny it--"as our own, to adopt it. Do you understand?"

She did not answer, but he continued with as much haste as if she had said yes. "We will treat it as if it really were our own. We shall be able to do more for it than you would, of course, and we----"

"Oh, and we'll love it so," his wife broke in.

The black-eyed woman turned her head slowly to the side where the fair-haired lady was standing. It was a peculiar look with which she scanned the stranger, who had now approached the cradle. Was it a scrutinising look or a forbidding one? A friendly or unfriendly one?

Kate looked at the child with longing eyes. It was no longer crying, it even smiled, and now--now it stretched out its little arms. Oh, it was already so intelligent, it was looking at her, it noticed already that she was fond of it. It tried to get up--oh, it wanted to go to her, to her!

Her face flushed with joy. She had already stretched out her hands to take the child, when its mother pushed herself in front of the cradle like a wall.

"Neni,"[A] she said in Walloon, in a hard voice. She raised her empty left hand to ward Kate off. And then she made the sign of the cross on the child's forehead and then on its breast.

[Footnote A: Non.]

But why, why would she not give it all at once? Kate trembled with dismay. She cast an imploring look at her husband, as much as to say: "Help me. I must have the child."

And then her husband said what he wanted to say before when his wife had cut him short: "We will secure your child's future. Do you know what that means, my good woman? It will never have to trouble about its daily bread--never have to hunger. Never have to work to prolong its life--only work for the pleasure of working. Do you understand?"

Work--for the pleasure of working? The woman shook her head, she did not understand him. But then the words came into her mind: never hunger!--and a light shone in her dull eyes. Never hunger--ah, the woman understood that; and still she shook her head again: "Neni!"

She pointed to herself and the other children, and then to the great Venn outside with a comprehensive gesture:

"Nos avans tortos faim."[A] She shrugged her shoulders with the equanimity of one who is accustomed to it, and it even looked as though she wanted to smile; the corners of her sullen mouth did not droop quite so much, her lips that were generally tightly closed showed her strong healthy teeth.

The vestryman stepped in now: "'Pon my word, Lisa, to hunger is surely no pleasure. Good heavens, how can you be so foolish! The child will be taken from h.e.l.l to heaven. Remember what I've told you, the lady and gentleman are rich, very rich, and they are mad on the child--quick, give it to them, you still have four."

Still four! She nodded reflectively, but then she threw her head back, and a look--now it was plain, something like hatred flickered in it--flew to the others standing there so rich, so fine, with rings on their ringers, and at whom her Jean-Pierre was peeping. "Neni!" She repeated it once more and still more curtly and more obstinately than before.