“Do you like best to sit still and not talk?” asked Eva softly. Goodness
shone in her eyes; she passed her hand over my hair.
“You good, good soul,” I broke out, and pressed her close to me. “I know
for certain I am perishing for love of you; I love you more and more;
the end of it will be that you must go with me when I go away. You shall
see. Could you go with me?”
“Yes,” she answered.
I hardly heard that yes, but I felt it in her breath and all through
her. We held each other fiercely.
An hour later I kissed Eva good-bye and went away. At the door I meet
Herr Mack.
Herr Mack himself.
He started--stared into the house--stopped there on the doorstep,
staring in. “Ho!” said he, and could say no more; he seemed thrown
altogether off his balance.
“You did not expect to find me here,” I said, raising my cap.
Eva did not move.
Herr Mack regained his composure; a curious confidence appeared in his
manner, and he answered:
“You are mistaken: I came on purpose to find you. I wish to point out to
you that from the 1st of April it is forbidden to fire a shot within
half a mile of the bird-cliffs. You shot two birds out at the island
to-day; you were seen doing so.”
“I shot two guillemots,” I said helplessly. I saw at once that the man
was in the right.
“Two guillemots or two eiderducks--it is all the same. You were within
the prohibited limit.”
“I admit it,” I said. “It had not occurred to me before.”
“But it ought to have occurred to you.”
“I also fired off both barrels once in May, at very nearly the same
spot. It was on a picnic one day. And it was done at your own request.”
“That is another matter,” answered Herr Mack shortly.
“Well, then, devil take it, you know what you have to do, I suppose?”
“Perfectly well,” he answered.
Eva held herself in readiness; when I went out, she followed me; she had
put on a kerchief, and walked away from the house; I saw her going down
towards the quay. Herr Mack walked back home.
I thought it over. What a mind, to hit on that all at once, and save
himself! And those piercing eyes of his. A shot, two shots, a brace of
guillemots--a fine, a payment. And then everything, _everything_, would
be settled with Herr Mack and his house. After all, it was going off so
beautifully quickly and neatly...
The rain was coming down already, in great soft drops. The magpies flew
low along the ground, and when I came home and turned Æsop loose he
began eating the grass. The wind was beginning to rustle.