How the Miller felt next morning; why Friedrich appeared to the
Miller's wife like the serpent in the Garden of Paradise; and why
Fieka thought Joe Voss's son was sent to them by Providence.
The next morning Miller Voss felt as if he had half-a-dozen sparrows in
his head, which were pecking away at flies. It was not, he said to
himself, because of last night's deep drinking. No, it was chiefly
because of the Frenchman.
"Mother," said he as he pulled on his boots,--and he nodded his head
and looked knowingly into their wide tops, "red wine is a fine thing in
the evening, but, in the morning, it seems to me it's no better than
brandy or beer. However, if you jump over a dog you jump over his tail
too. But where is the Frenchman? He lay in the straw, and Friedrich
must know what has become of him."
"Father," said his wife, "never mind that now. Friedrich must come soon
you know, for it's time for the first breakfast."
The Miller went into the room, sat down at the table where the large
bowl of barley-broth was standing and helped himself; then the mother
helped herself and then Fieka and, lastly, the two maid-servants; for
such was the custom in those days; and no miller had yet heard of
coffee.
The Miller ate, then laid down his spoon: "Where can Friedrich be?" He
began eating again, then went to the window and shouted across the
yard; "Friedrich." Still no Friedrich.
The bowl of broth was empty; the servants took away the things, and the
Miller said: "When I have hired a servant, I'm not going to have him
play the fine gentleman!"--and was just setting out to look after him,
when Friedrich came in, carrying something under his arm.
"Where have you been, you vagabond?" asked the Miller?
"Miller," said Friedrich, and drew his clasp-knife out of his pocket
and stuck it under the door-latch, "don't speak like that; it's not fit
for you, nor yet for me. When wild geese are in the air it's ill sowing
peas, and when gossiping women are in the room it's best not to say
what you don't wish everybody to know. So I waited till the maids had
left the room. Here!" and he threw something on to the table so that it
rang again. "Here, Miller Voss. I've not brought you the fox himself,
nor yet his skin, but here's his leather bag."
"What does this mean?" exclaimed the Miller, and hastily seized the
valise and began unbuckling the straps.
"What does it mean?" said Friedrich "You must find that out for
yourself; it's no business of mine. I have taken my share already."
The Miller shook the valise over the table, and a packet of silver
spoons fell out and a quantity of silver coin, and beautiful, round,
yellow gold--and a little box came to light, and when the Miller's wife
opened it, there lay rings and broaches with gold chains coiled in
amongst them like serpents among brilliant flowers.
"Heaven preserve us!" she cried, and let the box fall.
Fieka had stood there looking on, her hands pressed to her bosom and
her eyes getting larger and larger. She now threw herself, pale as
death, across the table, laid her arms over the gold and silver
treasure and cried:
"It is the Frenchman's! It is the Frenchman's. It is not ours."
When she lifted up her head, and glanced at her father, she looked as
if some one had stabbed her with a knife, and the anguish of death was
in her face as she said "Father, father."
And the old Miller sat there fidgeting about with his night-cap, and he
looked at his child in her anguish and then again at the glittering
money. All at once he sprang up, nearly overturning the table, and
cried:
"God in Heaven! I know nothing about it. I don't know what has become
of him; he lay in the straw, that I know," and added in a feeble voice,
"Friedrich must know the rest."
Fieka left the money, and darted towards Friedrich. "Where is the
Frenchman?" she screamed.
Friedrich, with his old iron face, stood quietly looking at her. "God
save us!" he said at last. "Is this to be a court of justice then? Why,
Fieka, Fieka! Do I look like a robber and murderer? I laid the
Frenchman with my own hands under a beech-tree in the Stemhagen wood,
and, if the night air hasn't been too cool for him, he'll be lying
there now--still as a rat--for he was dead drunk."
"That he was," said the Miller.
Fieka looked first at Friedrich and then at her old father, who was
listening to what Friedrich was saying, "Friedrich," she said, "how
could I help thinking it. You are always talking about killing and
murdering Frenchmen." And she put her apron up to her eyes, threw
herself down on the bench behind the large, tile-covered stove, and
began to cry bitterly.
"Dumouriez! That I am," said Friedrich, "and if I could wring the necks
of those d--d patriots I'd do it. But a man who could not defend
himself?--And for his money too!" ... muttered something in his beard
and went to the door; he took his knife from under the latch, and then
turned round and said:
"Miller, the air is clear again, for the two girls are gone to their
work. I have given you the things; consider well what you do with them.
If you wish to keep them--well and good. I have nothing to say against
it, for, according to my poor wits you've a right to them. The French
have taken more than this from you; and, if you don't wish it to be
talked about, I, for my part, can be silent. But if you are going to
deliver it up to the Amtshauptmann, and have to swear that nothing has
been taken out of it, just say that I have taken my share."
"Friedrich, Friedrich," said the Miller's wife, "do not be bringing
yourself into trouble, nor us either.--At this moment you seem to me to
be like the serpent in the Garden of Paradise."
"Frau," replied Friedrich, "everybody knows best what _he_ ought to do
himself. Two years ago when I had been taking salt to the Inn at
Klaukow for Rathsherr Krueger of Malchin, and was going to pay my bill,
and put an eight-groschen piece down on the table, an infamous rascal
of a Chasseur pounced upon it, and when I tried to get it back, three
of them fell upon me and nearly beat me to death. I have taken the
eight groschen, but the blows I keep in store for them. And if this
fellow did not do it himself, perhaps his brother did, or his
comrade--the account remains in the family. The eight groschen I shall
certainly keep." And so saying he went out at the door.
The Miller, meanwhile, had been walking up and down the room, and had
rubbed his head, and had scratched his head, had stood still and looked
at the money, and when Friedrich went out, he walked up to his
cupboard, brought out Adler Erben of Rostock's Calendar, and looked for
that which he had looked for a hundred times before, and sighed "Yes,
it is tomorrow." His wife stood with her back against the clock,
wringing her hands.
"Yes," said the Miller, "if we keep it, we shall be out of our
troubles."
"O God, Father!" groaned his wife, and looked up anxiously in his face.
"And the fellow has stolen it," he went on; "the silver spoons have a
crest; but even if it can be found out who they have belonged to, the
money is from all sorts of places and won't easily find its way back to
the right pockets."
"Father," said his wife, "you risk your neck if the fellow accuses you
publicly of having taken them from him."
"He won't open his mouth, for if he has to tell where the money has all
come from, they won't quite feed him on raisins and almond cakes.--And
after all, have we taken it? They fastened the horse to the tail of the
waggon up at the Schloss, and the horse brought the leather bag into
the stable to Friedrich last night. Who can say I took it?"
Thereupon he began to count the money, and sort it into heaps.
"Yes, but it does not belong to us," said his wife.
"Who does it belong to, then?" asked the Miller. "It doesn't belong to
the Frenchman either; and, if we wanted to give it back to him, where
is he?"
"Why, Friedrich tells you he is in the Stemhagen Wood."
"Indeed!" said the Miller scornfully. "Do you think then that he would
lie there in this weather from eight o'clock in the evening till nine
o'clock in the morning? He will have gone on his way long ago; and who
is to order me to run after him with his money?"
He began to count again, and his wife sat down and folded her hands in
her lap, and sighed. "You know who orders it."
Fieka was still sitting on the bench crying by herself. The Miller went
on counting the money, but looked up so frequently at Fieka that it
seemed as if he must certainly miscount. At last he had finished, and
leaning with his two hands on the table, he looked once more over the
treasure, and said,--"A third of this gold and silver would make more
than seven hundred thalers in Prussian money. Now, we are out of our
troubles."
Then Fieka stood up and dried her eyes; her face was pale and
quiet;--"Our troubles are only just beginning," she said in a low
voice.
"Don't talk like that, Fieka," said her father, and turned his head
away from her.
"From this time forward we shall eat unblessed bread, and sleep
unblessed sleep, and you can bury the money and bury your own good name
with it.
"There is no question of burying," said the Miller, "No indeed! I shall
pay my debts with it honestly."
"Honestly, Father? And if it were so--which it is not--would not the
old Herr Amtshauptmann ask you what money you had paid the Jew with?
And would not the French ask where you got the horse from? And how can
you be sure that Friedrich will not tell?"
The Miller looked half taken aback and half angry, and was just going
to burst out as people do when any one catches them in some stupid or
dishonest act. They try to silence their conscience by bluster, as
children in the dark try to keep away the ghosts by whistling and
singing. But Fieka did not let the storm come; she flung her arms round
her father, looked straight into his eyes, and cried--"Father! Father!
Take the money to the bailiwick; give it to the Herr Amtshauptmann. You
know he said he would not forget you. How often you have told me about
your old father, and about your mother, how she honestly earned her
bread to the end of her life by spinning; and how often you have told
me about when you were an apprentice, and your finding the other
apprentice's purse, and how you gave it back to him, and how glad he
was, and how glad you were."
"That was quite a different thing," said the Miller. "I knew who that
money belonged to, but I don't know whose this is, and I haven't either
taken or stolen it. I have a clear conscience."
All at once the Miller's wife jumped up from her chair, and cried,
"Good Heavens! A strange man has just passed the window and he is
coming in."
"Bolt the door!" shouted the Miller, and turned sharply round towards
the money; knocked up against the table, and shook down some of the
gold pieces which went rolling along the floor.
"Is that your clear conscience?" asked Fieka, and looked at her father
and mother, and said: "Mother, unbolt the door. The man is sent by
Providence; he brings a blessing upon the house."
Her mother unbolted the door, and stood with her eyes cast down, while
the Miller grew very red, and turned hastily round, and looked out at
the window.
A knock came. "Come in," said Fieka, and in stepped a fine young fellow
of about two-and-twenty. He glanced round the room rather curiously as
if he had long been wishing to know how it stood with them; made a
proper bow with a little scrape of the foot, and said--
"Good morning."
"Good morning," returned Fieka.
The Miller did not move, and his wife stooped down and picked up the
gold pieces which had fallen on the floor. As the two elders did not
return his greeting, and he became aware of the money on the table, the
young man said--
"I am afraid I am in the way?"
"Oh, no!" said Fieka and put a chair for him by the tile-stove, "Father
will soon have done his business."
"Yes, directly," said the Miller, and he opened the window, and called
out "Friedrich, get out the little cart, and put the horse to, and
fasten the Frenchman's horse behind. We are going to the bailiwick." He
shut the window, and said, turning to his wife and daughter: "Well!
That's done. Now, pack the things into the leather bag, and Friedrich
can put it into the cart"--went up to the stranger and said "welcome."
"Miller Voss," said the young man, rising and giving the Miller his
hand, "don't let me disturb you. I can wait; for, though the matter I
have come to you about is important, there is no great hurry.--In fact
what I chiefly came for was to see my relations."
"Relations?" said the Miller, and looked at him doubtingly.
"Yes," said the other, "I am Joe Voss's son, your twin-brother's
child;" and as the Miller was silent, and drew back his hand, he added:
"a fortnight ago, I came of age, and then I thought to myself, 'I have
no brother or sister or any relation hereabouts, I must drive over to
Stemhagen and see if there is no one there who will care to know Joe
Voss's son.'" And, so saying he went up to the Miller's wife, and gave
her his hand, and then to Fieka; and, as the miller still stood
pondering and looking as if the mice had taken the butter off his
bread, he added: "Uncle, the lawsuit is weighing on your mind; let it
be, we can be friends all the same."
"The devil we can!" said the Miller. "And you've been boasting to
people that you would oust me from the Borcherts Inn."
"Whom have I said it to?" asked Heinrich. "People will talk. Can I help
it? My father began the quarrel;--he thought he was in the right--my
guardian has gone on with it; and I have stood by. But a pretty sum of
money has slipped through my fingers, I honestly confess, and it shall
not be my fault if we don't come to an understanding."
"You want to beat the bush; your lawyer has advised you to come here."
"I advise myself, uncle," said the young man, and took up his hat,
"for, if I were to listen much longer to the lawyer's advice, the water
would run short and my mill would stop. It's very different for you.
Any one who can lard his leather bag like that, can fry a long time
without burning." And he pointed to the valise which was just packed.
"What the devil does that matter to you?" thundered the Miller, and
turned hastily round quite black in the face. "That money ... that
money is not mine."
Fieka went up to her father, and stroked his cheek. "Father, he did not
mean anything wrong."
"No," said Heinrich, "I came with good intentions, and I will not go
away in anger if I can help it. So I wish you good morning. My waggon
is standing out there before the yard gate only a couple of paces off."
"Stop," said Fieka, "Cousin Heinrich, do not be in such a hurry.
Father's head is full of business that must be attended to this
morning. It would vex him very much if you were to leave us in ill
will."
"Fieka," said the old Miller, and turned round, and kissed his daughter
on the forehead, "you have been twice right and I twice wrong, this
morning; you are a darling child," and he gave his hand to the young
man.--"Heinrich, it shall never be said that I drove Joe Voss's son out
of my house with hard words. You want to go away without having
anything to eat or drink? No, my son, you must stay here till I come
back, for I must be off now to the bailiwick, I have pressing business.
Look, Friedrich is waiting. Well, goodbye! and if you are really in
earnest about coming to an understanding, something may be done.
Goodbye, mother; goodbye, Fieka." And he went out and mounted into his
waggon.