How my uncle Herse came with pass-word and war-cry; and Mamsell
Westphalen refused to hide in the peat bog. How the Herr
Rathsherr got into Miller's cart, and how he got out of it again.
In the meanwhile, Fritz Sahlmann had made his way to the Schloss with
his hands in his pockets, whistling, with an unconcerned face, as
directed by the Rathsherr; but, when he came into the kitchen, he
forgot his orders and made a face like Balaam's when his ass began to
speak, and he stammered into Mamsell Westphalen's ear,--
"Oh! I'm to say there's help near."
"Boy! Fritz Sahlmann," cried Mamsell Westphalen, "what is this? What do
you mean? What do you _mean_ I say?"
Fritz now told her what she was to do; that she was to hold out the
kitchen to the last man and let no Frenchman in, and that Rathsherr
Herse would come with pass-word and war-cry and take the command.
"Heavens! What shall I do?" exclaimed Mamsell Westphalen, "I can't let
myself be seen by the Herr Amtshauptmann after what has passed. Well, I
suppose I had best trust to the Herr Rathsherr and follow his counsel;
it must be right, for else what would be the good of his being a
councillor. Hanchen and Corlin, you look after the back-door, Fritz
Sahlmann and I will take the front. Now, mind, and be sure you don't
miss the war-cry."
The doors were locked; Hanchen armed herself with a broom, Corlin with
a poker, Fritz Sahlmann with a long brass ladle; and Mamsell Westphalen
took up a pestle; but she quickly let it drop again, exclaiming--
"No, merciful heavens! I have done enough harm already without slaying
and killing besides. No, I know what will do better;" and she fetched
the box in which the peat-ashes were carried away, and set it down
before her on the table--from this point she could command both front
and back-doors.--"Now let them come when they like," she said, "but
whoever gets a volley in the face from me may rub his eyes for a long
time before he'll be able to see again."
It was not long before they heard a voice at the back-door crying:
"All's well;" and presently the same voice said half aloud through the
keyhole "Pickled pork."
"That's the Rathsherr," said Mamsell Westphalen, "Corlin, open the door
just wide enough for a man to pass, and, as soon as he is inside, shut
it fast again."
So Corlin opens the door a little way, and the Rathsherr proceeds to
squeeze through; but in the process the cape of his cloak falls back,
and reveals the cocked hat and the red uniform collar.
"Ah! Ah!"--screamed Corlin, and held the Rathsherr fast in the door. "A
Frenchman! The French!"
"Pickled pork," cried Rathsherr Herse. "Don't you hear? Pickled pork."
But it came too late; Hanchen had knocked the hat off his head and the
skin off his face with her broom, and Mamsell Westphalen had thrown two
hands full of ashes into his eyes.
My uncle Herse now stood in the kitchen, puffing, and blowing, and
snorting and groping with his hands out, as if he were playing at
"blind man's buff,"--his heart full of rage, and dark night before his
eyes. His whole plan had turned out a nest of addled eggs; for what is
there in a secret that becomes a kitchen scene! what can an imposing
face do when it is battered about by a broom! and what becomes of the
splendour of a Rathsherr's uniform when peat-ashes lie on it like
blight on a flower!
The first who recovered her senses, and became aware who it was that
they had been treating in this fashion, was Hanchen. With one bound she
was out of doors in the rain. Corlin followed and said to her--"I'd
rather be wet through, than get one of Mamsell Westphalen's scoldings."
"By George! It's the Herr Rathsherr," cried Fritz Sahlmann.
Mamsell Westphalen stood there like Lot's wife--only that she was
perhaps stouter--and looked at the Rathsherr as if he were Sodom and
Gomorrah.
"Merciful heavens! We are all wandering in the dark," she said in a
feeble voice.
"It's very well for _you_ to talk of wandering in the dark," sputtered
my uncle Herse. "You can see, but I can't open my eyes. Get me some
water."
Now began a scene of washing, and rubbing, and pitying, and wondering,
and scolding, and consoling; but my uncle was still angry, and said
that all the women in the Schloss might be hanged for what he cared, it
would be a long time before he was caught entering into secret
conspiracies with women again. Mamsell Westphalen held her apron up to
her eyes and began to cry:
"Herr Rathsherr," she said, "tell me what I ought to do. I have no
father or mother left and, I after last night, I couldn't let myself be
seen by the Herr Amtshauptmann. You are the only one I can look to for
help now."
My uncle Herse had a heart, a soft heart; my uncle Herse had a soul, a
tender soul; and, when he had quite got the ashes out of his eyes, and
Mamsell Westphalen had rubbed cold cream on the scratches in his face
till it looked like a red and white toadstool, he said kindly:
"Leave off crying. I will help you. You must take to flight."
"Take to flight!" she exclaimed and looked in a puzzled way at her
figure from head to foot; "Do you mean _me_ to take to flight?"
And she thought of the pigeons up in her pigeon-house; and if the
matter had not been too serious for her, she would almost have laughed.
"Yes," said my uncle. "Do you think that with these roads and in this
weather you could walk three or four miles at a stretch, for no
conveyance is to be had--and besides it would not be secret enough?"
"Herr Rathsherr," she said, and all desire to laugh entirely left her,
"look at me for a moment. Is it likely I could? Why, it's hard work for
me now to go upstairs."
"Can you ride then?"
"What?"
"I ask, can you ride?"
Mamsell Westphalen now got up, set her arms a-kimbo and said: "What
respectable woman ever rides? I have known one female in my life who
did; she was a young lady, and the rest of her conduct was of a piece
with it."
Rathsherr Herse now also got up, and walked once or twice up and down
the kitchen, lost in thought, and at last asked--"Do you think you
could sit for twenty-four hours in the town peat-bog?"
"But, Herr Rathsherr," said Mamsell Westphalen, and put her apron up to
her eyes again and wiped away the tears, "I'm now over fifty, and I had
my great illness last autumn and...."
"Then that won't do either," broke in the Rathsherr. "There are only
two ways left, one upstairs, the other down below. Fly you must, either
on to the roof or into the cellar."
"Herr Rathsherr," cried Fritz Sahlmann, and he crept from behind the
stove, "I know a place."
"What _you_ here!" exclaimed Rathsherr Herse.
"Yes," said Fritz quite abashed.
"Well then it's all over again with secrecy, for what three know, the
whole world knows."
"I promise faithfully I won't tell, Herr Rathsherr," said Fritz. "And,
Mamsell, I know a capital place. There's a plank loose in the garret
where you hang your hams and sausages to smoke, and, if you make
yourself small, you can squeeze through, and behind there by the
chimney there's a little place where you can hide and no one would ever
find you."
"You young scoundrel," said Mamsell Westphalen, forgetting all her
sorrows and woes, "then it's you who are always stealing the sausages
from up there; and, Herr Rathsherr, I have always suspected the
innocent rats."
My uncle, having threatened Fritz Sahlmann with a sound thrashing, said
it was now high time and they must fly, and it would be the very place.
So they all set off up to the garret, and when Fritz Sahlmann had shown
them the loose plank and the hiding-place, my uncle Herse said--
"Well, Mamsell, now sit down on the floor. There's no help for it. I
will lock the door of the garret; and if you hear anyone coming, creep
softly into the hole, and mind you don't sneeze or cough."
"You may well say that, Herr Rathsherr--in this smoke," she replied.
"Oh, we will soon manage that," said he, and opened the dormer window.
They were going away when she said, "Fritz, my lad, don't forsake me;
and bring me word how things are going on."
"Under no circumstances must he come up here," said the Rathsherr, "he
might be seen, and then everything would be discovered."
"Leave it to me, Mamsell," said Fritz, and made her a side wink, "I'll
manage it."
They went; and Mamsell Westphalen sat alone in her sadness under her
flitches of bacon and hams and sausages.
"Of what use are all these blessings," she said to herself, "when a
person of my years has to take to flight."
After seeing Mamsell Westphalen into her place of safety, my uncle
Herse went down again to the kitchen and cautioned Fritz Sahlmann once
more against letting out anything, impressing his warning well on Fritz
by a box on the ears. He then pulled the cape of his grey cloak over
his cocked-hat and embroidered uniform collar, and crept cautiously out
at the back-door like a cat out of a pigeon-house.
Scarcely had he put his head out of doors, when a screeching and
yelling arose; and Hanchen and Corlin, who were going back into the
kitchen, thinking that the coast was once more clear, flew asunder like
two white doves when a hawk pounces down upon them.
"Hold your tongues! I am not going to do anything to you," cried my
uncle Herse.
But what was the use of his saying that? The peasants, who had remained
in the garden with their horses, looked round at the noise; and, seeing
the disguised French officer, that is my uncle Herse, they all made for
the green gate, and in a few moments not a man nor a hoof to draw the
cannon was to be seen.
The Rathsherr now struck into a little side-path among the bushes, and
whom should he meet but old Miller Voss with the valise under his arm.
"Good morning, Herr Rathsherr."
"The devil take you!" exclaimed Rathsherr Herse. "Don't you see, Miller
Voss, that I don't wish to be known?"
"Well, that's my case too," said the Miller. "But, Herr Rathsherr, you
would do me a great favour if you would see my horse and cart into a
place of safety. I have fastened it up near the green gate. I'll do you
a good turn in exchange. As soon as the perch in the mill-pond begin to
bite, I'll let you know."
"I will see to it," said the Rathsherr.
He went on to the green gate, and when he had found the Miller's cart
and unfastened it, he got into it, and was just driving off, when up
came a party of French soldiers, and at their head the colonel of
artillery by whose command all the horses and waggons had been sent for
from the surrounding villages.
My uncle Herse was now forthwith arrested, and pulled down off the
cart; and, what with his uniform and his keeping on crying out that he
was "_conseiller d'etat_"--for he could not at the moment find any
better word for a Stemhagen Rathsherr--the French thought they must
have made a good catch, and that they had now got the head of the
conspiracy to rob them of their waggons and teams.
The colonel of artillery cursed and swore in the most unchristian
French; he would make an example of the Rathsherr; four men should take
him between them.
And so my uncle Herse, who had come in the greatest secrecy, to do a
good work to others, was led back into the town a public spectacle, to
suffer martyrdom for his good intentions.
When this happened, Witte the baker was standing close by, behind the
great chestnut-tree; for he, too, had come to take the Miller's cart
into a place of safety.
"That can't hurt the Herr Rathsherr," he said to himself; "he buys his
white bread of Guhlen, why doesn't he buy it of me? Well, he must judge
for himself, and he can do it too, he's clever enough; but the
unreasoning cattle can't, and so one of us must look after them." And,
so saying, he got into the cart, and, following the French at a
distance, drove slowly towards his barns, and put the horse in his
stable.