“Does your worship think that?” cried Kobus, in an ecstasy,—and a rosy
prospect instantly appeared before his mind’s eye—chief agent in a large
town, commissioner of police, nay, perhaps,—but that he would not have
dared to say out loud for any money in the world,—perhaps, one day, even
burgomaster!
“But now to business, Kobus! This very night we will try to catch the
thief; and my name is not Gerrit Rond if we don’t succeed. We’ll hide in
Jan’s orchard, and when he comes we’ll collar him, and then....”
Here the burgomaster-detective pointed downwards. Under the tower of the
court-house there was a vault or cellar of masonry, which usually served
as a receptacle for old iron and thieves; the latter destination,
however, was unknown, save by tradition, for only the very oldest
inhabitants of the village dimly remembered an evil-doer being
imprisoned there.
Kobus then suggested that it might be as well to take his son Hannes
with him on their expedition, a suggestion which might have been
unkindly interpreted by outsiders, for there were unpleasant reports
current about the brave _garde-champêtre’s_ reluctance to pursue
criminals alone. The suggestion, however, found favour in the eyes of
the magistrate, as it would enable them to take forty winks while the
boy watched for the appearance of the thief. This being settled, Kobus
withdrew, to reappear at the appointed time that evening. But he had not
been gone long when a loud knocking startled the burgomaster out of an
incipient reverie.
“Come in!” he cried, somewhat ungraciously, and the opening door
revealed Kobus’s bearded face; but this time with so scared an
expression, and such wildly rolling eyes, that Gerrit turned rigid with
terror and, pale as death, held on to the back of his chair for support,
as he stammered,
“Wh—wh—what is it, Kobus?”
“_Burrgemeesterr_,” rolled out Kobus, hoarsely, making as much as
possible of the _r’s_, and putting his head round the door without
coming into the room, “the thief of the apples that were stolen from
Piet Stein a year and a half ago, and this thief of the pears....”
“The same,” sighed the burgomaster, struck with consternation.
“Your worship,” said Kobus, “it is a conspiracy! Shall we—should we—go
and ask the Dominie?”
But scarcely had Kobus uttered this fatal word than he darted out of the
door and up the street, and it was long before his mind’s eye had lost
sight of that frightful picture: the burgomaster, purple in the face,
and boiling over with indignation; and the voice of his superior
thundered in his ears with all the annihilating force of contempt.
“The Dominie!” was all he had said.
The village schoolmaster was an old man of sixty-three, who, ever since
his twentieth year, had stood, day after day, Sundays excepted, behind
the same desk, leading the peasants’ children from the spelling of s, p,
a—spa, to the four elementary rules of arithmetic. Every year a few left
him, being found ripe for forgetting at the plough-tail what they had
learnt in the schoolroom, and every year fresh aspirants for s, p,
a—spa, appeared on the scenes. So he had grown old at his work, and his
work with him. For he belonged to the pre-examination days—he was a
“_schoolmeester_,” not an “_onderwijzer_.” The new generation looked on
him rather as a curiosity, a touchstone of progress, a souvenir of old
times, than a living being, a wheel in the world-machine of the
nineteenth century. Other men of his age had gone with the stream, and
followed its capricious windings; he had landed on the bank, and
followed his own old path; his mind had rusted into the old groove, and
he could not extricate it.
He had already received hints that he ought to retire, to ask for his
pension, so as to make way for modern forces; but the idea of ceasing to
stand before his class and behind his desk was too strange to the old
man—too new!
So he remained on for the present, till his resignation should no longer
be a matter of choice.
The elder children were busy doing sums; the younger ones were being
attended to by the Dominie himself.
But how strange he was to-day! It sometimes seemed as if he heard
nothing of the lesson the children were droning over,—saw nothing of the
tricks the older ones were up to in the background,—as if, in fact, he
were thinking of something entirely different. He had such fits,
sometimes. How funny it was, now, when he dipped his pencil into the
inkstand, instead of a penholder, and, shortly afterwards, abstractedly
put it into his mouth! What a face he made when he found it out! The
whole school had simply yelled at the joke, and the Dominie had got very
angry, and put the whole lot of them in detention. Later, however, he
almost laughed at the matter himself, and allowed them all to go home.
Such foolish and absurd things he used to do every now and then; and the
reason for this was, as the burgomaster said, because the Dominie was
“an obstructive fellow,” and “not practical.”
And when the burgomaster said so, every one believed him, for the
burgomaster was considered a very clever man.
But, after all, the Dominie was cleverer still.
For, indeed, there were sometimes things that the Dominie himself did
not know,—of course, for no man can know everything. But, in those
cases, he always said, “I’ll just look it up.” And then he looked in his
books, and kept on looking till he found it; and he always did find it,
because he had such piles of books! For, after all, that was where
things were to be found—in books! For this reason the burgomaster was
not so clever as the schoolmaster; he had scarcely any books at all.
This was one cause of the burgomaster’s dislike. He was Gerrit Rond,
_the burgomaster_, the first man in the village; and the Dominie was
just the schoolmaster. And, naturally, the former could not endure being
looked on as less clever than the latter. But he did not utter this
opinion aloud; he sometimes needed the Dominie’s help in “just looking
up something,” and swallowed his dislike as best he could; but people
could see it all the same.
Yes, indeed! the Dominie was particularly clever!
Once it befell that Piet Stein’s son came home from the city, where he
had “studied” with a view to becoming assistant-teacher; and on that
occasion he had said, in the presence of his father, “All the Dominie’s
cleverness is worth nothing; he is antiquated, and doesn’t know French.”
Piet Stein, junior, was well acquainted with the French language; he had
just learnt it. But Piet Stein, senior, seized his promising son by the
collar, and dealt him a well-intentioned thrashing, “to knock these
new-fangled notions out of him once for all.”
For the schoolmaster was a knowledgeable man. He lived with his books,
and—which was less obvious to the eyes of the world—with his instruments
and his medicine-chest. For years past he had been practising on his own
account, and had acquired a certain medical reputation among the
peasants of the neighbourhood as well as within the village. He had, in
truth, treated several cases within the last few years with great
success; but it might be better not to inquire how many earlier trials
had failed. Then came the new ideas—the laws against unlicensed
doctoring were strictly enforced, and he received warnings from various
quarters, of which, however, he took no notice. He could not understand
why he might not try to lessen people’s sufferings, as well as other
men, who usually did not succeed any better than he. It had become to
him a passion, an aim in life, a vocation.
So he obstinately went his own way, in spite of warnings, till the
doctors, whom he injured in their practice, at last lost patience, and
prosecuted him. He was convicted and fined, and from that time his
medical career was over,—at least so it was universally reported. It
seemed strange, however, that now and then a sick person made a
wonderful recovery, without having been treated by the doctor.
Now, one evening it happened that old Klaas, the shepherd, was seriously
ill, and had asked for the schoolmaster. The Dominie had said “No,” but
he had meant “Yes”; for though no longer allowed to do any doctoring, he
could not keep from it. So he meant to wait till it was dark, and then
slip out unnoticed to Klaas’ cottage.
In Jan o’ the Wood’s orchard three figures were crouching down behind
three low dwarf pear-trees, and each of the three had his head full of
thoughts that were not those of his neighbour. The burgomaster was
chiefly tortured by the idea that on the good or ill success of the
evening’s undertaking depended the preservation of his official dignity;
for, seeing that he had enjoined the strictest secrecy on the
veldwachter, and his promising son and heir, the only question was which
of the two would most speedily spread abroad the whole story through the
village. But, over and above this, the respected head of the community
was trembling like an aspen-leaf, for before his mental eye there arose
a vision of a robber—yes, truly and literally, _a robber_,—a man with a
long beard, bristling hair, and bloodshot eyes,—a man who goes about
with jemmies and murderous weapons on his person, and—and—who might kill
you if you came in his way, you see!
The veldwachter was, before all things, eager to behold the heroic feats
of the burgomaster, for he was firmly convinced that the mere presence
of the great man was sufficient to compel the miscreant to run into the
snare. For terror there was _now_ no room in his martial spirit,—for,
after all, he had Hannes with him!
Hannes was a big sturdy chap, who at fifteen might well have been taken
for eighteen,—a fellow with fists like engine-buffers, and a face which,
for shrewd intelligence of expression, was about equal to that of a
sheep. Hannes was burning with impatience to hammer away at the
malefactor; hitherto he had only tried his strength on mere vagabonds,
but now he was to have the opportunity of measuring himself with a real
thief. That would be something to boast of!
Thus the three would-be thief-catchers sat in the greatest excitement
behind three of the smallest dwarf pear-trees that any one can imagine.
A considerable time elapsed, during which even the strained senses of
the triumvirate could perceive nothing which, in the remotest degree,
resembled even a fraction of a thief. At last Hannes’ patience was
exhausted, and with it his capacity for silence. “Dad,” he began in a
whisper, “if he comes, am I to take him by the throat and choke him, or
shall I punch his head till he falls down dead?”
“I don’t know,” replied the veldwachter, in an equally cautious whisper,
at least as low as his love for gutturals and sibilants would allow,
“I’ll just ask his worship.” Thus did Kobus, and repeated the gruesome
question to the burgomaster, thereby sending a shudder through the
latter’s limbs.
“Tell him,” said the heroic man to his heroic subordinate, who was
squatting between his superior and his son, “that he must seize him by
the legs, so as not to come within reach of his hands; the thief is sure
to have daggers and pistols to defend himself with if he is attacked.”
Thus spake the wise man; but the real reason for his caution was that he
felt there might be disagreeable consequences for himself if Hannes
received the thief in too heavy-handed a manner.
The veldwachter passed on the message in a whisper to his son:
“Hold him by the legs, Hannes!”
“All right, dad,” replied Hannes, though he did not understand why he
was to treat the criminal so gently. But the burgomaster had said so,—in
other words, the oracle had spoken, and so——
It was very quiet, in the dark, behind Jan’s pear-tree. The burgomaster
dropped his venerated head, and slept. When Kobus heard the low sound of
snoring beside him, he turned to his son, and said:
“Hannes, his worship is off; I think I’ll have a nap too; keep a good
look-out, and give me a push if you see anything wrong.”
“All right, dad,” said Hannes, and he sat bolt upright, and opened his
eyes still wider than before. But the duet at his side, the darkness all
round him, and the weariness in his eyelids, made him close them now and
then. He struggled bravely against sleep, but there was no one to help
him. And he was only fifteen, and it was so late and so dark, and Hannes
fell into a doze.
Now and then he was awakened for a moment or so by the uneasy thought
that he was the one who had to watch. On one of these occasions, he
thought he saw a dim figure pass right before him in this dark, and to
hear steps—hurried footsteps. He rubbed his eyes, and—yes—there was some
one carefully opening the gate and leaving the orchard.
Hastily Hannes awakened his parent, in the gentle manner prescribed and
told him, in a whisper, what he knew. The awful tidings were then
reported to the burgomaster, and a moment later the trio were on their
way to seek the thief, who surely, as the veldwachter supposed, was just
carrying away his booty. Hannes went first, the burgomaster followed,
and Kobus formed the rearguard. This order had been determined by the
burgomaster. “For,” said he, “as head of the community, I ought to have
the most protection.”
In this way the police force wandered aimlessly about for some time.
Hannes did not know for certain what direction the thief had taken after
leaving the orchard; and, besides, there was scarcely any light. It
really seemed as though the moon were taking upon herself to play at
bo-peep with the most worshipful the burgomaster, for she chose not to
show up at all. Yes, perhaps, indeed—oh! scandalous thought!—she was
making faces at the great man behind her thick curtain of clouds! Who
knows?—there are such queer stories told about the moon.
The expedition, then, returned to the orchard unsuccessful, and once
more took up its position behind the dwarf pear-trees. That the
miscreant might yet return seemed probable, as Hannes assured them that
he had indeed seen him carrying something under his arm, but not a large
sack or anything of that sort. He could not, therefore, have taken
_much_ with him. And they waited—waited—waited....
Meanwhile the schoolmaster had quietly gone on his way. The better to
escape observation, he did not take the nearest way, along the main
street, but went out into his back garden, opened a little gate which
led into Jan o’ the Wood’s orchard, struck right across the orchard, and
so reached a lane leading round to the other side of the village. Here
he turned into a wood, and, following a small winding footpath, came at
length to a lonely cottage, seemingly forsaken, hidden away among the
tall trees. Here he seemed a habitual visitor. At least he lifted the
latch without first knocking, opened the door, and found himself in an
apartment serving at the same time as bedroom and kitchen.
A close, heavy air, and an ominous stillness, seemed to oppress him as
he entered. But the Dominie was not easily daunted. He felt about till
he found a lamp standing on the table, and lit it. With the light, life
seemed to come into the dead silence of the room; at least a low moaning
was heard from a corner where there was a bedstead, and a broken voice
asked, “Who’s there?”
“It’s I, Klaas, the schoolmaster,” announced the visitor; and, bending
over the sick man, he went on, “How is it with you?”
“It’s all up, Dominie, it’s all up,” gasped the voice. “Oh, Klaas is no
great loss—not much; oh no!”
There seemed to be reason enough for such an estimate; at least the man
who lay there dying did not give the idea of one whose loss society
would feel very keenly. The flickering lamp-light showed the bed-place,
let into the wall like a ship’s berth, in an indefinite half-darkness,
except the head, on which a dull yellow gleam was cast. There lay, on an
unsightly grey, greasy bolster, a head that at first sight seemed more
animal than human. The thin face was made still more angular and hollow
by the strongly projecting cheek-bones, and the pointed chin with its
bristly beard. The upper-lip, and indeed the whole mouth, was almost
covered with stiff hair; the nose was broad, flat, and turned up; while
a quantity of lank, tangled hair fell over the projecting forehead and
deep-set eyes. But these eyes glittered fiercely, every now and then, in
their dark sockets, and then again looked anxiously, almost
entreatingly, at the schoolmaster.
The Dominie tried to answer him cheerfully. “Come, come, Klaas! What
foolish talk is this? You may not have been a king or a great man, but
you have been of use for all that. Shepherds are wanted just as much as
kings.”
“No, sir,” said Klaas, moving his head restlessly. “Every day so many
finer lights are blown out, and Klaas is only a rushlight. Oh, Lord,
yes!”
The old schoolmaster tried to comfort him, but Klaas still seemed to
have something on his mind.
He had stolen Jan’s pears a fortnight ago, he told the schoolmaster at
last.
The old man remained with him till a late hour, and then started
homewards by the same way as he had come.
“Father, father!”
“What is it, Hannes?”
“I hear the gate creak.”
“So it does.... Your worship, here he comes back again.”
“Really? Yes, I see him.... Kobus, stand firm, my man. Let Hannes hold
him fast by the legs. No, not yet—wait till he passes! Oh, do be
careful! Look out for his weapons!”
“Hannes, be ready!”
“I’m quite ready, dad.”
“Not before I speak, and then by the legs—do you hear?”
“Yes, dad. Hush now!”
—The shuffling of approaching footsteps in the grass of the orchard ...
suddenly a figure disengages itself from the darkness.—
“Now, Hannes, now!”
Hannes creeps forward along the ground, seizes the figure, according to
instructions, firmly by the ankles—a good pull—and the thief falls
forward at full length. Hannes seizes his wrists, and lets himself fall
flat on the top of his prey.
The veldwachter, for greater security, incontinently throws himself upon
his two predecessors; and the burgomaster crowns the human pyramid, and
the successful thief-hunt, by sitting down, with all his burgomasterly
weight and a heavy bump, upon the three others, triumphantly shouting
the while, “I’ve got him,”—which is answered by, “Oh my ribs, your
worship!” from the uppermost stratum, “What in thunder!” from the
midmost, and a smothered groan from the lowest.
“Hannes, have you got a hold of his hands—tight now?”
“Yes, your worship, but I can’t do anything myself like this.”
“Well, I’ll get up, but keep a good hold of him—do you hear?”
“All right, sir.”
The burgomaster arose. “Kobus, put the handcuffs on him at once. In
heaven’s name make haste about it then.”
The veldwachter bustled up from the ground, and set about securing the
prisoner as closely as possible. While he was thus occupied, and Hannes
was holding the persistently silent criminal, the burgomaster kept
walking round and round his captive in order to see what sort of a fish
he had got in his net. In this he would probably have been unsuccessful,
had not the moon, in a sudden caprice, shone out brightly once more.
When the triumvirate saw the pale face, paler than ever with the fright
and the cold moonlight, and perceived it to be the face so well known to
them, all their astonishment uttered itself in the simultaneous cry—
“The Dominie!”
The school was empty, and the children had a holiday, for the
Dominie ... was sitting in the vault under the tower.
Under the tower sat the Dominie, amidst pieces of old iron and other
rubbish. Light and air stole in shyly, in small quantities, through the
little, square, grated window, in which a single scrap of glass, dusty
and weather-stained, remained in one corner, to show there had once been
a pane. As the court-house was surrounded by a paddock, which again was
enclosed by a low wall, the sounds from outside only penetrated
indistinctly, as a vague murmur, into this chamber. Sometimes it was
quiet,—deadly still, there, especially of an evening, and then life came
into the place, for the rats and mice began their games. The Master was
an old man, and nervous, and he could not sleep much. He thought over
the whole matter in his wakeful hours, and it gradually became clear to
him that he had been arrested by mistake.... Klaas had stolen Jan van ’t
Hout’s pears, and he, the Dominie, had been taken for the thief
returning for a second load. But it would not be difficult to prove his
innocence. Only it was lasting a long time; he ought surely to have been
tried before now. Four days had passed without his hearing anything.
Even the veldwachter, who, as a rule, could not be with him two minutes
without wanting to relate some story or other, was now silence itself,
when he brought the Dominie his daily rations. What was the meaning of
this delay?
[Illustration:
“SITTING IN THE VAULT UNDER THE TOWER.”
]
Yes, the delay had well-founded reasons! The burgomaster had indeed
caught the fish, but he did not exactly know what he was to do with him.
It was a ticklish business. Was he to hand over the prisoner
immediately, without the form of a trial, to the authorities in town? or
was he first to hold an inquiry, and send up the _procès-verbal_ along
with the prisoner? Supposing the latter to be the case, how was he to
set about it? It was a most unfortunate circumstance that there had
never been any thieves in the parish, for now the burgomaster was most
certainly at his wits’ end. The secretary—a poor, infirm old man, almost
in his dotage—was consulted in vain. The same result attended a
conference with the “law-holders.”[6] Finally the burgomaster called
Kobus to his assistance. He reflected for some time, and said at last:
“Doesn’t it say in the communal bye-laws?”
“This case is one for which no provision is made in the _Gemeentewet_”
said the burgomaster, with admirable composure,—the truth being that the
greater part of the Gemeentewet was Greek to him, and that he had
gradually picked up, by practical experience, what knowledge he
possessed of his official duties. Kobus, however, was very far from
suspecting any such subtleties, and believed his superior implicitly.
His invention being now exhausted, he confined himself to remarking,
with a sigh, “If it hadn’t been the Dominie himself, now, we might have
asked him—he could surely have looked it up somewhere.”
Yes, that would have been too absurd. They could not have brought the
Dominie all his books in a wheelbarrow, and requested him to “look up”
information as to what was to be done with himself! No—that would not
do. But all at once an expedient occurred to Kobus. There was an old,
old man in the village—a grey-beard of ninety or more. Perhaps in his
young days there might have been such a thing as a malefactor in this
rural region. Yes, the idea was not such a bad one, and Kobus was sent
as a delegate from the government to this oracle of antiquity. In fact,
the old man had a suggestion ready. He remembered that some sixty years
ago an analogous case had occurred, and then the burgomaster had first
examined the culprit himself, and then sent him to town for trial. He
added, however, that the burgomaster on that occasion had not been quite
certain of what he ought to do. That, however, did not matter so
much—the precedent was there in any case. The schoolmaster then must be
examined; and, as Mulders had once been present at a trial in court, the
forms of justice presented no such great difficulty after all.
On the fifth day after his arrest, the schoolmaster was haled forth from
the dungeon under the tower, and—of course, heavily handcuffed—taken to
the council-chamber. That was an event. The whole village formed a long
procession, which accompanied the prisoner; and when he was taken
inside, his train remained hanging about the doors. Then followed a buzz
and clatter among the crowd, as though it were a swarm of bees, or a
duck-yard.
[Illustration:
“THAT WAS AN EVENT.”
]