The Goose Girl by Harold MacGrath (best ebook reader for ubuntu TXT) 📖

and she smiled at him. Carmichael smiled at them both tolerantly.

"What will you be drinking?"

"Brown," said the vintner.

Gretchen took up the empty tankard and made off. The eyes of the two men followed her till she reached the dim bar, then their glances swung round and met. Carmichael was first to speak, not because he was forced to, but because it was his fancy at that moment to give the vintner the best of it.

"She is a fine girl."

"Yes," tentatively.

"She is the handsomest peasant I ever saw or knew."

"You know her?" There was a spark in the vintner's eyes.

"Only for a few days. She interests me." Carmichael produced a pipe and lighted it.

"Ah, yes, the pretty peasant girl always interests you gentlemen." There was a note of bitterness. "Did you come here to seek her?"

"This is the first time I ever saw her here. And let me add," evenly, "that my interest in her is not of the order you would infer. She is good and patient and brave, and my interest in her is impersonal. It is not necessary for me to make any explanations, but I do so."

"Pardon me!" The vintner was plainly abashed.

"Granted. But you, you seem to possess a peculiar interest."

The vintner flushed. "I have that right," with an air which rather mystified Carmichael.

"That explains everything. I do not recollect seeing you before in the Black Eagle."

"I am from the north; a vintner, and there is plenty of work here in the valleys late in September."

"The grape," mused Carmichael. "You will never learn how to press it as they do in France. It is wine there; it is vinegar this side of the Rhine."

"France," said the vintner moodily. "Do you think there will be any France in the future?"

Carmichael laughed. "France is an incurable cosmic malady; it will always be. It may be beaten, devastated, throttled, but it will not die."

"You are fond of France?"

"Very."

"Do you think it wise to say so here?"

"I am the American consul; nobody minds my opinions."

"The American consul," repeated the vintner.

Gretchen could now be seen, wending her return in and out among the clustering tables. She set the tankards down, and Carmichael put out a silver crown.

"And do not bother about the change."

"Are all Americans rich?" she asked soberly. "Do you never keep the change yourselves?"


[Illustration: "Are all Americans rich?" she asked, soberly.]


"Not when we are in our Sunday clothes."

"Then it is vanity." Gretchen shook her head wisely.

"Mine is worth only four coppers to-night," he said.

The vintner laughed pleasantly. Gretchen looked into his eyes, and an echo found haven in her own.

Carmichael thirstily drank his first tankard, thinking: "So this vintner is in love with our goose-girl? Confound my memory! It never failed me like this before. I would give twenty crowns to know where I have seen him. It's only the time and place that bothers me, not the face. A fine beer," he said aloud, holding up the second tankard.

The vintner raised his; there was an unconscious grace in the movement. A covert glance at his hand satisfied Carmichael in regard to one thing. He might be a vintner, but the hand was as soft and well-kept as a woman's, for all that it was stained by wind and sunshine. A handsome beggar, whoever and whatever he was. But a second thought disturbed him. Could a man with hands like these mean well toward Gretchen? He was a thorough man of the world; he knew innocence at first glance, and Gretchen was both innocent and unworldly. To the right man she might be easy prey. Never to a man like Colonel von Wallenstein, whose power and high office were alike sinister to any girl of the peasantry; but a man in the guise of her own class, of her own world and people, here was a snare Gretchen might not be able to foresee. He would watch this fellow, and at the first sign of an evil-Carmichael's muscular brown hands opened and shut ominously. The vintner did not observe this peculiar expression of the hands; and Carmichael's face was bland.

A tankard, rapping a table near-by, called Gretchen to her duties. There was something reluctant in her step, in the good-by glance, in the sudden fall of the smiling lips.

"She will make some man a good wife," said Carmichael.

The vintner scowled at his tankard.

"He is not sure of her," thought Carmichael. Aloud he said: "What a funny world it is!"

"How?"

"Gretchen is beautiful enough to be a queen, and yet she is merely a Hebe in a tavern."

"Hebe?" suspiciously. The peasant is always suspicious of anything he doesn't understand.

"Hebe was a cup-bearer to the mythological gods in olden times," Carmichael explained. He had set a trap, but the vintner had not fallen into it.

"A fairy-story." The vintner nodded; he understood now.

Carmichael's glance once more rested on the vintner's hand. He would lay another trap.

"What happened to her?"

"Oh," said Carmichael, "she spilled wine on a god one day, and they banished her."

"It must have been a rare vintage."

"I suppose you are familiar with all valleys. Moselle?"

"Yes. That is a fine country."

The old man in tatters sat erect in his chair, but he did not turn his head.

"You have served?"

"A little. If I could be an officer I should like the army." The vintner reached for his pipe which lay on the table.

"Try this," urged Carmichael, offering his pouch.

"This will be good tobacco, I know." The vintner filled his pipe.

Carmichael followed this gift with many questions about wines and vintages; and hidden in these questions were a dozen clever traps. But the other walked over them, unhesitant, with a certainty of step which chagrined the trapper.

By and by the vintner rose and bade his table-companion a good night. He had not offered to buy anything, another sign puzzling to Carmichael. This frugality was purely of the thrifty peasant. But the vintner was not ungrateful, and he expressed many thanks. On his way to the door he stopped, whispered into Gretchen's ear, and passed out into the black street.

"Either he is a fine actor, or he is really what he says he is." Carmichael was dissatisfied. "I'll stake my chances on being president of the United States, which is safe enough as a wager, that this fellow is not genuine. I'll watch him. I've stumbled upon a pretty romance of some sort, but I fear that it is one-sided." He wrinkled his forehead, but that part of his recollection he aimed to stir remained fallow, in darkness.

The press in the room was thinning. There were vacant chairs here and there now. A carter sauntered past and sat down unconcernedly at the table occupied by the old man whose face Carmichael had not yet seen. The two exchanged not even so much as a casual nod. A little later a butcher approached the same table and seated himself after the manner of the carter. It was only when the dusty baker came along and repeated this procedure, preserving the same silence, that Carmichael's curiosity was enlivened. This curiosity, however, was only of the evanescent order. Undoubtedly they were socialists and this was a little conclave, and the peculiar manner of their meeting, the silence and mystery, were purely fictional. Socialism at that time revolved round the blowing up of kings, of demolishing established order. Neither kings were blown up nor order demolished, but it was a congenial topic over which to while away an evening. This was in the German states; in Russia it was a different matter.

Had Carmichael not fallen a-dreaming over his pipe he would have seen the old man pass three slips of paper across the table; he would have seen the carter, the butcher, and the baker pocket these slips stolidly; he would have seen the mountaineer wave his hand sharply and the trio rise and disperse. And perhaps it would have been well for him to have noted these singular manifestations of conspiracy, since shortly he was to become somewhat involved. It was growing late; so Carmichael left the Black Eagle, nursing the sunken ember in his pipe and surrendering no part of his dream.

Intermediately the mountaineer paid his score and started for the stairs which led to the bedrooms above. But he stopped at the bar. A very old man was having a pail filled with hot cabbage soup. It was the ancient clock-mender across the way. The mountaineer was startled out of his habitual reserve, but he recovered his composure almost instantly. The clock-mender, his heavy glasses hanging crookedly on his nose, his whole aspect that of a weary, broken man, took down his pail and shuffled noiselessly out. The mountaineer followed him cautiously. Once in his shop the clock-mender poured the steaming soup into a bowl, broke bread in it, and began his evening meal. The other, his face pressed against the dim pane, stared and stared.

"Gott in Himmel! It is he!" he breathed, then stepped back into the shadow, while the moisture from his breath slowly faded and disappeared from the window-pane.


CHAPTER V

A COMPATRIOT


Krumerweg was indeed a crooked way. It formed a dozen elbows and ragged half-circles as it slunk off from the Adlergasse. Streets have character even as humans, and the Krumerweg reminded one of a person who was afraid of being followed. The shadow of the towering bergs lay upon it, and the few stars that peered down through the narrow crevice of rambling gables were small, as if the brilliant planets had neither time nor inclination to watch over such a place. And yet there lived in the Krumerweg many a kind and loyal heart, stricken with poverty. In old times the street had had an evil name, now it possessed only a pitiful one.

It was half after nine when Gretchen and the vintner picked their way over cobbles pitted here and there with mud-holes. They were arm in arm, and they laughed when they stumbled, laughed lightly, as youth always laughs when in love.

"Only a little farther," said Gretchen, for the vintner had never before passed over this way.

"Long as it is and crooked, Heaven knows it is short enough!" He encircled her with his arms and kissed her. "I love you! I love you!" he said.

Gretchen was penetrated with rapture, for her ears, sharp with love and the eternal doubting of man, knew that falsehood could not lurk in such music. This handsome boy loved her. Buffeted as she had been, she could separate the false from the true. Come never so deep a sorrow, there would always be this-he loved her. Her bosom swelled, her heart throbbed, and she breathed in ecstasy the sweet chill air that rushed through the broken street.

"After the vintage," she said, giving his arm a pressure. For this handsome fellow was to be her husband when the vines were pruned and freshened against the coming winter.

"Aye, after the vintage," he echoed; but there was tragedy in his heart as deep and profound as his love.

"My grandmother-I call her that for I haven't any grandmother-is old and seldom leaves the house. I promised that after work to-night I'd bring my man home