Landolin. Auerbach Berthold
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her lips tightly compressed, and looked with dismay at the sacred family table, as though she expected to see it shed blood after her husband's terrible blow.
The fork was still sticking in the table, when a carriage drew up to the door, and the District Judge and his clerk entered. The farmer's wife had the courage to draw the fork quickly out.
Landolin held out his hand in welcome, but the District Judge appeared not to notice it. Landolin with a steady voice thanked the judge for coming so soon to find out the facts of the unhappy affair.
"Pray be seated, your honor; and you, too, Mr. Clerk," he said, ingratiatingly; then poured out three glasses of wine, and taking one in his hand, touched the other two, as a sign to the gentlemen to drink. But the District Judge said curtly: "No, thank you," and did not take the glass. He leaned back in his chair while the clerk spread a paper on the table.
"Sit down," he said to Landolin; but the latter replied: "I'm comfortable standing," and laid his hand upon the back of the chair which stood in front of him. He drummed on it with his fingers, and controlling himself with a violent effort, said:
"Will you ask me questions, or shall I tell it in my own way?"
"You may go on."
"Your honor, that wine there is pure, for I brought it myself from the vat at Kaiserstuhl; but I think the wine at the Sword is not pure. When I drink during the day, and talk at the same time, it sets me beside myself; but the fright at the accident has brought me to my senses."
"So you were drunk at the time of the-of the accident."
Landolin started. "This is not a man who has come to gossip with me. It is a judge, and a judge over me. Stop! How can being drunk help?" These thoughts passed rapidly through his mind, and he replied, almost smiling:
"Thank heaven, I am never so drunk as not to know what I am doing. I can stand a good deal."
He bestowed a confidential smile on the judge, but when he saw the unchanging gravity of his countenance, he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and went on determinedly:
"I can prove that the good-for-nothing fellow got no harm from me."
"Have you got that down?" said the judge to the clerk; and he replied: "Yes, I am taking it in short-hand."
The chair under Landolin's hand moved, for he was dismayed to find that his disconnected expressions were all written down. He now waited for questions to be put to him, and after a little while the judge began:
"Have you not had a violent quarrel, once before to-day, with one-handed Wenzel of Altenkirchen?"
"Have you found that out already?"
"Yes. Tell me how it happened."
"How it happened? The story is soon told. More than thirteen years ago Wenzel was my substitute in the army. My father knew him well. He was a boatman. You can ask Walderjörgli if he wasn't. Our families are the oldest in the country-"
"But what has that to do with Wenzel?"
"Oh yes! Well! My father gave both Wenzel and his mother a great deal of money and clothes, and now Wenzel still tries to bleed me."
"Did you not threaten to lay him out cold if he spoke to you before other people again?"
"Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't. A man sometimes says such a thing when he's angry; but I did not say it in earnest. Have I all at once become a man who is ready to kill any one that crosses his path? Am I an unknown adventurer?"
Landolin waited in vain for an answer, for the judge came back to the main point and asked:
"Were there any witnesses to the affair with Vetturi?"
"Yes, to be sure! My future son-in-law, Anton Armbruster, whom you know, and my daughter."
The District Judge desired them both to be called. He was told that Anton had gone away.
Thoma soon entered, and the judge arose and set a chair for her opposite to him.
CHAPTER XVIII
Thoma sat down and folded her hands. She did not look up. "As you are Landolin's daughter you may refuse to testify," said the judge in a kindly tone. Thoma wearily raised her head.
"Father! What can I say?"
"What you saw."
She looked steadily into her father's face. She saw that he forced his eyes to remain open, but the eyelids trembled as though they must close before her glance. She turned away with a relentless movement of her head, and laying her clenched hand upon the table, said:
"Your honor-I say-I-I refuse to testify."
Landolin groaned. He knew what was going on in his daughter's mind. She rose and left the room without a look or a word for any one. They all gazed after her in silence.
The judge now asked Landolin if any of the servants had seen the affair. Landolin answered hesitatingly that he did not know; he had not looked around; but that Tobias and Fidelis were at home. It was with alarm that he perceived that his fate was in the hands of others.
The judge asked for his son Peter. Landolin shrugged his shoulders. Nobody cared whether Peter was at home or not. He was an obstinate, insignificant boy.
Nevertheless, though no one knew it, at this hour Peter had become an important personage.
No one dreamed that the little sliding window, between the living-room and the kitchen, was half-open, and that Peter lurked behind it. When he heard his father's answer, he quickly pulled off his boots, sprang noiselessly down the steps to the barn where Tobias was, and said:
"We now know how it happened. The stone did not hit Vetturi. Do you hear? And you too?" turning to the hostler Fidelis. Tobias nodded understandingly. Fidelis, on the other hand, made no answer.
There was no time to say anything more, for the two servants were called into the house. Before Tobias left the yard he threw a stone down near the gate.
Tobias was first reprimanded for having swept away the marks of blood. He took it all quietly, and said, in a firm voice, that he had plainly seen that Vetturi, who was always shaky, had not been hit by the stone, but had fallen down himself on the paving-stones. When the head-servant began speaking, Landolin had closed his eyes, but he now looked up triumphantly. His elbow rested on the chair; he held his hand over his mouth, and pressed his lips tightly together when Tobias concluded with:
"The stone that Vetturi threw, lies down there yet, scarcely a step from where the master stood."
Landolin raised himself to his full height. "That's the thing! Self-defense! I must justify myself on that ground." Landolin grasped the arm of the chair, as a drowning man, battling with the waves, grasps the rope thrown out to save him; and, just so, his soul clung to the thought of self-defense.
Fidelis said quite as positively that he had seen his master pick up a paving-stone with both hands, lean back, draw a long breath, and throw it. It had struck Vetturi on the head, and he had not seen Vetturi throw anything.
Landolin started up with an angry exclamation. He was told to be silent. The judge arose and said, evidently with forced calmness, that he was sorry, but, in order to prevent any tampering with the witnesses, he was compelled to place Landolin in confinement for the present.
The chair moved violently, and Landolin cried:
"Your honor, I am Landolin of Reutershöfen; this is my house; out there are my fields, my meadows, my forests. I am no adventurer, and I sha'n't run away for a beggar who is nothing to me."
The judge shrugged his shoulders, and said that they would probably be able to release him in a few days.
As the clerk folded his papers together, he cast a longing look at the poured-out wine; but he had to content himself with licking the ink-spots from his fingers.
"May I not send my husband a bed?" asked the farmer's wife. This was the first word she had spoken. The judge replied with a compassionate smile that it was not necessary.
Landolin took her hand, and, for the first time in many years, said in an affectionate tone:
"Dear