Then the woman turned to the strange lady and gentleman; she made a gesture of invitation with her thin right hand: "Entrez."
They stepped in. It was so low inside that Paul Schlieben had to bend his head so as not to knock against the beams in the ceiling, and so dark that it took a considerable time before they could distinguish anything at all. It could not have been poorer anywhere--one single room in all. The hearth was formed of unhewn stones roughly put together, above it hung the kettle in an iron chain that was made fast to the blackened beam; the smoke from the smouldering peat ascended into the wide sooty chimney. A couple of earthenware plates in the plate-rack--cracked but with gay-coloured flowers on them--a couple of dented pewter vessels, a milk-pail, a wooden tub, a long bench behind the table, on the table half a loaf of bread and a knife, a few clothes on some nails, the double bed built half into the wall, in which the widow no doubt slept with the children now, and little Jean-Pierre's clumsy wooden cradle in front of it--that was all.
Really all? Käte looked round, shivering a little in the cold dark room that was as damp as a cellar. Oh, how poor and comfortless. There were no ornaments, nothing to decorate it. Oh yes, there was a glaringly gaudy picture of the Virgin Mary--a coarse colour-print on thin paper--a vessel for holy water made of white china beneath it, and there on the other wall close to the window so that the sparse light fell on it the picture of a soldier. A framed and glazed picture in three divisions; the same foot-soldier taken three times. To the left, shouldering his arms, on guard before the black and white sentry-box--to the right, ready to march with knapsack and cooking utensils strapped on his back, bread-bag and field-flask at his side, gun at his feet--in the centre, in full dress uniform as a lance-corporal, with his hand to his helmet saluting.
That was no doubt the man, Michel Solheid as a soldier. Käte cast a timid glance at the picture--that man had been shot in the Venn whilst smuggling. How terrible! She heard the old man tell the story once more, saw the bleeding man lying in the heather, and the horror of his tragic end made her shudder. Her glance fell on the picture again and again, the usual picture of a soldier which told nothing whatever in its stereotyped inanity, and then on little Jean-Pierre's cradle. Did he resemble his father much?
Paul Schlieben had expected his wife to speak--she would of course know best what to say to the other woman--but she was silent. And the vestryman did not say anything either; as he had started the negotiations he considered it polite to let the gentleman speak now. And Lisa Solheid was also silent. All she did was to drive away the children, who wanted to fall upon the hard bread on the table with ravenous appetites, with a silent gesture. Then she stood quietly beside the cradle, her right hand, which still held the axe with which she had cut the wood, hanging loosely by her side. Her face was gloomy, forbidding, and still a struggle was reflected on it.
Paul Schlieben cleared his throat. He would have preferred some other person to have settled the matter for him, but, as this other person was not there and the vestryman only looked at him expectantly, he was compelled to speak. With an affability which might have been taken for condescension but which was nothing but embarrassment he said: "Frau Solheid, the vestryman will have told you what has brought us to you--do you understand me, my good woman?"
She nodded.
"It's our intention to take your youngest child away with us"--he hesitated, for she had made a movement as though she wanted to deny it--"as our own, to adopt it. Do you understand?"
She did not answer, but he continued with as much haste as if she had said yes. "We will treat it as if it really were our own. We shall be able to do more for it than you would, of course, and we----"
"Oh, and we'll love it so," his wife broke in.