"But, good Lord, he got no peace from them!" I cried, beside myself.
But all the time I stood in fear of being turned out, and I certainly did not utter my protest with any particular force; I only trembled over my whole body with irritation. He turned towards me, and said:
"Eh, listen to him, then. What the devil is it to you? You just keep your tongue in your jaw, you--just mark what I tell you, 'twill serve you best."
But now the wife's voice made itself heard, and the house was filled with scolding and railing.
"May God help me, but I think you are mad or possessed, the whole pack of you!" she shrieked. "If you want to stay in here you'll have to be quiet, both of you! Humph! it isn't enough that one is to keep open house and food for vermin, but one is to have sparring and rowing and the devil's own to-do in the sitting-room as well. But I won't have any more of it, not if I know it. Sh--h! Hold your tongues, you brats there, and wipe your noses, too; if you don't, I'll come and do it. I never saw the like of such people. Here they walk in out of the street, without even a penny to buy flea-powder, and begin to kick up rows in the middle of the night and quarrel with the people who own the house, I don't mean to have any more of it, do you understand that? and you can go your way, every one who doesn't belong home here. I am going to have peace in my own quarters, I am."
I said nothing, I never opened my mouth once. I sat down again next the door and listened to the noise. They all screamed together, even the children, and the girl who wanted to explain how the whole disturbance commenced. If I only kept quiet it would all blow over sometime; it would surely not come to the worst if I only did not utter a word; and what word after all could I have to say? Was it not perhaps winter outside, and far advanced into the night, besides? Was that a time to strike a blow, and show one could hold one's own? No folly now!... So I sat still and made no attempt to leave the house; I never even blushed at keeping silent, never felt ashamed, although I had almost been shown the door. I stared coolly, case-hardened, at the wall where Christ hung in an oleograph, and held my tongue obstinately during all the landlady's attack.
"Well, if it is me you want to get quit of, ma'am, there will be nothing in the way as far as I am concerned," said one of the card-players as he stood up. The other card-players rose as well.
"No, I didn't mean you--nor you either," replied the landlady to them. "If there's any need to, I will show well enough who I mean, if there's the least need to, if I know myself rightly. Oh, it will be shown quick enough who it is...."
She talked with pauses, gave me these thrusts at short intervals, and spun it out to make it clearer and clearer that it was me she meant. "Quiet," said I to myself; "only keep quiet!" She had not asked me to go--not expressly, not in plain words. Just no putting on side on my part--no untimely pride! Brave it out!... That was really most singular green hair on that Christ in the oleograph. It was not too unlike green grass, or expressed with exquisite exactitude thick meadow grass. Ha! a perfectly correct remark--unusually thick meadow grass.... A train of fleeting ideas darts at this moment through my head. From green grass to the text, Each life is like unto grass that is kindled; from that to the Day of Judgment, when all will be consumed; then a little detour down to the earthquake in Lisbon, about which something floated before me in reference to a brass Spanish spittoon and an ebony pen handle that I had seen down at Ylajali's. Ah, yes, all was transitory, just like grass that was kindled. It all ended in four planks and a winding-sheet. "Winding-sheets to be had from Miss Andersen's, on the right of the door...." And all this was tossed about in my head during the despairing moment when my landlady was about to thrust me from her door.
"He doesn't hear," she yelled. "I tell you, you'll quit this house. Now you know it. I believe God blast me, that the man is mad, I do! Now, out you go, on the blessed spot, and so no more chat about it."