She brought mugs of thick yellow milk, brown bread, delicious chipped beef, then went again into the field and sat sorting out leaves from a basket. The pastor followed Martin’s gaze which lingered on the girl; she appealed to his artistic sense.
“Angela is a wonder child; she is not of our family. I found her one moonlit winter night in a snow-drift—a white angel. Since she came the village has prospered; the people are happy.”
Martin smiled: probably the child of some unfortunate village girl. The pastor read his thoughts. “She belongs to no one; she is a miracle-child. You don’t believe in miracles?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
A simple question, difficult to answer. He couldn’t express the longing, which from childhood had made him restless, unhappy—a longing for some other space, some other element. He couldn’t explain his agitation, his unbearable joy, when he saw those scenes of which his grandfather had babbled in incoherent broken bits. He answered conventionally.
“I wanted to see the place where my grandfather was born.”
The pastor grew very serious. “It was not a case of idle curiosity you were drawn here; Angela knew you were coming. I used to tell her stories of your grandfather, Martin Staehli. He was queer; had a streak in him of evil. He got into a brawl with a guide and killed him; he had to leave the country.”
“I never knew that,” said Martin.
“That’s why he changed his name. I wrote to him often, but he seldom answered. Poor Martin, he got very rich.”