"You'll never repent it," Fausch forced the words out.
Thereupon the landlord replied thoughtfully: "So let it be then. I will give him employment, Franz, and--he will stay here alone, as I said! Time will show what comes of it--not that he is to think--that he is going to get the girl--But he will do well enough for me so far!"
The last few words Simmen said for his own satisfaction, meaning to cloak his own yielding disposition.
"Good!" said Fausch, and no more, not one unnecessary word. The way in which he now spared his words, showed how hard it must have been to bring them out before. His awkwardness slowly changed back again into moroseness. Once, when he was already on the threshold, it seemed as if something more had occurred to him. He half turned back toward Simmen, but changed his mind. With his brow thrust forward, he tramped heavily out of the house. "Good-by!" he said.
Simmen looked for some time at the door through which the smith had passed. Only now did he become fully aware, how bitter the hour must have been for the smith. He could still see him standing there, dragging out one sentence after another, as if he were doing some fearfully heavy piece of work, then stopping again and feeling, as it were, for the words which he could not find. At last he wrenched his thoughts away from the image of Fausch and began to consider the circumstances that had brought him here. He was not at all pleased to have Fausch leave the smithy again, for he had had no other such worker there, but yet he agreed with him as long as he and the boy were together, their common story would never be buried in oblivion. So the smith must go, certainly he must go. If the boy--if Franz alone was there--Simmen brought his fist down on the table half angrily, half laughing to himself--it wasn't really so wholly impossible, that they should make a match of it, the boy and Vincenza! The host thought how nicely Franz had served in the guests' room, and what a favorite he had been with the travelers, and he, Simmen, was not a narrow minded man: A serious and hardworking man stood higher in his esteem than a rich or well born man of whose character one could not feel so sure. So it did not seem so impossible to him, about Vincenza and the boy. But--Simmen hit the table another blow as if he were impatient--all the same the affair was not quite to his taste.
Chapter X
When Hallheimer, the trader, came back from Italy, he heard something on the mountain which astonished him; he was not to sell the smithy at Waltheim, for Stephen Fausch was going back to his old place within a short time.
The trader asked what had happened.
He got no answer. The smith only said, rudely: "It's none of your business what I do." So Fausch gave the trader a new nut to crack, though he had long puzzled over the smith's behavior and character. But Simmen, the landlord, of whom he also asked the cause of Fausch's departure, was equally evasive.
Meanwhile Stephen Fausch passed the days exactly as he had always done; now and then he nailed up a box of his possessions and gradually got his goods once more ready for moving. Cain and Katharine tiptoed around him with a sort of timidity. There was something about Fausch that they did not rightly understand, and that made them both involuntarily feel small and humble. Yet his manner had not altered in any way; he was sparing of his words as always, and the little that he said had a surly sound. He was just the same on the morning when he called Cain into the workshop, and told him that he, himself, was going back to Waltheim. Cain had listened eagerly, had then remonstrated, and when his father gave him a harsh answer, he had at last kept silence, to think things over. And now, days afterward, he was still thinking about it all. First he would feel joyful, and then doubtful. That he, Cain, was to stay at the hospice made him joyful, and yet he felt doubtful, because he could not understand his father's sudden decision to leave the place. But one thing was clear to him: If he were freed from his father's presence, the talk about the disgraceful name his father had given him would sooner die out, even if only gradually. He, Cain, if he were alone, would have the courage to stay there, and bear it, if a couple of servants, men or maids, should ridicule him for a time, until--they got tired of it. But his father? What was coming over the strange man? Was it not almost certain that he was making a sacrifice for him, for Cain, by going away? Did he repent of the injury he had formerly clone him? And was he--it often seemed so in little things--was his father somewhat fond of him, of Cain?