The Goose Girl by Harold MacGrath (online e book reading txt) 📕

the first time she had ever raised her voice in the councils.

"Oh, indeed!" said Goldberg, bowing with ridicule: "Since when did her serene highness make you her confidante?"

"Her serene highness told me so herself." Gretchen's eyes, which had held only mildness and good-will, now sparkled with contempt.

A roar of laughter went up, for the majority of them thought that Gretchen was indulging in a little pleasantry.

"Ho-ho! So you are on speaking terms with her highness?" Herr Goldberg laughed.

"Is there anything strange in this fact?" she asked, keeping her tones even.

The vintner made a sign to her, but she ignored it.

"Strange?" echoed Herr Goldberg, becoming furious at having the interest in himself thus diverted. "Since when did goose-girls and barmaids become on intimate terms with her serene highness?"

Gretchen pressed the vintner's arm to hold him in his chair.

"Does not your socialism teach that we are all equal?"

The vintner thumped with his stein in approval, and others imitated him. Goldberg was no ordinary fool. He sidestepped defeat by an assumption of frankness.

"Tell us about it. If I have spoken harshly it is only reasonable. Tell us under what circumstance you met her highness and how she happened to tell you this very important news. Every one knows that this marriage is to take place."

Gretchen nodded. "Nevertheless, her highness has changed her mind." And she recounted picturesquely her adventure in the royal gardens, and all hung on her words in a kind of maze. It was all very well to shout, "Down with royalty!" it was another matter to converse and shake bands with it.

"Hurrah!" shouted the vintner. "Long live her highness! Down with Jugendheit!"

There was a fine chorus.

And there was a fine tableau not down on the evening's program. A police officer and three assistants came down the stairs quietly.

"Let no one leave this room!" the officer said sternly.

The dramatic pause was succeeded by a babel of confusion. Chairs scraped, stems clattered, and the would-be liberators huddled together like so many sheep rounded up by a shepherd-dog.

"Ho, there! Stop him, you!"

It was the vintner who caused this cry; and the agility with which he scrambled through the window into the blind alley was an inspiration.

"After him!" yelled the officer. "He is probably the one rare bird in the bunch."

But they searched in vain.

Gretchen stared ruefully at the blank window.

Somehow this flight pained her; somehow it gave her the heartache to learn that her idol was afraid of such a thing as a policeman.

"Out into the street, every mother's son of you!" cried the officer angrily to the quaking socialists. "This is your last warning, Goldberg. The next time you go to prison for seditious teachings. Out with you!"

The socialists could not have emptied the cellar any quicker had there been a fire.

Gretchen alone remained. It was her duty to carry the steins up to the bar. The officer, rather thorough for his kind, studied the floor under the window. He found a cutting from a newspaper. This interested him.

"Do you know who this fellow was?" with a jerk of his head toward the window.

"He is Leopold Dietrich, a vintner, and we are soon to be married." There was a flaw in the usual sweetness of her voice.

"So? What made him run away like this?"

"He is new to Dreiberg. Perhaps he thought you were going to arrest every one. Oh, he has done nothing wrong; I am sure of that."

"There is one way to prove it."

"And what is that?"

"Ask him if he is not a spy from Jugendheit," roughly.

The steins clicked crisply in Gretchen's arms; one of them fell and broke at her feet.


CHAPTER XII

LOVE'S DOUBTS


Gretchen, troubled in heart and mind over the strange event of the night, walked slowly home, her head inclined, her arms swinging listlessly at her side. A spy, this man to whom she had joyously given the flower of her heart and soul? There was some mistake; there must be some mistake. She shivered; for the word spy carried with it all there was in deceit, treachery, cunning. In war time she knew that spies were necessary, that brave men took perilous hazards, without reward, without renown; but in times of peace nothing but opprobrium covered the word. A political scavenger, the man she loved? No; there was some mistake. The bit of newspaper cutting did not worry her. Anybody might have been curious about the doings of the king of Jugendheit and his uncle the prince regent. Because the king hunted in Bavaria with the crown prince, and his uncle conferred with the king of Prussia in Berlin, it did not necessarily follow that Leopold Dietrich was a spy. Gretchen was just. She would hear his defense before she judged him.

Marking the first crook in the Krumerweg was an ancient lamp hanging from the side of the wall. The candle in this lamp burned night and day, through winter's storms and summer's balms. The flame dimmed and glowed, a kindly reminder in the gloom. It was a shrine to the Virgin Mary; and before this Gretchen paused, offering a silent prayer that the Holy Mother preserve this dream of hers.

A footstep from behind caused her to start. The vintner took her roughly in his arms and kissed her many times.

Her heart shook within her, but she did not surrender her purpose under these caresses. She freed herself energetically and stood a little away from him, panting and star-eyed.

"Gretchen?"

She did not speak.

"What is it?"

"You ask?"

"Was it a crime, then, to jump out of the window?" He laughed.

Gretchen's face grew sterner. "Were you afraid?"

"For a moment. I have never run afoul the police. I thought perhaps we were all to be arrested."

"Well, and what then?"

"What then? Uncomfortable quarters in stone rooms. I preferred discretion to valor."

"Perhaps you did not care to have the police ask you questions?"

"What is all this about?" He pulled her toward him so that he could look into her eyes.

"What is the matter? Answer!"

"Are you not a spy from Jugendheit?" thinly.

He flung aside her hand. "So! The first doubt that enters your ear finds harbor there. A spy from Jugendheit; that is a police suggestion, and you believed it!"

"Do you deny it?" Gretchen was not cowed by his anger, which her own evenly matched.

"Yes," proudly, snatching his hat from his head and throwing it violently at her feet; "yes, I deny it. I am not a spy from any country; I have not sold the right to look any man in the eye."

"I have asked you many questions," she replied, "but you are always laughing. It is a pleasant way to avoid answering. I have given you my heart and all its secrets. Have you opened yours as frankly?"

To meet anger with logic and sense is the simplest way to overcome it. The vintner saw himself at bay. He stooped to recover his hat, not so much to regain it but to steal time to conjure up some way out.

"Gretchen, here under the Virgin I swear to you that I love you as a man loves but once in his life. If I were rich, I would gladly fling these riches to the wind for your sake. If I were a king, I'd barter my crown for a smile and a kiss. I have done no wrong; I have committed no crime. But you must have proof; so be it. We will go together to the police-bureau and settle this doubt once and for all."

"When?" Gretchen's heart was growing warm again.

"Now, to-night, while they are hunting for me."

"Forgive me!" brokenly.

"Come!"

"No, Leopold, this test is not necessary."

"I insist. This thing must be righted publicly."

"And I was thinking that the man I loved was a coward!"

"I am braver than you dream, Gretchen." And in truth he was, for he was about to set forth for the lion's den, and only amazing cleverness could extricate him. Man never enters upon the foolhardy unless it be to dazzle a woman. And the vintner's love for Gretchen was no passing thing. "Let us hurry; it is growing late. They will be shutting off the lights before we return."

The police-bureau was far away, but the distance was nothing to these healthy young people.

They progressed at a smart pace and in less than twenty minutes they arrived. It was Gretchen who drew back fearfully.

"After all, will it not be foolish?" she suggested.

"They will be searching for me," he answered.

"It will be easier if I present myself. It will bear testimony that I am innocent of any wrong."

"I will go in with you," determinedly.

The police officer, or, to be more particular, the sub-chief of the bureau, received them with ill-concealed surprise.

"I have learned that you are seeking me," said the vintner, taking off his cap. His yellow curls waved about his forehead in moist profusion.

Immediately the sub-chief did not know what to say. This was out of the ordinary, conspicuously so. There was little precedent by which to act in a case like this. So in order to appear that nothing could destroy his official poise, he let the two stand before his desk while he sorted some papers.

"You are not a native of Dreiberg," he began.

"No, Herr; I am from Bavaria. If you will look into your records you will find that my papers were presented two or three weeks ago."

"Let me see them."

The vintner's passports were produced. The sub-chief compared them to the corresponding number in his book. There was nothing wrong about them.

"I do not recollect seeing you here before."

"It was one of your assistants who originally went over the papers."

"What is your business?"

"I am a vintner by trade, Herr."

"And are there not plenty of vineyards in Bavaria?"

"We vintners," with an easy gesture, "are of a roving disposition. I have been all along the Rhine and the Moselle. I prefer grapes to hops."

"But why Dreiberg? The best vineyards are south."

"Who can say where we shall go next? Dreiberg seemed good enough for me," with a shy glance at Gretchen.

"Why did you jump out of the window?"

"I was frightened at first, Herr. I did not know that you merely dispersed meetings. I believed that we were all to be arrested. Such measures are in force in Munich."

"You accused him of being a Jugendheit spy," broke in Gretchen, who was growing impatient under these questions, which seemed to go nowhere in particular.

"You be silent," warned the sub-chief.

"I am here because of that accusation," said the vintner.

"What have you to say?"

"I deny it."

"That is easy to do. But can you prove it?"

"It is for you to prove, Herr."

"Read this."

It was the cutting. The vintner read it, his brows drawn together in a puzzled frown. He turned the slip over carelessly. The sub-chief's eyes bored into him like gimlets.

"I can make nothing of this, Herr. When I cut this out of the