“I don't chew things now--nothing at all. No feathers or money or bits
of paper--you can see for yourself.”
Glahn scarcely looked at her. He lay still. Maggie and I went on. When
I reproached her with having broken her promise and spoken to Glahn
again, she answered that she had only meant to show him he was wrong.
“That's right--show him he's wrong,” I said. “But do you mean it was
for his sake you stopped chewing things?”
She didn't answer. What, wouldn't she answer?
“Do you hear? Tell me, was it for his sake?”
And I could not think otherwise. Why should she do anything for Glahn's
sake?
That evening Maggie promised to come to me, and she did.
V
She came at ten o'clock. I heard her voice outside; she was talking
loud to a child whom she led by the hand. Why did she not come in, and
what had she brought the child for? I watched her, and it struck me that
she was giving a signal by talking out loud to the child; I noticed,
too, that she kept her eyes fixed on the attic--on Glahn's window up
there. Had he nodded to her, I wondered, or beckoned to her from inside
when he heard her talking outside? Anyhow, I had sense enough myself to
know there was no need to look up aloft when talking to a child on the
ground.
I was going out to take her by the arm. But just then she let go the
child's hand, left the child standing there, and came in herself,
through the door to the hut. She stepped into the passage. Well, there
she was at last; I would take care to give her a good talking to when
she came!
Well, I stood there and heard Maggie step into the passage. There was no
mistake: she was close outside my door. But instead of coming in to me,
I heard her step up the ladder--up to the attic--to Glahn's hole up
there. I heard it only too well. I threw my door open wide, but Maggie
had gone up already. That was ten o'clock.
I went in, sat down in my room, and took my gun and loaded it. At twelve
o'clock I went up the ladder and listened at Glahn's door. I could hear
Maggie in there; I went down again. At one I went up again; all was
quiet this time. I waited outside the door. Three o'clock, four o'clock,
five. Good, I thought to myself. But a little after, I heard a noise and
movement below in the hut, in my landlady's room; and I had to go down
again quickly, so as not to let her find me there. I might have
listened much more, but I had to go.
In the passage I said to myself: “See, here she went: she must have
touched my door with her arm as she passed, but she did not open the
door: she went up the ladder, and here is the ladder itself--those four
steps, she has trodden them.”
My bed still lay untouched, and I did not lie down now, but sat by the
window, fingering my rifle now and again. My heart was not beating--it
was trembling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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