Andreas Read Online Free Page A

farmer’s brow seemed to grow so still, and his wife’s face stern and hard—he longed to get up and give Gotthilff what he deserved, beating his face with his fists till he should collapse, bleeding, and have to be carried out feet foremost.
    At last the meal came to an end, grace was said—at any rate he ordered the ruffian at once to the stable to see to the sick horse, and in so peremptory a tone that the man looked at him amazed, and, although with a grimace and a scowl, immediately betook himself out of the room. Andreas went upstairs—thought he would go and have a look at the horse—thought better of it, to avoid seeing Gotthilff—was standing in the archway—a door was ajar in it—the girl Romana appeared and asked him where he was going. He: he didn’t know how to kill the time; besides, he ought to have a look at the horse so as to find out whether they would be able to leave the next day. She: do you have to kill it? It passes quickly enough for me. It often frightens me. Had he beenin the village? The church was really beautiful; she would show it to him. Then, when they came back, he could have a look at the horse; his man had been poulticing it with fresh cow-dung.
    Then they went out at the back of the farmyard; between the byre and the wall was a path, and beside one of the corner turrets a little gate led into the open. On the narrow footpath up through the fields they talked freely; she asked whether his parents were still alive—whether he had brothers and sisters. She was sorry for him there, being so much alone. She had two brothers; there would have been nine of them if six had not died. They were all little innocents in Paradise. Her brothers were woodcutting up in the convent wood. It was a merry life in the woodcutters’ hut; they had a maid with them too. She was to go herself next year—her parents had promised.
    Meanwhile they had reached the village. The church stood off the road, they entered, whispered. Romana showed him everything: a shrine with a knuckle of St. Radegunda in a gold casket, the pulpit with chubby-cheeked angels blowing silver trumpets, her seat, and her parents’ and brothers’, in the front pew, and, at the side of the pew, a metal shield, which bore the inscription
Prerogative of the Finazzers
. Then he knew her name.
    They left the church on the other side and went into the churchyard. Romana moved about the graves as if she were at home. She led Andreas to a grave with a number of crosses on it, one behind the other. “Here lie my little sisters and brothers, God keep their souls,” she said, and bent to pull up a weed or two from among the lovely flowers. Then she took a little holy-water stoup from the foremost cross. “I must fill it again, the birds are always perching here and upsetting it.” Meanwhile Andreas was reading the names; there were the innocent boys Egidius, Achaz, and Romuald Finazzer, the innocent girl Sabina, and the innocent twins Mansuet and Bibiana. Andreas was moved with inward awe to think they had had to depart so young—not one had been on earth for even so much as a year, and one had lived only one summer and one autumn. He thought of the warm-blooded, jovial face of the father, and realized why the mother’s regular features were harder and paler. Then Romana came back from the church with the holy water in her hand, reverently careful not to spill a drop. Thus gravely intent she was indeed a child; but unconsciously, and in her beauty, grace, and stature, already a woman. “There’s none but my kin hereabout,” she said, and looked with shining eyes over the graves. She felt happy here, asshe felt happy sitting between her father and mother at table, and lifting her spoon to her shapely mouth. She followed Andreas’s eyes: her look could be as steady as an animal’s, and, as it were, carry the look of another as it wandered.
    Built into the church wall behind the Finazzer graves there was a big, reddish tombstone, with