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Updated: May 31, 2025
"You can't mean that," said the other. He got into his wagon, took his place on the seat and repeated: "You don't mean that, Fausch." "He is going to be called Cain," said Stephen indifferently, without raising his voice. But his manner seemed to say: "Move me if you can." The trader looked for some money, to pay for the work, and handed it down to the smith.
He was not beckoning to them, but yet he looked as if he were waiting for them. "We must go home," said Cain, and seized the oar. But even now they did not go fast. The darkness that swept down suddenly over the Schwarzsee deepened around them. The ruddy glow was quenched. The lake lay like polished black glass, and the rocky banks seemed to grow higher. Stephen Fausch still stood and waited.
Simmen, the landlord, sent for Fausch to come to his little office, which was near one of the guest rooms. It was a small room, containing a table strewn with papers, and a chair in front of it; at this table Simmen used to make out the bills for his guests. A little oil lamp that hung from the ceiling was burning, and threw a fairly good light upon the two men, and around the room.
No one asked you how you liked it, when Maria was ha ha! So he must bear it too, the child of sin, the sinner's name! He must bear it! It was the old struggle between defiance and obstinacy, and that other feeling of pity for the boy, that arose once more in Fausch. Only the battle had never been so fierce before.
It had taken a long time, years indeed, and it had been a life and death struggle, but yet Stephen Fausch had perhaps only for a few days, or even a few hours, yet he had conquered his own obstinacy.
The very fact that the taciturn fellow came of his own accord astonished Simmen. He willingly opened the door of his little office for him, sat down once more at his table, and Fausch stood on the very same spot as on the previous evening. Everything in the little room was just the same, except that the lamp was not burning. A gray light reflected from a bare rocky slope, filled the room.
Then Cain came out of the tavern with his father, who had been to say good-by. Simmen and a few others came out, to see them off. "I will go with you as far as the path to the Schwarzsee," said Cain to Fausch, then hurried after the wagon, swung himself up and sat down by Katharine. No pair could be more unlike: he was like a slim, flexible young tree, she like an old, old crumbling branch.
Only Katharine still moved about in her soft old shoes that made almost no sound. Stephen Fausch rose from the table, where he had been eating something late at night. He had left the room dark, and it was as bare and gloomy as a cellar. With a few steps he crossed the room, and opened the door of the bedroom where Maria lay dead.
But when Stephen grew impatient, it occurred to the worthy man, that in any contest with these hard-headed peasants during his long ministry, he had often got the worst of it, and that strife always cost him too much trouble, and his weight and his comfort did not permit him to make any resistance. So he too wrote the name in the register: Cain Fausch.
Fausch came nearer and interrupted the landlord. Still in the same broken and difficult way he went on: "You said yourself that the boy is all right. He ought to come into notice I think." At that Simmen laughed: "Only not for my girl not for Vincenza! She can take her choice by and by Smith I tell you, down in Italy as well as on our side." His laugh turned into a smile.
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