"My Dearest Boleslav,--I can't let you go to the war again without once seeing and speaking to you. I beg and implore you to meet me this evening at nine o'clock, near the churchyard side-gate, where I will wait for you.--YourHelene."
"Why not before," he murmured, "when there was plenty of time to spare?" Then suddenly it flashed across him that again in an hour of danger his guardian angel had put forth her rescuing hand to him, and that it would be criminal folly on his part to disregard the sign, and not respond to the summons.
"You must--you must," he said to himself, "or you won't be worth the cannon-ball that at this moment is being cast for you in France."
Was it not a special dispensation of divine grace that the daughter should intervene at such a perilous crisis as this to transform the father's curse into a blessing? He looked at the clock. It wanted only a few minutes to the hour mentioned. He dragged himself on to his feet.
"I must go down to the village," he said. "There is some one who wants to see me." And though he avoided meeting her eyes, her pathetic, beseeching glance penetrated to his innermost soul.
"I shall soon be back," he stammered.
She folded her hands, and placed herself silently before him.
"What is it?" he asked.
She could hardly articulate her words.
"Herr! I am so frightened--I feel as if something dreadful was going to happen!"
"Since when have you been given to presentiments?" he said, trying to joke.
"I don't know-but I feel so strange,Herr! ... something in my throat--as if ... Oh! I know it's stupid of me, but I pray you--not to go--not to-night----"
He pushed her gently to one side. The hand that she stretched out to hold him back fell helplessly.
"Please-please don't go! ...Herr!"
He set his teeth and went--went to his guardian angel.
The Schrandeners, as many as could leave their homes and property, were meanwhile gathered together at the Black Eagle, engaged in a farewell orgie.
Old Merckel served them himself. He stood behind the bar, refilling unceasingly the empty glasses, with the melancholy smile, which to-day there was every reason to believe was not put on.
"Drink, dear friends," he exhorted; "don't let the unhappy event in my family prevent you! What does it matter even if he is shot? He will die a noble death for his honour and his Fatherland!"
He wiped the sweat from his shiny forehead, while his little eyes wandered in uneasy anticipation from one face to the other.
"Go and take a glass, Amalie," he said, turning to the barmaid, "over to those on guard. I won't bear them malice for helping to bring him to his ruin!"
The Schrandeners, deeply touched at the expression of so much high-minded sentiment, gazed into their tankards in moody anger. They would have been ashamed of rushing to the inn and displaying such avidity for a carousal in the face of their landlord's private misfortune, had they not felt they could not better show their sympathy than by taking advantage of the old man's generous impulses. So they poured beer and schnaps down their throats in positive streams, and emulated each other as to who could drink the fastest.
The barmaid, as fat and cunning as her master, slipped out with a tray containing a dozen foaming tankards, after she had received a few whispered instructions from him, accompanied by a knowing nod and wink.
"And if you should see old Hackelberg about," he called after her, "ask him in--ask him in. He has suffered too at the hands of the scoundrel. He ought not to be missing on this sad occasion."
"Brave soldiers," he continued, wiping his eyes, "drink! drink! You must try to forget that this day your honour has been forfeited. Yes, indeed, your case is lamentable--even more lamentable than that of my poor son, to whom it will at least be granted to meet death for honour's sake. But you! faugh, for shame! What will be your feelings to-morrow morning, when you have to march away under the leadership of that son of a traitor, the villain whom our reveredHerr Pastorhas cursed? It'll be 'Braun, clean my boots!' and 'Bickler, hold my stirrup!' and that sort of thing."
The two men mentioned thus by name started up with an oath.
"And all you others, however much he may oppress and bully you, you must submit because he is your commander; and if you dare to mutiny, you'll only be shot down like vermin for your pains. Such, my poor dear friends, is your pitiable lot! Therefore I say drink, and bid farewell to your military honour. To-morrow the very dogs will hesitate to take a crust of bread from your hands!"
A half-stifled murmur ran through the room, more ominous than a howl of rage.
Then the carpenter Hackelberg, who had been loafing about in the neighbourhood of the inn, reeled into the common parlour, half-drunk as usual.
He was received in silence. But old Merckel advanced solemnly to meet him, seized him by the hand, and led him to a seat of honour.
"You, too, are an unhappy father," he said to him in a voice quivering with emotion. "Your heart, like mine, has been broken by the ruin of your child. You, as well as myself and us all, has the tyrant up yonder, on his conscience. So sit down, you miserable man, and take a drop of something with us!"
The drunkard, who was used to being fisticuffed and held up to derision, even by those who bore him no ill-will, scarcely knew what to make of this highly flattering reception. He glanced suspiciously round him with his fishy eyes, and appeared to be considering earnestly whether he should begin to brag or to weep. Meanwhile he drank all he could lay hands on.
"Look at this deplorable victim of baronial lust," Herr Merckel continued. "A man who is deprived of the possibility of revenge must lose his self-respect as he has, and degenerate into a sloven. Day and night he broods inwardly on the wrong that has been done him. But even the trodden-on worm turns at last, and who can blame us if we wish with all our hearts that the miscreant should not live to see another day?"
"Strike him dead!" spluttered the carpenter, suddenly waxing furious, but there was only a faint echo in response, for to the men who were now soldiers under orders for active service the glibly made suggestion seemed no longer a trifle.
Herr Merckel assumed an air of holy horror. "For shame, dear people! we must not listen to such treason. I, being your mayor, cannot countenance it. To strike him down in broad daylight would be an unwarrantable act of violence, and I wonder you dare entertain such an idea for a moment. But who can stem the torrent of righteous wrath that vents itself in imprecations and anathemas? And so it is my most earnest desire that our arch-enemy and tyrant may die in his bed to-night, or disappear and never be seen again, or that his body may be found to-morrow morning in the river Maraune. Then it would at least be clearly proved that there is still a God above to judge and condemn sinners. Amen."
"Amen," growled his listeners, and folded their horny hands.
"But, alas! it won't come to pass. We shall live to see the miscreant fatten and prosper, and grow grey in this vale of tears. To-morrow he will ride up triumphantly and drag out my Felix like a lamb to the slaughter. And others who have demurred by a word or look will be sacrificed too. Indeed I shall be very much surprised if any of you escape with your lives. It is his intention, I firmly believe, to extirpate every Schrandener from off the face of the earth. Like a herd of cattle that has been purchased for the shambles, he'll drive you forth tomorrow morning, leaving your widows and orphans behind to weep and bewail your fate."
An ejaculation of fury arose, so loud and violent that even the inciter of it recoiled in alarm.
"Quietly, dear people, quietly! No law-breaking. Although, truly, there is no informer amongst us, we would sooner bite our tongues out than betray each other. Hackelberg knows that. Thereby hangs a tale, eh, old friend? But who knows that ourHerr Captainmay not himself be hanging about outside, spying through the windows."
Five or six heads turned, and were pressed against the panes.
"You think he wouldn't presume to spy on us? Oh, I can assure you he is not the one to stop short at any low trick. I know what you'd like to say, and I can't blame you for it--that if you catch him sneaking around at night-time, woe betide him!"
"We'll strike him dead! Strike him dead!" fumed the topers.
"Don't be for ever screaming that, children; it offends my ears. So much can be achieved quietly. Thus, bang! Some one has fired. Bang again--another report. Simply a poacher in the forest. It swarms with deer, eh, Hackelberg?" He laughed, and clicked his tongue.
"You mustn't sit dozing there, my man. One would think you had no more blood in your veins than a jelly-fish. Have you forgotten how the late Baron had you flogged till your skin hung in ribbons.Potztausend! How you danced and bellowed! It was a charming spectacle."
Hackelberg writhed and grunted over his glass.
"At that time you were a sportsman, a terror to your master, and your bullet never missed its mark. Drink away, man! It's difficult to believe now that you were ever a good shot."
"I am, still," lisped the carpenter.
"Ha, ha!--pardon my laughing, old fellow. To begin with, you don't even know what you've done with your gun."
"But--I do."
"And besides, your hand has become too slack, and your honour has evaporated, and your courage with it."
The carpenter laughed. An evil light gleamed in the corners of his eyes.
"What? You would maintain that you have a spark of honour left in your composition when you submit without a murmur to your daughter being brought to shame? And what's more, you can bear to see her and her seducer at large. Didn't she, your own flesh and blood, scorn you and slap away your proffered hand? Ungrateful, disrespectful wench that she is!"
The carpenter staggered to his feet.
"No one follow me," he roared, and shook his fist
"Where are you going?"
"That's no business of any one's."
The Schrandeners, even in their wrath, could not resist making fun of the drunkard, but Merckel signed to them to let him go in peace.
"He is going to scratch up his gun from the dungheap," he explained. "Still, what good will it do?" he added with a sigh, while his eyes wandered uneasily to the door. "He'll take care not to deliver himself into our hands at night. Tomorrow, at dawn of day, he'll come, when none of you can defend yourselves, and hand you over to your executioners, along with my son Felix, and none of you will see Schranden again. So drink your last, children--take leave of old Father Merckel---- Ah! there comes Amalie," he said, interrupting himself, and the lackadaisical expression of his face changed to one of cheerful expectancy.
The door was thrown open, and Amalie burst in greatly excited. She whispered something hurriedly in his ear.
He beamed, and folded his fat hands as if in prayer.
"Children," he cried, "there is yet a judge in Heaven. The Baron is in the village."
The Schrandeners rose from their seats yelling with delight.
"Where is he? Who has seen him?"
"Tell them, Amalie!" he urged the barmaid, and sank back exhausted, like a person who is satisfied that his day's work is done.
And Amalie told them. She had waited till the men on guard had finished their beer, and had taken a little stroll in the moonlight to get a breath of fresh air. Then she had seen a man coming across the fields from the Cats' Bridge. He was going in the direction of the churchyard, and wore an officer's coat with scarlet collar and gold buttons.
"Was he armed?" inquired a cautious son of Schranden.
Yes; she had seen his sabre flash in the moonlight.
This information afforded food for reflection.
"He has gone to inspect the guard," suggested some one, scratching his head.
Herr Merckel laughed ironically.
"Since how long has it been customary to review sentinels in the churchyard?" he exclaimed. "I tell you what he has gone there for. He wishes to pay his dear, chasteHerr Papaa visit--to swear on his grave that he will avenge him, so soon as you are delivered into his hands as soldiers. Congratulate yourselves on the expedition."
At this juncture an ally cropped up on whom he had ceased to count. The old carpenter rushed in at the door, flourishing in his right hand an old fowling-piece, on which hung straw and manure. He seemed in a perfect transport of fury, beating his breast and capering about like one possessed.
"Who said I had no sense of honour," he screamed; "and that I allowed my child to be ruined? Where's the hussy who has brought shame and disgrace on my grey hairs? I won't make her a coffin. No; I'll shoot her down--I'll shoot them both."
"Come along to the churchyard," cried a voice among the villagers, who felt their courage rising.
The old landlord winced. "No, not to the churchyard," he exhorted them. "In the first place, the ground is sacred; and in the second, you might miss him there. If you really wish to settle matters quietly with him once for all--I'm not supposed to know what you have against him, and don't wish to know--well, my advice to you is to go to the Cats' Bridge. Just there, you know, the bank is wooded--not thickly, certainly, but thick enough for you to hide behind."
"But suppose he returned by way of the village and the drawbridge?" put in the cautious trooper again.
Herr Merckel knew better. "Not he!" he laughed. "The Cats' Bridge is handier."
"Let's be off, then, to the Cats' Bridge," yelled the carpenter, bumping the butt-end of his gun against the chairs and tables. There was a general stampede. Herr Merckel crammed bottles of schnaps into as many pockets as he could catch hold of, as his customers hurried out.
"Take it, friends," he cried, "and welcome! Defend your honour--defend your honour!"
Then, when the last had gone, he mopped his perspiring brow, and folding his hands, exclaimed with an uneasy sigh--
"Ah, Amalie, if only they don't offer him violence!"
On reaching the highroad Boleslav saw the figure of a girl come out from the shadow of the churchyard yews, and advance to meet him with hesitating footsteps.
The moment to which he had looked forward with tender yearning for eight years had come at last, yet his heart beat no quicker. "You ought to be pleased; congratulate yourself," he said inwardly. "She loves you! She saved you ... has freed you from Regina." And something echoed sadly within him, "From Regina!"
The contour of the too slender figure was sharply defined against the moonlit background. The shoulders looked angular, and her hips fell in straight, ungraceful lines from the high-waisted bodice.
He jumped over the ditch, and held out both his hands to her. With a prudish simper she placed hers behind her back.
"Don't be so impetuous," she lisped.
He was amazed. The action chilled him, and almost excited his contempt; but he was ashamed of the emotion, and tried to suppress it.
"You have kept me waiting a long time, Regina."
The face she turned on him was illuminated by the moon, and he saw plainly how insignificant and meagre it had become. She tossed her head scornfully.
"My name isHelene," she said. "I am sorry you have forgotten it;" and pouting, she turned her back.
He winced. "Pardon," he stammered; "it was a slip of the tongue."
This was certainly an unfortunate beginning. She made another grimace, but seemed disposed to accept his apology.
"Don't let us stay here," she begged. "I'm afraid."
"What of?"
"Of the churchyard ... if youwillknow."
Again he had to struggle against a feeling of contempt. In all she said and did he found himself involuntarily comparing her with Regina, and the comparison was immeasurably to her disadvantage.
"You know how timid I am," she said, as they retraced their steps. "It was rash of me to have chosen this place for an appointment; indeed it was exceedingly rash to come at all--and if it weren't----"
Instead of finishing her sentence she cast at him an affected sidelong glance. Then, as he offered to help her over the ditch she gave a little scream and said, "No, no!"
His half-defined sensation of disappointment now gave place to blank astonishment. She gazed round her nervously.
"We can't stay here either," she whispered, "If I were caught here alone with a gentleman, I believe I should die of shame."
"Where do you wish to go, then?"
"You must decide."
"Very well. Come into the wood."
She clasped her hands together with an agitated old-maidish gesture.
"What are you thinking of?" she exclaimed. "At night ... with a gentleman!"
He rubbed his eyes. Was it really possible, what he heard and saw? Could this be Helene, the guardian angel to whom he had looked up, as to a being belonging to another world?
But perhaps it was he who was to blame. Perhaps the language of innocence and virtue was no longer intelligible to him because of the fair savage who had perverted his tastes, and filled his imagination with impure pictures.
"Then let us walk quietly along the highroad," he said.
"But if some one comes?"
"We can see that no oneiscoming."
"Yet some one might ..."
He was at a loss for an answer. A silence ensued, and then he said, "Won't you take my arm?"
"Oh, I don't know whether I ought," replied the love of his youth.
And again they walked on in silence. It almost seemed as if they had nothing at all to say to each other.
"Regina is waiting!" a voice cried within him.
"How silent you are!" Helene lisped, playfully pinching his elbow with two of the finger-tips that lay on his arm. "You wicked man! Haven't you a little bit of liking left for me?"
He felt he had no right to say "No." She had been true to him, had trusted his word for eight long years; he dared not prove himself unworthy now of her faith in him. When he had reassured her with a stammered "Of course, of course," she sighed, a deep-drawn, languishing sigh.
"I hear such dreadful things about you," she said, "that I don't know what to believe. Tell me it's not true."
"What?" he asked wearily.
"Ah, a girl can't discuss such matters. Immoral things, I mean. In old days you were a good, noble fellow, and I can't believe it's true that you've altered so completely."
She drew a little closer to him. In doing so, she dropped her blue silk reticule. As he stooped--with her--to pick it up, the peak of his cap brushed her face.
"Oh, take care!" she simpered, drawing back hastily.
"A thousand pardons!" he answered, in a tone of rigid politeness, and bit his lips.
"Well, you don't answer my question," she continued. "Perhaps it is true, then, what people say! I should be sorry to think that poor unhappy me had been so deceived in you. But papa always thought you would come to a bad end." She said this with such a ludicrous little air of superiority, that he could not help smiling.
She seemed to discern that she was appearing absurd in his eyes, and went on in a deeply injured tone, "Ah, it's all very well to laugh at a poor girl, whose intentions towards you are so kind, and who would give anything to prevent your ruin."
"Please, do not trouble yourself on my account," he replied.
"Now you are making yourself out worse than you are," she interposed. "I know you have a noble nature at bottom. And if fate parts us for ever, I shall always, always keep a warm place for you in my heart. Oh, what bitter tears have I shed for you many a time! And I've prayed every night to God to keep the dear friend of my youth from sin, and from wicked revengeful thoughts, and to give him a good conscience."
"I am afraid the behaviour of the Schrandeners is not exactly calculated to cure a man of revengeful thoughts," he replied.
She turned up her sharp little nose. "The Schrandeners are an uncouth lot," she remarked. "And one can't have much to do with them. I would much rather stay altogether with my aunt in Wartenstein. There at least one associates with respectable, well-mannered townspeople, who lift their hats to a lady when they meet her in the street. Not a single Schrandener, with the exception of Herr Merckel, and Felix of course, dreams of doing such a thing. Felix," she added with a sigh, "has the manners of a gentleman and an officer." Then as if something had suddenly recalled the events of the afternoon to her mind, she screamed, wrung her hands and said, "Oh, Boleslav, Boleslav!"
"What is it, Helene?"
"Boleslav, how could you be so wicked! Poor, poor Felix! I did not see it myself, for I was in the back-garden drawing radishes, but they told me afterwards how you slashed at his head with your drawn sabre, till it poured with blood." She shuddered and shook with suppressed sobs. Then she wrenched her hand out of his arm and skipped to the opposite side of the road. "Go! I won't have anything more to do with you," she cried. "You acted in a harsh and cruel manner----"
"But you don't understand, dear Helene," he protested.
"And he was your schoolfellow and playmate, and used to play hide-and-seek with us both in the garden. He often climbed over the hedge for you to get your ball when you had tossed it too far, and he used to give you guinea-pigs. Have you forgotten everything? You ought to remember the dear old times."
"Because of the guinea pigs, eh?"
"Oh,--and to think that you have shut him up in the cold dark church! Papa is of opinion that you have no business to do it; he says he will report your conduct to thekommando, and that probably you will get the worst of it."
She resembled her father so little, he thought, that his words of thunder when repeated by her lips sounded the most insipid chatter. And it was on this cackling little hen that he had let the great question of to be, or not to be, hang!
She had now come back to his side, and with a mincing gesture pushed her hand again through his arm.
"They say that you intend carrying him off to-morrow a prisoner, to be tried by a court-martial, and that he will be shot dead for certain. But it must be a lie. It is, isn't it? You couldn't do such a thing; I wouldn't believe it of you. You are not so bad as all that."
He suppressed an exclamation of impatience.
"Say you won't?" she besought, wiping her eyes. "IfIask you, dear Boleslav, to let him go free, you will grant me the favour--I know you will."
She spoke calmly, as if the request she made were merely a casual one. But there was secret anxiety in the eyes that glanced at his suspiciously.
"Dear, dear Boleslav!" she continued more urgently, her arm trembling violently, "if you care for me the very least little bit, don't let us part before you have promised me this. I will cherish your memory always in my heart, if Fate is cruel enough to separate us for ever, and will at least never cease to pray for you and bless you."
"I am sorry, Helene," he said, moved to speaking more warmly by her now evident distress, "if I must seem hard and inexorable to you. But it is all of no good. Your wish cannot possibly be fulfilled."
She had not in the least expected this answer, and regarded him for a second with a cold, angry expression. Then suddenly she burst out weeping, and sank against the trunk of a tree for support, with her thin hands before her face.
At the same moment the report of a gun was heard in the distance, the echo of which slowly rolled through the woodlands.
Helene gave a frightened cry, and, throwing up her hands, sobbed out--
"Now they have shot him for certain, because you, inhuman monster, have commanded it! Oh dear! have younomercy?"
Listening in the direction from which the gunshot had come, he did his best to soothe her.
That the shot had anything to do with Felix Merckel was, of course, out of the question.
It had undoubtedly been fired in the wood, on the farther side of the Castle, probably by a poacher on the track of a wild red deer.
But she sobbed more violently than ever--
"It's all very well ... but you ... you ... intend dragging him out to his death--you know you do."
Her increasing agitation began to bewilder Boleslav. He assured her he would do everything in his power to ameliorate Felix's sentence. He himself would testify to his being hopelessly intoxicated at the time. His old rancour against himself, his wounded vanity, all should be cited in extenuation of his offence, and might influence his judges to mildness.
But she was not satisfied, and at last dropped on her knees in the clay soil, and cried aloud--
"Be merciful! be noble! Save him!"
"For God's sake, stand up!"
"No, I shall not. In the dust I'll kneel to you and implore your mercy."
"But don't you see that I shall be imputing to myself a murderous design if I represent him as innocent?"
"Never mind," she sobbed. "If you really love me, you won't object to making this little sacrifice for my sake."
Then it began to dawn on him that it was not for the pleasure of seeing him she had summoned him to her side, but, in accordance with a preconceived plan, to make use of his love for her on behalf of another. And of such stuff as this the woman was made, of whom for long years he had considered himself unworthy! This was the radiant angel who had represented his ideal of purity and goodness, whose name he had held too sacred to mention in the same breath as Regina's!
And Regina, the dishonoured, the outcast! What worlds she seemed now above this sly virtue!
A wild laugh burst from him. "Why did you not tell me at once that you were in love with some one else?"
She started. "That is a slander!" she cried. "I am an honest, innocent girl!"
"Well, I presume you are betrothed?"
She began to cry again, though even in her grief she did not forget to carefully brush the mud from her skirts.
"Oh, Boleslav," she wailed, "it's all your fault. Why did you keep me waiting for you so long? And why have you given people so much cause to gossip about you? And then you know, there was papa! His consent could never have been won! What was I, poor girl, to do?"
"Please, say no more. It really doesn't matter!" he broke in cheerily.
"You aren't angry with me, then?"
"Oh no! not in the least!"
In silence he accompanied Helene back to the village, took a friendly farewell of her, and promised to do all he could to save herfiancé.
She thanked him, made a formal little curtsey, and they parted.
And so ended the great love of his life.
As he watched the shadow of her meagre little figure disappear behind the houses, his whole soul cried out for Regina in uncontrollable boundless jubilation. Now the road was free--free for sinful, exultant love.
But what was sin, when virtue had collapsed so deplorably? How could there be any evil, when what was good appeared so absurd and contemptible?
"Take her in your arms--crush her to your breast--even to-morrow shall not cheat you of her.... She shall follow you to the camp, from battle to battle--let her wear men's clothes like that Leonore Prohaska, the heroine whom all Germany admires and honours!"
"Regina! Regina!" he carolled anew, stretching out his arms exultingly, in anticipation. He bounded over the moonlit meadows, and higher and darker every minute rose the wooded bank of the river before him.
She would be standing on the Cats' Bridge looking out for him, as she had always done.
"Regina!" he shouted over the river. But no answer came. Deep silence all around. There was only a faint rustle among the young leaves of the willows that sounded like slumberous breathing through half-closed lips; and a gentle splashing came up from the invisible river. Its waters were low, and broke on the sharp pebbles. He climbed the steep steps.
"Regina!" he called again. Still silence. Then he saw that in the centre of the plank, the rickety hand-rail had given way: rotten splinters hung on either side. Horror-stricken, he looked down at the river.
On its silver surface floated a woman's corpse.
When the Schrandeners left the Black Eagle they dispersed to their homes, with the intention of arming themselves to the best of their ability.
Half of them did not turn up again. The others--about twenty in number--careered in detachments behind the limping carpenter, round the Castle island in the direction of the Cats' Bridge. Once united under the shelter of the bushes, they believed they would be unseen and unfollowed. They sneaked in silence through the damp grass; only the old drunkard insisted on keeping up an incessant chatter and mumbling. He conversed excitedly with his gun as if it had been a human being--shook and exhorted it not to fail him. From time to time he held the butt-end to his cheek in an aiming position, and when his range of vision became confused by the sight of his own dancing fingers, or imaginary bats and fireflies, he would take a long pull at his bottle to clear it.
On reaching the Cats' Bridge, which darkly spanned the river, its rivets glittering in the moonlight, the Schrandeners divided, some going to one side of it and the rest keeping to the other. As noiselessly as their half-drunken condition would permit, they slid down the decline in order to screen themselves behind the alders. Those who had firearms, led by the old carpenter, stationed themselves on the edge of the sand-bank, so that they might bring their victim down from the plank bridge, should he by any chance escape the meditated attack from below of pikes, scythes, and flails.
For the space of five minutes there was scarcely a sound audible, beyond the crackling and swishing among the twigs caused by some one stretching out a hand for his bottle of schnaps. Death-like stillness reigned too on the island.
Then the carpenter, whose eyes were momentarily sharpened by brandy, and who was on the alert like a tiger crouching for a spring, discerned a figure emerge and walk slowly and softly on to the Cats' Bridge. It must have been cowering in the boscage above, on the opposite bank, for several minutes.
As the figure came out of the shadow into the full light of the moon, he recognised his daughter. Clearly she had discovered the assassins, and was now on her way to warn the Freiherr of his peril.
"Go back, you vermin!" he cried, all a sportsman's fury at being deprived of his certain prey taking possession of him and clouding his erratic brain.
She ducked her head, but glided forwards, holding on to the hand-rail.
"Back, or I'll aim!"
With one frantic leap she tried to propel herself forwards, but a shot was fired at the same instant, and she sank noiselessly against the rotten balustrade. It snapped in two, and a dark, lifeless mass fell from the heights of the Cats' Bridge into the river. The water rose and fell in sparkling cascades. In the shallow bottom the stones rolled and ground against each other.
Then slowly the whirling, swaying body rose to the surface of the ripples, till the face gazed upwards and was brilliantly illumined by the moon.
A profound stillness reigned on the bank.
Motionless, and with bated breath, every one stared down on the dead, upturned face, with its wide-open eyes, which seemed full of warning and rebuke. A corner of her skirt had caught on a gnarled stump of a tree, which projected into the river; thus she was anchored, and prevented from drifting down with the stream.
Softly and cautiously, as if playing with it, the current moved the body to and fro, and no one, however much he might wish to avoid it, could help seeing the head as it reposed on the water.
The silence lasted a full ten minutes, and then one of the Schrandeners, who had helped to incarnate the evil conscience of the village, shyly with bent head slunk away, making the bushes crackle and rustle as he went. A second followed; a third, a fourth, ... until at last the scene of the catastrophe was deserted.
The carpenter, who had been contemplating his daughter's dead face, grumbling, and talking to himself the while, found himself alone.
Suddenly he roared out hoarsely, "Fire! fire! fire!" and hurled his gun at the corpse. It went splashing to the bottom of the river, and he staggered after the others as fast as his legs would carry him.
Nothing stirred now near the Cats' Bridge. Boleslav was safe!
* * * * *
Some time elapsed before he was able to take in what he saw. He stared in stupefaction, first at the floating corpse, then at the broken balustrade.
"You should have had it repaired long ago," he thought, and toyed dazedly with the fragments.
Then, as if waking from a dream, he went back to the bank, and climbed down the ravine, where he found broken branches lying about, and freshly-made footmarks. A vague suspicion of what had happened dawned on him, and then quickly died out; the hope that there might yet be time to restore her to life absorbing his mind, to the exclusion of every other emotion.
He crawled cautiously along the tree-stump as near the body as he could get, and drew it ashore with the hilt of his sabre.... Now she lay on the shining sand, and a hundred little rivulets ran from every part of her. He took his sabre-blade and cut her wet jacket off her, and became aware of the blood that had dyed her chemise crimson. As he ripped this away, too, he found the fount from which the stream flowed in a wound beneath her left breast.
Now he knew what that gunshot had meant. And when the first wild impulse for vengeance, which seemed to scream in his ear, "Go and burn their houses to the ground, and hew them down till you yourself are hewn down!" had subsided and consumed its own rage, he flung himself on the corpse, and broke into passionate weeping. He lay thus for a long time, then slowly rose, and, bearing her on his shoulders, carried her through the footprints of her murderers up the steep incline over the Cats' Bridge to the island. She was no light burden, and three times he sank on to his knees, gasping under her weight.
Near the shrubbery that surrounded the cottage he was obliged to put her down, for he feared he should swoon from his exertions. She lay on the same spot where he had found her, motionless and bleeding, after his father's funeral.
Now as then the moonbeams played on the still pale face; only now she would not revive, could never be recalled to life.
"They have succeeded at last!" he cried, breaking into a loud, bitter laugh.
A sharp spasm of pain shot through the back of his head; he felt as if he must go raving mad if those fixed, glazed eyes continued to look up at him much longer.
But his anxiety to get the corpse interred before he went away brought him to his senses. The Schrandeners were capable of laying the murdered girl beneath the earth somewhere in the heart of the forest; thereby removing all evidence of their crime, and crippling the hands of justice.
The one person he felt could be relied on to do what was right in the matter was the old pastor. Much as he might have denounced and slandered her hitherto, he, at all events, would not be a party to this last foul outrage. Boleslav therefore resolved to rouse him from his bed, and to bring him to the spot, so that later when he himself was, God knew where, a witness might not be wanting.
The belfry clock struck eleven as he reached the village street. The sentinels were parading noiselessly up and down in front of the church door, otherwise the whole world was apparently wrapped in profound slumber.
But from one of the cottages he passed, loud blows, oaths, and scolding cries fell upon his ear. He looked over the hedge, and saw the green coffin which was the carpenter Hackelberg's trade-mark, looming uncannily from its stand.
The drunkard's imbecile formula occurred to him. "His wish is likely to be fulfilled," he thought; "he has now the chance of making a coffin for his daughter;" and in a bitterly ironical mood he determined to communicate to the old man, if he were still in possession of his faculties, his child's terrible end, and to demand the fulfilment of his promise.
He entered the gloomy passage. From a room on the right proceeded the gurgling cries of the thick, drunken voice which excited his involuntary disgust. Mingled with it was a spasmodic hissing and whizzing that he could not explain, till he had lifted the latch and witnessed a spectacle so horrible and revolting that, rich as the day had been for him in horrors, he recoiled before it faint and shuddering.
The old carpenter, his clothes half torn off, bleeding from the throat and arms, the moonlight bringing into prominence the hideous filthiness of the room, plunged about as if seized with an attack of St. Vitus's dance. Every limb quivered violently, and he foamed at the mouth. His eyes rolled in a maniacal frenzy, and the muscles of his face twitched convulsively. A huge plane hung from his right hand, the handle of which, formed in the shape of a ring, had grazed his knuckles, and which he vainly endeavoured to steady with his palsied fingers. Whenever he came to a wooden surface, whether on the table, the walls, or the planks that covered the floor, he tried to plane it, and this caused the hissing sound which always ended abruptly with a rasping jerk.
"It'll soon be ready now!" he cried. "One more blow" ... ssh ... "and the shaping's done." ... ssh ... ssh ... "Damn the bats . .. why can't they leave a man alone?" ... ssh ... ssh ... "Forwards ... Listen! Fire! fire! The Castle's on fire! Fire! fire! Keep out of the way, you baggage--if you tell any one you've seen me--with the tinder and the bundle of flax" ... ssh ... ssh ... "I won't finish your coffin." ... ss ... ssh ... "Get out of my sight, you snake." He lunged against Boleslav, who, with a presentiment of what ghastly disclosures were to be made to him, had planted himself in his way. The drunkard appeared to be labouring under the delusion that Boleslav was his daughter. "Go back-off the Cats' Bridge--the Baron shall get his deserts today--back--or----" He laid the plane against his cheek, and took aim; then, as if confronted by another vision, he yelled once more at the top of his voice, trembling with fright, "Fire! fire!" and made an attempt to creep under the table, planing the tattered tails of his coat as he went. "Fire! fire! Get away--I didn't do it! My daughter is a liar.... The flames are spreading. Fire! fire! Look at the flames!"
With the flames he seemed to reach the zenith of his delirium, and then gradually descended again to the bats, which he made a feint of chivying out of his way with his arms and legs, and then resumed planing the legs of the table.
"Nearly ready, dear sir." ... ssh ... ssh ... "Just a couple more boards." ... ss ... ssh ... "My daughter's debauched ... There can be no mistake," ... ss ... ssh ... "finely polished." ... ss ... "Now there she lies, and will howl no more." ... ssh ... "What, not gone yet? Your father'll drive you out." ... ss ... ssh ... "The Baron will get a shot lodged in his ribs to-day." ... ssh ... "We want extra hands. Hurrah, men!--Hurrah, Merckel!" ... ss ... "Come off the plank--down from the bridge, you beast. Have you any more French behind you? If you don't go at once----"
Here he made for Boleslav. He looked in the moonlight, with his tottering legs, his palsied head, and his flapping arms, like some ghastly phantasmal monster, whose limbs were pieced together by a hundred movable joints. Just as he was reaching his goal, the flames began to pursue him once more, and to escape from them he crept, with a piercing shriek this time, beneath a stack of wood, where, with dense swarms of bats, the fearful cycle of his delusions recommenced.
Boleslav, shaken to the foundations of his being by the awful truth the old man had revealed in his delirious ravings, felt he could no longer bear to gaze on such a hideous scene.
He fled from the house as if the imaginary flames which so terrified the maniac were pursuing him too, and he did not pause till he had left the village behind him, and found himself encompassed by the shadows of the ruins.