The moon had risen and flooded the tranquil heath with its soft bluish
radiance. Down in the marshes the alder-bushes were tipped with crowns
of light, and the white, slender trunks of the birches which flanked
the highway in interminable rows shone and shimmered, till the road
seemed to stretch away and lose itself between hedges of burnished
silver. Silence reigned everywhere. The last note of the birds' evening
chorale had long since died away. Peace, the peace of well-being,
peculiar to late summer, pervaded the wide-stretching level fields.
Even the grasshopper in the ditch, and a fieldmouse scurrying in alarm
through the tall blades of corn, hardly broke the stillness.
A traveller with staff and knapsack came along the road, gazing
absently before him, evidently oblivious of the magic of the moon-lit
landscape. It was the young lieutenant, on his way home to bury the
father whose memory was held in such universal detestation. His host
had put his best equipage at his disposal, but his comrade had firmly
refused to accept the offer, and he had been obliged to content
himself with accompanying his guest part of the way on foot. At parting
he had solemnly affirmed that the compact of eternal friendship that
they had entered into as brothers-in-arms after their first baptism
of fire would hold good now and always, "the sins of the fathers"
notwithstanding. Whenever he was in need of help and sympathy in the
future, he might rely on the good-will of him and his neighbours.
This was meant well, but brought no comfort to the young man's sore
heart. The allusion to "the sins of the fathers" stung him to the
quick. It sounded very much like an insult, yet an insult that he was
powerless to resent openly, as there was no shuffling off the incubus
of shame which, as his father's heir, now weighed on his innocent
shoulders.
Thus fiercely brooding he walked on, and pictures of the past
involuntarily rose before his mental vision. He had never loved his
father--the harsh, tyrannical man who flogged the peasants, whose
laughter was more terrible than his oaths, to whom he, his only son,
had been not much more than the pet dog that one minute was allowed to
bite his heels when he was in a good humour, only to be hurled across
the room the next with a savage kick. As long as he could remember,
the small muscular figure, the sallow face with its high cheek-bones,
coal-black goat's beard, and little keen grey eyes, had been the terror
of his childhood. His mother he had never known. She had succumbed, a
few years after his birth, to a long and tedious illness. It was
rumoured at the time, in the village, that her lord's ungovernable
passions had been the death of her--that his love was as terrible as
his hate.
Her picture had hung at the end of a long line of ghostly portraits in
the dimly-lighted picture-gallery with its vaulted roof, where one's
footsteps echoed uncannily between the stone walls, and where it was
possible to shiver with cold on the hottest summer day.... The picture
of a gentle, tired-looking woman with thin bloodless lips, and
half-closed lids that seemed to droop from sheer weariness and lack of
spirit.
Many a time, unseen, the boy had stood by the hour before this picture,
and waited--waited for the heavy lids to lift, that one warm ray of
maternal love might at last be shed into his lonely young life. He
would fold his hands in prayer, and lift a tear-stained face in eager
anticipation, while his heart beat for fear; but the picture never came
to life. Tired and slumberous as ever, as if already half-closed in
their last long sleep, the heavily shadowed, star-like eyes continued
to look down on him with a strange, cold, metallic gleam, till he could
bear it no longer, and would rush from the spot half distracted with
disappointment.
Not far from his mother's picture hung another still more
remarkable--the portrait of an exquisitely beautiful woman with
blue-black hair. The artist had represented her in the act of mounting
a horse. A red velvet cloak, embroidered with gold and bordered with
fur, hung over her left shoulder, and in her right hand, which was
covered with a long, wrinkled, gauntleted glove, she tenaciously
grasped her riding-whip. It was easy to imagine her bringing it down
with a will on the back of a _mauvais sujet_. The whole figure was
instinct with indomitable spirit and energy. Life glowed in the dark
eyes that flashed imperiously from the canvas, as if demanding the
homage of all who came within their radius. This was his grandmother in
her youth--the old lady whose shrill scolding tongue, and witch-like
appendages in the shape of gold-headed canes, liqueur-glasses, and
snuff-boxes, were indissolubly associated with the boy's earliest
memories. She had been the evil star of his house. Before her marriage,
one of the most admired beauties of the Polish Court in Saxony, she had
instilled into his father with the milk from her breast love for the
country of the Pole, so that he, a nobleman of German name and lineage,
living on German soil, grew up to hate the land of his birth, and to
set all his affections on the moribund chimera of Polish nationality.
Though he had married a German lady, he had not hesitated to give his
son a Polish name, which, to be doomed to bear at a time when the
spirit of hyper-sensitive patriotism was rampant in the land, seemed a
worse misfortune by far than being afflicted by some hereditary
disease.
But what was the innocent name of Boleslav compared with the indelible
disgrace that his father, through his insane infatuation for the Poles,
had since brought on him and his race?
And now he was dead, this father, and of the dead one should speak no
evil. Yet even as he repeated this truism to himself, the consciousness
of the stain with which he was branded, which no power on earth could
remove, overwhelmed him with acutest anguish.
Passionately he threw up his arms towards the soft, blue, star-spangled
heavens, as if he fain would demand that the soul of his father should
be instantly brought to judgment, no matter in what remote planet it
might be hiding.
Then came a reaction. His vehemence was succeeded by a gentler mood. He
flung himself on the damp, dewy grass by the roadside, and buried his
face in his hands. He felt he should like to cry. But his lids remained
dry and burning. The thought of his immediate future was almost more
than he could bear. He reflected that in a few hours he should find a
forsaken wilderness, a howling desolation, where once bathed in all the
rosy radiance of his boyish vision he had beheld a scene of sylvan
peace and beauty.
For though he had been a lonely, motherless boy, it would have been
wicked and ungrateful to maintain that even _his_ childhood had not had
its share of sunshine, and boasted its hours of unalloyed delight. Had
he not been allowed to roam where he listed, through field and forest,
untrammelled by conventions about meals and bedtime, as free to do as
he pleased as any Robin Hood or gipsy in Arcadia? When the soft May
zephyrs breathed on the shaking grasses, and the yellow butterfly
danced from flower to flower, he had lain on his back between the tall
blades and meadow-sweet, looking up into the blue sky, his day-dreams
undisturbed. He might have stayed there from morning till night; so
long as he was not hungry he did stay, and it mattered to no one.
If he took it into his head to wander off with the shepherd to the
distant moorlands, to partake of black bread from his wallet, and
quench his thirst at the babbling streams, who was there to prevent it?
He was his own master. Round the Castle, which commanded an extensive
view of the country, flowed the sparkling, merry river, in great
serpentine curves, between its wooded banks and green terraces. By the
river-side there was always something of interest going on. There the
grooms watered the horses, the tanner washed his skins, and the boys
winked from behind their fishing-rods at the servant-girls paddling
bare-legged in and out of the water. But greatest delight of all--when
the sun went down behind the alders, the stately wild deer would
venture cautiously out of the neighbouring thicket, climb down the
steep incline, through bush and briar, and thirstily lap up the
moisture with its parched tongue. Often it was necessary to lie in
ambush more than half-an-hour without moving so much as a hair to
witness this enchanting spectacle, otherwise it would have vanished
like a mirage. And what in the world could be more glorious than, when
the moon rose and cast a silver network on the ripples; when the alders
looked like white-veiled princesses, and the lively wenches sang over
their griddle snatches of plaintive song, to plunge into the depths of
the wood, and with a canopy of foliage overhead, and moonbeams dancing
round you, dream the night away, and wake to greet the dawn? He let his
hands fall from his face; and stared round him with vacant, wild eyes.
The fields lay white and still in the moonlight.
Only the tree under which he rested cast dark, jagged bars of shadow
over the peaceful landscape. A pitiful sound like the scream of a child
in distress arose in the distance. It came from a young hare that had
lost itself in the furrows, and frightened and hungry was crying for
its mother, little suspecting that every yell was but a fresh signal to
its murderers. He was thrilled with compassion for the sufferings of
dumb creation, as he rose and pursued his way.... Reminiscences still
kept pace with his footsteps.
Now it was his school-days that came vividly back to him--the time when
the old Pastor Goetz had undertaken his education, and the white
parsonage among the nut-bushes became his second home. No more vagabond
roamings now, for the grey-bearded, fiery-tempered old parson was a
stern disciplinarian, and kept his pupils in good order. There were ten
or twelve of them--boys and girls together;--children of the well-to-do
farmer class. He had, of course, never associated with the children of
the peasantry, who were allowed to run wild and grow up like young
cattle. This was not to be wondered at, considering the village
schoolmaster, an ex-valet of his father's, superannuated through drink,
spent most of the time that should have been engaged in teaching the
young idea how to shoot, in the various taverns of the neighbourhood.
Felix Merckel, son of the village innkeeper, was the one of his
comrades he remembered best--a strapping, unruly lad, who, at the age
of ten, wore top-boots and carried a gun, and whose tendency to bully
kept the whole school in subjection. Even Boleslav himself, though two
years younger, and of a retiring nature that had little in common with
the elder boy's somewhat bumptious temperament, was much influenced by
him. Yet his position as the squire's son was never lost sight of, and
Felix joined with his other schoolfellows in paying him a sort of sly
homage in deference to it. Felix was his mentor in all boyish
accomplishments. He taught him to swim, to row, to snare birds, to make
fireworks, to shoot rabbits, and even to plunder the poor peasants'
garden during church time on Sunday evenings. And though the fruit in
his own garden, which he was at liberty to pick whenever he liked, was
a thousand times sweeter and more luscious than the hard, sour stuff he
clambered after at the risk of breaking his neck, he could not
withstand the allurements of those secret raids. Afterwards he was
often seized with remorse on account of them, and was so heartily
ashamed of himself that he would pay back in the morning a hundredfold
what he had stolen over-night. Such acts of reparation, nevertheless,
were only received with scowls or smiles of malice, for the unfortunate
_canaille_ were compelled by benighted feudal laws to plough and delve
on his father's estates, and were sorely oppressed; therefore it was
only natural that the boy should reap to the full the harvest of bitter
hate sown by the father.
Of his other companions, especially of the girls, he had nothing but
the haziest recollection. There was, of course, _one_ exception. Her
bright image had floated before him, through all the pain and heartache
that had gradually darkened his whole existence, pain which even the
fascinations of war could not alleviate. It was her image, that like a
lodestar had led him into the thickest of the fight, and had not faded
from him as he lay wounded, and, as he believed, dying.
Intense longing for her had become identified with that vague yearning
after happiness which still sometimes possessed him, just as if his
chances of happiness had not, by his father's misdeeds, been
irretrievably ruined.
How this love had sprung up in his breast and grown apace, becoming
stronger every day, till at last the whole world seemed filled with its
reflection, he hardly knew himself.
As a child, the pastor's small daughter had always been distant in her
manner. The fresh, neat, fairylike little creature never could be
coaxed by any of them into jumping a ditch, even if the bottom was dry,
and was very particular at hide-and-seek not to allow her frocks to be
caught hold of lest "the gathers should go." Now and then, when they
were alone together, Helene would show off with pride the glories of
her doll's house, and point out that the tiny towels had hemmed edges
and a monogram. They would be getting quite confidential till, in an
outburst of boyish spirits, he was sure to do something rough or clumsy
which brought down on his head a gentle rebuke, and he was reminded of
the limitations of their friendship. Hurt and ashamed, he would
afterwards try to keep out of her way, but a smile of forgiveness never
failed to bring him to her feet, for there was a kind of sovereignty in
her little person that was not to be resisted.
Felix resented her power. He called her affected and a mollycoddle, and
teased her as only he could tease. She, on her part, had an aggravating
trick of turning up her nose and appearing to look down on him, though
he was a good head taller, which goaded him into tormenting her the
more, and ended in her running to her father, and with streaming eyes
begging that Felix might be punished.
At twelve years old, Boleslav left his birthplace. Some relations on
his mother's side, belonging to the old Prussian official nobility,
proposed to continue his education. His father had every reason to
congratulate himself at getting rid of him. The life he had led since
his wife died was scarcely of a character to bear the scrutiny of
innocent, questioning, childish eyes. The Baron was in the habit of
bringing back to the castle from his visits to the capital curious
company, chiefly women, and many a half-opened bud, indigenous to the
soil, had fallen an unwilling victim to his unbridled lust. Not that he
carried on his intrigues openly and unashamed. It was simply that in
his private life he refused to recognise the restraint of any moral
law, and, after all, what he did was only, for the most part, what his
fathers had done before him. Such amours were a part of the traditions
of his house, and were not likely to excite surprise or comment, unless
it were from the boy, who had occasionally been an involuntary witness
of assaults on virtue and heartrending appeals for mercy.
There were many other transactions besides these going on at the castle
that were not meant for his eyes. When the great Napoleon's call to
arms roused that miserable cat's-paw of European ambitions, the
lacerated country of Poland, from its death-throes, mysterious
movements were set on foot in every quarter where the peculiar hiss of
Polish speech was heard, and even extended so far as the unadulterated
German regions of East Prussia.
Foreigners with slim, supple figures, and sharply-cut features used to
arrive at Schranden Castle, driving through the village at express
speed in small carriages, and leave again in the middle of the night.
The post brought innumerable sealed packages bearing the Russian
post-mark; and for weeks together the Baron's study was locked against
all intruders. He himself became taciturn and pre-occupied, going about
like a man in a dream, actually permitting the stripes and weals on the
backs of his serfs to heal and fade away.
It was at this time that Boleslav migrated to his relations in
Koenigsberg. Afterwards, years passed calmly away, years in which he
grew in stature and developed in mind under the watchful care of the
widow of a former chancellor, who stood in the place of a mother to
him. All the leading families in the town opened their houses to him,
and by degrees the old familiar scenes and faces of his home became
little more than shadowy memories. His father's rare and hurried visits
only demonstrated how estranged he had become from his son, and how
little love was lost between them.
Then came that terrible winter in which the war-fury was let loose,
devastating the old Prussian provinces, and the victorious march of
Napoleonic cohorts resounded between the Weichsel and the Memel. Scores
of provincial fugitives sought refuge from the invaders within the
walls of Koenigsberg. Every house, from cellar to garret, was crammed
with human beings, and in the streets smouldered the bivouac-fires of
the soldiers who were camping out in the open air.
In the midst of war's alarms, to the accompaniment of beating of drums
and bugle-blasts, it was vouchsafed to Boleslav to dream for the first
time "love's young dream."
He had lately turned sixteen, and his upper lip was already shaded with
a pencilled line of down. He knew Horace's odes to Chloe and Lydia by
heart, and the passion which Schiller, who had recently died, had
cherished for his Laura was no longer a mystery to him. One January
evening on his way home from the gymnasium, as he crossed the castle
square where Russian and Prussian orderlies were galloping hither and
thither, he caught a glimpse of a pair of blue eyes which seemed turned
on him with an expression of friendly inquiry. He blushed, but when he
ventured to look round the eyes had vanished. The same thing happened
again the next evening. Not till it happened a third time could he
summon sufficient courage to watch more carefully and discover that the
eyes belonged to a fair young face, which could boast besides a
straight little nose, delicately curved lips, which naively smiled at
him. The face reminded him of an old altar-piece in the cathedral
representing the Virgin Mary standing in a garden of stiff white lilies
and short-stalked crimson roses. Of something else it reminded him too,
and it puzzled him to think what. He was racking his brains to
remember, when a rosy glow tinged the girl's fair cheeks, and the
charming lips opened.
"Boleslav!" they lisped. "Is it you?"
Now, of course, he knew.
"Helene, Helene! You!" he exclaimed joyously. Had she not bashfully
evaded him, he would have embraced her then and there in the middle of
the crowded square, regardless of spectators in the shape of giggling
servant-maids and ribald soldiers. They withdrew into a more secluded
street, and she told him that on the advance of the enemy her father
had sent her for the sake of safety to board with an old aunt, who had
set up an institution for the daughters of poor clergymen. Here she was
very happy, and was making the most of her time, studying French and
music, for she hoped that in the future she might render her father
assistance with his school, for it was not likely she would ever marry.
All this she related in a quiet, old-fashioned way, which excited his
respectful admiration, casting smiling side-long glances at him as she
talked. Of his father she could not tell him much; the last time she
had met him he had looked very fierce. It was some time since she had
had any news from home, because the French were quartered there; but
Felix Merckel was in Koenigsberg, and she saw him now and then. He was
apprenticed to a corn merchant, and thought himself quite the fine
gentleman. He wasn't likely to come to any good though, for he smoked
cigars and wore loud Turkish neckties. She ended by giving him leave to
call on her at her aunt's on Friday--Friday being the day for visitors
at the institution.
Then she tripped lightly away, swaying her slender limbs from side
to side, and as he watched her, he felt as if the Virgin in the
altar-piece had graciously condescended to appear to him in the flesh,
and was now returning to her lilies and crimson roses.
On Friday he pulled the bell of the institution and was admitted. He
did not find her, it is true, among lilies and roses, but there were
some plants of fuchsia and geranium in the room, whose faded, dusty
leaves made a pretty background to the girlish figure. The glow of the
winter sunset came through the diamond-pane windows, and spread a rosy
veil over her face. Perhaps, too, the pleasure of meeting an old friend
made her blush a little. The aunt, a toothless, antique spinster, with
patches and a powdered toupee, exhausted herself with curtseying and
compliments, and after regaling the distinguished visitor with
chocolate, in a bowl of superb old English china, vanished as
noiselessly as if the earth had swallowed her up. That was the first of
a succession of blissful, beatific Fridays.
Troops went forth to battle and returned, but he did not even notice
them. The thunder of cannons at Eylau reverberated through the town,
but he was deaf, and heard nothing. It often seemed to him, as he
looked up at the sky, that he must be lying far down in the depths of
the blue sea, and that the world in which he had lived before was
somewhere a long way off on the other side of the azure empyrean. But
that he still in reality belonged to that world, he was forcibly
reminded one Sunday afternoon, when the door of his attic-chamber,
where he was dreaming over his books, was boisterously flung open, and
his heaven invaded.
"Hurrah! my boy!" cried the intruder, with outstretched arms. "I've
been looking for you everywhere for a year past, and it's been as
difficult as searching for a needle in a bottle of hay. Even now I
mightn't have tracked you out if that pious little girl Helene had not
given me a hint of your whereabouts."
It was the harum-scarum Felix, and the Turkish necktie of which the
beloved had spoken, flapped over either shoulder in aggressive fly-away
ends.
Boleslav returned the greeting more heartily than a few weeks ago he
would have thought possible; since his meeting with Helene, the old
home and the old life had come back to him very distinctly, and his
heart felt drawn to this once inseparable friend of his boyhood.
Felix did not stand on ceremony, but threw himself on the sofa, and as
he stretched his legs on the leather cushions looked round him in
amazed admiration. The room seemed to him the embodiment of luxury and
magnificence.
"You are domiciled here like a prince in the 'Arabian Nights,'" he
exclaimed; "that's what comes of being born a _Junker_, I suppose. I
wish I was. Such as we have to rough it, and----"
He paused in order to shoot through his front teeth a stream of
dark-brown saliva, a habit he had learnt from the sailors on the quays.
After this, he frequently visited Boleslav's sequestered retreat,
devoured the dainties his aunt sent up to him, borrowed money and
books, and initiated him in the mysteries of life at the water's edge.
In short, he conducted himself as do most "men of the world" between
fifteen and nineteen years of age, who are apt to gain an ascendency
over deeper and more thoughtful natures than their own.
Boleslav sometimes thought of making him his confidant in his love
affair, but never, when it came to the point, could find the right
words in which to express himself. So his secret remained, as he
thought, buried in his heart of hearts. But one day Felix astounded him
by saying--
"Don't think I am blind! I have discovered some time ago that you are
head over heels in love with a certain little prude. She's pretty
enough, but a bit too good for me."
The blood mounted swiftly and angrily to Boleslav's brow, and he
demanded with dignity that henceforth no disrespectful word be spoken
of the fair Helene in his presence. And Felix, though he made a
contemptuous grimace, was careful not to offend again by any jibing
allusion to his love.
Later he announced his intention of enlisting in the English navy as a
midshipman, that he might be "revenged on the tyrant of his downtrodden
Fatherland," as he expressed it, and Boleslav looked up to him in
consequence with a profounder reverence than ever.
Then a day came when this friend passed him in the street without
bestowing on him a shake of the hand, or even a nod. Only a scornful
shrug of the shoulders indicated that he had seen him at all. Utterly
disconcerted, he gazed after the rapidly disappearing figure that
seemed anxious to get out of his way as quickly as possible.
What could be the meaning of this extraordinary behaviour? The same
evening, with tears pouring down his face, he wrote asking for an
explanation. Before there was time for an answer, a messenger brought
him a parcel of books and a note that ran as follows:--
"_To His Hochgeboren Herrn_
_Boleslav von Schranden_.
"Having become apprised of events that have recently taken place in
Schranden, I consider that it would be beneath my dignity, and contrary
to all my patriotic principles, to continue our intercourse. The books
you have lent me are therefore returned. The money will follow in due
course as soon as I have earned the same. Meanwhile the messenger will
hand you five silver groschens.--In humble submission, your
Hochgeboren's obedient servant,
"Felix Merckel."
Boleslav felt as if some one had struck him a blow from behind. He was
so bitterly humiliated that for a whole day he daren't look any human
being in the face. At last he resolved to tell Helene of his trouble,
in the hope that she might be able to give him tidings that would at
least end his fearful suspense. She had forbidden him to speak to her
in the street, because she considered such meetings out of doors
unnecessary and improper, as he was allowed to call at the institution.
Yet, in spite of her veto, he waylaid her and showed her Felix's
letter. As usual, she smiled sweetly and consolingly, but could throw
little light on the matter. The last time she had heard from her
father, the letter had been full of nothing but the unfortunate
engagement which had taken place in the wood near Schranden, when the
Prussian soldiers had been completely routed. That had been in all the
newspapers. There was only one means of learning the whole truth.
Helene could walk along by the river's bank, where the clerks from the
great warehouses lounged away their spare time, and make inquiries of
Felix. This she consented to do, though reluctantly; and he, in a fever
of anxiety, waited for her return on one of the bridges.
"He does think too much of himself!" she said, as she came back slowly
from her errand, the colour deepening in her cheeks. "And so they all
do, these merchants' clerks. It's not likely that I should allow any of
them to make love to me!"
She smiled, and hid her burning face in the blue silk reticule she
always carried.
"But you needn't mind him, dear Boleslav. Since he has determined to go
as a midshipman, he has got love for the Fatherland on the brain."
"How have I interfered with his love for the Fatherland?" asked
Boleslav. "Don't I abominate that bloodhound Bonaparte as much as he
does?"
Helene was silent, and gathered the folds of her cloak closer about her
slender limbs, to keep out the bitter winter wind. Then she continued--
"You may rely on me. I will never bear a grudge against you for it."
"For what? Good God, tell me at once!"
And then at last the mystery was cleared up.
"You mustn't take it too much to heart, dearest Boleslav. At home in
the village they all say that your father showed the French the path by
the Cats' Bridge in the middle of the night, so that they might
surprise the Prussians; and that gipsy-looking Regina, the carpenter's
daughter--you remember the little curly-headed thing who was at school
with you and me--she confessed it, because it was she who really led
the way. And now the people call your father the betrayer of his
country, and refuse to work for him any more, and have burnt down his
house."
Ah! so that was it. Now he knew all. In that hour his life's budding
joys and hopes were withered like the blossoms of a tree struck by
lightning in May. How intolerable were these memories of darkest hours
of silent torture-hours in which he was oppressed with a sense of
crime, and when shame literally consumed him!
It was some time before the news of the betrayal was openly spoken
about in Koenigsberg. Months passed before the first signs that it had
become known manifested themselves, and during these months his whole
character underwent a complete change.
His glance became shifty and uneasy, his colour often forsook him. Shy
and awkward he withdrew himself more and more from society, and
frequented none of his old haunts. He would start and tremble at every
word unexpectedly addressed to him. Then came days when the masters
at the gymnasium began to look askance at him, and the pupils to shun
him--days in which his aunt kept her room to escape his morning
greeting, and the family sat in conclave behind closed doors, when the
servants began to set his orders at defiance, and from time to time
spat on the ground as they passed his door.
So he watched it creeping on, nearer and nearer, the cold, clammy
monster, that, snake-like, was to bind his limbs and freeze the blood
in his veins. He watched its wriggling progress, heard the gloating
hiss of its approach, and defenceless, paralysed, he stared it stonily
in the face, lacking the courage to cry out, or even to moan.
He had lost Helene too. Not through any fault of hers. She had still
allowed him to go on pulling the institution bell on Fridays as if
nothing had happened, and had been friendly as ever, and had even tried
to distract his thoughts from the painful subject on which they
incessantly brooded, with mild little jokes. But was it because he was
himself so altered that he could only see the rest of the world through
a distorting mist of shame, or had she really, since that day of the
revelation, adopted a tone of pitying compassion towards him? Anyhow,
he became more and more embarrassed in her presence, and dared not meet
her eye.
One day, instead of Helene, the old schoolmistress received him alone.
She curtseyed and grinned as usual, and assured him, a hundred times at
least, that she was his humblest servant; but what she proceeded to
unfold seemed to Boleslav the last straw. Her dear nephew, the _Herr
Pastor_, she stuttered, thought it best that the intimacy between his
daughter and the young nobleman should terminate, and in order that
there should be no further temptation to continue it, had decided to
remove her instantly from the town of Koenigsberg. A note sealed with
blue sealing-wax contained Helene's farewell:--
"Dear, Dear Boleslav,--My father commands me to give up my friendship
with you. I must obey him. Good-bye. I shall always be fond of
you----always. I swear it. Your
"Helene."
Six hastily scribbled lines! Were these to be his food and drink
through a life of longing and renunciation? Yet had he any right to
expect more? Had she not promised to be true, and to hold to him though
everyone else had cast him off? From that time forward she became for
him transfigured and a saint. Her face became more than ever identified
in his imagination with that of the Madonna he had seen in the
Cathedral, and whenever he pictured her he beheld her adorned with an
aureole, and surrounded by lilies and roses.
Had it not been for his extreme youth, energy and self-reliance might
possibly have helped him over the abyss of enervating grief; but a
habit of childlike respect, a latent instinct of veneration, put the
idea of asking his father to explain what had happened, much less of
calling him to account for it, out of the question. It was his
unexpected appearance on the scene that at last roused in him a spirit
of revolt.
He was now seventeen, and would have been ready to pass into the
university, even if the authorities of the gymnasium had not repeatedly
hinted that his withdrawal would be in every way desirable. Even his
kindly aunt, who had carefully avoided referring to the rumour through
which she herself suffered keenly, had, as mercifully as she knew how,
spoken to him about the advisability of his going somewhere else to
finish his studies.
Under other circumstances, his pride, his zeal for fair play and his
own honour, would have rebelled against this unjust dismissal. But now,
in his unspeakable bitterness, he cherished only one wish, and that was
to hide away somewhere with his disgrace, and be seen by no human eye.
And in this mood he stood one day face to face with his father.
The baron had come to town, to call in the aid of the law in dealing
with his rebellious peasants, but had found every door shut in his
face. His fury knew no bounds; he appeared to have lost all control
over himself, and his demeanour was one of desperate defiance.
At the sight of the short, stubborn figure, the bull-neck and the grey,
fiery eyes rolling in their red sockets, Boleslav was seized with the
old boyish terror. He had to pull himself together with a tremendous
effort before he could bring the fatal question over his lips.
"Father, is it true what people are saying, that----"
Suspicion blazed up in the small grey eyes.
"Eh?--what are people saying?" he interrupted.
"That it was through you that the French found out the path by the
Cats' Bridge."
"And what if it was through me, you Hottentot? What if I did avenge the
wrongs of the down-trampled Pole on this pack of cowardly Russian
thieves? These hulking, stupid, lazy serfs, who would only get their
deserts if the great Napoleon extirpated them altogether from off the
face of the earth. Don't gape at me like that, clown! What I did was
done as a sacred duty. Heavily chained, scourged human beings cried out
imploringly to me, 'Save us, save us!' I could not save them, it is
true; that work was reserved for a greater than I--but I could at least
_help_, help him, who like an avenging angel swept over Europe and laid
it waste--help to annihilate a handful of ruffians I saw providentially
delivered into my hand."
As he held forth thus, his short figure seemed to grow. His eyes
flashed fire. The demon of fanaticism that so strongly resembles
inspiration, its angelic sister, enveloped him in its red-hot, glowing
mantle.
Boleslav shrank away, trembling. He felt keenly, how completely every
tie between him and this man was now severed.
"Let them whisper, and nudge each other as I pass," he continued, "and
make faces; what the devil do I care? They daren't do it so long as the
Corsican lion held them in his claws. And after all, who is to prove it
against me? If it hadn't been for that fool Regina, who let her father
hunt her down in the Bockshorn, every one would naturally have supposed
that General Latour, with his inventive brain, had found out the way
over the river and through the wood of his own accord. As it is, the
wretches are all at my throat.... The peasants are no longer to be
brought to heel with the knout. They've always been so fond of me, you
see. If what the papers say is true, and the king is willing to let the
mutiny continue, they'll lynch me, as sure as fate. You will have good
cause to congratulate yourself on your succession, my boy!"
Those were the last words his father had ever spoken to him, for the
conversation which had taken place in his own study, was interrupted at
this point by the entrance of his aunt.
The aristocratic old lady recoiled from the touch of the Baron's red
muscular hand as from that of some poisonous reptile. But mastering her
repugnance, she asked for a few minutes' private talk with him.
What decision they came to over his future he was never to know, for
even before the short interview had elapsed, his former life already
lay behind him like a nightmare, and he stood in the street and
reflected through which of the city-gates he should wander out into the
wide world. Finally, the goal of his travels proved to be a small
property in a remote corner of Lithuania, where he found rest in hard
work, and an opportunity of fitting himself for the duties of a landed
proprietor.
Years went by. For him they meant unremitting labour for his daily
bread--a struggle for existence full of hardships, which, however,
could be engaged in without shame, or any wounding of his _amour
propre_. For now he no longer bore the abhorred name of his fathers. If
at the same time he only could have cast off, like a soiled garment,
the host of bitter recollections with which it was associated, he would
have been happier. But consciousness of the infamy that clung to the
discarded name remained ever present. Love for his country, which
hitherto had only slumbered in his heart, now bounded into full life.
The passion of patriotism grew and grew, till it became a tormenting
demon which scourged him with scorpions, drove the blood from his face,
the sleep from his eyes, and heaped the guilt of Prussia's misfortunes
on his shoulders.
Only once during this time did news of his home reach him. That was
when he read in a Koenigsberg news-sheet that Schranden Castle, which
had enjoyed such an unenviable notoriety in the winter of 1807, had
been burned down with all its outlying buildings. Then he had folded
his hands, and a sound had escaped his lips like a prayer of
thanksgiving.
Expiation! expiation! must be the watchword of his soul.
But as yet nothing could be expiated. Still the unhappy Fatherland lay
crushed beneath the heel of the dictator. Then came the downfall of the
Great Army on the snow-covered plains of Eastern Europe, and the rising
of Prussia quickly followed.
Now the hour had come. His hour! He would die--give his life for the
Fatherland, and expiate his father's sin with his own blood.
In the volunteer Jaeger Baumgart, who rode into Koenigsberg on the 5th of
March 1813, no one recognised the youthful Baron von Schranden, who,
just five years before, had fled from the town unable to face the
dishonour brought upon his name; and there were many now hailing him
with shouts and cheers of welcome, who then would have driven him out
with stones and brickbats.
He attached himself to a cluster of intrepid sons of the soil, from
whose mouths the dialect of his lost home fell familiarly and musically
on his ear. He became their friend and their leader, till suddenly a
well-known face cropped up in the camp, the sight of which immediately
drove Lieutenant Baumgart out of it.
Felix Merckel, he knew too well, would not have hesitated to betray him
to his comrades, and to inform them who it was that led them to battle.
What followed was like a ghastly confused phantasmagoria, in which
bloodshed, salvoes, and death-rattles played their part. Why had he not
died? How had he lived through it? These were the questions he asked
himself on first regaining consciousness and opening his eyes on the
world, after lying for months between life and death. For him, then, no
French sabre had been sharpened, no French bullet fired.
The one complete atonement his conscience told him it was in his power
to make had been denied him. Was a heavier one awaiting him now, as he
drew near the dusky woodlands of his birthplace in the dim, grey dawn
of day?