The glow in the evening sky faded. A violet vapour hung about the bare
tracery of the tree-tops, and showers of sparkling crystals rained from
the branches.
Boleslav ground the snow under his heel. His breath curled in front of
him in slender columns. The keen frosty air was balm to his fevered
face. He had sent Regina on before, and was trying to regain calmness
and presence of mind in solitary wandering, for his brain boiled like a
witch's caldron.
The curse stood out intangibly in his ruminations; it was like the
bogey that little children people the darkness with. He saw it
everywhere; it haunted him. How well his father's old enemy had availed
himself of the opportunity of doing what probably he had long connived
at, putting the son under the same ban as the father.
But it was a terrible reflection to think he might have deserved that
curse. As it was, he had not merited it; a thousand times no! What the
veteran priest in his dark suspicion had alluded to as an accomplished
brutal fact, had really only swept his soul with phantom wings. Now
that his conscience was awakened to the danger of the situation, the
danger itself was over. After all, he ought to be indebted to the
pastor for showing him the yawning precipice that lay at his unwary
feet.
"Think no more of it," he said to himself; "I am the master, she the
servant, and I should be an accursed----"
He stopped. Was he not already accursed? Then he laughed at his foolish
fears. It was childish to mind. Bah! he was too susceptible. At all
events, this day should be the beginning of a new epoch in his
relations with the outer world. The possession of the iron cross was a
proof that he was not dishonoured or outside the pale of law and
justice. With it he might, if he had the courage, outwit the knavish
tricks of his personal enemies, and appeal to the assistance of the
Courts. If the judge of the district had chosen to condone the fire by
ignoring it, he might in his turn light a fire that would send forth
such a blaze that the very holes where the incendiaries skulked would
be illuminated. But it would involve dragging his father's dealings
also into the fierce light of day. Could he dare to disturb the peace
of the dead, like a body-snatcher, and blazon forth the shame of his
house in the face of all the world?
His mouth became distorted with the defiance that inwardly consumed
him. He felt for the moment as if deliberate self-destruction were a
mere joke. Why should he hold back; stop at anything? Was he not under
a curse? A bitter laugh rose in his throat. He could not forget that
curse!
Then he went into the house. Regina was laying the table for supper.
She had mended her jacket, and smoothed out her hair with water. Her
face was as calm as if nothing in the least out of the way had
happened; only a scratch on her throat, testified to the hours of peril
she had lately lived through.
With affected severity he asked, "What induced you, Regina, to be so
silly as to come near the inn?"
She measured him with a shy glance. "I beg your pardon, _Herr_," she
said, with a graceful bend of her neck. "I found your letter, and I saw
everything swimming green and yellow before my eyes, it made me feel so
queer. I hardly knew what I was about. I thought perhaps I could help
to set you free."
"Stupid child!" he said, and laughed; but a feeling rose within him
that had to be forcibly repressed.
"Bring the wine," he ordered, as he sat down to the table.
"Which kind, _Herr_?"
"The best. It is high festival and holiday to-day!"
She looked at him in surprise, and went.
"Fetch a glass for yourself," he said, as she uncorked the grey
cobwebby bottle.
"Oh, please, _Herr_, I'd rather not. It's too strong."
"Nonsense! you will get used to it."
"Perhaps, _Herr_."
He poured out the wine. The dark-gold fluid foamed sparkling into the
slender-stemmed emerald rummers, which, perishable as they were, had
been saved from the ruins.
"Clink!" he said.
The glasses as they came in contact produced music like muffled bells.
"The curse of a priest has to-day coupled me with her," he thought, and
his eyes sought hers and probed their depths. "How extraordinary! how
monstrous!" This woman was to be part of his existence, the old man had
said. This woman--why, oh, why this one?
"A curse is a sanction," he meditated further. "Something that never
happened, and never would have happened, through him has been
substantiated and vouched for before Heaven as if it were an
established fact."
And again his thoughts began to encroach stealthily on that forbidden
ground, in whose insurmountable barriers the preacher's words
themselves had quarried access. "You are master," he repeated the
formula over and over to himself, "she the servant;" and then he added,
"What is more, she is your slave, and so let it be."
One course of action seemed clear enough at the moment, and that was
that progress must be made immediately with his work of retaliation. He
bade Regina remove the dishes and bring another bottle of wine. Then he
fetched his writing materials and motioned her to sit down in the place
she had occupied on Christmas evening. With shy delight she obeyed, for
since that night she had spent her evenings till bed-time alone in the
vestibule.
"I'm going to ask you, Regina," he began, "to answer very briefly, and
to the point, several questions!"
She started, then whispered, "Yes, _Herr_."
"Drink, and that will make you more talkative."
She struggled to do as he desired, but to-day the effect the wine had
upon her was to make her more nervous and reserved, instead of less so.
"To go back to the night in which you led the French across the Cats'
Bridge. Was there any one on the premises who knew of the expedition?"
"No, _Herr_."
"How did it get wind in the village then?"
She cast down her eyes. "I believe through me, _Herr_," she stammered.
"To whom did you confide the information?"
"To my father."
"How, and when?"
"He used to come to the Castle secretly from time to time to get money
from me, and if I hadn't any to give him he pinched and beat me."
"Why did you not call out for help?"
"Because it was at night, _Herr_; and if he had been found there they
would have flogged him."
"Go on."
"And so he came soon after ... after the expedition, I mean ... and
asked me to do all sorts of things. I was to get money from the
_gnaediger Herr_ ... or to turn out his pockets when no one was looking;
and to be left in peace, I fetched the bag the French General had given
me. And when he saw the moonlight shine on the coin that was in it, he
was half mad----"
She paused abruptly.
"Well?"
"Must I say it, _Herr_?"
"Of course you must."
"But he _is_ my father, _Herr_."
"You are to do as I command you."
She drew a deep sigh and went on. "And he caught hold of me by the
throat with one hand, and beat me with the other, and hissed in my ear:
'Unless you confess how you came by all that money, I'll squeeze the
life out of you----' And when I could hardly breathe, I----"
He laughed harshly to himself. _His_ father and _her_ father--both had
resorted to the same chivalrous measures.
Regina thought the laugh was at her expense.
"Ah, _Herr_," she went on with an imploring upward glance, "I
was so dreadfully stupid then. Even a fortnight later, when they
cross-examined me, they could have strangled me before they would have
got anything out of me. But then--I suppose it was because he was my
father----"
"Oh yes, I understand. You told tales out of school to your father.
Well, what else?"
"The very same night my conscience pricked me, and in the morning when
I took the _gnaediger Herr_ his coffee--he would always have me take
it--I told him all."
"And what did he say?"
"He turned as white as chalk, but said nothing at first. He took down a
gun from the wall and pointed it at me; I folded my hands and closed my
eyes, and then I heard him utter an oath, and then he put the gun over
his shoulder and rushed out. I thought to myself, he's gone to put an
end to father! And I watched him run towards the drawbridge with his
two bloodhounds, and then I, as quick as lightning, hurried through the
park, across the Cats' Bridge to the village, to let father know his
life was in danger. Had he been at home I couldn't have saved him. But
he was in the Black Eagle, and had blabbed everything the night before,
and was now blind drunk. The _gnaediger Herr_ won't fetch him out of the
Black Eagle, I thought--and besides it was too late, for Herr Merckel
and every one knew, and they all made a great hullabaloo when they saw
me, and caught hold of me, and tried to force me to speak; but I bit my
tongue till it bled, and kept silent. Then they let me go, and I ran to
meet the _gnaediger Herr_, and threw myself at his feet, saying, 'Spare
his life, for it will do no good to take it. All the world knows now.'
... He gave me a kick that made me faint, but he left father alone. And
then a fortnight after a gendarme came for me, and took me to the Black
Eagle. There, in the wine-room, were assembled five or six gentlemen;
the _Herr Landrath_, who was there to-day, among them. And they shut
the door behind me, and began to cross-question me. I felt as if I
could do nothing but cry, and then I grew calmer, and pretended that
father had dreamt it all in one of his drunken fits. But they showed me
the bag he had taken from me--and so--_Herr_ ... I was obliged to say
... that the money ... was the ... reward ... that I----" She broke
off, and hid her face that was suffused with a dark crimson flush of
shame, in her hands.
"Proceed with your story," he commanded, grinding his teeth.
"They didn't believe me, _Herr_, but they saw it was no good trying to
get the truth out of me, and asked me no more questions. And then they
held a consultation in low voices (but I have good ears, and understood
all they were saying), as to whether they should lock me up till I
found my tongue, and arrest the _gnaediger Herr_, and so on, and then
they came to the conclusion that to blaze it abroad would cause too
great a scandal in the district, and be a dishonour to the whole of
Prussia, and as there was no direct proof, the affair might be left in
the dark. I have forgotten the exact words, but it was something like
that."
"And then they let you go?"
"Yes. Herr Merckel said I was to take myself off, or my presence might
breed a pestilence in the house."
A silence ensued: then hastily gulping down three more glasses of the
old wine, he said--
"Now, then, for the night of the fire!"
She jumped up from her chair and stared at him, her eyes starting with
horror.
"What! I'm to tell you about the fire?"
"All you can recollect."
"All! ... Not all, _Herr_?"
"All."
"_Herr_ ... I can't." The words rattled in her throat like a
death-agony.
"You mean you refuse?" He too had risen, and stood looking at her with
dilated eyes.
She folded her hands on her breast. "I have always been obedient,
_Herr_, to your every wish. I have never been unwilling or grumbled.
I'll go on doing all you order me to do. If you say, 'Go out and be
stoned to death,' I'll go. But just this one thing, I beseech you from
the bottom of my heart, don't ask me?"
He regarded her in wrathful amazement. So accustomed had he become to
her unconditional obedience, that this explosion in her of a spark of
resistance was incomprehensible to him. Was his power over her, that he
had imagined unlimited, thus suddenly to end? Surely this woman had of
her own accord made herself his body-slave? She had sold herself body
and soul to his house, and therefore it was unpardonable presumption in
her to assert unexpectedly that she had a will of her own.
The blood mounted hotly to his head, and his eyes flashed. "You
shall!--I say you _shall_!"
She retreated and shrank against the wall. From the dark background her
eyes shone out at him like a persecuted wild-cat's. "I won't," she
muttered.
All the inherited brutality of the feudal master awoke in him. The
wine, too, was doing its work. He sprang on her, and caught her by the
breast.
The buttons of her jacket burst beneath his violent attack, and her
bare bosom gleamed forth. He transfixed her with the intensity of his
gaze.
"Shall I throttle her, or shall I kiss her?" he asked himself, and
fumbled for her throat.
Then in her deadly terror she made a counter-attack. Her hands were
fastened in his shoulders like iron rivets. It needed a gathering up of
all his strength to withstand their muscular pressure.
A noiseless struggle began. It lasted a minute, and yet seemed to be no
nearer its end. Embittered and desperate at first as a wrestle for life
and death, it became eventually a sort of game. The combatants
apparently had lost sight of what it was they were struggling for. His
eyes, bloodshot and wild, sought hers. Her bosom, wet with
perspiration, pressed hard against his. Their breathing mingled.
Tightly locked in each other's arms they staggered and swayed to and
fro. He pressed her in the back of her knee, but she did not yield, and
with renewed vigour tried to draw him down to her. For one second in
their delirious grappling they gazed dreamily into each other's eyes.
Then she vibrated from head to foot, and in the midst of the conflict
laid her cheek caressingly on the arm that was raised against her. He
saw the action, he saw how her eyes hung on his face with melting
solicitude--saw the beautiful dishevelled head droop like a broken
flower.
"If you are cursed, why should it be for nothing?" And as the thought
flashed through him, he bent over her with a sigh, and kissed her on
the mouth.
She groaned aloud, clung heavily to him, and buried her teeth, till
they met, in his lips. Then, overcome, with suddenly collapsed limbs,
she slipped from his arms on to the floor, and lay with the back of her
head flat on the bare boards.
He stared down at her half-stunned. She would have looked as if she
were dead, had it not been for the heaving bosom, that seemed to fight
for air. Blood trickled from his lip, and unconsciously he wiped it
away with his tongue.
"What next?" he asked himself.
The longer he gazed at the prostrate form the intenser became his
anxiety, till it almost amounted to insanity; anxiety for what must
come.
"Away! out of the house! Away before she moves!" an inward voice
commanded. He tore down his coat from the wall, crushed a fur cap over
his brow, and flew out into the bitter cold night, as if chased by the
devil.
But he could not escape--could not run away from _her_; wherever he
went she was beside him. A tornado raged in his breast, and lashed the
blood to froth in his veins.
He was fleeing from his young manhood's senses, and they were in hot
pursuit.
He dashed through the woods at full speed. The frosty air did not cool
him, nor the darkness restore his serenity.
Was there no salvation? None?
He thought of the parsonage. A jeering laugh rose to his lips. Helene
had shrunk from him when he had approached her with clean hands and a
pure heart. What would she do to-day if he came into her presence
bearing a curse and an insupportable burden of guilt upon him?
And yet that one spot of earth was sacred to memories of all that had
been purest, most peaceful and happy in his blighted life. Ought such a
refuge of light to be denied to him, even if a thousand curses had
descended upon his head from the outer darkness?
Almost against his will his footsteps took the road to the village. It
was reposing peacefully. Only from the windows of the Black Eagle a
ruddy glow was cast on the white expanse of snow. The clock in the
church tower struck one. He must have been tramping about for five
hours, and it seemed like five minutes. Faint moonbeams shone on the
sleigh-ruts, which looked like long white ribbons unrolled on the
ground, and the mass of icicles hanging from the church roof spread a
delicate silver filigree on the dark, time-stained walls.
He passed the church and came to the parsonage garden. There was a
light in one of the gable windows. His heart seemed to bound into his
throat. He swung himself over the hedge, and strode through the deep
snow to the summer-house, which stood at a distance of twenty paces
from the gable. In its shadow he took up his position.
A white curtain was drawn across the illuminated casement. On the
surface of the chintz a delicate tracery of leaves and stalks was
reflected from flower-pots inside. There was her virgin paradise; there
she ruled as modestly and sweetly as the Madonna in her rose-garden.
And again the picture in the cathedral rose before his mental eyes, as
it always did when he tried to realise the presence of the beloved. Oh!
for one second in which to feast his bodily eye on that dear, forgotten
face, so that what time and guilt had deadened in him might revive and
live anew!
For a moment the outline of a girl's figure darkened the illuminated
window-pane. A corner of the curtain was lifted.
Instinctively he stretched out his arms. The curtain dropped quickly,
and a moment afterwards the light within was extinguished.
He waited, hardly daring to draw a breath, for a sign from the darkened
spot. But none came. All was motionless and still.
"It is madness to think of it!" he said to himself. "Probably she
didn't recognise you. She only saw a man's figure that gave her a
fright. Make haste! For the whole house will be roused and turned out
to hunt the supposed thief."
So he retraced his steps. In turning into the street he was conscious
that his blood was flowing more calmly, and his pulses not throbbing so
fiercely. Being in her neighbourhood even for a few minutes had soothed
him.
"Where now?" Anywhere in the world, but not home. At the bare thought
of that outstretched figure on the floor, his veins began to pulsate
again with violence. Oh, she was a fiend, and he hated her!
He took a side path, not knowing where it led. It was divided from the
Castle island by stables and carters' huts, and ended in an open field.
On the opposite side, he saw the indigo belt of woods that encircled
the flat white plains. The woods drew him towards them again like a
magnet. There he would hide, in their majestic depths where the peace
of winter reigned and slept its mysterious dreamless slumber.
He trod the pathless field covered with hills and dales of snow which
swept away before him like the billows of a boundless ocean of liquid
light. His feet crunched through the frozen crust till he sank to his
knees, and then it needed all his powers to step forwards once more.
But with strenuous effort he ploughed his way, still taking flight from
his own thoughts. There was something almost comforting in this
objectless striving. His lungs fought for breath; moisture poured from
every pore of his body as he plunged and stumbled on. Here and there
the crust was strong enough to bear him, and then he felt as if he had
been endowed with wings and floated over the ground, till another crash
laid him low, grovelling on his hands and knees.
Now the wall of woods rose higher and darker before him; ... he was
only a hundred steps from his goal, when his eye was arrested by
something in the shape of a hillock extending a distance of about fifty
or sixty feet in the direction of the wood. Coming nearer, he saw it
was too regular in form for a hillock, and its corners too sharply
defined. A few feet off there was a second mound of the same
description, and to the left again, a third. They must be gravel heaps,
he thought, that had been dug up in the autumn and left to be removed
till after the thaw set in. Why should the peasants not get gravel from
his property when there was no one to prevent them?
But what did those crosses mean, that stood out so solemnly and eerily
in the night, at the foot of each mound? At first he had not noticed
them against the dark background of the woods. They were three in
number. Roughly hewn out of fir trunks, they were so firmly planted in
the earth, that they did not move a hair's-breadth when he shook them.
They bore no inscription, and if they had, he would not have been able
to read it. Inscrutable as memorials of forgotten misfortune, they
stood ranged there in the dim moonlight like rugged sentinels.
And then the mystery was solved. He saw what they were. With a loud cry
he dropped his face in his hands. He had stumbled on the graves of the
men who had fallen on that accursed night in the year '7. Here lay the
bones of his father's victims. What evil chance had led him here
to-night? Or was it chance? Had not a thousand invisible arms beckoned
him cajolingly and irresistibly along this maniacal route, and let him
fight his way through snow and ice, till he was ready to faint from
exhaustion? It seemed as though fate had kept in reserve the most
excruciating lash of her scourge till this hour of his bitterest
humiliation; so that he should no longer be in doubt as to there being
any salvation in store for him, and to demonstrate once for all that he
was doomed to sink for ever under the weight of shame and despair.
"But it is well that I came," he said, conversing with himself; "where
better can I convince myself that the old pastor's curse was not
unjust--and that what was not a sin, has become one?"
His eyes wandered over the row of flattened graves, and now there
seemed no end to them.... How many were buried there? If they had been
closely packed, a hundred or more might rest in each grave--or perhaps
even double that number. And they had all been brave soldiers who had
left their homes gaily, in light-hearted devotion to fight for King and
Fatherland.... Through foulest treachery they had been butchered here
in cold blood, under cover of night.
He clung to one of the crosses, and held his face so tightly against
the rough wood that splints dug into his flesh.
"Arraign him before the whole world!" something cried within him--"him
and _her_--and then go with her to perdition."
He gazed at the distant prospect, and sought the outline of the ruins
against the horizon. But nothing was visible except the tall trees that
crowned the park, which were only dimly discernible. A little behind to
the right of them lay the Cats' Bridge.
He could fancy her emerging from those trees with the troop of
remorselessly cruel Frenchmen following her, bent on their work of
blood. How terrible must the regular echo of their marching feet have
sounded in her ears. Deeper and deeper into the wood they must have
gone, till they reached that ravine which ran parallel with the
thicket, almost in a half-circle. She had never told him the road she
had taken, but he saw exactly how it had all happened. Everything was
as plain as if he had been there himself and seen it with his own eyes.
He stretched out his arm, and with a trembling finger traced the path
against the horizon.
And afterwards when they let her go, and she had made her way home
alone, with the wages of her sin in her pocket--how the cracking
of bullets, the beating of drums, the clouds of gunpowder, the
death-shrieks of the massacred, must have followed her, galloping at
her heels like an army of furies!
How she had gone on living with those awful sounds ringing in her head,
those ghastly pictures floating before her eyes, he could not
understand. If he had been in her place he would have sought instant
deliverance in the first halter or pond that came handy.
But not she! Visions were no terror to her. Her conscience, instead of
tormenting itself, was apparently scarcely conscious of its guilt. She
had only the feelings of an animal or a demon. He shuddered. And it was
to her, _her_, that he had been on the brink of succumbing!
Then in his sore distress he flung himself across the grave, face
downwards in the snow, folded his hands and stammered forth an
incoherent prayer, while tears gushed from his eyes.
The intense cold of his exposed position stung his face, and drove him
to stand up again. He patrolled the row of graves, unable to evolve a
single rational thought. He felt as if he were caught in a brazen net,
that was drawing its meshes tighter and tighter around him.
"God in Heaven," he cried aloud, "visit not the sins of the fathers on
me! Let the dead sleep.... _I_ have not murdered them. Let something
happen, a miracle, a sign, that I may be shown that Thou wilt not have
me perish in this anguish of despair." He cast his eye round him as if
looking for help.
But coldly and unsympathetically the moonlit, lead-coloured sky looked
down on him. There was no sign, no miracle.
He laughed. "You are becoming imbecile," he murmured inwardly.
An unspeakable exhaustion overwhelmed him. He reeled, and his feet gave
way beneath him. The next moment he was sitting in the cavity which the
weight of his prostrate figure had made in the snow. He drew up the
collar of his coat, and nearly frozen, brooded on, half sleeping, half
waking.
When he rose with cramped limbs, happy to have escaped falling asleep
and being frozen to death, one thin purple streak had appeared in the
eastern sky. An ague, hot and cold at the same time, like the beginning
of fever, shook his frame.
Now there was nothing for it, but to go home. But where was he to find
the strength necessary to obliterate for ever from his mind what had
happened in the night that was over at last? His tongue instinctively
felt for his lip.... The wound left by the impress of her kiss burned
there still.
And there had been no sign from Heaven, no miracle. One course only
remained that might save him from the worst, and that was death.
Death! The thought came to him like a ray of light in the darkness, yet
his brain was too weary, his soul too dispirited for him to grasp it,
and it died out as quickly as it had come.
In his own footprints he walked back to the village. No one was
stirring out of doors, but here and there a chimney smoked, and a cock
from his perch crowed a greeting to the new-born day.
As he took the path down to the river, he thought he saw the fleeting
shadow of a woman's figure hurrying from the drawbridge. Perhaps it was
Regina, who after long waiting and watching had now come to meet him.
But no! Regina was not so slim and dainty. Who in all the village could
want to come to the drawbridge at this unearthly hour? His heart beat
fast. He had been seen. A soft, squealing sound fell on the air, and
the next instant the figure had vanished down a bypath. He did not
think of following her. It might possibly be a dairymaid who had been
taking a morning dip, and was shy of meeting him; but on coming to the
drawbridge he saw footmarks on the freshly fallen hoarfrost, and these
came to an end at the pillar to which the letter-box was fixed.
Who could be his nocturnal correspondent? It was ridiculous, yet a
flood of hope suffused his soul.
He snatched the little key, that he always carried about with him, from
his pocket. The box opened--a letter fell out.
He broke the seal with shaking fingers. Helene's signature! Had God
heard his petition? Had He after all sent him fresh strength for the
struggle, and deliverance?
The dawn gave him sufficient light to read by, but the lines danced
before his eyes. Only here and there he drank in a broken sentence or a
single word--"Wait patiently." "The hour when I summon you to come to
me." "Longing." "Childhood's days." "Happy."
And one thing that was not written there at all he could read
distinctly. The sign that he had prayed for by the grave of the
warriors had fallen from Heaven. The miracle had happened!
Renewed confidence in himself possessed him. He was not forsaken; he
need not yet despair of his better self. This pure, bright angel, the
good genius of his youth, was still faithful, still believed in him.
Her trust should not be abused. Rather die than, through despising
himself, bring her to feeling shame at her faith in him.
He turned his face towards the purple morning glow, and, raising his
hand solemnly, uttered the following words:--
"God, who art a great and just Judge, and visitest the sins of the
fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation, I hereby
swear to take my life with my own hand rather than let the curse of Thy
priest gain ascendency over me. Amen."
Then he walked towards the house as if freed from an intolerable
burden.
"Now the devil is exorcised!" he said as he entered the vestibule,
heaving a deep sigh of relief; nevertheless, the hand that lifted the
latch still trembled feverishly.
He surveyed the room with one quick shy glance.
In the rosy light of dawn he saw her crouching, dressed on her bed, her
hands clasped over her knees. Her jacket was open; her hair hung about
her face in tangled masses. Her dress was exactly as it had been when
he left her the evening before.
She raised her head slowly, and gazed at him as if in a dream with soft
melting eyes.
He shrank before that gaze.
"Haven't you been to bed?" he asked in as harsh a tone as he could
command.
She continued to look at him with the same blissfully rigid expression,
and said nothing.
"Didn't you hear?" he asked again imperiously.
She did not start as she used to do when he spoke thus; but a scarcely
perceptible vibration passed through her frame, as if the sound of his
voice filled her with ecstasy. She smiled a little.
"Hear what?" she asked.
"My question as to why you hadn't been to bed."
"I waited up for you, _Herr_."
"I did not order you to wait for me."
"Nor did you forbid me, _Herr_."
He clung to the back of a chair.
"Why are you afraid of her?" he asked himself. "You have just sworn
that danger exists no longer."
Then to get rid of her he told her to go and prepare him something hot
for breakfast.
She rose deliberately, stretching her stiff limbs. A dreamy languor
seemed to pervade her whole being. Since last night she was completely
transformed.
Directly he had shut the door after her, he tore the letter from his
pocket, and read it to reassure himself of is happiness. It ran:--
"Dear Friend Of My Youth,--I hear from papa that you have been highly
honoured by our wise and noble King--that he has made you captain of
your division, and given you the Iron Cross. I congratulate you
heartily, and am rejoiced at your good fortune. What else passed papa
wouldn't tell me, but he was very excited about it, and in a great rage
when he mentioned you. Ah! if only you could have managed to win his
affection and the goodwill of the parishioners! Then I shouldn't have
to be so careful, and could see and speak to you often.... Dear
Boleslav, I implore you never to think of coming into the garden again.
"You know papa--what he is; and if he found out--ah! I believe he would
kill me! Wait patiently, my dear friend! The Bible says, you know,
patience shall be rewarded. So have patience till the hour when I shall
summon you to come to me; then I will tell you all the news. How full
of longing I am to see you! Oh, those lovely days of childhood! What
has become of them? How happy I was then!--Your
"Helene.
"_Postscript_.--Never come to the garden again. I will appoint another
place of meeting. Not in the garden."
Strange, that what a few minutes before had filled him with delight
now seemed flat and colourless, and disappointed him. Doubtless the
half-wild creature was to blame, whose close proximity confused his
judgment. A kind of delirium of bliss seemed to have taken possession
of her. And how she had smiled! how strangely she had stared into
space!
She came back into the room, and moved about it like a somnambulist.
"Regina!"
She half closed her lids, and said, "Yes, _Herr_,"
"What's the matter with you?"
She smilingly shook her head. "Nothing, _Herr_," she answered, and
again that look came into her eyes; they seemed to swim in dreamful
contemplation of some infinite felicity.
He felt his throat contract. Clearly there was still reason to be
afraid of himself.
Then he resolved to speak and listen to her no more, but to live in his
work. He immersed himself in his papers again, sorted and laid aside
important documents, filed, registered, and made copies of them. It
seemed to him that he must get everything in order in anticipation of
some pending catastrophe.
So the day went by, and the evening. Regina crouched in the darkest and
remotest corner she could find and remained motionless. He dared not
cast even a glance in her direction. The blood hammered in his temples,
yellow circles danced before his eyes, every nerve in his body was on
edge from over-fatigue.
On the stroke of ten she rose, murmured goodnight, and disappeared
behind her curtain. He neither answered nor looked up.
At eleven he put out the lights and went to bed too.
"Why does your heart beat like this?" he thought. "Remember your oath."
But the superstitious, indefinable dread of coming disaster haunted him
like a ghost in the darkness.
He got up again, and stole with bare feet across the room to the case
of weapons, that was dimly illumined by the newly-risen moon. He caught
up one of his pistols, which he always kept loaded to be forearmed
against unforeseen events. It had been his faithful friend and
protector in many a bloody fray. To-day it should protect him from
himself. With its trigger cocked, he laid it on the small table by his
bedside.
"It's doubtful whether you sleep a wink now," he said, as he nestled
his head on the pillows. Yet scarcely three seconds later he lost
consciousness, and slumber lapped his tired limbs.
* * * * *
A curious dream recalled him from profoundest sleep into a half-dozing
wakefulness. He fancied he saw two bright eyes like a panther's
glittering at him out of the darkness. They were only a few inches from
his face, and seemed to be fixed on it with fiery earnestness, as if
with the intention of bringing him under the spell of their
enchantment.
His breath came slower, almost stopped, then he felt another breath
well over him in full soft waves.
It was no dream after all, for his eyes were wide open. The moon cast a
patch of light on the counterpane of his bed, and still those other
lights glowed on, devouring him with their fire. The outline of a face
was visible. A woman's white figure bent over him.
A thrill of mingled pleasure and alarm ran through his body.
"Regina," he murmured.
Then she sank on her knees by the bed and covered his hands with kisses
and tears. In the enervation that had crept over him he would have
stroked the black tresses which streamed across the pillow, only he
lacked the strength to extricate his hands from hers.
Then--"Your oath, think of your oath!" a voice cried within him.
In dismay, he started up. Not yet fully awake, he reeled forwards, and
tearing his hands out of her grasp, fumbled for the pistol.
"You, or her."
There was a report. Regina, with a cry of pain, fell with her forehead
against the edge of the bed, and at the same moment a great rumbling
and crackling was heard from the opposite wall. The portrait of his
beautiful grandmother had crashed to the ground.
He stared wildly round him, only just arriving at complete
consciousness.
"Are you wounded?" he asked, laying his hand gently on the dark head.
"I--don't--know, _Herr_," and then she glided across the floor to her
mattress.
He dressed himself and kindled a light. It now all appeared a confused
nightmare.
Ah! but if she died, if he had killed her?
When he drew aside the curtain, he beheld her cowering and shivering in
her corner, holding up the counterpane in her teeth. It was smeared
with blood.
"For God's sake--show me. Where were you hit?" he cried.
She let the counterpane drop as far as her breast, and silently offered
her naked shoulder for his inspection. Blood was streaming from it.
But the first glance satisfied him, the connoisseur in wounds, that it
was a mere surface shot. It would heal of itself in a few days.
"Thank God! Thank God!"
She stared up at him absently with wide eyes.
"It is nothing," he stammered. "A scratch--nothing more."
She appeared not to hear what he said.
"Pull yourself together like a man. Not a word, not a look, must betray
your real feelings."
With this self-exhortation he withdrew, and wearily put down the light
on the table.
What now? Where should he go? To stay meant ruin and damnation.
This very hour he must go away. Away! Somewhere, _any_where, so long as
a barrier of his fellow-creatures separated him from her for evermore.
And in breathless haste he began to gather together papers that proved
his father's guilt, as if they were the most precious possessions in
the world.