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.