The church clock had struck the midnight hour, by the time Boleslav got
back to the spot where he had left Regina's soulless body.
A protecting darkness now veiled the white face, for the moon had
passed behind a bank of clouds, yet even from the darkness the great
lustreless eyes gazed appealingly up at him, as if asking a question to
which there was no answer here or hereafter.
He threw himself on his knees beside her, and, saying good-bye to the
two stars, whose light had gone out, he tenderly closed their lids. She
now looked as if she were asleep, and he breathed more freely. He felt
something almost approaching a painful satisfaction as he watched by
her. "You belong to me, only to me," he said. "No one else shall have
any part or lot in you, in death as in life."
What he had resolved to do, in a spirit of defiance, as he left the
murderer's house, in his present calmer mood still seemed the most
commendable course to take. Past events appeared to him now like a
brazen chain of guilt, to which for years one link after the other had
been added. And into this chain had been forged, till it was made a
component part of it, an unlawful love. For the sake of this love which
was sinful as hell and pure as heaven, that which only the silence
of the night had witnessed should in the silence of the night be
buried--buried with this corpse.
What retribution could be rendered by the poor tribunal of man, in a
case in which fate had so clearly interfered and pronounced sentence?
Would it not be profaning the dead body to drag it into the glare of
publicity, and so expose it to the snivelling curiosity of the vulgar
herd?
Should he permit the priest who had cursed her in her lifetime to
consign her to the grave with a perfunctory blessing? And would not
this involve her being laid in a coffin manufactured by her father's
blood-guilty hands, followed by his accomplices as mourners, hooting
and throwing stones?
Ah no; it should not be! She should be the prey, now she was dead, of
no Schrandener wolves. He alone, for whom she had lived, for whom she
had gone to meet her death, must prepare her last resting-place. He
would hide her in the lap of mother earth, and smooth the turf so
carefully above her that no body-snatcher would ever discover and
profane the holy spot. He lifted the corpse in his arms and carried it
to the grass-plot. The moon had risen high in the heavens and shrouded
the landscape in a veil of silver. From the dewy glistening grass rose
the fragments of the old Diana statue in dazzling whiteness. Here he
bore her and let her sink on the turf, her neck supported by the
cracked pedestal, so that with her face turned towards the moon, she
looked as if she had fallen asleep in a sitting position. Then he
sought a burial-place. His eye fell on the black, four-cornered patch
which Regina had intended for his father's grave. How vividly she came
back to him, as she had looked then, in the full splendour of her
sunburnt strength and beauty, driving the heavy spade into the ground
with her naked foot, as if it had been a ramrod. If he had not then
interrupted her in her work, he would to-day have been spared his.
The service of love she had wished to render his father it was now his
duty to do for her. What could be simpler than to go on digging deeper
the grave that she had begun that day, little dreaming it would be her
own?
He fetched a spade from the kitchen, where the fire she had kindled was
still smouldering, and began with all his strength to throw up the sod.
From time to time he paused and glanced at her. She seemed well content
to sit there in the bright moonlight, and quietly contemplate his
labours. Now and then, when the shadow of a cloud flickered on her
face, he half fancied she moved, and was going to rise to her feet.
Then that tormenting scepticism that all experience in the presence of
their beloved dead overwhelmed him. He called her name and rushed to
her side. Her hand rested on Diana's head, which lay close to her in
the grass. He dared not touch her, and stole back to his work, his face
buried in his hands.
The grave began to grow deep, and he feared that soon he might not be
able to climb on to the edge again. He went to get the flower-stand out
of the green-house, on the shelves of which she had ranged the plates
and dishes in such beautiful order.
"No one shall eat off them again!" he said, and dashed the earthenware
crockery on the floor, where it broke to atoms. He placed the stand
against the inside of the grave, to serve as a ladder, and then
continued throwing out the soil as before.
By the time the clock in the village had boomed out the second hour of
the morning, his melancholy task was finished. He had no coffin for
her, but to prevent her lying on the black moist earth, he fetched from
his bed, which she had always taken pains to keep so daintily clean and
tidy, a quilt, and two feather pillows, and lined the grave with them.
And now the time for parting had come. He raised her in his arms, and
bore her to the edge of the pit; then sitting down on the mound of turf
to take breath, he lifted her head on to his knees. Never before had he
been able to look at her so leisurely, for he had never dared trust
himself to let his eyes rest on her for long. Now he studied lovingly
every feature of the dead face, caressed the stiff cheeks, and wrung
the water from her heavy curls. A cold shiver passed through his frame.
He had held the wet body, with its dripping skirts, so long in his
arms, that his own clothes were damp from the contact.
"Farewell!" he murmured, and kissed her on the forehead. He was going
to kiss her on the lips, but drew back quickly.
"You disdained them in life," he said to himself, "so in death they may
not belong to you."
And then he edged the corpse nearer the grave, and jumped down on to
the top step of the stand. Slowly and cautiously he lifted her in,
stretched her on the quilt, and cushioned her head on the soft pillows.
Once more he wanted to kiss her, but was afraid to leave the stand that
bridged her feet; so he contented himself with stroking her hands,
which he could reach from where he sat; then he clambered out of the
grave, drawing the stand after him with the top of the spade-handle.
But afterwards he found he had forgotten to draw a corner of the quilt
over her face, to prevent the soil from falling on it. "Flowers," he
thought, "will do as well;" and he went in search of them. Under the
trees in the park grew great masses of anemones and bluebells, and
there were violets and primroses, that she herself had cultivated, in
the garden.
He gathered all he could see in the uncertain light. The anemones and
primroses had closed their calyxes in sleep, but the violets looked up
at him with their confiding blue eyes, as if inviting him to pluck
them.
With his hands full he returned to the grave, and, as he looked down
into it, stood spell-bound at what he saw. It was indeed a picture of
almost magic loveliness. The moon had passed its height, and, shining
at the foot of the grave, illuminated it on the east side, so that the
head, reposing in its deep resting-place, was thrown out clearly in
relief, while the blood-stained body was hidden in darkest shadow.
The still, white face seemed to smile up at him, as if lapped in
blissful dreams.
He threw the flowers aside, and, crouching down in the loose earth he
had thrown up, stared and stared down on her, holding a solemn and
silent wake.
Thoughts chased each other through his brain in a confused whirl, until
gradually he came to a calmer and more rational frame of mind.
He reflected on how she had gone through life despised and guilt-laden,
and yet unrepentant, appearing to be satisfied with her past rather
than regretting it.
Once, in an hour of dire perplexity, he had asked himself whether it
was the dull indifference of the brute or the wiles of a devil that
made her will so strong and her conscience so lax, and he had not known
what to answer.
To-day, when it was too late, her true nature was revealed to him.
No, she had not been a brute or a devil, but simply a grand and
complete human being. One of those perfect, fully developed individuals
such as Nature created before a herding social system, with its
paralysing ordinances, bungled her handiwork, when every youthful
creature was allowed to bloom unhindered into the fulness of its power,
and to remain, in good and in evil, part and parcel of the natural
life.
And as he pondered thus, it seemed to him that the mists which obscure
the source of human existence from human knowledge had dispersed a
little, and that he had been granted a deeper glimpse than most men
into the fathomless gulf of the Unknown. What is generally called good
and bad drifted about anchorless on the cloudy surface, but below lay
dreaming in majestic strength, the Natural.
"And those whom Nature favours," he said aloud to himself, "she lets
take root in her mysterious depths, so that they spring boldly into the
light, with vision undimmed and conscience untrammelled by the
befogging illusions of morality and worldly wisdom."
Such a highly favoured, completely-endowed human creature was this
abused and abandoned woman.
"And I for whom she lived and died, have I deserved such a sacrifice?"
he meditated further. "Was I worthy of the trust and confidence she so
unhesitatingly placed in me?
"With ruthless severity he sat in judgment on himself, and he came out
of the ordeal anything but unscathed.
"Of course I belong to the other type," he thought, "to the people who
are torn all their life long between right and wrong, and who lose
their way in the fog. We regard the tribute Nature demands of us as
impurity and vice, and yet the restraint of moral laws often appears to
us hollow and far-fetched. Thus we vacillate perpetually between
defiance and fear of them. We crave for the good opinion of the world,
in which we don't believe, and tremble in face of its condemnation,
which we despise and contemn in our hearts. Once I thought it would be
an indelible disgrace to bury my father in this unconsecrated ground;
now I should be glad if I had done so. Once I tried to forget my
bitterness in the ambition of restoring my ancestral inheritance to its
pristine glory; now I am delighted at the thought of shaking its dust
from my feet. Then I held the Schrandeners to be mere barbarous
savages; but to-day I awake to the fact that my own race has made them
what they are.... _Then_ I thought this woman too degraded to take
bread from her hand; to-day I am weeping by her grave. All my heart was
centred on the extinguished flame of youth's first foolish fancy; I
insisted on making the arbitress of my destiny a simpering, prudish
minx, for whom I really had long ceased to care ... and I repulsed in
horror the most splendid and satisfying of natural loves. But truly
this natural love represented deadly sin, and tempted me to contaminate
my blood.
"Yet when the worst came to the worst, and the life that flowed in my
veins had burst from the control of all laws, human and divine, could I
not have made atonement by paying the penalty of death?"
And then the question occurred to him, whether the body he talked so
lightly of surrendering at his own caprice belonged exclusively to him?
What if it were the Fatherland's inviolable possession? Certainly,
then, he was not privileged to desecrate it.
"It is well that in an hour of chaos like this, when good and evil,
right and wrong, honour and dishonour, seem to be swaying about in
hopeless confusion, and when the old God of our childhood with His
Heaven seems to have vanished away ... it is well for swooning men to
have one prop left to lean on, one firm rock to cling to, on which even
to be shipwrecked were a delightful relief. Such a prop, such a stay,
have I in my country."
Thus spake the son of his country's betrayer, and fervently folded his
hands.
The moon had shifted its radiance away from the grave, and the dead
face it had illumined now lay in shadow. It was scarcely possible to
distinguish it from the surrounding earth.
"The time has come," he said, and looked round him.
In the east glimmered the first rosy streak of dawn. A bluish haze
suffused the landscape, and above him in the branches began the dreamy
twitter of awakening birds. He was in the act of throwing the flowers
into the grave, when suddenly he changed his mind, and with a frown
cast them aside.
"What need of such fastidious effeminacy?" he asked himself rebukingly.
"Dust has no reason to fear meeting dust."
Then he seized the spade, and shutting his eyes, began with zest to
shovel the dark earth over the beloved body. A quarter of an hour later
the grave was full. He laid the turf carefully in its original place,
and took care to remove the remnants of superfluous soil and scattered
flowers, so that when the sun rose no one could have found the place
where Regina slept for ever.
As he searched for a stone to commemorate the sacred spot, his eyes
fell on the head of the ruined statue, which smiled at him in stony
vacancy. He lifted it, and planted it in the turf.
"Diana, the chaste," he murmured, "shall serve her as a tombstone. The
sister by whom she will keep eternal watch is not unworthy of her."
And again he flung himself on the grass and became lost in meditation.
On the stroke of six he rose, and made preparations to depart.
"They will be fools indeed," he muttered to himself, "if they don't
make an end of me to-day."
He filled his pistols with new cartridges, and sharpened his sabre, for
he was determined his life should be dearly purchased.
But when he crossed the drawbridge to the village, he was greeted by
familiar and friendly faces. They belonged to Heide's sons, who were
making their way to the Schranden depot. They pressed round him and
offered him their hands.
"We are come," said Karl Engelbert, "to put ourselves under your
command, for we wish to make amends for our conduct to you in the
past."
"I thank you with my whole heart," he replied. "All is forgiven and
forgotten."
Then he walked up to Schranden's gallant troopers, who, pale and with
chattering teeth, cowered near the church door, like criminals awaiting
execution.
His comrades pointed out to each other in dismay the blood-stains on
his clothes, but not one dared ask him to explain how they came there.
"Bring out the prisoner, and get a waggon for him," he ordered. Felix
Merckel was led out, but Boleslav did not deign to give him a glance.
When farewells had been said, and all was in readiness for the march,
the old pastor made his way through the crowd. His face was haggard and
his hands shook.
He hastened to Boleslav's side and whispered in his ear: "I hear that
Regina met her death last night.... I am willing to give her Christian
burial."
"Many thanks, your reverence," answered Boleslav, "but I have already
buried her with Pagan rites," and he turned away.
A Schrandener, who, to ingratiate himself, had probably spent part of
the night in capturing Boleslav's horse, now came forward holding it,
with a servile grin.
He swung into the saddle, and his sabre flew out of the scabbard. His
voice rang out clear and threatening above the heads of the crowd as he
gave the word of command.
"Right, left. Quick march!"
They left the village behind them; the woods loomed nearer.
He did not look back.
* * * * *
Of the career of Boleslav von Schranden afterwards, very little is
known. It was considered advisable by the military authorities to
gazette him again into his old regiment, owing to the mutiny that had
taken place under his command.
While the East Prussian Landwehr remained behind in the ancient
provinces, he obtained the much-coveted permission to go direct to the
seat of war.
It is supposed that he fell at Ligny.
THE END