"Dan?" said I.
The lids of his eyes rolled wearily back.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Bury me."
It was very sad. "Where?" I asked.
"Did you see the little cemetery on the hill, across the valley? Put me there. It is a wild, forgotten place. "Tis only my body. Who cares what becomes of that? As for the other, the soul, who can say?
I have never been a good man; still, I believe in G.o.d. I am tired, tired and cold. What fancies a man has in death! A moment back I saw my father. There was a wan, sweet-faced woman standing close beside him; perhaps my mother. I never saw her before. Ah, me! these chimeras we set our hearts upon, these worldly hopes! Well, Jack, it"s curtain and no encore. But I am not afraid to die. I have wronged no man or woman; I have been my own enemy. What shall I say, Jack? Ah, yes! G.o.d have mercy on my soul. And this sudden coldness, this sudden ease from pain--is death!"
There was a flutter of the eyelids, a sigh, and this poor flotsam, this drift-wood which had never known a harbor in all its years, this friend of mine, this inseparable comrade--pa.s.sed out. He knew all about it now.
There were hot tears in my eyes as I stood up and gazed down at this mystery called death. And while I did so, a hand, h.o.r.n.y and hard, closed over mine. The innkeeper, with blinking eyes, stood at my side.
"Ah, Herr," he said, "who would not die like that?"
And we buried him on the hillside, just as the sun swept aside the rosy curtain of dawn. The wind, laden with fresh morning perfumes, blew up joyously from the river. From where I stood I could see the drab walls of the barracks. The windows sparkled and flashed as the gray mists sailed heavenward and vanished. The hill with its long gra.s.ses resembled a green sea. The thick forests across the river, almost black at the water"s edge, turned a fainter and more delicate hue as they receded, till, far away, they looked like mottled gla.s.s. Only yesterday he had laughed with me, talked and smoked with me, and now he was dead. A rage pervaded me. We are puny things, we, who strut the highways of the world, parading a so-called wisdom. There is only one philosophy; it is to learn to die.
"Come," said I to the innkeeper; and we went down the hill.
"When does the Herr leave?"
"At once. There will be no questions?" I asked, pointing to the village.
"None. Who knows?"
"Then, remember that Herr Hillars was taken suddenly ill and died, and that he desired to be buried here. I dare say the Prince will find some excuse for his arm, knowing the King"s will in regard to dueling.
Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
I did not speak to him again, and he strode along at my heels with an air of preoccupation. We reached the inn in silence.
"What do you know about her Serene Highness the Princess Hildegarde?" I asked abruptly.
"What does Herr wish to know?" shifting his eyes from my gaze.
"All you can tell me."
"I was formerly in her father"s service. My wife----" He hesitated, and the expression on his face was a sour one.
"Go on."
"Ah, but it is unpleasant, Herr. You see, my wife and I were not on the best of terms. She was handsome . . . a cousin of the late Prince.
. . . She left me more than twenty years ago. I have never seen her since, and I trust that she is dead. She was her late Highness"s hair-dresser."
"And the Princess Hildegarde?"
"She is a woman for whom I would gladly lay down my life."
"Yes, yes!" I said impatiently. "Who made her the woman she is? Who taught her to shoot and fence?"
"It was I."
"You?"
"Yes. From childhood she has been under my care. Her mother did so desire. She is all I have in the world to love. And she loves me, Herr; for in all her trials I have been her only friend. But why do you ask these questions?" a sudden suspicion lighting his eyes.
"I love her."
He took me by the shoulders and squared me in front of him.
"How do you love her?" a glint of anger mingling with the suspicion.
"I love her as a man who wishes to make her his wife."
His hands trailed down my sleeves till they met and joined mine.
"I will tell you all there is to be told. Herr, there was once a happy family in the palace of the Hohenphalians. The Prince was rather wild, but he loved his wife. One day his cousin came to visit him. He was a fascinating man in those days, and few women were there who would not give an ear to his flatteries. He was often with the Princess, but she hated him. One day an abominable thing happened. This cousin loved the Princess. She scorned him. As the Prince was entering the boudoir this cousin, making out that he was unconscious of the husband"s approach, took the Princess in his arms and kissed her. The Prince was too far away to see the horror in his wife"s face. He believed her to be acquiescent. That night he accused her. Her denials were in vain.
He confronted her with his cousin, who swore before the immortal G.o.d himself that the Princess had lain willing in his arms. From that time on the Prince changed. He became reckless; he fell in with evil company; he grew to be a shameless ruffian, a man who brought his women into his wife"s presence, and struck her while they were there. And in his pa.s.sions he called her terrible names. He made a vow that when children came he would make them things of scorn. In her great trouble, the Princess came to my inn, where the Princess Hildegarde was born. The Prince refused to believe that the child was his. My mistress finally sickened and died--broken-hearted. The Prince died in a gambling den. The King became the guardian of the lonely child. He knows but little, or he would not ask Her Highness--" He stopped.
"He would not ask her what?"
"To wed the man who caused all this trouble."
"What! Prince Ernst?"
"Yes. I prayed to G.o.d, Herr, that your friend"s bullet would carry death. But it was not to be."
"I am going back to London," said I. "When I have settled up my affairs there I shall return."
"And then?"
"Perhaps I shall complete what my friend began."
I climbed into the ramshackle conveyance and was driven away. Once I looked back. The innkeeper could be seen on the porch, then he became lost to view behind the trees. Far away to my left the stones in the little cemetery on the hillside shone with brilliant whiteness.
CHAPTER XVI
There were intervals during the three months which followed when I believed that I was walking in a dream, and waking would find me grubbing at my desk in New York. It was so unreal for these days; mosaic romance in the heart of prosaic fact! Was there ever the like?
It was real enough, however, in the daytime, when the roar of London hammered at my ears, but when I sat alone in my room it a.s.sumed the hazy garments of a dream. Sometimes I caught myself listening for Hillars: a footstep in the corridor, and I would take my pipe from my mouth and wait expectantly. But the door never opened and the footsteps always pa.s.sed on. Often in my dreams I stood by the river again. There is solace in these deep, wide streams. We come and go, our hopes, our loves, our ambitions. Nature alone remains. Should I ever behold Gretchen again? Perhaps. Yet, there was no thrill at the thought. If ever I beheld her again it would be when she was placed beyond the glance of my eye, the touch of my hand. She was mine, aye, as a dream might be; something I possessed but could not hold. Heigho!
the faces that peer at us from the firelight shadows! They troop along in a ghostly cavalcade, and the winds that creep over the window sill and under the door--who can say that they are not the echoes of voices we once heard in the past?