She would be standing on the Cats" Bridge looking out for him, as she had always done.
"Regina!" he shouted over the river. But no answer came. Deep silence all around. There was only a faint rustle among the young leaves of the willows that sounded like slumberous breathing through half-closed lips; and a gentle splashing came up from the invisible river. Its waters were low, and broke on the sharp pebbles. He climbed the steep steps.
"Regina!" he called again. Still silence. Then he saw that in the centre of the plank, the rickety hand-rail had given way: rotten splinters hung on either side. Horror-stricken, he looked down at the river.
On its silver surface floated a woman"s corpse.
CHAPTER XIX
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 gra.s.s; 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 b.u.t.t-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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sa.s.sins, 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 bal.u.s.trade. It snapped in two, and a dark, lifeless ma.s.s 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 anch.o.r.ed, 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 hoa.r.s.ely, "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 bal.u.s.trade.
"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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sionate 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, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 ... "d.a.m.n 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.