Then the voice of the old pastor was raised behind him. "Is Hackelberg, the carpenter, here?"
Boleslav winced. That voice so close to his ear sounded intimidating and uncanny, and prophetic of coming evil. There was a scuffling and swaying in the crowd. The ragged figure of the village drunkard, by means of shoves and kicks, was propelled forward into the front row. He struggled and beat the air with his hands, and when forced on to the threshold of the inner parlour, tried to duck beneath the legs of the men on either side of him.
"There is nothing to be afraid of, Hackelberg," said the pastor. "I will see that you are not hurt."
Rea.s.sured, he drew himself up, and scanned the gentlemen he had been brought before with a suspicious, gla.s.sy eye.
"What creature is this?" inquired the Landrath, scandalised. "Why is he not put under restraint?"
"Because his condition is owing more to his misfortune than his fault,"
the pastor answered.
Herr Merckel thought it his duty to whisper an explanation to his superior.
"He is the poor father so much to be pitied," he said, with a mock pathetic air, "whose sad story I related to your _Hochwohlgeboren_."
At the same time he watched uneasily some Schrandeners, who seemed to be waiting for a signal to take the drunkard into custody.
"Have you nothing to say, Hackelberg?" asked the pastor.
"What should I have to say, Herr Pastor?" he lisped, beginning to cringe again, and drawing the lappets of his tattered coat over his naked breast.
"Have you no accusation to make?"
"Let me go," he growled. "I haven"t----"
"Not even against _him_?" and he pointed to Boleslav.
A glimmer of intelligence came into the dull, glazed eyes. He understood his cue. Old Merckel nodded at him encouragingly, and he began to play his favourite role. Floods of tears that the besotted inebriate can always command so easily, poured over his cheeks. He rubbed his wet face with his black hands, till it resembled some hideous mask.
"Poor fellow! poor outraged father!" crooned Herr Merckel, senior, wiping his own eyes.
"What is the meaning of this absurd farce?" asked Boleslav, with a scornful laugh. But his face had become visibly paler.
"Here we don"t enact farces, but sit in judgment," answered the pastor.
Boleslav shrugged his shoulders. "I am pleased to hear it," he said, and there was a tremor in his voice.
The Schrandeners craned their necks to get a better view of the edifying scene, of which they now expected to be spectators. In the momentary calm that ensued, distant whoops and yells were heard from the crowds who filled the square, having stormed the inn in vain, and with the noise there seemed to mingle a woman"s voice crying for succour.
What if it were Regina? But it was not possible that it could be she; and the idea vanished as quickly as it had flashed into his brain.
"My child, my poor wretched child!" howled the carpenter, who now found himself in more familiar waters.
"What have they done to your child, man?" asked the Landrath, who was not going to tolerate the conduct of affairs being taken out of his hands.
"My child was seduced--he ruined her--my fatherly heart is ...
lacerated ... I am a poor beg--gar ... Only one coffin----"
"I fancy I have heard you harp on this string before," the Landrath interrupted him sharply, "at the time when I examined your daughter about the Cats" Bridge disaster. If you haven"t learnt anything a little newer than that in five years, you"d better hold your tongue. It seems," he said, turning with a smile to the pastor, "as if this ruffian were bent on playing the part of Virginius."
The little man in grey laughed shrilly at this facetious sally on the part of his chief, and then was overcome with confusion at his own timerity. But the old pastor was less disposed to appreciate the Landrath"s urbane humour.
"I will speak for you, Hackelberg," he said. "My words must be taken seriously. I will speak for you and for all of us in the name of our Heavenly Father, whose commandments were not made to be flouted and set at nought by aristocrats. Freiherr von Schranden, just now you challenged me to speak. Will you listen to what I am going to say?"
He a.s.sented impatiently. For the second time he fancied he heard that cry of distress rise above the hubbub outside.
"You have entered into the inheritance of your father?"
"Can there be any doubt in the matter?"
"G.o.d knows! None."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean you have only too quickly appropriated that which was his unlawful possession."
"_Herr Pastor_----" But he could not go on. He felt a choking sensation in his throat, and a stony horror creep over him.
"Where is your spirit?" he asked himself; "your boasted defiance?"
"You found a woman, _Herr Baron_, on your estate who had been your father"s mistress. You found her degraded, defiled, dragged through the mire of wickedness and vice. Year-long slavery had robbed her of the respect of every living creature. She was treated as a mere animal by animals. This wretched woman belonged to my parish and to me. I reared her in the way she should go. It was my hand that sprinkled the baptismal water on her brow; my hand that held the chalice to her lips at the Holy Sacrament; and I promised and vowed before G.o.d, and in presence of my flock, to watch over this young soul; doubly orphaned, because he who generated her was not responsible for his actions."
"Ah, my poor orphaned child!" maundered the carpenter. "Only two, only one other coffin ..."
"I am answerable for her to G.o.d and the parish. I could not command your father to give her up, for, as I told you, I had handed him over to a heavenly tribunal; but _you_, who have courted this inquiry, I command to give her up, and, what is more, in the present hour of reckoning I exhort you to render account of what you have done for her soul."
A red mist floated before Boleslav"s eyes, and in this mist the figure of the venerable priest seemed to grow till it became almost G.o.d-like.
He could only stammer forth--
"What should I ...?" And the old man took up the thread of his speech again--
"To-day you have been honoured before all men by our King; but, Boleslav von Schranden, look to it that G.o.d holds you in equal esteem.
What should you have done, you ask? This impure, abandoned creature ought to have been more awful, more sacred to you than any other earthly being. What have you done to atone for the guilt your father heaped on her? Have you freed her from the bondage into which she had sunk, loosed her from the chain of her sin? Have you pointed her soul upwards to G.o.d, the All-gracious and All-forgiving? Or have you dragged her down deeper and deeper into the h.e.l.l that your own flesh and blood created for her? Above all, in what fashion have you been living with her? It is said that, amidst the devastation of your island, there is only one room habitable. Have you never lost sight of the fact that by all laws, human and divine, your father"s property in this instance was for you forbidden? Have you taught her to repent and pray, or have you filled her poor undisciplined senses with fresh poison? And have you preserved your own blood intact from sinful desires and l.u.s.t? Or have you let your pa.s.sions, like greedy beasts waiting whom they may devour, keep watch on her, ready to spring in an hour of weakness, thus adding fresh shame----?"
"Cease!" cried Boleslav. "This is too much!"
Truly scorpions proceeded out of the mouth of this mild Christian priest, who knew how to reveal and lash secret sins of the imagination, which till this hour Boleslav never suspected had existed in his.
But now he saw it all. Everything was clear. Now he knew what it was had sent his blood tearing impetuously through his veins in the long night vigils, and had made him hold his breath, and listen to hear whether that other breath did not come faster or slower, showing that she, too, was sleepless and on guard. It was sinful desire for her body--the body that had been dishonoured and abused, yet in spite of all remained so triumphantly beautiful.
Thank G.o.d! ah, thank G.o.d! that the sin was still confined to his inner consciousness. There was yet time to lock it behind bolts and bars to prevent its stealing forth over the fatal threshold. So far he could claim the right to be his own judge, to stand before the private judgment-seat of his own conscience.
He looked round him, and his face was distraught and ghastly pale. He saw triumph flame up again in the eyes that watched him.
"What right have you to impute this crime to me?" he said to the pastor.
"I did not impute it--I merely asked you," the old man interposed quickly. "You have become too pale, _Herr Baron_, for us not to observe your discomfiture."