"What is it, Helene?"
"Boleslav, how could you be so wicked! Poor, poor Felix! I did not see it myself, for I was in the back-garden drawing radishes, but they told me afterwards how you slashed at his head with your drawn sabre, till it poured with blood." She shuddered and shook with suppressed sobs.
Then she wrenched her hand out of his arm and skipped to the opposite side of the road. "Go! I won"t have anything more to do with you," she cried. "You acted in a harsh and cruel manner----"
"But you don"t understand, dear Helene," he protested.
"And he was your schoolfellow and playmate, and used to play hide-and-seek with us both in the garden. He often climbed over the hedge for you to get your ball when you had tossed it too far, and he used to give you guinea-pigs. Have you forgotten everything? You ought to remember the dear old times."
"Because of the guinea pigs, eh?"
"Oh,--and to think that you have shut him up in the cold dark church!
Papa is of opinion that you have no business to do it; he says he will report your conduct to the _kommando_, and that probably you will get the worst of it."
She resembled her father so little, he thought, that his words of thunder when repeated by her lips sounded the most insipid chatter. And it was on this cackling little hen that he had let the great question of to be, or not to be, hang!
She had now come back to his side, and with a mincing gesture pushed her hand again through his arm.
"They say that you intend carrying him off to-morrow a prisoner, to be tried by a court-martial, and that he will be shot dead for certain.
But it must be a lie. It is, isn"t it? You couldn"t do such a thing; I wouldn"t believe it of you. You are not so bad as all that."
He suppressed an exclamation of impatience.
"Say you won"t?" she besought, wiping her eyes. "If _I_ ask you, dear Boleslav, to let him go free, you will grant me the favour--I know you will."
She spoke calmly, as if the request she made were merely a casual one.
But there was secret anxiety in the eyes that glanced at his suspiciously.
"Dear, dear Boleslav!" she continued more urgently, her arm trembling violently, "if you care for me the very least little bit, don"t let us part before you have promised me this. I will cherish your memory always in my heart, if Fate is cruel enough to separate us for ever, and will at least never cease to pray for you and bless you."
"I am sorry, Helene," he said, moved to speaking more warmly by her now evident distress, "if I must seem hard and inexorable to you. But it is all of no good. Your wish cannot possibly be fulfilled."
She had not in the least expected this answer, and regarded him for a second with a cold, angry expression. Then suddenly she burst out weeping, and sank against the trunk of a tree for support, with her thin hands before her face.
At the same moment the report of a gun was heard in the distance, the echo of which slowly rolled through the woodlands.
Helene gave a frightened cry, and, throwing up her hands, sobbed out--
"Now they have shot him for certain, because you, inhuman monster, have commanded it! Oh dear! have you _no_ mercy?"
Listening in the direction from which the gunshot had come, he did his best to soothe her.
That the shot had anything to do with Felix Merckel was, of course, out of the question.
It had undoubtedly been fired in the wood, on the farther side of the Castle, probably by a poacher on the track of a wild red deer.
But she sobbed more violently than ever--
"It"s all very well ... but you ... you ... intend dragging him out to his death--you know you do."
Her increasing agitation began to bewilder Boleslav. He a.s.sured her he would do everything in his power to ameliorate Felix"s sentence. He himself would testify to his being hopelessly intoxicated at the time.
His old rancour against himself, his wounded vanity, all should be cited in extenuation of his offence, and might influence his judges to mildness.
But she was not satisfied, and at last dropped on her knees in the clay soil, and cried aloud--
"Be merciful! be n.o.ble! Save him!"
"For G.o.d"s sake, stand up!"
"No, I shall not. In the dust I"ll kneel to you and implore your mercy."
"But don"t you see that I shall be imputing to myself a murderous design if I represent him as innocent?"
"Never mind," she sobbed. "If you really love me, you won"t object to making this little sacrifice for my sake."
Then it began to dawn on him that it was not for the pleasure of seeing him she had summoned him to her side, but, in accordance with a preconceived plan, to make use of his love for her on behalf of another. And of such stuff as this the woman was made, of whom for long years he had considered himself unworthy! This was the radiant angel who had represented his ideal of purity and goodness, whose name he had held too sacred to mention in the same breath as Regina"s!
And Regina, the dishonoured, the outcast! What worlds she seemed now above this sly virtue!
A wild laugh burst from him. "Why did you not tell me at once that you were in love with some one else?"
She started. "That is a slander!" she cried. "I am an honest, innocent girl!"
"Well, I presume you are betrothed?"
She began to cry again, though even in her grief she did not forget to carefully brush the mud from her skirts.
"Oh, Boleslav," she wailed, "it"s all your fault. Why did you keep me waiting for you so long? And why have you given people so much cause to gossip about you? And then you know, there was papa! His consent could never have been won! What was I, poor girl, to do?"
"Please, say no more. It really doesn"t matter!" he broke in cheerily.
"You aren"t angry with me, then?"
"Oh no! not in the least!"
In silence he accompanied Helene back to the village, took a friendly farewell of her, and promised to do all he could to save her _fiance_.
She thanked him, made a formal little curtsey, and they parted.
And so ended the great love of his life.
As he watched the shadow of her meagre little figure disappear behind the houses, his whole soul cried out for Regina in uncontrollable boundless jubilation. Now the road was free--free for sinful, exultant love.
But what was sin, when virtue had collapsed so deplorably? How could there be any evil, when what was good appeared so absurd and contemptible?
"Take her in your arms--crush her to your breast--even to-morrow shall not cheat you of her.... She shall follow you to the camp, from battle to battle--let her wear men"s clothes like that Leonore Prohaska, the heroine whom all Germany admires and honours!"
"Regina! Regina!" he carolled anew, stretching out his arms exultingly, in antic.i.p.ation. He bounded over the moonlit meadows, and higher and darker every minute rose the wooded bank of the river before him.