"I was helping with the sewing," she stammered.
"Why did you come to the Castle?"
"My father told me I must. He said I was to go up and ask the _gnad"ger_ Herr if there was any sewing for me to do. I was to earn my bread somehow, he said."
"Oh, indeed!" There was a pause, then he continued: "Go and put on a jacket, Regina."
She pa.s.sed her hand over her bosom and drew her linen garment tighter round her chest, till the string cut into the swelling flesh.
"Well, why don"t you go?"
"I haven"t got a jacket."
"What! Didn"t he clothe you?"
"They tore my jacket off my back yesterday."
"Who?"
A gleam of burning hate flashed from her eyes.
"Who? Why, they--the people down there, of course," and she spat in the direction of the village.
A feeling of mingled surprise and satisfaction arose within him, for here was a being who could share his hatred; some one whom fate was to a.s.sociate with him in the coming struggle with the villagers below.
"So the people down there are your foes?" he said.
She laughed jeeringly.
"I should just think they were. They throw stones at me whenever they get the chance--stones as big as this." She joined the hollows of her hands together to show the size.
"For how long have they thrown stones at you?"
"It must be six years," she said after a moment"s calculation.
"And how often have they hit you?"
"Oh, lots of times. Look here!" and she let the chemise slip down again, to display a scar extending from her shoulder to the root of her bosom, which marked the warm olive skin with a thin line of scarlet.
"But now I always take the tub with me."
"The tub?"
"Yes; the wash-tub. I hold it over my head and neck when they come after me."
What a wretched existence was hers--worse than a dog"s!
"Why have you gone on staying here when they treat you thus?" he asked.
"There are other places in the world."
She gazed at him in astonishment, as if she did not grasp his meaning.
"But I belong here," she said.
"You might at least have left the island, and betaken yourself somewhere where your life would not always be in danger."
She gave a short laugh.
"Was I to leave _him_ to starve?" she asked; and then, growing suddenly red, she added, correcting herself shyly, "I mean the _gnad"ger Herr_."
He nodded to rea.s.sure her, for she looked as if she expected to be chastised on the spot for her slip of speech, poor miserable creature!
"I don"t go down there oftener than I can help. Generally I go over the Cats" Bridge by night to Bockeldorf, three miles away. There, at Bockeldorf, I could get flour and meat, and everything else that _he_--the _gnadiger Herr_--wanted, if I paid double the price for it, and be back by the morning. But sometimes it"s impossible to get there--in a snow-storm, for instance, or a flood. So when the weather was very bad I was obliged to go down to the village, and had to pay still more money there, and even then perhaps get nothing but blows.
So"--she laughed a wild, almost cunning laugh--"I just took what came handy."
"That means--you thieved?"
She gaily nodded a.s.sent, as if the achievement was deserving of special praise.
She was so depraved, then, this strange, savage girl, that she was quite incapable of distinguishing the difference between right and wrong!
"And what were you doing in the village yesterday?" he questioned anew.
"Yesterday? Well, you see, _he_ must be buried. It"s time, _Herr_, quite time. And I thought to myself, however much I cry, that won"t get him under the earth."
"So you cried, did you?" he asked contemptuously.
"Yes," she replied. "Was it wrong?"
"Well, never mind: go on."
"And so I took the tub and went down to the pastor"s. But the pastor said I mustn"t contaminate his house by coming near it, so on I went to landlord Merckel, who is mayor as you know, _Herr_. And there the soldiers saw me----"
"What soldiers?"
"The soldiers who have just come from the war." She paused again.
"Go on!" he commanded.
"And the soldiers cried out "Down with her--strike her down!" and then the chase began, and my father joined in and called out "Down with her!" too, but he was only drunk, as he nearly always is.... The stones flew about, and the women and children caught hold of me and held me fast, that they might strike me; but I had the tub and held it with both hands high over their heads, hacking with it right and left like this." She ill.u.s.trated her story by holding up her rounded muscular arms in the air, and bringing them down again like a pair of clubs.
The tall, magnificent figure before him, reminded him of some antique statue in bronze. Strange, that in spite of all the degradation and vileness amidst which she had been reared, it should have blossomed into such fulness of triumphant splendour. There was something cla.s.sic, too, in the mere unaffected freedom with which she exposed its charms.
But of course in reality she was nothing but a shameless hussy, long since lost to all sense of decency.
"Perhaps you have got a shawl, if not a jacket," he suggested, turning his back.
"Yes, I have a shawl, a woollen one."
"Then put it on at once."