Ludwig and Katharina went into the next room. They looked long into each other"s eyes, and in the gaze lay many of the thoughts which, if they cannot be told to the one person on earth, are never heard by any one else. Suddenly Katharina, without word of warning, dropped on her knees at her lover"s feet, seized his hand, and laid her face against it.
"You are my guardian angel," she whispered (the invalid in the next room must not be disturbed by the sound of voices); "you have rescued that saint from her enemies and saved me from perdition. Oh, Ludwig, if only you knew what I have suffered! Marie"s every sigh, the feverish words uttered in her delirium, have been so many accusations oppressing my heart. These have been terrible days! To be compelled hourly to dread either of two horrible blows, and to have to pray to G.o.d that, if both could not be averted, to let the milder one fall! Death would have been welcome, indeed, compared to the other one. To listen tremblingly, hour after hour, for the knock at the door which would announce the messenger sent to bear Marie to Paris, or death with his scythe to bear her to the grave! And then to have to look on her sufferings, and hear her pray for her betrayer! Oh, it was terrible, terrible! Ludwig, you are just--as G.o.d is just. I have suffered as any woman in the Bible suffered. You have taken my load of sorrow from me, have released my heart from the tortures of perdition. All the evil I have done, you have made good.
Therefore, do you p.r.o.nounce judgment on me. Condemn me or forgive me. I deserve both; I will accept either at your hands."
Without a word Ludwig Vavel raised the woman to her feet, clasped her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers in a long, long kiss. In it were forgiveness, love, union.
From the adjoining room came the sounds of a piano. Some one was playing the hymn of the Hungarian militia.
Ludwig and Katharina hurried into the room. Marie was seated at the piano, arrayed in her favorite blue gown. Her transparent hands hovered over the ivory keys, and lured from them the melancholy air, to which she sang, in a voice that seemed to come from the distant clouds:
"Was kleinliche Bosheit ausgedacht, Hat unserer Liebe ein Ende gemacht."
At the last word her arms sank to her sides; the exertion had completely exhausted her. But she struggled bravely to overcome her weakness. She smiled brightly at Ludwig and Katharina, and said:
"This melancholy song was not intended for you two. It was only to show Ludwig how I have improved. You two will love each other very dearly, won"t you? And you will go far, far away from here, and leave "Marie"
buried in her tomb. I don"t mean myself; I mean the troublesome girl who has made so much ill feeling in the world, because of whom so many people have suffered; the girl whose ashes rest there in the steel casket, and whose life was so sad that she had no desire to live longer.
But "Sophie" is going with you out into the world. She will see how happy you two can be. And now, help me to the window; I want to look at the evening star,"
They rolled her arm-chair to the window, and Vavel opened the sash to admit the fresh air from the garden.
Marie clasped Ludwig"s and Katharina"s hands in both her own, and whispered in a faint voice:
"You will forget the past, will you not? or think of it only as a dream--a disagreeable dream. And don"t go back to the Nameless Castle.
The veiled woman, the locked doors, the silent man, the telescope, the lonely promenades in the garden--all, all were dreams. Don"t think of them! Forget them all! The clanking swords, the thunder of cannons--all these were not. We only dreamed it. We never lived under the shadow of a throne. Who was Marie? A sovereign of cats, and crown princess in the realm of little dogs and birds--a nursery tale to tell naughty little children who will not go to sleep! But Sophie Botta will be here to-morrow, and the next day, and always; she will be with you, the silly, stupid little maid, who can do nothing but obey those whom she loves with all her heart."
Vavel with difficulty refrained from giving voice to his overwhelming grief.
"Just see," Marie continued in a gay tone, "how much better I am!
Heretofore, when the hour came for the evening star to appear, the fever would come too, and to-day it has failed to come with the star. Joy has cured me. Don"t take your hands away from me, Ludwig--Katharina. They will--hold me--hold me--fast."
But they did not "hold her fast."
And why should such a being remain on this earth--a being that could do naught else but love and renounce, adoring her nation even when it persecuted her?
A dark thunder-cloud rose above the horizon out over the Hansag. The sky looked like a vaulted ceiling hung with mourning draperies. From time to time a distant flash of lightning illumined the cloud-curtain, then would be heard the rumbling of thunder, like the deep tones of a distant organ.
Under the threatening sky lay the glittering lake. Its surface of quicksilver was streaked here and there with black shadows--the track of the wind-gusts racing across it. The trees were rustling in the wind, making a sound like a distant choral.
On the sh.o.r.e of Lake Neusiedl stood the Volons in rank and file. They were waiting for something that was coming from the farther sh.o.r.e of the little cove.
Presently the glistening surface of the water was ruffled by a black object that pushed out from the sh.o.r.e. It was a boat. Six men were rowing, a seventh held the rudder. There was a coffin in the boat, covered with a simple pall. No ostentatious trappings ornamented the coffin; only a myrtle wreath lay on it. A woman, sat at the head of it, another at the foot--the former a lady, the latter a peasant wife.
The six men, with even and powerful strokes, sent the craft through the ripples which occasionally leaped into the boat, as if they would salute her who had so often toyed with them.
At the moment the boat touched the sh.o.r.e the storm burst. Vivid lightning illumined the heavy downpour of rain, and it seemed as if the black-robed forms bore the coffin to its grave amid a flood of harpstrings that reached from heaven to earth.
The two weeping women followed the coffin; at a little distance they seemed two shadows. The helmsmen of the funeral boat now stepped to the head of the grave and opened his lips to speak, but a heavy peal of thunder drowned his voice. When it had ceased he said:
"My brave comrades, you are here to pay a last honor to your patroness.
There is nothing left for us to fight for. Peace has been proclaimed.
The conqueror takes from you a plot of ground twenty-four hundred square miles in extent. The one lying here takes from you only six feet of earth. To you remain your tattered flag and your wounds. Return to your homes. My sword has finished its work, and will accompany the saint for whom it was drawn!"
As he spoke he broke the keen blade in twain and cast the pieces into the grave, adding impressively, "May G.o.d give us forgetfulness, and may we be forgotten!"
The Volons fired three salvos over the grave, the reverberating thunder and the flashing lightning mingling with the noise of the muskets.
When the storm had pa.s.sed the moon rose in a cloudless sky. Only the waves, which had been stirred by the tempest, continued to murmur to their favorite who was sleeping peacefully in her grave on the sh.o.r.e.
Marie had asked to be buried on the gra.s.sy slope by the side of her old friend the Marquis d"Avoncourt, and that no other monument should mark her resting-place save the imperishable tree which turns to stone after it dies.
And what could have been graven on her tomb? A name that was not hers? A history that was not true?
Or would it have been well to carve on the marble her true life-history, that those who would not believe it might wage a lawsuit against an epitaph?
No; it was better so. No one would ever learn what had become of her.
Vavel had prayed for forgetfulness--that he might be forgotten.
His prayer was granted.
For a few years afterward tales were repeated about Sophie Botta, and some of her kinsfolk came from a distance to claim the sum of money Vavel had placed in the hands of the authorities for the young girl"s heirs. But none of the claimants could produce satisfactory proofs of kinship, and after a while Sophie Botta was forgotten by all the world, as were Count Vavel and Katharina.
The Nameless Castle as well vanished from the face of the earth, as have entire villages which once stood on the treacherous sh.o.r.es of Lake Neusiedl.
Gradually, imperceptibly, the castle disappeared; gradually, imperceptibly, bastion after bastion vanished, until not even the stone hand which held aloft the sword in the n.o.ble escutcheon, or the towering weathervane, could be seen above the placid waters of the lake.