Regina, or the Sins of the Fathers Part 4

The one long straggling street lay before him, deserted and basking in the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne. The cart-ruts in the rich clay soil shone as if they had been glazed; bottle-gla.s.s and rags from old besoms filled the interstices to prevent the acc.u.mulation of stones. On either side of the road stood the thatched cottages of the peasants, shaded by limes and chestnuts, some of whose leaves were even now beginning to look autumnally sere and yellow. These peasants had formerly been under the jurisdiction of the Castle, and only since the new rural laws came into force had been relieved of their service and joined the freemen.

Here and there he saw a new fence painted in glaring colours, as if the owner wished to mark off his recently acquired possession from the rest of the inhabited globe. In other respects the new _regime_ had left everything much the same. Sunflowers and herbs bloomed in the front gardens as they had always done; damp mattresses hung out of the windows to air just as of old. Only the number of taverns had increased. Boleslav counted three, whereas once the Black Eagle had reigned supreme and met all the requirements of the place.

Nearer the church were the white houses of the free artisans, burghers as they were called, who paid to the Castle ground-rent, and therefore enjoyed the privilege of cultivating their own vegetable plots as they pleased. There were a couple of blacksmiths with the sign of a horseshoe over the entrance of their forges, two or three cobblers, a wheelwright, a basketmaker, and a----

He paused and let his eyes rest on a dilapidated tumble-down hovel, the most wretched in the whole row. A dirty green s.h.i.+eld hung over the door, bearing the almost obliterated inscription--

"HANS HACKELBERG, CARPENTER AND PARISH UNDERTAKER."

A coffin, also painted green, supported by pillars, loomed down on the neglected garden, and gave to those who couldn't read, the necessary information. At the sight of it an incident long forgotten occurred to Boleslav with extraordinary distinctness. He saw again a little untidy girl with great, dark, tearful eyes and a tangled cloud of black, curly hair flying about her face and shoulders in wild dishevelment. She had clung to this garden gate with one hand, while with the other she held the corner of her blue print pinafore convulsively pressed against her bosom. A pack of village hobbledehoys were pelting her with sticks and stones. He was not much taller than she was, but at his approach the little crowd made way for him, shy and awestruck. For he was the "young _Junker_," who had only to lift his finger, they thought, to bring down blessings or curses on their heads.

"What is going on here?" he had asked, whereupon the persecuted child had humbly advanced, and opened her pinafore just wide enough for him to get a glimpse inside.

"Beasts! They wanted to take it away from me!" she had exclaimed, lifting her wet eyes to his, blazing with indignation.

A poor unfledged sparrow, which somehow or other had fallen out of the nest, reposed in the pinafore.

"Give it to me," he had demanded, for he loved young birds; and obediently she had held out her pinafore for him to s.n.a.t.c.h it away. As beseemed a lordling, he had not said thank you, or troubled himself further about the giver.

And that was _she_--the girl who, it was said, had shown the French the path by the Cats' Bridge, and had lived with his father as his mistress to the last.

Why had he defended her then? Why had he prevented the pack hunting her down? One blow on the forehead from a stone might then and there have cut short her mischievous career!

He walked on. Now and then a dull, dirty face peered at him curiously through the small, dark window-panes, or a cur barked. But he pa.s.sed unmolested through the village. It was unlikely enough that any one would recognise him. The parsonage came in view with its shady veranda, trim flower-beds, and nut-trees. It looked as quiet and peaceful as on that morning long ago, when, with a sigh of relief at escaping from the pastor's stern rule, he had seen it for the last time from the post-chaise, and Helene had waved him farewell with her little cambric handkerchief. With lowering brow he now took a short cut that he might avoid pa.s.sing it. It seemed as if Helene must still be standing on the lawn waving her handkerchief. But what if she had been there? It would have been impossible for him to go to her. A path on his left led down to the river, which divided the Castle domain from the villagers'

territory. As he turned into it he became aware of the frightful ravages the fire had made. Instead of the long line of barns and stables which had been ranged on this side of the river stood a row of ruins, falling walls and scorched beams, grown over with celandine and valerian. Beyond could be seen, through gaps in the walls, the courtyard, now a weedy, gra.s.s-grown rubbish heap, and on the summit of the hill, behind a lattice formed of the leafless branches of dead elms, a black ruined ma.s.s of fantastically jagged brickwork--all that remained of the once proud Castle.

His arms fell heavily to his sides. A sound escaped him like a sob, a sob for vengeance.

He dragged his way laboriously along the banks of the river to the drawbridge, which was the main mode of access to the island; for, since his grandfather's time, the whole of the Castle grounds had been, by means of an aqueduct, practically converted into an island. The drawbridge, at least, was still _en evidence_. It looked like a remnant of antiquity as it hung with its grey projecting timbers on its black, clumsy b.u.t.tresses, at the foot of which the ripples broke with a gurgling sound. The rusty chains were tightened, and between _terra firma_ and the floating edge of the bridge was a s.p.a.ce of about three feet, which could be jumped with ease. Some one had evidently tried to draw it up, and failed in the effort.

Boleslav sprang over and pa.s.sed through the stone gateway, whose nail-studded doors, half-burnt, were thrown back on their hinges.

Suddenly he heard a sharp clicking sound at his feet resembling the snap of a bowstring. He stopped, and saw, to his horror, the iron semicircle of a fox-trap half-buried in the rubbish, and carefully covered with birch-broom. The long pointed teeth of the iron jaw had closed on each other in a tenacious grip. By a miracle he had escaped an accident which might have laid him up for many weeks.

Feeling the ground with his stick, he pursued his way more cautiously through the refuse and litter, amongst which he came across occasionally a disused waggon or the rotten barrel of a brandy cask held together by iron hoops. He went on, up the hill to the Castle. The path was overgrown with brambles as tall as himself, and again he came on traps, their wide open maws greedily eager to seize him by the leg.

The whole place seemed strewn with them--the only signs of civilisation he had as yet encountered.

The Castle lay before him, with yawning window-frames and sundered walls, a complete ruin. Piles of fallen tiles and plaster, between which rank gra.s.s and weeds had sprung up, formed a mound round its foundations. The vestibule, with its drooping rafters, had become a perfect bower of creepers and evergreens, whose luxuriant growth seemed almost impenetrable. A white tablet hung among the leaves, on which, in his father's handwriting, were the words, "_Caution to trespa.s.sers_."

He shuddered at this, the first trace he had seen for six years of the man to whom he owed his existence, and whom he had now come to bury.

In a few moments he would be standing probably beside his corpse.

But how was he to find it? What resting-place could his father have found here while yet alive?

No door or unbroken window, no signs of a human habitation, were visible amidst all this fearful wreckage. He turned, and walked slowly the length of the Castle facade, past the towers which flanked the gabled roof; here over the blackened stonework the ivy had begun to grow afresh, enshrouding it in a peaceful melancholy. From this point his eye caught a vista of the park, with its giant timber and wealth of undergrowth. And then he saw a few yards off, on the gra.s.s-plot where once had stood the statue of the G.o.ddess Diana, of which nothing now was left but the shattered fragments and pedestal, a woman.... A slender, strongly-built woman, with long plaits of dark curling hair hanging down her back. Her primitive costume consisted of a red petticoat and a chemise. She was digging energetically with a heavy spade in the dark rich soil, and was apparently too engrossed to notice his approach. She set her naked foot at regular intervals, as if beating time on the hard edge of the spade, and with the slightest possible pressure drove it deep into the earth. As she dug she sang a song on two notes, a high and a low, which welled out of her full breast like the sound of a sweet-toned bell. The chemise, a coa.r.s.e and roughly made garment, had slipped off her shoulders, laying bare the strong, magnificently moulded neck. When he addressed her, she drew herself erect with a sudden movement of surprise and alarm, and stood before him half naked.

She turned on him a pair of l.u.s.trous, large dark eyes. "What do you want here?" she asked, grasping the spade tighter, as if intending to use it as a weapon of defence. Then lifting her other arm she calmly raised the chemise over her shapely bosom.

"What do you want?" she repeated.

Still he did not answer. "So this is she," he was thinking, "the traitress, the courtesan, who---- Should he point his pistol at her, and drive her instantly from the island, so that the ground he trod on might at least be clean?"

Meanwhile his bearing seemed to have convinced her of the peacefulness of his intentions.

"This is no place for strangers," she went on. "Go away again at once.

You are lucky not to have been caught in a wolf's trap."

She stood, drawn to her full height, and waved him off. Then gradually she became confused under his searching glance, and regarded him nervously out of the corners of her eyes. Tossing back the black tangle of hair from her sunburnt cheeks, she began to fidget with her inadequate garment, seeming conscious for the first time of her half-nude condition.

"Show me his corpse!" he asked imperatively.

She started and stared at him for a moment with astonished, questioning eyes, then threw herself weeping at his feet.

"_Gnadiger Herr_!" she murmured, in a voice stifled with emotion.

He felt her fingers seeking his hand, and pushed her violently from him.

"Show me his corpse!" he commanded again, "and then you may go."

She rose slowly, kicked the spade away with her foot, and led the way down to the park. As they neared some bushes she turned round and said timidly, "There's a trap here." He stepped quickly to one side, otherwise he would have walked straight into the snare. She held back the brambles of the thicket through which they were making their way, to prevent the thorns scratching his face. They came to a clearing in the wood where stood a small one-storied cottage with a tall chimney, surrounded by broken hot-house frames and lime heaps. It was the gardener's house, in which as a boy he had often played with flower-pots, seeds, and bulbs; the one solitary building the ravages of the fire had left untouched, because the incendiary had been unable to find his way to it.

Again his guide warned him. "Take care! That is dangerous," she said, pointing to a heap of earth like a mole-hill. "Whoever steps on it is a dead man," she added half to herself. He knelt down, and with his hands dug out the bomb that lay concealed in the soft earth, and hurled it with all his might far away, so that it exploded with a loud report against the trunk of a tree. She cast a shy, half-scandalised glance at him over her shoulder, for to her what he had done was an act of desecration.

Then she opened the door, and he found himself in a dark pa.s.sage. The cottage had only two rooms. The one on the left of the front-door had been the gardener's dwelling-room, the other his workshop.

From the former, the door of which stood ajar, issued a powerful death odour.

He went in. A body veiled in white lay on a low bier in the middle of the close, gloomy little room.

"Leave me," he said, without looking round, and he threw back the cloth.

His father's rigid features, covered with bristles, stared up at him.

The eyes had sunk far back in his head; the brows were contracted. In the hollows of his cheeks bushy black hair had sprouted, while the beard had turned partially grey. The short, thick nose had shrunk, and close to the firmly-shut lips that had not parted in death lay a deep line, denoting intense suffering, and, at the same time, defiant scorn; as Boleslav looked down on it, the line seemed to deepen still more, and at last to quiver and play round the mouth that was still for ever.

He dropped on his knees, and, with folded hands, prayed a paternoster.

His tears fell fast, and rained heavily on the waxen face of the dead man.

"Your guilt is my guilt," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "If I don't defend your memory, who else will? No one in all the world."

Then he covered up the body again with the white cloth, for flies were swarming round it. As he turned away, he observed the girl's dark head pressed against the foot of the bier. Her symmetrical neck and shoulders shone out in relief from the shadowy background.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded roughly. She crouched down, s.h.i.+vering, and raised her left shoulder, as if to ward off a threatened blow. Her eyes flashed a warm ray through the ma.s.ses of her curly hair.

"No one has ever driven me away from him before," she murmured.

"But _I_ drive you away," he answered with decision.