She kissed them both on their pale lips; then Reinhold took her in his arms and led her down from the side of the dais, where he saw Justus and Meta standing hand in hand a little way off between the shrubs, while from the back appeared upon the dais the General, Valerie, and Sidonie, Uncle Ernst and Aunt Rikchen, to take leave of the dead. It was a solemn yet exciting moment, the details of which Reinhold’s tear-filled eyes could not seize or retain, while to Justus’s keen artist’s eye one touching and beautiful picture followed another—none more touching or beautiful to him, who knew these people and their circumstances so well, than the last which he saw: the General with tender care almost carrying down the steps of the dais the utterly exhausted Valerie—she had only left her sickroom for this moment, and had covered her head with a thick lace veil—while Uncle Ernst’s powerful figure, still standing above, bent down to good little Aunt Rikchen, and he passed his strong large hand soothingly over her pale, sorrowful, tear-stained cheek.
“Do you know,” whispered Meta, “they are feeling now just what we did when he stood by our sleeping angel, that they must love one another very much now, you know.”
Half an hour later the funeral procession moved from the gateway, from whose battlements floated in the soft evening breeze on one side the German flag, on the other a black flag, and passed over the bridge of boats, up the gully, and from there turning to the right, entered the gradually ascending road to the churchyard, which lay on the highest of the hills that had now become the shore, a few hundred paces from the village. It was a long, solemn procession.
First came village children, strewing with fir branches the sandy road before the coffins, the one adorned with palms, in which lay hidden the virgin form of the beautiful and heroic maiden, carried by sturdy pilots and fishermen from Wissow, who insisted upon bearing their Captain’s cousin to her last resting-place; and the other with the warlike emblems of the man for whom she had died, and whom a merciful fate had permitted to die the death of a brave man, worthy of the decorations he had won in presence of the enemy, and which the sergeant of his troop carried behind him on a silk cushion, worthy that the gallant soldiers who had known him in his brightest days, whose shoulders his kindly hand had so often rested on in the heat of battle, by the blazing campfire, on the weary march, should carry him now on his way to answer to the great roll-call.
Behind the coffins came the two fathers, then Reinhold leading his Elsa, Justus with his Meta—Sidonie and Aunt Rikchen had remained with Valerie—the President and Colonel von Bohl, Schönau and the brilliant company of other officers, the neighbouring gentry with their wives, Herr and Frau von Strummin, the Wartenbergs, the Griebens, the Boltenhagens and Warnekows, and all the rest of the descendants of the old, long-established families; the innumerable following of landsmen and sailors, the gigantic form of the worthy Pölitz, and the stalwart figure of the head pilot, Bonsak, at their head.
A long, solemn, silent procession, accompanied step by step by the monotonous sound of the tide washing against the steep banks, and now and then the shrill cry of a gull, as skimming over the dazzling water, it seemed curiously to watch the strange sight, or a whispered word from some man to his neighbour, that even those nearest before or behind could not hear.
Such was the word that the General spoke to Uncle Ernst, as the head of the procession reached the graveyard, “Do you feel strong enough?” and that which Uncle Ernst answered, “Now for the first time I feel myself strong again.”
But even Reinhold and Elsa, who walked behind them, would not have understood it if they had heard. Uncle Ernst had not shown to anyone yet, excepting the General, the telegram of which Justus had spoken, the fateful message, in the dry hard style of a police official.
“Philip Schmidt, on the point of embarking tonight on board steamer Hansa, from Bremerhaven to Chile, recognised, and shot himself with a revolver in his cabin; misappropriated money recovered untouched; will be buried tomorrow evening at .”
Under the broad hand which he had thrust into his overcoat lay the paper, and against it beat his mighty heart, beat in truth stronger and with revived pride, now that he might say to himself that his unhappy son was not at least one of the cowards who prized life above all things; that even for him there had been a measure of infamy which could not be over-passed, since at that moment he had spilt the cup of life—a draught too insipid and miserable for
