CHAPTER XIII.
"Heavens and earth!" cried the Neuenfähr man, "I must go in here! One moment, sir!" and he ran into the house.
The gentleman who was just getting into the carriage drew back, and stamped his foot furiously.
"Is hell itself let loose against me?" he cried, and gnashed his teeth.
As he had made his way cautiously through the darkness a few minutes before to the inn, of which he had taken note as he drove through the village in the afternoon, and where he hoped to find some vehicle to convey him farther, he had met the Neuenfähr driver, who was just harnessing his horses again, for which the landlord, with the best of goodwill, could find no stable-room, at any rate not before a part of the outhouse was cleared out.
"The horses will catch cold," the man had said to himself; "the best thing after all will be to drive back."
He was still busying himself in the dark over the harness, which had got twisted, when some one who suddenly appeared beside him asked:
"Will you give me a lift, my man?"
"Where to, sir?"
"To Neuenfähr."
"What will you pay, sir?"
"Anything you like."
"Get in, sir!" said the Neuenfähr man, delighted to find that instead of taking his carriage back this long distance empty, he had found a passenger who would pay him anything he liked to ask. He would not take him for nothing, but he must see about this alarm of murder.
"He will not come back in a hurry," muttered the gentleman; "and I shall run the risk of meeting him again; it is almost a miracle that he did not see me."
He had been standing close to Ottomar as the latter gave his orders to the people, and, to give more authority to his words, mentioned his name, and that it was his aunt and sister who were in danger, and that there was not a moment to lose or it would be too late.
The stranger moved farther into the shadow of the barn before which the carriage stood. He would make sure of not being seen in any case. But just then the Neuenfähr man came back in a state of great excitement.
The young lady had been stabbed and killed, whom he had brought here with the young gentleman! Heavens and earth, if he had known that it was Herr von Werben! and that the beautiful young lady, his wife, would so soon be murdered by a foreign vagabond--the same no doubt whom he had seen hanging about in Neuenfähr, when he drew up at the inn by the bridge--a young fellow with black hair and black eyes; and he had noticed the black hair again as the fellow rushed out of the house--plainly--he could swear to it. The fellow might attack them on the road; he was not afraid for himself--he did not fear the devil; but if the gentleman preferred to remain here--
In his excitement the brandy he had been drinking before had got into the man's head; he would have willingly remained; he was evidently a person of importance here, and the gentleman had quite staggered back when he spoke of the foreign vagabond, and had muttered something in his black beard which he did not understand.
"Shall we remain here, sir?"
"No, no, no! Drive on! I will give you double what you ask!"
So saying he sprang into the carnage. The Neuenfähr man had meant to ask five thalers, now he would not do it under ten, and so he should get twenty.
For that one might leave even a murder behind one!
"Make way there! Make way!" cried the Neuenfähr man with an oath, cracking his whip loudly over the heads of the dark figures who were running towards him down the village street, and more than one of whom he nearly ran over.
For twenty thalers it was worth while running over somebody--in the dark too!
In the darkness and the storm! It really was worse than before, though then it had been bad enough, and he had said a dozen times, "We had better stop at Faschwitz, sir;" and then as they came to Grausewitz, "We had better stop at Grausewitz, sir;" but the young gentleman--Herr von Werben--had always called out, "Drive on, drive on! Farther, farther!" If he had only known that half an hour later the lady would have been dead as a door-nail! and he had taken the horse-cloths too to cover her feet, here in this very place!
The fact seemed so important to the Neuenfähr man that he stopped to show the gentleman the very spot, and to breathe his horses a little too, for they could hardly make way at all against the storm. To the right of the road was a steep clay bank some five or six feet high, at whose edge stood two or three willows wildly tossed about by the wind; to the left was level marshy ground reaching down to the sea, which must be about a mile or so off, although they could hear it roaring as if it were close by the roadside.
"On, on!" cried the gentleman.
"Are you in such a hurry, too?" said the Neuenfähr man, and grumbled something about commercial travellers, who were not officers so far as he knew, and need not snap up an old soldier of the reserve in that way; but he whipped his horses up again, when suddenly the gentleman, who had been standing up behind him in the carriage, clutched his shoulder with his right hand, and pointing with the other to the left, cried: "There, that way!"
"Where to?" said the driver.
"No matter where! That way!"
"We can pass it," said the Neuenfähr man, thinking only that the gentleman was afraid that in the narrow road they could not get out of the way of a carriage which had just appeared coming towards them through the grey mist, and might still be a few hundred yards from them.
The gentleman caught him by both shoulders.
"Confound it!" cried the Neuenfähr man. "Are you mad?"
"I will give you a hundred thalers!"
"I'll not be drowned for a hundred thalers!"
"Two hundred!"
"All right!" cried the driver, and whipped up his horses as he turned them to the left from the sandy road down to the marshes. The water oozed up under their feet, but then came firmer ground again. It might not be so bad after all; and two hundred thalers! He called to his horses, and whipped them up again.
They dashed forward as if the devil were behind them; he could hardly keep them in hand. And meanwhile he had gone much farther than he had intended; he had meant only to turn off a little way from the road, and then come back to it again. But when he looked round, the road and the trees had alike disappeared, as if all had been wiped out with a wet sponge. And from the thick, dark atmosphere the mist was falling so that he could not tell at last whether he ought to go straight on, or turn to right or left. Neither could he trust his ears. Along the road the roaring of the sea had been on his left hand, then in front of him; now there was such an infernal din all round him--could they be already so near the sea?
The fumes of the brandy suddenly vanished from the Neuenfähr man, and instead of them a terrible fear took possession of him. Who was the mysterious passenger who was sitting behind him in the carriage, and who had promised him two hundred thalers if he would avoid the other carriage which was coming towards them? Was he an accomplice of the foreign vagabond? He had just the same black eyes and black hair, and a long black beard too, and just such a curious foreign accent! Was it the devil himself to whom he had sold his miserable soul for two hundred thalers, and who had meant to wring his neck just now when he took him by the shoulders, and who had enticed him out into the marshes this fearful night to make an end of him in the storm and mist? And there were his wife and children at Neuenfähr! "Good Lord! good Lord!" groaned the man. "Only let me get out of this! I will never do it again, so help me God! Oh Lord! oh Lord!"
The carriage was driving through water; the man could hear it splashing against the wheels. He flogged his horses madly; they reared and kicked, but did not move a step forward.
With one bound the man was off the box beside his horses. There was only one means of safety now--to unharness them and dash forward at their full speed. He had said nothing; the thing spoke for itself. He had thought, too, that the man in the carriage would help him. He had just got the second horse out, and raised his head, when--his hair stood on end, as if all that had passed before were child's play to what he saw now! There had been only one person in the carriage, and now there were two; and the two were taking each other by the throat, and were struggling and shouting together--one of them, his passenger, as if he were asking for mercy, and the other yelling like the very devil himself--and the other was the murderer of that afternoon.
The Neuenfähr man saw no more. With a desperate spring, he threw himself on to the near horse, and dashed away, the other horse galloping beside him. The water splashed over him, and then he was up to his waist in water, and then up to his neck and the horses swimming; and again he had dry land under him, and got on to firm ground, and the horses stopped because they could go no farther, and the one on which he sat had trembled so that he had nearly fallen off. And he looked round to see what had happened and where he was.
He was on rising ground, and before him lay a village. It could only be Faschwitz; but Faschwitz was two or three miles in a straight line from the sea, and there behind him, from where he came--it was a little clearer now, so that he could see some little distance--was the open sea, rising in fearful waves, which roared and foamed, as they rolled farther and farther--who could tell how far inland?
"They have been drowned like kittens, and my beautiful new carriage. May the----"
But the Neuenfähr man felt as if he could not swear just then.
He dismounted, took the horses by the bridle, and led them, almost exhausted, at a foot's pace into Faschwitz, his own knees trembling at every step.