XX
An hour later they were in Borsche’s farm yard. The stable door was open. The men servants and the maid servants stood in front of it. An old man held a lantern high up, and they all stared into the shed. In the dim and wavering light, their faces showed a mixture of reverence and amazement. Within, on a pallet of straw, lay the body of Walpurga. Its cheeks were rosy. Nothing in that countenance recalled death, but only a peaceful sleep.
On the wooden bench a single candle was burning; but it was near extinction.
Amadeus Voss passed through that group of men and women, and kneeled at the dead woman’s feet. The old man who held the lantern whispered something, and all the men and women kneeled down and folded their hands.
A cow lowed. After that there was no sound save from the bells of the unquiet cattle. The darkness of the stable, the face of the dead woman, which was like a face in a painting, the faces of the kneeling people, with their blunted foreheads and hard lips, in the yellow glimmer of the light—all these things Christian beheld, and something melted in his breast.
He himself watched it all from the darkness of the yard behind.
When Amadeus Voss joined Christian, the village carpenter came to measure the dead woman for her coffin. They started on their homeward way in silence.
Suddenly Christian stopped. It was near a tall mile-post. He grasped the post with both hands, and bent his head far back, and gazed with the utmost intensity into the drifting clouds of the night. Then he heard Amadeus Voss say: “Is it possible? Can such things be?”
Christian turned to him.
“I have a strange feeling in your presence, Christian Wahnschaffe,” Voss said in a repressed and toneless voice. And then he murmured to himself: “Is it possible? Can the monstrous and incredible come to pass?”
Christian did not answer, and they wandered on.