Walda: A Novel

by Mary Holland Kinkaid

XIX

For three days after the Untersuchung Zanah was in mourning. The body of Wilhelm Kellar lay in the meeting-house, and there the colonists spent many hours in prayer and fasting. Gerson Brandt shut himself in the upper room where Wilhelm Kellar had been so long ill and where Piepmatz still hung in the big wicker cage. The school-master sat for hours looking towards the bluffs which shut out the busy world. He thought constantly of Walda. He had given her a pledge that he would make reparation for his part in the Untersuchung, but his heart rebelled against his task. He coveted Walda with all the strength of a nature in which the best human impulses had been thwarted. He knew that he must give up the woman he loved to the stranger in Zanah, but his soul cried out against the fate that took her from him. He looked back upon the years in Zanah, and he knew that she had become all of life to him. At first he was dead to the sense of his own unfaithfulness to the colony. Gradually he realized that his had been the part of the unconscious traitor. He felt relieved when he looked forward to his release from the irksome duties of a leader of Zanah.

A sense of terrible loneliness took possession of him whenever he thought of the death of his friend, but his grief became more poignant with the thought that Wilhelm Kellar’s death made Walda’s departure from the colony possible. There was no reason why she should not go out into the world as Everett’s wife. Night after night he battled with himself to the end that he might be strong enough to help the woman he loved to the attainment of happiness. He gained many partial victories over himself, but at first he could not summon the courage to go to see Walda in the House of the Women where she was kept under surveillance. The day after the Untersuchung he compelled himself to ask that Everett be released, but he found that the cupidity of Adolph Schneider had been aroused by the possibility of exacting a fine from the stranger, who was locked in his room at the inn. It was a rule of the colony that a member who brought money into the community should, in case of departure from Zanah, receive just what he had contributed. Wilhelm Kellar’s share was not small, and the danger of Walda’s marriage, and consequent demand for her portion of her father’s property, was one that the elders desired to avert.

“Thou canst persuade Walda Kellar that the curse of God will descend upon her if she leaveth Zanah,” Karl Weisel said to Gerson Brandt, at the close of a long conference of the elders. “She is suffering from remorse, and thou canst sway her woman’s heart.”

“I refuse to have aught to do with inclining Walda’s will to the will of Zanah,” said the school-master, in a tone so decisive that the matter was dropped.

It was two days after Wilhelm Kellar’s death that Gerson Brandt, who had gone to look once more upon the still face of his friend, encountered Walda. The girl was kneeling alone beside the bier.

“See how peaceful he looketh,” she said, in a voice that was shaken with sobs. “It is a comfort to remember that his last words told me and all the people that he had forgiven my failure to fulfil his hopes.”

“He hath attained greater wisdom. He knoweth that thou wast led by a stronger power than thine own will,” the school-master answered.

“As thou art my friend, point out the path of duty to me,” Walda implored, rising to her feet. “I have prayed constantly, and it seemeth that it is right I should stay here in Zanah serving the people, and proving to them that while love must ever be in my heart, I can still follow in the paths of righteousness.”

Gerson Brandt was silent. He stood looking at her as if he would have her image graven on his mind for all his coming years. The tempter spoke to him. One word of counsel, given as from her father’s friend, and he could keep her safe in Zanah.