"Not so," returned the sergeant, "he shall have no dishonourable burial, only as a stranger he must lie next to the wall. His French girl has offered to pay the sexton. You can remind her, Killian."
"What I wanted to ask," the man broke in, "is whether the foreign lady may have wine, and also a roast pigeon for which she longs. She will pay for it, she says, and indeed she is a very good little thing, and a pair of foreigners have been to pay her a visit in the tower and spent three hours there. The warder turned them away at night, but the lady was sadly put out, and she sent the warder to ask whether I would not pay her a visit, for she found the time hang heavy."
"She must conform to the regulations," growled the sergeant. "To-morrow she will be free, and then she can recommence her godless trade, as she too surely will so soon as she is beyond our jurisdiction. Good-night, Killian."
He turned to Frau Helena, who had gone to the door of the hall, and there in deep shadow leant against the wall. While he led her out, and on the way to her house, whither he accompanied her, he kept railing against the dissolute creature, who might well have the unfortunate dead on her conscience instead of throwing out baits for fresh victims before the earth had closed over the last. He protested it removed a stone from his heart to know that this Laporte was no Amthor, and he hoped that the real Andreas might yet live to make up to his mother for all that she had so christianly endured. The Council, however, was truly indebted to the worthy matron for having given herself the trouble of this late walk.
And so saying he took leave of the silent lady, and wished her a night of refreshing sleep.
That wish was most certainly not realised. A storm arose that filled the night with such wild uproar, that it seemed as if the very earth trembled. In the room which had once been that of Andreas, a window-shutter had been blown open, and now kept beating and flapping against the wall. Lisabethli, who had fallen asleep, woke up in terror at the sound. She saw her mother leave the room without a light, and heard her go upstairs, and there was an end to that source of disturbance as she fastened the shutter again. The young girl waited awhile for her return, but fell asleep before it, and indeed she would have waited in vain. For Frau Helena remained in the dark room above, as though it were more tolerable to her to listen to the storm than to the breathing of her child, who, in her happy dreams spoke of her Kurt, and called him loving names.
About dawn the wind went down, and in its place came a cold rain which got heavier and heavier, and at length veiled town and river in a grey mist. The sexton who, with two companions to help him, had by five o'clock dug a grave by the churchyard wall, and lowered a rudely-made coffin into it, was quicker than ever over his work, and the coffin rested slantingly in the shallow pit. Then, since the clergyman who was to have blessed it, omitted his duty in consequence of the terrible weather, the man of the spade himself said a Paternoster for the poor soul, and hastily shovelled in the coarse clods, leaving the rest to be finished by his companions. He was about to hasten home and catch a short morning-nap in his warm room, when he noticed a female figure kneeling by a head-stone not far from the new grave, her head, covered by a black veil, resting against the stone. That stone had long been deserted, the family of the one who slept there having removed to another country. What could the lady be doing there? As, however, she remained quite still, and spite of the rain seemed absorbed in her devotions, he did not venture to disturb her. For an instant it flashed across him that it might be the foreign hussy who had paid for the grave of the murdered man, but he heard afterwards that she had slept till a late hour, and had, indeed, only awaked when the beadle came to march her out of the town.
A few days later there reached him from an unknown source, a considerable sum of money, which purported to be payment for a forgotten burial. He for his part gave himself no thought about the matter, and pocketed the unexpected windfall as though it had dropped from the sky.
What follows is soon told. In the next spring the marriage of Kurt Brucker and Elizabeth Amthor was, according to custom, celebrated at the home of the bride, and the Augsburg relations came in great state to do all honour to the bride's mother, and the family of the Amthors. Nothing which could be looked for on such an occasion was left undone, and Lisabethli had no cause to complain of her dower, her outfit, or the wedding banquet. One thing only was lacking--the smile of joy on the face of the bride's mother. She was kind and courteous to all, to strangers and relatives alike, and bowed assent when the guests remarked to her how completely made for each other the young couple were, and that both houses might well be congratulated on so fitting and honourable an alliance. But amidst all the loud cheer of the bridal banquet, she sat pale and silent as a ghost, and though the rest of the family of the bridegroom who had not known her before, gradually grew reconciled to this, and whispered to each other that it was the sorrow for her absent son which pressed so hardly upon her on this joyous day--yet Kurt had not been wont to see his mother-in-law thus, and it struck him as strange that she never once gave him her hand, or pressed him in her arms as she had done the stranger-guest when, but half-recovered, he had ventured to woo her child. It was only when the youthful pair set out to their new home, that the mother kissed her daughter with such a violent burst of tears, it seemed as though her heart would break and melt away, and then laid her damp hand on her son-in-law's brow, murmuring words that no one could understand. Then she turned hurriedly away, and even before they left the house, locked herself up in the solitude of her own room.