Black Diamonds Part 61

"Do you undertake the duty?"

Ivan bowed his head.

"Then you will perform it alone. Alive I shall never enter the family vault. You know why."

Both were silent. Then Theudelinde burst out:

"Why was I not left in my castle? Why was I undeceived when I imagined that my ancestors visited me? If I had not been shaken in my delusions I should still have been happy. I should never have gone into the world, where I have only found misery; Angela would not have come to me; my brother Theobald would not have been ruined; h.e.l.l would not have been let loose in the Bondavara mines; I should have never known you; all--all would have been different!" Then, after a pause, she went on: "There is no need of a clergyman; there is no need of any ceremony. You can say some prayers. You are a Protestant--so was Angela. She became one that she might get a separation from her unworthy husband. Let them carry the coffin quietly and reverently to the family vault. There I shall leave you and it, for I shall not go inside--never, until I am dead. You will put the coffin in its place, and then I return whence I came, where I am wanted by no one."

Ivan called the miners to take the coffin again upon their shoulders, and told them to carry it through the vestibule to the private door which led into the park. The park separated the director's house from the castle.

As they walked through the winding paths of the park the trees shed their golden leaves upon the coffin and the t.i.tmice in the brushwood chanted the dirge.

Ivan walked bareheaded behind the coffin, and behind him came Countess Theudelinde.

When they reached the entrance of the vault Ivan told the bearers to put the coffin down, and, kneeling down beside it, he remained for a long time praying. G.o.d hears us if we speak to Him in a whisper; nay, He hears us, even although we do not speak, but feel.

Theudelinde bent over Ivan and kissed his forehead.

"I thank you. You walked behind her with your head uncovered. Now she is all yours." Then she returned by the winding path, as if she were afraid that Ivan would make her take away what she had brought.

Ivan placed the coffin in its resting-place and sent away the bearers; then he remained for many hours beside it. By the light of the torches he read Angela's last words to him--

"For whom shall I wait on the sh.o.r.e of the new world?"

Ivan sighed deeply. "Who will wait for me on the sh.o.r.e of the new world?"

Then he made his way back to the house. There was no trace of either the countess's travelling carriage or Angela's hea.r.s.e.

CHAPTER XLI

HOW IVAN MOURNED

They were both gone, the high-born lady and the peasant girl--gone where there is no sorrow and no more sin. One had lost her life by charcoal, the other by fire--two vengeful spirits.

Ivan thought of both with bitter regret. He felt now that he was alone in the world. He would have given all the fame he had acquired, the money he had earned, the good he had done, to have been able to save even one of these women. He mourned for them not in black, not with c.r.a.pe on his hat. What good are these signs of grief?

The European mourns in black, the Chinese in yellow, the Mussulman in green; in the cla.s.sical age they mourned in white; the former generation of Hungarians in violet; the Jews in rags; the philosopher in his heart. The wise man never shares his grief, but he does his joys.

Meantime, in the Bondavara Valley there reigned peace and plenty; where there had been a half-savage race there was a happy people. The worst characters had settled down, morality had grown popular.

Ivan sent the young men at his own expense to factories abroad, where they learned the arts of civilization. He brought wood-carvers from Switzerland and lace-workers from Holstein to teach their trades to the women and children, so that they might unite artistic labor with increase of wages. For a population where every one, big and little, works either from necessity or for amus.e.m.e.nt--a people who look upon work as pleasure and who feel it no privation to be employed--such a people are enn.o.bled by their toil.

Ivan looked after the schools. He emanc.i.p.ated the national teachers from the misery of their national tyrants; he rewarded the student with scholars.h.i.+ps, the school-boy with useful prizes; in every parish he established a library and reading-room. He accustomed the people to put by the pence they could spare; he taught them how to help one another; he established in Bondavara a savings-bank and a hospital.

His own colliery was a model. The miners and himself were the joint owners, and shared the profit. Whoever was taken on in this colliery should pa.s.s an examination and work one year on trial. This rule applied to women and men alike. This trial year was not easy, particularly for the girls.

Nowhere was a girl so looked after; not in her mother's house or in a convent or state inst.i.tution was there more particularity as to manners and morals than in Ivan Behrend's colliery. Every word, every act was watched. If any one failed to be up to the mark during his year of probation, no one taunted him, nor was he despised. He was simply told to go and work in the company's colliery, where there was better pay; and the workman or workwoman imagined this was an advance, not a degradation. In the company's colliery there was certainly more freedom, the rules being less strict.

If, however, at the end of the trial year the applicant had fulfilled all requirements, he or she was received into the colony and became a shareholder, so far as the profit was in question. Besides this, a prize for virtue was given once a year, on the anniversary of the great pit-burning, to the most modest, well-conducted girl in the colony.

Ivan spent on this prize fifty ducats, and the miners on their side promised the winner a handsome wedding present.

It was, of course, an understood thing that no one went in for the prize. No one knew who was likely to get it. The elders took notes; it was their secret.

The giving of this prize was not to be attended with any ceremonial.

It would take place on an ordinary working day, when all the miners would have picks and shovels in their hands, so that every one could see that the reward was not for a pretty face, but for a good heart and industrious fingers. It was to be a day of general rejoicing.

This was how Ivan mourned.

CHAPTER XLII

EVILA

It was the anniversary of the great pit fire. Old Paul had gone to look for Ivan at his house in the princ.i.p.al colony, but Ivan had already started for the smaller colliery. He saw Paul on the road, and, stopping his carriage, took the miner up.

"This day last year was a memorable day," said Paul.

"I recollect it well," returned Ivan; "but to-day we have to give the prize for virtue. Have the jury settled to whom it is to be given?"

"They are agreed. A girl who has been little less than a year in the colliery."

"And she has fulfilled all conditions?"

"In every way. The child is most industrious. She is every morning the first to come and the last to leave. She never complains of the work, as many of them do; she treats it as if it were a pleasure to her. If her wheelbarrow is overloaded, she encourages the digger to put on still more; then she runs away gayly with her burden, and comes back singing as if she had been amusing herself. At the end of the recreation she drives the other girls back to their work."

"Is she vain?"

"No; she wears the same holiday clothes in which she was dressed when she came a year ago; naturally they are not quite as fresh as they were. She has a little string of beads round her throat, and in her hair a narrow ribbon. At night she washes her clothes in the stream, for she has one peculiarity--she wears fresh linen every day; but she makes it up herself, so she alone has the trouble."

"Is she saving?"

"She has more in our savings-bank than any one of the girls. She would have still more, only that on Sundays she gives a whole day's wages to the beggar who sits at the church door."

"Does she go to church regularly?"

"Every Sunday she comes with us, but she never sits with the other girls; she kneels before a side-altar, covers her face with her hands, and prays all through ma.s.s."

"Is she good-tempered?"