"Dan?" said I.
The lids of his eyes rolled wearily back.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Bury me."
It was very sad. "Where?" I asked.
"Did you see the little cemetery on the hill, across the valley? Put
me there. It is a wild, forgotten place. 'Tis only my body. Who
cares what becomes of that? As for the other, the soul, who can say?
I have never been a good man; still, I believe in God. I am tired,
tired and cold. What fancies a man has in death! A moment back I saw
my father. There was a wan, sweet-faced woman standing close beside
him; perhaps my mother. I never saw her before. Ah, me! these
chimeras we set our hearts upon, these worldly hopes! Well, Jack, it's
curtain and no encore. But I am not afraid to die. I have wronged no
man or woman; I have been my own enemy. What shall I say, Jack? Ah,
yes! God have mercy on my soul. And this sudden coldness, this sudden
ease from pain--is death!"
There was a flutter of the eyelids, a sigh, and this poor flotsam, this
drift-wood which had never known a harbor in all its years, this friend
of mine, this inseparable comrade--passed out. He knew all about it
now.
There were hot tears in my eyes as I stood up and gazed down at this
mystery called death. And while I did so, a hand, horny and hard,
closed over mine. The innkeeper, with blinking eyes, stood at my side.
"Ah, Herr," he said, "who would not die like that?"
And we buried him on the hillside, just as the sun swept aside the rosy
curtain of dawn. The wind, laden with fresh morning perfumes, blew up
joyously from the river. From where I stood I could see the drab walls
of the barracks. The windows sparkled and flashed as the gray mists
sailed heavenward and vanished. The hill with its long grasses
resembled a green sea. The thick forests across the river, almost
black at the water's edge, turned a fainter and more delicate hue as
they receded, till, far away, they looked like mottled glass. Only
yesterday he had laughed with me, talked and smoked with me, and now he
was dead. A rage pervaded me. We are puny things, we, who strut the
highways of the world, parading a so-called wisdom. There is only one
philosophy; it is to learn to die.
"Come," said I to the innkeeper; and we went down the hill.