"They are bringing him in!" shrieked Malvine, and they could hold her
back no longer. A moment later and she knew that she was right. On the
billiard-table, in the room to the right of the hall, lay Wilhelm's
motionless form, while the people who had carried him in stood round.
Water flowed from his clothes and made little pools on the green cloth
and trickled into the leather pockets of the billiard-table. His breast
did not move, and death stared from the glazed, half-open eyes.
A doctor was soon on the spot, the curious were turned out of the
house, and they began the work of resuscitation. They had labored
uninterruptedly for nearly an hour when Paul burst in, crying in a
choking voice: "Doctor--doctor, is he alive?" The servants had told him
all in flying haste outside.
The doctor shook his head. "There is nothing more to be done."
But Paul would not believe it. He would not suffer them to cease their
efforts. The rubbing, the movements, the artificial respiration had to
be kept up for another full hour. But death held his prey fast, and
would not let them force it out of his clutches.
Two days later, on a gray rainy day, they buried him. Schrotter came
over from Berlin for the funeral. He looked quite broken down, and
grief had aged his leonine features to an appalling extent. Malvine and
Willy were lying ill in bed, so that Paul and Schrotter followed their
friend alone to his last resting-place. When the coffin was carried out
and lifted into the hearse, and Paul came out of his house, he saw
through the veil of tears that obscured his vision that several hundred
men were standing in orderly array on the opposite side of the
Carlstrasse. They were young for the most part, but there was a
sprinkling of older men among them; all were poorly, but cleanly and
decently dressed, and every man had a red everlasting in his
buttonhole. They stood as motionless as a troop under arms, and
apparently followed the orders of a gray-bearded man who paced
authoritatively up and down the silent line.
Paul was surprised, and asked the undertaker, who was waiting for him
beside the hearse, who these people were. He had not invited anybody,
and did not expect there would be a crowd of any kind, although the
Hamburg papers had devoted whole columns to the accident.
The undertaker went over and addressed himself to the man who was
evidently the leader of the party. He informed Paul on his return:
"They are workingmen's societies from Hamburg and Altona. Their leader
says the deceased was not one of them, but they wanted to show him this
last mark of respect because he had been kind to them during his
lifetime."
CHAPTER XIV.
UDEN HORIZO.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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