While Hilda and Greif were talking together the three older members of the family party had established themselves in a shady arbour of the garden, close to the low parapet, whence one could look down the sheer precipice to the leaping stream and watch the dark swallows shooting through the shadow and the sunshine, or the yellow butterflies and moths fluttering from one resting-place to another, drawn irresistibly to the gleaming water, out of which their wet wings would never bear them up again to the flower-garden of the castle above.
Frau von Greifenstein had seated herself in a straw chair with her parasol, her fan and her lap-dog, a little toy terrier which was always suffering from some new and unheard-of nervous complaint, and on which the sensitive lady lavished all the care she could spare from herself. The miserable little creature shivered all summer, and lay during most of the winter half paralysed with cold in a wadded basket before the fire. It snapped with pettish impotence at every one who approached it, including its mistress, and the house was frequently convulsed because there was too much salt in its soup or too little sugar in its tea. Greifenstein’s pointers generally regarded it with silent scorn, but occasionally, when it was being petted with more than usual fondness, they would sit up before it, thrust out their long tongues and shake their intelligent heads, with a grin that reached to their ears, and which was not unlike the derisively laughing grimace of a street-boy. Greifenstein never took any notice of the little animal, but on the other hand he was exceedingly careful not to disturb it. He probably considered it as a sort of familiar spirit attached to his wife’s being. Had he been an ancient Egyptian instead of a modern German, he would doubtless have performed a weekly sacrifice to it, with the same stiff but ready outward courtesy, and prompted by the same inward adherence to the principles of household peace, which so pre-eminently characterised him.
The Lady of Sigmundskron had neither parasol, nor lap-dog, nor fan. Her plain grey dress, made almost as simply as a nun’s, contrasted oddly with the profusion of expensive bad taste displayed in her hostess’s attire, as her serious white face and quiet noble eyes were strangely unlike Frau von Greifenstein’s simpering, nervous countenance. The latter lady would certainly have been taken at first sight for the younger of the two, though she was in reality considerably older, but a closer examination showed an infinite number of minute lines, about the eyes, about the mouth, and even on her cheeks, not to mention that tell-tale wrinkle, the sign manual of advancing years, which begins just in front of the lobe of the ear and cuts its way downwards and backwards, round the angle of the jaw. There was a disquieting air of improbability, too, about some of the colouring in her face, though it was far from apparent that she was painted. Her hair, at all events, was her own and was not dyed. And yet, though she possessed an abundance of it, such as many a girl might have envied, it remained utterly uninteresting and commonplace, for its faded straw-like colour was not attractive to the eye, and it grew so awkwardly and so straight as to put its possessor to much trouble in the arrangement of the youthful ringlets she thought so becoming to her style. These, however, she never relinquished under any circumstances whatever. Nevertheless, at a certain distance and in a favourable light, the whole effect was youngish, though one could not call it youthful, the more so as Frau von Sigmundskron who sat beside her was, at little over forty, usually taken for an old lady.
For some moments after they had all sat down, no one spoke. Then Greifenstein suddenly straightened himself, as though an idea had occurred to him, and bending stiffly forward in his seat, addressed his cousin.
‘It gives us the greatest pleasure to see you once more in our circle,’ he said emphatically.
Frau von Sigmundskron looked up from her fine needlework, and gracefully inclined her head.
‘You are very kind,’ she answered. ‘You know how happy we are to be with you.’
‘Ah, it is too, too delightful!’ cried Frau von Greifenstein, with sudden enthusiasm, covering the toy terrier with her hand at the same time, as though anticipating some nervous movement on his part at the sound of her voice. The dog stirred uneasily and uttered a feeble little growl, turned round on her lap, bit his tail, and then settled himself to rest again. The lady watched all these movements with anxious interest, smoothing the folds of her dress at the spot on which the beast was about to lay his head.
‘Ah! my beloved, my treasure!’ she murmured in a strident whisper. ‘Did I wake you! Dear, dear Pretzel! Do go to sleep! I call him Pretzel,’ she added, looking up with a wild smile, ‘because when he is curled up, with his little legs together, on his side, he is just the shape of those little twisted rolls my husband likes with his beer. It is a vulgar name, yes—but this is a vulgar age, dear cousin, you know, and we must not be behind our times!’
‘Is it?’ asked Frau von Sigmundskron without taking her eyes from her work.
‘Oh, dreadfully so! Is it not, Hugo? I am sure I have heard you say so.’
‘Without doubt, the times are changed,’ replied Greifenstein. ‘But I suppose that what is modern will always seem vulgar to old-fashioned people.’
‘Ah, you do not call me old-fashioned, dear husband? Do you? Really, if I am old-fashioned, the times must have advanced very, very quickly! Eh? Dearest cousin, he calls us old-fashioned! You and me! Aber nein! How is it possible!’
A fit of spasmodic, unnatural laughter shook her from the tip of her lace parasol to the toes of her small slippers, causing such a convulsion in the lap-dog’s mind that he sat up on her knees and joined his cries with hers, until he had succeeded in attracting her attention, when he was instantly caressed and kissed and petted, with expressions of the greatest anxiety for his comfort. In about thirty seconds, however, the noises suddenly ceased, Pretzel went to sleep again and his mistress sat looking at the swallows and the flitting butterflies, her weary features expressing nothing that could be connected with mirth, any more than if she had not laughed for years. The repose could not last long, but Greifenstein felt that it was refreshing. In five and twenty years of married life, by dint of never exhibiting any annoyance at his wife’s way of expressing herself, he had grown hardened against the disturbing effect of her smile and voice until he was really very little affected by either. So far as her conduct was concerned, he had never had anything to complain of, and since he had chosen her of his own free will, he considered that one part of his duty consisted in suffering her eccentricities with patience and calm. The idea that a German who called himself a gentleman should not do his duty never entered his mind. On the other hand, his imperturbable manner sometimes irritated his wife, and in justice to her it must be allowed that his conversation in her presence was often very constrained.
‘The next time you come to Greifenstein,’ he said, leaning forward again and speaking to his cousin, ‘it will be on the occasion of a very happy event.’
‘Yes,’ answered Frau von Sigmundskron with her gentle smile, ‘I hope so.’
‘I think that if you approve, and if your daughter has no objections—’
‘Objections!’ cried Frau von Greifenstein, suddenly waking from her reverie and turning her face to her companion’s with an engaging simper. ‘As if dear, sweet, beautiful Hilda could have any objections to marrying our Greif! Objections! Ah no, dear cousin, that youthful heart is already on fire!’
The words were uttered with such an affectation of softness that Pretzel did not move, as his mistress anxiously looked to see if he were awake when she had done speaking.
‘No,’ replied the other lady calmly. ‘She has none. But I do not think that was what my cousin Greifenstein meant.’
‘I meant that the marriage might take place early in the new year, if neither you nor your daughter had any objections,’ said Greifenstein.
‘But they have none—she has just told you so! Oh, Hugo, how dull men are, where love is concerned! Why should they object?’
‘Indeed, I cannot see any reason why they should not be married in January,’ said Hilda’s mother. But there was a shade of annoyance in her face, and she bit her lip a little as she bent over her work.
‘Very good, then,’ pursued Greifenstein, as though his wife had not spoken. ‘We will say the first week in January, if it is agreeable to you.’
‘It seems to me,’ observed Frau von Greifenstein with a fine affectation of irony, ‘that I might be consulted too.’
The Lady of Sigmundskron looked up quickly, but Greifenstein seemed to grow calmer than ever.
‘Pardon me, my dear wife,’ he answered, with a rather formal inclination of the head. ‘If you will be as kind as to remember our conversation of last night, you will call to mind that I asked your consent to the arrangement, and that you gave it at once.’
‘Ah yes!’ said Frau von Greifenstein. ‘It is true. I daresay we did speak of it. Ah, you see, the multiplicity of my household cares drives these things from my head!’
Thereupon her face grew vague and expressionless and she looked again at the birds and the butterflies.
‘Moreover,’ said Greifenstein, now addressing his wife directly, ‘I am sure you will recollect that we proposed to ask our cousin to stay with us until the young people return from their wedding trip.’
‘Yes—yes. I believe we did,’ replied Clara very vaguely and nodding her head slowly at each word. ‘Indeed we did!’ she exclaimed turning quickly with one of her unexpected smiles. ‘Of course! Dear, dear! What could you do, all by yourself up there among those towers? Such a solitary life, and your only daughter, too! How I pity you!’
‘You are very kind. But I am not much to be pitied. Many mothers lose their children altogether when they have married them. Hilda will always be near me, and we can see each other as often as we please.’
‘Your room at Greifenstein will always be ready to receive you,’ said the master of the house.
‘Oh always, always!’ affirmed his wife with great vivacity.
The conversation languished. It was impracticable to discuss anything seriously in the presence of Frau von Greifenstein, for her inopportune interruptions rendered any connected talk impossible.
Presently Greifenstein took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read the news of the day aloud to the two ladies. He did not read well, and the sound of his mechanical voice had a drowsy effect in the warm June air, like the clacking of an old-fashioned mill, dull, regular and monotonous. Neither of his companions, however, felt inclined for sleep. His wife watched the birds with a weary look, and his cousin plied her needle upon her fine work. During many hundreds of afternoons like this Frau von Greifenstein had sat in the same place hearing the same voice, and wearing the same expression. She rarely listened, though she occasionally uttered some exclamation more or less appropriate to what she thought she had heard. She was generally asking herself whether she had done well to accept the peace and the isolation that had fallen to her lot.
Her life was certainly neither happy nor gay. She had all that money could give, but there was no one to see that she had it. Like glory, wealth gives very little satisfaction unless there is a public to witness its effects, and the pleasure we derive from them. Frau von Greifenstein had no public, and to a nature that is fond of show the privation is a great one. She could dress herself as gorgeously as she pleased, but there was no one to envy her splendour, nor even to admire it. For years she had played to an empty house. If, by any fantastic combination of events, it were possible that a fairly good actress should ever be obliged to play the same part every night for five and twenty years in an absolutely empty theatre, and if she did not go mad under the ordeal, she would perhaps turn out very like the Lady of Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein’s theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments or a flutter of a programme in a spectator’s hand made the silence less intense, not an echo of applause woke a thrill of pride or vanity in the heart of the solitary performer. And the poor actress was growing old, wasting her smiles, and her poses, and her bursts of laughter, and her sudden entries on the empty air, till by mechanical repetition they had grown so meaningless as to be almost terrifying and more than grotesque.
It was no wonder that she seemed so very silly. Incapable of finding any serious resource in her intellect, she had devoted her energies to outward things in a place where there was no one to applaud her efforts or flatter her vanity. Many women would have given it up and would have fallen into a state of listless indifference; some would have become insane. But with Frau von Greifenstein the desire to please by appearance and manner had outlasted any natural gift for pleasing which she might once have possessed, and had withstood the test of solitude and the damping atmosphere created by a total absence of appreciation. It cannot be denied that her mind dwelt with bitterness on the hardness of her situation. More than once she had thought of changing her mode of life to plunge into a pietist course of simplicity and asceticism. But when the morning came, the emptiness of her existence made the diversion of personal adornment a necessity. There was nothing else to do. And yet she never pressed her husband to go and live in town, nor to fill the castle with visitors. She had lost all hold upon the current of events in the outer world; and as she looked at herself in her mirror, and saw better than any one else the remorseless signature of time etched deep in the face that had once been pretty, she felt a sharp pain in her breast, and a sinking at the heart, for she knew that it was all over and that she had grown old. There were even moments when she feared lest she were becoming ridiculous, for she had not originally been without a certain acute perception in regard to herself. But the fear of ridicule is never strong unless a comparison of ourselves with others is possible, and Frau von Greifenstein lived too much alone to suffer long any such imaginary terrors. The time when she might still have made a figure in the world had gone by, however, and she knew it, and as any desire for change which she had formerly felt had sprung from the wish to be seen, rather than from the wish to see others, she was becoming resigned to her fate. She had reached that sad period at which half the pleasure of life consists in dreaming of what one might have done twenty years ago. It is a dreary amusement, but people who are very hopeless and solitary find it better than none at all.
Greifenstein read on, without much punctuation and with no change of tone. There was an article upon the European situation, another upon tariffs, the court news, the gazette, the festivities projected for a certain great event. It was all the same to him.
‘In view of the solemnity of the occasion, his majesty has deigned to grant amnesty to all political—’
He stopped suddenly and coughed, running his eye along the lines that followed.
‘To all what?’ inquired his wife with a show of interest.
‘To all political offenders concerned in the revolutionary movements of 1848 and 1849,’ continued Greifenstein, who sat up very straight in his chair and tried to read more mechanically than usual, though his voice grew unaccountably husky. What followed was merely a eulogium upon the imperial clemency, and he read on rapidly without taking his eyes from the printed sheet. Frau von Sigmundskron uttered a little exclamation. She had pricked her thin white finger with her needle. The Lady of Greifenstein saw the tiny drop of blood, and immediately exhibited an amount of emotion out of all proportion with the accident.
‘Oh, what have you done!’ she cried, and she was pale with anxiety as she bent forward and insisted on seeing the scratch. ‘But, my dear, you have wounded yourself! Your finger is bleeding! Oh, it is too dreadful! You must have some water, and I will go and get you some court-plaster—do be careful! Bind it up with your handkerchief till I come!’
She rose quickly, and Pretzel for once was forgotten, and rolled from her knees to the grass, falling upon all-fours with a pathetic little squeak. But Frau von Greifenstein picked him up and fled towards the house in search of the plaster before he could make any further protest against such rough treatment.
‘My wife cannot bear the sight of blood,’ observed Greifenstein, who had lowered the newspaper and was looking over his glasses at his cousin’s hand.
‘The wound is not dangerous,’ she answered with an attempt to smile, but her eyes fixed themselves on Greifenstein’s with a look of anxious inquiry.
‘He will come back,’ he said, in a low voice, and the colour slowly left his face.
‘Do you think it possible?’ asked his cousin in the same tone.
‘It is certain. He is included in the amnesty. He has hoped for it these many years.’
‘Even if he does—he will not come here. You will never see him.’
‘No. I will not see him. But he will be in Germany. It is for Greif—’ he stopped, as though he were choking with anger, but excepting by the pallor of his stern features, his face expressed nothing of what he felt.
‘Greif will live here and will never see him either,’ said Frau von Sigmundskron. ‘Besides, he does not know—’
‘He knows. Some student told him and got a sabre cut for his pains. He knows, for he told me so only yesterday.’
‘That only makes it easier, then. Greif will be warned, and need never come into contact with him. Hilda would not understand, even if she were told. What can she know about revolutions and those wild times? I am sure he will never attempt to come here.’
‘He shall not sleep under my roof, not if he is starving!’ exclaimed Greifenstein fiercely. ‘If he had not been the dog he is, he would have made an end of himself long ago.’
‘Do not say that, cousin. It was better that he should live out his life in a foreign country than do such a bad thing.’
‘I do not agree with you. When a man has taken Judas Iscariot for his model I think he ought to follow so eminent an example to the end.’
Frau von Sigmundskron did not wish to argue the point. Far down in her heart there existed an aristocratic and highly irreligious prejudice about such matters, and though her convictions told her that suicide was a crime, her personal sentiment of honour required that a man who had disgraced himself should put an end to his existence forthwith.
‘He will write, if he means to come,’ she observed, by way of changing the current of the conversation.
‘It would be more like him to force himself upon me without warning,’ said Greifenstein, folding the paper with his lean strong hands and drawing his thumb-nail sharply along the doubled edges. The action was unconscious, but was mechanically and neatly performed, like most things the man did. Then he opened it, spread it out and looked again at the passage that contained the news. Suddenly his expression changed.
‘I do not believe he is included in the amnesty,’ he said. ‘He was not convicted for a political misdeed, but for a military crime involving a breach of trust. He aggravated his offence by escaping. I do not believe that he is included.’
‘But will he not believe it himself?’ asked Frau von Sigmundskron.
‘It will be at his peril, then.’ Greifenstein’s face expressed a momentary satisfaction. Again he folded the paper with the utmost care, evidently reflecting upon the situation.
‘I suppose he will be sent back to the fortress,’ observed his companion.
‘I would almost rather he were pardoned, than that,’ answered Greifenstein gloomily. ‘The whole scandal would be revived—my name would appear, it would be a fresh injury to Greif. And my wife knows nothing of it. She would hear it all.’
‘Does she know nothing?’ asked Frau von Sigmundskron, looking curiously at her cousin.
‘Not a word. She never heard his name.’
‘I could not help supposing that she left us just now because she was disturbed at the news—and she has not come back.’
‘She is not so diplomatic as that,’ answered Greifenstein with something like a grim smile. ‘She forgets things easily, and has probably been detained by some household matter.’
Frau von Sigmundskron could not help admiring the way in which Greifenstein always spoke of his wife, excusing her more noticeable eccentricities, and affecting to ignore her minor peculiarities, with a consistent dignity few men could have sustained in the society of such a woman. It was a part of his principle of life, and he never deviated from it. It had perhaps been strengthened by the necessity of teaching Greif to respect his mother and to treat her with a proper show of reverence, but the prime feeling itself was inseparable from his character, and did honour to it. Whatever he might think of his wife, no living person should ever suspect that he could have wished her to be different. He had chosen her and he must abide by his choice.
But his cousin was a very keen-sighted person and understood him better than he guessed, admiring his forbearance and giving him full credit for his constancy. She had her own opinions concerning his wife, and did not like her; nor was she quite free from a disturbing apprehension lest at some future time Greif might develop some of his mother’s undesirable peculiarities. At present, indeed, there seemed to be nothing which could justify such fears; but she found it hard to believe that the young man had inherited nothing whatever from his mother. She could remember the time when Frau von Greifenstein had been younger and fresher, when her hair had been less dull and colourless, and when her complexion had possessed something of that radiance which was so especially noticeable in her son. And yet Hilda’s mother felt instinctively that she could never dislike Greif, even if he became vain and foolish, which did not seem very probable.
For some minutes neither of the cousins spoke, and Frau von Sigmundskron sat doing nothing, which was altogether contrary to her nature, her work lying upon her knees and her hands joined one upon the other. As for Greifenstein, he had at last folded the paper to his satisfaction and had returned it to his pocket. Presently the sound of his wife’s footsteps was heard upon the gravel path. She seemed less excited than when she had left her seat.
‘I have kept you waiting,’ she said, as she came up. ‘I could not find what I wanted, and when I did that dreadful Pretzel was swallowing a pair of scissors and nearly had a fit, so that I had to give him a hot bath to calm him. He is such a care! You have no idea—but here it is, if it is not too late. I am so dreadfully sorry! I thought I should have died! Do let me put it upon your finger.’
The scratch had entirely disappeared, but Frau von Sigmundskron did not wish to appear ungracious, or ungrateful, and held out her hand without any remark. It would have seemed uncharitable to make Clara’s errand look wholly superfluous before Greifenstein. But he paid very little attention to what was passing, for he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, and before long he rose, excused himself for going away by saying that he had some pressing correspondence, and left the two ladies to their own devices.
Frau von Sigmundskron felt rather uncomfortable, as she always did when she was alone with her hostess. To-day she had an unpleasant consciousness that she was in the way, and that, if she were not present, Clara would have already disappeared, in order to be alone. She resolved to make the interview as short as possible.
‘The weather is very warm,’ she remarked, as a preparatory move towards going into the house.
‘Is it?’ asked her companion as though she had been told something very unusual.
‘It seems so to me,’ responded the baroness, rather surprised that the fact should be questioned. ‘But then, it always seems warmer here after Sigmundskron.’
‘Yes—yes, perhaps so. I daresay it is. How very good of his majesty—is it not?’
‘To grant an amnesty?’
‘Yes, to forgive those dreadful creatures who did so much harm. I am sure I would not have done it—would you? But you are so good—did you ever know any of them?’
‘Oh no, never. I was—’ She was going to say that she had been too young, but she was stopped by a feeling of consideration for Clara. ‘I was never in the way of seeing them,’ she said, completing the sentence.
‘As for me,’ said Clara, ‘I was a mere child, quite a little thing you know.’ An engaging smile—poor woman, it was more than half mechanical and unconscious—emphasised this assertion of her youth.
Frau von Sigmundskron, in whom enforced economy had developed an unusual facility for mental arithmetic, could not refrain from making a quick calculation. Forty-eight from eighty-eight, forty—a young thing, perhaps ten—ten and forty, fifty. Clara was virtually admitting that she was fifty, and if she owned to that, she must be nearer sixty. In other words, she must have been well over thirty when she had married Greifenstein. She was certainly wonderfully well preserved. And yet Greifenstein had more than once told his cousin that he had married his wife when she was a widow five and twenty years of age. This was the first occasion upon which Clara had ever let fall a word which could serve as a starting-point in the calculation, and though the baroness was the best and kindest of mortals she would not have been a woman if she had failed to notice the statement, or to draw from it such conclusions as it offered to her ingenuity.
‘The people who profit by the pardon will be old men,’ she remarked.
‘Old?’ repeated Clara with a scarcely perceptible start. ‘Not so very. They may be less than sixty—a man of sixty is still young at that age. I wonder whether any of them will profit by the permission to return. What do you think, Therese?’
The question was asked with every show of interest, and the baroness raised her quiet eyes from her work. She and Clara very rarely called each other by their first names. They generally avoided the difficulty by a plentiful use of the convenient designation of cousin. Frau von Greifenstein evidently meant to be more than usually confidential, and her companion wondered what was coming, and began to feel nervous.
‘Really,’ she answered, ‘I do not know. I suppose that a man who has been expelled from his country and exiled for many years, would naturally take the first opportunity of returning. I should think it probable. On the other hand—’ she stopped a moment, to smooth a stitch in her work.
‘On the other hand?’ repeated Clara anxiously.
‘Well, I was going to say that in forty years, a man might learn to love an adopted country as well as his own, and might prefer to stay there. It would depend upon the man, upon his character, his tastes, perhaps upon whether he had gone into the revolution out of mistaken patriotism, or out of personal ambition.’
‘Do you think so? Why?’ Frau von Greifenstein seemed deeply interested.
‘Because I fancy that a patriot would come back at any rate. His love of his country would be the strongest element in his nature. An ambitious man would either have found a field for his ambition elsewhere in forty years, or the passion would have died a natural death by that time.’
‘Ah yes! There is truth in that! But what a dreadfully extraordinary position!’ she exclaimed, with one of her unexpected bursts of laughter. ‘What a novel! Do you not see it! Oh, if I were only a novelist, what a coffee?’
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg