“Are there any old legends attached to the castle?” asked Conrad of his
sister. Conrad was a prosperous Hamburg merchant, but he was the one
poetically-dispositioned member of an eminently practical family.
The Baroness Gruebel shrugged her plump shoulders.
“There are always legends hanging about these old places. They are not
difficult to invent and they cost nothing. In this case there is a story
that when any one dies in the castle all the dogs in the village and the
wild beasts in forest howl the night long. It would not be pleasant to
listen to, would it?”
“It would be weird and romantic,” said the Hamburg merchant.
“Anyhow, it isn’t true,” said the Baroness complacently; “since we bought
the place we have had proof that nothing of the sort happens. When the
old mother-in-law died last springtime we all listened, but there was no
howling. It is just a story that lends dignity to the place without
costing anything.”
“The story is not as you have told it,” said Amalie, the grey old
governess. Every one turned and looked at her in astonishment. She was
wont to sit silent and prim and faded in her place at table, never
speaking unless some one spoke to her, and there were few who troubled
themselves to make conversation with her. To-day a sudden volubility had
descended on her; she continued to talk, rapidly and nervously, looking
straight in front of her and seeming to address no one in particular.
“It is not when _any one_ dies in the castle that the howling is heard.
It was when one of the Cernogratz family died here that the wolves came
from far and near and howled at the edge of the forest just before the
death hour. There were only a few couple of wolves that had their lairs
in this part of the forest, but at such a time the keepers say there
would be scores of them, gliding about in the shadows and howling in
chorus, and the dogs of the castle and the village and all the farms
round would bay and howl in fear and anger at the wolf chorus, and as the
soul of the dying one left its body a tree would crash down in the park.
That is what happened when a Cernogratz died in his family castle. But
for a stranger dying here, of course no wolf would howl and no tree would
fall. Oh, no.”
There was a note of defiance, almost of contempt, in her voice as she
said the last words. The well-fed, much-too-well dressed Baroness stared
angrily at the dowdy old woman who had come forth from her usual and
seemly position of effacement to speak so disrespectfully.
“You seem to know quite a lot about the von Cernogratz legends, Fraulein
Schmidt,” she said sharply; “I did not know that family histories were
among the subjects you are supposed to be proficient in.”
The answer to her taunt was even more unexpected and astonishing than the
conversational outbreak which had provoked it.
“I am a von Cernogratz myself,” said the old woman, “that is why I know
the family history.”
“You a von Cernogratz? You!” came in an incredulous chorus.
“When we became very poor,” she explained, “and I had to go out and give
teaching lessons, I took another name; I thought it would be more in
keeping. But my grandfather spent much of his time as a boy in this
castle, and my father used to tell me many stories about it, and, of
course, I knew all the family legends and stories. When one has nothing
left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care.
I little thought when I took service with you that I should one day come
with you to the old home of my family. I could wish it had been anywhere
else.”
There was silence when she finished speaking, and then the Baroness
turned the conversation to a less embarrassing topic than family
histories. But afterwards, when the old governess had slipped away
quietly to her duties, there arose a clamour of derision and disbelief.
“It was an impertinence,” snapped out the Baron, his protruding eyes
taking on a scandalised expression; “fancy the woman talking like that at
our table. She almost told us we were nobodies, and I don’t believe a
word of it. She is just Schmidt and nothing more. She has been talking
to some of the peasants about the old Cernogratz family, and raked up
their history and their stories.”
“She wants to make herself out of some consequence,” said the Baroness;
“she knows she will soon be past work and she wants to appeal to our
sympathies. Her grandfather, indeed!”
The Baroness had the usual number of grandfathers, but she never, never
boasted about them.
“I dare say her grandfather was a pantry boy or something of the sort in
the castle,” sniggered the Baron; “that part of the story may be true.”
The merchant from Hamburg said nothing; he had seen tears in the old
woman’s eyes when she spoke of guarding her memories—or, being of an
imaginative disposition, he thought he had.
“I shall give her notice to go as soon as the New Year festivities are
over,” said the Baroness; “till then I shall be too busy to manage
without her.”
But she had to manage without her all the same, for in the cold biting
weather after Christmas, the old governess fell ill and kept to her room.
“It is most provoking,” said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the
fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year; “all the time that
she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill,
too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the
house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks
down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and
shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same.”
“Most annoying,” agreed the banker’s wife, sympathetically; “it is the
intense cold, I expect, it breaks the old people up. It has been
unusually cold this year.”
“The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many
years,” said the Baron.
“And, of course, she is quite old,” said the Baroness; “I wish I had
given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this
happened to her. Why, Wappi, what is the matter with you?”
The small, woolly lapdog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and
crept shivering under the sofa. At the same moment an outburst of angry
barking came from the dogs in the castle-yard, and other dogs could be
heard yapping and barking in the distance.
“What is disturbing the animals?” asked the Baron.
And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that had roused
the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage; heard a long-drawn
whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at one moment leagues away, at
others sweeping across the snow until it appeared to come from the foot
of the castle walls. All the starved, cold misery of a frozen world, all
the relentless hunger-fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and
haunting melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in
that wailing cry.
“Wolves!” cried the Baron.
Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come from
everywhere.
“Hundreds of wolves,” said the Hamburg merchant, who was a man of strong
imagination.
Moved by some impulse which she could not have explained, the Baroness
left her guests and made her way to the narrow, cheerless room where the
old governess lay watching the hours of the dying year slip by. In spite
of the biting cold of the winter night, the window stood open. With a
scandalised exclamation on her lips, the Baroness rushed forward to close
it.
“Leave it open,” said the old woman in a voice that for all its weakness
carried an air of command such as the Baroness had never heard before
from her lips.
“But you will die of cold!” she expostulated.
“I am dying in any case,” said the voice, “and I want to hear their
music. They have come from far and wide to sing the death-music of my
family. It is beautiful that they have come; I am the last von
Cernogratz that will die in our old castle, and they have come to sing to
me. Hark, how loud they are calling!”
The cry of the wolves rose on the still winter air and floated round the
castle walls in long-drawn piercing wails; the old woman lay back on her
couch with a look of long-delayed happiness on her face.
“Go away,” she said to the Baroness; “I am not lonely any more. I am one
of a great old family . . . ”
“I think she is dying,” said the Baroness when she had rejoined her
guests; “I suppose we must send for a doctor. And that terrible howling!
Not for much money would I have such death-music.”
“That music is not to be bought for any amount of money,” said Conrad.
“Hark! What is that other sound?” asked the Baron, as a noise of
splitting and crashing was heard.
It was a tree falling in the park.
There was a moment of constrained silence, and then the banker’s wife
spoke.
“It is the intense cold that is splitting the trees. It is also the cold
that has brought the wolves out in such numbers. It is many years since
we have had such a cold winter.”
The Baroness eagerly agreed that the cold was responsible for these
things. It was the cold of the open window, too, which caused the heart
failure that made the doctor’s ministrations unnecessary for the old
Fraulein. But the notice in the newspapers looked very well—
“On December 29th, at Schloss Cernogratz, Amalie von Cernogratz, for
many years the valued friend of Baron and Baroness Gruebel.”