AFTERWARD
Grimm Manor was in mourning. And, far more to the dead man's honour,
Grimm Manor _was_ mourning.
The last of the ancient line was dead. The Grimms had been the ruling
spirits in the drowsy little up-State town for more than two centuries.
From father to son, the hierarchy had been handed down.
In days when the district was a wilderness and when the Grimms fought
wild animal and Indian, and in the days when it was a prosperous suburb
and the Grimms fought "scale" and locust, it had been the same:--ever a
Grimm had swayed the little community.
Quiet in spite of his eccentric ways and dress, Peter Grimm had been
known chiefly as a kindly neighbour and a shrewd business man. But now,
after his death, all sorts and conditions of people came forward with
queer stories of his private dealings.
There was a crotchety old Civil War veteran, for instance, who lived
"on the Mountain" and who was a reputed miser. He now told how Peter
Grimm had eked out his $8 a month pension for the past forty years and
had made it possible for him to live in comfort. A crippled woman who,
with her four children, had at one time seemed likely to become a public
charge and who had been relieved in the nick of time by a legacy, now
told the real source of that providential "legacy."
A farm boy who had yearned to study engineering and who had been helped
unexpectedly by a secret fund, revealed the name of the fund's donor.
A market gardener whose house, barns, and horses had been destroyed by
fire, proclaimed that insurance had not enabled him to make good his
loss. For he had not been insured. Peter Grimm had set him on his feet
again. And as in every other case, Grimm had imposed but one condition
upon the gift:--absolute secrecy.
These were but a few cases out of dozens that were made known within the
week after Grimm's death.
The little stone church of Grimm Manor was packed to the doors on the
day that six big awkward men with tear blotched faces bore a silent
burden up its aisle. A burden so covered with masses of fragrant
blossoms as to blot out its gruesome oblong shape. The flowers were from
Peter Grimm's own gardens, then in the riot of their June-tide glory.
And so, covered and drifted over with the glowing blooms he loved so
well, the dead man went to his burial.
In the Grimm pew, with its silver plate and high, box-like sides, sat
Frederik, Kathrien, and old Marta. The heir was as woe begone of face
and as crassly sombre of raiment as even the most captious could have
desired. The unostentatious pressure of his black bordered handkerchief
to his eyes once or twice during the service attested to a sorrow that
could not be kept wholly within stoic bounds.
Yet, oddly enough, it was Kathrien,--rather than Frederik or the frankly
blubbering old housekeeper,--on whom people's eyes most often
rested--rested and then dimmed with a haze of sympathy. The girl did not
weep. Her face was very pale. But it was set and expressionless. Save
for its big eyes it seemed a lifeless mask. The eyes alone were alive.
And never for one instant did they move from the flower banked casket
in front of the altar rail. They were tearless. But in their soft depths
lurked the awed, unbelieving horror of a little child's that is for the
first time brought face to face with the Black Half of life.
Kathrien was not in mourning. Her simple white dress caused no comment.
For, by this time, it was known she was acting on what she believed to
be Grimm's wishes. The dead man had ever had a loathing of all the
hideous visible trappings of grief. He had been wont to hold forth on
his aversion after every funeral he had been forced to attend.
"When it comes my time to fall asleep," he had said, during one of these
Philippics, "I don't want anybody that cares for me to make death
horrible by going around dressed like an undertaker. I'd as soon expect
a mother to put on black after she had kissed her child good-night.
There'd be just as much sense in it. If it's done because we're grieved
to think where our friends have gone,--well and good. But if we're
willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, why dress as if we were
sorry for them?"
Wherefore, Kathrien was wearing one of the white summer dresses he had
loved. She had timidly suggested that Frederik also honour the dead
man's prejudices. But the sad, reproachful look he had bent upon her at
her first hint of the subject had silenced the girl and had left her
half-convicted of heartlessness because of her own avoidance of black.
Willem was not at the funeral. After that first strange outburst on
learning that Grimm was dead, the child had said no word all day. At
night when Kathrien came to take him to bed, she found him in a high
fever.
Dr. McPherson had been sent for, and had examined the child closely, but
could find no palpable cause for the malady.
"He's an odd little fellow," he told Kathrien. "Like no other boy I've
ever known. The Scotch call such children 'fey' and prophesy short lives
for them. And the prophecy usually comes true. There's always been
something psychic about Willem. A hypnotist or a medium would look on
him as a treasure.
"All the diagnosis I can make is that Peter's death caused a shock to
the boy's never strong nerves and that the shock has caused the fever.
Keep him in bed for a few days. He'll probably come around all right.
There doesn't seem to be anything really serious--except that in a
constitution like his everything is apt to be more or less serious."
After the funeral, life went on outwardly much as before at the Grimm
home. The only change was the impalpable one which occurs in a room when
a clock stops.
And, in fulfilment of Peter Grimm's last request, preparations for the
"June wedding" were begun. It was Frederik who tactfully broached the
theme. Kathrien, after a look of helpless fear, nodded acquiescence.
"I promised him," she said faintly. "And he died while the promise was
still scarcely spoken. The smile of happiness it brought to his dear old
face was on it when they laid him to sleep. I _couldn't_ break that
promise."
"And you wouldn't, if you could. I know that," said Frederik tenderly.
"Dear one, I would not urge the wedding at a time like this if it had
not been his last wish that we should be married this very month."
"Yes," she agreed lifelessly. "It was his wish. And we must do it."
And with this unenthusiastic assent Frederik was forced to be satisfied.
So the preparations were pushed on with a furtive, almost apologetic,
haste.
Mrs. Batholommey entered into the spirit of the affair with a lugubrious
zest that would have sickened Kathrien had it not taken so much of the
burden of arrangement-making off her own tired young shoulders.
It was to Frederik and Mrs. Batholommey that every one at length turned
for directions in details for the wedding, not to the still-faced girl
who seemed to know or to care nothing about the way matters were to be
conducted.
And this gave Kathrien surcease,--a breathing space wherein to try to
think with a brain from which sorrow had driven the power of clear
thought; a time to plan, to _realise_, to remember,--with faculties too
numb to carry out the will power's intent. The days crept past her like
shadows. And the wedding day drew near. But still she could not wholly
rouse herself from the dumb inertia that gripped her.