BEREAVED.
It was about ten months since we had last seen him; but that time had
sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown
thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that
cordial serenity which used to characterise his features. His dark blue
eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under
his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone
usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in
bringing it about.
We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to talk, with
his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it,
which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward; and
he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing
against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and
expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven
should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of
hell.
My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had
befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the
circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he
expressed himself.
"I should tell you all with pleasure," said the General, "but you would
not believe me."
"Why should I not?" he asked.
"Because," he answered testily, "you believe in nothing but what
consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was
like you, but I have learned better."
"Try me," said my father; "I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose.
Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for
what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly pre-disposed to
respect your conclusions."
"You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a
belief in the marvellous--for what I have experienced _is_
marvellous--and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit
that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been
made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy."
Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General's
penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General,
with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.
The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and
curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening
before us.
"You are going to the Ruins of Karnstein?" he said. "Yes, it is a lucky
coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to
inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined
chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family?"
"So there are--highly interesting," said my father. "I hope you are
thinking of claiming the title and estates?"
My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the laugh,
or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friend's joke; on the
contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that
stirred his anger and horror.
"Something very different," he said, gruffly. "I mean to unearth some of
those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious
sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and
enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by
murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I
myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since."
My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of
suspicion--with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm.
"The house of Karnstein," he said, "has been long extinct: a hundred
years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the
Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle
is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the
smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left."
"Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you;
a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything
in the order in which it occurred," said the General. "You saw my dear
ward--my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more
beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming."
"Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely,"
said my father. "I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my
dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you."
He took the General's hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears
gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He
said:
"We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me, childless
as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and
repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life
happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be
very long; but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind
before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends
who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!"
"You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it
occurred," said my father. "Pray do; I assure you that it is not mere
curiosity that prompts me."
By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall road, by
which the General had come, diverges from the road which we were
travelling to Karnstein.
"How far is it to the ruins?" inquired the General, looking anxiously
forward.
"About half a league," answered my father. "Pray let us hear the story
you were so good as to promise."