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 plot I could make out of that! Dearest cousin, is it not time to have
coffee?’