As the words escaped Clara’s lips, Greifenstein started violently and
made as though he would rise, laying his hands on the edge of the table
and leaning forward towards his wife. The echo of Rieseneck’s name
had not died away when the unhappy woman realised what she had done.
Rieseneck himself turned suddenly towards her and the blood rushed to
his pale face. Clara’s head fell forward and she covered her eyes with
her hands, uttering a short, sharp cry like that of an animal mortally
wounded. The servant stood still at Rieseneck’s side, staring stupidly
from one to the other. Fully ten seconds elapsed before Greifenstein
recovered his presence of mind.
‘You are ill, Clara,’ he said in a choking voice. ‘I will take you to
your room.’
He did not understand the situation, and he could not guess how his wife
had learned that the visitor was not Herr Brandt but Kuno von Rieseneck.
But he was horrified by the thought that she should have made the
discovery, and his first idea was to get her away as soon as possible.
He came to her side, and saw that she was helpless, if not insensible.
Then he lifted her from her chair and carried her through the wide door
and the small apartment beyond into the drawing-room. Rieseneck followed
at a distance.
‘You can go,’ said Greifenstein to the servant. ‘We shall not want any
more dinner to-night.’
The man went out and left the three together. Clara lay upon a great
divan, her husband standing at her side, and Rieseneck at her feet. Her
eyes were open, but they were glassy with terror, though she was quite
conscious.
‘Clara--are you better?’ asked Greifenstein anxiously.
She gasped for breath and seemed unable to speak. Greifenstein looked
at his brother. ‘I cannot imagine how she knew your name,’ he said. ‘Did
you know her before?’
Rieseneck had turned white again and stood twisting his fingers as
though in some terrible distress. Greifenstein had not noticed his
manner before, and gazed at him now in considerable surprise. He fancied
that Rieseneck feared discovery and danger to himself.
‘What is the matter!’ he asked impatiently. ‘You are safe enough yet--’
While he spoke Clara endeavoured to rise, supporting herself upon one
hand, and staring wildly at Rieseneck. The presentiment of a great
unknown evil came upon Greifenstein, and he laid his hand heavily upon
his brother’s arm.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked sternly. ‘Do you know each
other?’
The words roused Rieseneck. He drew back from his brother’s touch and
answered in a broken voice:
‘Let me go. Let me leave this house--’
‘No!’ exclaimed the other firmly. ‘You shall not go yet.’
Again he grasped Rieseneck’s arm, this time with no intention of
relinquishing his hold.
‘Let him go, Hugo!’ gasped Clara. She struggled to her feet and tried to
unloose the iron grip of her husband’s fingers, straining her weak hands
in the useless attempt. ‘Let him go!’ she repeated frantically. ‘For
God’s sake let him go!’
‘What is he to you?’ asked Greifenstein. Then, as though he guessed some
fearful answer to his question he repeated it in a fiercer tone. ‘What
is he to you? And what are you to her?’ he cried, facing his brother as
he shook him by the arm.
‘You have cause to be angry,’ said Rieseneck. ‘And so have I.’ He
fixed his eyes on Clara’s, and something like a smile flitted over his
features.
‘Speak!’ commanded Greifenstein, to whom the suspense was becoming
unbearable.
Clara saw that Rieseneck was about to utter the fatal words, and with a
last remnant of energy she made a desperate attempt to cover his mouth
with her hand. But she was too late.
‘This woman is my wife, not yours!’ he cried in ringing tones.
In an instant Greifenstein thrust his brother from him, so that he
reeled back against the wall.
‘Liar!’ he almost yelled.
Clara fell upon the floor between the two men, a shapeless heap of
finery. Rieseneck looked his brother in the face and answered the insult
calmly. From the moment when he had recognised Clara, he had felt that
he must see the whole horror of her fall with his own eyes in order to
be avenged for his wrongs.
‘I told you my wife was dead,’ he said slowly. ‘I believed it. She
is alive. She has lived to ruin you as she ruined me. Clara von
Rieseneck--that is your name--stand upon your feet--lift up your
infamous face, and own your lawful husband!’
Even then Clara might have saved herself. One vigorous protest, and
Greifenstein would without doubt have slain his brother with his hands.
But she had not the strength left to speak the strong lie. She dragged
herself to her accuser’s feet and threw her arms about his knees.
‘Mercy!’ she could not utter any other word.
‘You see,’ said Rieseneck. ‘She is alive, she knows me!’
‘Mercy!’ groaned the wretched creature, fawning upon him with her wasted
hands.
‘Down, beast!’ answered the tall old man with savage contempt. ‘There is
no mercy for such as you.’
Greifenstein had stood still for some seconds, overcome by the horror of
his shame. One glance told him that his brother had spoken the truth. He
turned away and stood facing the empty room. His face was convulsed, his
teeth ground upon each other, his hands were clenched as in the agony of
death. From his straining eyes great tears rolled down his grey cheeks,
the first and the last that he ever shed. And yet by that strange
instinct of his character which abhorred all manifestation of emotion,
he stood erect and motionless, as a soldier on parade. The deathblow had
struck him, but he must die on his feet.
Then after a long pause, broken only by Clara’s incoherent groans and
sobs, he heard Rieseneck’s footstep behind him, and then his brother’s
voice, calling him by his name.
‘Hugo--what has this woman deserved?’
‘Death,’ answered Greifenstein solemnly.
‘She helped to ruin me through my faults, she has ruined you through no
fault of yours. She must die.’
‘She must die,’ repeated Greifenstein.
‘She has given you a son who is nameless. She cast off the son she
bore to me because through me his name was infamous. She must pay the
penalty.’
‘She must die.’
Greifenstein did not turn round even then. He crossed the room to
the chimney-piece and laid his two hands upon it. Still he heard his
brother’s voice, though the words were no longer addressed to him.
‘Clara von Rieseneck, your hour is come.’
‘Mercy, Kuno! For God’s sake--’
‘There is no mercy. Confess your crime. The time is short.’ The wretched
old woman tried to rise, but Rieseneck’s hand kept her upon her knees.
‘You shall do me this justice before you go,’ he said. ‘Repeat your
misdeeds after me. You, Clara Kurtz, were married to me in the year
eighteen hundred and forty-seven.’
‘Yes--it is true,’ answered the poor creature in broken tones.
‘Say it! You shall say the words!’
Her teeth chattered. Transfixed by fear, her lips moved mechanically.
‘I, Clara Kurtz, was married to you in the year eighteen hundred and
forty-seven.’
The woman’s incredible vanity survived everything. Her voice sank to a
whisper at the two last words of the date, for Greifenstein had never
known her real age.
‘You caused me to betray the arsenal,’ continued Rieseneck inexorably.
‘I did.’
‘You abandoned me when I was in prison. When I escaped you refused to
follow me. You sent me false news of your death, with a lock of your
hair and the child.’
Clara repeated each word, like a person hypnotised and subject to the
will of another.
‘Then you must have changed your name.’
‘I changed my name.’
‘And you induced Hugo von Greifenstein to marry you, knowing that he was
my brother and that I was alive. I had often told you of him.’
Clara made the statement in the words dictated.
‘And now you are to die, and may the Lord have mercy upon your sinful
soul.’
‘And now I am to die. May the Lord have mercy upon my sinful soul.’
Released from the stern command of her judge, Clara uttered a low cry
and fell upon her face at his feet.
‘You have heard,’ said Rieseneck to his brother. ‘It is time.’
Greifenstein turned. He saw the tall old man’s great figure standing
flat against the opposite wall, and he saw the ghastly face, half hidden
by the snowy beard. He glanced down, and beheld a mass of straw-coloured
silk, crumpled and disordered, and just beyond it a coil of faded hair
adorned with jewelled pins that reflected the soft light. He crossed
the room, and his features were ashy pale, firmly set and utterly
relentless. He had heard her condemnation from her own lips, he thought
of his son, nameless through this woman’s crime, and his heart was
hardened.
‘It is time,’ he said. ‘Have you anything more to say?’
He waited for an answer, but none came. Clara’s hour had struck and
she knew it. There was deep silence in the room. Then the stillness was
broken by a gasp for breath and by a little rustling of the delicate
silk. That was all.
When it was done, the two brothers stooped down again and lifted their
burden and bore it silently away, till they reached the room in which
they had first met. Then Greifenstein made sign that they should go
further and they entered the chamber beyond, and upon the bed that was
there, they laid down the dead woman, and covered her poor painted face
decently with a sheet and went away, closing the door softly behind
them.
For a moment they stood looking at each other earnestly. Then Rieseneck
took from his pocket his brother’s gift and laid it upon the table.
‘It is time for us also,’ he said.
‘Yes. I must write to Greif first.’
Half an hour later the short and terrible tragedy was completed, and of
the three persons who had sat together at the table, suffering each in
his or her own way as much as each could bear, not one was left alive to
tell the tale.
Outside the house of death, the silent, spotless snow gleamed in the
light of the waning moon. Not a breath of wind sighed amongst the
stately black trees. Only, far below, the tumbling torrent roared
through its half-frozen bed, and high above, from the summit of the
battlement that had sheltered so many generations of Greifensteins from
danger in war, and in peace from the bitter north wind, the great horned
owls sent forth their melancholy note, from time to time, and opened
wide their cruel hungry eyes, as the dismal sound echoed away among the
dark firs.
Then all was confusion in an instant, within and without. Lights flashed
out over the snow from the deep, low gateway, voices rang in accents of
alarm through the halls and spacious corridors, huge watch-dogs
sprang to the length of their rattling chains and bellowed out their
deep-mouthed cries, the shrieks of frightened women rose high above
the noise and were drowned again by the loud bass voices of excited
serving-men. Then there was the clatter of iron shoes upon the stone
pavements as the startled horses were led out into the moonlight
from their warm dark stalls, the tinkle of curb chains, the wheeze of
tightening leather girths, the clicking of curb and snaffle between
champing teeth, the purselike chink of spurs on booted heels, the soft
dull thud of riders springing into saddles. The iron-studded gates
creaked back upon their huge hinges, as the burly porter, pale with
fear, dragged open the heavy oak panels. Lanterns flashed, stable-boys
and house servants elbowed each other in the narrow way and flattened
themselves against the damp stone walls, as they heard the tramp of the
approaching feet. Then four strong horses trotted out, two and two,
into the moonlight beyond, each bearing on his back a messenger of the
terrible tidings, and all breaking into a brisk gallop as the party
disappeared in the mottled black and white distance under the mighty
trees. One rode for Sigmundskron, and one for the nearest surgeon, one
for the distant town, and one to bear the ghastly tale to Greif himself,
the nameless orphan, who at that moment was marching sword in hand
beside the tall standard of his Korps, at the head of a thousand
students, in all the magnificence of his fantastic dress, leading the
great torchlight procession which closed the academic year, and which
crowned with a splendid revelry the last act of his student life. As he
strode along, proud, successful, popular, the envy of all his fellows,
the idol of his Korps companions, pale-faced servants were laying
the body of his father beside his dead mother in the state chamber of
Greifenstein, and frightened menials were trembling under the weight of
the tall dead man whose snowy beard blew about in such fantastic waves
before the draught of every opened door. As he went up the steps of the
festal drinking-hall wherein the last students’ feast of the year was
to be celebrated, and over which he himself was to preside, three women
were met together in distant Sigmundskron, repeating the service for the
dead, before the smouldering embers of their poor fire, by the dim light
of their one smoking candle. An hour later, as the orchestra thundered
out the strains of the soul-stirring Landesvater, sustaining but
not covering the glorious chorus of a thousand fresh young voices, a
grey-haired woman in a dark cloak was riding slowly through the snowy
ways of the dismal forest, her horse led carefully by the booted groom
who had brought the news. Her face was paler than ever it was wont to
be, but not less brave. Her well-worn mantle was no fit covering against
the bitter Christmas air, but her heart was not cold within. She knew
that Greif would come in the morning, or at noontime, and cost what it
might, she would not let him face his awful sorrow alone, or feel that
none but a hired hand had smoothed his dead mother’s faded hair, or
closed his dead father’s staring eyes. She did what she could. She
sat as she might upon the man’s saddle, and she faced the cruel cold
unflinchingly, encouraging the fellow who led her horse with such words
and promises as she was able to devise.
But the distance was great, the snow was deep, and the stout
Mecklenburger roan had breasted the steep road at a gallop only an
hour before. The castle clock was striking half-past four when the
strong-hearted Lady of Sigmundskron was lifted from her seat to the
pavement within the walls of Greifenstein, half dead with cold,
and horrified at the thought of what she had come to see, but calm,
determined and full of dignity as only women, and such women, can be, in
the presence of a horrible catastrophe. She took what they offered her,
a glass of strong wine and a slice of venison, scarcely cold from the
ghastly meal that had preceded the tragedy. She did not suffer herself
to think whence it came, for she needed strength, not only to do her
duty, but to impose order and quiet in the terrified household. Then she
listened to the story and visited the rooms. There were policemen in
the house, quiet men in dark uniforms with great yellow beards and grave
faces, and there was the surgeon, an insignificant country leech in
spectacles, who would have been pompous anywhere else and at any other
time, but who looked singularly helpless and subdued. Other officials
would doubtless come in the course of the early morning, to report upon
what had happened, but now that there was a responsible person present,
a relation of the dead and one in authority, no great difficulty could
arise. One thing only Frau von Sigmundskron had not understood, and that
involved the understanding of all the rest. She did not know who the
stranger was, whose coming seemed to have led to the final catastrophe.
She guessed indeed that he must be Rieseneck, but there was no evidence
of his identity. It was not until she had been three hours in the house
that she extracted from one of the servants an account of what had
occurred before the three had so suddenly left the dinner-table. The man
remembered having been told that the visitor was Herr Brandt, but his
mistress, when he was waiting at the guest’s side had certainly called
him by another name. It was ‘von Riesen’--and something more. The
servant was sure of that, and the baroness was satisfied. She did not
care to tell him what the name really was, for she began to see dimly
that the triple murder and suicide were in some way the result of the
exile’s coming. Nothing had been found, not a scrap of writing to give
an explanation, not a sign to indicate a clue. The surgeon’s evidence
was simple. The lady had been strangled, the two gentlemen had
shot themselves. Nothing showed that there had been any struggle.
Greifenstein and his guest had been found in two chairs, each having in
his hand a revolver of which one chamber was empty. The position of the
wounds showed that they had not fired upon each other. While the
cause of their action was a total mystery to every one except Frau von
Sigmundskron, the steps of it were singularly clear. It was evident that
they had killed Clara deliberately and had then killed themselves. Even
the baroness was obliged to admit to herself that the mere fact of the
exile returning suddenly was wholly inadequate to account for the three
deaths.
She was a brave woman, and though she was profoundly horrified and
grieved by what had happened she was conscious that she had not suffered
any great personal loss. She had never known Rieseneck, she had never
liked Clara, and her friendship for Greifenstein had not been great.
Greif himself was safe, the only one of the family for whom she felt any
affection, and in whom all her hopes for her daughter’s happiness were
centred. But for him, she would have refused the occasional hospitality
of the castle as she had once refused the tardy assistance of its
possessors. It is due to the memory of Greifenstein to repeat here that
he never at any time realised the extremity of her need, and that it had
been long before he had learned that she was really poor. But the Lady
of Sigmundskron did not know this, and she could not comprehend how
completely her penury had been hidden from her relations by her own
wonderful management and indomitable pride. At present, her thoughts
were absorbed by the necessity of meeting Greif when he arrived, which
must be within a few hours, and she sat calmly in her chair under the
light of the candles that illuminated the chamber of death, trying
vainly to frame some consoling speech which might break the violence of
his sorrow. She knew how he had loved his father, and during his last
visit she had noticed his increasing affection for his mother. She knew
that he was aware of Rieseneck’s existence, and she tortured her weary
brain in the attempt to find some explanation that would not pain him
needlessly, and which might nevertheless seem to account in some measure
for the calamity that had overtaken him. But her trouble was thrown
away, and many a cunning lawyer might have laboured in vain to frame
out of the facts a consistent narrative. As the morning approached, the
intensity of her thoughts was diminished by her bodily fatigue, and
she dreamed of other things, wondering somewhat vaguely whether it were
right to marry her child to the son of the murderer and suicide whose
dead body lay beside that of his victim under the yellow light of
the tall candles, to the nephew of the traitor, whose tall figure was
stretched upon a couch in the room beyond.
To most women the situation would have been infinitely more painful
than it was to Therese von Sigmundskron. She was more like a sister of
a religious order than a woman of the world. Years of ascetic practices,
of constant self-sacrifice, of unswerving devotion had refined her
nature from the fear of death, or the dread of its presence. We ask in
vain why an existence of painful labour elevates some characters and
debases others, inspires courage in some and in some destroys the power
to face the inevitable. We search our experience and we know that the
fact exists, we apply our intelligence to the study of it and we admit
that the cause of the fact escapes us. The seekers after explanations
are bold with big words which tell us nothing, and call themselves
physiological psychologists, or if that definition fails they say that
they are psychological physiologists, and establish a difference in
meaning between the one title and the other. But all the Greek words
they can spell with Latin letters cannot show us what the human heart
is, nor make us believe that it is seated in the right or in the left
side of the brain, nor yet that it is established in the middle, in the
island of Reil; any more than we admit that the human heart has anything
to do with the little muscle-pump we carry in our breasts and which
sometimes stops pumping just at the wrong moment for our convenience.
‘Life is a continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations,’ says the Apostle of the Misunderstanding. ‘Adjustment’ is
good, for it means nothing. It would have shown better taste, however,
to substitute for it a beautiful term of some sort, with a Greek root,
a Latin suffix and an English termination, because in that case a large
majority of people would never have found out that the whole phrase was
blatant nonsense. What are internal relations? Did the chief destroyer
of common sense, the chief executioner of good English, mean, perhaps,
the relations between that which is within and that which is without?
He might have said so. It would not have meant much, but it would
undoubtedly have meant something. And if life is this, then death must
be the opposite, and death becomes ‘a cessation of the adjustment of
internal relations to external relations,’ and if that is what it means
we ought to say so when a man is dead, although nature continues to
adjust the internal and the external relations afterwards in a way we do
not care to see.
Fortunately for Frau von Sigmundskron, she had not read the works of the
Apostle of the Misunderstanding, and was consequently able to bear her
situation with some degree of equanimity. But it was a hard one for
all that, and she could not help making some very ignorant but sincere
reflexions upon that state we call life, and upon that other state which
is so near to it. What her thoughts would have been like had she known
all that had happened, it is not easy to say. If she had known that she
was entitled by the laws of her country to Greifenstein and to all that
belonged to the name, as the only living and legitimate heir, she would
certainly have looked at the future in another way. But she had no
reason for thinking that all was not Greif’s. So far as she knew,
she was still the poor widowed gentlewoman she had been twelve hours
earlier, struggling against poverty, starving herself for her daughter,
looking to herself for courage and support, and to her child’s wellbeing
as the only source of her own happiness. The same in all respects save
one, and that one change brought with it many bitter doubts. So long as
Greifenstein and Clara had been alive, Hilda’s marriage with Greif
had seemed right in her eyes. She regretted Rieseneck’s disgrace, as a
family disaster, but her conscience was not so sensitive as to look at
it in the light of an obstacle to the union.
Now, however, there was that before her--there upon the bed of state
in the glare of the lights--which changed everything very much. Between
Greif and Hilda lay Greif’s murdered mother, and Greif’s father dead by
his own hand. Therese von Sigmundskron was a Greifenstein at heart, and
she would rather face misery and starvation than give her child to one
whose name must for ever be branded with such a story. Very soon she
felt that it would be impossible, and the prospect of so much suffering
for Hilda appalled her. She thought of Greif, too, and she was
profoundly grieved for him, for she had already looked upon him as
her son. Of course, for the present, there could be no talking of
the matter. If the poor fellow did not go mad with sorrow, he would
nevertheless wish to put off his marriage for a year or more. She
thought of Hilda’s disappointment at the prospect of even retarding the
happy day, she thought of the girl’s despair when she should know that
the day could never come.
Then her resolution almost broke down, and she even argued with herself
against it. Greif was innocent. It was no fault of his, he had no share
in the fearful doings of last night, he was far away, thinking of
Hilda, dreaming that he led her up the aisle of the church, counting
the moments until he could come back to her. Why should he suffer the
consequences of what others had done? Why should Hilda’s young life
be wrecked, condemned, perhaps, to perpetual poverty, ruined, most
assuredly, by the overthrow of its only happiness? Could they not marry
and live here, as Greif’s father and mother had lived for years? Could
they not be everything to each other, and nothing to the world?
Why had Greifenstein and Rieseneck killed Clara? The question cut short
the good baroness’s attempt to justify the marriage. It rose suddenly
in her mind and covered every other thought with a veil. Since that day
when poor Clara had behaved so strangely on hearing of the amnesty, Frau
von Sigmundskron had always believed that she knew more of Rieseneck
than any one else supposed. Rieseneck had come, and he had not been in
the house three hours when everything was over. What had happened? No
one knew. Those who had known had acted out their own tragedy to the
end and were gone with their secret. The authorities had already taken
cognisance of their deaths and had drawn up their preliminary report.
The three would be buried, perhaps side by side, in the vault of the
Greifensteins, and no living person could ever know what had passed
during their last moments. The most careful search had brought no trace
of writing to the light, excepting a letter addressed to an unknown
person, evidently written before the catastrophe, which had been found,
directed and stamped for the post, upon the library table. Everything
in the house had been found in order, every object in its place. The
servants had heard the two shots and had tried to enter the room, but
it had been locked within. A lad had climbed along the cornice until he
could see through the window, and had come back pale with terror. In the
presence of the whole household the door had been forced, and all had
seen together the hideous sight. That was all there was to be known.
As the castle clock struck one hour after another, the baroness felt
that every minute was carrying the secret further beyond her reach, and
yet, as the time passed, the effect of that secret’s existence upon her
own mind grew more and more clear to herself. She could never give Hilda
to Greif. She could never suffer her child to mate with a man whose
existence was overshadowed by such a history, innocent though he
assuredly was himself.
And yet Greif was coming, and she had ridden all those weary miles
through the freezing night in order to meet him at his own gate,
in order to comfort him, to give him the help of her presence, the
consolation of a friend in his utmost need. Would it console him to know
that he must lose the only surviving thing that was dear to him, the
hope of Hilda? Her heart beat at the thought of the pain he would
suffer, though it had been calm enough in the sight of the great horror.
But she could not yield the point. In spite of her gentle face she had
all the unbending qualities of her masterful countrymen, as well as all
the pride of the Greifensteins. She could not yield, let the resistance
cost what it might.
The late winter’s dawn stole through the crevices of the windows, which
had been opened more than once during the night. The contrast of the
still grey rays, seen through the flickering light of the candles that
filled the place of death, was terribly unpleasant. The baroness rose
and fastened the shutters carefully. As she turned back she shuddered
for the first time since she had come. The slight exertion had stirred
her tired blood and had made her momentarily nervous. The room looked
very naturally. The huge carved bed of state with its enormous canopy
was where she had always seen it when she had visited the house. The
massive furniture was arranged as usual, saving that there were high
pedestals placed about the bed to support the heavy candlesticks.
Nothing else was changed. But upon that bed lay two straight things,
side by side, covered all over with fine linen. The great secret of
death was there, and death had taken with him the key-word of a strange
mystery.