Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  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 h
uge 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.

  CHAPTER XIII

  REX SAT IN a careless attitude in a corner of Greif’s small room, watching his friend as he arrayed himself in the official dress of a Korps student for the coming festivity. It was to be Greif’s last appearance in public as a fellow. To-morrow there would be a meeting of the Korps and he would resign his functions, and some one else would be elected in his stead. Rex watched him curiously and hummed the first stanza of the ‘Gaudeamus’ —

  ‘Give our hearts to gladness, then,

  While the young life flashes!

  When our joyous youth is gone,

  When old age’s aches are done,

  Earth shall have our ashes!’

  ‘I wish you would not sing that song!’ exclaimed Greif, a little impatiently. ‘There will be time enough to exercise your voice upon it when we begin to throw away the torches.’

  ‘It is the only song I ever heard that has any truth in it,’ answered Rex.

  ‘You ought to write one about the vortex, and call it the physicist’s Lament,’ laughed the other.

  ‘The idea is not new. Scheffel made geological jokes in verse and sang them.’

  ‘Go thou and do likewise! But do not make the idea of turning into a philistine more unpleasant than it naturally is.’

  ‘We have all been through it,’ said Rex, ‘and most of us have survived the change. With insects, the caterpillar turns into the pretty moth. With Korps students, the butterfly becomes sooner or later a crawling, philistine grub. The moral superiority of the worm over the moth is manifest in his works. Have you read your speech over?’

  ‘I know it by heart. Help me with the scarf, will you?’ ‘Vanity of vanities!’ laughed Rex as he began to knot the coloured silk.

  Greif’s costume is worth a word of description. He wore a close-fitting yellow jacket, heavily trimmed with black, white and yellow frogs and crossed cords, in the hussar fashion, and finished at the neck in the military manner with a stiff high collar. His legs were encased in tight breeches of white leather, and long polished boots with riding flaps were drawn above the knee. The long straight rapier hung in its gleaming sheath by his side, the colours of the Korps being done in velvet upon the basket-hilt. Over his right shoulder he wore a heavy silk scarf of the three colours, which was tied in a big knot near the sword-hilt. Upon his bright hair a very small round cap, no bigger than a saucer, and richly embroidered with gold, was held in its place by mysterious means, involving the concealment of a piece of elastic beneath his short curls. Upon the table lay a pair of white leather gauntlets. The whole effect was theatrical, but in the surroundings for which the dress was intended, it could not fail to be both striking and harmonious. It displayed to the best advantage the young man’s fine proportions and athletic figure, and where there were to be hundreds similarly arrayed, with only a difference of colour to distinguish their even ranks, the result could not differ greatly from a military parade. Indeed the costume is not more gaudy than many modern uniforms and is certainly as tasteful.

  ‘I am sorry it is the last time,’ said Greif sadly, as his friend finished the knot. Then he went to the window and looked once more at the dim outline of the cathedral spire and listened to the water rushing through its cold bed in the dusk far below. He knew that he should look out but a few times more. He did not know that this time was the last. Rex was looking for his overcoat, and as he moved about the room he sang softly another stanza of the old song —

  ‘Short and sweet this life of ours,

  Soon its cord must sever!

  Death comes quick, nor brooks delay,

  Ruthless, he tears us away,

  No man spares he ever.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, do not sing that song any more!’ cried Greif. ‘I am sad enough, as it is, without your cat’s music.’

  Rex laughed oddly.

  ‘I am as sad as you,’ he said, a moment later, with an abrupt change of manner. ‘You do not act as though you were,’ observed Greif. ‘What are you sad about?’

  ‘World-sorrow.’

  ‘Has the vortex fallen ill?’ inquired Greif ironically.

  ‘It is likely to, I fear. Come along! It is time to be off. You must not keep everybody waiting.’

  Something in the tone of his voice struck Greif and affected him disagreeably. He held up the light to Rex’s face, and saw that he was pale, and that his strange eyes looked weary and lifeless.

  ‘What is the matter, Rex?’ he asked earnestly. ‘Are you in any trouble? Can I do anything for you?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you,’ answered the other quietly.

  Greif set down the lamp upon the table and seemed to hesitate a moment. Then he turned again and laid his hand upon his friend’s arm.

  ‘Rex, do you want money?’ asked Greif. ‘You know I have plenty.’

  In the eyes of a Korps student the want of cash appears to be the only ill to which flesh is heir. Rex smiled rather sadly.

  ‘No, I do not want money. I thank you, all the same.’

  ‘What is it then? In love?’

  ‘In love!’ Rex laughed. ‘I would tell you that soon enough,’ he added carelessly. ‘No — it is a more serious matter.’

  ‘If I can be of no use to you—’

  ‘Look here, Greif,’ interrupted the other, ‘we have grown to be good friends, you and I, during this term. You are going away, and I may never see you again. You may as well know why I fraternised with you so readily. I have had your friendship so far, and if I must lose it, I may as well lose it at once.’

  Greif opened his bright eyes and stared at his friend in considerable astonishment. He thought that he knew him well, and he could not imagine what was coming.

  ‘I do not see what could happen to cause that,’ he answered.

  ‘Do you remember that evening when you first came to my rooms?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have I gained any advantage from our acquaintance, excepting your society and that of your Korps? Think well before you answer.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Greif. ‘I am quite sure that you have not. What a foolish question!’

  ‘It seems so to you, no doubt. But it is far from foolish. You say that you remember that evening well. Then you recollect that I told you I knew nothing of you or your family. I made certain predictions. Well, I made them according to the figure, as you saw by the unexpected arrival of that telegram. But I lied to you about the rest. I knew perfectly well who you were, whence you came, and what your father’s half-brother had done.’

  Greif had drawn back a little during the first part of this declaration. At the statement that Rex had deceived him he started and drew himself up, his face showing plainly enough that his wrath was not far off.

  ‘And may I ask your reasons for practising this deception upon me?’ he inquired coldly.

  ‘There is but one reason, and that is of a somewhat startling nature,’ returned Rex, leaning back against the table and resting his two hands upon it. ‘You allow that I have got no personal advantage out of your friendship. I desired none. I only wanted to know you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am your cousin. My name is Rieseneck. I am the only son of your father’s half-brother.’

  Greif’s eyes flashed, and the hot blood mounted to his face. The information was surprising enough, and his hatred of his uncle was likely to produce trouble.

  ‘How did you dare to impose upon me in such a way?’ he cried angrily.

  ‘No one ever speaks to me of daring,’ answered Rex, who seemed quite unmoved. ‘I dare do mo
st things, because I have nothing to lose but a little money, my good name of Rex, and my life. As for my not calling myself Rieseneck, I have not imposed upon you any more than upon any one else, by doing so. My father calls himself Rex, and I have never been known by any other appellation.’