And again, he was with her upon a balcony at night. In the warm dusk he could see the whiteness of her face, and the outline of her figure. She had said something, and he had felt the hot blood surging to his forehead, and falling again, as by its own weight, upon his heart. All at once he had answered her with such words as he had not guessed a man could speak, for they had broken forth in a passionate eloquence, unrestrained and fresh with young life, as words first spoken can be. He could not always remember them now; the heartfelt ring of them waked him from his sleep, sometimes; and again, in the midst of the occupations of the day, the stirring echo of their music filled the room in a moment and was gone before he could seize it, or was blown into his ear by the clear breeze that swept the valley.
The dead woman was alive — the woman who had never lived save in his brain — and Hilda was growing to be like her. Rex watched them both, her whom he saw with open eyes, and her who was present with him the instant his eyes were closed. No daughter was ever so exact an image of the mother who had borne her; line for line, the features grew to be the same, shade for shade the colour of the one became the colour of the other, coil for coil the yellow hair of both was wound alike upon the noble head. And the love of this dead woman, who had never breathed, but whom he had buried with such bitter tears and such heartbroken grief, filled his whole being and twined itself through all the mazes of his complex nature, till no action of his life was independent of it, and no thought free from its all-dominating influence.
In the first beginnings of this creation of his fancy he had found such peace and such sweet melancholy satisfaction that he had encouraged its growth and had tried to persuade himself of its reality. And the reality had come, so far as it can come to anything wholly built up in the imagination. It had also brought with it its consequences, unless it could be said to be a consequence in itself. Rex’s devotion to Hilda increased with every day, as she seemed to him to be more and more like the woman he had loved, the mother he had imagined for her in place of her own. For it was out of Hilda herself that his love for a shadow had grown to be what it was, and the shadow itself was but the reflection of Hilda’s present brightness upon the misty emptiness of his own past life.
Rex was very happy. The dreams that filled the hours did not hinder his actions; on the contrary, the latter seemed to be supplied at last with the purpose they had lacked during forty years, the purpose to honour the love that was in him, and to please Hilda, the outcome of that love. All that he did seemed to acquire directness and perfection of detail, all that he said was dignified by a tender thought for this child of an adored vision, until those who lived with him were amazed at his wisdom and kindness, and wondered whether the world had ever held his like before.
The busy months went by and the summer was at hand. Much had been done to Sigmundskron, but there was work for years to come, before it should be what Greif dreamed of. But one day in June the work ceased suddenly, and all was hushed and still. The servants trod noiselessly and spoke in whispers, and Rex found himself left to his own devices with no companion but the dear idol of his fancy. The whole household life seemed suspended.
It was the silence of a great happiness. On that fair June morning Hilda had borne her husband an heir to Sigmundskron.
CHAPTER XXV
BERBEL, TRANSFORMED INTO the housekeeper of Sigmundskron, was busy with the preparations for the christening. A year of uninterrupted prosperity had made her a trifle more sleek than before, and though she still affected a Spartan simplicity of dress, her frock was made of better materials than formerly, and her cap was adorned with black ribbands of real silk.
The day was warm, and Berbel came out into the court to breathe the air. As she stood at the door trying to remember whether she had forgotten anything, a man entered the gate and strode across the pavement. It was Wastei, and he carried in his hand a magnificent string of trout, threaded by the gills upon a willow withe. He bore his burden very carefully, and it was clear that he had gone home to dress himself after catching the trout and before coming to the castle, for he was splendidly arrayed in a pair of new leather breeches and he wore a velvet coat, the like of which had not been seen in Sigmundsdorf within the memory of man, for, like Berbel’s ribbands, it was of real silk. Berbel eyed him curiously. She had an odd liking for the fellow.
‘God greet you, Frau Berbel,’ said Wastei with far more politeness than he vouchsafed to most people, high or low. ‘I have brought these fish for the christening feast, and I have seen worse.’
Berbel took the willow wand from his hand, tried the weight, counted the trout with a housewife’s eye, tried the weight again, and then nodded approvingly.
‘They are good fish,’ she said, looking them over once more.
Wastei drew a bright red handkerchief from his pocket, and carefully wiped his sinewy brown hands. Then without further ceremony he sat down upon the stone curb at the corner of the steps, as though he had done his business and meant to rest himself without paying any more attention to Berbel. She liked him for his independence and taciturnity. Moreover, in the old days of starving poverty, Wastei had done her many a good service she had never been able to reward, and had brought many a plump hare and many a brace of quails to the empty larder, swearing that he had come by them honestly, and offering to exchange them for a little mending to his tattered clothes. Berbel used to suspect that Wastei knew more of the nakedness of the land than he admitted, and that he risked more than one dangerous bit of poaching out of secret pity for the poor ladies who were known to buy so little food in the village. They were better off now, both she and Wastei, but as she looked at the broad expanse of black velvet that covered his square, flat back, she remembered the days when he had come ragged to the back door to throw down a good meal of game upon the kitchen table, going off the next minute with nothing but a bit of black bread in prospect for his supper.
‘I will take them to the baron myself,’ said Berbel.
Wastei looked up as though he had supposed she was already gone in.
‘Thank you, Frau Berbel,’ he answered.
Five minutes later she returned, carrying a black bottle, a glass and something small shut in the palm of her hand.
‘The baron thanks you and sends you this,’ she said, holding out a gold piece. ‘And I have brought you this,’ she added, filling the glass, ‘because I know you like it.’
‘Luck!’ ejaculated Wastei, slipping the twenty-mark piece into the pocket of his waistcoat, and watching the white liquor as it rose nearer to the brim.
He took the glass, twisted it in his fingers, held it to the sun, and then looked again at Berbel.
‘God greet,’ he said, and tossed off the liquor in a trice. ‘Luck!’ he exclaimed again, as he smacked his lips.
‘Why do you say luck, in that way?’ asked the good woman.
‘I will tell you, Frau Berbel,’ answered Wastei, lowering his tone. ‘It is the new coat that brought me luck to-day.’
‘It is a good coat,’ observed Berbel, in her usual manner.
‘Well, I came by it through a gold piece and a drink of that same good stuff.’
‘Cheap. It is a good coat.’
‘Do you remember, after the devil had flown away with the old wolf of Greifenstein—’
‘Hush, for mercy’s sake!’ exclaimed Berbel. ‘You must not talk like that—’
‘He was a wolf. I believe he would have torn a poor free-shot like me to pieces if he could. I had him after me once, and I remember his eyes. If he had been ten years younger and if I had not dropped through a hole I knew of so that he thought I had fallen over the Falcon Stone beyond Zavelstein, he would have caught me. He looked for my body two days with his keepers. Well, the devil got him, as you know, for he killed himself. And after that the young lord was ill and you sent me off at night for news, because Fraulein Hilda could not sleep. Well, you remember how I brought back the bad news, and a gold piece Herr Rex had given me, and which I supposed mus
t be for your ladies because they had not many at that time, though I thought it queer. Good, and the baroness said it must be for me — you remember all that?’
‘Very well,’ replied Berbel, suppressing a smile by force of habit.
‘So I took the gold piece, but I would not use it nor change it, for I said it was the price of bad news, though I owed the host at the Ox three marks and a half at the time. I took my gold piece and I put it in a safe place, where nobody would have thought of looking for it.’
‘Where was that?’ asked Berbel, as he paused.
‘Well, if you want to know, I will tell you. There is a place in the forest, called Waldeck, where there is a ruined castle, and before the gate there are three trees and a stump of an old tree farther on — it is all thick and full of brushwood and pines and birches, so that my three trees look very much like the others, but when you have found them, you must take a straight line from the right hand one to the stump — you will find it if you look, and then go on past the stump about a hundred ells, always straight, and then you will come to a flat stone; and the stone is loose so that it turns round easily, if you are strong enough to move it, and underneath it there is a deep hole. I put my gold piece at the bottom of this hole and set a heavy stone upon it, and then I got out and drew the big stone into its place, and went away. I did not think that any one would be likely to look for a twenty mark-piece just in that spot.’
‘Improbable,’ assented Berbel, her massive mouth twitching with amusement.
‘Very. And I said to myself, Wastei, you’re a brave fellow, and you shall starve to death rather than use the gold which is the price of bad news; but if the son of the old wolf gets well, and marries Frau Berbel’s young lady, and if the good God sends them a boy, then, Wastei, you shall go and get the gold piece and spend it at the christening. You see Herr Rex had given me a drink with the money, just as you did, so that there was a chance of its turning out well after all, and I knew that — because if there had been no chance, why then, money is money, after all.’
‘And so now you have bought a coat with it?’
‘And what a coat! The Jew had had it in his shop for six months, but nobody could buy it because it was so dear.’
‘The Jew?’ inquired Berbel, looking sharply at Wastei.
‘Yes — and do you know what I think, Frau Berbel?’ Wastei lowered his voice to a whisper.
‘What?’
‘I believe it is the coat the old wolf died in, and that is the reason it brings me luck.’
‘What makes you think that?’ inquired his companion, knitting her rough brows.
‘There is a spot on the collar — here.’ Wastei moved closer to her and presented himself sideways to Berbel pointing out the place with his finger. ‘The Jew said it was from a rusty nail, or that it might be an ink-spot — but he is only a Jew. That is not rust, nor ink, Frau Berbel. That is the old wolf’s last blood — on the right side, just under the ear. He would have shot me for a poacher, if he could, Frau Berbel. Well, I have got his coat, with his own mark on it.’
Berbel shuddered slightly, strong though she was. She liked Wastei, but she had often guessed that there was a latent ferocity in him which would come out some day.
‘And how could the coat have come to the Jew’s shop?’ she asked, after a pause.
‘You know they had a houseful of servants, all thieves from the city, and they were always getting new ones, instead of keeping honest folk from the estate. The young lord sent them all away and took his own people, God bless him. But on the night when they all died, the servants were alone in the house, before your lady got over there, and when she did, she could not do everything. I have heard that they buried them all in fine clothes. Well, in the confusion, you may be sure that one of the servants stole the coat with the blood on it, and as he expected to stay in the house, and could not have worn it himself, he took it to the Jew and sold it for what he could get. You see it looks likely, because the Jew would have waited at least a year before trying to sell it, for fear of being caught.’
‘That is true,’ said Berbel thoughtfully.
‘I would not have told the story to any one else,’ observed Wastei. ‘But as you know everything, you may as well know this too.’
‘What? Is there anything more?’
‘Nothing particular,’ answered Wastei. ‘Except that there was a hole in the pocket,’ he added carelessly. ‘You see it was not quite new, or I could not have got it for twenty marks.’
‘So there was a hole in the pocket,’ said Berbel. ‘Do you want me to mend it for you?’
‘No. I think I will leave it, for luck. Besides it is convenient, if I should want to let anything slip through, between the velvet and the lining.’
‘That is true,’ observed Berbel, watching him intently.
‘A thing might lie a long time between the velvet and the lining of a coat in a Jew’s shop,’ remarked Wastei presently.
‘Very long.’
‘Long enough for people not to want it, when it is found.’
‘It depends on what it is.’
‘A ticket for a lottery, for instance, would not be of much use after a year or two.’
‘Not much, as you say,’ assented Berbel, keeping her eye upon him.
‘Or an old letter, either,’ said Wastei with perfect indifference.
‘That depends on the person to whom it is addressed.’
‘A live son is better than a dead father. A message from the dead wolf would not make the christening of his grandson any merrier, would it, Frau Berbel?’
‘Better leave dead people alone,’ she answered, thoughtfully rubbing the mole on her chin.
‘In God’s peace,’ said Wastei, lifting his small hat from his head. ‘Or wherever else they may be,’ he added, putting it on again.
There was a pause, during which Berbel reflected upon the situation, and Wastei leaned back against the grey wall, watching a hawk that was circling above the distant crags.
‘What will you do with it?’ asked Berbel, at last.
‘Burn it, or give it to you — whichever you like.’
‘You have not read it?’
‘It is not the sign-board of an inn — if it were, I could. Besides, it is sealed. There is writing on the back, and I think there is a capital G among the letters. You see there was more than the spot on the collar to tell me whose the coat was.’
‘It is true that the baron always expected to find a letter from his father,’ said Berbel. ‘It looks probable, this story of yours.’
‘Do you want the paper?’ ‘Yes. I will keep it in a safe place. In ten years, when there is no more sorrow about the old people, the baron may like to know that his father thought of him.’
‘Better burn it,’ suggested Wastei, pulling out a match-box, and fumbling in his unfamiliar pockets for the letter.
‘I am not sure of that,’ said Berbel, who knew that if she insisted, he would destroy it in spite of her. ‘After all, Wastei, it is neither yours nor mine.’
‘I bought it with the coat. I can burn it if I like,’ said Wastei, striking a match and watching the white flame in the sunshine.
‘Of course you can, if you like,’ replied Berbel unmoved.
‘Well, if you want it, there it is,’ he said, throwing away the match and handing her the letter. ‘Do not spoil the christening with it, Frau Berbel.’
She took the envelope with a great show of indifference and looked attentively at the superscription.
‘Is it what I thought?’ inquired Wastei.
‘To my son Greif. That is what is written on it.’
‘It is like the old wolf’s manner,’ said the other. ‘He might have said Greifenstein at least. But I suppose the devil was in a hurry and could not wait for him to write it out. I am sure I would not have waited so long. God greet you, Frau Berbel.’
Wastei nodded and strode across the sunny court, well satisfied with himself. He had planned the whole meeting, with th
e useless craftiness of a born woodman. Several days had elapsed since he had bought the coat and found the letter in the lining. In spite of his pretended ignorance he could read well enough to make out the address, and he had come to the conclusion that Berbel was the person to be trusted. He would not for the world have destroyed the precious missive, but he was equally determined neither to keep it himself nor to mar the joy of the Sigmundskrons’ festivities by putting it into Greif’s own hands. He had known Berbel for many years and he was sure of her discretion. She would keep it until the proper moment was come, and would give it to the right person in the end. But he had not been able to resist the temptation of making a profound mystery of the matter and he prided himself upon the effective way in which he had executed his scheme. Three words would have sufficed, but he had passed more than half an hour very agreeably in Berbel’s company. And Berbel, little guessing the tremendous import of what she held in her hand, had been interested by the long story. It did not enter her mind that the letter could be anything but a word of affectionate farewell, at the time Wastei gave it into her keeping. Intelligent and keen as she was, for a woman of her class, it nevertheless did not occur to her that she was putting into her pocket the key to the mystery of eighteen months ago. The baroness had never spoken to her familiarly about the tragedy, and she took it for granted that the catastrophe was fully understood by the survivors, though they chose to keep its cause a secret among themselves. Hilda had indeed told her that poor Greif had received no message from his father, but as the baroness had never mentioned the letter to Rex, she supposed that both were in the same position.
Berbel carried the paper to her own room and put it into a strong wooden box with her own most sacred belongings, the few relics of her husband which she possessed, a dozen letters written to her during the war, an old button from his uniform, a faded bit of ribband which had carried the medal for the war of 1866, and which she had once replaced with a new one, a pair of his old soldier’s gloves and a lock of his hair. It was all she had left of him, for he had fallen among hundreds and had been buried in the common trench. She envied her mistress nothing in the world except the two swords and the leathern helmet that had been Sigmundskron’s — poor woman! Her husband had fought as bravely and had fallen on the same honourable field as his master, but she had nothing of his, but a little hair, a bit of ribband, a tarnished button and a pair of worn-out gloves. The rough-browed, hard-faced woman kissed each of her poor relics in turn before she closed the box, and the tears were in her eyes as she hid the key away.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 357