‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘I did not quite hear.’
‘There has been much snow this year,’ Greifenstein repeated with forcible distinctness.
‘Yes,’ replied his brother, ‘it seems so.’
‘After all, it is nearly Christmas,’ said Clara, trembling in every limb at the sound of her own voice.
Only an hour more to bear, and she would be safe for ever. Only another effort and Greifenstein would suspect nothing. Rieseneck looked mechanically at his brother, as though he were trying to find something to say. In reality he was almost insensible, and he hardly knew why he did not fall from his chair.
A servant brought another dish and Clara helped herself unconsciously. The man went on to Rieseneck, and waited patiently until the latter should turn his head and see what was offered to him.
Clara saw an opportunity of speaking again. She could call his attention by addressing him. One, two, three seconds passed, and then she spoke. It would be enough to utter his name, so that he should look round and see the attendant at his elbow. ‘Herr Brandt’ — the two syllables were short and simple enough.
‘Herr von Rieseneck,’ she said quietly.
In the extremity of her nervousness, her brain had become suddenly confused and she was lost.
CHAPTER XII
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 ju
stice 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.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 338
