Greifenstein Part 5

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 s.h.i.+vered 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances 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 antic.i.p.ating 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-fas.h.i.+oned people.'

'Ah, you do not call me old-fas.h.i.+oned, dear husband? Do you? Really, if I am old-fas.h.i.+oned, the times must have advanced very, very quickly! Eh?

Dearest cousin, he calls us old-fas.h.i.+oned! 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 b.u.t.terflies, 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 refres.h.i.+ng. 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 b.u.t.terflies.

'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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 repet.i.tion 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 gra.s.s, 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 gla.s.ses at his cousin's hand.