Greifenstein Part 6

'The wound is not dangerous,' she answered with an attempt to smile, but her eyes fixed themselves on Greifenstein's with a look of anxious inquiry.

'He will come back,' he said, in a low voice, and the colour slowly left his face.

'Do you think it possible?' asked his cousin in the same tone.

'It is certain. He is included in the amnesty. He has hoped for it these many years.'

'Even if he does--he will not come here. You will never see him.'

'No. I will not see him. But he will be in Germany. It is for Greif--'

he stopped, as though he were choking with anger, but excepting by the pallor of his stern features, his face expressed nothing of what he felt.

'Greif will live here and will never see him either,' said Frau von Sigmundskron. 'Besides, he does not know--'

'He knows. Some student told him and got a sabre cut for his pains. He knows, for he told me so only yesterday.'

'That only makes it easier, then. Greif will be warned, and need never come into contact with him. Hilda would not understand, even if she were told. What can she know about revolutions and those wild times? I am sure he will never attempt to come here.'

'He shall not sleep under my roof, not if he is starving!' exclaimed Greifenstein fiercely. 'If he had not been the dog he is, he would have made an end of himself long ago.'

'Do not say that, cousin. It was better that he should live out his life in a foreign country than do such a bad thing.'

'I do not agree with you. When a man has taken Judas Iscariot for his model I think he ought to follow so eminent an example to the end.'

Frau von Sigmundskron did not wish to argue the point. Far down in her heart there existed an aristocratic and highly irreligious prejudice about such matters, and though her convictions told her that suicide was a crime, her personal sentiment of honour required that a man who had disgraced himself should put an end to his existence forthwith.

'He will write, if he means to come,' she observed, by way of changing the current of the conversation.

'It would be more like him to force himself upon me without warning,'

said Greifenstein, folding the paper with his lean strong hands and drawing his thumb-nail sharply along the doubled edges. The action was unconscious, but was mechanically and neatly performed, like most things the man did. Then he opened it, spread it out and looked again at the pa.s.sage that contained the news. Suddenly his expression changed.

'I do not believe he is included in the amnesty,' he said. 'He was not convicted for a political misdeed, but for a military crime involving a breach of trust. He aggravated his offence by escaping. I do not believe that he is included.'

'But will he not believe it himself?' asked Frau von Sigmundskron.

'It will be at his peril, then.' Greifenstein's face expressed a momentary satisfaction. Again he folded the paper with the utmost care, evidently reflecting upon the situation.

'I suppose he will be sent back to the fortress,' observed his companion.

'I would almost rather he were pardoned, than that,' answered Greifenstein gloomily. 'The whole scandal would be revived--my name would appear, it would be a fresh injury to Greif. And my wife knows nothing of it. She would hear it all.'

'Does she know nothing?' asked Frau von Sigmundskron, looking curiously at her cousin.

'Not a word. She never heard his name.'

'I could not help supposing that she left us just now because she was disturbed at the news--and she has not come back.'

'She is not so diplomatic as that,' answered Greifenstein with something like a grim smile. 'She forgets things easily, and has probably been detained by some household matter.'

Frau von Sigmundskron could not help admiring the way in which Greifenstein always spoke of his wife, excusing her more noticeable eccentricities, and affecting to ignore her minor peculiarities, with a consistent dignity few men could have sustained in the society of such a woman. It was a part of his principle of life, and he never deviated from it. It had perhaps been strengthened by the necessity of teaching Greif to respect his mother and to treat her with a proper show of reverence, but the prime feeling itself was inseparable from his character, and did honour to it. Whatever he might think of his wife, no living person should ever suspect that he could have wished her to be different. He had chosen her and he must abide by his choice.

But his cousin was a very keen-sighted person and understood him better than he guessed, admiring his forbearance and giving him full credit for his constancy. She had her own opinions concerning his wife, and did not like her; nor was she quite free from a disturbing apprehension lest at some future time Greif might develop some of his mother's undesirable peculiarities. At present, indeed, there seemed to be nothing which could justify such fears; but she found it hard to believe that the young man had inherited nothing whatever from his mother. She could remember the time when Frau von Greifenstein had been younger and fresher, when her hair had been less dull and colourless, and when her complexion had possessed something of that radiance which was so especially noticeable in her son. And yet Hilda's mother felt instinctively that she could never dislike Greif, even if he became vain and foolish, which did not seem very probable.

For some minutes neither of the cousins spoke, and Frau von Sigmundskron sat doing nothing, which was altogether contrary to her nature, her work lying upon her knees and her hands joined one upon the other. As for Greifenstein, he had at last folded the paper to his satisfaction and had returned it to his pocket. Presently the sound of his wife's footsteps was heard upon the gravel path. She seemed less excited than when she had left her seat.

'I have kept you waiting,' she said, as she came up. 'I could not find what I wanted, and when I did that dreadful Pretzel was swallowing a pair of scissors and nearly had a fit, so that I had to give him a hot bath to calm him. He is such a care! You have no idea--but here it is, if it is not too late. I am so dreadfully sorry! I thought I should have died! Do let me put it upon your finger.'

The scratch had entirely disappeared, but Frau von Sigmundskron did not wish to appear ungracious, or ungrateful, and held out her hand without any remark. It would have seemed uncharitable to make Clara's errand look wholly superfluous before Greifenstein. But he paid very little attention to what was pa.s.sing, for he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, and before long he rose, excused himself for going away by saying that he had some pressing correspondence, and left the two ladies to their own devices.

Frau von Sigmundskron felt rather uncomfortable, as she always did when she was alone with her hostess. To-day she had an unpleasant consciousness that she was in the way, and that, if she were not present, Clara would have already disappeared, in order to be alone. She resolved to make the interview as short as possible.

'The weather is very warm,' she remarked, as a preparatory move towards going into the house.

'Is it?' asked her companion as though she had been told something very unusual.

'It seems so to me,' responded the baroness, rather surprised that the fact should be questioned. 'But then, it always seems warmer here after Sigmundskron.'

'Yes--yes, perhaps so. I daresay it is. How very good of his majesty--is it not?'

'To grant an amnesty?'

'Yes, to forgive those dreadful creatures who did so much harm. I am sure I would not have done it--would you? But you are so good--did you ever know any of them?'

'Oh no, never. I was--' She was going to say that she had been too young, but she was stopped by a feeling of consideration for Clara. 'I was never in the way of seeing them,' she said, completing the sentence.

'As for me,' said Clara, 'I was a mere child, quite a little thing you know.' An engaging smile--poor woman, it was more than half mechanical and unconscious--emphasised this a.s.sertion of her youth.

Frau von Sigmundskron, in whom enforced economy had developed an unusual facility for mental arithmetic, could not refrain from making a quick calculation. Forty-eight from eighty-eight, forty--a young thing, perhaps ten--ten and forty, fifty. Clara was virtually admitting that she was fifty, and if she owned to that, she must be nearer sixty. In other words, she must have been well over thirty when she had married Greifenstein. She was certainly wonderfully well preserved. And yet Greifenstein had more than once told his cousin that he had married his wife when she was a widow five and twenty years of age. This was the first occasion upon which Clara had ever let fall a word which could serve as a starting-point in the calculation, and though the baroness was the best and kindest of mortals she would not have been a woman if she had failed to notice the statement, or to draw from it such conclusions as it offered to her ingenuity.

'The people who profit by the pardon will be old men,' she remarked.

'Old?' repeated Clara with a scarcely perceptible start. 'Not so very.

They may be less than sixty--a man of sixty is still young at that age.

I wonder whether any of them will profit by the permission to return.

What do you think, Therese?'

The question was asked with every show of interest, and the baroness raised her quiet eyes from her work. She and Clara very rarely called each other by their first names. They generally avoided the difficulty by a plentiful use of the convenient designation of cousin. Frau von Greifenstein evidently meant to be more than usually confidential, and her companion wondered what was coming, and began to feel nervous.

'Really,' she answered, 'I do not know. I suppose that a man who has been expelled from his country and exiled for many years, would naturally take the first opportunity of returning. I should think it probable. On the other hand--' she stopped a moment, to smooth a st.i.tch in her work.

'On the other hand?' repeated Clara anxiously.

'Well, I was going to say that in forty years, a man might learn to love an adopted country as well as his own, and might prefer to stay there.

It would depend upon the man, upon his character, his tastes, perhaps upon whether he had gone into the revolution out of mistaken patriotism, or out of personal ambition.'

'Do you think so? Why?' Frau von Greifenstein seemed deeply interested.

'Because I fancy that a patriot would come back at any rate. His love of his country would be the strongest element in his nature. An ambitious man would either have found a field for his ambition elsewhere in forty years, or the pa.s.sion would have died a natural death by that time.'