The Serapion Brethren Volume Ii Part 43

Aurelia, full of anxious presentiment, tottered to the window. Her presentiment was not fallacious. It _was_ the stranger (as we have styled him), and he was being brought along, firmly bound upon a tumbril, surrounded by a strong guard. He was being taken back to undergo his sentence. Aurelia, nearly fainting, sank back into her chair, as his frightfully wild look fell upon her, while he shook his clenched fist up at the window with the most threatening gestures.

After this the Baroness was still a great deal away from the house; but she never took Aurelia with her, so that the latter led a sorrowful, miserable existence--occupied in thinking many thoughts as to destiny, and the threatening future which might unexpectedly come upon her.

From the maidservant (who had only come into the house subsequently to the nocturnal adventure which has been described, and who had probably only quite recently heard about the intimacy of the terms in which the Baroness had been living with this criminal), Aurelia learned that the folks in the Residenz were very much grieved at the Baroness's having been so deceived and imposed upon by a scoundrel of this description.

But Aurelia knew only too well how differently the matter had really stood; and it seemed to her impossible that, at all events, the men of the police, who had apprehended the fellow in the Baroness's very house, should not have known all about the intimacy of the relations between them, inasmuch as she herself had told them his name, and directed their attention to the brand-marks on his back, as proofs of his ident.i.ty. Moreover, this loquacious maid sometimes talked in a very ambiguous way about that which people were, here and there, thinking and saying; and, for that matter, would like very much to know better about--as to the courts having been making careful investigations, and having gone so far as to threaten the Baroness with arrest, on account of strange disclosures which the hangman's son had made concerning her.

Aurelia was obliged to admit, in her own mind, that it was another proof of her mother's depraved way of looking at things that, even after this terrible affair, she should have found it possible to go on living in the Residenz. But at last she felt herself constrained to leave the place where she knew she was the object of but too well-founded, shameful suspicion, and fly to a more distant spot. On this journey she came to the Count's Castle, and there ensued what has been related.

Aurelia could not but consider herself marvellously fortunate to have got clear of all these troubles. But how profound was her horror when, speaking to her mother in this blessed sense of the merciful intervention of Heaven in her regard, the latter, with fires of h.e.l.l in her eyes, cried out in a yelling voice--

"You are my misfortune, horrible creature that you are! But in the midst of your imagined happiness vengeance will overtake you, if I should be carried away by a sudden death. In those tetanic spasms, which your birth cost me, the subtle craft of the devil----"

Here Aurelia suddenly stopped. She threw herself upon her husband's breast, and implored him to spare her the complete recital of what the Baroness had said to her in the delirium of her insanity. She said she felt her inmost heart and soul crushed to pieces at the bare idea of the frightful threatenings--far beyond the wildest imagination's conception of the terrible--uttered to her by her mother, possessed, as she was at the time, by the most diabolical powers.

The Count comforted his bride to the best of his ability, although he felt himself permeated by the coldest and most deathly shuddering horror. Even when he had regained some calmness, he could not but confess to himself that the profound horribleness of the Baroness, even now that she was dead, cast a deep shadow over his life, sun-bright as it otherwise seemed to be.

In a very short time Aurelia began to alter very perceptibly. Whilst the deathly paleness of her face, and the fatigued appearance of her eyes, seemed to point to sortie bodily ailment, her mental state--confused, variable, restless, as if she were constantly frightened at something--led to the conclusion that there was some fresh mystery perturbing her system. She shunned her husband. She shut herself up in her rooms, sought the most solitary walks in the park.

And when she then allowed herself to be seen, her eyes, red with weeping, her contorted features, gave unmistakable evidence of some terrible suffering which she had been undergoing. It was in vain that the Count took every possible pains to discover the cause of this condition of hers, and the only thing which had any effect in bringing him out of the hopeless state into which those remarkable symptoms of his wife's had plunged him, was the deliberate opinion of a celebrated doctor, that this strangely excited condition of the Countess was nothing other than the natural result of a bodily state which indicated the happy result of a fortunate marriage. This doctor, on one occasion when he was at table with the Count and Countess, permitted himself sundry allusions to this presumed state of what the German nation calls "good hope." The Countess seemed to listen to all this with indifference for some time. But suddenly her attention became vividly awakened when the doctor spoke of the wonderful longings which women in that condition become possessed by, and which they cannot resist without the most injurious effects supervening upon their own health, and even upon that of the child. The Countess overwhelmed the doctor with questions, and the latter did not weary of quoting the strangest and most entertaining cases of this description from his own practice and experience.

"Moreover," he said, "there are cases on record in which women have been led, by these strange, abnormal longings, to commit most terrible crimes. There was a certain blacksmith's wife, who had such an irresistible longing for her husband's flesh that, one night, when he came home the worse for liquor, she set upon him with a large knife, and cut him about so frightfully that he died in a few hours' time."

Scarcely had the doctor said these words, when the Countess fell back in her chair fainting, and was with much difficulty recovered from the succession of hysterical attacks which supervened. The doctor then saw that he had acted very thoughtlessly in alluding to such a frightful occurrence in the presence of a lady whose nervous system was in such a delicate condition.

However, this crisis seemed to have a beneficial effect upon her, for she became calmer; although, soon afterwards there came upon her a very remarkable condition of rigidity, as of benumbedness. There was a darksome fire in her eyes, and her deathlike pallor increased to such an extent, that the Count was driven into new and most tormenting doubts as to her condition. The most inexplicable thing was that she never took the smallest morsel of anything to eat, evincing the utmost repugnance at the sight of all food, particularly meat. This repugnance was so invincible that she was constantly obliged to get up and leave the table, with the most marked indications of loathing. The doctor's skill was in vain, and the Count's most urgent and affectionate entreaties were powerless to induce her to take even a single drop of medicine of any kind. And, inasmuch as weeks, nay, months, had pa.s.sed without her having taken so much as a morsel of food, and it had become an unfathomable mystery how she managed to keep alive, the doctor came to the conclusion that there was something in the case which lay beyond the domain of ordinary human science. He made some pretext for leaving the Castle, but the Count saw clearly enough that this doctor, whose skilfulness was well approved, and who had a high reputation to maintain, felt that the Countess's condition was too unintelligible, and, in fact, too strangely mysterious, for him to stay on there, witness of an illness impossible to be understood--as to which he felt he had no power to render a.s.sistance.

It may be readily imagined into what a state of mind all this put the Count. But there was more to come. Just at this juncture an old, privileged servant took an opportunity, when he found the Count alone, of telling him that the Countess went out every night, and did not come home till daybreak.

The Count's blood ran cold. It struck him, as a matter which he had not quite realized before, that, for a short time back, there had fallen upon him, regularly about midnight, a curiously unnatural sleepiness, which he now believed to be caused by some narcotic administered to him by the Countess, to enable her to get away un.o.bserved. The darkest suspicions and forebodings came into his mind. He thought of the diabolical mother, and that, perhaps, her instincts had begun to awake in her daughter. He thought of some possibility of a conjugal infidelity. He remembered the terrible hangman's son.

It was so ordained that the very next night was to explain this terrible mystery to him--that which alone could be the key to the Countess's strange condition.

She herself used, every evening, to make the tea which the Count always took before going to bed. This evening he did not take a drop of it, and when he went to bed he had not the slightest symptom of the sleepiness which generally came upon him as it got towards midnight.

However, he lay back on his pillows, and had all the appearance of being fast asleep as usual.

And then the Countess rose up very quietly, with the utmost precautions, came up to his bedside, held a lamp to his eyes, and then, convinced that he was sound asleep, went softly out of the room.

His heart throbbed fast. He got up, put on a cloak, and went after the Countess. It was a fine moonlight night, so that, though Aurelia had got a considerable start of him, he could see her distinctly going along in the distance in her white dress. She went through the park, right on to the burying-ground, and there she disappeared at the wall. The Count ran quickly after her in through the gate of the burying-ground, which he found open. There, in the bright moonlight, he saw a circle of frightful, spectral-looking creatures. Old women, half naked, were cowering down upon the ground, and in the midst of them lay the corpse of a man, which they were tearing at with wolfish appet.i.te.

Aurelia was amongst them.

The Count took flight in the wildest horror, and ran, without any idea where he was going or what he was doing, impelled by the deadliest terror, all about the walks in the park, till he found himself at the door of his own Castle as the day was breaking, bathed in cold perspiration. Involuntarily, without the capability of taking hold of a thought, he dashed up the steps, and went bursting through the pa.s.sages and into his own bedroom. There lay the Countess, to all appearance in the deepest and sweetest of sleeps. And the Count would fain have persuaded himself that some deceptive dream-image, or (inasmuch as his cloak, wet with dew, was a proof, if any had been needed, that he had really been to the burying-ground in the night) some soul-deceiving phantom had been the cause of his deathly horror. He did not wait for Aurelia's waking, but left the room, dressed, and got on to a horse.

His ride, in the exquisite morning, amid sweet-scented trees and shrubs, whence the happy songs of the newly-awakened birds greeted him, drove from his memory for a time the terrible images of the night. He went back to the Castle comforted and gladdened in heart.

But when he and the Countess sate down alone together at table, and, the dishes being brought and handed, she rose to hurry away, with loathing, at the sight of the food as usual, the terrible conviction that what he had seen was true, was reality, impressed itself irresistibly on his mind. In the wildest fury he rose from his seat, crying--

"Accursed misbirth of h.e.l.l! I understand your hatred of the food of mankind. You get your sustenance out of the burying-ground, d.a.m.nable creature that you are!"

As soon as those words had pa.s.sed his lips, the Countess flew at him, uttering a sound between a snarl and a howl, and bit him on the breast with the fury of a hyena. He dashed her from him on to the ground, raving fiercely as she was, and she gave up the ghost in the most terrible convulsions.

The Count became a maniac.

"Well," said Lothair, after there had been a few minutes of silence amongst the friends, "you have certainly kept your word, my incomparable Cypria.n.u.s, most thoroughly and magnificently. In comparison with this story of yours, vampirism is the merest children's tale--a funny Christmas story, to be laughed at. Oh, truly, everything in it is fearfully interesting, and so highly seasoned with asaf[oe]tida that an unnaturally excited palate, which has lost its relish for healthy, natural food, might immensely enjoy it."

"And yet," said Theodore, "our friend has discreetly thrown a veil over a great many things, and has pa.s.sed so rapidly over others, that his story has merely caused us a pa.s.sing feeling of the eery and shuddery--for which we are duly grateful to him. I remember very well having read this story in an old book, where everything was told with the most prolix enumeration of all the details; and the old woman's atrocities in particular were set forth in all their minutiae, truly _con amore_, so that the whole affair produced, and left behind it, a most repulsive impression, which it took a long while to get over. I was delighted when I had forgotten the horrible thing, and Cyprian ought not to have recalled it to my memory; although I must admit that he has acted in accordance with the principles of our patron saint Serapion, and caused us a sufficient thrill of horror, particularly towards the end. It made us all turn pale, particularly the narrator himself!"

"We cannot hurry away too quickly from this gruesome picture," Ottmar said. "And it will not serve as a dark background (as Vincenz expected it would), because the figures of it are in too glaring colours. Allow me, by way of a grand change of subject--a sort of sideways spring away from the h.e.l.l-broth which Cyprian has served up to us--to say a word or two (merely to give Vincenz time to clear his throat, as I hear him doing) concerning a certain aesthetic tea society, which was brought to my memory by a little paper which accidentally came into my hand to-day. Have I your permission, Vincenz?"

"Strictly speaking," said Vincenz, "it is a breach of all Serapiontic rule to keep chattering in this sort of style; and not only that, but, moreover, without any especial motive or inducement, the most unseemly things about gruesome vampires, and other such matters, are brought forward, so that I am obliged to shut my mouth just as I have got it opened. But go on, my Ottmar. The hours are flying, and I shall have the last word, like a quarrelsome woman, in spite of you. So go on, my Ottmar, go on."

"Chance," began Ottmar, "or rather, a kindly-intentioned introduction, brought me into the aesthetic tea society which I mentioned; and there were circ.u.mstances which induced me, or rendered it inc.u.mbent on me, to attend its meetings regularly for a time, although heaven knows they were tedious and wearisome enough. It greatly vexed me that, on an occasion when a really talented man read something which was full of true wit, and admirably appropriate to the occasion, all the people yawned, and grew impatient of it; whilst they were charmed and delighted by the marrowless, spiritless trash of a conceited young poetaster. This latter was all in the line of the gushing and the exuberant, but he also thought very highly of his epigrams. As what they were chiefly remarkable for was the absence of the sting in their tails, he always gave the signal for the laugh himself by beginning it at the proper time; and everybody then joined in it. One evening I asked, modestly, if I might be allowed to read out a few little verses which had occurred to me in moments of a certain amount of inspiration.

And as people were good enough to credit me with the possession of a certain amount of brains, my request was received with a good deal of applause. I took out my ma.n.u.script and read, with great solemnity--

"'ITALY'S MARVELS.

'When tow'rds the orient heav'n my gaze I bend, The western sun shines warm upon my back; Whilst, when I turn me to the beauteous west, The golden glory strikes upon mine eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Oh, sacred land! where nature thus displays Such mighty marvels to the sight of men, All adoration, quite compact of love.'

"'Ah! glorious! heavenly! dear Ottmar, and so deeply felt, Bo sensitively expressed, right out of the fulness of your heart, so rich in emotions!' cried the lady of the house, whilst several white ladies and black gentlemen (I only mean black-dressed ones, with great hearts under their jabots) followed her by crying, 'Glorious! heavenly!' and one young lady sighed profoundly, weeping away a scalding tear. Being asked to read something more, I gave to my voice the expression of a deeply moved heart, and read--

"'LIFE DEPTHS.

'A little lad at Yarrow Had a pretty little sparrow.

The other day he let it fly, And now 'tis gone, alas! we sigh, Heigho! the little lad at Yarrow He hath no more the pretty sparrow.'

"There was a fresh tumult of applause. They begged for more; but I said, modestly, that I could not but feel that stanzas of this kind, grasping as they did comprehensively at the bases of all life, have, in the long run, a tendency to impress the hearts of delicate, impa.s.sioned women too strongly, so that I should prefer to quote a pair of epigrams, in which the distinctive feature of the epigram--the sudden flashing out of the species of squib which const.i.tutes the tail--would not fail to be duly appreciated. I read--

"'WIT.

'The pudgy Master Schrein Drank many a gla.s.s of wine, But death cut short his thread.

Then quoth his neighbour Spry (A gossip, deep and sly), "Our pudgy Master Schrein No longer drinks his wine, And, why?--because he's dead."'

"When the sparkling wit of this roguish epigram had been sufficiently admired, I treated them to the following one in addition--

"'STINGING REPLY.

'Of Hans's book the folks make much ado; "Say, neighbour Hamm, hast read the wonder yet?"

Thus Humm to Hamm: and Hamm (a joker he) Said, "Faith, good Humm, I have not read it yet."'

"Everybody laughed heartily, but the lady of the house shook a minatory forefinger at me, saying, 'Ah, wicked scoffer! Is nothing to escape that scathing wit of yours?'

"The clever man shook hands with me as he pa.s.sed me, saying--

"'Admirably done. Much obliged to you.'

"The young poet turned his back upon me with much contempt. But the young lady who had shed a few tears over 'Italia's Marvels,' came to me, and blushing, as she cast down her eyes, said the maidenly, virginal heart was more disposed to open to the sense of sweet sadness than to the comic; and she begged me to give her a copy of the first poem I had read. She said she had felt so curiously happy and creepy when she heard it. I promised to give it to her, and I kissed the charming young lady's sufficiently pretty hand with all the appropriate rapture of a bard duly appreciated by beauty, with the sole intention of angering the poet, who cast upon me glances as of an infuriated basilisk."

"It is strange enough," said Vincenz, "that, without being in the smallest degree aware of it, you have spoken what may be called a Goldsmith's prologue to my story. Of course you notice my pretty allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet, and his question, 'Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?' What I mean is, that your prologue consists of what you have said about the irritated poet; for I am greatly mistaken if a poet of that kind is not one of the princ.i.p.al characters in my story; which story I am now going to begin, and I don't intend to stop it until the last word of it is out. And that last word is just as hard to speak as the first."

Vincenz read--