<h2><SPAN name="page39"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>THE WOLVES OF CERNOGRATZ</h2>
<p>“Are there any old legends attached to the
castle?” asked Conrad of his sister. Conrad was a
prosperous Hamburg merchant, but he was the one
poetically-dispositioned member of an eminently practical
family.</p>
<p>The Baroness Gruebel shrugged her plump shoulders.</p>
<p>“There are always legends hanging about these old
places. They are not difficult to invent and they cost
nothing. In this case there is a story that when any one
dies in the castle all the dogs in the village and the wild
beasts in forest howl the night long. It would not be
pleasant to listen to, would it?”</p>
<p>“It would be weird and romantic,” said the Hamburg
merchant.</p>
<p>“Anyhow, it isn’t true,” said the Baroness
complacently; “since we bought the place we have had proof
that nothing of the sort happens. When the old
mother-in-law died last springtime we all listened, but there was
no howling. It is just a story that lends dignity to the
place without costing anything.”</p>
<p>“The story is not as you have told it,” said
Amalie, the grey old governess. Every one turned and looked
at her in astonishment. She was wont to sit silent and prim
and faded in her place at table, never speaking unless some one
spoke to her, and there were few who troubled themselves to make
conversation with her. To-day a sudden volubility had
descended on her; she continued to talk, rapidly and nervously,
looking straight in front of her and seeming to address no one in
particular.</p>
<p>“It is not when <i>any one</i> dies in the castle that
the howling is heard. It was when one of the Cernogratz
family died here that the wolves came from far and near and
howled at the edge of the forest just before the death
hour. There were only a few couple of wolves that had their
lairs in this part of the forest, but at such a time the keepers
say there would be scores of them, gliding about in the shadows
and howling in chorus, and the dogs of the castle and the village
and all the farms round would bay and howl in fear and anger at
the wolf chorus, and as the soul of the dying one left its body a
tree would crash down in the park. That is what happened
when a Cernogratz died in his family castle. But for a
stranger dying here, of course no wolf would howl and no tree
would fall. Oh, no.”</p>
<p>There was a note of defiance, almost of contempt, in her voice
as she said the last words. The well-fed, much-too-well
dressed Baroness stared angrily at the dowdy old woman who had
come forth from her usual and seemly position of effacement to
speak so disrespectfully.</p>
<p>“You seem to know quite a lot about the von Cernogratz
legends, Fraulein Schmidt,” she said sharply; “I did
not know that family histories were among the subjects you are
supposed to be proficient in.”</p>
<p>The answer to her taunt was even more unexpected and
astonishing than the conversational outbreak which had provoked
it.</p>
<p>“I am a von Cernogratz myself,” said the old
woman, “that is why I know the family history.”</p>
<p>“You a von Cernogratz? You!” came in an
incredulous chorus.</p>
<p>“When we became very poor,” she explained,
“and I had to go out and give teaching lessons, I took
another name; I thought it would be more in keeping. But my
grandfather spent much of his time as a boy in this castle, and
my father used to tell me many stories about it, and, of course,
I knew all the family legends and stories. When one has
nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with
especial care. I little thought when I took service with
you that I should one day come with you to the old home of my
family. I could wish it had been anywhere else.”</p>
<p>There was silence when she finished speaking, and then the
Baroness turned the conversation to a less embarrassing topic
than family histories. But afterwards, when the old
governess had slipped away quietly to her duties, there arose a
clamour of derision and disbelief.</p>
<p>“It was an impertinence,” snapped out the Baron,
his protruding eyes taking on a scandalised expression;
“fancy the woman talking like that at our table. She
almost told us we were nobodies, and I don’t believe a word
of it. She is just Schmidt and nothing more. She has
been talking to some of the peasants about the old Cernogratz
family, and raked up their history and their stories.”</p>
<p>“She wants to make herself out of some
consequence,” said the Baroness; “she knows she will
soon be past work and she wants to appeal to our
sympathies. Her grandfather, indeed!”</p>
<p>The Baroness had the usual number of grandfathers, but she
never, never boasted about them.</p>
<p>“I dare say her grandfather was a pantry boy or
something of the sort in the castle,” sniggered the Baron;
“that part of the story may be true.”</p>
<p>The merchant from Hamburg said nothing; he had seen tears in
the old woman’s eyes when she spoke of guarding her
memories—or, being of an imaginative disposition, he
thought he had.</p>
<p>“I shall give her notice to go as soon as the New Year
festivities are over,” said the Baroness; “till then
I shall be too busy to manage without her.”</p>
<p>But she had to manage without her all the same, for in the
cold biting weather after Christmas, the old governess fell ill
and kept to her room.</p>
<p>“It is most provoking,” said the Baroness, as her
guests sat round the fire on one of the last evenings of the
dying year; “all the time that she has been with us I
cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill, too ill to go
about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the
house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and
breaks down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so
withered and shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the
same.”</p>
<p>“Most annoying,” agreed the banker’s wife,
sympathetically; “it is the intense cold, I expect, it
breaks the old people up. It has been unusually cold this
year.”</p>
<p>“The frost is the sharpest that has been known in
December for many years,” said the Baron.</p>
<p>“And, of course, she is quite old,” said the
Baroness; “I wish I had given her notice some weeks ago,
then she would have left before this happened to her. Why,
Wappi, what is the matter with you?”</p>
<p>The small, woolly lapdog had leapt suddenly down from its
cushion and crept shivering under the sofa. At the same
moment an outburst of angry barking came from the dogs in the
castle-yard, and other dogs could be heard yapping and barking in
the distance.</p>
<p>“What is disturbing the animals?” asked the
Baron.</p>
<p>And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that
had roused the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage;
heard a long-drawn whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at
one moment leagues away, at others sweeping across the snow until
it appeared to come from the foot of the castle walls. All
the starved, cold misery of a frozen world, all the relentless
hunger-fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and haunting
melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in
that wailing cry.</p>
<p>“Wolves!” cried the Baron.</p>
<p>Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come
from everywhere.</p>
<p>“Hundreds of wolves,” said the Hamburg merchant,
who was a man of strong imagination.</p>
<p>Moved by some impulse which she could not have explained, the
Baroness left her guests and made her way to the narrow,
cheerless room where the old governess lay watching the hours of
the dying year slip by. In spite of the biting cold of the
winter night, the window stood open. With a scandalised
exclamation on her lips, the Baroness rushed forward to close
it.</p>
<p>“Leave it open,” said the old woman in a voice
that for all its weakness carried an air of command such as the
Baroness had never heard before from her lips.</p>
<p>“But you will die of cold!” she expostulated.</p>
<p>“I am dying in any case,” said the voice,
“and I want to hear their music. They have come from
far and wide to sing the death-music of my family. It is
beautiful that they have come; I am the last von Cernogratz that
will die in our old castle, and they have come to sing to
me. Hark, how loud they are calling!”</p>
<p>The cry of the wolves rose on the still winter air and floated
round the castle walls in long-drawn piercing wails; the old
woman lay back on her couch with a look of long-delayed happiness
on her face.</p>
<p>“Go away,” she said to the Baroness; “I am
not lonely any more. I am one of a great old family . . .
”</p>
<p>“I think she is dying,” said the Baroness when she
had rejoined her guests; “I suppose we must send for a
doctor. And that terrible howling! Not for much money
would I have such death-music.”</p>
<p>“That music is not to be bought for any amount of
money,” said Conrad.</p>
<p>“Hark! What is that other sound?” asked the
Baron, as a noise of splitting and crashing was heard.</p>
<p>It was a tree falling in the park.</p>
<p>There was a moment of constrained silence, and then the
banker’s wife spoke.</p>
<p>“It is the intense cold that is splitting the
trees. It is also the cold that has brought the wolves out
in such numbers. It is many years since we have had such a
cold winter.”</p>
<p>The Baroness eagerly agreed that the cold was responsible for
these things. It was the cold of the open window, too,
which caused the heart failure that made the doctor’s
ministrations unnecessary for the old Fraulein. But the
notice in the newspapers looked very well—</p>
<blockquote><p>“On December 29th, at Schloss Cernogratz,
Amalie von Cernogratz, for many years the valued friend of Baron
and Baroness Gruebel.”</p>
</blockquote>
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