A Legacy (6 page)

Count Bernin was a rich man. Clara was his only daughter. She was then a woman in her mid-twenties who showed signs of character and integrity, and more than signs of will. She had great piety, and combined a staunch and simple orthodoxy of Catholic creed with a righteous line of conduct that seemed positively Protestant. She was long and spare, and was not, but seemed, taller than Gustavus, with features that were good and would become better with a more accordant age. Her clothes neither intended nor attracted notice. She had beautiful hands, and for the taste of the period not quite enough hair.

Her mother was dead; her brother was a papal chamberlain. Her father had found it necessary to impress upon
her early that her duty lay in labouring the vineyard wherever it was most lacking, in short, that in the present century her call was in the world. As the years passed and Clara took no step towards that tiresome vocation, Count Bernin became more specific. He began to speak of the young man—young for his career—who was already Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and in case his daughter's aversion to marriage to a Lutheran could not be overcome, he also mentioned the Catholic widower who had just been appointed to the brand-new Governorship of Alsace-Lorraine. Then Clara spoke of Gustavus. . . .

Gustavus, at twenty-three, was certainly in love with Clara. Perhaps it became him. Like everybody else he must have had youthful and immortal longings. So far he had had his family's easy way with women, and now he was discovering something else. He believed that he was conquering virtue herself, and attaining it too. It is always a pleasing prospect. Even the worst of us would like to change, like at least to think—and talk—of becoming better; the attentions of our reformers are so flattering, and at no other time is the ascending path tripped so lightly as when we are in love. Clara von Bernin, who was so unbending, who when sent by her father to a dance would not dance but prayed, almost audibly, for those present, who did not speak to and seldom was approached by the men of her own age, unbent to Gustavus. She gave him the confidence of seriousness; she spoke with almost amused forbearance of what she called his pagan upbringing; the old Baron was a good man, she said, at least at heart— there were many ways of pleasing God. Though for Gustavus there was something finer; she spoke of his immortal soul which nobody had mentioned since the lower catechism. She spoke of what together they might do: for Lan-den, for salvation, for the poor. Purpose. Elevation. Infinity. It was magnifying, it was heady; it was new. And it was also clear that it was brought about because Clara von Bernin Sigmundshofen found him irresistible as a man.

There was something else. Gustavus wanted to get away. Gustavus had never quite belonged to Landen: he often worried about the neighbours, and now he began to see his family in a new light. He did not really seek the Power and the Glory, but neither, like his father, did he wish to vivre heureux; he wanted to be respectable. He had the soul of a modern bourgeois, and a niche should have been found for him in a bank. So it was a rather pathetic form of poetic justice that he should have sought to make his escape from nonconformity into the fire of Clara's rigorism and the high politics of Count Bernin. For the present, he was in love with the glass held up to him by Clara, passably attracted by the improbable conquest of her person, puffed above his brothers, and he did love her beau nom.

As for Clara! Who can tell? What did she make of it? What did she make of herself? Her contemporaries were surprised when she did not take the veil; I knew her only in old age, and near seventy, in harsh black, upright as a pole, with luminous eyes and a face both tranquil and ravaged, she still appeared the least secular of women. She must have loved Gustavus. It is not imaginable. To me who saw her as the one figure of my childhood who never changed her mind, who did not think of herself, who always was the same, who acted in everything for reasons totally different from those of anybody else, and always could be counted on to act, who always censored, never yielded, never bent to humour, temper, self-interest or circumstance, it is incredible that this tower, this dreaded and derided rock from whom my mother even could not strike a smile, should have been animated once by the most fallible of human emotions. That she gave way to it is not conceivable. And yet she did.

Whatever may have moved Clara proved powerful enough to move Count Bernin. Against her wasteful project, he lined up principles and influences—filial obedience, the duties of the militant, mortification of the will; and priests. Priests calling, priests to stay; priests in conclave
in the library, priests casual after tea, priests in the confessional. But there Count Bernin was handicapped, for Clara's confessor, one might have known it, was a latter-day Jansenist. And this good man, Father Martin, looked upon the Count's plan of marriage to a heretical cabinet minister with as much distaste as Clara did herself. The campaign went on all winter and well into the spring, and throughout it they were always on the thin ice of Clara's possible vocation. Clara remained composed: the alliance, she maintained, was irreproachable. And there of course she had him. For the Feldens by the standards of their common world were that. They were one of the oldest families in Baden and their quarterings at least proved them the purest of Catholics. The old Baron was a great pet at Court. The people liked their ways, and they were without knowing it much loved. In fact they were exactly what Count Bernin appeared to stand for. Landen was rather mortgaged, but then few people in Baden, except indeed the Bernins, were really rich. The boys' looks were considered romantic, and the attachment between Clara and Gustavus was already being talked about with sentiment. The old Baron might appear eccentric and old-fashioned, but however much Count Bernin deplored his lack of public spirit or was irritated by the shiftless, obstinate, private way in which the old man went on ordering his life, he saw that this would not be seen good reason for stopping the engagement of a daughter to one of the four well-grown sons of a country gentleman, a less fortuned equal and a neighbour. If there was one thing Bernin disliked, it was to show his hand.

Meanwhile the Governor of Alsace was doing very well without Clara's promptings; Count Bernin daily found it harder to believe that his daughter ever could be made to fit serviceably into his plans; at last, wearily in May, he gave a temporizing consent to Clara's engagement to Gustavus.

They called at Landen. While the young couple walked about the grounds, the old Baron saw Count Bernin in the
library. In age, their difference was a bare ten years, but Baron Felden liked to pretend that he was eighty. They were amiable. The old Baron could never resist the attractions of his own hospitality; he might rail against impending guests for hours, but on arrival covered them with vintage Oloroso and Havanas. Bernin could make himself appear as aimless as his host. They talked. Of bird migration and the badness of the times, of a neighbour, old Countess Frassen who had just been convicted by the new busybodies of selling watered wine and carted off to the county gaol.

"Such interference," said the old Baron.

"An unfortunate incident," said Count Bernin.

"Ah yes," said the old Baron, "watering wine—a great mistake."

He showed his guest a boat which Gabriel had rigged inside a bottle and asked him what he thought of the processes of Monsieur Pasteur. He was at ease to see that Bernin's enthusiasm for the engagement was no greater than his own. The Count saw this too, and a deal besides.

In the middle of this visit my grandfather was called away to see a cow. He happened to be the most competent veterinary surgeon in three counties and his tenants insisted on his attending their every confinement.

Julius appeared, decorative, composed, and offered to do the round.

To people's boredom and surprise Count Bernin talked to them of economics. He foresaw much social unrest. The North being embarrassed, he told them, by insuperable problems of expanding industries and low land wages, an ostentatiously contented rural population should be nursed in the agrarian South. The idea was not popular among the Count's landed friends. As he strolled about his neighbour's grounds, he felt particularly irritated by the fact that the old Baron did in some way manage to have one of the best run farms in Baden, even if there were not many profits, and that his tenants appeared to be better off and better looked after than anywhere else in Germany.

He tried to convey something of this to Julius.

"My father likes them to eat well," said Julius. "He tells them it is foolish to sell their veal and vegetables and dine off dumplings and fried potatoes."

The Count touched on other aspects of the question.

Julius listened with politeness, concealing rather well incomprehension and complete noninterest.

Count Bernin's mind began to work. "Twenty? You said you were?"

He drew Julius out about his prospects and intentions. Count Bernin was very good about this.

So was Julius. He answered with perfect grace, telling nothing.

Count Bernin took this in, too. "And there are four of you?" he said. "Four sons!"

The evenings were still chilly. Julius suggested they would find a fire in the smoking room.

It was precisely at this moment that the Benzheim authorities, through the War Office, chose to break the news of Johannes's disappearance to his father. The boy had been gone five weeks and must be either dead or overseas. They were not in an enviable position, and they had settled to be straight about it. The War Office was staffed by old-fashioned Prussians who exacted all kinds of enormities from others and themselves; they were able to keep their mouths shut, but like their old Emperor Wilhelm they did not approve of lies. They decided to tell Baron Felden the grounds of public expediency for the sake of which he had not been notified, to admit their mistake and ask him to view the case not as a father but as a German patriot and a member of the ruling caste. The appeal was never made to the old Baron, for it was Count Bernin who on returning with Julius from the home farm found Major von Grautkopf, helmet and white gloves in hand, standing waiting in the hall.

"Sir—it is my duty to inform you of some very serious news," said the Major.

"Sir?" said Count Bernin.

The calf was dead, they hoped to pull through the cow. The old Baron had forgotten all about Count Bernin. On his return he found him in possession, and a man in uniform shouting in the hall.

The Major turned on him at once.

"I understand the boy is here!"

"What?" said the old Baron, "what?"

"We were not informed."

"The omission appears to have been mutual," said Count Bernin.

"The boy must be ordered to get ready at once."

"What can you mean?" said the Baron. "Jules, tu as Vair decoiffe."

Julius, in fact, looked five years younger. "Papa, they want to take Jean back to Benzheim.

"What?" said the Baron.

"Now, if I might explain," said Count Bernin. It was the first time he had heard of the affair, but in the last half-hour he had listened to rather more than he should. "This gentleman—"

"Von Grautkopf," said the Major.

"Major von Grautkopf has come all the way from Berlin."

"By train?" said the Baron. "Very uncomfortable journey. Not that I've ever been there."

"I do not think—" said the Major.

"All the way from Berlin," said Count Bernin, "on the assumption—"

"He came to tell us that Jean was dead," said Julius.

Count Bernin had indeed allowed the Major to proceed to this length. The Major was furious.

"Un fou," said the Baron.

"He naturally feels—" said Count Bernin.

"Where is the boy?" said the Major.

"I don't think you quite appreciate the situation," said Count Bernin. The Count, too, and it must be remembered under Julius's eye, had had a difficult time of it.

Slower than his neighbour, grasp came to the old Baron
only then. He turned on the Major. "Monsieur I'Officier — this is an enormity. How dare you come here? How dare you reproach me for not having written to you about my son? My son was returned to me from your place three-quarters starved, unwashed—"

"But Baron—"

"And you have the impertinence to ask for him. I hope you'll lose all your pupils."

"Baronl"

"Nothing will be gained—" said Count Bernin.

"You would oblige me, Monsieur," said the old Baron, "by leaving my house."

The Major clicked, the old Baron bowed; the Major clicked to Count Bernin, Count Bernin also bowed and very nearly shrugged. Julius was with the helmet by the door.

"Well" said the old Baron and sat down. "Well!"

Count Bernin said nothing.

Presently the old Baron said, "Where is Jean? Jean ought to have heard this. Jules, va chercher Jean. You will stay to dinner, Bernin, won't you? You—and the young woman."

"Thank you. As a matter of fact I should like to meet your son Johannes. The boy must have an uncommon deal of pluck."

"C'est un brave cceur," said his father.

But Johannes could not be found.

All through dinner the old man fretted. Where was Jean? Why was Jean not here? So mal-eleve, so unnatural. Then, when it was time to get out the Bernins' horses, Johannes was reported hiding in the stables.

"How very odd," the old Baron said. "Gustavus, go and fetch him."

Gustavus was talking to Clara; but Gustavus went.

He came back alone.

"Where is your brother?"

"He won't come in."

"He won't come in?"

"Oh he's mad," said Gustavus and returned to the sofa.

Julius had gone too. "Papa: he is frightened."

"Nonsense!"

"Oh, is he?" said Count Bernin.

The old Baron went to see for himself, and they followed him. Johannes was discovered in a stall with his arms round a small bull. He was trembling all over and his black curls were matted with sweat.

"Jean," said his father, "Jean!"