_ CHAPTER VIII. AFTERWARD
Grimm Manor was in mourning. And, far more to the dead man's honour, Grimm Manor
was mourning.
The last of the ancient line was dead. The Grimms had been the ruling spirits in the drowsy little up-State town for more than two centuries. From father to son, the hierarchy had been handed down.
In days when the district was a wilderness and when the Grimms fought wild animal and Indian, and in the days when it was a prosperous suburb and the Grimms fought "scale" and locust, it had been the same:--ever a Grimm had swayed the little community.
Quiet in spite of his eccentric ways and dress, Peter Grimm had been known chiefly as a kindly neighbour and a shrewd business man. But now, after his death, all sorts and conditions of people came forward with queer stories of his private dealings.
There was a crotchety old Civil War veteran, for instance, who lived "on the Mountain" and who was a reputed miser. He now told how Peter Grimm had eked out his $8 a month pension for the past forty years and had made it possible for him to live in comfort. A crippled woman who, with her four children, had at one time seemed likely to become a public charge and who had been relieved in the nick of time by a legacy, now told the real source of that providential "legacy."
A farm boy who had yearned to study engineering and who had been helped unexpectedly by a secret fund, revealed the name of the fund's donor.
A market gardener whose house, barns, and horses had been destroyed by fire, proclaimed that insurance had not enabled him to make good his loss. For he had not been insured. Peter Grimm had set him on his feet again. And as in every other case, Grimm had imposed but one condition upon the gift:--absolute secrecy.
These were but a few cases out of dozens that were made known within the week after Grimm's death.
The little stone church of Grimm Manor was packed to the doors on the day that six big awkward men with tear blotched faces bore a silent burden up its aisle. A burden so covered with masses of fragrant blossoms as to blot out its gruesome oblong shape. The flowers were from Peter Grimm's own gardens, then in the riot of their June-tide glory.
And so, covered and drifted over with the glowing blooms he loved so well, the dead man went to his burial.
In the Grimm pew, with its silver plate and high, box-like sides, sat Frederik, Kathrien, and old Marta. The heir was as woe begone of face and as crassly sombre of raiment as even the most captious could have desired. The unostentatious pressure of his black bordered handkerchief to his eyes once or twice during the service attested to a sorrow that could not be kept wholly within stoic bounds.
Yet, oddly enough, it was Kathrien,--rather than Frederik or the frankly blubbering old housekeeper,--on whom people's eyes most often rested--rested and then dimmed with a haze of sympathy. The girl did not weep. Her face was very pale. But it was set and expressionless. Save for its big eyes it seemed a lifeless mask. The eyes alone were alive. And never for one instant did they move from the flower banked casket in front of the altar rail. They were tearless. But in their soft depths lurked the awed, unbelieving horror of a little child's that is for the first time brought face to face with the Black Half of life.
Kathrien was not in mourning. Her simple white dress caused no comment. For, by this time, it was known she was acting on what she believed to be Grimm's wishes. The dead man had ever had a loathing of all the hideous visible trappings of grief. He had been wont to hold forth on his aversion after every funeral he had been forced to attend.
"When it comes my time to fall asleep," he had said, during one of these Philippics, "I don't want anybody that cares for me to make death horrible by going around dressed like an undertaker. I'd as soon expect a mother to put on black after she had kissed her child good-night. There'd be just as much sense in it. If it's done because we're grieved to think where our friends have gone,--well and good. But if we're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, why dress as if we were sorry for them?"
Wherefore, Kathrien was wearing one of the white summer dresses he had loved. She had timidly suggested that Frederik also honour the dead man's prejudices. But the sad, reproachful look he had bent upon her at her first hint of the subject had silenced the girl and had left her half-convicted of heartlessness because of her own avoidance of black.
Willem was not at the funeral. After that first strange outburst on learning that Grimm was dead, the child had said no word all day. At night when Kathrien came to take him to bed, she found him in a high fever.
Dr. McPherson had been sent for, and had examined the child closely, but could find no palpable cause for the malady.
"He's an odd little fellow," he told Kathrien. "Like no other boy I've ever known. The Scotch call such children 'fey' and prophesy short lives for them. And the prophecy usually comes true. There's always been something psychic about Willem. A hypnotist or a medium would look on him as a treasure.
"All the diagnosis I can make is that Peter's death caused a shock to the boy's never strong nerves and that the shock has caused the fever. Keep him in bed for a few days. He'll probably come around all right. There doesn't seem to be anything really serious--except that in a constitution like his everything is apt to be more or less serious."
After the funeral, life went on outwardly much as before at the Grimm home. The only change was the impalpable one which occurs in a room when a clock stops.
And, in fulfilment of Peter Grimm's last request, preparations for the "June wedding" were begun. It was Frederik who tactfully broached the theme. Kathrien, after a look of helpless fear, nodded acquiescence.
"I promised him," she said faintly. "And he died while the promise was still scarcely spoken. The smile of happiness it brought to his dear old face was on it when they laid him to sleep. I
couldn't break that promise."
"And you wouldn't, if you could. I know that," said Frederik tenderly. "Dear one, I would not urge the wedding at a time like this if it had not been his last wish that we should be married this very month."
"Yes," she agreed lifelessly. "It was his wish. And we must do it."
And with this unenthusiastic assent Frederik was forced to be satisfied. So the preparations were pushed on with a furtive, almost apologetic, haste.
Mrs. Batholommey entered into the spirit of the affair with a lugubrious zest that would have sickened Kathrien had it not taken so much of the burden of arrangement-making off her own tired young shoulders.
It was to Frederik and Mrs. Batholommey that every one at length turned for directions in details for the wedding, not to the still-faced girl who seemed to know or to care nothing about the way matters were to be conducted.
And this gave Kathrien surcease,--a breathing space wherein to try to think with a brain from which sorrow had driven the power of clear thought; a time to plan, to
realise, to remember,--with faculties too numb to carry out the will power's intent. The days crept past her like shadows. And the wedding day drew near. But still she could not wholly rouse herself from the dumb inertia that gripped her. _