Too Rich: A Romance

by Adolf Streckfuss

Herr von Heydeck was a very wealthy man after the death of the boy, but he altered nothing in his manner of life. He lived just as solitary as before in the old castle, only leaving it for a few weeks in the year to visit the baths, for the sake of his health, the doctor said. Then occurred what surprised every one. Many years had passed since the boy's death, when, just nineteen years ago, Herr von Heydeck returned from one of his summer excursions that had lasted longer than usual; and this time he was not alone. In the carriage beside him sat a lovely young wife, looking like an angel with her blue eyes and golden curls. "The gentlemen can see now how she looked," the postmaster remarked, "for our Fräulein Hilda is very like her."

And the young mistress of Reifenstein was an angel. The village priest acknowledged that, although she was a heretic. No one in the village believed it when the doctor told them so until the Herr Pastor had confirmed it.

At first the people shook their heads and declared that such a thing had never been heard of in the Tyrol,--that a heretic should be mistress of Reifenstein. But the Herr Pastor himself comforted them, and he had good reasons for doing so, for a golden time had come for the poor in Tausens with the new mistress's arrival. Before long the people had forgotten that madame was a heretic. Although she never went to mass or to confession, she used often to go to church to listen to the sermon, and no one there could be more devout than she.

She never was haughty to any one, but had a kind word for the poorest. The only people she could not endure were the doctor and his wife. She made the first visit herself to the wife of the district judge, and begged her to come often to the castle, but although the doctor's wife went up to the castle the day after the bride arrived there, Madame von Heydeck could not have liked the former nurse from the first, for she never asked her to repeat her visit; and never as long as she lived did she set foot beneath the doctor's roof. She could not endure the doctor himself either. She told the judge's wife that she was afraid of his cunning gray eyes, but since there was no other physician in the country for miles round, she had to send for him whenever there was sickness at the castle. He never went there at other times, although they said he was still good friends with Herr von Heydeck, else how could he live as he did? He could hardly buy the wine that he drank with the couple of hundred guilders that he got from the peasants yearly; and certainly they would not have paid for the silk dresses and ornaments that his wife wore even on weekdays, not to speak of the show she made when she went to church on Sundays, or took a journey to Vienna, which she did two or three times every year.

All the villagers loved the mistress, and the master perfectly idolized her; he had become another man. There never were again such doings at the castle as there had been during the first mistress's reign. Herr and Madame von Heydeck lived for the most part a very quiet retired life, but they were not entirely without society. The judge and the collector, with their wives, were often invited to the castle, and sometimes there were grand visitors from Germany, relatives of madame, who was a countess.

But this happy life in the castle lasted only a few years. The second wife began to sicken: she lost her fresh colour; the doctor said the keen mountain-air did not agree with her, but she would not leave the beautiful country where she was so happy. At last, one autumn, she had to follow the doctor's advice. It is just twelve years ago now; her cough grew so bad that she herself saw that she could not spend another winter in the castle, around which the cold northern blasts swept continually. She went away with her husband and her little daughter, then six years old.

When the carriage drove through Tausens, all the villagers crowded about it to have a last word from the lovely lady, and she spoke to every one as kindly as she did to the judge himself.

She never came back. The doctor said she followed his advice too late. In Italy, at Nizza, they buried her. She died there hardly a year after she took leave of Tausens.

In a short time the master and his little girl returned. He brought a governess with him for his daughter, but she found it too lonely at the old castle. She soon went away again, and the master lived on alone, and the poor child would have had no woman to speak to if the judge's wife had not taken pity on it. She talked seriously to the Herr about his duty to his child, and told him how wrong it was to pay no attention to her education. And so the Herr took the little girl to Vienna to school. After that he led a more solitary life than ever at Castle Reifenstein, never leaving it except to go to Vienna three or four times a year to see his child; the rest of the time he spent without one human being to speak to: even the doctor was not allowed to go often to the castle.

And thus it has gone on until the present day, for even when a year ago Fräulein Hilda came home from Vienna, her father never altered his way of life. He sits up there in his gloomy old room with his books and plants and worms; he has grown old and feeble, so that he cannot take long walks among the mountains, but only in the castle garden, and he studies all day long,--his daughter is with him only at dinner and in the evenings.