It was over,--over and gone,--sentence had been pronounced,--her child's life was destroyed. This she repeated to herself again and again, without any clear comprehension of the fact, as she lay, still half-stunned, on the floor where she had sunk down when he left her. After a while she staggered to her feet, and began to move aimlessly to and fro, steadying herself at times by grasping a chair or table. At last she sank into a seat, her memory had given way;--she asked herself the meaning of the dull weight at her heart, her eyes wandered vaguely around, her thoughts dazed by agony groped backward through the past, and forward through the future, finding no resting-place. She recalled her child's birth, and how every one rejoiced in it, except herself; when the doctor showed her the little thing as a perfect model of a baby, did she not thrust it from her impatiently? Farther back, beyond Oswald's birth, all light faded--everything was dark. That within her which had sinned had been so long, so completely dead; a woman capable of such a lofty ideal, whom maternal affection had so entirely purified and refined, could not but lose all comprehension of her past. All her inner life preceding the hours of Oswald's life, was to her mental consciousness misty and undefined; the birth of her child had revealed a new world to her, and though for years she had denied it, and had crushed down the mother in her, it was none the less true that after his birth she had no interest save her child. Urgent regard for her health prompted the physician to order that she should nourish the boy herself, if only for the first two months of his life; she obeyed him fretfully, eyeing the child suspiciously--nay, well-nigh malignantly,--when it was first placed in her arms, and then .... then she enjoyed it, and longed for the hours when her baby was to be brought to her, and when the two months were over, and the physician informed her that she could now without detriment to her health hand over the child to a hired nurse, she was angry, and felt strangely vexed with the man, who after all had thought only to please her in relieving her of what he supposed was an intolerable burden. What was intolerable to her was the idea of laying her child on the breast of a stranger, and for an instant she was on the point of flatly refusing to do it. But no, that would have been too eccentric, and she gave the boy up. For a couple of days she feared she should lose her reason, so consumed was she with restless jealousy; she could not sleep at night, and when the hours came round at which her baby had usually been brought to her, she trembled from head to foot, and sometimes burst into tears of agitation and longing. She could not forget the warm little bundle that had lain upon her knees, and the boy had thriven so well in her arms, had begun to be so pretty, to smile back at her and to gaze slowly about him in solemn surprise, after the fashion of such human atomies, to whom everything around is strange, and a deep mystery. Still she conquered herself and avoided all sight of the child, trying to divert her mind, but--'the wine of life was drawn.'
The child's existence caused her infinite torment; she was not one whom shams could satisfy. She called everything by its right name, and this foisting of a false heir upon the Lodrins she called, in her soul a crime. Sometimes she wished he would die--that would have untangled everything;--good Heavens! how many children die! but he--was never even ill, he throve and grew strong.
The Count, who had never before ventured upon the slightest remonstrances with his headstrong wife, now reproached her continually for her neglect of the child. She listened to him with brows gloomily contracted and lips compressed, but said not a word in reply. In winter she could contrive never to see the boy, but in summer this was more difficult, especially at times when her husband declared that he could receive no guests at the castle, that he wished to be alone. She could hardly set foot in the park without hearing soft childish laughter, or without seeing some plaything, or the gleam of a little white dress among the bushes. Once, on a lovely day in June, after a thunder-shower, as she was walking in the park she suddenly noticed two tiny footprints on the damp gravel. She stood still, her eyes riveted upon the delicate outlines, when from the shrubbery close at hand a little creature toddled up to her, grasped her dress with his chubby hands and looked up roguishly at her out of his large dark eyes. But she extricated herself, and hurried past the little man so quickly and impatiently, that he lost his balance and fell down. What else could she do but turn and look at him....? Had he cried like other children of his age it would probably have made no impression upon her; but he sat stock-still, his little legs stretched out straight, and gazed at her in indignant surprise like, a little king to whom homage had been denied. He could not understand it. He was a comical little fellow, with tiny red shoes, a white frock that did not reach to his bare knees, and a broad-brimmed, starched, linen hat tied beneath his chin, shading his charming little face. In a flash her heart was conscious of a consuming thirst; she stooped and lifted him in her arms.
Some children there are who dislike to be caressed, and will fretfully turn away their heads from their mother's kisses, but little Ossi was of a different stamp, and responded with a bewitching readiness to his mother's tenderness, nestling his head on her shoulder with a satisfied chuckle, and pressing his little lips to her cheek. For just one moment she resolved to yield, she would forget everything, and take her fill of kisses, and of delight in his beauty, in his bright eager looks, and in the droll way in which words, robbed of every harsh consonant by rosy little lips, came rippling like the twittering of birds.
"Papa!--Papa!" the child shouted. She looked round,--there stood the old Count watching her in mute delight.
"Has he conquered you too at last?" he exclaimed, "there's no finer little fellow in all Austria than our Ossi!" And he held out his hands to the child. She let him be taken from her, and without a word walked away toward the castle. Ah, what a wretched night she passed after this episode! No, she would not think of him, it hurt too much.
Time passed; for weeks she would not look at him; then suddenly she would appear when he was taking his lessons, and for a couple of days she would watch him with a morbid intensity which sometimes degenerated into lurking distrust; then finding nothing to justify the distrust she would again turn from him.
In spite of his excellent disposition the boy might perhaps have grown up a good-natured but inconsiderate egotist, had not Count Lodrin taken an unwearied interest in his training, guiding him aright with the most affectionate gentleness. The influence of the frail old man upon the child was invaluable. In the society of an invalid so tender and so loving, the boy learned what he could have learned nowhere else,--to bow before weakness, and helplessness, the only two potentates whose sway natures as proud as Oswald's acknowledge. He learned to refine his innate haughtiness by the most considerate delicacy towards his inferiors, and to consider his pride as inseparable from devotion to duty and an impregnable sense of honour.
Sometimes the Countess would steal to the door of the library, where the father and son were wont to talk together, and would listen. She did so once when the old man was seriously reproving the boy for some rudeness that he had shown towards his tutor.
"I know it, papa, I am wrong, but Herr Müller is a coarse kind of man, and I cannot abide coarseness," she heard the boy say, and the old man rejoined gently, "He is unfortunate, Ossi, remember that before all. How, think you, could he endure his lot if in his veins ran such blood as yours?"
All things swam before the mother's eyes, as with downcast looks she hurried away, locked herself in her room and wrung her hands.
* * * * * She never addressed a kind word to him, treating him with studied indifference, with almost malignant severity. Under such treatment the boy suffered, grew pale, thin, and nervous. Then came a damp, warm autumn, the skies were every day veiled behind leaden clouds,--it drizzled continually without actually raining, and the leaves instead of falling rotted on the trees. A terrible epidemic broke out in the country around Tornow, and raged like a pestilence, carrying off victim after victim, until at last it appeared in the market town itself.
The Count, fanatically faithful as ever to the duties of his position, would not leave Tornow for fear of increasing the panic, but he entreated his wife to go away and take the boy with her, but this she obstinately refused to do, not even allowing Oswald with his tutor to be sent to her relatives.
One morning the Count came to her saying, "Ossi has the fever! The disease is of a malignant and contagious character; it is quite unnecessary that you should expose yourself to it, Schmidt and I can take care of him." Whereupon he left her.
She was fearfully agitated; the hour of her liberation was perhaps about to strike; she determined not to lift a finger to save the child's life. She forced herself to keep away from his sick-room for several days; the boy rapidly grew worse; for his recovery the Count had mass said in the chapel of the castle, although he himself was not present at it,--he would not leave the child's bedside; but of course the Countess attended at the religious celebration. She was very generally beloved by her servants, but on that day she could see on their faces ill-concealed surprise, nay, scarce-repressed indignation, beneath their conventional expression of respect.
After the Elevation the chaplain delivered a short discourse in which he praised the sick boy's amiable qualities, and requested all to join him in imploring God's grace for the heir of the house. Tears ran down the cheeks of all the old servants while the priest prayed, but the Countess kneeled on herprie-dieu, her face pale, her eyes tearless, her lips scarcely moving.
The day wore on; hour after hour passed into eternity, the early autumnal twilight descended from the gray clouds upon the earth, and gradually deepened to black night; throughout the castle reigned unbroken silence, and not even outside was heard the sound of a falling leaf. The Countess's pulses throbbed with a feverish longing for her child, that nearly drove her mad. She wondered if he in turn did not feel a yearning for her presence?--if his grief at her absence from his sick-bed did not aggravate the disease?--how if it were killing him? She pictured him borne away upon the dark, swiftly-rushing stream of eternity so close beside her that she might have stretched forth her hand to save him,--and she dared not! Oh, that she could have commanded fate, "Take him, I will not keep him, but take me too!"
Minutes grew to hours; perhaps at that very instant he was breathing his last. She sprang up,--she would not nurse him back to life, no, but she must see him once more, once more clasp him to her heart before he died.
She hurried to the door of the sick-room, listened, and heard the low monotonous moan that is wrung from a half-conscious sufferer. She entered; at the foot of the bed sat the old Count, bent and weary. Schmidt, Oswald's old nurse, was applying a cold, wet towel to the boy's forehead. The Countess took it from her, thrust her aside with jealous haste, and herself laid the wet cloth upon her son's head. Strange! at the touch of her hand he opened his eyes, and even in his half-unconscious state, recognised her with a faint, wondering smile.
From that hour she never left his bedside. The famous physician in whom she had great confidence, and for whom she telegraphed to Vienna, frequently declared afterwards: "Never have I seen a child nursed with such devotion by a mother!"
She tended him like a sister of charity,--like a maid-servant. She gloried in his refusal to allow any one else to wait upon him, that he screamed with pain when another hand than hers touched him, that he turned from his medicine if she did not administer it.
The crisis passed; the physician pronounced all danger over if no unforeseen relapse occurred. This he made known to the Count and Countess in the antechamber of the sick-room, whither they had withdrawn to hear his opinion. When the Count feelingly thanked him for saving his child's life, Doctor M .... denied that any credit was due to him, "my share," said he, "in this fortunate result is but trifling; the recovery of our little patient is owing solely to the wonderful nursing that he has been blessed with," and turning to the Countess he added respectfully, "Your Excellency may say with pride that your child owes his life to you for the second time."
The ground seemed to reel beneath her,--she could have shouted for joy, and yet never in her life had she been so wretched as at this blissful, terrible moment. Without a word she returned to the sick-room, and sat down by the little white bed; she motioned to Schmidt who had been watching the boy's sleep, to retire, she wanted to be alone with her child. He was sleeping soundly, his breath came and went regularly, and his brown head rested comfortably on the pillow. She could not look long enough at the dear little emaciated face, wearing now a smile in sleep. He was like herself, his every feature resembled hers, his straight, broad brow, the short, delicately chiselled nose, the finely curved mouth, firm chin, nay, even the gleam of gold in the dark hair about the temples, all were her own. Even his hands lying half-closed on the coverlet resembled hers; they were longer and more muscular, but they were shaped like hers. How she admired him, how proud she was of him in her inmost soul! She had not been able to let him die,--heowed his life to her for the second time!It was useless to combat a feeling that always gained the upper-hand; but how was she to adjust herself to her false position?--what was her duty? This question she asked herself in desperate earnest, honestly ready to atone for her guilt by any sacrifice. Her stern, cold duty was perhaps to go to her husband, confess to him the terrible truth, and then, with her child, and with all the means that was her own, depart for some quarter of the world where amid strangers she could provide a tolerable existence for her boy. She shuddered!--her own disgrace was of no consequence; she suffered so fearfully beneath the weight of the falsehood of her life, that it would have been a relief to burst its bonds,--but her child!--Why, in comparison with the torture to which her confession would subject him, it would be merciful to stab him to the heart. He was too old and too precocious not to appreciate fully the disgrace of his position; he was too proud and too sensitive to find any consolation or support under such fearful circumstances in the love of a dishonoured mother.
She must continue to carry out the lie. Who would thus be the sufferer?--Her own conscience; hers must be the torture! A confession would ruin the existence of her husband, and her son, and would overwhelm two families with disgrace, while now ....! The only being who had any claim to the Lodrin estates was a good-for-naught, who never could be to his people what Oswald promised to be. And suddenly she seemed to see her duty clear before her, a noble sacrificial duty!
She would so train Oswald that he should fill the station that he occupied better than any other could possibly fill it,--his excellence should justify her deceit.
She solemnly vowed, by her child's bedside, to watch over his heart and soul, to guard his fine qualities like a priceless treasure, to see that no breath of evil should ever taint them. Then she bent over him and kissed his hands gently. He woke and smiled, whispering, "Mamma, will you go on loving me when I am well?"
Love him indeed! Ah, how she petted and indulged him during his long convalescence, how willingly she complied with all his little whims, how gladly she submitted to the exactions of his affection, half selfish though they were at times, as those of an invalid on the road to recovery are so apt to be! How well she knew how to amuse, and occupy him! how many games of chess and of cards she played with him! how she read aloud for his entertainment, albeit unused to such exertion, Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, and Dumas'Trois Mousquetaires!
When he had fully recovered, her treatment of him was more serious. She kept the vow she had made to herself, she watched his every impulse, his every breath, spared no pains to train him to be,--what he must be to satisfy her conscience, her pride,--a blessing to all around him. She even did what was for her the hardest task of all, she repressed her tenderness for him, lest it should make him effeminate. She made it her duty, when the time came for him to resume his studies, to engage a new tutor for him, and, quite out of patience with the cringing, fawning candidates for the position that had hitherto made their appearance in Tornow, she wrote to a foreign Professor of her acquaintance asking him to aid her in procuring the person whom she needed. A month later there came to Tornow a young fellow with the lightest possible hair standing up like a brush above a very intelligent face, not at all handsome, ruddy, clean-shaven, and with a very sympathetic expression. He carried himself erect, and his manner, while it was perfectly easy, was never obtrusive. He was much interested in his profession of tutor, although he fully recognised its difficulties, and it never occurred to him to regard it simply as a provision for impecunious scholars whose hopes were bounded by the prospect of a future pension. Oswald ridiculed the Prussians, until this particular Prussian not only compelled his respect, but won his friendship.
The Countess's social relations dwindled to a point; everything that interfered with her care for her child wearied her. She was often present while his lessons were going on, she rode with him daily, and he and his tutor always took their meals with the Count and Countess.
She adjusted her life by her boy in every respect. One word from Ossi sufficed, where her mother's and her brother's entreaties had failed, to produce a change in her hard, impatient bearing towards her invalid husband. It was long before she perceived how her conduct in this respect wounded Ossi's feelings; she sometimes wondered what depressed the boy. It made her anxious, and one day she asked him about it. Taking his face tenderly between both her hands she said, "How sad your eyes are, Ossi, does anything trouble you?" For a moment he hesitated, and then he spoke out bravely. "Mother, dear, you are so very kind to every one else; be a little kind to papa!"
She started, turned pale, and left the room without a word; he looked after her anxiously. Had he alienated her affection again?
No! that which all the arguments and representations of her mother and brother had failed to accomplish a couple of words from boyish lips had achieved. From that hour she testified towards her invalid husband the unvarying respect, the careful regard of a dutiful daughter, and although his various, and increasing infirmities,--he lost his hearing, and very nearly his eyesight,--becoming at last a complete paralytic,--made her tendance upon him most distressing, she was never again betrayed into uttering an impatient word. Hers was a hard task--especially at the beginning--a very hard task! But what of that? Ossi was pleased with her, and that was reward enough! She had learned to read his eyes; for love of him she altered everything in herself that could displease him, although he himself could not have explained why; she purified and strengthened her character day by day, and really became the mother that he dreamed her.
The old Count died; Georges Lodrin had disappeared. An American newspaper announced his death, and as the announcement was not contradicted it was held to be true. Georges was the last heir; at his death the property would have escheated to the government; thus the Countess need no longer be tormented by the thought that she was depriving another of his rights.
Days of cloudless delight ensued; Ossi grew to manhood, left her protecting arms, and launched forth upon the broad, perilous stream of life, while she, gazing after him anxiously, was forced to stay upon the shore. The time was past when tenderly, delicately, and yet with a certain shyness of the son already a head taller than herself, she could ask to know all of his life, could extort from him his small confessions. She had to leave him to himself, with, at times, a secret tremor. Only secret, however; she would not interfere with his freedom of action. Praise of him greeted her on all sides; she was satisfied with her work.
He was like her in every way, even in his faults; but those faults which had wrought her ruin,--pride, and passionate blood--became him well. There was no throne upon earth that she did not consider him worthy to fill, and which should not have been his if she could have given it to him; there was no conceivable torture that she would not have borne willingly if thereby she could have added to his happiness.
His excellence was her justification; her maternal love was her religion.
She still sat in the same arm-chair where she had resolved to utter the falsehood, which, after all, her lips had refused to speak! Her heart seemed to have burst in twain, and from it had fallen the whole treasury of fair memories which she had stored within it; her slain joys lay about her in disarray, shattered, dead. She tried to collect them, groping for them in memory; all at once her thoughts hurried to the future,--the confusion subsided,--she understood!
She moaned, and stroked back the hair from her temples; her wandering glance fell upon a newspaper lying on her table. The date caught her eye,--the sixth of August,--she started, the morrow was his birthday! She remembered the little surprise she had prepared for him; she had selected from among her jewels something very rare and beautiful which he could give to his betrothed. Rising from her chair, she said to herself aloud, "The marriage is impossible!" Then followed the question, "What will he do, how will he live on?"--"Live?" she repeated, and on the instant a wild dread assailed her. "For God's sake!" she groaned, "that must not be, I must prevent it."
Again her thoughts hurried confusedly through her mind. She would go to him, and on her knees before him entreat, "Despise me, curse me, but be happy, live to bless those whose fate lies in your hands, and who could find no better master. The injustice of it I will answer for here, and before God's judgment-seat! Or--if you cannot sustain the burden of these unlawful possessions, cast it off. Let my name be blasted, I deserve nothing better. But you,--you live, take everything that is mine and that is yours of right, and found a new existence for yourself wherever it may be!"
She hurried out into the corridor, wild, beside herself. Before his door she paused, overcome by a horrible sense of shame,--she could never again look him in the face! What would have been the use? Another might perhaps compromise philosophically with circumstances. But he,--detestation of the blood flowing in his veins, would kill him! She raised her arms, and then dropped them at her sides, like some wounded bird, that, dying in the dust, makes one last vain effort to stir its wings to bear it to its lost heaven. Then she kneeled down and pressed her lips upon the threshold of his door before groping her staggering way back to her room.
The mood in which Conte Capriani took his place beside Kilary in the victoria that was to carry him to the place of meeting, was a very strange one. Never had he felt such pride of victory; his thoughts reverted to his first meeting with the beautiful Countess Lodrin at the beginning of his career, when with his keen scent for all that was lowest in human beings, he had divined her passionate nature, a nature held in check with despotic resolution after the great disappointment of her early life.
With calculating cunning he had plotted and schemed to get her into his power. But when at last he thought he had quelled and broken her pride, she suddenly reared her head more haughtily than ever, and thrust him from her.--He had not believed such audacity possible!
And now the woman whom he had thought to tread beneath his feet stood at so unattainable a height above him, that his treachery was of no avail as a weapon against her. How his heart had been consumed by futile rage! Only the day before yesterday she had dared to send him word by Zoë Melkweyser that she did not remember him.
"But it is my turn now," he thought, "this duel has forced an explanation between herself and Oswald,--she has had to humble herself before her child!" A fiendish exultation thrilled him to his very finger-tips. "At last they must bow before me," he said to himself.--"Mother and son, the two haughtiest of the whole haughty crowd!"
It never occurred to him that this explanation which he had forced so relentlessly upon the mother and son could have results other than those which he contemplated. Absolutely content, for the first time in his life, he leaned back among the cushions slowly puffing forth big clouds of smoke into the fresh morning air, as the carriage approached the old monastery of St. Elizabeth.
It was a large building blackened by time, standing quite isolated at about half a league from Tornow upon fallow land. Formerly a monastery, afterwards a hospital, and then a poor-house, it was now one of those melancholy ruins that only await the pickaxe of demolition. The walls were dirty, the windows black, with half the panes broken and patched up with paper.--Two grape-vines trailed over the grass where once had been a garden, and a couple of knotty mulberry-trees grew close to the ruinous walls.
Leaning against one of these walls stood an ancient black, wooden crucifix; the nail that had held fast the right hand of The Crucified had fallen out and the arm hung loose, lending to the rudely-carved image a strange reality. It looked as if the Saviour in the death struggle had torn away his bleeding hand from the cross to bless mankind with it once more.
Beneath the figure of Christ was a tablet with an inscription, the gilt letters of which, much faded by time, still glistened in the morning sunlight.
The atmosphere was unusually clear, the skies cloudless. Oswald, Georges, and old Doctor Swoboda arrived before Capriani; whilst Georges and Doctor Swoboda walked about the old building discussing various parts of it to keep themselves cool, Oswald leaned against the doorway of the old cloister, and gazed silently into the distance. Not a trace was perceptible of the irritability which Georges had observed on the previous day. His was the repose of one who sees the goal where the terrible burden with which destiny has laden him can be cast off.--His soul was filled with anguish, but was conscious of the remedy at hand.--Release went hand in hand with duty.
Dear old memories arose upon his mind,--vaguely as if obscured by thick vapour. His mother's image hovered before him; he clasped his hands tightly, stood erect, threw back his head and looked upwards as desperate men always do before final exhaustion. His glance fell upon the Christ; the tablet at His feet attracted his attention, he approached it.
"What have you found there?" asked Georges, with forced carelessness.
"I am only trying to decipher the inscription," replied Oswald.
"The inscription?--'God--God--have....'" Georges spelled out.
"'God have mercy upon us all!'" Oswald read, and at that moment the old iron-barred gate of the monastery garden creaked on its hinges,--Kilary entered first and Oswald returned his bow with friendly ease. But when the Conte, following Kilary closely, bowed with a sweet smile Oswald scarcely touched his hat.
The Conte glanced keenly at him; for an instant his eyes encountered those of the young man and gazed into their depths, but found nothing there save immeasurable disgust.
The conditions of the duel called for thirty paces with an advance on each side of ten paces. The seconds measured off thirty paces and at the distance of ten paces apart laid two canes down on the grass.
The whole proceeding was to Georges a disgusting farce; he seemed to be acting as in a dream, without any will of his own. It was impossible that his cousin Oswald Lodrin should condescend to fight with this adventurer.
Oswald and the Conte took their places, the seconds gave the signal. On the instant Oswald shot wide of the Conte. A brief, dreadful pause ensued; the Conte hesitated. With utter disdain in his eyes, his head held erect, Oswald advanced; the Conte had never seen him look so haughty.
The sight of the handsome set face recalled to the adventurer the manifold humiliations that he had been obliged to endure all his lifelong at the arrogant hands of 'these people.' All his hatred for the entire caste blazed up within him,--all power of reflection gone he blindly discharged his pistol!
Oswald felt something like a hard cold blow on his breast,--a crimson cloud seemed to rise out of the earth before him, he staggered and fell.
"Good God!" exclaimed Georges quite beside himself, as he raised the dying man in his arms and held him there while the old Doctor bent over him.
Oswald opened his eyes. His mind was somewhat astray,--everything about him seemed wavering vaguely; then, in the midst of the terrible, chaotic confusion of every sense that precedes dissolution he made a mighty effort to grasp and hold a thought that glided indistinctly through his half-darkened mind. "Georges," he gasped, "what day of the month is it?"
"The seventh of August."
"My birthday."--Suddenly his mind grew clear once more, and there came over him the incredible celerity of thought, the wonderful illumination of vision of the dying, who in a moment of time grasp the memory of an entire life. As the earth slipped away from him he was able to judge human weaknesses in the light of eternity.
"Georges!" he began.
"Yes, dear old fellow!" said Georges softly, in a choked voice.
"Tell my mother--and for God's sake do not forget--that for the happy twenty-six years that are past I thank her, and that I kiss her dear, dear hands in token of farewell!"
He was silent, he breathed with difficulty,--his lips moved again, and Georges put his ear down to them that he might understand him--"Georges,--if I have ever done you wrong,--you or any one else in my life--without knowing it,--then...."
"Ah Ossi, would to God that I could ever lay down my head as calmly and proudly as you can," whispered Georges, clasping him closer in his arms.
The dying man smiled--possessed by a great calm. He knew that what had been his secret was his own forever.
He tried to raise himself a little, rivetting his eyes upon the crucifix;--the gilt letters gleamed in the morning light. He lifted his hand by an effort, to make the sign of the cross,--Georges guided his hand. A bluish pallor appeared upon his features,--twice a tremor ran through his limbs, his hands fell clinched by his side--his lips moved for the last time. "Poor Ella!" he murmured scarcely audibly.
God have mercy upon us all!
The Countess Lodrin had passed the night without lying down. When her maid appeared to see if her mistress were not ill, she had been dismissed by a mute wave of the hand. At last, towards morning, sitting beside her writing-table, she had fallen into the leaden sleep that is wont to follow terrible mental agitation.
The sun was high in the heavens when she awoke with stiffened limbs and a dull pain at her heart, but without any distinct consciousness of misfortune. She looked around her, and started, perceiving that some strange commotion was astir in the castle; she could hear footsteps overhead, and outside her door.--She hurried out, the corridor was filled with people--people who had no claim to be up here. And all the servants were hurrying hither and thither in the confusion of a household where some catastrophe has occurred, all weeping, trembling, not one showing unsympathetic curiosity, and amongst them was Pistasch, vainly trying to quiet the loud howling of Oswald's Newfoundland.
"What is the matter?" the Countess shrieked,--"what has happened?"
But no one had the courage to answer her. She ran to Oswald's bedroom--all gazed after her in horror-stricken compassion; they might have restrained her, but who could dare to do so? At the door she met Georges.
"What is it?" she gasped, clutching his arm, "where is Ossi?"
"In there," he murmured hoarsely, "but ...!"
"'But'--for God's sake tell me what has happened?"
"A duel," said Georges with an effort,--he would fain have detained her, would fain have found the conventional phrases with which men attempt to break bad news, he could not recall any, and he stammered.
"A duel?" she asked sharply, "with whom?"
"With Capriani;--he...."
Before he could say another word she had opened the door and had entered Oswald's room.
They had lain him on his bed,--the noble outlines of his stalwart figure were distinctly visible beneath the white sheet;--his face was uncovered, and bathed in all the ideal charm of dead youth.
The Countess staggered, tried to hold herself erect, tripped over her dress, and fell; then dragged herself on her knees to the bed of her dead child. At its foot she lay, her face buried in her hands.
When, two hours afterward, Truyn who had been informed of the frightful catastrophe entered the room with Georges Lodrin, she was still kneeling in the same place, her head still in her hands.
Profoundly shocked Truyn bent over her, and gently begged her to leave the room. She arose mechanically, and leaning upon his arm went to the door. There she paused, turned, and hurried back to the bed. They feared that force would be necessary to separate her from the dead body, when Georges remembered the message entrusted to him by the dying man. In the tumult, the horror, in his own terrible grief he had forgotten it. "Let me try to persuade her, wait for me here," said he to Truyn, and going to the bedside where the Countess was again kneeling he whispered: "Aunt, I have a message for you from him; he died in my arms, and while dying he thought of you!"
She shrank away from him.
"To-day is his birthday," Georges continued, "he remembered it in his last moments and begged me to tell you, and, for God's sake not to forget it, that he thanked you for the past happy twenty-six years, and that he kissed your dear, dear hands in token of farewell."
The wretched woman, who had hitherto seemed carved out of marble, began to tremble violently; a hard hoarse sob burst from her lips.
It was the first warm breath of spring breaking up the ice. She instantly rose and threw herself in an agony of tears upon the corpse, exclaiming: "My child, my fair, noble boy!"
Georges withdrew; the moment was too sacred to be intruded upon. Shortly afterwards she tottered, bent and bowed, from the room. Truyn, whom she had not seemed to perceive, offered her his arm, and she quietly allowed herself to be led to her own apartment.
The death of the young man excited universal sympathy. He was mourned not only by his relatives and friends, but by all his dependants, the peasants on his estates, nay, even by strangers to whom he had only been pointed out as he passed by. And on the day when he was buried, with all the honours befitting the noble name which he had borne so worthily, there was in the whole country round no little child whose hands were not folded in prayer for him, no poor labouring woman who had ever met him in the road, and whose existence his kindly smile had helped to lighten, who did not wear a black apron or a black kerchief, in loving memory of him. No one, perhaps, could have told what he or she had expected of the young Count, but all felt that with him some hope had died, some sunshine had been buried.
Fritz Malzin, the only witness of the insult offered to the Conte, died the night before the duel; nothing therefore was known save what the Conte chose to tell; the versions of the reasons that had induced Oswald's rash acceptance of the Conte's challenge were many and widely differing, but not one of them bore the least relation to the truth.
As Oswald had foreseen, his relatives overwhelmed Georges with reproaches for the part he had borne in a duel between his cousin and a parvenu. But the letter to Truyn which Oswald left behind, exculpated Georges completely.
People declared, to be sure, that Georges ought to have restrained the folly of his hot-tempered cousin, but the unaffected grief evinced by the man, hitherto regarded as careless and indifferent, disarmed every one. His devotion to his dead cousin revealed itself in his every action, in the exquisite tenderness of his treatment of Oswald's wretched mother, and his management of the estates thus suddenly fallen to him, absolutely in accordance as it was with all Oswald's wishes, soon won him the warmest sympathy from all.
Of course the Conte was denounced; Oswald's associates in his own rank regarded the man as no better than a murderer. But he coldly defied public opinion, and held his head higher than ever; he seemed even to pride himself upon his deed, and several newspapers defended him.
When in May a white-edged, black cloud discharges a storm of hail upon the fresh, green wheat, the tender blades break and are buried out of sight beneath heavy sleet; when the storm is past, and the ice melted, and the sun once more beaming bright and warm in cloudless skies, the bruised blades think they cannot bear the light, and lying close upon the ground would fain die. Then over the fields thus laid waste many a head is shaken, and many a sigh is breathed for the broken promise of the harvest.
But some there are who, seeing farther and knowing better, shrug their shoulders, and say "A hailstorm in spring prostrates, but does not kill!" and they look forward hopefully to the future.
Gradually, and very slowly, the warm sunshine penetrates the crushed blades, awakening and strengthening within them the benumbed forces of youth. Before the summer is fully abroad in the land, the wheat stands erect and tall, to the inexperienced eye all unharmed, but the husbandman can detect the callous ring where the blade was bent, and says: "The wheat has been shot in the knee."
Thus it is with youthful souls, crushed to the earth in the spring-time of life by some fierce tempest. Slowly but surely the spirit, well-nigh wounded to death, recovers, and God grants to the hearts of those whom he loves a glorious resurrection.
Gabrielle recovered from the fearful blow that had befallen her,--very slowly, and painfully to be sure, but at last. At first indeed, her grief was so profound, she suffered so silently, so tearlessly, that they feared for her reason, and then, when all seemed darkest to her, she was suddenly possessed by an intense, inexplicable yearning to return to the pretty home in the Avenue Labédoyère in which the fairest hours of her shattered bliss had been spent.
Her desire was complied with; and for many a long winter night Zinka sat beside her by the same little white bed where the girl had once whispered to her in the delirium of her happiness that it seemed as if her heart would break with joy. With tenderest sympathy the young stepmother talked of the departed unweariedly with the girl, allowing her tears free course, without ever cruelly attempting to restrain the expression of her grief. And when Truyn, in despair over such endless grieving, unreasonably taxed his wife with exciting Ella's emotion, and with hindering her from forgetting, Zinka replied gently, "Let me alone; I know what I am doing. There is nothing more terrible, more dreadful than the spectre of a grief that has been violently stifled; it lurks in wait for us, and persecutes us all the more persistently, the more resolutely we thrust it from us. The memory of our beloved dead must not be banished, it must be tenderly welcomed and cherished, until in time it loses all bitterness, and is ever with us, sad, but very dear."
Truyn listened incredulously, but a few weeks later he perceived with surprise, and with trembling delight that Gabrielle's pale cheeks began to show a faint colour, and that her weary gait grew more elastic. Then when he was alone with Zinka he kissed her gratefully, saying "I see you understand better than I how to comfort."
"And from whom did I learn the art?" she asked in reply, with a loving glance, "do you not see that I am only repaying old debts?"
With the first snowdrops in February came a golden-haired little brother for Gabrielle, who, by Zinka's desire was christened "Ossi." Thus Gabrielle learned to utter her dead lover's name without tears. She idolizes the little one, and sometimes smiles when she has him in her arms; he has given her a fresh interest in life. Georges who came to Paris the last of May, only to see the Truyns, and to find out especially how Gabrielle was, perceived this with pleasure, and said much that was encouraging to Truyn, who is still anxious about his sorrowing child. A hailstorm in spring prostrates, but does not kill.
But when a storm of hail just before harvest beats down the ripened ears, the grain never recovers. Bowed down to the earth, broken and blasted by the weight of the hailstones, the crop lies prostrate in the fields, only awaiting the hand that shall clear it away.
Never again will the Countess Lodrin rally. Had her health been less vigorous she might have died of agony, had her mind been less strong, she might have forgotten. But her health is perfect, and her mind clear as daylight.
She occupies her modest suite of apartments at Tornow, which Georges has prayed her always to consider as her home. Her rooms are but a shrine for relics and memorials of the dead. Every object which Oswald's hand ever touched is sacred for her. Every benevolent scheme devised by Oswald in his generous desire, 'to brighten the existence of as many people as possible,' she promotes. She heaps his former servants with benefits, his faithful Newfoundland is her constant companion. She tried to employ her widow's jointure in buying back Schneeburg for poor Fritz's children, but her agent could effect nothing against Capriani's obstinacy and millions. At least she succeeded in buying Malzin's children of their mother.
Charlotte married again, another secretary of Capriani's. The little Malzins live at Tornow under the care of an English governess, and thrive apace. The Countess attends to every detail of their education and training, and sees them every day although only for a short time; there is no close tie between them. In spring when she hears their sweet voices resounding with merriment in the park, she winces, and grows paler than usual. She avoids them, but if she encounters them by chance she never fails to speak a kind word to them, or to bestow upon them a gentle caress. She is no longer capable of a fervent affection for any living being. Her heart is a tomb, completely filled by a single, idolized, dead son, but for his dear sake she does all the good that she can to the living. Thus, even after his departure, she seems striving for his approval.
She devotes the greatest part of her income and of her time to the most self-sacrificing benevolence. There is no misery in all the country round which she does not search out, and try to alleviate, going from hut to hut, and never shrinking from even the most menial services to the sick. She is revered as a saint throughout the district. In her social intercourse with her peers, which grows less year by year, her son's name never passes her lips; if others mention it she turns the conversation. But when the country-people utter his name with blessings, and recall his constant kindliness and readiness to aid;--when the peasants and day-labourers kiss the hem of her dress, with tears, saying, "God give him his reward in Heaven, we shall never have another such master!" she lifts her head and her eyes gleam with intense, sacred pride. Those who meet her then walking erect and with beaming looks on her way back to the castle, think her wonderfully recovered, and never dream how utterly shattered her life is. But could they see her later, when, exhausted by the temporary exaltation, she takes refuge in her chamber and sinks into the arm-chair wherein she fell asleep on that horrible night, they would be horror-struck by the fearful misery of her expression.
There she sits for hours, erect, her elbows close pressed, her hands folded in her lap. Her whole life is but a protracted, lingering agony; with fixed gaze she seems listening for the rustling wings of the messenger who shall release her: the Angel of Death.