CHAPTER VIII.
The road from Rautschin castle to Tornow goes directly through the village, across the market-place, and past the inn, 'The Rose.'
Involuntarily Oswald glanced towards the unpretending front of the tavern. Conceited and bedizened, with a dirty coat, and with bare feet thrust into morocco slippers down at the heel, the same waiter is standing in the doorway, just as he stood there on that rainy afternoon in spring, when Oswald took refuge in the inn-parlour.
Was everything to be forever reminding him of that odious scene?--In Prague he had fancied that he should soon be able to shake off the hateful sensation produced by the interview with Capriani, just as we all overcome the nervous shudder, caused by some revolting spectacle. But no! for three days it had lasted and he could not rid himself of it,--on the contrary this hateful sensation was growing more defined.
Of course he did not frame his suspicion in words, he was ashamed of it; he called it an idée fixe, resulting from nervous irritability still remaining from a slight sunstroke which he had had the year before, but for all that, he could not away with it. Countless memories of trifling events, dating from earliest childhood, crowded upon his mind, all pointing, with a sneer, one way. There was a lump in his throat, a weight as of lead upon his heart; the pain waxed more and more intolerable. He could have leaped out of the carriage and have flung himself down in the road with his face in the very dust, in an agony of shame and horror!
For the first time in his life he was reluctant to go home; he was afraid of meeting his mother. There was a kind of relief in the thought that she was not expecting him, and would not come to meet him. He clinched his hands tightly, and gazed abroad, striving by the sight of distinct, familiar objects, to exorcise the evil phantoms that possessed his soul. But everything that his eyes beheld was stamped with ugliness and dejection. The leaves on the trees were limp and dusty. The grain, lodged by the storms, lay on the ground, half rotted in its own luxuriance. The farmers could recall no former year so rich in promise, so poor in fulfilment.
When at length he reached the castle, he could hardly bring himself to ask after his mother, or to go and look for her. How could he, while his mind was filled with such vile abomination? He went up to his room, where the first object that met his eyes was the white death-mask upon the wall. He grew dizzy, a black, crimson-edged cloud seemed to rise before him; he flung open the window,--the air cooled by the sunset, and laden with the fragrance of flowers, played about him, and refreshed him,--he breathed more freely.
Just then a soft, gentle sound fell upon his ear--his mother's voice! He shivered nervously from head to foot. How sweet, how noble was that voice!
"So, so, old friend; fine, good Darling! Bravo, old dog, bravo!"
These words spoken with caressing tenderness, reached him through the silence. He leaned out of the window--there she sat in a large wicker garden-chair, playing with his Newfoundland, that, with huge forepaws upon her lap, was looking familiarly into her face. Her full, elegant figure, about which some soft, black material fell in graceful folds, stood out against the background of a clump of pale purple phlox in luxuriant bloom. Oswald watched her in silence; the beautiful placid expression of her features, the rich harmony of her voice, the tender grace of her movements, as she passed her hands lovingly over the dog's head and neck,--all appealed to him. He never could tire of watching those hands. So slender and delicate that a girl of eighteen might have coveted them, there was something more about them than mere physical beauty, something clinging, pathetic, which is never found in the hands of young girls or of childless women. They were true mother-hands,--hands with an innate genius for soothing caresses; Oswald recalled the time when he had been extremely ill, and those delicate, white hands had tended him day and night with untiring patience and unsurpassable skill;--he could even yet feel their touch upon his suffering, weary limbs.
And this saint,--his mother, his glorious, incomparable mother,--he had presumed to sully by such vile suspicions! He, her son!
Without another thought he hurried down into the park. He saw her at a distance. The dog was lying quiet at her feet; she sat with hands clasped in her lap, and in her half-closed eyes there lay the look of the visionary, dim or far-seeing, always beholding more, or less than the actual. The dog heard his master's step and began to wag his tail, then rose, barking with joy, and ran to meet Oswald.
"Ossi!" and the Countess opened her arms to him. Not even from his betrothed had he ever heard a tone of welcome so fervent, and as his mother clasped him close, and kissed him, he felt as if God Himself had laid His hand upon his sore heart and healed it. Gone were all his evil surmises, all fled, leaving only a sensation of angry self-reproach.
"You are a day sooner than you said," she exclaimed, kissing him affectionately. "Well, I shall not complain, I am a few hours richer than I thought."
"How so, mamma?"
"Do you not understand? Do you really not yet know that I am counting the thirty-three days before your marriage--the last days that I shall have you to myself--and that to each one as it goes, I bid a sad farewell? Let me look at you,--my poor child, how you have come back to me! you look as if you had had an illness."
"I have felt miserably, really wretchedly ever since I went away," he admitted, speaking slowly and without looking at her. "Uncle Erich diagnosed either the jaundice or intermittent fever, but it does not amount to anything, I am well again."
"You do not look so," said the Countess, shaking her head. "Take an arm-chair, that seat is very uncomfortable."
He had seated himself upon a low stool at her feet.
"No, no, mamma," he replied smiling, "this seat is all right, and now tell me of what you were thinking as I came towards you. Your thoughts must have been very pleasant!"
"Must you know everything," she replied gaily, "I had no thoughts,--my dreams...." she patted him lightly on the cheek and whispered--"were of my grandchildren."
"Indeed? Perfectly reconciled, then, to my marriage?"
"We must learn to acquiesce in the inevitable, and--and--it really would be delightful to have a chubby little Ossi, in miniature, to pet, and cosset."
He did not speak, but leaned a little forward and pressed the hem of her gown to his lips.
"You goose!" she remonstrated; but when he raised his head she perceived that his eyes were filled with tears. "What is the matter?"
"A momentary weakness, as you see," he said with forced gaiety; adding earnestly,--"I am not ashamed of it before you. Of the evil that is in us, we are more ashamed before those whom we love than before all the rest of the world; but of our weaknesses we are ashamed only before those to whom we are indifferent!"
Paler and paler grow the blossoms of the sweet rocket, sweeter and sweeter their fragrance rises aloft, like a mute prayer,--twilight hovers over the meadows and the leafy summits of the lindens grow black. The quiet air is stirred by the village bells ringing the Angelus. The Countess folded her hands,--of late years she has grown devout. Oswald is overcome by intense lassitude, the lassitude that follows the sudden relaxation of nervous tension in men upon whom severe physical exertion has no effect.--He lays his head upon his mother's knee, and recalls the time when, only twenty years old, and smarting under a severe disappointment, he had taken refuge there. Then he had lain his head upon her lap, and sleep, wooed in vain through feverish nights, had fallen on him.--He remembers how, regardless of her own discomfort, she had let him sleep there for hours, never moving, lest he should be disturbed. And how many other instances of her love and self-sacrifice fill his memory! She strokes his hair, and for a moment he wishes he might die, thus, now, and here,--yes, it would be far better, a hundredfold better to die thus at her feet, his heart filled with filial adoration, than to have to live down again the anguish of the last three days.