CHAPTER XII.
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 her prie-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,--he owed 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.