His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one shudder.
The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery, possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after her mother, who had gone into the garden.
It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen. The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about, seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by even the gentlest touch.
Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears.
In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in unison: all discord between them had vanished.
She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie, bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly; at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt, it seemed to her that her reason must give way.
Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude, almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her child's pale face with its large dark eyes. "They do not see it," she would murmur, "but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika! you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am no longer here."
"Do not say that!" cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. "As if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!"
"You do not dream of what can be endured," her mother said, bitterly. "One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion. You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!" She uttered the words almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter.
She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole, in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way. Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate, grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing.