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.