"Our angel has just died, with his mother's name on his lips. Please send directions for the funeral.
"Josepha."
A cry rang through the room like the breaking of a chord--a death-like silence followed. The countess was on her knees, with her face bowed on the table, her hand clasping the telegram, crushed before the God whose might she felt for the first time in her life, whom only a few moments before she had blasphemed and defied. He had taken her at her word, and her words had condemned her. The child, the loyal child who had died with her name on his lips, she had wished but a few minutes before that God would take out of the world--she could betray him for the sake of an aristocratic legitimate brother, who never had existed. She could think of his death as something necessary, as her means of deliverance? Now the child had released her. Sensitive and modest, he had removed the burden of his poor little life, which was too much for her to bear and vanished from the earth where he found no place--but his last word was the name of all love, the name "mother!" He had not asked "have you fulfilled a mother's duties to me?--have you loved me?" He had loved his mother with that sweet child-love, which demands nothing--only gives.
And she, the avaricious mother, had been niggardly with her love--till the child died of longing. She had let it die and did not bestow the last joy, press the last kiss upon the little mouth, permit the last look of the seeking eyes to rest upon the mother's face!
Outraged nature, so long denied, now shrieked aloud, like an animal for its dead young! But the brute has at least done its duty, suckled its offspring, warmed and protected it with its own body, as long as it could. But she, the more highly organized creature--for only human beings are capable of such unnatural conduct--had sacrificed her child to so-called higher interests, had neither heeded Josepha's warning, nor the voice of her own heart. Now came pity for the dead child, now she would fain have taken it in her arms, called it by every loving name, cradled the weary little head upon her breast. Too late! He had passed away like a smiling good genius, whom she had repulsed--now she was alone and free, but free like the man who falls into a chasm because the rope which bound him to the guide broke. She had not known that she possessed a child, while he lived, now that he was dead she knew it. Maternal joy could not teach her, for she had never experienced it--maternal grief did--and she was forced to taste it to the dregs. Though she writhed in her torture, burying her nails in the carpet as if she would fain dig the child from the ground, she could find no consolation, and letting her head sink despairingly, she murmured: "My child--you have gone and left me with a guilt that can never be atoned!"
"You can be my mother in Heaven," he had once said. This, too, was forfeited; neither in Heaven nor on earth had she a mother's rights, for she had denied her child, not only before the world but, during this last hour, to herself also.
Freyer bore the dispensation differently. To him it was no punishment, but a trial, the inevitable consequence of unhappy, unnatural relations. He could not reproach himself and uttered no reproaches to others. He was no novice in suffering and had one powerful consolation, which she lacked: the perception of the divinity of grief--this made him strong and calm! Freyer leaned against the window and gazed upward to the stars, which were so peacefully pursuing their course. "You were far away from me when you lived in a foreign land, my child--now you are near, my poor little boy! This cold earth had no home for you! But to your father you will still live, and your glorified spirit will brighten my path--the dark one I must still follow!" Tears flowed silently down his cheeks. No loud lamentations must profane his great, sacred anguish. With clasped hands he mutely battled it down and as of old on the cross his eyes appealed to those powers ever near the patient sufferer in the hour of conflict. However insignificant and inexperienced he might be in this world, he was proportionally lofty and superior in the knowledge of the things of another.
"Come, rise!" he said gently to the bewildered woman, bending to help her. She obeyed, but it was in the same way that two strangers, in a moment of common disaster, lend each other assistance. The tie had been severed that day, and the child's death placed a grave between them.
"I fear your sobbing will be heard downstairs. Will you not pray with me?" said Freyer. "Do what we may, we are in God's hands and must accept what He sends! I wish that you could feel how the saints aid a soul which suffers in silence. Loud outcries and unbridled lamentations drive them away! God does not punish us to render us impatient, but patient." He clasped his hands: "Come, let us pray for our child!" He repeated in a low tone the usual, familiar prayers for the dying--we cannot always command words to express our feelings. An old formula often stands us in good stead, when the agitation of our souls will not suffer us to find language, and our thoughts, swept to and fro by the tempest of feeling, gladly cling to a familiar form to which they give new life.
The countess did not understand this. She was annoyed by the commonplace phraseology, which was not hallowed to her by custom and piety--she was contemptuous of a point of view which could find consolation for such a grief by babbling "trivialties." Freyer ended his prayer, and remained a moment with his hands clasped on his breast. Then he dipped his fingers in the holy water basin beside the place where the child's couch had formerly stood and made the sign of the cross over himself and the unresponsive woman. She submitted, but winced as if he had cut her face with a knife and destroyed its beauty. It reminded her of the hour in Ammergau when he made the sign of the cross over her for the first time! Then she had felt enrolled by this symbol in a mysterious army of sufferers and there her misery began.