A Sister's Love Part 38

said she. He pressed her hand. His eyes were already glowing feverishly, and all at once he started up, the sound of a silvery laugh came in.

Susanna was actually laughing, perhaps with her child--I know not. The next moment the door opened a little way. 'How is Klaus to-day?' she asked.

"Anna Maria did not answer; her eyes were looking at Klaus; he had already fallen back, and his fingers began to play, unnaturally, over the silk quilt.

"I hastened to Susanna. 'He is not very well, my child,' I whispered to her; 'the fever is returning.' Her face grew grave, and she quietly closed the door. 'Always the same thing!' I heard her say, disappointed.

"Sturmer came toward evening, almost at the same time with the two physicians. Susanna was sitting in her blue boudoir, reading. With a sigh of relief she laid her book on the table when Sturmer was announced. He entered quickly. 'Well,' said he, sympathetically, and breathing fast, 'I hear he is not so well again to-day?'

"Susanna gave him her hand. 'So-so, baron,' she replied; 'they are not very wise about the case. The physicians themselves do not know what they ought to say, and Anna Maria is so fearfully anxious, and Aunt Rosamond no less so. They think he is going to die right away. People do not die so easily, do they?' she asked confidently. 'I know from myself; I have been delirious, I----'

"She got no further, for our old family physician suddenly came into the room. I knew what he meant as soon as I looked at him--Klaus was worse.

"Susanna gave him her hand, and went to the bell to order wine, she said. Isa came with the child and presented it to the old gentleman.

'How is my husband?' asked Susanna. 'He is better, is he not, than Aunt Rosa's and Anna Maria's funeral faces predict?'

"He did not answer, but looked at her, almost benumbed. At last he said slowly: 'All is in G.o.d's hands. He can still help when we mortals see no longer any way before us.'

"Susanna sprang up out of the chair in which she had just taken her seat, the color all gone from her face. Her horrified eyes were fixed on the old man's face as if they would decipher if those words were truth.

And when she saw his unaltered, sad expression, she began to totter, and would have fallen to the floor if Edwin Sturmer had not caught her.

"'Is it really so bad?' he asked the doctor, reluctantly, as he carried the young wife to the couch.

"'The end has come,' he replied, looking after Susanna.

"She had lost consciousness only for a moment. She awoke with a loud cry, and now all the pa.s.sion that dwelt in the delicate woman broke forth in its full force. She screamed, she fell at the doctor's feet; he should not let Klaus die, she could not live without him! She wrung her hands and began to sob, but not a tear flowed from her great eyes. She sprang up and threw herself upon the cradle of the child, whose frightened crying mingled with a terrible sound with her sorrowful laments: 'I will not live if Klaus dies, I will not!'

"'Calm yourself, gracious Frau,' bade the doctor, much shaken; 'think of the child, take care of yourself.'

"'I made him ill,' screamed the young wife. 'I sent him to the city in the rain, in spite of his feeling poorly then; I am guilty of my husband's death!' The lace on her morning dress tore under her convulsively trembling hands; she ran up and down the room, accusing G.o.d and demanding death. Silently Isa took the cradle with the child and carried it into another room. Meanwhile Dr. Reuter had poured a few drops of a sedative into a spoon and begged the young wife to take it.

"She pushed the medicine out of his hand. 'I will not!' she cried, sobbing. 'If you knew anything you would have saved Klaus! Oh, if I had only taken care of him! But you did not let me go to his bed once, and now he is dying!'

"'Susanna, control yourself,' said I, severely, as the doctor shrugged his shoulders. 'Is this proper behavior in the hour in which a human life is making its last hard struggle? Surely there should be peace,' I added, weeping.

"She grew silent, not at my words, but at the entrance of Anna Maria.

"'Come, Susanna,' said she, in a lifeless tone, 'let us go to Klaus.

Before the last parting, the doctor has told me, there sometimes returns a clear moment. His last look will seek you, Susanna, he has loved you so much.'

"The young wife let herself be led away without resistance, but her face had grown deathly pale. When they reached the door, she tore her hands impetuously away from Anna Maria's. 'I cannot!' she cried, shuddering, and turning her terrified eyes toward us; 'I cannot see him die, I cannot!'

"Anna Maria looked sadly at the young creature, who was now on her knees before her, beginning afresh her despairing lamentations. Then she silently turned away and went back to Klaus. We carried the young wife to the sofa, and Dr. Reuter busied himself with Isa about her.

"I started to go into the death-chamber, and Edwin Sturmer followed me.

In going out he cast a peculiar look at Susanna. In the next room, through which we had to pa.s.s, stood the cradle; alone and unwatched slumbered the poor little fellow in it, without a suspicion that the black wings of death were hovering so near to his young existence. 'No hope!' They are fearful words.

"Sturmer came with me into the chamber of death. I did not wonder at it; it seemed to me as if it must be so, as if he, the best and oldest friend of the family, had a right to come to the dying bed of our Klaus.

Anna Maria was on her knees beside the bed, her hands folded; she was waiting for that last look.

"Then the house grew still, the servants stole about on tip-toe, and outside, before the front door, stood the day-laborers and the men, with their wives, looking timidly and with red eyes up to the windows. Edwin Sturmer sat opposite me, deep in shadow, behind the curtains of the bed; he leaned his head on his hand, and looked at Anna Maria and at the pale face there on the pillow. I could not distinguish his features, but I heard his deep and heavy breathing. I do not know if Klaus looked at Anna Maria again, I could not see the two from my place. But I heard him whisper once more: 'My child--Susanna' and 'Anna Maria, my old la.s.s!'

with an expression of warm tenderness.

"It was deathly still in the room; no sound but the swift, low ticking of the clock. I started up all at once at this stillness. When I came up to the bed Anna Maria was still on her knees and holding her brother's hand, her fair head buried in the pillow.

"Seized by a terrible foreboding, I went up to her. She started up. 'My only brother!' she sobbed out. To my heart penetrated this shrill, broken cry: 'My only brother!'

"Then I heard the door open softly, and saw Sturmer go out; he held his hand over his eyes, though it was so dark round about us, so fearfully dark."

CHAPTER XIX.

"As formerly Anna Maria had been baptized beside the dead body of her mother, so now was the little boy at his father's coffin. On the same spot where, scarcely a year before, the clergyman had married the young couple stood the black, silver-mounted coffin, almost covered over with wreaths and flowers. The folding-doors of the hall were opened wide; the last crimson ray of the setting sun fell through the windows and made the light of the numerous candles appear feeble and yellow, and touched Anna Maria's face with a rosy shimmer, as she bent over the child in her arms.

"The long white christening-robe of the child contrasted strangely with the deep black of the mourning dress which enveloped the tall figure of the girl. I stood beside her, my hands resting on the child; by my side was Isa in a profusion of black c.r.a.pe. A throng of mourners filled the hall, gentlemen and ladies. I do not remember who they all were, but I can still see Sturmer's pale face.

"A chair had been placed aright for Susanna, and she sat in it as if petrified in pain and sorrow--a strange sight, this child in widow's garb. The raging pain had abated, she had wept and sobbed herself weary; now only great tears rolled down her marble cheeks. Bluish rings lay about her eyes, and made them shine more ardently than ever. She kept her slender hands folded and listened to the words of the clergyman, a picture of the most hopeless and comfortless pain.

"How many eyes then grew moist; how the servants wept outside the door!

The clergyman spoke affectingly; once before he had thus baptized a child in this house. A quiver went through Anna Maria's tall figure, but she pressed her lips firmly together. She did not weep, she only pressed the child closer to her; then she took it to the young mother. I can still see how Susanna sat there, with the little boy on her lap, as the clergyman blessed them. She bent her head so that the black veil almost covered her and the child.

"But now the clergyman pa.s.sed on to the funeral address, and when he mentioned the full name of the dead man I saw Isa spring up quickly--the young wife had fainted. She was carried to her room. A murmur of sympathy went through the a.s.sembly. 'A bruise for her whole life,' I heard whispered behind me. 'Poor young wife--still half a child! She will never recover from it!'

"Of Anna Maria, who stood there, no one thought. No one had said a sympathetic word to her. All the pity belonged to the young widow, still so young, so charming, and already so unhappy! They knew she was not on good terms with her sister-in-law. They knew Anna Maria only as proud and cold.

"Anna Maria, if they could have seen you late that evening, in the dark garden, at the fresh grave; if they had found you, as I found you, so undone with grief and pain, kneeling on the damp earth, unwilling to leave the flower-strewn mound under which your only brother lay--would they not have granted you, too, a word of sympathy?

"Those were sad, dreadful weeks which now followed, weeks in which we, first regaining our senses, began to miss him who had left us forever.

Everywhere his kind, fresh nature, his ever-mild disposition, were wanting. It seemed every moment as if he must open the door and ask in his soft voice: 'How are you, aunt? Where is Anna Maria?'

"Anna Maria! The whole weight of the extensive household management rested on her shoulders, the whole wilderness of the inevitable domestic business which her brother's death had caused. She found no time to indulge in her grief. She had to drive into the city at fixed times, she had to look through Klaus's books, letters, and papers, with her trembling heart. And if then, in her swelling pain, she but threw her hands over her face, she always regained the mastery over herself, and could work on.

"Susanna mourned in a different way. She fled to her little boudoir, and always had some one about her. She was afraid in bright daylight, and in twilight her heart would palpitate, and she was short of breath, and Isa had to read aloud to her constantly. The little boy, who had been named 'Klaus' for his father, was not allowed to be called so; she called him her little Jacky, her treasure, the only thing she had left in the world, and yet sometimes would start back from the cradle with a cry, he had looked at her so terribly like Klaus!

"Then came the mourning visits from far and near, and Susanna received them in the salon. She sat there, so broken down, her charming face surrounded by the black c.r.a.pe veil, the point of her little widow's cap on her white forehead, and her black-bordered handkerchief always wet with bitter tears.

"Anna Maria was never present during such calls. She fled to the garden and did not return till the last carriage had rolled away from the court. She was gentle and tender toward Susanna--'he loved her so much!'

she said softly.

"It was November. In Susanna's little boudoir the lamp was lighted, and the young wife lay, in her deep black woollen dress, on the blue cushions; she held a book in her hand, and now and then cast a glance at it. Occasionally she coughed a little, and each time quickly held her handkerchief to her lips. I had come down, as I did every evening, to look after her and the child. The little fellow was already asleep--'thank G.o.d,' as Susanna added. The nurse was probably asleep with him in the next room, it was very still in there. Isa was bustling busily about the stove, for it was bitterly cold out-of-doors; on the table beside Susanna lay a quant.i.ty of colored wools, as well as a piece of embroidery begun, and extremely pleasant and comfortable was this little room. Who in the world could have desired a more comfortable spot on a snowy, stormy evening?

"'Where is Anna Maria?' I asked pleasantly, after the first greeting.

"Susanna shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said feebly, and let her book drop.

"'Fraulein Anna Maria is in the master's cabinet,' Isa answered. 'Herr von Sturmer has just ridden away.'