Erlach Court Part 8

and

"Penso alla prima volta in cui volgesti Lo sguardo soave in sino a me!"

Sometimes she would fall asleep sitting beside his bed, her head resting on his pillow.

She grew to look like a shadow, so pale and worn did she become. He did all that he could to prevent her from coming to him at night, even threatening to employ a nurse, but the threat was never fulfilled.

In fact, he needed very little care but such as her affection insisted upon giving him; he was never confined to bed, only grew more and more inclined to rest on a lounge during the day. He was very thoughtful of others, and required but little service at their hands up to the very last, only seldom demanding any a.s.sistance in dressing. He grew nervous and restless, longed for change, yearned for his home with the fervent desire of a dying man. Before his mental vision hovered the picture of the old mill, with its old-fashioned garden, the small spa.r.s.e forest with feathery underbrush at the foot of the knotty oaks, and the gray waters of the stream that wound through the autumn mist between bald stony banks. He felt an insane desire to see it all once more. For a long time he endured this yearning in silence, not venturing to express it; his wife had repulsed all advances of his too decidedly. But, good heavens! he needed so little room, he would not trouble her much; and then, besides, he was an old man, ill unto death: his demands upon her personally were restricted to a kind word now and then, a sympathetic pressure of the hand!

Meanwhile, he grew worse and worse. Other complications heightened the peril in which he stood from the original disease. He complained that he could no longer endure the food at the hotel. His physician, who, like all physicians at health-resorts, avoided as far as possible the annoyance of having his patients die on his hands, strongly advised a change of air.

Utterly dejected, his face turned away from her, the dying man begged Stella to ask her mother if he might come home.

But Stella had already asked, and shortly afterwards an answer was received. The Baroness wrote that now, as ever, she was prepared to do her duty,--to receive him, and take care of him. The mill was always open to him.

How he rejoiced in the prospect of home! He tried to help in the packing, but he was too languid. From his lounge he looked on while Stella managed it all, and now and then with a smile he would call her to him, only to stroke her hands and look into her dear, loving eyes.

At last they set out. It was Easter Monday, in the latter half of April; the bells were all ringing solemnly, and dazzling sunshine lay upon the dark waters of the lagunes.

All their acquaintance at the hotel surrounded the father and daughter as they stepped into their gondola. The little vessel was filled with flowers, farewell tokens to Stella, and from the balconies of the hotel many a white kerchief waved adieu to the travellers.

At first they journeyed by short stages, sometimes taking a roundabout route for the sake of better lodgings at night, stopping at Villach and at Gratz. Then the colonel grew anxiously eager to be at home; he could no longer restrain his impatience. From Gratz he insisted upon making one journey of it, during which they had to change conveyances frequently. Every one was kind, showing all manner of attention, to the sick man and his pretty, loving, tender daughter. With every hour he became more weak and miserable. The last change they made he could scarcely manage to descend from the railway-carriage: two porters were obliged to help him into the other coupe.

It was one of those first-cla.s.s half-coupes for three occupants. Stella had not been able to procure for him, as. .h.i.therto, an entire carriage, and we all know how deceptive is the ease of those half-coupes.

The girl propped her father up with rugs and cushions so that he found his position tolerable, and he fell asleep. The afternoon pa.s.sed, and twilight came on. Greenish-yellow tints coloured the horizon, and a small white crescent gleamed above the darkening earth. Through the open window of the coupe came the warm, balmy air of the spring.

Sometimes there mingled with the acrid, searching odour of the undeveloped foliage the full, sweet fragrance of some blossoming fruit-tree. A scarcely perceptible breeze swept gently and caressingly over the meadows, and lightly rippled the surface of the large quiet pond past which the train rushed. Here and there the level landscape was dotted by a village,--long barns and hay-ricks covered with blackened straw, grouped irregularly about some little church or castle among trees white with blossoms or pale green with opening leaf-buds.

The colonel slept on. Suddenly Stella perceived that she had lost her bracelet,--the one with the four-leaved clover. She moved with a sudden start. The colonel awoke.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"In an hour we shall be at home: it is only three stations off," she said, soothingly, with a beating heart.

He bent his head, folded his hands, and prepared to wait patiently. But it was impossible: a deadly anguish a.s.sailed him. He looked round in despair like some trapped animal.

"I am ill!" he cried. "I cannot tell what ails me. I never felt so before!"

He coughed convulsively, but briefly, then tried to move the cushions so that his head might find a more comfortable resting-place.

"Take more room, papa; lay your head in my lap," Stella entreated, tenderly.

He did so. He laid his head on her knees, and, taking her hand in his, held it against his cheek. The feverish unrest which had hitherto throbbed throughout his frame subsided, giving place to a delicious desire to sleep. For the last time the vision rose upon his mind of the drunken father being led home by his little girl; then all grew indistinct. He dreamed; he thought he was staggering painfully through a bog, when some one took him by the hand and led him across a narrow bridge beneath which gleamed dark, slowly-flowing water. He looked down; it was Stella who was leading him, but Stella as a little three-year-old child, with her simple little white night-cap tied beneath her chin, her rosy little bare feet showing beneath the hem of her white night-gown. The bridge creaked beneath him; he started and awoke.

"Are we at home?" he asked, scarce audibly.

"Almost, papa."

He pressed her hand to his lips.

The twilight deepened; a dark transparent mist seemed to veil the sky; the heavens showed as if through thin mourning c.r.a.pe; the broad shining edges of the ponds and pools were dim; the crescent moon grew brighter.

The train whizzed along faster than ever, swaying from side to side on the sleepers. Suddenly Stella felt her father start violently; then he heaved a brief sigh, like that which one gives when surprised by anything unexpectedly delightful, or when one is suddenly relieved of a heavy burden. Then all was quiet,--quiet,--still as death! She bent over him and listened. In vain! She felt his hand grow cold and stiff in her own. A sudden anguish took possession of her. She was afraid in the darkness. Meanwhile, the lamp in the coupe was lighted. Its crude, yellow light fell upon the colonel's face.

Was he asleep, or---- She held her own breath to listen for his. Her heart beat as though it would break; no longer able to control her distress, she called, "Papa!" then louder, "Papa! Papa!" He did not answer.

The night-moths fluttered in through the open window and circled about the lamp; the fragrance of the blossoming cherry-trees filled the air; a cracked church-bell in the distance hoa.r.s.ely tolled the Ave Maria.

In an undertone Stella prayed 'Our Father;' but in the midst of it she burst into a convulsive fit of sobbing: she stroked and caressed the cold cheeks, the thin gray hair, of the dead. She knew that before many minutes were over he would be taken from her, and with him everything dear to her in life.

Onward rushed the train. The fiery sparks flew like rain past the windows; there was a shrill whistle, then a stop. The journey's end was reached.

Her mother and sister had come to the station to meet them. When the conductor opened the door, Stella sat motionless, her father's head resting upon her knees.

It was dark. The stars gleamed in the blue-black heavens.

Mute and pale as the dead, the Baroness walked with Franziska and Stella behind her husband's corpse the short distance between the station and the mill. Some awkwardness on the part of the bearers released one arm of the dead man, and the hand fell and trailed on the earth. With a quick impetuous movement his wife took it in her own, pressed the cold, dead hand to her lips, and held it clasped in hers the rest of the way.

They laid the body in the fresh, white bed, fragrant with lavender and orris, which had been prepared for the sick man in the corner room he had so loved, and in which the Baroness had placed a bouquet of white hawthorn in honour of his arrival.

Two candles were burning at the head of the bed.

Stella, who had, as it were, turned to marble, moving and speaking like an automaton, suddenly grew restless. She seemed to have forgotten something, and then looked for and found the locket which the colonel had given her for her mother, and which she had ever since worn around her neck. Very distinctly and monotonously she repeated the dying man's message and request as she handed the locket to her mother.

"He begs you will hang this around his neck before they lay him in the grave; and once he said he should have liked once more to ask your forgiveness."

The Baroness took the little case from her child's hand. She grew paler than ever, and her eyes were those of one startled by an inward vision of a long-forgotten past. The hawthorn shed a delicious fragrance; outside, the breeze of spring sighed among the weeping-willows, the brook gurgled and sobbed.

All in an instant the old, gray-haired woman's hands began to tremble violently.

"Leave me alone with him for a moment," she softly entreated; and Stella slipped away.

In the terrible week ensuing upon that wretched evening the Baroness treated Stella with an unvarying and altogether pathetic tenderness; in that week Stella learned to comprehend what an irresistible charm this woman had been able to exercise,--learned to understand how longing for her, even after years of separation, had gnawed at the heart of the dying man.

Then, to be sure, everything ran its old course, with the sole exception that the widow never uttered in the presence of her children one unkind word with regard to their father, but often alluded before them to his fine qualities.

CHAPTER VII.