Gloria Victis! Part 37

Love him indeed! Ah, how she petted and indulged him during his long convalescence, how willingly she complied with all his little whims, how gladly she submitted to the exactions of his affection, half selfish though they were at times, as those of an invalid on the road to recovery are so apt to be! How well she knew how to amuse, and occupy him! how many games of chess and of cards she played with him!

how she read aloud for his entertainment, albeit unused to such exertion, Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, and Dumas' _Trois Mousquetaires_!

When he had fully recovered, her treatment of him was more serious. She kept the vow she had made to herself, she watched his every impulse, his every breath, spared no pains to train him to be,--what he must be to satisfy her conscience, her pride,--a blessing to all around him.

She even did what was for her the hardest task of all, she repressed her tenderness for him, lest it should make him effeminate. She made it her duty, when the time came for him to resume his studies, to engage a new tutor for him, and, quite out of patience with the cringing, fawning candidates for the position that had hitherto made their appearance in Tornow, she wrote to a foreign Professor of her acquaintance asking him to aid her in procuring the person whom she needed. A month later there came to Tornow a young fellow with the lightest possible hair standing up like a brush above a very intelligent face, not at all handsome, ruddy, clean-shaven, and with a very sympathetic expression. He carried himself erect, and his manner, while it was perfectly easy, was never obtrusive. He was much interested in his profession of tutor, although he fully recognised its difficulties, and it never occurred to him to regard it simply as a provision for impecunious scholars whose hopes were bounded by the prospect of a future pension. Oswald ridiculed the Prussians, until this particular Prussian not only compelled his respect, but won his friendship.

The Countess's social relations dwindled to a point; everything that interfered with her care for her child wearied her. She was often present while his lessons were going on, she rode with him daily, and he and his tutor always took their meals with the Count and Countess.

She adjusted her life by her boy in every respect. One word from Ossi sufficed, where her mother's and her brother's entreaties had failed, to produce a change in her hard, impatient bearing towards her invalid husband. It was long before she perceived how her conduct in this respect wounded Ossi's feelings; she sometimes wondered what depressed the boy. It made her anxious, and one day she asked him about it.

Taking his face tenderly between both her hands she said, "How sad your eyes are, Ossi, does anything trouble you?" For a moment he hesitated, and then he spoke out bravely. "Mother, dear, you are so very kind to every one else; be a little kind to papa!"

She started, turned pale, and left the room without a word; he looked after her anxiously. Had he alienated her affection again?

No! that which all the arguments and representations of her mother and brother had failed to accomplish a couple of words from boyish lips had achieved. From that hour she testified towards her invalid husband the unvarying respect, the careful regard of a dutiful daughter, and although his various, and increasing infirmities,--he lost his hearing, and very nearly his eyesight,--becoming at last a complete paralytic,--made her tendance upon him most distressing, she was never again betrayed into uttering an impatient word. Hers was a hard task--especially at the beginning--a very hard task! But what of that?

Ossi was pleased with her, and that was reward enough! She had learned to read his eyes; for love of him she altered everything in herself that could displease him, although he himself could not have explained why; she purified and strengthened her character day by day, and really became the mother that he dreamed her.

The old Count died; Georges Lodrin had disappeared. An American newspaper announced his death, and as the announcement was not contradicted it was held to be true. Georges was the last heir; at his death the property would have escheated to the government; thus the Countess need no longer be tormented by the thought that she was depriving another of his rights.

Days of cloudless delight ensued; Ossi grew to manhood, left her protecting arms, and launched forth upon the broad, perilous stream of life, while she, gazing after him anxiously, was forced to stay upon the sh.o.r.e. The time was past when tenderly, delicately, and yet with a certain shyness of the son already a head taller than herself, she could ask to know all of his life, could extort from him his small confessions. She had to leave him to himself, with, at times, a secret tremor. Only secret, however; she would not interfere with his freedom of action. Praise of him greeted her on all sides; she was satisfied with her work.

He was like her in every way, even in his faults; but those faults which had wrought her ruin,--pride, and pa.s.sionate blood--became him well. There was no throne upon earth that she did not consider him worthy to fill, and which should not have been his if she could have given it to him; there was no conceivable torture that she would not have borne willingly if thereby she could have added to his happiness.

His excellence was her justification; her maternal love was her religion.

She still sat in the same arm-chair where she had resolved to utter the falsehood, which, after all, her lips had refused to speak! Her heart seemed to have burst in twain, and from it had fallen the whole treasury of fair memories which she had stored within it; her slain joys lay about her in disarray, shattered, dead. She tried to collect them, groping for them in memory; all at once her thoughts hurried to the future,--the confusion subsided,--she understood!

She moaned, and stroked back the hair from her temples; her wandering glance fell upon a newspaper lying on her table. The date caught her eye,--the sixth of August,--she started, the morrow was his birthday!

She remembered the little surprise she had prepared for him; she had selected from among her jewels something very rare and beautiful which he could give to his betrothed. Rising from her chair, she said to herself aloud, "The marriage is impossible!" Then followed the question, "What will he do, how will he live on?"--"Live?" she repeated, and on the instant a wild dread a.s.sailed her. "For G.o.d's sake!" she groaned, "that must not be, I must prevent it."

Again her thoughts hurried confusedly through her mind. She would go to him, and on her knees before him entreat, "Despise me, curse me, but be happy, live to bless those whose fate lies in your hands, and who could find no better master. The injustice of it I will answer for here, and before G.o.d's judgment-seat! Or--if you cannot sustain the burden of these unlawful possessions, cast it off. Let my name be blasted, I deserve nothing better. But you,--you live, take everything that is mine and that is yours of right, and found a new existence for yourself wherever it may be!"

She hurried out into the corridor, wild, beside herself. Before his door she paused, overcome by a horrible sense of shame,--she could never again look him in the face! What would have been the use? Another might perhaps compromise philosophically with circ.u.mstances. But he,--detestation of the blood flowing in his veins, would kill him! She raised her arms, and then dropped them at her sides, like some wounded bird, that, dying in the dust, makes one last vain effort to stir its wings to bear it to its lost heaven. Then she kneeled down and pressed her lips upon the threshold of his door before groping her staggering way back to her room.

CHAPTER XIII.

The mood in which Conte Capriani took his place beside Kilary in the victoria that was to carry him to the place of meeting, was a very strange one. Never had he felt such pride of victory; his thoughts reverted to his first meeting with the beautiful Countess Lodrin at the beginning of his career, when with his keen scent for all that was lowest in human beings, he had divined her pa.s.sionate nature, a nature held in check with despotic resolution after the great disappointment of her early life.

With calculating cunning he had plotted and schemed to get her into his power. But when at last he thought he had quelled and broken her pride, she suddenly reared her head more haughtily than ever, and thrust him from her.--He had not believed such audacity possible!

And now the woman whom he had thought to tread beneath his feet stood at so unattainable a height above him, that his treachery was of no avail as a weapon against her. How his heart had been consumed by futile rage! Only the day before yesterday she had dared to send him word by Zoe Melkweyser that she did not remember him.

"But it is my turn now," he thought, "this duel has forced an explanation between herself and Oswald,--she has had to humble herself before her child!" A fiendish exultation thrilled him to his very finger-tips. "At last they must bow before me," he said to himself.--"Mother and son, the two haughtiest of the whole haughty crowd!"

It never occurred to him that this explanation which he had forced so relentlessly upon the mother and son could have results other than those which he contemplated. Absolutely content, for the first time in his life, he leaned back among the cushions slowly puffing forth big clouds of smoke into the fresh morning air, as the carriage approached the old monastery of St. Elizabeth.

It was a large building blackened by time, standing quite isolated at about half a league from Tornow upon fallow land. Formerly a monastery, afterwards a hospital, and then a poor-house, it was now one of those melancholy ruins that only await the pickaxe of demolition. The walls were dirty, the windows black, with half the panes broken and patched up with paper.--Two grape-vines trailed over the gra.s.s where once had been a garden, and a couple of knotty mulberry-trees grew close to the ruinous walls.

Leaning against one of these walls stood an ancient black, wooden crucifix; the nail that had held fast the right hand of The Crucified had fallen out and the arm hung loose, lending to the rudely-carved image a strange reality. It looked as if the Saviour in the death struggle had torn away his bleeding hand from the cross to bless mankind with it once more.

Beneath the figure of Christ was a tablet with an inscription, the gilt letters of which, much faded by time, still glistened in the morning sunlight.

The atmosphere was unusually clear, the skies cloudless. Oswald, Georges, and old Doctor Swoboda arrived before Capriani; whilst Georges and Doctor Swoboda walked about the old building discussing various parts of it to keep themselves cool, Oswald leaned against the doorway of the old cloister, and gazed silently into the distance. Not a trace was perceptible of the irritability which Georges had observed on the previous day. His was the repose of one who sees the goal where the terrible burden with which destiny has laden him can be cast off.--His soul was filled with anguish, but was conscious of the remedy at hand.--Release went hand in hand with duty.

Dear old memories arose upon his mind,--vaguely as if obscured by thick vapour. His mother's image hovered before him; he clasped his hands tightly, stood erect, threw back his head and looked upwards as desperate men always do before final exhaustion. His glance fell upon the Christ; the tablet at His feet attracted his attention, he approached it.

"What have you found there?" asked Georges, with forced carelessness.

"I am only trying to decipher the inscription," replied Oswald.

"The inscription?--'G.o.d--G.o.d--have....'" Georges spelled out.

"'G.o.d have mercy upon us all!'" Oswald read, and at that moment the old iron-barred gate of the monastery garden creaked on its hinges,--Kilary entered first and Oswald returned his bow with friendly ease. But when the Conte, following Kilary closely, bowed with a sweet smile Oswald scarcely touched his hat.

The Conte glanced keenly at him; for an instant his eyes encountered those of the young man and gazed into their depths, but found nothing there save immeasurable disgust.

The conditions of the duel called for thirty paces with an advance on each side of ten paces. The seconds measured off thirty paces and at the distance of ten paces apart laid two canes down on the gra.s.s.

The whole proceeding was to Georges a disgusting farce; he seemed to be acting as in a dream, without any will of his own. It was impossible that his cousin Oswald Lodrin should condescend to fight with this adventurer.

Oswald and the Conte took their places, the seconds gave the signal. On the instant Oswald shot wide of the Conte. A brief, dreadful pause ensued; the Conte hesitated. With utter disdain in his eyes, his head held erect, Oswald advanced; the Conte had never seen him look so haughty.

The sight of the handsome set face recalled to the adventurer the manifold humiliations that he had been obliged to endure all his lifelong at the arrogant hands of 'these people.' All his hatred for the entire caste blazed up within him,--all power of reflection gone he blindly discharged his pistol!

Oswald felt something like a hard cold blow on his breast,--a crimson cloud seemed to rise out of the earth before him, he staggered and fell.

"Good G.o.d!" exclaimed Georges quite beside himself, as he raised the dying man in his arms and held him there while the old Doctor bent over him.

Oswald opened his eyes. His mind was somewhat astray,--everything about him seemed wavering vaguely; then, in the midst of the terrible, chaotic confusion of every sense that precedes dissolution he made a mighty effort to grasp and hold a thought that glided indistinctly through his half-darkened mind. "Georges," he gasped, "what day of the month is it?"

"The seventh of August."

"My birthday."--Suddenly his mind grew clear once more, and there came over him the incredible celerity of thought, the wonderful illumination of vision of the dying, who in a moment of time grasp the memory of an entire life. As the earth slipped away from him he was able to judge human weaknesses in the light of eternity.

"Georges!" he began.