Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 7

Minna shook her head. "It is dead."

"And my mother?"

"Ah, come quickly."

She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor.

In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head; Strachinsky was weeping.

Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the touch!

In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying.

Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear the dear voice once more.

"My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----"

"Oh, mother, darling----"

"My death will make it all right. Write to----"

At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. "Emma!" he whispered.

The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. "Do not let him come in!" she exclaimed.

Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the bedside her mother was struggling for breath.

Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she had not the strength to do so. Once more she pa.s.sed her hand over Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight.

Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won.

All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct.

Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of the castle, tolling restlessly.

Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion, the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.

She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left alone with the body.

Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed, Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to h.o.a.rd her treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and this they laid beneath her head.

Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circ.u.mstance. He honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appet.i.te for two days; but as the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.

He had ordered a hea.r.s.e from the city. Erika was standing at a window of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.

Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it knock against the wall at a sharp turn.

She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hea.r.s.e, the shabby splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.

Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since ceased to visit at Luzano, a.s.sembled to pay the last honours to the poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train.

Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the hea.r.s.e came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and kind to all.

It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.

Through the new life strode death.

Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long procession with large eyes of wonder.

CHAPTER III.

The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.

His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice.

With very little trouble he deciphered them: "My last will."

He frowned. "So she has made a fresh will," he said to himself. In spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed envelope inscribed "My last will." Strachinsky slipped the doc.u.ment into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.

At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter.

Although the day was warm and suns.h.i.+ny, she looked cold, and in all her movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to creep away and hide himself. The resolute att.i.tude she had been wont to maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul seemed alike crushed.

"What do you want here?" Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.

She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain pa.s.sed through her. "What should I want?" she murmured, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I want to go to my mother!" She said it to herself, not to him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.

No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will.

Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud.

It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields, the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.

Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal doc.u.ment of the kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she const.i.tuted him her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be distinctly developed.

Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and strong, had been clouded of late years.

So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the seal of the will.

Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in his own eyes both himself and his motives.

Whilst reading the doc.u.ment he changed colour several times. When he had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: "Poor Emma!" Then, after pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, "She would be indeed distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!" A flood of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily, overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last will.

And then, without the slightest p.r.i.c.king of conscience, he betook himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed an act of exalted devotion.

"No need, dearest Emma," he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait which hung above his couch, "to say that I never shall let your child want. No legal doc.u.ment is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!" And, remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period of his existence, he moaned, drearily, "Oh, what a n.o.ble mind was there o'erthrown!"

When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, "Poor little Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that you still have a father."