In the quiet chamber in the ancient hunting-castle, on the spot formerly occupied by the little bed, a casket now stood on two chairs near a wooden crucifix.
Freyer had returned, bringing the body of his child. He had telegraphed to the countess, but received in reply only a few lines: "She was compelled to set off on a journey at once, her mind was so much affected that her physician had advised immediate change of scene to avert worse consequences."
A check was enclosed to defray the funeral expenses and bestow a sum on Josepha "as a recognition of her faithful service," sufficient to enable her to live comfortably in case she wished to rest. Josepha understood that this was a gracious form of dismissal. But the royal gift which expressed the countess' gratitude did not avail to subdue the terrible rancor in her soul, or the harshness of this dismissal.
Morning was dawning. Josepha was changed by illness almost beyond recognition, yet she had watched through the night with Freyer beside the coffin. Now she again glanced over the letter which had come the evening before. "She doesn't venture to send me away openly, and wants to satisfy me with money, that I may go willingly. Money, always money! I was forced to give up the child, and now I must lose you, too, the last thing I have in the world?" she said to Freyer, who was sitting silently beside the coffin of his son. Tearing the cheque, she threw it on the floor. "There are the fragments. When the child is buried, I know where I shall go."
"You will not leave here, Josepha, as long as I remain. Especially now that you are ill. I have been her servant long enough. But this is the limit where I cease to yield to her caprices. She cannot ask me to give you up also, my relative, the only soul in my boundless solitude. If she did, I would not do it, for--no matter how lowly my birth, I am still her husband; have I no rights whatever? You will stay with me, I desire it, and can do so the more positively as my salary is sufficient to support you. So you need accept no wages from her."
"Yes, tell her so, say that I want nothing--nothing except to stay with you, near my angel's grave." Sobs stifled her words. After a time, she continued faintly: "I shall not trouble her long, you can see that."
"Oh, Josepha, don't fancy such things. You are young and will recover!" said Freyer consolingly, but his eyes rested anxiously upon her.
She shook her head. "The child was younger still, yet he died of longing for his mother, and I shall die of the yearning for him."
"Then let me send for a doctor--you cannot go on in this way."
"Oh, pray don't make any useless ado--it would only be one person more to question me about the child, and I shall be on thorns while I am deceiving him. You know I never could lie in my life. Leave me in peace, no doctor can help me."
Some one rang. Josepha opened the door. The cabinetmaker was bringing in a little coffin, which was to take the place of the box containing the leaden casket. Her black dress and haggard face gave her the semblance of a mother mourning her own child. Nothing was said during the performance of the work. Josepha and Freyer lifted the metal casket from the chest and placed it in the plain oak coffin. The man was paid and left the room. Freyer hastened out and shook the snow from some pine branches to adorn the bier. A few icicles which still clung to them thawed in the warm room, and the drops fell on the coffin--the tears of the forest! The last scion of the princely House of Prankenberg lay under frost-covered pine boughs; and a peasant mourned him as his son, a maid servant prepared him for his eternal rest. This is the bloodless revolution sometimes accomplished amid the ossified traditions of rank, which affords the insulted idea of universal human rights moments of loving satisfaction.
The two mourners were calm and quiet. They seemed to have a premonition that this moment possessed a significance which raised it far above personal grief.
An hour later the pastor came--a few men and maid-servants formed the funeral procession. Not far from the castle, in the wood, stood a ruinous old chapel. The countess had permitted the child to be buried there because the churchyard was several leagues away. "It is a great deal of honor for Josepha's child to be placed in the chapel of a noble family!" thought the people. "If haughty old Count Wildenau knew it, he would turn in his grave!" The coffin was raised and borne out of the castle. Josepha, leaning on Freyer, followed silently with fixed, tearless eyes and burning cheeks. Yet she succeeded in wading through the snow and standing on the cold stone floor in the chilly chapel beside the grave. But when she returned home, the measure of her strength was exhausted. Her laboring lungs panted for breath; her icy feet could not be warmed; her heart, throbbing painfully, sent all the blood to her brain, which burned with fever, while her thoughts grew confused. The terrible chill completed the work of destruction commenced by grief. Freyer saw it with unutterable sorrow.
"I must get a doctor!" he said gently. "Come, Josepha, don't stare steadily at the empty space where the body lay. Come, I will take you to my room and put you on the bed. Everything there will not remind you of the boy."
"No, I will stay here," she said, with that cruelty to herself, peculiar to sick persons who do not fear death. "Just here!" She clung to the uncomfortable sofa on which she sat as if afraid of being dragged away by force.
Freyer hastily removed the chairs which had supported the coffin, the crucifix, and the candles.
"Yes, put them out, you will soon need them for me. Oh, you kind-hearted man. If only you could have the happiness you deserve. You merited a better fate. Ah, I will not speak of what she has done to me, but her sins against you and the child nothing can efface--nothing!" A fit of coughing almost stifled her. But it seemed as if her eyes continued to utter the words she had not breath to speak, a feverish vengeance glittered in their depths which made Freyer fairly shudder.
"Josepha," he said mildly, but firmly. "Sacrifice your hate to God, and be merciful. If you love me, you must forgive her whom I love and forgive."
"Never!" gasped Josepha with a violent effort "Joseph--oh! this pain in my chest--I believe it is inflammation of the lungs!"
"Alas!--and there is no one to send for the doctor. The men are all in the woods. Go to bed, I beg you, there is not a moment to be lost, I must get the doctor myself. I will send the house-maid to you. Keep up your courage, I will be as quick as I can!"
And he hurried off, forgetting his grief for his child in his anxiety about the last companion of his impoverished life.
The house-maid came in and asked if she could do anything, but Josepha wanted no assistance. The anxious girl tried to persuade her to go to bed, but Josepha said that she could not breathe lying down. At last she consented to eat something. The nourishment did her good, her weakness diminished and her breathing grew easier. The girl put some wood in the stove and returned to her work in the kitchen. Josepha remained lost in thought. To her, death was deliverance--but Freyer, what would become of him if he lost her also? This alone rendered it hard to die. The damp wood in the stove sputtered and hissed like the voices of wrangling women. It was the "fire witch," which always proclaims the approach of any evil. Josepha shook her head. What could be worse than the evil which had already befallen her poor cousin and herself? The fire witch continued to shriek and lament, but Josepha did not understand her. A pair of crows perched in an old pine tree outside the window croaked so suddenly that she started in terror.
Ah, it was very lonely up here! What would it be when Freyer lived all alone in the house and waited months in vain for the heartless woman who remembered neither her husband nor her child? She had not troubled herself about the living, why should she seek the little grave where lay the dead?
A loud knock on the door of the house echoed through the silence.
Josepha listened. Surely it could not be the doctor already?
The maid opened it. Heavy footsteps and the voices of men were heard in the entry, then a dog howled. The stupid servant opened the door of the room and called: "Jungfer Josepha, here are two hunters, who are so tired tramping over the snow that they would like to rest awhile. Can they come in? There is no fire anywhere else!"
Josepha, though so ill, of course could not refuse admittance to the freezing men, who were already on the threshold. Rising with an effort from the sofa, she pushed some chairs for the strangers near the stove. "I am ill," she said in great embarrassment--"but if you wish to rest and warm yourselves here, I beg--"
"We are very grateful," said one of the hunters, a gentleman with a red moustache and piercing eyes. "If we do not disturb you, we will gladly accept your hospitality. We are not familiar with the neighborhood and have lost our way. We came from beyond the frontier and have been wading through the snow five hours."
Meanwhile, at a sign from Josepha, the maid-servant had taken the gentlemen's cloaks and hunting gear.
"See, this is our booty," said the other hunter. "If we might invite you to dine with us, I should almost venture to ask if this worthy lass could not roast the hare for us? Our cousin, Countess Wildenau, will surely forgive us this little trespass upon her preserves."
"Are you relatives of Countess Wildenau?"
"Certainly, her nearest and most faithful ones!"
Josepha, in her mortal weakness felt as if crushed by the presence of these strangers--with their heavy hunting-boots and loud voices. She tried to take refuge in the kitchen on the pretense of roasting the hare herself. But both gentlemen earnestly protested against it.
"No, indeed, that would be fine business to drive you out of your room when you are ill! In that case, we must leave the house at once."
The red-bearded gentleman--Cousin Wildenau himself--sprang from his chair and almost forced Josepha to go back to her sofa.
"There, my dear--madam--or miss? Now do me the honor to take your seat again and allow us to remain a short time unto the roast is ready, then you must dine with us."
A faint smile hovered around Josepha's parched lips. "I thank you, but I am too ill to eat."
"You are really very ill"--said the stranger with kindly solicitude. "You are feverish. I fear we are disturbing you very much. Pray send us away if we annoy you." Yet he knew perfectly well that she could not help asking the unbidden guests to stay.
"But my dear--madam--or miss?"--Josepha never answered the question--"are you doing nothing to relieve your illness, have you had no physician?"
"No we are in such a secluded place, a physician cannot always be had. But I am expecting one to-day."
"Why, it is strange to live in this wilderness. And how uncomfortable you are, you haven't even a stool," said the red-haired cousin putting his huge hunting-muff, after warming it at the stove, under her feet.
Josepha tried to refuse it, but he would not listen. "You need not mind us, we are sick nurses ourselves, we commanded a sanitary battalion in the war. So we understand a little what to do. You are suffering from asthma, it is difficult for you to breathe, so you must sit comfortably. There! Now put my cousin's muff at your back. That's better, isn't it?"
"But pray--"
"Come, come, come--no contradiction. You must be comfortable."
Josepha was ashamed. The gentlemen were so kind, so solicitous about her--there were good people in the world! The neglected, desolate heart gratefully appreciated the unusual kindness.
"But I am really astonished to find everything so primitive. Our honored cousin really ought to have done something more for your comfort. Not even a sofa-cushion, no carpet! I should have thought she would have paid more attention to so faithful a--" he courteously suppressed the word "servant"--and correcting himself, said: "assistant!"
Josepha made no answer, but her lips curled bitterly, significantly.
Wildenau noted it. "Dissatisfied!" escaped his lips, so low that only his companion heard it.
"You have been here a long time, I suppose--how many years?
"Have I been with her?" said Josepha frankly. "Since the last Passion Play. That will be ten years next summer."
"Ah--true--you are a native of Ammergau!" said the baron, with the manner of one familiar with the facts, whose memory has failed for an instant. "I suppose you came to the countess at the same time as the Christus?"
"Yes."
"Is he a relative of yours?"
"Yes, my cousin."
"He is here still, isn't he?"
"Why, of course."
"He is--her--what is his title?"
"Steward."
"Is he at home?"
"No, he has gone to the city for a doctor."
"Oh, I am very sorry. We should have been glad to make his acquaintance. We have heard so many pleasant things about him. A man in whom our cousin was so much interested--"
"Then she speaks of him?"
"Oh--to her intimate friends--certainly!" said Wildenau equivocally gazing intently at Josepha, whose face beamed with joy at the thought that the countess spoke kindly of Freyer.
"Why is he never seen in the city? He must live like a hermit up here."
"Yes, Heaven knows that."
"He ought to visit my cousin sometimes in the city, everybody would be glad to know the Ammergau Christus."
"But if she doesn't wish it--!" said Josepha thoughtlessly.
"Why, that would be another matter certainly, but she has never told me so. Why shouldn't she wish it?" murmured Wildenau with well-feigned surprise.
"Because she is ashamed of him!"
"Ah!" Wildenau almost caught his breath at the significance of the word. "But, tell me, why does Herr Freyer--isn't that his name--submit to it?"
Josepha shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, what can he do about it?"
A pause ensued. Josepha stopped, as if fearing to say too much. The two gentlemen had become very thoughtful.
At last Wildenau resumed the conversation. "I don't understand how a man who surely might find a pleasant position anywhere, can be so dependent on a fine lady's whims. You won't take it amiss, I see that your kinsman's position troubles you--were I in his place I would give up the largest salary rather than--"
"Salary?" interrupted Josepha, with flashing eyes. "Do you suppose that my cousin would do anything for the sake of a salary? Oh, you don't know him. If the countess described him to you in that way, the shame is hers!"
Wildenau listened intently. "But, my dear woman, that isn't what I meant, you would not let me finish! I was just going to add that such a motive would not affect your kinsman, that it could be nothing but sincere devotion, which bound him to our cousin--a loyalty which apparently wins little gratitude."
"Yes, I always tell him so--but he won't admit it--even though his heart should break."
Two dark interlaced veins in Josepha's sunken, transparent temples throbbed feverishly.
"But--how do you feel? We are certainly disturbing you!" said the baron.
"Oh, no! It does not matter!" replied Josepha, courteously.
"Could you not take us into some other room--the countess doubtless comes here constantly--there must be other apartments which can be heated."
"Yes, but no fire has been made in them for weeks; the stoves will smoke."
"Has not the countess been here for so long?"
"No, she scarcely ever comes now."
"But the time must be very long to you and your cousin--you were doubtless accustomed to the countess' visits."
"Certainly," replied Josepha, lost in thought--"when I think how it used to be--and how things are now!"
Wildenau glanced around the room, then said softly: "And the little son--he is dead."
Josepha stared at him in terror. "Do you know that?"
"I know all. My cousin has his picture in her boudoir, a splendid child."
Josepha's poor feverish brain was growing more and more confused. The tears she had scarcely conquered flowed again. "Yes, wasn't he--and to let such a child die without troubling herself about him!"
"It is inexcusable," said Wildenau.
"If the countess ever speaks of it again, tell her that Josepha loved it far more than she, for she followed it to the grave while the mother enjoyed her life--she must be ashamed then."
"I will tell her. It is a pity about the beautiful child--was it not like an Infant Christ?"
"Indeed it was--and now I know what picture you mean. In Jerusalem, where the child was christened, a copy as they called it of the Infant Christ hung in the chapel over the baptismal font. The countess afterwards bought the picture on account of its resemblance to the boy."
"I suppose it resembles Herr Freyer, too?" the baron remarked carelessly.
"Somewhat, but the mother more!"
Baron Wildenau began to find the room too warm--and went to the window a moment to get the air, while his companion, horrified by these disclosures, shook his head. He would gladly have told the deluded woman that they had only learned the child's death from a wood-cutter whom they met in the forest--but he dared not "contradict" his cousin. After a pause, Wildenau again turned to Josepha. He saw that there was danger in delay, for at any moment the fever might increase to such a degree that she would begin to rave and no longer be capable of making a deposition: The truth must be discovered, now or never! He felt, however, that Josepha's was no base nature which could be led to betray her employer by ordinary means. Caution and reflection were necessary.
"I am really touched by your fidelity to my cousin. Any one who can claim such a nature is fortunate. I thank you in her name."
He held out his hand. But she replied with her usual blunt honesty: "I don't deserve your thanks, sir. I have not remained here for the sake of the countess, but on account of the child and my unfortunate cousin. She has been kind to me--but--if I should see her to-day, I would tell her openly that I would never forgive her treatment of the child and Joseph--no matter what she did. The child is dead and my cousin will die too. Thank Heaven, I shall not live to witness it."
"I understand you perfectly--oh, I know my cousin. And--my poor dear Fraeulein Josepha--I may call you Fraeulein now, may I not, since you are no longer obliged to pass for the child's mother?--it was an unprecedented sacrifice for you--! Alas! My dear Fraeulein, you and your cousin must be prepared to fare still worse, to be entirely forgotten, for I can positively assure you that the countess is about to wed the Hereditary Prince of Metten-Barnheim."
"What?" Josepha shrieked loudly.
Wildenau watched her intently.
"She has just gone to Cannes, where the old duke is staying, and the announcement of the engagement is daily expected."
"It is impossible--it cannot be!" murmured Josepha, trembling in every limb.
"But why not? She is free--has a right to dispose of her hand--" Wildenau persisted.
"No--she is not--she cannot marry," cried Josepha, starting from her sofa in despair and standing before them with glowing cheeks and red hair like a flame which blazes up once more before expiring. "For Heaven's sake--it would be a crime!"
"But who is to prevent it?" asked Wildenau breathlessly.
"I!" groaned Josepha, summoning her last strength.
"You?--My dear woman, what can you do?"
"More than you suppose!"
"Then tell me, that we may unite to prevent the crime ere it is too late."
"Yes, by Heaven! Before I will allow her to do Joseph this wrong--I will turn traitor to her."
"But Herr Freyer has no right to ask the countess not to marry again--"
"No right?" she repeated with terrible earnestness, "are you so sure of that?"
"He is only the countess' lover--"
"Her lover?" sobbed Josepha in mingled wrath and anguish: "Joseph, you noble upright man--must this be said of you--!"
"I don't understand. If he is not her lover--what is he?"
Josepha could bear no more. "He is her husband--her legally wedded husband."
The baron almost staggered under this unexpected, unprecedented revelation. Controlling himself with difficulty, he seized the sick woman's hand, as if to sustain her lest she should break down, ere he had extorted the last disclosure from her--the last thing he must know. "Only tell me where and by whom the marriage ceremony was performed."
As if under the gaze of a serpent the victim yielded to the stronger will: "At Prankenburg--Martin and I--were witnesses." She slipped from his hand, her senses grew confused, her eyes became glassy, her chest heaved convulsively in the struggle for breath, but the one word which she still had consciousness to utter--was enough for the Wildenaus.
When, a few hours later, Freyer returned with the physician and the priest, whom he had thoughtfully brought with him, he found Josepha alone on the sofa, speechless, and in the last agonies of death.
The physician, after examining her, said that an acute inflammation of the lungs had followed the tuberculosis from which she had long suffered and hastened her end. The priest gave her the last sacrament and remained with Freyer, sitting beside the bed in which she had been laid. The death-struggle was terrible. She seemed to be constantly trying to tell Freyer something which she was unable to utter. Three times life appeared to have departed, and three times she rallied again, as if she could not die without having relieved her heart of its burden. Vain! It was useless for Freyer to put his ear to her lips, he could not understand her faltering words. It was a terrible night! At last, toward morning, she grew calm, and now she could die. Leaning on his breast, she ceased her struggles to speak, and slowly breathed her last. She had conquered and she now knew that he would conquer also. She bowed her head with a smile, and her last glance was fixed on him, a look of reconciliation rested on her Matures--her soul soared upward--day was dawning!
