Part 19 (1/2)

'And now I must say good-bye to you,' Oswald began again, but the ring had died out of his voice now; it was very low and subdued. 'I came to take leave of you.'

'Edmund will expect you in December, if only for a few days,' said Hedwig, half hesitatingly. 'He counts on your being present at--at our wedding.'

'I know it, and know that he will think me coldhearted and unkind if I stay away. He must interpret it as he will. I can but submit.'

'So you will not come?'

'No.'

Oswald added no single word of pretext, for none would have found belief; but his eyes, resting full on Hedwig's face, gave the explanation of his curt, harsh-sounding answer. His meaning was understood. He read this in the look which met his; but fierce and poignant as might be the pain of parting in these two young hearts, no word was spoken, no outward manifestation of it was made.

'Goodbye, then, Herr von Ettersberg,' said Hedwig, offering him her hand.

He stooped, and pressed his hot, quivering lips on the trembling hand extended to him. That pressure was the only betrayal of how matters stood with Oswald. Next minute he released the little palm, and stepped back.

'Do not forget me quite, Fraulein,' he said. 'Good-bye.'

Hedwig was alone again. Involuntarily she grasped the bushes to draw them aside, and so once more gain sight of his departing figure, but it was too late. As the boughs closed again, the first faded leaves fell in a shower on the young girl's head. She shrank beneath them, as at some grave warning or reminder. Yes, there could be no mistake; autumn had come, though the whole landscape before her lay bathed in golden suns.h.i.+ne.

That rough, stormy spring day had been so rich in promise, with all its unseen magic movement, with its thousand mysterious voices whispering around. Now all these sounds had ceased. Nature's fair life had bloomed, and was slowly waning towards dissolution. The world was hushed and seemingly deserted.

Hedwig, pale and mute, stood leaning against the terrace railing. She did not move, did not weep, but with a sad ineffable longing in her eyes gazed over at the distant chain of mountains, and then up at the clouds, where the migratory birds swarmed, streaming hither and thither in long flights. Today the swallows swept not to the earth with loving greetings and pleasant messages of happy days to come.

They pa.s.sed high overhead, far, far beyond reach, flitting away into the blue distance, and their faint piping was borne down but as a vague murmur half lost in the immeasurable s.p.a.ce. It was a last low echo of the word which here below had been spoken in the keen anguish of parting, an echo of the melancholy word Farewell.

CHAPTER IX.

The following day, the last Oswald was to spend at Ettersberg, brought a somewhat unlooked-for visitor. Count Edmund, though his coming was hourly expected, had not returned from his shooting expedition when Baron Heideck suddenly arrived in the forenoon, straight from town. He had thought fit to absent himself in demonstrative fas.h.i.+on from the festivities held to celebrate his nephew's coming of age. The announcement of the young gentleman's approaching marriage, then publicly to be made, should not, he decided, receive the sanction of his presence; but when more than two months had elapsed, he determined to pay a brief visit to his relations at the castle. Though the fact of the engagement could not now be altered, an animated discussion on the subject seemed to have taken place between the brother and sister.

They had remained more than an hour closeted together, and Heideck's reproaches took the more effect that Edmund's mother already secretly repented of her precipitate action in the matter, though as yet she would not admit it openly.

Finally the Countess, in evident perturbation, retired to her own room. Seating herself before her writing-table, she pressed a hidden spring, which opened its most secret drawer. The interview she had had with her brother must have borne upon, or at least have reawakened, memories of the past, for very certainly the article which the Countess took from that small compartment was a souvenir of distant, bygone days. It was a small leather case, a few inches long, containing apparently a portrait which perhaps for years had remained in its hiding-place untouched. That it belonged to a remote period was proved by its old-fas.h.i.+oned shape and faded exterior. The Countess held it open before her, and as she sat gazing fixedly down on the features thus exposed to view, her countenance a.s.sumed an abstracted air most unfamiliar to it.

She was lost in one of those vague, half-unconscious reveries which altogether efface the present, and carry the dreamer away to a far-distant past. Obliterated memories troop back upon the mind, forgotten joys and sorrows revive in all their old intensity, and forms that have long lain beneath the sod rise, move, and live again.

The Countess did not notice how the minutes sped by, lengthening into hours as she sat there, wrapt in contemplation. She started, half frightened, half annoyed, when, without any previous warning, the door of the room was suddenly thrown open. Quick as thought, she closed the little case and placed her hand upon it, while the angry look in her eyes seemed to inquire what the interruption could mean.

The intruder was old Everard, who came in with a haste much at variance with his usual formal, solemn demeanour. He was evidently agitated, and he began his report at once without waiting to be questioned by his mistress.

'The Count has just returned, my lady.'

'Well, where is he?' asked the mother, accustomed always to be her son's first thought.

'In his room,' stammered Everard. 'Herr von Ettersberg was at the door when the carriage drove up, and he helped the Count to mount the stairs.'

'Helped him upstairs?' The Countess's face blanched to a deadly pallor. 'What do you mean by that? Has anything happened?'

'I fear so, my lady,' said the old retainer hesitatingly. 'The groom said something about an accident out shooting. A gun was accidentally discharged, and the Count was wounded.'

He could not tell his tale at length, for the Countess sprang up with a cry of alarm. Asking no question, listening to no further word, the agonized mother rushed into the antechamber, whence a corridor led direct to her son's room.