"Yes, dear old fellow!" said Georges softly, in a choked voice.

"Tell my mother--and for G.o.d's sake do not forget--that for the happy twenty-six years that are past I thank her, and that I kiss her dear, dear hands in token of farewell!"

He was silent, he breathed with difficulty,--his lips moved again, and Georges put his ear down to them that he might understand him--"Georges,--if I have ever done you wrong,--you or any one else in my life--without knowing it,--then...."

"Ah Ossi, would to G.o.d that I could ever lay down my head as calmly and proudly as you can," whispered Georges, clasping him closer in his arms.

The dying man smiled--possessed by a great calm. He knew that what had been his secret was his own forever.

He tried to raise himself a little, rivetting his eyes upon the crucifix;--the gilt letters gleamed in the morning light. He lifted his hand by an effort, to make the sign of the cross,--Georges guided his hand. A bluish pallor appeared upon his features,--twice a tremor ran through his limbs, his hands fell clinched by his side--his lips moved for the last time. "Poor Ella!" he murmured scarcely audibly.

G.o.d have mercy upon us all!

CHAPTER XIV.

The Countess Lodrin had pa.s.sed the night without lying down. When her maid appeared to see if her mistress were not ill, she had been dismissed by a mute wave of the hand. At last, towards morning, sitting beside her writing-table, she had fallen into the leaden sleep that is wont to follow terrible mental agitation.

The sun was high in the heavens when she awoke with stiffened limbs and a dull pain at her heart, but without any distinct consciousness of misfortune. She looked around her, and started, perceiving that some strange commotion was astir in the castle; she could hear footsteps overhead, and outside her door.--She hurried out, the corridor was filled with people--people who had no claim to be up here. And all the servants were hurrying hither and thither in the confusion of a household where some catastrophe has occurred, all weeping, trembling, not one showing unsympathetic curiosity, and amongst them was Pistasch, vainly trying to quiet the loud howling of Oswald's Newfoundland.

"What is the matter?" the Countess shrieked,--"what has happened?"

But no one had the courage to answer her. She ran to Oswald's bedroom--all gazed after her in horror-stricken compa.s.sion; they might have restrained her, but who could dare to do so? At the door she met Georges.

"What is it?" she gasped, clutching his arm, "where is Ossi?"

"In there," he murmured hoa.r.s.ely, "but ...!"

"'But'--for G.o.d's sake tell me what has happened?"

"A duel," said Georges with an effort,--he would fain have detained her, would fain have found the conventional phrases with which men attempt to break bad news, he could not recall any, and he stammered.

"A duel?" she asked sharply, "with whom?"

"With Capriani;--he...."

Before he could say another word she had opened the door and had entered Oswald's room.

They had lain him on his bed,--the n.o.ble outlines of his stalwart figure were distinctly visible beneath the white sheet;--his face was uncovered, and bathed in all the ideal charm of dead youth.

The Countess staggered, tried to hold herself erect, tripped over her dress, and fell; then dragged herself on her knees to the bed of her dead child. At its foot she lay, her face buried in her hands.

When, two hours afterward, Truyn who had been informed of the frightful catastrophe entered the room with Georges Lodrin, she was still kneeling in the same place, her head still in her hands.

Profoundly shocked Truyn bent over her, and gently begged her to leave the room. She arose mechanically, and leaning upon his arm went to the door. There she paused, turned, and hurried back to the bed. They feared that force would be necessary to separate her from the dead body, when Georges remembered the message entrusted to him by the dying man. In the tumult, the horror, in his own terrible grief he had forgotten it. "Let me try to persuade her, wait for me here," said he to Truyn, and going to the bedside where the Countess was again kneeling he whispered: "Aunt, I have a message for you from him; he died in my arms, and while dying he thought of you!"

She shrank away from him.

"To-day is his birthday," Georges continued, "he remembered it in his last moments and begged me to tell you, and, for G.o.d's sake not to forget it, that he thanked you for the past happy twenty-six years, and that he kissed your dear, dear hands in token of farewell."

The wretched woman, who had hitherto seemed carved out of marble, began to tremble violently; a hard hoa.r.s.e sob burst from her lips.

It was the first warm breath of spring breaking up the ice. She instantly rose and threw herself in an agony of tears upon the corpse, exclaiming: "My child, my fair, n.o.ble boy!"

Georges withdrew; the moment was too sacred to be intruded upon.

Shortly afterwards she tottered, bent and bowed, from the room. Truyn, whom she had not seemed to perceive, offered her his arm, and she quietly allowed herself to be led to her own apartment.

CHAPTER XV.

The death of the young man excited universal sympathy. He was mourned not only by his relatives and friends, but by all his dependants, the peasants on his estates, nay, even by strangers to whom he had only been pointed out as he pa.s.sed by. And on the day when he was buried, with all the honours befitting the n.o.ble name which he had borne so worthily, there was in the whole country round no little child whose hands were not folded in prayer for him, no poor labouring woman who had ever met him in the road, and whose existence his kindly smile had helped to lighten, who did not wear a black ap.r.o.n or a black kerchief, in loving memory of him. No one, perhaps, could have told what he or she had expected of the young Count, but all felt that with him some hope had died, some sunshine had been buried.

Fritz Malzin, the only witness of the insult offered to the Conte, died the night before the duel; nothing therefore was known save what the Conte chose to tell; the versions of the reasons that had induced Oswald's rash acceptance of the Conte's challenge were many and widely differing, but not one of them bore the least relation to the truth.

As Oswald had foreseen, his relatives overwhelmed Georges with reproaches for the part he had borne in a duel between his cousin and a parvenu. But the letter to Truyn which Oswald left behind, exculpated Georges completely.

People declared, to be sure, that Georges ought to have restrained the folly of his hot-tempered cousin, but the unaffected grief evinced by the man, hitherto regarded as careless and indifferent, disarmed every one. His devotion to his dead cousin revealed itself in his every action, in the exquisite tenderness of his treatment of Oswald's wretched mother, and his management of the estates thus suddenly fallen to him, absolutely in accordance as it was with all Oswald's wishes, soon won him the warmest sympathy from all.

Of course the Conte was denounced; Oswald's a.s.sociates in his own rank regarded the man as no better than a murderer. But he coldly defied public opinion, and held his head higher than ever; he seemed even to pride himself upon his deed, and several newspapers defended him.

CONCLUSION.

When in May a white-edged, black cloud discharges a storm of hail upon the fresh, green wheat, the tender blades break and are buried out of sight beneath heavy sleet; when the storm is past, and the ice melted, and the sun once more beaming bright and warm in cloudless skies, the bruised blades think they cannot bear the light, and lying close upon the ground would fain die. Then over the fields thus laid waste many a head is shaken, and many a sigh is breathed for the broken promise of the harvest.

But some there are who, seeing farther and knowing better, shrug their shoulders, and say "A hailstorm in spring prostrates, but does not kill!" and they look forward hopefully to the future.

Gradually, and very slowly, the warm sunshine penetrates the crushed blades, awakening and strengthening within them the benumbed forces of youth. Before the summer is fully abroad in the land, the wheat stands erect and tall, to the inexperienced eye all unharmed, but the husbandman can detect the callous ring where the blade was bent, and says: "The wheat has been shot in the knee."

Thus it is with youthful souls, crushed to the earth in the spring-time of life by some fierce tempest. Slowly but surely the spirit, well-nigh wounded to death, recovers, and G.o.d grants to the hearts of those whom he loves a glorious resurrection.

Gabrielle recovered from the fearful blow that had befallen her,--very slowly, and painfully to be sure, but at last. At first indeed, her grief was so profound, she suffered so silently, so tearlessly, that they feared for her reason, and then, when all seemed darkest to her, she was suddenly possessed by an intense, inexplicable yearning to return to the pretty home in the Avenue Labedoyere in which the fairest hours of her shattered bliss had been spent.

Her desire was complied with; and for many a long winter night Zinka sat beside her by the same little white bed where the girl had once whispered to her in the delirium of her happiness that it seemed as if her heart would break with joy. With tenderest sympathy the young stepmother talked of the departed unweariedly with the girl, allowing her tears free course, without ever cruelly attempting to restrain the expression of her grief. And when Truyn, in despair over such endless grieving, unreasonably taxed his wife with exciting Ella's emotion, and with hindering her from forgetting, Zinka replied gently, "Let me alone; I know what I am doing. There is nothing more terrible, more dreadful than the spectre of a grief that has been violently stifled; it lurks in wait for us, and persecutes us all the more persistently, the more resolutely we thrust it from us. The memory of our beloved dead must not be banished, it must be tenderly welcomed and cherished, until in time it loses all bitterness, and is ever with us, sad, but very dear."

Truyn listened incredulously, but a few weeks later he perceived with surprise, and with trembling delight that Gabrielle's pale cheeks began to show a faint colour, and that her weary gait grew more elastic. Then when he was alone with Zinka he kissed her gratefully, saying "I see you understand better than I how to comfort."

"And from whom did I learn the art?" she asked in reply, with a loving glance, "do you not see that I am only repaying old debts?"