The First Violin Part 73

She stopped to hold out her hand for the note which a servant was bringing in; but her face fell when the missive was presented to me.

"LIEBE MAI"--it began--"Will you come and help me in my trouble?

Sigmund is very ill. Sometimes he is delirious. He calls for you often. It breaks my heart to find that after all not a word is uttered of us, but only of Eugen (burn this when you have read it), of you, and of 'Karl,' and 'Friedhelm,' and one or two other names which I do not know. I fear this pet.i.tion will sound troublesome to you, who were certainly not made for trouble, but you are kind. I saw it in your face. I grieve too much. Truly the flesh is fearfully weak. I would live as if earth had no joys for me--as indeed it has none--and yet that does not prevent my suffering. May G.o.d help me! Trusting to you, Your,

"HILDEGARDE v. ROTHENFELS."

I lost no time in complying with this summons. In a few moments I was in the carriage; ere long I was at the schloss, was met by Countess Hildegarde, looking like a ghost that had been keeping a strict Lent, and was at last by Sigmund's bedside.

He was tossing feverishly from side to side, murmuring and muttering.

But when he saw me he was still, a sweet, frank smile flitted over his face--a smile wonderfully like that which his father had lately bent upon me. He gave a little laugh, saying:

"Fraulein May! _Willkommen!_ Have you brought my father? And I should like to see Friedhelm, too. You and _der Vater_ and Friedel used to sit near together at the concert, don't you remember? I went once, and you sung. That tall black man beat time, and my father never stopped looking at you and listening--Friedel too. I will ask them if they remember."

He laughed again at the reminiscence, and took my hand, and asked me if I remembered, so that it was with difficulty that I steadied my voice and kept my eyes from running over as I answered him. Grafin Hildegarde behind wrung her hands and turned to the window. He did not advance any reminiscence of what had happened since he came to the schloss.

There was no doubt that our Sigmund was very ill. A visitation of scarlet fever, of the worst kind, was raging in Lahnburg and in the hamlet of Rothenfels, which lay about the gates of the schloss.

Sigmund, some ten days before, had ridden with his uncle, and waited on his pony for some time outside a row of cottages, while the count visited one of his old servants, a man who had become an octogenarian in the service of his family, and upon whom Graf Bruno periodically shed the light of his countenance.

It was scarcely to be doubted that the boy had taken the infection then and there, and the doctor did not conceal that he had the complaint in its worst form, and that his recovery admitted of the gravest doubts.

A short time convinced me that I must not again leave the child till the illness was decided in one way or another. He was mine now, and I felt myself in the place of Eugen, as I stood beside his bed and told him the hard truth--that his father was not here, nor Friedhelm, nor Karl, for whom he also asked, but only I.

The day pa.s.sed on. A certain conviction was growing every hour stronger with me. An incident at last decided it. I had scarcely left Sigmund's side for eight or nine hours, but I had seen nothing of the count, nor heard his voice, nor had any mention been made of him, and remembering how he adored the boy, I was surprised.

At last Grafin Hildegarde, after a brief absence, came into the room, and with a white face and parted lips, said to me in a half-whisper.

"_Liebe_ Miss Wedderburn, will you do something for me? Will you speak to my husband?"

"To your husband!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

She bowed.

"He longs to see Sigmund, but dare not come. For me, I have hardly dared to go near him since the little one began to be ill. He believes that Sigmund will die, and that he will be his murderer, having taken him out that day. I have often spoken to him about making _der Arme_ ride too far, and now the sight of me reminds him of it; he can not endure to look at me. Heaven help me! Why was I ever born?"

She turned away without tears--tears were not in her line--and I went, much against my will, to find the Graf.

He was in his study. Was that the same man, I wondered, whom I had seen the very day before, so strong, and full of pride and life? He raised a haggard, white, and ghastly face to me, which had aged and fallen in unspeakably. He made an effort, and rose with politeness as I came in.

"_Mein Fraulein_, you are loading us with obligations. It is quite unheard of."

But no thanks were implied in the tone--only bitterness. He was angry that I should be in the place he dared not come to.

If I had not been raised by one supreme fear above all smaller ones, I should have been afraid of this haggard, eager-looking old man--for he did look very old in his anguish. I could see the rage of jealousy with which he regarded me, and I am not naturally fond of encountering an old wolf who has starved.

But I used my utmost effort to prevail upon him to visit his nephew, and at last succeeded. I piloted him to Sigmund's room; led him to the boy's bedside. The sick child's eyes were closed, but he presently opened them. The uncle was stooping over him, his rugged face all working with emotion, and his voice broken as he murmured:

"_Ach, mein Liebling!_ art thou then so ill?"

With a kind of shuddering cry, the boy pushed him away with both hands, crying:

"Go away! I want my father--my father, my father, I say! Where is he?

Why do you not fetch him? You are a bad man, and you hate him."

Then I was frightened. The count recoiled; his face turned deathly white--livid; his fist clinched. He glared down upon the now unrecognizing young face and stuttered forth something, paused, then said in a low, distinct voice, which shook me from head to foot:

"So! Better he should die. The brood is worthy the nest it sprung from.

Where is our blood, that he whines after that hound--that hound?"

With which, and with a fell look around, he departed, leaving Sigmund oblivious of all that had pa.s.sed, utterly indifferent and unconscious, and me s.h.i.+vering with fear at the outburst I had seen.

But it seemed to me that my charge was worse. I left him for a few moments, and seeking out the countess, spoke my mind.

"Frau Grafin, Eugen must be sent for. I fear that Sigmund is going to die, and I dare not let him die without sending for his father."

"I dare not!" said the countess.

She had met her husband, and was flung, unnerved, upon a couch, her hand over her heart.

"But I dare, and I must do it!" said I, secretly wondering at myself. "I shall telegraph for him."

"If my husband knew!" she breathed.

"I can not help it," said I. "Is the poor child to die among people who profess to love him, with the one wish ungratified which he has been repeating ever since he began to be ill? I do not understand such love; I call it horrible inhumanity."

"For Eugen to enter this house again!" she said in a whisper.

"I would to G.o.d that there were any other head as n.o.ble under its roof!"

was my magniloquent and thoroughly earnest inspiration. "Well, _gnadige Frau_, will you arrange this matter, or shall I?"

"I dare not," she moaned, half distracted; "I dare not--but I will do nothing to prevent you. Use the whole household; they are at your command."

I lost not an instant in writing out a telegram and dispatching it by a man on horseback to Lahnburg. I summoned Eugen briefly:

"Sigmund is ill. I am here. Come to us."

I saw the man depart, and then I went and told the countess what I had done. She turned, if possible, a shade paler, then said:

"I am not responsible for it."

Then I left the poor pale lady to still her beating heart and kill her deadly apprehensions in the embroidery of the lily of the field and the modest violet.

No change in the child's condition. A lethargy had fallen upon him. That awful stupor, with the dark, flushed cheek and heavy breath, was to me more ominous than the restlessness of fever.

I sat down and calculated. My telegram might be in Eugen's hand in the course of an hour.

When could he be here? Was it possible that he might arrive this night?

I obtained the German equivalent for Bradshaw, and studied it till I thought I had made out that, supposing Eugen to receive the telegram in the shortest possible time, he might be here by half past eleven that night. It was now five in the afternoon. Six hours and a half--and at the end of that time his non-arrival might tell me he could not be here before the morrow.