Читать книгу "O Thou, My Austria!" - Ossip Schubin - Страница 9

At the period when I again take up my reminiscences I am entirely at home at Zirkow, and almost as familiar with Uncle Paul and Aunt Rosa as if I had known them both all my life.

Winter has set in, and, ah, such a wonderful, beautiful winter,--so bright, and glittering with such quantities of pure white snow! I go sleighing with Uncle Paul; I make a snow man with Krupitschka,--a monk in a long robe, because the legs of the soldier we tried to make would not stand straight; and I help Krupitschka's wife to make bread in a large wooden bowl with iron hoops. How delicious is the odour of the fermenting dough, and how delightful it is to run about the long brick-paved corridors and passages, to have so much space and light and air! When one day Uncle Paul asks me, "Which is best, Paris or Zirkow?" I answer, without hesitation, "Zirkow!"

Uncle Paul laughs contentedly, but mamma looks at me sadly. I feel that I have grieved her.

Now and then I think of papa, especially before I go to sleep at night. Then I sometimes wonder if the snow is deep on his grave in the churchyard at Montmartre, and if he is not cold in the ground. Poor papa!--he loved the sun so dearly! And I look over at mamma, who sits and sews at a table near my bed, and it worries me to see the tears rolling down her cheeks again.

Poor mamma! She grows paler, thinner, and sadder every day, although my uncle and aunt do everything that they can for her.

If I remember rightly, she was seldom with her hosts except at meal-times. She lived in strict retirement, in the two pretty rooms which had been assigned us, and was always trying to make herself useful with her needle to Aunt Rosa, who never tired of admiring her beautiful, delicate work.

Towards spring her hands were more than ever wont to drop idly in her lap, and when the snow had gone and everything outside was beginning to stir, she would sit for hours in the bow-window where her work-table stood, doing nothing, only gazing out towards the west,--gazing--gazing.

The soiled snow had vanished; the water was dripping from roofs and trees; everything was brown and bare. A warm breath came sweeping over the world. For a couple of days all nature sobbed and thrilled, and then spring threw over the earth her fragrant robe of blossoms.

It was my first spring in the country, and I never shall forget my joyful surprise each morning at all that had been wrought overnight. I could not tell which to admire most, buds, flowers, or butterflies. From morning till night I roamed about in the balmy air, amid the tender green of grass and shrubs. And at night I was so tired that I was asleep almost before the last words of my childish prayer had died upon my lips. Ah, how soundly I slept!

But one night I suddenly waked, with what seemed to me the touch of a soft hand upon my cheek,--papa's hand. I started up and looked about me; there was no one to be seen. The breeze of spring had caressed me,--that was all. How had it found its way in?

The moon was at the full, and in its white light everything in the room stood revealed and yet veiled. I sat up uneasily, and then noticed that mamma's bed was empty. I was frightened. "Mamma! mamma!" I called, half crying.

There was no reply. I sprang from my little bed, and ran into the next room, the door of which was open.

Mamma was standing there at the window, gazing out towards the west. The window was wide open; our rooms were at the back of the castle, and looked out upon the orchard, where nature was celebrating its resurrection with festal splendour. The huge old apple-trees were all robed in delicate pink-white blossoms, the tender grass beneath them glittered with dew, and above it and among the waving blossoms sighed the warm breeze of spring as if from human lips. Mamma stood with extended arms whispering the tenderest words out into the night,--words that sounded as if stifled among sighs and kisses. She wore the same dress in which she had sat by papa's bedside when he wished her to be beautiful at their parting. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders. I gasped for breath, and threw my arms about her, crying, "Mamma! mamma!" She turned, and seemed about to thrust me from her almost angrily, then suddenly began to weep bitterly like a child just wakened from sleep, and crept back gently and ashamed to our bedroom. Without undressing she lay down on her bed, and I covered her up as well as I could.

I could not sleep that night, and I heard her moan and move restlessly.

The next morning she could not come down to breakfast; a violent nervous fever had attacked her, and ten days afterwards she died.

They broke the sad truth to me slowly, first saying that she had gone on a journey, and then that she was with God in heaven. I knew she was dead,--and what that meant.

I can but dimly remember the days that followed her death. I dragged myself about beneath the burden of a grief far too great for my poor, childish little heart, and grew more and more weary, until at last I was attacked by the same illness of which my mother had died.

When I recovered, the memory of all that had happened before my illness no longer gave me any pain. I looked back upon the past with what was almost indifference. Not until long, long afterwards did I comprehend the wealth of love of which my mother's death had deprived me.