“Read out loud,” she said; “I was not able to read it through.”
I did as she wished.
“Dear Sister—Yesterday we had a hot combat; there must be a long list of casualties. In order that you, and in order that our poor mother may not hear in that way of the misfortune, that you may be able to prepare her for it gradually (tell her he is severely wounded), I write at once, my dear, to tell you that our brave brother Karl is of the number of the warriors who have died for their country.”
I interrupted my reading to embrace my friend.
“I had got so far,” she said gently.
With tearful voice I read on.
“Your husband is untouched, and so am I. Would that the enemy’s bullet had hit me instead! I envy Karl his hero’s death. He fell at the beginning of the battle, and did not know that this one again was lost. It is really too bitter. I saw him fall, for we were riding near each other. I jumped down at once to pick him up. Only one look and he was dead. The bullet must have passed through his lungs or heart. It was a quick painless death. How many others had to suffer for hours, and to lie helpless on the field in the heat of the battle, till death released them! It was a murderous day—more than a thousand corpses, friend and enemy, covered the battlefield. I recognised among the dead the faces of so many dear friends; and, amongst others, there is poor”—here I had to turn the page—“poor Arno Dotzky.”
I fell unconscious on the floor.
III
First Years of Widowhood—Solitude, Study, Enlarged Views—I Return Into Society—Renewed Enjoyment of Life—Thoughts of Second Marriage—I Chaperon My Younger Sisters—I Am Introduced to Baron Tilling—He Brings Me an Account of the Manner of Arno’s Death.
“Now, Martha, it is all over. Solferino was decisive—we are beaten.”
My father came hastily one morning on to the terrace, with these words, where I was sitting under the shadow of a clump of lime trees.
I had gone back home, to the house of my girlhood, with my little Ruru. A week after the great battle, which had struck me down, my family moved to Grumitz, our country house in Lower Austria, and I with them. I should have been in despair alone. Now all were again around me, just as before my marriage—papa, Aunt Mary, my little brother, and my two growing sisters. All of them did what they possibly could to mitigate my grief, and treated me with a certain consideration which did me good. Evidently they found in my sad fate a sort of consecration, a something which raised me above those around me, even a kind of merit. Next to the blood which soldiers pour out on the altar of their country, the tears which the bereaved mothers, wives, and sweethearts of the soldiers pour on the same altar become a libation hardly less sacred. And thus it was a slight feeling of pride, a consciousness that to have lost a beloved husband on the field of honour conferred a kind of military merit, which helped me most to bear my pain; and I was far from being the only one. How many, ah! how many women in the whole of the country were then mourning over their loved ones sleeping in Italian earth!
At that time no further particulars were known to me of Arno’s end. He had been found dead, recognised, and buried. That was all I knew. His last thought doubtless had flown towards me and our little darling, and his consolation in the last moment must have been: “I have done my duty, and more than my duty.”
“We are beaten,” repeated my father gloomily, as he sat down by me on the garden seat.
“So those who have been sacrificed were sacrificed in vain.” I sighed.
“Those who have been sacrificed are to be envied, for they know nothing of the shame which has befallen us. But we will soon pick up again for all that, even if at present peace, as they say, must be concluded.”
“Ah, God grant it,” I interrupted. “Too late, indeed, for my poor Arno, but still thousands of others will be spared.”
“You are always thinking of yourself and of individuals. But in this matter it is Austria which is in question.”
“Well, but does not she consist entirely of individuals?”
“My dear, a kingdom, a state, lives a longer and more important life than individuals do. They disappear, generation after generation, while the state expands still farther, grows into glory, greatness and power, or sinks and crumples up and disappears, if it allows itself to be overcome by other kingdoms. Therefore the most important and the highest aim for which any individual has to struggle, and for which he ought to be glad to die, is the existence, the greatness and the well-being of the kingdom.”
I impressed these words on my mind in order to put them down the same day in the red volume. They seemed to me to express so clearly and strongly the feeling which I had derived in my student days from the books of history, a feeling which in these last times, after Arno’s departure, had been driven out of my mind by fear and pity. I wanted to cleave to it again as close as possible, in order to find consolation and support in the idea that my darling had fallen in a great cause, and that my misfortune itself was only one element in this great cause.
Aunt Mary had, on the other hand, a different source of consolation ready.
“Do not weep, dear child,” she used to say, when I was sunk in profound grief. “Do not be so selfish as to bewail him who is now so happy.
