“It is hard, baron,” the physician replied; “but do not be too anxious, the patient is young and strong. This evening it will be all over, and you will receive a tranquillising despatch.”
“Oh yes! You mean to send good news in any case, because the opposite would do no good! But I will have the truth! Listen, doctor! I must have your most sacred word of honour on it. The whole truth. Only on this condition could a tranquillising account really give me tranquillity. Otherwise I should think it all a lie. So swear to do this.”
The physician gave the promise required.
“O my poor, poor husband”—the thought cut me to the soul—“even if you receive the news today that your Martha is lying on her deathbed, you cannot turn back to close her eyes! You have something more important on hand—the claims of the Augustenburgs to a throne.”
“Frederick!” I cried out loud.
He flew to my side. At this moment the clock struck. He had now only a minute or two. But we were cheated out of even this last respite, for another attack seized me, and instead of the words of adieu, I could only utter groans of anguish.
“Go, baron—finish this scene,” said the physician, “for the patient such excitement is dangerous.”
One more kiss, and he rushed out. My cries and the doctor’s last word, “dangerous,” gave him his dismissal.
In what frame of mind must he have been when he departed? The local newspapers of Olmütz gave this report next day:—
“Yesterday the —th Regiment left our town with music playing and banners waving, to gain fresh laurels for themselves in the sea-surrounded brotherland. Cheerful courage filled the ranks; one could see the joy of battle glowing in the men’s eyes—” and so on, and so on.
Frederick had already telegraphed to Aunt Mary before his departure that I was in want of her help, and she came a few hours later to me. She found me senseless and in great danger.
For several weeks I hovered between life and death. My child died the day of its birth. The mental pain, which parting from my beloved husband had caused me, just at the time when I wanted all my strength to master the bodily pain, had rendered me incapable of bearing up against it, and I was near succumbing altogether.
The physician was obliged by his plighted word to send my poor husband the sorrowful news that the child was dead, and the mother in danger of death.
As to the news which came from him, they could not be communicated to me. I knew no one and was delirious day and night. A strange delirium. I brought back with me a feeble reminiscence of it into the period of recovered consciousness, but to reproduce this in reasonable words would be impossible for me. In the abnormal whirl of the fevered brain, conceptions and images form themselves for which there is no expression in language suitable to our normal thoughts. Only so much can I set down—and I have attempted to fix the fantastic sketch in the red volumes—that I confused the two events—the war and my confinement—together. I fancied that cannon and naked weapons (I distinctly felt the bayonet thrusts) were the instruments of delivery, and that I was lying there the prize of contention between two armies rushing on each other. That my husband had marched out I knew, but I saw him still in the form of the dead Arno, while by my side Frederick dressed as a sick nurse was stroking the silver stork. Every moment I was awaiting the bursting shell which was to shatter us all three—Arno, Frederick, and me—to pieces, in order that the child could come into the world, who was destined to rule over “Denstein, Schlesmark, and Holwig.” … And all this gave me such unspeakable pain and was so unnecessary. … There must, however, be someone somewhere who could change it and remove it all, who could lift off this mountain from my heart and that of all humanity by some word of power; and I was devoured with a longing to cast myself at this somebody’s feet and pray to him: “Help us! for the sake of mercy and justice help us! Lay down your arms! down!” With this cry on my lips I woke one day to consciousness. My father and Aunt Mary were standing at the foot of the bed, and the former said to me to hush me:—
“Yes, yes, child, be quiet. All arms down.”
This recovery of the sense of personality after a long suspension of the intellect is certainly a strange thing. First the joyful astonished discovery that one is alive, and then the anxious questioning with oneself who one really is. …
But the sudden answer to that question, which burst in with full light upon me, changed the just awakened pleasure of existence into violent pain. I was the sick Martha Tilling, whose newborn child was dead, and whose husband was gone to battle. … How long ago? That I knew not.
“Is he alive?—have you letters there?—messages?” were my first questions. Yes; there was quite a little heap of letters and telegrams piled up which had come during my illness. Most of them were merely inquiries after my condition, requests for daily, and as far as possible, hourly information. This, of course, was so long as the writer was at places where
