Rosshalde Page 13

  Veraguth wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He felt that it was time for him to learn the truth, and conscious of the doctor's stony silence, he was overcome by painful, paralyzing fear. He squirmed as though his shirt collar were choking him, and at last he blurted out: "Is it as bad as all that?"

  Raising his sallow, overworked face, the doctor gave him a wan glance and nodded. "Yes, I'm sorry to say. It's bad, Herr Veraguth."

  The doctor did not avert his eyes. Attentively waiting, he saw the painter turn pale and let his hands drop. He saw the lips sag and tremble slightly and the lids droop over the eyes as in a faint. And then he saw the painter's mouth recover its firmness and his eyes kindle with fresh will. Only the deep pallor remained. He saw that the painter was ready to listen.

  "What is it, Doctor? You don't have to spare me. Speak up. --You don't think Pierre is going to die?"

  The doctor moved his chair a little closer. He spoke very softly, but sharply and distinctly. "That's a question no one can answer. But if I'm not greatly mistaken, your little boy is dangerously ill."

  Veraguth looked into his eyes. "Is he going to die? I want to know if you think he's going to die. Do you understand--I want to know."

  Unconsciously, the painter had stood up and stepped forward almost menacingly. The doctor put his hand on his arm; Veraguth gave a start and immediately sank back into his chair as though ashamed.

  "There's no sense in talking like that," the doctor began. "The decision between life and death doesn't rest with us. Every day we physicians meet with surprises. As long as a patient has breath, we have hope for him. You know that. Or where would we be?"

  Veraguth nodded patiently and merely asked: "What is it, then?"

  The doctor coughed slightly.

  "If I'm not mistaken, it's meningitis."

  Veraguth sat very still and softly repeated the word. Then he stood up and held out his hand to the doctor. "So it's meningitis," he said, speaking very slowly and cautiously because his lips were trembling as though it was very cold. "Is that ever curable?"

  "Everything is curable, Herr Veraguth. One man takes to his bed with a toothache and dies in a few days, another has all the symptoms of the worst disease and gets well."

  "Yes, yes. And gets well! I'll go now, Herr Doktor. You've been to a lot of trouble on my account. In other words, meningitis isn't curable?"

  "My dear Herr..."

  "Forgive me. Perhaps you have taken care of other children with this meni ... with this disease? Yes? You see!... Are those children still alive?"

  The doctor was silent.

  "Are two of them still alive? Or one?"

  There was no answer.

  As though vexed, the doctor had turned toward his desk and opened a drawer.

  "You musn't give up like that!" he said in a changed tone. "Whether your child will get well, we don't know. He is in danger, and we've got to help him as best we can. We must all of us help him, do you understand, and you too. I need you. --I'll be out to the house again this evening. In any case, I'm giving you this sleeping powder, perhaps you can use it yourself. And now listen to me: the child must have absolute quiet and the most nourishing food. That's the main thing. Will you keep that in mind?"

  "Of course. I won't forget."

  "If he has pain or is very restless, lukewarm baths or compresses help. Have you an ice bag? I'll bring you one. You do have ice out there? Good. --We shall go on hoping, Herr Veraguth. It won't do for any of us to lose heart now, we've all got to be at our posts. Agreed?"

  Veraguth replied with a gesture that inspired confidence in the doctor. The doctor saw him to the door.

  "Would you like to take my carriage? I won't need it until five."

  "No, thank you. I'll walk."

  He went down the street, which was as deserted as before. The joyless piano practicing was still pouring from the open window. He looked at his watch. Only half an hour had passed. Slowly he went on, street after street, by a circuitous route that took him through half the city. He dreaded to leave it. Here in this poor, stupid heap of houses, medicine-smell and sickness, affliction and fear and death were at home, a hundred dismal languishing streets helped to bear every burden, one was not alone. But out there, it seemed to him, under the trees and clear sky, amid the singing of scythes and the chirping of crickets, the thought of all that must be much more terrible, more meaningless, more desperate.

  It was evening when he arrived home, dusty and dead tired. The doctor had called, but Frau Adele was calm and seemed to know nothing.

  At dinner Veraguth spoke about horses with Albert. At every turn he thought of something to say, and Albert joined in. They saw that Papa was very tired, nothing more. But he kept thinking with almost scornful bitterness: I could have death in my eyes, they would never notice! This is my wife and this is my son! And Pierre is dying! And these thoughts circled dismally through his head while his wooden tongue formed words that were of no interest to anyone. But then came a new thought: So much the better! This way I shall drink my suffering to the last bitter drop. I shall sit here dissembling, and see my poor little boy die. And if I'm still alive after that, there will be nothing more to bind me, nothing more that can hurt me; then I will go and never lie again as long as I live, never again believe in a love, never again procrastinate and be cowardly ... Then I will live and act and go forward, there will be no peace and no inertia.

  With dark delight he felt the suffering burn in his heart, wild and unbearable, but pure and great, a feeling such as he had never known before, and in the presence of the divine flame he saw his small, dismal, disingenuous and misshapen life dwindle into insignificance, unworthy of so much as a thought or even of blame.

  In that frame of mind, he sat for an hour in the child's half-darkened sickroom and spent a burning sleepless night in his bed, giving himself with fervor to his devouring grief, desiring nothing and hoping for nothing, as though wishing to be consumed by this fire and burned clean down to the last quivering fiber. He understood that this had to be, that he must relinquish his dearest and best and purest possession, and see it die.

  Chapter Sixteen

  PIERRE WAS SUFFERING and his father sat with him almost all day. The child had a constant headache; he breathed rapidly, and every breath was a brief, anguished moan. At times his little thin body was shaken with brief tremors or stiffened and arched. Then for a long while he lay perfectly still, and at length he was overcome by a convulsive yawning. Then he slept for an hour, and when he woke, the same regular, plaintive sigh resumed with every breath.

  He did not hear what was said to him and when they raised him almost by force and put food into his mouth, he ate it with mechanical indifference. The curtains were closed tight and in the dim light Veraguth sat for a long while bent watchfully over the child, observing with freezing heart how one delicate sweet trait after another vanished from the child's lovely familiar face and was gone. What remained was a pale, prematurely aged face, a gruesome mask with simplified features, in which nothing could be read but pain and disgust and profound horror.

  At times, when the child dozed off, the father saw the disfigured face soften and recover a trace of its lost charm, and then he stared fixedly, with all the thirsting fervor of his love, once again and then again to imprint this dying loveliness on his mind. Then it seemed to him that he had never in all his life known what love was, never until these watchful moments.

  For a long time Frau Adele had suspected nothing; Veraguth's tenseness and strange remoteness had struck her only gradually and in the end aroused her suspicions, but it was days before she gained an intimation of the truth. One evening as he was leaving Pierre's room she took him aside and said brusquely, in an offended, bitter tone: "Well, what is the matter with Pierre? What is it? I see that you know something."

  He looked at her as though from far off, and said with dry lips: "I don't know, child. He's very sick. Can't you see that?"

  "I do see. And I want to know what
it is! You treat him almost as if he were dying--you and the doctor. What has he told you?"

  "He told me it was bad and that we must take very good care of him. It's some sort of inflammation in his poor little head. We'll ask the doctor to tell us more tomorrow."

  She leaned against the bookcase, reaching up with one hand to grasp the folds of the green curtain above her. She said nothing and he stood there patiently; his face was gray and his eyes looked inflamed. His hands were trembling slightly, but he kept control of himself and on his face there was a sort of smile, a strange shadow of resignation, patience, and politeness.

  Slowly she came over to him. She put her hand on his arm and seemed unsteady in the knees. Very softly she whispered: "Do you think he's going to die?"

  Veraguth still had the weak foolish smile on his lips, but quick little tears were running down his face. He only nodded feebly, and when she slumped down and lost her hold, he lifted her up and helped her to a chair.

  "We can't know for sure," he said slowly and awkwardly, as though repeating with disgust an old lesson with which he had long ago lost patience. "We mustn't lose heart."

  "We mustn't lose heart," he repeated mechanically after a time, when her strength had returned and she was sitting up straight again.

  "Yes," she said. "Yes, you're right." And again after a pause: "It can't be! It can't be!"

  And suddenly she stood up, there was life in her eyes and her face was full of understanding and grief. "You're not coming back, are you?" she said aloud. "I know. You're going to leave us."

  He saw clearly that this was a moment which permitted of no falsehood. And so he said quickly and tonelessly: "Yes."

  She rocked her head as though she had to think very hard and was unable to take it all in. But what she now said was not a product of reflection; it flowed unconsciously from the black, hopeless affliction of the moment, from weariness and discouragement, and most of all from an obscure need to make amends for something and to do a kindness to someone still accessible to kindness.

  "That's what I thought," she said. "But listen to me, Johann. Pierre mustn't die. Everything mustn't collapse now all at once! And do you know ... there's something else I want to tell you: if he gets well, you may have him. Do you hear me? He shall stay with you."

  Veraguth did not understand immediately. Only gradually did he grasp what she had said and realize that what they had fought over, what had made him hesitate and suffer for years, had been granted him now that it was too late.

  It struck him as unspeakably absurd, not only that he should now suddenly have what had so long been denied him, but even more, that Pierre should become his at the very moment when he was doomed to die. Now, to him, the child would die doubly! It was insane, it was ridiculous! It was so grotesque and absurd that he was almost on the point of bursting into bitter laughter.

  But, beyond a doubt, she meant it seriously. It was clear that she did not fully believe Pierre must die. It was a kindness, it was an enormous sacrifice which some obscure good impulse drove her to make in the painful confusion of the moment. He saw how she was suffering, how pale she was, and what an effort it cost her to stand on her feet. He must not show that he took her sacrifice, her strange belated generosity, as a deadly mockery.

  Already she was waiting uneasily for a word from him. Why didn't he say something? Didn't he believe her? Or had he become so estranged that he was unwilling to accept anything from her, not even this, the greatest sacrifice she could make him?

  Her face began to tremble with disappointment, and then at last he regained control of himself. He took her hand, bent over, touched it with his cool lips, and said: "Thank you."

  Then an idea came to him and in a warmer tone he added: "But now I want to help take care of Pierre. Let me sit up with him at night."

  "We shall take turns," she said firmly.

  That night Pierre was very quiet. On the table a little night lamp was left burning; its feeble light did not fill the room but lost itself halfway to the door in a brown twilight. For a long while Veraguth listened to the boy's breathing, then he lay down on the narrow divan that he had had moved into the room.

  At about two in the morning Frau Adele awoke, struck a light, and arose. She threw on her dressing gown and, holding a candle, went to Pierre's room. She found everything quiet. Pierre's eyelashes flickered slightly as the light grazed his face, but he did not awaken. And on the divan her husband lay asleep, fully dressed and half curled up.

  She let the light fall on his face as well, and stood over him for a few minutes. And she saw his face shorn of pretense, with all its wrinkles and gray hair, its sagging cheeks and sunken eyes.

  "He too has grown old," she thought with a feeling of mingled pity and satisfaction, and felt tempted to stroke the disheveled hair. But she did not. She left the room without a sound. When she came back in the morning, he had long been sitting awake and attentive at Pierre's bedside. His mouth and the glance with which he greeted her were again firm with the resolution and secret strength which for some days now had enveloped him like armor.

  For Pierre, a bad day was beginning. He slept a good deal of the time with fixed open eyes until a new wave of pain awakened him. He tossed furiously about in his bed, clenched his little fists, and pressed them into his eyes; his face was at times deathly white, at times flaming red. And then he began to scream in helpless rage at the intolerable torment; he screamed so long and so pitifully that his father, pale and crushed, had to leave the room because he could bear it no longer.

  He sent for the doctor, who came twice that day and in the evening brought a nurse with him. A little later Pierre lost consciousness, the nurse was sent to bed, and father and mother watched through the night with the feeling that the end could not be far off. The child did not stir and his breathing was irregular but strong.

  But Veraguth and his wife both thought of the time when Albert had been seriously ill and they had cared for him together. And they both felt that important experiences cannot be repeated. Gently and rather wearily, they spoke to one another in whispers across the sickbed, but not a word of the past, of Albert's illness. The similarity in the situations struck them as ghostlike, they themselves had changed, they were no longer the same persons who then as now had watched and suffered together, bowed over a deathly sick child.

  Meanwhile, Albert, oppressed by the unspoken anxiety and creeping dread in the house, had been unable to sleep. In the middle of the night he tiptoed half dressed to the door, came in, and asked in an excited whisper whether there was something he could do to help.

  "Thank you," said Veraguth, "but there's nothing to do. Go to bed and keep your health."

  But when Albert had gone, he said to his wife: "Go in with him for a while and comfort him."

  She gladly complied and she felt that it had been kind of him to think of it.

  Not until morning did she incline to her husband's pleas and go to bed. At daybreak the nurse appeared and relieved him. There had been no change in Pierre.

  Irresolutely Veraguth crossed the park, he had no desire to sleep. But his burning eyes and a slack, stifled feeling in his skin warned him that he had better. He bathed in the lake and asked Robert to make coffee. Then in the studio he looked at his study of the woods. The painting was brisk and fresh, but it was not really what he had been aiming at, and now it was all up with his projected picture and he would never paint again in Rosshalde.

  Chapter Seventeen

  FOR SOME DAYS there had been no change in Pierre. Once or twice a day he would be taken with spasms and onslaughts of pain; the rest of the time he lay with senses dimmed in a half sleep. The warm weather had worn itself out in a series of storms, and under a steady drizzle the garden and the world lost their rich summer radiance.

  At last Veraguth had spent a night in his own bed and slept. The last few days he had gone about in feverish weariness, and now as he was dressing with the window open, he suddenly became aware of the dismal cold. He
leaned out the window and, shivering slightly, breathed in the rainy air of the lightless morning. There was a smell of wet earth and of approaching fall, and he, who ordinarily was keenly alive to the signs of the seasons, reflected with surprise that this summer had vanished for him almost without trace, as though unperceived. It seemed to him that he had spent not days and nights but whole months in Pierre's sickroom.

  He threw on his raincoat and went over to the house. Informed that the child had wakened early but had dropped off to sleep again an hour before, he kept Albert company at breakfast. Albert took Pierre's illness very much to heart and, though he tried not to show it, suffered from the subdued hospital atmosphere, the dejection and anxiety about him.

  When Albert had gone to his room to busy himself with his schoolwork, Veraguth went in to see Pierre, who was still asleep, and took his place by the child's bedside. Sometimes, in recent days, he had wished that the end would come quickly, if only for the sake of the child, who had not spoken a word in heaven knows how long and who looked so exhausted and aged, as though he himself knew he was beyond help. Yet Veraguth was unwilling to miss an hour, he clung to his post at the sickbed with jealous passion. Oh, how often little Pierre had come to him and found him tired or indifferent, deep in his work or lost in care, how often his mind had been far away as he held this thin little hand in his and he had scarcely listened to the child's words, each one of which had now become an inestimable treasure. That could never be made good. But now that the poor child lay in torment, facing death alone with his spoiled, defenseless little heart, now that he was condemned to experience in the space of a few days all the numbing pain, all the anguish of despair with which illness, weakness, growing older, and the approach of death terrify and oppress a human heart, now he wished to be with him always and always. He must not be absent and missed if ever a moment came when the child should want him, when he might be of some little help to him or show him a little love.

  And lo and behold, that morning he was rewarded. That morning Pierre opened his eyes, smiled at him, and said in a weak, tender voice: "Papa!"