A noble name
by Claire von Glümer · English · Gutenberg #36550 · 642,249 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A noble name
or, Dönninghausen
Author: Claire von Glümer
Translator: A. L. Wister
Release date: July 2, 2011 [eBook #36550]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36550
Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NOBLE NAME ***
Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
A NOBLE NAME
OR
DOeNNINGHAUSEN
BY CLAIRE VON GLUeMER
TRANSLATED BY
MRS. A. L. WISTER
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1883
Copyright, 1882, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & Co.
CONTENTS.
I.--"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"
II.--DISAPPOINTED ASPIRATIONS
III.--A CRISIS
IV.--FUTURE PLANS DECIDED
V.--AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN
VI.--THE FREIHERR'S PRINCIPLES
VII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG
VIII.--CHRISTMAS AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN
IX.--NEW YEAR'S EVE
X.--"THAT BLASE LIEUTENANT"
XI.--RECOVERY
XII.--CELA N'ENGAGE A RIEN
XIII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG
XIV.--AN UNEXPECTED RETURN
XV.--A BIRTHDAY FETE
XVI.--A BETROTHAL
XVII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG
XVIII.--TANNHAGEN
XIX.--PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM
XX.--AN EQUESTRIAN ARTIST
XXI.--SHIPWRECK
XXII.--DOeNNINGHAUSEN OBSTINACY
XXIII.--THE FREIHERR ASSERTS HIS AUTHORITY
XXIV.--DR. URBAN WOLF
XXV.--A WAGER AND AN ADVISER
XXVI.--DR. STEIN'S SCHEME
XXVII.--THE FREIHERR'S WEAKNESS IS PAST
XXVIII.--THE TERRACE-COTTAGE
XXIX.--CHANGES AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN
XXX.--AN OLD FRIEND ONCE MORE
XXXI.--THE TRUTH AT LAST
XXXII.--TWO YEARS AFTERWARD
A NOBLE NAME;
OR,
DOeNNINGHAUSEN.
CHAPTER I.
"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."
At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was
seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed
air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while
standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a
strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay
ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a
blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense
satisfaction.
"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from
between the curtains of the portiere of the door of the adjoining
sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.
"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the
footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother
hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown
to the little one's assistance.
"I haven't hurt myself," the child immediately declared, looking up
beseechingly at her mother, who, nevertheless, seized her impatiently by
the arm and tore off the sash from her shoulders. "All this beautiful
ribbon crushed and spoiled!" she said, crossly. "If you can take no
better care of Lisbeth, my dear Johanna, the child must stay with Lina.
Go, go to the nursery, and don't disturb me again to-day," she added,
turning to the little girl; and then, sitting down before the
dressing-table, she began to arrange her abundant fair hair.
Lisbeth went to Johanna and seized her hand. "Don't be vexed with
Lisbeth, mamma," the young girl entreated. "She is not to blame. I was
not attending to her; I was going over my part."
"If you do not know it perfectly by this time you had better give it
up," the other said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Make up your
mind to do so, and I will give it to Fraeulein Dornbach. She can easily
learn those few words before to-morrow evening."
"Oh, no! let me try," the young girl exclaimed. "I have just said them
without stumbling. And my dress is nearly finished. I wanted to ask
you----"
"Well?" the other asked, when Johanna hesitated.
"To let me go to the theatre to-night," she replied, without looking up.
"What! again? You went only a couple of days ago."
"Yes, but I should so like to see papa as Egmont, and----" She hesitated
again and blushed. "And you as Claerchen," was what she meant to add,
knowing that this addition would have secured her the desired enjoyment;
but her innate integrity triumphed; her step-mother's acting was
distasteful to her, and she suppressed the end of her sentence.
With a degree of artistic instinct the lady divined her step-daughter's
thoughts. "You had better study your part," she said, rising. "And,
besides, I want you to trim my lace overdress with fresh ribbons; you
will have too much to do to-morrow to attend to it."
"There comes papa!" exclaimed Lisbeth, who had gone to the window and
was looking out. "He is just crossing the street." And she was hurrying
out of the room, when her mother called her back.
"Stay where you are!" she said. "You must not disturb papa now; we are
just going to the theatre. My hat and wrap, Johanna, and my gloves; be
quick, be quick!" And beginning to sing 'Joyous and sorrowing,' with a
languishing expression she took from her step-daughter the articles
brought to her and left the room.
Johanna sat down and went on with her sewing. She heard her father's
step in the anteroom, heard his sonorous voice. How many would be
delighted, enthralled, inspired by that voice this evening! She alone,
his most enthusiastic, rapt admirer, could not enjoy it. Tears rose to
her eyes and dropped unheeded upon her busy hands.
"Tell me a story," Lisbeth begged, standing beside her sister at the
window. "Oh, you are crying!" she added distressed as she looked round.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing, darling," Johanna replied, hastily wiping her eyes. "What
shall I tell you? Cinderella, or Snowdrop and the Dwarfs?"
"No, no! nothing about bad step-mothers," the little girl exclaimed; and
then, with her eyes opened to their widest extent, she went on: "Only
think, Lina says that mamma is a step-mother,--so stupid of her,--my
dear pretty mamma. Friedrich laughed at her, and told her it was not
true; but then he is just as stupid himself, for he told her you were
not my sister, only an adopted child, and I won't have it; you shall be
my sister!"
She stamped her little foot. Johanna took her in her arms. "Hush,
darling; I am really your sister," she said, stroking the little curly
head.
"Then why were you not always with me?" Lisbeth went on, pettishly. "All
the sisters I know are always together."
"I was far away from here, at boarding-school," Johanna replied. "Papa
sent me there when my poor dear mother died, and he did not know what to
do with me. He travelled about from one town to another; and then he
married your mamma, and then you were born, and he has grown very
famous. I think he had almost forgotten me----"
Here old Lina, Lisbeth's former nurse, entered.
"Fraeulein, a gentleman wishes to see you," she said, handing Johanna a
card.
"Dr. Ludwig Werner," the girl read, and started up with a joyous
exclamation. "Uncle, dear uncle!" she cried, and hurried into the
antechamber, where, however, instead of the old gentleman whom she had
expected to see, she was met by a young man.
"Johanna!" he exclaimed, with evident emotion, and he would have clasped
her in his arms, but she retreated and only gave him her hand. He
laughed, half confusedly, half derisively.
"It is you!" she said, and her voice, too, trembled. "I thought it was
your father. Pray come in."
She led the way to the drawing-room. Lina, who was standing holding
Lisbeth by the hand at the dressing-room door, looked after her in
surprise. How could Fraeulein Johanna receive so familiarly a young man
who paid visits in a shooting-jacket and shabby crush hat?
He himself became conscious of the contrast that he presented to his
surroundings as soon as he entered the drawing-room. As he looked about
him in the luxurious apartment, now lit up by the last rays of the
September sun, all trace of tenderness vanished from his face, leaving
there only the cynical expression which Johanna knew so well.
"And this is now your home," he said. "I begin to understand,--I have
not been able to do so hitherto. And you yourself,--are you as changed
as your surroundings?"
He had stepped out upon the balcony with her, and as he spoke looked at
her fixedly. There was no change in the grave unembarrassed expression
of the girl's large gray eyes as she returned his gaze.
"What have you been unable to understand?" she asked.
"How you could leave us and come hither--to this house----"
"To my father's house?" she interrupted him, and her eyes flashed. "Let
me tell you how it happened," she went on more gently, "and you will
easily comprehend."
They stood leaning against the balustrade of the balcony. The shady
little garden beneath them, the golden light of evening streaming from
the western sky awakened the same memory in each, but Johanna alone gave
it utterance. "Do you remember," she asked, "how we stood at your garden
wicket the evening before you left Lindenbad and watched the setting
sun? It was not quite two years ago, and yet how much has happened since
then! you have made a home both in Paris and in London."
"A home!" he interrupted her; "no, Johanna, not for a moment. I worked
hard in London and Paris, I studied day and night, looking neither to
the right nor to the left, for I had but one aim, one desire,--to return
to my home well skilled in my profession. I may have become a skilful
physician, but my home is desolate,--my mother dead,--you here."
"Your dear mother!" Johanna whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.
He did not see them.
"If I had been at home you should not have gone," he went on; "but my
father has grown to be a weak old man, and my mother was enfeebled by
illness before her death, or she would have kept her promise better."
"Do you mean the promise that she made to my dying mother?" Johanna
asked. "She kept that perfectly."
"She let you come here to this step-mother!" Ludwig exclaimed, and his
lips quivered, as they always did when he controlled his indignation.
"She could not but let me; I wanted to come, and my father wanted me
again."
"So suddenly?" Ludwig interposed. "Since your mother's death he had not
apparently given you a thought. My father's house was your home, your
holidays were spent with us, you came to us when you left
boarding-school; you belong to us, and to us only! Your father has his
fame, his luxury, his wife, the woman who was your mother's death----"
"Ludwig!" Johanna interrupted him reprovingly.
He coloured. "It is the truth, and you are old enough to know it," he
said, sullenly. "You do know it, but would not for worlds acknowledge
it! Deceit--falsehood--hypocrisy everywhere. In your case I suppose it
would be called filial piety."
He threw himself into the nearest chair and frowned darkly.
"Hard and unjust as ever," Johanna exclaimed, and her voice trembled.
"As ever?" he repeated. "You forget: formerly you trusted to my
judgment, you saw with my eyes and followed willingly where I led."
"Possibly," said Johanna; "but since then I have learned to see with my
own eyes, and to walk alone. It was high time: I am no longer a child."
She was right; Ludwig reflected that she must be nearly twenty years
old, although she looked scarcely sixteen, so immature was her slender
figure, so youthful the pale face that looked dreamily into the world
from beneath a luxuriance of brown braids.
"Well, let bygones be bygones," he rejoined with bitterness. "I may
surely be allowed to ask what snatched you from us so suddenly. You were
going to tell me."
Johanna seated herself opposite him. "If I only knew how to tell you,
how to convince you that I could not do otherwise," she said. "From the
expressions you have let fall you seem to me to think that I was
influenced by vanity, love of pleasure, and a desire for luxury. Your
sister accused me of the same motives."
"Let that go; what is Mathilde to us? Go on!" Ludwig interposed,
impatiently.
Johanna obeyed; the dictatorial tone to which she had submitted for so
long exercised its old influence upon her.
"You went away in the autumn," she began; "the winter passed as
peacefully as usual, and summer brought the usual throng of guests to
the baths. Suddenly we heard that my father was starring in Weimar. One
of our friends took me to the first performance. When we arrived it was
too late to see my father before the play, and so I sat in the corner of
our box in trembling expectation of beholding him after nearly eight
years----"
"Eight years!--a tender parent!" Ludwig interrupted; she paid him no
heed.
"But it was not my father whom I saw," she went on with increasing
agitation: "it was Hamlet. I thought I knew the play, but what heights
and depths were disclosed to me by this representation! This was no
acting, it was actual life: suffering--doubt--despair. I sat trembling
as if from a fever-fit, and after the performance I hastened to him. I
do not know what I said to him, but my enthusiasm touched and delighted
him. He kept me with him at first only during his stay in Weimar,
afterwards for always. He went with me to Lindenbad to demand me of my
foster-parents, and they thought it but natural that he should do so."
"Yes, so my mother wrote me," said Ludwig, "in the last letter I had
from her before she was taken ill."
"I had no idea how ill she was," the young girl whispered, "or I should
not have left her."
He made no rejoinder; his expression, as he gazed moodily upon the
ground, grew darker still.
After a pause, Johanna said, "I wrote to you then; why did you not
answer me?"
"I could not," he replied. "Amid all your grief at my mother's death
there was a tone of relief in your letter."
"There was," said Johanna. "It is not in vain that I am the child of a
great artist. The revelations he makes to me of the world of art are
like my native air to me. Unconsciously I missed them and longed for
them before I ever knew them."
"The intoxication has lasted, then?" Ludwig asked, with his bitterest
smile.
"Intoxication!" she repeated. "You may call it so; but it is something
better and nobler. I cannot define it, but its effect upon me is the
same, only intensified, if possible. Everything within me that is dim
and confused becomes clear and distinct when my father interprets for
me----"
"Johanna!" Ludwig exclaimed, "you would not--you cannot go upon the
stage!"
"If I only could!" she cried, with sparkling eyes; "if I only could!"
"You must not!" he said angrily, and seized her hands. "Bethink
yourself; a man can assert himself, isolate himself upon the stage as
elsewhere, a woman never; she loses her identity, degrades herself----"
"There is no reason why she should do so," Johanna exclaimed, clasping
tightly the hands which she had withdrawn from his grasp. "The
inspiration which animates and strengthens a man can exalt a woman also
above all petty, low considerations. I have been here more than a year,
and have kept my eyes open. I have seen what has been mean and paltry,
nay, disgusting, but never in my father, never! He is not only great in
his art, he is a man great and complete as only an artist can be."
Ludwig changed colour. "Do you really mean this, Johanna?" he asked. "Is
it only in an artist that you can find a 'complete' man? Think what you
are saying."
"Yes, yes; I mean it!" she cried passionately, and her cheeks glowed.
She seemed transformed.
"Then I have nothing more to say," said Ludwig, as he arose.
Then first Johanna was conscious of what she had done.
"Oh, do not go!" she cried, confronting him. "I cannot let you go so.
You did not understand me; I only meant----"
"I not understand you, child?" said Ludwig, controlling himself. "I
might deceive myself while I was absent from you; but now that we are
together, I see into your heart just as I always did."
"No, no; you do not see clearly. You do not understand me. You are
offended----"
"Hush, hush!" Ludwig interrupted her, leading her to her seat again.
"Come, sit down, and listen to me. Why should I be offended? We all
embody for ourselves an ideal of beauty and dignity. I have done the
same. Shall I tell you how?"
She only nodded an assent. There was something in his manner that
confused her.
"My ideal," he began, taking a seat opposite her,--"a woman, of
course,--was a gay, simple-hearted creature, looking out upon life with
clear, truthful eyes; not exacting much, but always ready to do her
best, interested in all that was good, beautiful, and great, but with a
keen sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, never neglectful of the
daily tasks of life, but consecrating, as it were, the meanest among
them by her performance of it, and surrounded as by a purer ether,
diffusing harmony and content wherever she might be."
"Your mother!" Johanna said, when he paused.
"My mother," he repeated, with a sudden smile that wonderfully
transfigured his set, determined face. And the earnest look that he
turned upon Johanna was a strange mixture of gentleness, entreaty, and
menace.
"My mother," he repeated. "Yes, and one other who was like her; one who
I believed for years would exactly resemble her. It was an illusion; it
is past."
Johanna looked down with a blush. She could not but perceive that he
meant herself. But could this be love? Impossible! One does not so
quickly and causelessly resign what one loves. What had she done? Left
his father's house to go to her own father's house. And the thoughtless
words she had just spoken? If he loved her he would know that they had
been uttered too hastily. Anger and obstinacy conquered every gentler
emotion, and after a short pause she rejoined coldly, without looking
up, "It is not given to every one to achieve content as did your
mother."
"Content!" Ludwig exclaimed; "she was a happy woman."
"Do you think so?" said Johanna, raising her eyes to his. "Had she hoped
and longed for nothing more in life than the companionship of a good
man, but one who wore himself out in the discharge of the duties of his
profession? Do you imagine that the letting of lodgings to visitors to
the baths was the true vocation for your mother's sensitive, refined
nature? And could the society of two silly girls like your sister and
myself indemnify her for the tedious solitude of the long winter?"
"And yet this life satisfied her," said Ludwig. "So spiritual a nature
is always satisfied with love and a round of duties."
Johanna shook her head. "It is comfortable to suppose so," she said;
"but let me recall one expression of your mother's which, child as I
was, made a deep impression upon me. My mother was already ill; yours
sat beside her bed, while I was busied with a book at the window. Mamma
must have been speaking of her past life. I had been paying no
attention, when suddenly I heard her say, 'Ah, dear Louise, you pity
me!' Your mother dried her tears, and said, in a tone which I never can
forget, 'No, Agnes, I envy you! It is sad to be driven forth from
Paradise, but infinitely sadder never to have entered it.'"
Ludwig gazed gloomily into space. "There are various Paradises," he
said, at last, "and they are found in various ways. My mother, I am
convinced, found hers later. But you are right; hers was not for every
one. You could hardly find it as she did."
"I should never seek it in that direction," she replied, quite conscious
that she was paining him; it grieved her to do so, but she could not
help it.
Ludwig arose once more; his face was pale and set. "I must take leave of
you," he said; "I have an appointment with a couple of college friends."
"When shall I see you,--to-morrow? When will you come?" asked Johanna.
"Of course I shall be at home for you all day long."
"I take the first train to-morrow for the north," he replied.
"Oh, you must not!" she exclaimed. "You must be here to-morrow evening.
It is my father's birthday, and you must be present at its celebration."
"Impossible; I cannot postpone my departure," he made answer. "And even
if I could, where could I find a place among your friends? I am--you
remember how often my father said so--a faithful, cross, ugly dog. In a
_tete-a-tete_ the old playfellow is all very well, but he does not
belong in the drawing-room."
Johanna took his hand. "I will not let you go," she said, "until you
promise to come to-morrow evening. We have a little play,--I make my
first histrionic essay. You must be present."
"No, my dear Johanna, I cannot see you act," he said, in a calm voice,
but with lips that quivered in spite of himself. "And independently of
that, I really must go. I must get to my work. I have just come from a
six-weeks' tour through Switzerland and the Tyrol, and my holiday is
over."
"But you have told me absolutely nothing of your work, of your plans. I
do not know where to picture you in my thoughts!" she exclaimed.
"I will write to you," he said. "Good-by, and try to think kindly of
me." He shook hands with her and left her.
"A faithful, cross, ugly dog," Johanna repeated to herself, as the door
closed behind him and his step died away in the antechamber. Suddenly a
rush of emotion overcame her; she sank into a chair and burst into
tears.
CHAPTER II.
DISAPPOINTED ASPIRATIONS.
The festival was over. The last guests had taken their departure, and as
they issued shivering into the cold air of the autumn night, criticism,
and that not of a very genial kind, replaced the flattering expressions
they had just used in characterizing to their hostess 'the delightful
evening' they had passed.
"Wanton extravagance!" "It is worse than folly, and so out of taste for
an actor to attempt to vie with a banker." "Everything borrowed,
girls,--rely upon Frau Helena for that." "Yes, and she does understand
how to dress herself. How beautiful she looked in that pale blue silk
with the rich lace overskirt!" "And her pearl necklace and
ear-rings,--where did she get those, do you think?" "'_Honi soit qui mal
y pense_,' madame; a love-token from her husband, when he was another
woman's husband." "Roderich always gives us excellent cigars, and the
Johannisberg was delicious!" "Well, we needed it to carry down the
play." "For heaven's sake, hush! Hofrath Leuchtenberg arranged the
thing." "Oh, the thing itself was well enough, but the performance! Such
nonsense to entertain us with an amateur performance!" "And that tall,
pale, awkward girl was Roderich's daughter? 'Tis inconceivable that she
should have no talent." "Roderich looked as if he were upon the rack
when she stood so like a stick and 'spoke her piece.'" "But Frau Helena
was all the more pleased; she could hardly conceal her exultation. Her
step-daughter is a thorn in the flesh to her."
Such was the talk among young and old, men and women, as they walked
along the silent streets, through which the north wind howled as in
indignant scorn.
While her parents were bidding farewell to the last of their guests,
Johanna slipped into the sleeping-room where Lisbeth's little bed stood
beside her mother's. She noiselessly drew near it, and bent over the
rosy little face dimly revealed with its closed eyelids in the light of
the night-lamp. Suddenly two soft arms encircled her neck, and the blue
childish eyes laughed into her own.
"Darling, did I wake you?" Johanna asked.
"Oh, no; I have not been asleep; I cannot go to sleep. Stay with me, and
let us tell each other stories."
"Dear, you must go to sleep," her sister said, trying to disengage
herself, but the child clung to her.
"No, no, you must stay with me; it frightens me to be alone," she cried
in a peevish tone, which would hardly have prevailed with Johanna had it
not been for the little one's burning cheeks and feverishly brilliant
eyes.
"Well, I will stay if you will promise to be perfectly still," she said,
seating herself at the head of the bed, and putting her arm beneath
Lisbeth's fair curly head.
"That is delightful," said the child. "But I came near crying when I
heard them all talking and laughing so. Ah, it was such a lovely
evening, was it not, Hanna dear?"
"Yes, Lisbeth; but now shut your eyes. Perhaps you may dream of it."
"I do not need to do that; I remember all about it. How lovely it was
when I said my little verse and gave papa the wreath, and everybody
clapped their hands and cried Brava! Oh, I wish I were grown up and
could act every evening, like mamma!"
She had raised herself in the bed; Johanna laid her back upon the
pillow.
"Be quiet," she said, gravely.
"Yes, yes, I am quiet now," Lisbeth assured her. "But tell me," she went
on, with eyes wide open, "why did no one call out 'Brava' and clap their
hands for you?"
"Probably because I did not do as well as you did," Johanna answered,
and the mortification with which she had been struggling brought a
crimson blush to her face. "No, it was wretched, it was miserable," she
went on in a trembling voice. "My throat seemed closed; my limbs were
heavy as lead; the eyes of all seemed to pierce me through and through.
Oh, Lisbeth, I shall never be able to act!"
She laid her head upon the pillow beside the child, who pressed her
flushed little face against her sister's cheek. "Oh, you will learn,"
Lisbeth whispered. "Papa says you are very clever, and you are so kind,
and I love you so very much."
The words came more and more slowly; Johanna remained motionless, that
she might not prevent the child from sleeping. After a while she heard
the rustle of silk: her step-mother had entered the adjoining
dressing-room. Directly afterwards her father also entered. "I should
like to speak with you a moment, Helena," he said.
"I am listening," she made reply, without looking round, and continuing
to take off her ornaments and her sash.
He began to pace the room to and fro. Johanna's heart beat fast; she
knew how Helena irritated him by this assumption of indifference.
"You have placed me in a strange position," he began, after a pause, in
a low, stern tone. "I certainly ought to be grateful to you for my
birthday fete; but I must at the same time reiterate, and that most
decidedly, that we cannot give such extravagant entertainments. We are
so much in debt----"
"Dear Roderich," she interrupted him, "one benefit and it will all be
paid."
"But, Helena, I cannot reckon upon the future," he rejoined. "You know I
could not make any engagements last summer,--I am not yet well. It seems
to me very undesirable to burden ourselves with unnecessary care."
"And it seems to me undesirable, sordid, degrading, to be always
counting the cost," exclaimed Helena. "Without freedom of action the
artist cannot exist."
"It is that very freedom which I wish to secure," Roderich said gravely.
"At your urgent entreaty, and by Commerzienrath Schmidt's advice, I
speculated with our entire fortune, as you know, and lost it. Therefore
we must begin afresh, and economize. Therefore, dear Helena, no more of
these costly entertainments."
She shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Dear Roderich," she said,
"to-night's festival is my affair; it is my birthday present to you----"
"Child, you cannot count the cost," he interrupted her; "your salary
scarcely suffices to provide your wardrobe."
"'Tis little enough!" said Helena. "You might long ago have used your
influence to procure me a better position. Instead of which, you always
take sides with the Kronberg against me."
"No, I do not," he replied. "I wrote to the manager only yesterday that
I would renew my present engagement with him only upon condition that
the Kronberg were not allowed to usurp any of your parts."
Helena threw her arms around him. "Oh, you darling, did you really?" she
cried in glee. "You do not know how you delight me. They wanted to
persuade me that you cared for the Kronberg."
"Helena!" he said reproachfully. "Since I have known you there has been
but one woman for me in the world."
His words hurt Johanna; she tried to release herself, that she might
leave the room, but Lisbeth in her sleep held her fast.
Helena had taken her husband's arm and paced the room to and fro with
him. She had doffed her lace overdress, and looked wonderfully lovely in
the close-fitting blue silk with bare neck and arms. "Why do you always
find fault with me, you bad fellow?" she said, looking up at him with an
exultant smile. "I live only for you--to fulfil your wishes. I have
economized; I have even dismissed my own maid, contenting myself with
Johanna's services."
"She really seems fit for little else," he replied. "How miserably she
acquitted herself in her small part! You ought not to have allowed her
to take it."
"What could I do?" Helena asked. "She insisted upon making the attempt,
and I as her step-mother----"
"Poor Johanna!" Roderich interrupted her; "as devoid of talent as her
mother, and as ugly as myself!"
"Oh, Roderich, you! The most glorious Egmont,--the most enchanting
Leicester!"
"But a very ugly man!" he said, with the brilliant smile that was all
his own, and that really made his plain face handsome. "What you admire
comes from within; there seems to be some kind of a flame there that
flickers interestingly. But this is denied to poor Johanna. And
then--you must see that the Graces have denied her their gifts; the
greatest misfortune for a woman. You have managed that they should
bestow them all upon your little daughter."
He kissed her hand. Johanna could endure it no longer; by a hasty effort
she released herself from her sleeping sister's arm, and stepped
noiselessly out of the room into the corridor, at the end of which was
her own chamber.
She groped her way to the arm-chair beside the window, sank into it, and
gazed into the darkness without. How gay and hopeful she had been while
dressing in this room a few short hours before, and how forlorn and
discouraged she had now returned to it! 'As devoid of talent as her
mother, and as ugly as myself,' had been the words spoken by a voice
whose utterances she believed implicitly; and then again, 'the Graces
have denied her their gifts; the greatest misfortune for a woman.'
Bitterness, such as she had never before known, possessed her. What had
she done to be thus disinherited from the beginning, deprived of all
claim to love and happiness?
Suddenly a joyous thrill drove the blood to her heart. It was not so,
she was not disinherited. Little more than twenty-four hours had passed
since the most truthful of men had said to her in effect, 'You were my
ideal; ugly and awkward as you are, I saw in you the embodiment of all
loveliness.' If he saw it in her no longer, it was because of a
mistake,--a misunderstanding. She would prove to him that she had lost
nothing of value, that she was still worthy the love of former days.
Why should she do this? She did not love Ludwig. No, no, she did not
love him. Only in contrast with her father's cruel verdict did she find
pleasure in his words of yesterday, and the impetuous throbbing of her
heart was but the result of the various emotions that had besieged it
during the past few hours.
If she only had not undergone that one experience! To stand there and
not be mistress of her motions; to will to speak, and not be able to
give to her words the meaning she desired; to be stared at by all those
unsympathetic eyes, to be conscious of exciting contemptuous pity.
'Devoid of talent as her mother, and ugly as myself,' rang in her ears
again.
She would rid herself of this torment. And she arose, lit a candle, and
then first perceived a letter lying upon her table.
"From Ludwig," she thought; and she was right; his large clear
handwriting stared at her from the envelope, and covered three sides of
a sheet of paper which enclosed several others. Johanna seated herself
at the table and read:
"DEAR JOHANNA,--The enclosed letter, which my mother found
among the papers left her by your mother, was sent to me by the
former in her last illness. She wrote to me telling me to do
with it what seemed best to me; she had never been able to
bring herself to disturb your happiness in your reunion with
your father after so many years.
"I might assert that the same consideration has hitherto
prevented me from imparting to you the wishes of your dying
mother, but I will be as frank with you as I am with myself. I
withheld the letter because I hoped even without its aid to be
able to withdraw you from surroundings unworthy of you. I
thought that a word from me would suffice to restore you to the
home that was your own so long. I hesitated--made cowardly and
selfish as we always are by the desires of our hearts--to erect
any barrier between you, a grandchild of the Doenninghausens,
and your old friends.
"But now I have convinced myself that the old friends are of no
avail to counteract new and unworthy influences; therefore let
a voice from the grave speak to you.
"If you should heed it, and have any need either of my pen or
of my personal aid, pray command me. I shall be at my father's,
where I have certain scientific work to do, throughout the
coming winter.
"Twice to-day I have been to your door, but each time I turned
away. What could it avail me to see you again where you are?
Farewell, and let me hear from you soon.
"L. W."
To Johanna the tone of this letter seemed icy cold. Experience is
needed to detect intensity of emotion beneath exterior and perhaps
hardly-won composure. With a trembling hand she opened her mother's
letter. What could she, gentle and loving as she had always been,
require of her daughter so hard that her foster-mother had been
unwilling to impart it to her? Johanna gazed at the delicate
handwriting, its uncertain characters betraying the mortal weariness
that had possessed the writer. The touching figure of her dying mother
rose vividly in her memory, and with increasing emotion she read what
follows,--in all of which she distinctly felt the quickened feverish
throb of the poor invalid's heart.
"LINDENBAD, August 19, 1864.
"MY DEAR LOUISE,--A few hours ago you left me, and in a few
hours you will come again, faithful friend that you are, to ask
how I have passed the night. Ah, Louise! it begins so
distressingly, with such throbbing pulses and wandering
thoughts, that I would flee from myself to you as to some
shrine of the Madonna.
"If I was at first inclined to regard as a piece of good luck
the chance which brought me an old school-mate in the wife of
the physician of this place, I soon learned to bless the
Providence which conducted me hither. Dear, kind friend! How
you have cheered and encouraged me through these weary days of
sickness and suffering! They would have been cheerless without
you.
"Cheerless in every respect, dear Louise; for I hardly need to
tell you that my soul suffers more than my failing body,
because it does not share the weary longing of the latter for
death. My poor soul clings to life, thirsting for the love and
happiness of former days,--vanished now forever.
"Would Roderich feel some pity if he knew how vital within me
is still the memory of every word of his,--the very tone in
which each word was uttered? Ah, Louise! those words, those
tones, possessed the power to create thrones and altars, and
transformed the fortunate creature for whom they were spoken
into a queen, a goddess: _he_ constituted her such.
"I was his from the first moment that I saw him. I was with my
parents in Berlin, where he was playing. I saw him first in
'Torquato Tasso,' and then at a ball at the French
ambassador's. He asked to be presented to me. I stood before
him trembling, and when he held out his hand to me I was his
slave for life. There was no longer any question of will or
choice, nothing but a blessed necessity. I could not but resign
everything for him,--home, parents, brothers, family, rank, and
wealth. He was still only a beginner in his art. My enthusiasm,
my devotion, flattered him; my intelligence fired his genius;
my beauty intoxicated his senses. Yes, there were years when I
made him happy, in which I filled his heart and his
imagination.
'Though 'tis torture, yet that time
Can never be forgot.'
"In the first year of our marriage Johanna was born. I
announced her birth to my parents, and hoped, from my mother at
least, for a kind word. Instead of this I saw the notice of her
death in the papers. Two years later God sent me a son, but he
lived only a few hours, and my life was in danger for months,
while I was confined for years to my room. That was the
beginning of my unhappiness. Roderich was still so young,--he
had married when only twenty-three. He needed change and
excitement to counterbalance his close application to the
duties of his profession. Often, when in the flush of some
fresh triumph he would come to my room to make me a partaker in
his delight, both doctor and nurse would caution him not to
fatigue me. He was obliged to walk on tiptoe, to sit in
semi-darkness, to speak in a whisper. All this he could not
endure. He went, and I was left alone,--more and more alone, of
course, as time passed on.
"August 22.
"I could not write more. This pain in my heart has debarred me
from all exertion for the last few days, during which you, dear
Louise, have been, as always, my stay and comfort. Let these
lines thank you for your kindness when my lips can do so no
longer.
"I know how near the end is now, and the consciousness fills me
with a despair beyond words. To vanish--to be forgotten--to
leave to others what was once my own----
"But I did not mean to speak of myself. My last thought and
care are for my poor Johanna, who will so soon be orphaned. If
it is possible, Louise, let my child stay with you. I will
write to Roderich and entreat him to send the child to some
school here in your neighbourhood. Then give her that home in
your heart which she loses in mine. Her father hardly knows
her, and will hardly miss her, as she on her part will scarcely
miss him. On the other hand, she is warmly attached to you and
to your children, and in your house she will find the pure
domestic atmosphere which can never be hers in her father's.
Hard though it be to say it, it must be said: the thought of
leaving my child in the hands of the woman who has robbed me of
Roderich's love poisons my last hours, and will leave me no
rest in the grave. Johanna must not love that woman, must not
owe her anything. I am sure you understand this feeling, even
although you do not approve of it.
"Later.
"More bad days and nights,--how many I do not know; and through
them all this terrible anxiety about Johanna's future. If you
cannot grant my request and keep her yourself, then, I entreat
you, see that she takes refuge with my people. They will
receive her kindly. Three years ago, when Roderich's passion
for this actress became notorious, my father wrote to me asking
me to come to him with my child. His only condition was my
legal separation from Roderich and the dropping of the name
which he so hated. I could not bring myself to consent to this;
but twice since then, when my two brothers died, I wrote to my
father, now quite desolate, and each time he answered me and
made me the same proposal. He will certainly receive my orphan
child kindly.
"Understand me aright, dear Louise. I would rather know Johanna
at home with you than anywhere else. In your home-circle her
youth would be gayer and simpler. Only if you cannot adopt her,
send her to my father, to the Freiherr Johann von
Doenninghausen, Doenninghausen on the Harz, or write to him and
commend my child to her grandfather's heart.
"The morning dawns. Perhaps when the phantoms of the night flee
I can sleep--
'To die--to sleep!
To sleep! perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.'
"Did you ever hear Roderich utter those words? They ring in my
ears now as if I had just heard him say them. I _must_ hear him
say them once more. No, no,--I cannot die."
Here the letter ended. Death had come suddenly and painlessly. Johanna
remembered the peaceful smile upon her mother's beautiful face as she
lay in her coffin. She kissed the last lines written by her dear hand,
and her heart overflowed with tenderness.
The impression made upon her by the letter, however, was far other than
Ludwig seemed to expect it would produce. Not for a moment did it alter
Johanna's love for her father. On the contrary, its passionate pain
seemed to justify her feeling for him. Weary unto death, and tortured
with jealousy, her mother had turned to him in love and longing, and her
last words were the utterance of a desire to see him once more.
"This is love," Johanna said to herself,--"the only true love,--that of
which it stands written, 'beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.' Whoever can
merely say as Ludwig does, 'I loved you so long as you thought and felt
thus and so,' has never really loved."
Even her mother's desire that she should go to her grandfather did not
disturb Johanna. The letter said expressly, 'Her father hardly knows
her, and will hardly miss her.' Now that he knew her and loved her, her
mother would not, Johanna was convinced, wish her to leave him. Only if
her father should come to consider her a burden, or if her lack of
talent should estrange him from her, or if her step-mother's dislike of
her should lead to misunderstandings, could it be her duty to leave her
father's roof.
But it was useless to pursue such reflections as these. If her
step-mother did not like her, her father's love and her little sister's
devotion more than indemnified her. To attach to herself the lovely
little creature who before her sister's arrival had spent all her time
with the servants, to make good the deficiencies in the little girl's
training, these were tasks after Johanna's own heart, and in them she
could find abundant content; if she applied herself to these and
restrained her thoughts and desires from wandering in other realms, she
could surely be once more for Ludwig what she had been formerly.
She sat with clasped hands gazing into the flame of the candle. The
little watering-place in the Thueringian forest, so long her home, rose
vividly in her memory. There stood the vine-wreathed cottage of the
resident physician, where Ludwig would dwell as his father's successor;
the garden, with its dwarf fruit-trees, vegetable patch, and
flower-beds; the hawthorn arbour by the hedge, with the vista of the
chestnut avenue, along which the guests at the baths used to saunter;
the little stream with its grassy banks; and, enclosing all, the wooded
heights, a fitting frame for the lovely peaceful picture.
"But it would be no life for me," Johanna said to herself. "Why not? Why
cannot I be content with what has satisfied thousands? Why am I
possessed by this desire for--I know not what--for giving shape and
expression to something? Is it not vanity, or ambition, or
self-conceit?"
She was more than ever conscious of the loneliness in which she had
lived since the death of her foster-mother, who had been her refuge in
all doubt and distress, while her husband, Uncle Werner, as Johanna
called him, had ministered only to the physical ailments of his family.
She had found but little sympathy from Mathilde, Ludwig's sister, whose
nature was cold and narrow; even Ludwig, sensitive as he was, had not
understood her. But her father,--he must have known such times of doubt
and uncertainty,--he might help her.
"I will pluck up courage and tell him everything to-morrow," she said to
herself. Then, calmed and quieted by this resolve, she betook herself to
bed and to sleep.
CHAPTER III.
A CRISIS.
Johanna could not carry her resolve into execution. The following
morning she was busy until late in replacing by order the disarray
produced by the birthday fete, and when her father, who had gone out
meanwhile, returned, he hurried past her with so gloomy an expression
that she did not venture to follow him to his room.
At dinner she learned the cause of his troubled mood. He had quarrelled
with the manager because the latter would persist in giving various of
Helena's youthful parts to her rival, Fraeulein Kronberg.
"Of course I cannot withdraw my stipulations," Roderich added, "and
therefore cannot renew my contract, favourable as its conditions were
for me."
"You can get another anywhere else quite as favourable, and even more
so," said Helena.
"But not the accessories which I have here," Roderich declared. "Not the
intelligent public, nor the charming _mise-en-scene_ which makes each
separate performance a work of art."
"That is no affair of yours," said Helena. "Each for himself, and God
for us all. And as for the public, I can't see that it is especially
intelligent. Wherever else you go you receive more applause than you get
here, and so do I."
"Applause!" he repeated, with an impatient shrug. "Dear Helena, there is
a kind of applause that makes me blush with mortification; but from
your point of view you can hardly understand this."
How gladly would Johanna have assured him that she understood him
perfectly! But while she was struggling with her natural shyness, Helena
exclaimed, "If you think so meanly of me, pray do not proclaim it before
other people; it is more than I can bear."
Roderich changed colour. "To accuse me of unkindness just when I am
sacrificing all my plans for your sake is rather hard!" he said. And,
rising from table, he left the room suddenly, slamming the door noisily
behind him.
Lisbeth, terrified, began to cry, the others were amazed. Never before
had he allowed himself to be so carried away by temper.
"He must be ill," said Johanna.
"Nonsense! he is out of temper," said Helena, "and he shall not hear a
kind word from me until he begs my pardon."
Johanna was right. In half an hour Friedrich announced that the Herr had
one of his attacks of headache, and could see no one.
On such days there seemed to be a spell upon the entire household. Every
voice was lowered, every footfall was as light as possible, and
Friedrich muffled the bell upon the landing.
This time, Johanna learned from Friedrich, the pain was not so intense
as usual, but it did not pass away at the end of twenty-four hours.
When, in spite of it, Roderich went to rehearsal the next day, he
returned more ill than ever. The third day fever set in, and the
physician ordered him to bed.
Helena had not forgiven the scene at table.
"It surely is not very bad, doctor," she said, as she accompanied the
physician from the room. "I am just ordering a magnificent costume for
Desdemona. Othello comes out next week; you must have him well by that
time."
"We will hope for the best," the old man said, as he took his leave.
Johanna, who overheard his words, was startled. She knew from Dr. Werner
what these words signified in a physician's mouth. Whilst Helena
carelessly returned to her costume, Johanna waited with a throbbing
heart at her father's door until the servant made his appearance.
"Pray ask papa, Friedrich, whether I may not come in," she said.
The sick man heard her. "Come!" he called. His voice, usually so full
and sonorous, sounded muffled, and his face was still more changed: it
was colourless, and looked pinched and wan upon the pillow.
Johanna went to his bedside, with difficulty suppressing all signs of
emotion. "Papa," she entreated, "let me stay with you. You have
Friedrich, it is true, but I know better than he how to nurse an
invalid."
For a while he gazed at her as if he scarcely understood her words.
"Yes, stay with me," he said; "I think I am really very ill, and you are
more careful, quieter, stronger----"
He did not finish the sentence, but she understood what he meant.
"Ah, thank you!" she said, kissing his burning hand.
He drew his daughter closer to him. "My dear, good child!" he said,
pressing his feverish lips to her forehead. She did not dream that it
was a farewell caress.
The disease progressed rapidly, and was pronounced by the physician the
next day to be a nervous fever. He was quite content with Johanna's
calm, careful treatment of his patient, but he begged Helena, who could
not control her agitation, to spare her own delicate health for the sake
of her child, and to be as little as possible in the sick-room. She
sighed and submitted.
But, indeed, neither she nor any one else could have disturbed the sick
man after a few days had passed; he lay in a state of entire
unconsciousness.
The whole city was interested in the artist's condition; the inquiries
after his health were countless; the door was besieged by friends and
acquaintances. He had always been a kind, ungrudging comrade to his
fellow-actors, and now when he could no longer excite their envy, they
remembered his own freedom from it, and did all in their power to
testify their esteem and friendship for him.
For Helena it was a kind of consolation to receive their visits; her
nature was of those for which distraction is possible. After she had
with many tears given an account of the sick man's state, she would
listen with interest to theatrical gossip, and forget for a while her
own sorrow. It overcame her, indeed, with redoubled violence when she
was once more alone. Often, when she had been laughing with a visitor at
some jest, Johanna would find her in a state of most pitiable distress.
"He is going to die, I know he is; such happiness as ours was too great
for this world of misery," she would declare, sobbing as if her heart
would break; or she would cry out as if bereft of her senses, "O God,
you cannot take him from me! He must be spared for me and for his art."
She was most helpless and hopeless in the sick-room, where she would
throw herself on her knees by Roderich's bedside, cover his hand with
kisses, and exhaust every passionate term of endearment, nearly fainting
when there was no response from her unconscious husband. But if one of
the physicians or a friend wished to speak to her, she would arise, and,
with a look of anguish as she left the room, involuntarily adjust
artistically the soft folds of her white cachemire peignoir.
Johanna was too young and unsophisticated to appreciate her step-mother.
She did her injustice when she accused her of heartlessness, and she
added to her own burden by a daily increasing dislike for Helena.
But she could not help it. The sleep of exhaustion, which now and then
overcame her, was all the rest and forgetfulness that she had. If she
forced herself to talk with little Lisbeth, she had to struggle
continually with rising tears, and when she heard others speaking of the
events of the day, she could hardly comprehend how the affairs of the
world could pursue their usual course outside of the sick-room. That was
her realm, and her father's death seemed to her the end of all things.
Week after week passed. The physician gave Johanna no hope. She had
herself watched from day to day, and from hour to hour, the inexorable
approach of the Destroyer, and when the last moment came, she had lived
it over in thought a hundred times.
It was the gray dawn of a morning in November. She was sitting alone at
her father's bedside. Helena was asleep upon a lounge in the next room,
when Roderich once more opened his eyes, in which there was a last ray
of consciousness; his lips moved, and when Johanna leaned over him, she
heard him whisper, 'Helena.' His features were convulsed for an instant,
and when Helena rushed into the room in answer to her low cry, it was
too late. Her husband had breathed his last. His heart had ceased to
beat.
Johanna closed his eyes and took her usual place beside him. She seemed
paralyzed; she could not weep, she could not even think. Helena's noisy
grief distressed her, but it seemed to reach her ear from some great
distance, and soon died away altogether. Only two images remained in her
memory from this terrible time,--the ideal beauty of her beloved dead as
he lay in the coffin crowned with laurel, and the dreary aspect of the
funeral cortege as it moved endlessly along the streets in the pouring
rain, while the wind tore away from the hearse and whirled in air some
of the flowers and wreaths with which it was bedecked.
It was Lisbeth who at last aroused Johanna from her lethargy. To spare
the imaginative child the sad impression of her father's dying moments,
she had been intrusted to the care of an actress friend, returning to
her home only when the funeral was over. Helena rushed to her, clasped
her in her arms, loaded her with caresses, declaring that she was all
that was left her in life, all that she had to live for, and then turned
away to receive a couple of her friends who had called to see her. They
were all soon absorbed in an animated discussion of mourning gowns and
Helena's broken heart, the impossibility of recovering from Roderich's
loss, his widow's plans for the future, the intrigues of the Kronberg,
and the inconceivable partiality of the manager for one so utterly
without talent. The child felt herself forgotten, and left the room to
look for her sister.
Johanna was not in her usual place at the work-table in Helena's
dressing-room, nor was she in her own sleeping apartment. But when
Lisbeth timidly entered her father's study, she found Johanna, looking
pale and white in her black gown, still sitting by the window whence she
had seen the funeral procession disappear. She sat in an arm-chair, her
head leaning back, her arms hanging idly down, gazing into space with
such an expression of dull anguish that the little girl was frightened.
"Johanna, dear Johanna, please do not be ill, do not die!" she cried,
throwing her arms around her sister's neck; and these first tender
words, the nestling close to her of the little one, dissolved the spell
that had bound the poor girl, and she burst into tears.
Afterwards, when longing for sympathy, she went to her step-mother,
Helena said in her coldest tone,--
"Has it really occurred to you to remember my existence? I think it was
high time. Everything comes upon me,--it will kill me."
Not a word was said of all that Johanna had done during the long weeks
of illness, and the gulf between Helena and herself widened.
The next morning Johanna was handed the card of Lieutenant Otto von
Doenninghausen. She would gladly have refused to see him, but written in
pencil upon the card was 'Commissioned by our grandfather,' and she
could not deny herself to one so accredited.
In the drawing-room she found a tall, fair man, about thirty years old,
whose military carriage betrayed the soldier in spite of his civilian's
dress.
"Cousin Johanna?" he said, advancing towards her, while his bright,
resolute blue eyes scanned her keenly. Then he held out his hand.
"Forgive me for intruding at such a time," he continued. "Let me plead
the right of kinship, and believe in the sincerity of my sympathy."
Johanna's eyes filled with tears. She mutely returned the pressure of
his hand, and motioned him to a seat.
"Our grandfather has requested me to put this letter into your own
hands," he began again when both were seated. "The commission was a
welcome one to me; I take a sad satisfaction in assuring you personally
of my sympathy. I have had the pleasure of seeing your father repeatedly
upon the stage, and I never can forget him."
"I thank you," said Johanna, and for an instant her pale face glowed
with the same fire which had distinguished her father. Her cousin's
simple cordiality of tone did her good, inspired her with confidence,
and yet she felt a timidity in his presence quite foreign to her.
"It is the result of the distressing consciousness of knowing nothing of
my nearest relatives," she thought.
"Grandpapa requests you to come to him," the young man said, handing
Johanna a sealed letter. "Do not be led astray by his manner of
expression, which is probably as blunt and cold in this letter as it is
in daily personal intercourse. There is much kindliness beneath his
rough exterior. Our grandfather is a nobleman in the full sense of the
word, with all the prejudice and narrowness of his class. You will soon
understand and value him, and I hope soon to see you in Doenninghausen."
"Are you going back there again?" asked Johanna, trying to find
something to say.
"Not now," he replied. "My regiment is stationed on the Rhine, and I am
returning to it after having assisted last week in the celebration of my
grandfather's birthday, on which occasion we are all wont to assemble at
Doenninghausen."
"Who are all?" asked Johanna. "I know little, almost nothing, of my
mother's family; she had become estranged from her kindred."
"Unfortunately," her cousin interposed, "I have but a faint remembrance
of my aunt Agnes. I am the eldest son of her second brother, who was
attached to our embassy in London."
"Was he not called Waldemar?" asked Johanna.
"You are right," the young man replied. "Grandpapa's eldest son, Johann
Georg, was already dead when Aunt Agnes left her home. He left only one
child, a son, Johann Leopold, who has been brought up in Doenninghausen,
and lives there now. He has pursued various studies, and is the heir. I
have a younger brother, named for our father, Waldemar; he has entered
upon a diplomatic career. My two sisters, Hedwig and Hildegard, are
married to two distant cousins belonging to the Wildenhayn-Oderbuchs.
Finally, grandpapa's youngest son, Major Karl Anton, also dead, left one
child, a daughter, young and beautiful and a widow of two years'
standing. Her name is Magelone; her husband, Lieutenant von der Aue,
who lived only eighteen months after their marriage, contrived in that
time to run through all her property, and she now lives at
Doenninghausen, under the chaperonage of our grand-aunt Thekla,
grandpapa's unmarried sister. Let me add that Magelone is as clever as
she is beautiful, as accomplished as she is amiable, and that she is
especially desirous of welcoming Cousin Johanna to Doenninghausen."
"Me?" Johanna asked, blushing. "I cannot understand----"
"I will read the riddle for you," Otto interposed. "Do you not remember
meeting two years ago, among the guests at Lindenbad, a certain Frau von
Werth? She visits at Doenninghausen, and has told wonderful tales of you.
I will spare your modesty further details."
He bowed with a smile, and again his sparkling eyes scanned her. Johanna
coloured: she felt cheered and comforted. None among her father's
friends had ever accorded her any degree of attention.
"I should like to know something of my grandfather," she began, after a
pause; but, before she could go on, the door opened and Lisbeth came in.
"Johanna!" she exclaimed, startled, and stood still; but Johanna held
out her hand, and the child flew to her side.
"My sister," she said, tenderly stroking the little one's fair curls.
"Sister?" Otto repeated, in a tone of surprise. "Oh, yes, I remember.
Come, my little beauty, give me your hand," he said, with his winning
smile.
But the child held Johanna's arm tight and looked at him with a little
air of defiance. "No, I do not know you, and I do not want to know you,"
she said in a wayward tone.
"Darling, don't be naughty," Johanna whispered.
"Never mind," said her cousin; "the child is shy, and, besides, I must
go." And he glanced at the clock as he arose.
Johanna also arose. "I am sorry," she said; "I had so much to ask----"
"And I, too, seem to have a thousand things to say," the young man
rejoined. "I thought I should have seen much more of you, but when I
arrived yesterday I found that the funeral had not yet taken place, and
the hours were wasted which I hoped to have spent with you. I wish that
I could at least have followed to the grave the man whom I so admired,
but I was detained by pressing business."
How cordial was the tone in which he spoke! Johanna's eyes filled; how
could she know that his 'pressing business' was a breakfast with some
gay companions? Much moved, she held out her hand to her cousin. Otto
pressed it to his lips.
"_Au revoir_ in Doenninghausen!" he said, and went.
"_Au revoir_," she rejoined, half involuntarily; and, as the door closed
behind his tall figure, she all but asked herself whether the events of
the last half-hour had not been a dream. How could she feel thus nearly
related to a man of whose existence she had been so short a time before
unconscious? 'Strange force of kinship!' she said to herself.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth had seized upon the large envelope lying upon the
table, and was trying to spell out the address.
"What a funny letter! Is it to you? Why is there no 'Fraeulein' on it?"
she asked, handing the letter to her sister, who observed for the first
time that the envelope was addressed 'To my grand-daughter Johanna.'
She now remembered that letters from Doenninghausen to her mother had
always been sent in an enclosure, and the address only of the envelope
within had been written by her grandfather, and had always been 'To my
daughter Agnes.' The Freiherr could not bring himself to write the
hated name of the actor.
With a sigh, Johanna broke the seal and read:
"MY DEAR CHILD,--Now that you are, as I learn, an orphan
indeed, it seems to me a matter of course that you should come
as soon as possible to your natural home,--that is, to my
house. Write to me when you intend to start, that I may send
you a suitable escort.
"Your affectionate grandfather,
"JOHANN HEINRICH V. DOeNNINGHAUSEN."
Johanna's hands fell by her sides. Not one word of pity for her loss, of
sympathy for the death of the famous artist, or of welcome for the
unknown grandchild. No, she could never find a home in a house where her
father's name was despised!
But then she recalled what her cousin Otto had said of her grandfather's
noble nature, which his harsh exterior continually gainsaid. Perhaps it
might be given to her to reconcile the old nobleman with her father's
memory; and Magelone was there, witty and talented, and Cousin Otto made
frequent visits to Doenninghausen. He would always pay to the dead the
tribute of admiration which she coveted. Should she go? Her glance fell
upon Lisbeth, sitting opposite her, her eyes fixed upon the ground, her
little face sad with that look of misery which is so indescribably
pathetic in a child. "No, I cannot leave my darling. What is
Doenninghausen to me?" she said to herself, and clasped her sister in her
arms.
Meanwhile, Otto had returned to his hotel, whence before leaving town he
wrote to Magelone:
"GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN,--Your commands are obeyed. When I
delivered our grandfather's letter I exercised in your behalf
all the power of observation with which I am gifted, and can
state, so far as can be learned in the limits of a brief
interview, that the reality coincides with excellent Frau
Werth's description. Our cousin is rather plain than pretty,
but looks clever and distinguished, has quiet, pleasing
manners,--in a word, she seems to me entirely presentable, and
eminently adapted to indemnify you for the fatiguing society of
your Knight of the Rueful Countenance.
"I seize this favourable opportunity for prostrating
myself--only metaphorically, alas!--at the smallest feet in the
world, and am, as ever, O fairest Magelone,
"Your cousin and slave,
"OTTO."
CHAPTER IV.
FUTURE PLANS DECIDED.
Immediately after her father's death, Johanna had received an
affectionate letter from Ludwig, and her grandfather's note was scarcely
read before a second budget from Lindenbad brought her letters from each
member of the Werner family.
Old Dr. Werner, after his own simple and cordial manner, begged Johanna
to return to them. Mathilde assured her in choice phraseology that she
should rejoice to welcome her dear foster-sister, who, she trusted,
would not feel too deeply the change from the luxury and freedom from
restraint which belonged to an artist's world, to a quiet, monotonous
existence spent in devotion to duty. Ludwig, writing in his turn, feared
lest he might have wounded her by his bluntness in their last interview,
and offered, if for any reason she would avoid living beneath the same
roof with him, to spend the winter in Weimar, where he could easily
complete his work.
The advantage that the public library in Weimar would be to him would be
an abundant motive to assign for this step, and he added: "What I shall
do with myself afterwards I do not know. At all events, all idea of the
Lindenbad idyl is relinquished. I pray you to acquaint me unreservedly
with your wishes, and I assure you that you will delight us all by
coming to us, and most of all your brother LUDWIG."
"How good and kind he is!" Johanna said to herself. "It is a great pity
that, with all his goodness and kindness, he should be so unattractive."
Otto's image rose in her memory in strong contrast,--the elegant ease of
his bearing, his courtesy, which occasionally seemed more than mere
courtesy, his fine figure and handsome face. Was her grandfather like
him? And the beautiful Magelone,--did she really possess everything that
he ascribed to her,--beauty, wit, talent, amiability? Perhaps he loved
her.
"All are loved save myself," Johanna thought. "I have been here a whole
year, and have won no single heart except that of my little sister, who
would soon, after the fashion of a child, forget me were I to leave her.
Ludwig's love I lost before I knew that I possessed it, and even the
father whom I idolized had not a single thought for me in his last
moments."
Her own sentiments, however, she vowed to herself, never should be
influenced by this knowledge. As in a sanctuary, she would guard and
cherish in her heart the memory of her father and of the lofty service
he had rendered to art, and where could she better do this than here,
where everything reminded her of him, where she inhaled, as it were, the
aroma of his personality? The longer she reflected, the clearer was her
conviction that she must stay where she was.
Nevertheless, she postponed answering her letter from day to day. She
had but little time of her own. Since Helena was occupied from morning
till night with friends of both sexes, Lisbeth was left to the care of
her sister, whose busy hands were, moreover, occupied all day long in
completing her step-mother's mourning wardrobe. In the evening, when the
child had gone to bed and Helena's visitors had left her, it was
Johanna's hard task to listen to the wailing and woe of this
undisciplined, unregulated nature. After hours of such labour, she
would go to her room thoroughly exhausted, and long after Helena was
sleeping quietly the poor girl would toss to and fro in her bed, unable,
from over-fatigue, to find any repose.
But one evening Helena made her appearance in her dressing-room with dry
eyes and an air of important business. Johanna had just put Lisbeth to
bed, and was again sitting at her sewing. Her step-mother went hither
and thither, restlessly picked up this and that only to lay them down
again, and said at last, with averted face, "Johanna, my friends say it
is my duty--that is, that I owe it to you to speak seriously with you."
The young girl looked at her inquiringly.
"We--that is, I must arrange some plan for the future; and you--you told
mo that your grandfather and Dr. Werner have both asked you to come to
them. To which of them have you decided to go?"
Johanna's heart seemed to stand still. "Must I go away from here?" she
gasped at last.
Helena turned sharply round towards her. "Dear Johanna, I had not
supposed you could be so unreasonable," she said harshly. "Roderich left
nothing but debts; and as for my supporting a step-daughter----"
"Not another word, please, mamma," Johanna interposed. "In my grief I
have forgotten all else. The instant that I know that I am a burden to
you my resolution is taken."
"How haughtily you speak!" Helena complained. "You must know how
terribly hard it is for me to have to calculate thus. I had even
deliberated whether, in view of your diligence and your care of Lisbeth,
I might not as well keep you with me instead of paying Lina and a
waiting-maid. But Hofrath Leuchtenberg said--and that decided me--that
it would be of the greatest disadvantage to me in my career as an
actress to be accompanied by a grown-up daughter."
She paused. Johanna replied by a mute inclination of her head.
"There might be a way found out of the difficulty," Helena continued.
"If you would call me 'Helena,' Lisbeth could call you aunt, and the
world would take you for Roderich's sister. You know I am only going to
stay here where we are known until New Year. What do you think?"
"I thank you!" Johanna made answer. "We had all better be spared this
farce; besides, you know I have no talent as an actress. The part of my
father's sister and your waiting-maid would be too difficult for me to
undertake."
With these words she arose and left the room. Helena cast a tearful look
towards heaven. "Leuchtenberg is right," she thought; "Johanna is
haughty, obstinate, and heartless. I shall be spared a thousand
annoyances by her leaving me. I am only sorry for Lisbeth's sake. The
dear little creature really loves her sister, and Johanna seemed to care
for her. But it is plain now how much her affection was worth!"
Johanna passed a sleepless night, but when morning came her mind was
made up; she arose and wrote immediately to Doenninghausen and to
Lindenbad. Her last letter was to Ludwig, and was as follows:
"I have just thanked your father and Mathilde for the help they
offered me, and have told them that I cannot accept it. Little
as my father seemed to care for me, he always provided for me
with a lavish hand; but he has left nothing, and it seems very
unjust to burden your father with my maintenance when my
grandfather offers me a home beneath his roof.
"This reason, however, excellent as it is, is not my only one.
You offer to leave your father's house if I come to it. That
alone would deter me. Finally,--you know I am given to
selfishness--I dread living with Mathilde. No one knows better
than I how excellent she is, how dutiful, self-sacrificing, and
unpretending. But she is strict and literal to a degree that
paralyzes and irritates me. Your mother, from whom Mathilde
inherits all her good qualities, was, besides, kind and
imaginative. Hers was the heart of a child so long as she
lived. Your home without her--and, let me add, without
you--could never be mine; and, since I resign it, I may as well
go among entire strangers.
"If you would lighten my task, my dear Ludwig, remain the
connecting link between my past and present. Let me inform you
as to my life, and let me hear from you of your work, your
plans for the future. However dissatisfied you may be with what
I am now, it cannot affect the past,--I mean our childhood. Do
you not remember how I always from the first sought and found
protection with you from Mathilde's tyranny? It must always be
so; a kind of instinct will always lead me to you whenever I
need counsel and help, and I know that you will open to me when
I knock.
"I have told my grandfather, who wrote to me a few days ago,
that I am ready to go to him, and that I only wait for his
directions with regard to my journey. To part from what is dear
to me here--my father's grave and my little sister--will be
hard; and, besides, I liked the atmosphere in which I lived.
Not for the sake of society here; I knew no one intimately but
my father and Lisbeth. But all this activity and effort in the
interest of art, inartistic as its results sometimes might be,
interested me, and gave me the sensation of being in my
element.
"But no,--this is self-conceit,--it was not my element. The
histrionic attempt to which I so confidently invited you proved
that I do not belong to the elect. 'Devoid of talent as her
mother' was my father's verdict with regard to me; and when I
recall the terrible moment when I stood there, utterly
incapable of giving expression to what I felt so vividly in my
imagination,--oh, Ludwig, the anguish of that moment cannot be
described in words!
"I would that this bitter, mortifying experience had really
cured me; that is, had stifled my desire for the Paradise then
closed upon me. But this is not so. During the long days and
nights passed beside my dying father, I constantly struggled
with the old longing.
"If I could make you comprehend all that this last year with my
father has brought to me, you might, perhaps, understand me. In
all his artistic performances I was beside him in spirit. The
strongest chord that he struck, the gentlest harmony that he
awakened, found an answering echo in my heart. When Desdemona,
Ophelia, Klaerchen seemed like puppets beside his Othello,
Hamlet, Egmont, I knew just what they ought to be; every look,
every motion of theirs as it should be, was as clear to my mind
as was his own exquisite conception of his part.
"Was this an inborn gift of mine, inherited from my father? If
so, diligent perseverance could have made my clumsy limbs and
speech obedient to my will; but my father's expression, 'Devoid
of talent as her mother,' paralyzes my courage, and filial
affection bids me to try no further where he can no longer
criticise my efforts. Perhaps the creative force which I
thought I possessed was but the momentary impression of his
genius. I might then have had some measure of success at his
side, inspired by his spirit,--no great amount, it may be,--but
we love the moon with its borrowed light, and my sun might have
permitted me to reflect its brilliancy.
"But this career is ended, and there is nothing for me but to
submit. Perhaps my new surroundings will lighten my task;
perhaps I shall find at my grandfather's something to do which
will give healthy occupation to my thoughts. And I shall be in
the country again, in quiet seclusion. In a sketch-book of my
mother's there is a pencil-drawing of Doenninghausen, which I
used as a child to contemplate with secret longing. The castle,
a huge, plain, two-storied pile, with a lofty roof and low
bell-tower, stands half-way up the side of a mountain which is
crowned with forests and overlooked by loftier ranges of
mountains. Down in the valley is the village, with its little
old church; a mountain stream winds through the meadows, and
the road beside it ascends the mountain along its course and is
lost in the forest. This road always bewitched me; it was the
pathway to all kinds of adventures and wonders,--the entrance
to a fairy world. So closely is this landscape interwoven with
all my childish dreams, that I could go to Doenninghausen as to
a home, if I could hope to learn to understand or to be
understood by its inmates. Assuredly the best intentions, the
most sincere effort, shall not be wanting on my part. I
certainly do possess a certain talent, my only one, for
adapting myself to the habits and social life of those with
whom I am thrown. May it now stand me in stead!
"Farewell for the present. I hope you will read between the
lines of this long letter the earnest desire to be understood
by you of
"Yours,
"J."
CHAPTER V.
AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN.
In the large three-windowed morning-room of Castle Doenninghausen the old
Freiherr was walking to and fro, smoking his long pipe, as was his
custom always after breakfast, his huge, tawny dog Leo following, as
ever, close at his master's heels. The sister of the lord of the castle
sat prim and stately in her usual place by the window, knitting, while
at a small table near the chimney-place Magelone and Johann Leopold were
playing chess. The fire crackled, the old tall clock ticked, the needles
in Aunt Thekla's busy hands clicked, and the Freiherr's footsteps fell
regularly upon the rug that covered the floor. The morning was precisely
like every one of its predecessors.
Suddenly the old man went up to the middle one of the three tall windows
and gazed out into the flurry of snow that veiled the distant landscape.
Leo, amazed at this transgression of traditionary custom, stood still
and pricked his ears.
"Ten," said the Freiherr, as the clock began to strike. "In half an hour
Johanna may be here; at twelve, when I have returned from my ride, I
wish to speak with her in my room. She shall receive all the
consideration due to my grandchild, but there shall be no interruption
of the rules of the house upon her account, nor"--his deep voice grew
louder, and there was something in it like the mutter of a coming
tempest--"nor shall her father's name be mentioned in my hearing."
With these words the Freiherr turned about and left the room,
accompanied by Leo.
So soon as the door closed behind him, Johann Leopold arose. "Allow me,
dear Magelone, to postpone the end of our game. I have a headache," he
said, passing his hand wearily over his eyes.
"Just as you please, dear Johann Leopold," Magelone replied, with a
gentle smile. He kissed her hand and left the room. She lifted her arms
towards heaven. "Thank God, he has gone!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Aunt
Thekla, Aunt Thekla, this life is intolerable!"
The old lady shook her head so that the gray curls beneath her lace cap
trembled.
"My dear child, you ought not to speak so," she said, in a tone of
gentle reproof; "you are going to marry him----"
"Because I choose to, or because I must?" Magelone interposed, going
across the room to her great-aunt. "But never mind that; when we are
married it will be better,--then I will not stay any longer in
Doenninghausen."
"You will not leave your old grandfather alone!" said Aunt Thekla.
"I am nothing to grandpapa," Magelone answered, with a shrug of her
shoulders; "and as for any entertainment that he gets from Johann
Leopold----But don't be troubled about that; who knows what the new
cousin may turn out? I am very curious. From all that I hear, she will
be far too solemn for me,--all the better adapted, however, for our
croaking household and for Doenninghausen."
With these words Magelone hurried to the other end of the room, seated
herself at the grand piano, and began to play a polka; then suddenly
ceasing, she ran back again to her aunt and sat down opposite her. "Can
you possibly understand, Aunt Thekla," she asked, "why grandpapa has
sent for this Johanna? Do not misunderstand me. I have no objection to
her coming. We can yawn together, even if she is good for nothing else.
But why grandpapa, who cannot endure the sound of her family name, did
not rather board her somewhere----"
"I asked myself the same question," her aunt replied; "and the only
answer I can find to it, knowing him as I do, is that he yearns to see
his Agnes's child. Believe me, dear, he is not so hard-hearted as he
chooses to appear."
"But he banished his daughter!" Magelone exclaimed.
"He did what he thought was his duty, and no one knew how he suffered in
doing so," the old lady rejoined. "Agnes was his darling. How enraptured
he was when, after his three boys,--the youngest, your father, was
eleven years old,--a daughter was born to him! Although he was thought a
strict father, he could deny his Agnes nothing. Everybody in the house
did as she pleased, and did it gladly, for she was a gentle,
tender-hearted creature. But she grew too dreamy and imaginative in this
solitude, and when my sister-in-law at last had her way and sent her for
a year to boarding-school, where she had companions of her own age, it
was too late. At her very first entrance into society she fell in love
with that man, that actor, and there was no help for it."
"How inconceivable it is, this falling so desperately in love!" said
Magelone.
Aunt Thekla dropped her knitting and gazed at her niece through her
eye-glasses. "Are you in earnest?" she asked. "Can you really not
understand it?"
Magelone's eyes sparkled strangely, reminding one of sunshine upon
rippling water.
"Oh, Aunt Thekla, you think I mean it!" she exclaimed, and laughed like
a child.
"No, not exactly," said the old lady; "but I cannot deny that I am
sometimes anxious. 'Tis all the better for you if you are only flirting,
but I pity the poor lad."
"The poor lad!" Magelone repeated. "Does that mean Otto? Aunt, you are
perfectly heavenly; I must give you a kiss!" And she sprang up and threw
her arms around Aunt Thekla's neck. "Let me assure you that it is a
question which of us is flirting the most. When men attempt anything in
that line their achievements are wonderful----Hark! there comes a
carriage. It is Johanna!" she interrupted herself, and, beginning to
sing, 'For her I sigh,' in a rather weak but melodious voice, she ran
out of the room.
In the corridor she walked more deliberately. "Remember your dignity,
Magelone," she said to herself,--"no farther than the head of the
staircase." But when she reached the head of the staircase, and
Johanna's pale face--shrouded in black crape, her large eyes dimmed with
weeping--looked up at her, dignity was entirely forgotten. Holding out
both hands, she hurried to meet the guest, exclaiming, "Johanna! Cousin
Johanna! I am Magelone!" And she clasped her in her arms.
Johanna was mute with amazement. Otto's expressions had led her to
imagine Magelone's beauty to be of a dazzling superb kind, instead of
which here was a fairy-like creature, with child-like eyes and a winning
grace of manner.
"Poor Johanna, how tired you look!" Magelone continued. "And how you
shiver! you are chilled through and through----"
"Yes; I have been travelling all night," said Johanna. And her teeth
chattered as she spoke.
"Poor child, I suppose I ought to take you directly to Aunt Thekla, but
you must first rest and get warm. Here,"--and Magelone opened the door
of a spacious, well-warmed apartment,--"here is a quiet room; and now
tell me what you would like. Shall I send you a maid, or will you have
breakfast?"
"Thank you; I should like to sleep," was Johanna's reply.
Magelone helped her take off her hat and wraps. "Then lie down
here,"--and she led her to a huge lounge,--"and I will see that you are
not disturbed until it is time to dress for dinner."
She turned to go. Johanna took both her hands. "Thanks!" she said, with
emotion; "your reception of me has done me so much good----"
"But you have not yet called me Magelone!" was the laughing
interruption. "But don't force yourself to it,--it will come of itself."
With these words she kissed the young girl's forehead and left her
alone.
"She is charming," thought Johanna, as her weary head sank back among
the cushions. "If every one here is as kind, I have been very silly to
have any dread of Doenninghausen." And she fell asleep with a lightened
heart, the rumble and rush of the railroad train still buzzing in her
ears.
Suddenly she started. "Ten minutes for refreshments!" had just rung
through her dream. She awoke to find herself, to her surprise, in the
spacious dim room. The door opened, and an old gentleman entered, with a
large dog beside him.
"Grandfather!" she cried, and would have risen.
He approached her quickly. "Sit still! sit still!" he said, with a
commanding gesture, as he took a seat beside her couch. "My old
Christian tells me that you are exhausted with your journey, and
therefore I came here to see you, and to release you, if you like, from
coming to dinner to-day."
Whilst the Freiherr spoke, his cold blue eyes rested searchingly upon
the girl. She bore the look bravely.
"Thank you, that is not necessary; my sleep has greatly refreshed me,"
she replied.
"So much the better," said the old man. "You still look pale and tired,
but that will pass away. You do not look like your mother," he went on,
after a pause, in a gentler tone, "but you have her low gentle voice,
and there is something in your smile----"
He broke off and turned away his head. At this moment the dog, who had
been sniffing about Johanna, reared himself and put his large forepaws
upon her shoulders. "Down, Leo, down!" the Freiherr called. The animal
obeyed, but Johanna stroked its huge head caressingly, and it fawned at
her feet.
"Why, look! Leo, usually so slow to make acquaintance, has accepted you
upon the spot," the old man said, with a gratified air. "That, too, you
get from your mother,--all animals liked her. Now I will leave you
alone. After dinner you shall be presented to your grand-aunt, my sister
Thekla. Until then, my child, adieu."
He arose and held out his hand; suddenly he drew her to him and kissed
her. "God bless your home-coming!" he murmured; then he walked towards
the door, turning round, however, before he reached it, and saying, in
his usual imperious way, "From this time, Johanna, you belong entirely
to us. We shall all call you by your first name, and you will be one of
the family, to the rules of which you must conform. Come to me if any
occasion should arise for your wanting advice."
With these words he departed.
"I hope we shall be fond of each other," Johanna thought. "He is kinder
than his letter led me to imagine him. And how handsome he is, with his
white hair, his proud stern air, his bright eyes beneath their bushy
eyebrows, and his erect martial figure! In his coarse shooting-jacket,
leather breeches, and riding-boots, he is the most distinguished-looking
man I have ever seen."
Grand-aunt Thekla, too, to whom Johanna was presented before dinner by
Magelone, received her kindly, although after a prim fashion of her own,
and Cousin Johann Leopold, upon his introduction to her in the
dining-room, offered the tips of his cold fingers, and expressed a hope
that she would be pleased with Doenninghausen.
Altogether, it had the effect upon Johanna of the scene of a fairy-tale:
the spacious dining-hall, its wainscoting and ceiling of dark oak; a
huge green porcelain stove at one end, at the other a buffet, whence
shot mysterious gleams from glass and silver in the light of the
chandelier; the assembled family, contrasting so strongly with one
another,--Johann Leopold in evening dress; Aunt Thekla in gray satin and
black lace; Magelone in a faultless toilette of rose-coloured silk,
flounced and furbelowed; Johanna in her deep mourning, and the Freiherr
in his riding-dress.
There was no conversation. Sometimes the Freiherr asked a question
briefly and in a gruff voice, receiving as brief and satisfactory an
answer as possible from whomsoever he addressed, and then for a space of
time no sound would be audible save the rattle of knives and forks and
the hushed footsteps of the two men-servants. Besides these last, old
Christian, Johanna's escort, stood behind his master's chair, his only
office, apparently, being to fill the Freiherr's glass and to pick up
the napkin which the old gentleman continually let fall.
It was a protracted meal: the Freiherr had a good appetite and ate
slowly. He grew more talkative at dessert, discussed affairs of the
estate with Johann Leopold, asked Aunt Thekla about some sick people in
the village, inquired of Johanna how long she had been in reaching
Doenninghausen, and made a contemptuous remark about Magelone's
'ball-dress.'
At last he arose, and every one seemed to breathe more freely. He gave
his arm to his sister: Johann Leopold offered his to Magelone.
"You must take us both," she said. "Come, Johanna."
"I should like to go to my room," the girl whispered. Magelone shook her
head.
"You must not; we are all on duty now. Come," she said, in a low voice,
as she followed the brother and sister into the drawing-room.
Here the lamps were lit, and the coffee-equipage was set out upon a
table before a lounge. There was another table near the fireplace,
provided with candles and newspapers, and so soon as the Freiherr had
taken his arm-chair beside it old Christian made his appearance with a
pipe and box of matches, followed by Leo, who pushed his head
affectionately into his master's hand and then lay down at his feet.
Aunt Thekla sat down opposite her brother with her knitting; Johann
Leopold withdrew to a dark corner on the other side of the
chimney-piece.
"Are you in pain again?" the Freiherr asked him, in a tone which
expressed more irritation than sympathy.
"Yes, sir; I have another of my old headaches," Johann Leopold replied,
and the ghastly pallor of his handsome but emaciated face, and the look
of suffering in his eyes, were confirmation of his words.
The Freiherr picked up the paper with a growl, and pushed his chair
nearer the light.
"Come," said Magelone, taking possession of Johanna, "I will initiate
you into the mysteries of my coffee-brewing; you can relieve me
sometimes in future." And while she was clattering among her cups and
saucers she went on in an undertone, "This goes on every day the same.
Now we shall all take coffee; if grandpapa finds anything interesting in
the paper he reads it aloud; when Johann Leopold condescends to be well
he reads the paper, after which grandpapa and Aunt Thekla play
backgammon, and _I_ give you a little music. Are you musical?" she asked
in a louder tone.
"Unfortunately, no," Johanna replied.
"Perhaps you draw?" Magelone asked further.
"No, I do not. I have no talent at all," Johanna declared, with some
mortification.
"None at all?" the Freiherr said, and his eyes gleamed brightly over his
newspaper. "Actually none? So much the better, child, so much the
better!"
Johanna understood the meaning of such words from her grandfather. This
was the gulf that separated them.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FREIHERR'S PRINCIPLES.
When the next morning Johanna went to her window, she could not repress
an exclamation of delight. Her room looked from a gable of the castle
out into the park. In front of it an aged oak stretched its gnarled
limbs above a little clearing; around it stood magnificent hemlocks,
their boughs drooping to the ground beneath a weight of snow; while on
the right the only vista through the trees afforded a view of the snowy
roofs and the little church of the village in the valley, of a row of
stunted willows, probably marking the course of a stream, and of the
wooded mountain-sides crowned by curiously-jagged rocks.
It was a peaceful landscape, such as she loved, and had the added charm
of the brilliant sunlight shining upon the glittering snow in the clear
wintry atmosphere. It attracted her irresistibly to go out into the open
air. The breakfast-hour was nine o'clock: she had half an hour to spare;
and she wrapped herself up and hurried out into the park.
She soon found a pathway, but walking on the dry snow was hard work, and
she had to return long before the limits of the park had been reached.
As she ascended the terrace steps in front of the castle, she saw her
grandfather standing at a window of the lower story. She called up a
'good-morning!' to him; he acknowledged her greeting, but his look and
air were so gloomy that she feared she had transgressed some rule of the
house, and betook herself to the dining-room with a certain timidity.
Her fears were groundless, however. When the customary morning
salutations had been exchanged and all had taken their seats at table,
the Freiherr said, "I am glad to see, Johanna, that you are not one of
these silly, new-fangled girls. Out in the open air before
breakfast,--that's right, child! But 'tis hard walking over the soft
snow. Can you ride?"
Johanna replied in the negative.
"Should you like to learn?" her grandfather asked, and when she said
'yes,' with sparkling eyes, he added, "Very well; be ready by half-past
twelve, and we will make our first trial. Christian will give orders to
have Elinor saddled for you; she's the gentlest creature in the world."
"She threw me," Magelone remarked.
"Your own fault!" the Freiherr exclaimed. "A horse is a noble creature;
those who would control it must keep a tight rein upon themselves. It
rebels against alternations between childish foolhardiness and childish
timidity. By the way, Magelone, when do you wish to begin riding again?"
"Not at all, grandpapa," Magelone replied, with gentle decision.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the Freiherr. "A Doenninghausen and not ride on
horseback! Why, your cousins Hildegard and Hedwig are perfect Amazons."
"You will have to reconcile yourself to leaving me out of the family in
this respect as in several others," Magelone replied, as gently as
before, but with a flash in her eyes that betrayed her irritation.
"Probably you will find Johanna more truly of the race."
Aunt Thekla and Johann Leopold looked up startled; the Freiherr tossed
his head, and his eyes darted fire at Magelone, but his glance fell upon
Johanna, who, paler than usual, cast down her eyes, and he controlled
his displeasure. Magelone went on eating as if nothing had occurred; the
Freiherr turned with some question to Johann Leopold. The meal
concluded as monosyllabically as usual, and the members of the household
continued as silent after it was finished; and while the Freiherr smoked
his morning pipe, Johann Leopold and Magelone played chess, and Aunt
Thekla and Johanna busied themselves with some needlework.
Johanna was puzzled by Magelone; the more she reflected upon her words
the more she was convinced that they could not have been thoughtlessly
uttered, and yet was it possible that that careless air, that gentle
smile, those clear eyes, could conceal petty spite?
Her ride with her grandfather put an end to her reflections. Martin, the
groom, who, before her grandfather appeared, tried to initiate her
somewhat into the rudiments of his art, declared with a grin that the
"gracious Fraeulein was sure to be a good rider." The Freiherr, when he
saw her sitting gayly and confidently in her saddle, said, "Now hold
yourself upright, and don't be afraid." And away they went in the clear
winter morning, with Leo at their heels.
Johanna returned warmed and refreshed. Her grandfather had not talked
much, but the little that he had said, the few questions he had put, had
brought them nearer together.
Under the influence of this impression she sat down at her writing-table
to tell Ludwig, as she had promised, of her arrival; but she had
scarcely written two lines when there was a knock at her door, and
Magelone entered. "I am disturbing you," she said, with her sunniest
smile, "but I cannot help it. I must beg your pardon,--I said such a
horrid thing at the breakfast-table."
She approached Johanna and offered her her hand.
"Never mind," Johanna replied, clasping the delicate hand in both her
own. "I thought you spoke hastily."
Magelone shook her head. "No, it was not exactly that." And she seated
herself at the writing-table. "You have no idea how childish I am. It
vexed me to have grandpapa praise you at my expense, and I had to say
that,--_c'etait plus fort que moi_."
"'Confessions of a fair soul,'" said Johanna.
"You are laughing. Oh, you are good and kind!" Magelone declared. "I
never will be cross to you again. I will love you so dearly. Believe me,
Johanna, I have always wanted some one like you."
"You hardly know me," said Johanna.
"But I know that you have everything which I lack. The repose of your
manner,--how I envy and admire you for it! You can sit perfectly quiet
all the while grandpapa is reading the papers. It drives me about like a
will-o'-the-wisp."
"That is your nature," Johanna rejoined. "There is always something
about you, not like a will-o'-the-wisp, but like a rippling wave."
Magelone shook her head. "Far more like a will-o'-the-wisp. The wave has
its goal, flows in a destined course; I go I know not whither."
"But you are gay and happy; what more would you have?" exclaimed
Johanna.
Magelone replied, "Not always. Latterly I have been rather gloomy than
gay. What do you think of Johann Leopold?" she added, after a pause.
"I cannot judge yet," Johanna replied. "I have hardly talked with him."
"He does not talk," Magelone interrupted her. "He is just what you have
seen him day out and day in. It is the same with every one. Grandpapa is
always dictatorial, Aunt Thekla always good and tiresome, Johann Leopold
always odd. Doesn't he look like the marble guest?"
"He looks melancholy and ill."
"And yet he has no positive complaint that I know of," said Magelone.
"His hobby is chemistry. Whenever he is not on duty with grandpapa he is
shut up in his laboratory in the garden, with all sorts of sounds and
smells. It is a perfect witch's kitchen there. Can you imagine an odder
match than he and myself?"
"Magelone!" cried Johanna. "You do not mean to say----"
"Yes, yes; we wish--or rather we ought to marry," Magelone interposed.
"Grandpapa devised the match, and of course it must be. I am a widow;
Johann Leopold's betrothed died; I have lost my property; he is the
heir. We are equals in rank; he is thirty years old, I am twenty-one. In
short, the match is the most suitable that can be imagined."
"But you will not consent?"
"What am I to do?" Magelone asked, shrugging her shoulders. "I am
spoiled. Poor Willfried ran through all my money to the last farthing. I
have no chance of making conquests in this wilderness; and, besides, who
would marry a widow with no money?"
"Whoever loved her."
"Do you believe in love?" asked Magelone. "I don't. All I have seen of
what is called love was mere play. People flirt, and try to befool one
another, to outdo a rival, but love, which might induce one to contract
a disadvantageous marriage, never. Marriage is a business transaction."
"Yours does not seem to have been such," Johanna said.
"Do you suppose I was enamoured of my stout captain?" asked Magelone.
"Not in the least! It suited me to marry before I was quite eighteen an
officer of the Garde du Corps; it suited me to go to Berlin, and to
court; but I never imagined for a moment that Willfried would forego his
ballet-girls and his cards for longer than the honeymoon. My folly lay
in never reflecting upon how quickly a fortune may be gambled away. My
good father ought to have thought of that; but he was ill, and wanted
to see me established, as they say, before his death, and so it all
happened."
"Poor child!" said Johanna, taking her hand. "It was the fault of
circumstances. You will learn to look upon life differently. Only have
courage, and hope."
"If I could!" Magelone said, her melancholy smile contrasting oddly with
her sparkling eyes. "Do you know I sometimes fancy that I have no heart?
It has something to do with my name. The water-witch Magelone, after
whom I am called, bequeathed to me her own uncanny nature."
"No, no; you will learn to love," Johanna interrupted. She thought of
Otto, and of the way in which he had spoken of Magelone. "You are not
actually betrothed yet?" she added.
"Not yet," Magelone replied. "Thus far grandpapa has only informed us
both, Johann Leopold and myself, of his desire. He called us into his
study and addressed us very solemnly."
"And you?" Johanna asked.
"Johann Leopold bowed, as he always does, like an automaton,--_cela
n'engage a rien_,--and I suppose I smiled. But what does it matter what
we say? You may be sure that if we employed all the eloquence in the
world to combat grandpapa's arrangements it would avail nothing. At
Christmas, when all the noble family are assembled here, the betrothal
will take place, and at the hour that grandpapa shall appoint we shall
stand before the altar and exchange rings whether we will or not."
"That I cannot understand," said Johanna.
"You will understand it when you have once seen how terrible grandpapa's
anger is," Magelone rejoined,--"when he frowns, and his eyes flash from
beneath his bushy white eyebrows, and his voice thunders and roars. It
occurs but rarely, but the terror of it is in our very blood, or has
been taught us from childhood, I cannot tell which."
"Did you ever see grandpapa so?" asked Johanna.
"Only once, when Otto, who is very hasty, had boxed the forester's ears.
Grandpapa roared out that so to treat an honest man, who could not
demand satisfaction for the insult, was the act of a blackguard; Otto
was not worthy to bear the name of Doenninghausen. As I tell it it seems
nothing, but when grandpapa flew out at the poor boy I really thought he
would have felled him to the earth, and every one present--it happened
during the charmingly social hour after breakfast--was petrified with
horror."
"But grandpapa was right!" exclaimed Johanna. "Cousin Otto must have
acknowledged that, for he speaks of him with the greatest reverence, and
calls him a nobleman in the fullest sense of the word."
Magelone shrugged her shoulders. "My dear child, that is the
Doenninghausen craze. They all imagine that because they bear this name
they are superior to all other human beings; and since they are not
so,--I mean the younger generation,--they fall down and worship the old
gentleman, in whom the family craze has become flesh and blood. But what
have we to do with that?" she went on, jumping up and throwing her arms
around Johanna. "You are not weighted with the sacred name. I have, for
a while at least, thrown it aside, and I only wish we could really and
truly enjoy life. There it goes again!" she added, with an expression of
comic despair,--"that dreadful bell, for the second breakfast, and then
four vacant hours before it rings again to call us to dinner. Poor
Johanna! Day after day passes here, each the exact counterpart of these
last twenty-four hours, year out, year in, and there is nothing for it
but to lament with Heine's Proserpine,--
''Mid corpses pale,
While Lemurs wail,
To grieve away my youthful days.'"
Whilst Magelone was revealing this melancholy prospect to the new inmate
of the castle, the Freiherr had gone to his sister in the morning-room,
where, as he paced to and fro after his wonted fashion, with his hands
clasped behind him, he said, "I am surprised and delighted to find how
well Johanna suits us. Although she has been here so short a time, I
seem nearer to her than to Magelone."
"Yes, because she has more soul," said the old lady.
The Freiherr shrugged his shoulders. "My dear Thekla, what is her soul
to me? She is clever and--strange as it sounds, and much as the word
irritated me, coming from Magelone--she has race. More than any other of
my grandchildren is she flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone."
Aunt Thekla nodded assent, and the Freiherr went on:
"It makes me anxious, too. What is to become of the child? She does not
belong in our circle. She is too good to be married to one of these
new-fangled noblemen, who, in spite of their descent, are quite ready to
throw themselves away upon any peasant's or tradesman's daughter
provided she has money; and to allow her to fall back into a rank which
would separate her from us entirely,--a great pity, a great pity!"
"But must she of necessity be married?" asked Aunt Thekla.
"Of course!" said the Freiherr.
"I have not been----" the old lady began.
Her brother interrupted her. "But you were betrothed to one your equal
in rank. Since you vowed fidelity to your lover before his death, I
respected your vow, much as it went against the grain with me."
"Dear Johann, will you not likewise respect the desire of Johann
Leopold's heart?" asked Aunt Thekla.
The Freiherr turned short and stood before her. "Has the lad
complained,--taken refuge behind a petticoat----?"
"Not at all," his sister interposed. "He has not said a word; I heard it
from Magelone. And I know Johann Leopold's heart; I know that he has not
yet recovered Albertine's loss."
"Nonsense!" cried the Freiherr. "It is his duty, as the heir, to marry.
He knows it perfectly, and when a suitable _partie_ is offered him
without his looking for her or courting her, I promise you he'll say yes
and amen without a word."
Aunt Thekla shook her head dubiously.
"Do you call it a suitable _partie_?" she said. "I fear that Magelone,
with her love of amusement and her superficiality, will make Johann
Leopold unhappy, or that he will make her so."
"I do not think so," said the Freiherr. "On the contrary, she will
spirit him up, and he will tone her down; a very good thing for both.
The stronger will get the upper hand, I don't care which it is. My duty
is to look out for the continuance of the family intrusted to my care."
"Dear Johann, do not take it amiss, but it strikes me that you look out
for it rather too much," the old lady said, timidly.
"Too much!" the Freiherr repeated, pausing again before his sister, and
his eyes flashed. "Do you really think that too much can be done in this
age of indifference and degeneracy? I can understand such a thought in
the younger generation, which is for the most part senseless and
objectless, and finds it easiest to swim with the current. But I--I
hoped you knew this without needing my assertion--I have sworn to stand
fast as long as I can, and to hold fast as much as I may. We have been
taught, and we have believed, that, like everything else on earth, the
differences of rank are instituted and decreed by the Almighty. Since
when has this not been so?"
He paused, and seemed to expect a reply, but the increasing violence of
his tone and manner had intimidated his sister. She sat mute, with
downcast eyes; and after a pause he went on:
"I do not wish to find fault with those who think otherwise. 1848
thinned our ranks. But for those who believe as I do it is all the more
an imperative duty to assert themselves. I have done so. I have made
great sacrifices to my convictions, and I feel that I have thereby
purchased the right, so long as my eyes are open to the light, to
provide for Doenninghausen according to the dictates of my reason and my
conscience. If you think I do too much--well, I must endure that
reproach."
The old lady went up to her brother. "Dear Johann," she said, laying her
hand upon his arm, "how can you suppose that any one of us would
reproach you? We know that you always do what is best, and we thank you
from our hearts."
"That I don't believe, neither is it necessary," the Freiherr interrupted
her. "I do my confounded duty, fulfil my obligations,--_basta!_ Has
not the lad, Johann Leopold, had his own way hitherto in everything? He
has studied what he chose, where he chose; he has travelled for years;
has been betrothed to the girl whom he loved, and what is the result? He
has come to be a mollycoddle and a bookworm. My successor, the Lord of
Doenninghausen, must be none of that. At all events, an attempt must be
made to spirit him up by a marriage with Magelone, and so the betrothal
is fixed for Christmas, the marriage for Easter. But come, Thekla, the
bell rang some time ago."
CHAPTER VII.
JOHANNA TO LUDWIG.
"DOeNNINGHAUSEN, Dec. 19, 1873.
"... I have been here just a fortnight to-day, and feel
entirely at home. You cannot fancy how, after the sorrow and
agitation through which I so lately passed, I am soothed and
rested by the quiet life here, with its regular methodical
occupations. I accompany my grandfather every morning in his
rides to inspect his saw-mill, his wood-cutting, and his farms,
and in the evening I read aloud to him the newspapers and
magazines, an office silently transferred to me by Johann
Leopold. In the course of the day I go with Aunt Thekla to see
her poor people and the sick in the village, or we sew, or knit
Christmas-presents for her protegees. Aunt Thekla is a gentle
kindly soul. When Magelone awhile ago laughed at us for taking
such pains to manufacture what could so easily be bought in any
town, she said, 'You cannot imagine how I enjoy the thought
that the work of my hands, which would else have nothing to do,
may keep certain little feet warm as they run to school on some
cold morning, or may help to make the winter less intolerable
for the aged and bedridden.' Magelone could not understand
this, or perhaps she did not choose to understand it. She is a
puzzle to me; I cannot discover whether she is really
superficial by nature, or whether she tries to become so. She
wants to be entertained, amused, but every serious book tires
her, all really fine music gives her the headache, although she
is not frightened by technical difficulties, and in
conversation she insists upon changing the subject if it turns
upon anything save dress and society. Nevertheless, she is
admirably endowed intellectually as well as physically, and the
charm that she had for me when I first saw her has grown with
time. There is something odd and striking about her that rivets
one's interest. She is really short in stature, and yet her
graceful lithe figure in her long trains seems that of a tall,
slender woman; her hair is light brown or golden, according as
the light falls on it; her eyes one would call blue, another
gray, and a third green, and they would all be right; her smile
is that of a child, but in an instant there will be something
arch, mocking, even sneering, in it. One moment she will call
me awkward, pedantic, the next I am her comfort, her stay, the
friend for whom she has been longing. For a moment her whim
will be enthusiasm, and on a sudden she will turn herself and
everybody else into ridicule. Whether she enjoys doing this or
not I cannot say; I suspect she hardly knows herself.
"Johann Leopold's seeming indifference to her is very
extraordinary. Although she tells me that she thinks him
'awfully tiresome,' she sometimes makes a brilliant display of
coquetry in his honour, on which occasions he gazes at her with
lack-lustre eyes, not smiling at all, and even, if possible,
making no reply to her sallies. And these two are to marry each
other. Can you understand it?
"This morning I had a little adventure that gave me some
insight into Johann Leopold's character; until then I really
had not discovered in him one human emotion. Grandpapa had an
attack of gout, consequently could not ride out, and was
annoyed that his absence would delay some operations going on
in the new clearing. I offered to ride thither with Martin; so
I received my instructions and set forth.
"Beyond the village, in the valley, we met a labourer's wife,
who told me with tears that she was obliged to run to the
drug-shop, at least a mile and a half distant, for some
medicine for her sick husband, who must thus be left alone
with a little girl only six years old. Of course I sent the
woman back to her patient's bedside, despatching Martin upon
her errand, and struck into my beloved forest-path up the
mountain alone, or rather under Leo's protection.
"I had never ridden in this direction except in grandpapa's
company, when I had enjoyed immensely the grand old beeches at
the beginning of the way, the views of the village of
Doenninghausen, and of the opposite hills, which open out as the
path ascends the mountain-side, leading to the most magnificent
hemlocks that I have ever seen. Of the realm of magic and
enchantment of which I dreamed as I looked at my mother's
sketch of Doenninghausen I found no trace.
"To-day, however, the forest-sprites seemed determined to lead
me astray. Although, as far as I knew, I turned into the forest
at the right point, the hemlocks would not appear. The path
seemed uncommonly steep; on the left, crags which I did not
recognize thrust themselves forth from the shrubbery, but yet I
could not make up my mind to turn back. Perhaps this way also
might lead to my destination. At all events, fresh footprints
in the snow were evidence that both men and horses had preceded
me shortly before; and I rode on and on, although forced to
believe that my goal lay more to the right. The desire to
explore had taken possession of me. I could not but go on! The
air was exhilarating in its freshness, the sun shone, the snow
glittered upon the trees and bushes; the rocks on my left grew
more huge; gnarled roots twisted out from crevice and fissure;
a flock of screaming crows flew overhead, making the only sound
to be heard, save the rustling among the trees and the snorting
of my horse.
"At last--I had been riding perhaps an hour--I reached a small
plateau shaded by oaks; across my way ran a rude fence, the
gate in which my clever Leo opened, and soon after a peaked
roof, with a smoking chimney, appeared among some hemlocks. As
I approached, the horns nailed above the door told that it was
a forester's lodge, and I was greeted by the loud barking of
five or six dogs,--the only living creatures to be seen.
"I alighted, fastened Elinor's bridle to a tree, and, opening
the door, entered--followed by the noisy pack, which Leo
haughtily disdained to notice--a hall, around which were
several doors. I knocked at the right-hand one of these,--no
answer; at the left, where I heard voices, and instantly the
door was opened. An elderly woman, with an air of distress,
appeared, and in the background of the long, dim apartment
there stood, by a curtained bed, a figure which seemed familiar
to me. 'Johann Leopold!' I exclaimed involuntarily; and I was
not mistaken: he whom I addressed turned and came quickly
towards me.
"'Johanna, what brings you here?' he cried, with a certain
confusion of manner; and when I replied that I had lost my way,
he begged the woman to take me to her sitting-room, promising
to join me in a few moments.
"She conducted me to the opposite room; hurriedly offered me
some refreshment; begged pardon for leaving me alone, since she
must assist the gentleman with his patient, and vanished.
"I could not but see that my arrival here had been inopportune,
and I was just pondering whether I had not better make good my
retreat without waiting for Johann Leopold, when there arose a
loud barking again, and a forester whom I had now and then met
when with my grandfather passed the window.
"'Wife!' he called out, as he entered the house, and then I
heard him ask what the deuce was the meaning of the
Doenninghausen horse with the side-saddle, and whether the old
lady had come. I could not hear the woman's reply, but the man
declared in a harsh tone that he had had enough of secrets; the
fellow must leave the house to-day, for no one could expect him
to risk his daily bread for the sake of such a
good-for-nothing. He must leave immediately.
"'Fritz! Fritz! it may be his death, and he is my brother!' the
woman wailed. The man cut short her words with an oath; but
Johann Leopold's voice was now heard telling him to be quiet,
and all three came into the room together,--the woman with her
apron at her eyes, the man with gloomy looks, and Johann
Leopold with an air of energy that surprised me.
"'Dear Johanna,' he said, as the forester bowed sullenly,
'chance has here made you acquainted with circumstances which
must be withheld from our grandfather. You surely will promise
me and these worthy people to say nothing of what you have
seen, will you not?'
"'With all my heart,' I replied.
"The forester shrugged his shoulders. 'A young lady's
promise----' he began.
"'Kruger, remember to whom you are speaking,' Johann Leopold
interrupted him authoritatively. 'My cousin's promise is as my
own. I am going now to saddle my horse, and meanwhile you will
explain the matter to her.'
"With these words he left the room, and the woman followed him.
The forester gave him an angry look and then turned to me.
"'There's not much to explain,' he said, crossly. 'Red Jakob,
my wife's brother, is a good-for-nothing fellow, a brawler and
a poacher, whom our old master--Jakob used to be a servant at
the castle--dismissed from his service. But he is always coming
back here from Brunswick, where he had work in a saw-mill.
Early last Sunday I caught him in the very act of aiming at a
fine doe. I shouted to him. He made a leap over the rocks to
get off; fell, his gun went off, and a bullet pierced his arm.
What was I to do? I had to get him up here; but if the master
should hear of it the fellow would be sent to jail, and I never
could outlive the disgrace.'
"The man's blunt manner pleased me.
"'Grandpapa certainly shall not hear of it from me, forester,'
I said, and offered him my hand. He looked at me in surprise,
reddened, and took my hand, grasping it so tightly that I could
hardly help crying out. 'Thanks, Fraeulein,' he said, simply,
and, as Johann Leopold now made his appearance with his horse,
we left the lodge.
"While the forester helped me mount my horse, Johann Leopold
addressed him again in an arrogant tone: 'Remember, Kruger,
that I positively forbid the man to be moved. Until he is
recovered he stays here as my patient. Everything that he needs
is to be charged to me.'
"The forester's wife broke out into protestations of gratitude,
her husband muttered some unintelligible words, and we rode
off.
"When Johann Leopold learned my errand, he offered to guide me
by a road over the mountain to the clearing, and we agreed to
tell grandpapa that we had met, but to say nothing further.
Johann Leopold told me that 'Red Jakob' had been his most
cherished playmate when they were boys. No one could approach
him in the knowledge of the woods and fields. He knew every
plant, every stone, and every animal of the country; the habits
of the game, the holes of the foxes, and the nests of the
birds.
"'He was a born Nimrod,' he added, 'and would have made a far
better lord of Doenninghausen than I shall ever be; but in the
sphere of life to which he belongs his tastes and talents are a
stumbling block to him.'
"I asked him whether he did not think that a place could be
found in the world for every kind of talent. He shook his head.
'There may be a place,' he replied, 'but occupied by some one
who does not feel himself authorized to resign it. Take me for
an example. No one knows better than I how unfit I am to be the
heir of Doenninghausen. My capabilities and my inclination lead
me to the study, or to the bedside of the sick. Nevertheless I
cannot decide to resign my position, and when an inferior
opposes me, as the forester did awhile ago, my hot blood, or my
acquired arrogance, asserts the mastery, and I should like to
put the fellow in irons. And yet I am theoretically convinced
of the equal rights of mankind.'
"This conversation gave me food for reflection. I wonder
whether Johann Leopold acquiesces in a marriage with Magelone,
from an idea of the requirements of his rank, or whether, under
apparent indifference, he does not really feel an interest in
the enchanting siren. As I have been mistaken with respect to
his outward life, I may also be in appreciation of his mind and
heart. For example, during our ride I learned that instead of
leading the owlish existence which Magelone ascribes to him, he
is the physician of the poor for miles around the country,
providing them himself with all the needed medicaments. My
grandfather must know nothing of this; he would call it all
quackery, and would consider it an insult offered to worthy old
Dr. Francke, who has been the physician at Doenninghausen for
the last thirty years.
"As for myself, I get on very well with grandpapa. I was rather
uncertain as to how he would receive the intelligence that I
had sent off Martin and undertaken the forest ride alone, but
he was pleased and praised me. 'That's right, child; never
delay where help is needed, is my maxim.' Nevertheless, he is
usually, as he says himself, apt to be cross. To be tied to his
room and to his arm-chair by gout at Christmas-time, when all
the family assemble here, is a hard trial for an impatient
temperament. Aunt Thekla says we must look for stormy times."
"December 23.
"I have not been able to write for the last few days, but this
letter must go to-day, that you may have it for a
Christmas-greeting. Day before yesterday the cousins arrived
with husbands and belongings,--Hildegard, with two children;
Hedwig, with three, beside nurses and lady's-maids. Both
mothers look like Aunt Thekla,--tall, slender, fair, and rather
stately. They have rosy cheeks, abundant hair, and bright
light-blue eyes, are vain of their looks, of their husbands and
children, of their name and social position, and mutually
endeavour to outshine each other in the splendour of their
attire. With Magelone they wage a very amusing petty warfare.
Their husbands, twin-brothers, are strikingly alike,--fair and
stately like their wives, but better-natured, gayer, more at
their ease. Eduard, Hedwig's husband, distinguished himself in
the Schleswig-Holstein war, whence come his stiffened arm and
several orders,--a _creve-coeur_, as Magelone maintains, for
Hildegard, whose Karl has only won peaceful laurels as an
orator at agricultural meetings. To-morrow afternoon the
brothers of the sisters are coming. The festival takes place in
the evening.
"Grandpapa is unfortunately still obliged to be pushed from one
room to another in his wheeled chair. His great-grand-children
must be with him as much as possible, and when the three boys,
respectively six, five, and four years old,--the little girls
are still in arms,--are romping about the spacious
drawing-room, his face clears up. His grand-daughters do not
seem very near to him, and it must pain him at these family
gatherings that he has no children to link him with the younger
generation.
"I had one distressing moment with him yesterday. Before the
second breakfast he sends off the post-boy. Every inmate of the
household brings or sends the letters, which grandpapa himself
locks into the bag. I had a Christmas-gift to send to Lisbeth,
and took the package to his room myself. How his eyes flashed
at me as he read the address!
"'A Christmas-gift for my little sister,' I replied to their
mute inquiry.
"'You have no sister, and no friendly correspondence with those
people shall be carried on from my house!' grandpapa fairly
roared. This was the voice of which Magelone had told me. But I
took courage, and said, in a trembling voice indeed, and
without looking up, 'Dear grandfather, I might have sent my
package secretly----'
"He stared at me, and his brow cleared. 'Do you love the
child?' he asked.
"'Yes, grandpapa!' I cried; 'and if you could see the dear
little creature----'
"'Enough, enough!' he interrupted me; and, laying the package
aside, he added, 'It shall go, Johanna, and you have done
well.'
"Since then he has been kinder than ever to me, perhaps on
account of my cousins, who tried to treat me coldly. The old
man has so emphatic a way of saying 'My grand-daughter
Johanna,' that they changed their tactics, and are now almost
amiable to me. Nevertheless, I like Doenninghausen better
without them, and am looking forward with pleasure to our quiet
days when they shall have departed."
CHAPTER VIII.
CHRISTMAS AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN.
Christmas-eve had arrived. As was the custom, the festival for old and
young at Doenninghausen took place in the late afternoon, before the
principal meal of the day, and even with Johanna's help Aunt Thekla had
much ado to be ready with the arrangement of the presents at the
appointed time. The gifts for the members of the family were laid out on
long tables to the right and left of the brilliantly-decorated fir-tree
in the centre of the ball-room, while smaller Christmas-trees sparkled
and shone upon tables ranged against the wall, where were the presents
for the servants and the castle pensioners. When the bells of the
village rang in the Holy Christmas-tide, Aunt Thekla's silver bell was
also rung, the doors into the corridors were opened, and as the flood of
light streamed out upon the expectant group outside, there arose, sung
by old and young, the strains of the Freiherr's favorite hymn,--
"He comes, He comes, the Holy One,
Filled with His might divine."
Involuntarily, Johanna, standing beside Aunt Thekla beneath the
Christmas-tree, folded her hands: memories of vanished years crowded
upon her heart; but, as she turned aside to wipe away her starting
tears, her look encountered her cousin Otto's eyes fixed upon her. He
had arrived in the course of the afternoon. She had not seen him before,
and he now nodded to her by way of greeting. She courtesied, and was
aware of the same mingled sensation of timidity and confidence that had
possessed her at their first interview.
Beside Otto stood Magelone, more elfin-like than ever, in a long,
closely-fitting pale-green silk, with her sweet smile and
strangely-gleaming eyes.
"Is it Otto's presence that makes her thus brilliantly beautiful? It is
strange that grandpapa has never destined these two for each other,"
thought Johanna.
The hymn was ended, the Freiherr was wheeled into the room, the rest
crowded in after him, and soon the delight of the children made itself
heard, and the poor stammered their grateful acknowledgments, while
Hildegard and Hedwig cast inquisitive, unfriendly glances away from
their own rich gifts towards a morocco case which the Freiherr handed to
Johanna.
"Open it, child!" he said. She obeyed. A rococo _parure_ of rubies and
diamonds lay gleaming upon the yellowish-white satin inside the case.
"Your grandmother's bridal jewels, your mother's inheritance," said the
Freiherr.
The sisters exchanged looks of indignation. Johanna kissed her
grandfather's hand.
"I thank you; the double memory makes it very precious," she said, and
closed the case. As she did so, Otto approached her.
"At last, Fraeulein Johanna," he said, and held out his hand. "How glad I
am to see you again!"
"Fraeulein!" cried the Freiherr. "Boy, what do you mean? You should call
the daughter of your father's sister 'Johanna.'"
"Most gladly if I may. Will you allow it, dear Johanna?" said Otto,
bestowing upon her a cousinly kiss. Blushing, she released herself from
him, as he looked into her eyes with a glance of momentary triumph. "To
our friendship," he said, gravely, and then the children came rushing
up and separated them.
A telegram was handed to the Freiherr; he read it with a lowering brow.
"How unfortunate!" he cried. "Waldemar tells me that important business
will not allow of his being with us before New Year's day. This
Christmas it vexes me particularly."
"I am delighted," Magelone whispered to Johanna. "It is a respite, at
least for me. The betrothal of the future head of the family cannot
possibly be announced unless all its august members are present."
Johanna looked at her and shook her head. "That betrothal will never
take place," she said; "Otto will not allow it."
"Otto! What do you mean?" asked Magelone. "You have hardly seen us
together."
"Long enough to see how he adores you."
"Mere gallantry, child; nothing more," said Magelone. "Remember, pray,
he has debts, I have nothing, and we are sensible people."
And she fluttered away to her presents, where the next instant Otto
joined her. "May I take you in to dinner?" he asked.
"That is at present Johann Leopold's privilege, or task. As which do you
think he regards it?"
"Can you ask?" said Otto. "He is pursuing you with the glare of a
veritable Othello!"
"How romantic! I see only his usually melancholy sheep's-eyes," said
Magelone. "He stares at me, but it is a question whether he sees me.
Others, on the contrary, see too much; discover that we, that is, you
and I, are flirting with each other."
"Flirting!" he interrupted her. "How can my serious devotion----"
"Oh, hush!" she cried. "You know grandpapa's plans. Johann Leopold's
future betrothed must listen to nothing of that kind. You ought to court
Johanna."
"It pleases my sovereign to jest," said Otto, bending over her with a
smile.
"Not at all," she rejoined. "I am rather laying my commands upon my
slave to turn his talent to account."
He bowed again. "The command shall be obeyed," he said. "Moreover,
obedience will not be difficult. Cousin Johanna has improved wonderfully
in appearance."
Magelone glanced hastily towards Johanna. "You are right: she has gained
life and colour;" and she added, mentally, "Is he trying to make me
jealous? He shall not succeed."
In spite of this resolution, she could not away with a slightly
disagreeable sensation when, sitting beside Johann Leopold at table, she
noticed the assiduity with which Otto, who was Johanna's neighbour,
obeyed her command, and how Johanna's eyes sparkled as she talked with
her cousin. If Magelone could only have revenged herself upon him! But
words, looks, and smiles were lavished in vain upon Johann Leopold, who
was as monosyllabic as ever.
After dinner, in the drawing-room, Otto came to Magelone just as she was
going to join Aunt Thekla and her cousins around the fire. "Not there,"
he entreated; "come to the piano; it is so long since I heard you play."
"Lost pains," was her laughing reply, as she followed him to the other
end of the room. "You never will convince me that you care for music.
Did you ever really know what I was playing?"
"And if I did not, it was your fault. How can I think of aught else but
your beauty, which has so bewitched me, you enchanting siren?"
"Ah, you're wrong. Sirens enchant chiefly by their song," she rejoined
in a teasing tone, as she sat down at the piano and struck a few
chords. "Well, Sir Enthusiast for music, what will you have?"
"Play anything; never mind what."
"Last autumn you had a passion for Chopin,--have you forgotten? Do you
no longer recognize your favourite?"
She began to play. Otto sat beside her and turned over the leaves of her
music when she signed to him to do so. As often as he leaned forward she
felt, with a thrill, his breath upon her neck, and sometimes he
whispered, so low as to be almost inaudible, a word or two in jest in
which there seemed a tone of suppressed passion.
"Does he conduct himself thus towards Johanna?" she asked herself.
"Impossible!" her vanity made reply, and the _berceuse_ which she was
playing assumed the character of a triumphal march.
The moods of the group around the fire were less harmonious. The
Freiherr had retired immediately after dinner; the brothers Wildenhayn
and Johann Leopold, engaged in a political discussion, had withdrawn to
such a distance that they could not overhear the ladies' conversation,
and Hildegard soothed her injured feelings by animadverting upon
Johanna's position in the family.
It was certainly a matter of course that grandpapa should take charge of
the destitute orphan, since in a certain sense she was one of the
family; but was there any need to treat her as an equal? It was not only
an insult to the other members of the family, it was an injury to
Johanna herself. It would end in her forgetting her true position; she
would learn to form expectations which could not be fulfilled hereafter,
and she would lose by her arrogance the regard of the relatives upon
whom, after grandpapa's death, she must needs be dependent.
"I do not think you are right there," Aunt Thekla at last interposed,
having long tried in vain to oppose her gentle remonstrances to the
torrent of Hildegard's speech. "My brother is sure to provide for
Johanna."
"I think so too," cried Hedwig; "and I wonder, Hildegard, that you do
not see it yourself. After grandpapa's giving her that valuable
_parure_----"
"Yes, that _parure_!" Hildegard interposed. "With all your prejudice in
the girl's favour, you must admit, dear aunt, that grandmamma's bridal
_parure_ does not belong of right to her. She can do nothing with it;
she never can wear it. She does not belong in society; even grandpapa
could hardly succeed in introducing an actor's daughter."
Hildegard spoke these last words in a voice intentionally raised; for
Johanna, who had been preparing the coffee as usual at the table before
the sofa, was just passing with the first cup for Aunt Thekla. The
trembling of her hand betrayed that she had heard the malicious remark,
and Hildegard looked after her exultantly as she returned to the
coffee-table.
But Johann Leopold had also heard and seen, and he came to Johanna's
assistance.
"Dear Magelone," he said, going to the piano,--the _berceuse_ was just
ended, and Otto was expressing his admiration for the music and for the
performer,--"dear Magelone, will you preside at the coffee-table to-day?
Johanna has exhausted herself with Christmas-eve preparations; she looks
terribly pale and weary."
Magelone was ready on the instant to comply. "Johann Leopold
jealous,--charming!" she said to herself; adding aloud, "Indeed, Johanna
dear, you do look wretched. Sit there in the corner of the sofa, and I
will pour out coffee for you."
"I would rather go to bed," Johanna replied. And, bidding good-night to
Magelone and to Johann Leopold, whose kindness she had perfectly
understood, she slipped out of the room, unperceived, she thought, by
its other inmates. But in the corridor Otto joined her. "Dear Johanna,"
he said, "here is a little Christmas-token that had no place in the
joyous confusion of the evening. Do not look at it until you are in your
own room; but, before you go, tell me how you really are." And he gazed
into her eyes with the expression that always confused her.
"It is nothing; I shall be quite well to-morrow," she stammered,
mechanically, taking the little packet he handed her, and then hastening
up-stairs to her apartment, while he returned to the drawing-room.
Why should her heart beat so fast? Her trembling hands could scarcely
steady themselves sufficiently to light her candle; but when they had
done so, and she had unwrapped Otto's Christmas-gift, she said to
herself that it was the suspicion of what it was that had so moved her.
Otto had given her a small miniature of her father, taken from a
well-known life-size bust. She gazed at it lost in thought. What would
she not have given to be able to pour out her gratitude to Otto on the
instant, to speak with him of the departed one whom he had known and
revered! Otto had been the first at the close of her old life to bid her
welcome on the threshold of the new existence, and he was the only one
in all this new existence who appreciated her love and veneration for
her father.
When she met him the next morning at breakfast, he learned from her eyes
and voice even more than from her words how great had been the pleasure
his little gift had given her.
"I knew you would like it," he said, simply, as he conducted her to the
breakfast-table; and, although no further allusion could be made then to
the picture, their intercourse seemed more cordial than ever before.
Hildegard contemplated the pair with an unfriendly mien. They did not
appear to notice it, and therefore the careful sister judged it best at
last to signify to Otto that he was bestowing his attentions upon a most
unsuitable object. The Freiherr's question as to whether the clear
winter's day might not be made available for a sleigh-ride afforded her
an opportunity to carry out her intention.
"Yes, dear grandpapa, a sleigh-ride would be glorious," she said; "I
would merely propose that we should also pay a visit. Do you not think,"
she went on, looking around the circle at the table, "that it would be
well to call at Klausenburg? When church is over the sleighs can take us
there, and we can be back in time for the second breakfast."
"Will there be room for all of us?" asked Hedwig.
"Certainly," Hildegard replied. "Magelone and Johann Leopold can go in
the small sleigh, and Eduard can drive, and the large sleigh will easily
hold Aunt Thekla, us two, and Otto, with Karl to drive us."
"I will resign my place to Johanna," said Aunt Thekla.
Johanna was about to declare that she would rather stay at home, but
Hildegard gave her no time. "Johanna at Klausenburg?" she exclaimed.
"That will never do. I, at least, have not the courage to take her
there."
"Make your mind easy; that is my affair," the Freiherr interposed, and
his eyes flashed at the speaker. "On New Year's day we give our
customary dinner, at which I shall present my grand-daughter to the
neighbourhood, and I promise you that she will meet with the reception I
desire her to have. Christian, take me to my room."
The servant wheeled the old man away, and every one rose from table.
Johann Leopold began to converse with Johanna upon indifferent subjects,
and involuntarily she became interested. Hedwig whispered to her
discomfited sister, "Rather awkward of you, my dear." Otto asked his
brother-in-law, Karl, how he could allow Hildegard to display such want
of tact, and was answered by a shrug of the shoulders, whilst Aunt
Thekla tried to dispel every one's embarrassment by reminding them that
it was time to make ready for church.
"Come, let us go together!" said Magelone, putting her arm through
Johanna's and leaving the room with her. "Let me entreat you not to look
so grieved," she went on. "Don't let that stupid woman vex you; you know
how the others love you."
Johanna pressed Magelone's arm, and went up-stairs with her in silence.
At the door of her room she said, "You must go to church without me
to-day; I cannot feel devotional after what has happened."
"Oh, Johanna, we ought not to bear malice! Be kind, and come," Magelone
entreated; but with a decided "I cannot!" Johanna left her and shut
herself up in her own room. She could not say to Magelone that she was
far less annoyed by Hildegard's hostility than by the prospect of being
thrust into a society where she was not welcome.
"If I could but get away!" she thought, as she looked from the window
out over the wintry landscape. "Yes, away, away, if but for an hour!"
she said, aloud. And putting on her wraps, and accompanied by Leo,
barking joyously, she hurried out into the park, and thence to the path
that led up the mountain from the village into the forest.
Her heart grew lighter in the fresh winter air. She walked on quickly,
upwards beneath the snow-laden boughs, upon which the sunlight played in
thousands of prisms, and from which the glittering dust came powdering
down upon her. At length the sight of the forester's lodge, its windows
sparkling in the sunshine, warned her to return.
Since she had come thus far, she would inquire after Johann Leopold's
protege. Greeted and accompanied by the barking dogs, she was going
towards the door, when close by the house a girl, very poorly clad, with
a shawl about her head and shoulders, came out of the thicket. The
slender figure stooped low as it passed the windows, softly lifted the
latch of the house-door, and went in.
Johanna followed her. She turned to the door of the room opposite the
sitting-room, and laid a little, blue, half-frozen hand upon the latch.
"Jakob!" she whispered, as she tried to open it gently. But on the
instant the door of the sitting room opened, and the forester's wife in
a black gown and a cap with white ribbons made her appearance, the
hymn-book in which she had been reading in her hand.
"Christine!" she exclaimed, angrily, in an undertone, and without
noticing Johanna she rushed at the girl. "Christine, how dare you? Go
away this moment!" And she tried to push the girl away from the door,
but her hand held fast the latch. "For God's sake," a poor little
pleading voice cried, "let me only say one word to Jakob!"
"Not one," Frau Kruger interposed. "Go this instant, I tell you!" And
she raised the book as if to strike the girl.
"Frau Kruger!" Johanna exclaimed, approaching the pair. They turned. The
girl's shawl had fallen back from her head, and a pale youthful face,
the large dark eyes swollen with weeping, met Johanna's look, while the
violence of the forester's wife was instantly replaced by extreme
courtesy.
"Oh, Fraeulein!" she said, with a curtsey, "do not take it amiss. I never
like to harm a living creature, but Christine is a shameless girl, who
will persist in worrying Jakob."
"I worry him?" the girl said, quickly. "Why, since his accident I have
never even been allowed to see him. Have pity; let me bid him good-by. I
am going to Oberroda to-day, but I cannot go so." And she burst into
tears.
"Frau Kruger, be persuaded," Johanna entreated. "The poor girl----"
"Oh, Fraeulein, do not waste your compassion," the forester's wife
interrupted her, with an angry glance at the girl. "Christine has always
been a bad, wilful creature. She has had a child, and wants to force
Jakob to marry her, but he will have nothing to do with her."
"Jakob have nothing to do with me? That is not true," cried the girl.
"He will not forsake me, and I will not forsake him. And he loved the
little child dearly, and now he does not even know that it is dead. I
must tell him." She hid her face and sobbed aloud.
"How can you be so hard-hearted?" said Johanna. "You must let the girl
speak with the sick man."
"That she may make him worse with her whining," said Frau Kruger. "If
she loves him as much as she says she does, she might spare him her
blubbering. And what of it? It is lucky that the Lord took the brat from
her."
"Frau Kruger!" Johanna exclaimed, indignantly; and Christine, who had
grown deadly pale, drew the shawl over her head and silently left the
house.
"Oh, Fraeulein, if you but knew! Have the kindness to come in here and
let me tell you," the forester's wife begged, all smiles and servility
again; but Johanna left her and followed Christine.
The girl ran down the forest-path like a hunted creature. Suddenly her
strength seemed to fail her, and she leaned against a tree.
Johanna hurried to her. "Where is your home? I will take you there," she
said kindly.
"Home? I have none!" the girl replied, with a wild look. "My brother has
turned me out of doors, and they will not let me go to Jakob. His sister
says I am too bad for Jakob; my brother says Jakob is too bad for me.
Ah, good heavens! if we are both such wretches, we are well suited to
each other."
The depth of bitterness in her words contrasted so oddly with her gentle
child-like face that Johanna's sympathy was still more strongly
enlisted. She put her arm round her to support the slender, trembling
figure, and walked with her slowly down the mountain. After a while
Christine said, "You are so kind, Fraeulein. Herr Forester Kruger told me
about you. He is far kinder to me than his wife."
"What is Frau Kruger's grudge against you?" asked Johanna.
"At first it could only have been that I am poor and low-born," the girl
replied. "My father was only a cowherd, it is true, and Jakob is a
farmer's son. But for all that, he wanted to marry me, and if the others
had consented all would have been different with me now."
"Who are the others?" Johanna asked again.
"The forester's wife opposed it most. She worked upon my guardian and my
brother, and they forbade me to go with Jakob. So we had to see each
other in secret, for he would not give me up, nor would I him. And then
that happened that ought not to have been."
She was silent. For a while they walked along without speaking, and then
Christine said, timidly, "Please, kind Fraeulein, do not think hardly of
us. Ah, how hard Jakob tried to have us married! and when the child came
he loved it so dearly,--so dearly! And now it has been lying under the
snow for a week, and Jakob is up there with his cruel sister, and I must
go away. I have taken service at Oberroda, and oh, it is too, too hard
to go without seeing Jakob, or letting him know anything about me and my
trouble!"
Johanna spoke soothingly to her, promised to give her news of
Jakob,--she depended upon Johann Leopold's help,--and when they reached
the cross-road leading to the village, the girl took leave of her with a
lighter heart and grateful words. Johanna looked thoughtfully after her.
The sound of the Christmas bells struck clearly upon her ear in the
crisp, frosty air. Where was the "Peace on earth" that it should have
heralded to mankind?
CHAPTER IX.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
The sleighing-party did not return to the second breakfast. The
dinner-hour first assembled the various members of the family.
"Was grandpapa angry?" Magelone whispered to Johanna. Just then the
Freiherr was wheeled into the room, and his frowning brow answered her
question only too clearly.
Hildegard was not to be intimidated.
"Do not be angry, dear grandpapa," she said, with an air of arrogant
ease quite her own. "It was my fault that we stayed so long; I had not
seen the Klausenburgs for an age, and they begged us so to stay that it
was impossible to say no."
"But you found it quite possible to keep us waiting here," the Freiherr
rejoined. "Another time please to remember that such want of
consideration has never been the rule of my household, and never shall
be. Be seated!"
"I told you so," Karl Wildenhayn whispered to his wife as she passed
him.
"You are all cowards!" she rejoined, and then seated herself with head
erect and knitted brows on the left of the Freiherr, for whom she seemed
no longer to have any existence.
The meal was very monosyllabic. Now and then Otto would whisper
something to Johanna, and she would listen with a smile. Then Johann
Leopold, who looked paler and more weary than usual, would look up from
his plate, gaze at her, and then sink again into his usual apathy, from
which Magelone to-day did not try to rouse him.
When they went to the drawing-room she left Johann Leopold, and,
approaching Otto, said, "Pray suggest some folly to me,--I am dying of
ennui."
"'Ah! fly with me, and be my love,'"
he began to sing in an undertone, and his eyes expressed the passion
which was suppressed in his half-teasing voice. Magelone shrugged her
shoulders.
"Nonsense! even the poet himself called that tragedy," she replied. "I
want something merry to do. But you are afflicted with the Doenninghausen
stupidity."
"How unjust!" cried Otto. "Was it not a merry thing to whisk you away
from Klausenburg--right from under Johann Leopold's long nose--into the
sleigh with me, and drive off with you?"
Magelone laughed. Otto continued passionately: "I should have liked to
carry you off to the end of the world. The thought of seeing you in
Johann Leopold's arms makes me frantic. Why do you look at me so
disdainfully, and what does that smile mean?"
"Perhaps it means what did you whisper to Johanna at table with just the
same look you wear at present?"
"I thought I was to obey orders and pay court to her," said Otto. "Do
you command the contrary?"
"Indeed I do not."
"It really would be better to continue the farce," Otto went on in a
graver tone. "Johann Leopold's jealousy is evident; it would be better
to lead him upon a false scent----"
"And beguile two female hearts at the same time," Magelone interposed,
laughing. "Oh, Don Juan, Don Juan!"
"Play the 'Don Giovanni' overture," Otto begged her. "You play it
magnificently."
"Not to-day. There must be nothing but chorales to-day," she said. And
with a coquettish glance she turned away towards the fire, where were
her cousins and Aunt Thekla.
During this conversation Johann Leopold had approached Johanna at her
coffee-table.
"How do you like your new cousin?" he asked; "but I need hardly ask, for
you seem to have become excellent friends with him since last evening."
"Not quite since last evening," Johanna replied, blushing slightly. "He
came to see me just after my father's death, and was so kind----"
"I can easily imagine it," Johann Leopold interrupted her. "He knows how
to strike the right chord everywhere, modern Piper of Hamelin that he
is. Have a care of him."
She looked up at him inquiringly, but the telltale blush would return;
involuntarily she turned away to conceal it, and suddenly, she did not
know why, she remembered the lovers whom she had promised to befriend.
"I have a favour to ask of you," she said, gravely. "It concerns Red
Jakob."
"What is it?" he asked, taking a chair by her side; and, encouraged by
his sympathy, she told him of the scene in the forest lodge and of poor
Christine's sorrows. Johann Leopold readily promised his help to the
girl, and together they discussed what should be done.
"Let me beg you, Magelone, to look towards the coffee-table," said
Hildegard, after she had watched the pair for a while. "They have been
engaged in that interesting conversation for a quarter of an hour. Are
you not jealous?"
Magelone laughed. "Jealous of Johanna? Oh, no," she declared,
confidently.
"Don't be so sure, my dear child," was Hildegard's sneering reply. "In
spite of your irresistible charms, you have never succeeded since I
have been here in making Johann Leopold talk as he is now talking to
Johanna."
"Yes, he actually seems transformed," said Hedwig. "He certainly is
talking and listening now, while beside you he sits like a wooden doll."
"Of course, ''tis love, 'tis love that makes men mute,'" Magelone said,
with a smile; but her eyes gleamed, and a sensation of mistrust of
Johanna stirred in her heart,--faint and fleeting, it is true, but it
was the beginning, nevertheless, of a change in the relations between
the cousins.
The next morning Johann Leopold rode to the forest lodge. When he
returned, meeting Johanna in the corridor, he told her that the rough
fellow had wept bitterly when told of the death of his child, and had
entreated that he might see Christine.
"It would be best for you to go up to the lodge with her to-morrow
morning early," he added; "it would lighten the weary way for her, and I
will be there to take her to the invalid."
"I will certainly have her there," Johanna replied, "punctually at
eleven o'clock. Oh, Johann Leopold, how kind you are!"
They had just reached the drawing-room door. Magelone, gliding
noiselessly down-stairs, heard Johanna's last words.
"What has he been doing that is so kind?" she asked. "Tell me, that I
may admire it too."
Johanna was embarrassed. Her cousin came to her assistance. "Never mind,
my dear Magelone," he said, in his usual cold, deliberate tone. "You
would consider it the mere dilettantism of philanthropy, upon which you
but lately expended your ridicule."
As he spoke he opened the drawing-room door. Magelone passed him with an
angry blush. How silly to take her words so seriously! Of course
Johanna never said such things. The girl was growing positively
disagreeable.
According to agreement, Johanna presented herself with her protegee at
the forester's the next morning. Christine could not yet believe that
she should see Red Jakob. "His sister will certainly prevent it," she
kept saying.
But Johann Leopold's authority had successfully opposed the forester's
wife. As soon as she saw Johanna and Christine approaching she sullenly
withdrew, and contented herself with watching them through the chink of
the door.
She did not see much. Johann Leopold went to meet the visitors. "Come,
my child, Jakob is expecting you," he said, with a gentle kindness that
aggravated Frau Kruger's ill humour. He had never spoken so to either
her husband or herself. "Do not be afraid," he went on; "no one shall
molest you. If any should try to do so, let me know." And he opened the
door of the sick-room.
"Christine, have you come at last?" Jakob's voice called from the bed.
With a cry the girl rushed to him, and Johann Leopold closed the door
upon them. "Come, Johanna, we have nothing further to do here," he said,
and together they left the house.
When the forester's wife looked from the window, they were walking down
the forest-path. She smiled scornfully. "No one could persuade me," she
thought, "that those two came up here for the sake of Jakob and
Christine; but I'll see to it, they may depend upon it. If I could only
hear what they are talking about! She looks up at him as if he were the
Herr Pastor in the pulpit."
Their talk was strange enough,--it was rather a monologue of Johann
Leopold's to which Johanna listened.
"Happy unfortunates!" he began, looking sadly abroad into space. "Even
yesterday, when Jakob was weeping for his boy and crying out after
Christine, I envied him. How such emotion must enlarge and strengthen
the soul! Happiness or misery is of no moment, but an absorbing passion,
that possesses and rules the entire man----Yet who experiences such?
Only some half-savage like my poor Jakob. We superior beings, as we are
called, with our boasted culture, pay for our position with doubt,
hesitation, half-heartedness."
Johanna listened to him with pained surprise. How could he thus forget
or ignore his own past, his love for his dead betrothed, which Aunt
Thekla maintained he still cherished in his heart? She could not venture
to remind him of it, however, and she said, after a pause, "I think you
are mistaken; love is not influenced by rank or culture. Remember my
mother."
He did not seem to hear her, but went on: "And naturally we are drawn on
from year to year by half-desires, half-resolves; our goal seems to us
not worthy of exertion to attain it. And if some caprice places what we
desire within our reach, we scarcely know whether to grasp it and hold
it fast, for to grasp it gives trouble, and to hold it fast calls for
exertion."
Was he speaking with reference to himself? Was Magelone what he desired?
Johanna would have liked to help him to unburden his mind, but any
mention of Magelone seemed to her to be indiscreet, so she merely
remarked, "I cannot imagine any one's being too indolent to grasp an
offered happiness."
"Happiness!" he repeated, with a melancholy smile. "Happiness! Who
believes in it? You do not know how much strength is required for
belief; much more than for passionate desire. Therefore the man who
rushes blindly, head first, into the maddest, unworthiest passion,
regardless of the harm that may result from it, seems to me not only
more enviable, but more estimable even, than the prudent doubter, who is
cold to-day and warm to-morrow, unable either to grasp or to
relinquish. There stands the lovely being before you; your heart throbs
at the sight of her; you long to call her your own, to belong to her, to
lose yourself in her. But in the midst of your intoxication you know
that she is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that she does not
understand you, or wish to understand you, and that if your longing were
fulfilled your desire would become satiety and disgust. You tell
yourself that you never would be able to excuse to yourself the illusion
of the past, and there are moments in which you even despise your
desire."
He drew a long breath, paused, and stroked back the hair from his pale
forehead. "Do I startle you?" he then said, in a quiet tone. "Forgive
me, and forget what I have said. When you have known me longer you will
understand that I am apt to be lost in illusions, and that I readily
take phantoms for creatures of flesh and blood."
The Freiherr was able to leave his wheeled chair on this same day; he
declared that nothing any longer stood in the way of the contemplated
New Year's dinner, and preparations were begun for it. Johanna and Otto
wrote the invitations; Aunt Thekla passed cellar and pantries in review,
and had conferences with the housekeeper; old Christian polished up the
'ancestral plate,' as Hildegard reverently called it, and from spacious
cupboards were produced treasures of antique glass and porcelain.
Magelone was more whimsical than usual, beginning one thing after
another only to lay it aside, and ridiculing the 'ceremonial state' in
progress, but with a forced gayety that troubled Johanna. Hildegard
strutted like a peacock in hopes of outshining in a new velvet gown all
the ladies of the surrounding county, while Hedwig ascribed still more
dazzling properties to her old Venetian lace. The Freiherr anticipated
the New Year's dinner with the satisfaction with which an architect
contemplates the laying of the corner-stone of a structure that has been
long planned. Even the Herr Pastor was busy with the dinner. He was
composing a toast to be given at it in honour of the betrothal.
What Johann Leopold's sensations were upon this occasion it would be
difficult to say. By no hint did he betray his knowledge of the
significance of the festival. His conduct towards Magelone was as cool
and deliberate as ever. As long as the Freiherr remained amid the family
circle, Johann Leopold was there also. So soon as the old gentleman
withdrew, he also vanished. Johanna, in whom the impression of his talk
in the forest was still vivid, watched him narrowly, but she looked in
vain for any echo of that hour, and began to believe that not only
Johann Leopold but also she herself had seen phantoms.
Thus the day before the first of the new year arrived. The clear
Christmas weather had given place to thick gray clouds that, lashed by
the winds, sailed above the mountains. The Freiherr, too, whose mood had
been more cheerful since the gout had left him, looked as gloomy
within-doors as did the skies without. "I do not know what to think of
Waldemar," he said, as he paced the room to and fro, smoking his morning
pipe. "It is a little too much to have no word from him since the
telegram on Christmas-eve."
"Since that announced his arrival here to-day, he probably thought
nothing further necessary," said Aunt Thekla.
"Indeed! And do you agree with him?" the Freiherr said, turning upon
her. "Then see what this new-fangled want of consideration comes to.
What is to be done about sending for him? I cannot have the carriage go
to every train."
"Waldemar always comes by the express-train, which is due at five
o'clock in Thalrode," said Hildegard, who sat opposite Aunt Thekla
engaged on some embroidery.
"Nonsense! He comes sometimes at noon, and sometimes at eight in the
evening," the Freiherr rejoined. "But that's of no consequence. Let him
come when he chooses, he must send word when he will be here, and if he
does not he will not be sent for. _Basta!_"
His tone was such as to admit of no reply. All were silent, while the
old Herr continued to pace to and fro, puffing out thick clouds of
smoke. Magelone alone ventured, when he was at the other end of the
room, to whisper to Aunt Thekla, "A great fuss about nothing! You will
see we shall have a letter or a telegram from Waldemar saying he cannot
come. I wouldn't come either, if I could amuse myself in Vienna as he
can."
But the hours passed, and neither letter nor telegram made its
appearance. The early twilight came on, made still more dim by the
snow-storm which had begun at noon, and which was increasing in
violence. The wind howled and shrieked around the castle.
A bright fire was burning in the drawing-room, where stood the
Christmas-tree, which was, according to custom, to be relighted, then
thoroughly stripped, chopped up, and burned on New Year's eve. Magelone
and Johanna were busy replacing upon it candles which had burned down.
Aunt Thekla and Hildegard sat beside the fire; Hedwig stood at the
window, looking out into the driving snow. "If our husbands were only
back again!" she said. "Inconceivable to wish to ride out in such a
storm."
"It looks worse than it is," said Johanna. "I came back only half an
hour ago from the village; it was glorious to breast the wind."
"A strange predilection!" Hildegard exclaimed. "But you did not go
alone?"
Before Johanna could reply, the door was noisily opened, and the
Freiherr entered. It was so unusual for him to join the family at this
hour that Aunt Thekla, startled, arose and went towards him.
"Do not disturb yourself!" he said, beginning to pace the room to and
fro. "Detestable weather!" he exclaimed, as a blast of wind shook the
windows. "I ought to have sent the carriage. There's no knowing whether
or not Waldemar can get a conveyance in Thalrode now; it is too late."
"The carriage is at Thalrode, grandpapa," said Johanna. "Johann Leopold
drove over."
"Without my knowledge?" cried the Freiherr, standing still in the middle
of the room. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.
"You were asleep, grandpapa, and Johann Leopold had to hurry to catch
the two-o'clock train. He had something to attend to in town, he said,
but would return to Thalrode in the four-o'clock train. If my cousin
Waldemar comes, they will surely meet."
"Indeed they will. We may rely upon that. From their very infancy they
always stood by each other in every silly prank," the Freiherr said, but
in a tone so kindly that Aunt Thekla breathed afresh.
"How did you know all this, my dear Johanna?" Magelone asked, as the
Freiherr resumed his walk.
"As I was starting for the village, Johann Leopold was just driving
off," she replied, "and he took me and my bundles as far as the
parsonage----"
"It was odd not to bid us good-by!" said Magelone.
Hildegard approached her. "Why, child, he probably feared your tender
remonstrances," she said, scornfully, "or it may perhaps have occurred
to him at the twelfth hour to purchase you a betrothal-gift."
Magelone shrugged her shoulders impatiently. At this moment old
Christian entered with the lamp, followed by Otto, who handed a letter
to the Freiherr. "From Waldemar," he said. "It has just been brought by
an express from Thalrode."
"He's not coming; I knew it," whispered Magelone.
The Freiherr went to the light and began to read, his face brightening
at every word. Before he had finished the sheet he cried out, "This is a
surprise! The boy could not have pleased me more. He is betrothed!"
"Waldemar! Betrothed? To whom?" several voices exclaimed together.
"Hear what he says," said the Freiherr. "The letter is from Vienna. We
now know what the urgent business was that kept him away at Christmas.
But listen. I will spare you the beginning. Here: 'Since yesterday the
happiest of men----' Of course. 'My betrothed, Maria Therese Antoinette
Walburg, is the second daughter of Count Anton, the chief of the
elder--that is, of the Protestant--branch. Her mother was a Rothkirch;
her grandmother, Theodora Klausenburg, you used to know, my dear
grandfather. Antoinette is said to resemble her. She is eighteen years
old, with light-brown hair, blue eyes, a lovely colour, and is tall and
stately, like all the Klausenburg women,--only, between ourselves, more
graceful and elegant. Her loveliness, her modesty, her childish gayety,
make all hearts her captives----' and so forth, and so on! He continues
in that strain a long while, which is of small account, for the lad is
in love. But the family is good, and this child probably takes after
them. God bless them both!"
Aunt Thekla wiped her eyes; the Freiherr rose, and again paced the room
to and fro. "To-morrow we will celebrate a double betrothal, and as soon
as possible a double marriage!" he began again after a while. "This joy
is quite unexpected. All my Doenninghausens shall rejoice with me. I will
give an entertainment that shall be the talk of their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. As for you, Thekla, tell my steward to give you
whatever you need for your infant-school."
"Thank you, dear Johann, a thousand times!" she said, blushing with
pleasure, as she went to her brother and embraced him.
"That will do, sister, that will do!" he said, extricating himself from
her embrace. "Come, be quick! Light the tree and send for the children.
I want merry faces about me!"
In a few moments the room was illumined by the magic light of the
Christmas-tree, and rang with merry childish voices, while little hands
were eagerly lifted to receive the last of the tree's sweet fruits,
which the great-grandfather detached and put into them. Hildegard and
Hedwig, much excited, exchanged with Magelone and Otto information with
regard to the Walburgs and Rothkirchs, while Aunt Thekla listened to the
raging of the storm.
"Where can the Wildenhayns be, and Johann Leopold?" she said. "The
carriage ought to have been back from Thalrode as soon as the express."
"Perhaps it is waiting for the eight-o'clock train," said Johanna.
"If I knew that it was waiting in Thalrode, a messenger might be sent,"
said Aunt Thekla. "But if Johann Leopold has remained in town----"
She did not finish the sentence. Old Christian entered, and begged
Johanna to come into the corridor for a moment.
"What is the matter?" asked Aunt Thekla.
"Some one wishes to speak to the Fraeulein Johanna," the old man said, in
evident agitation.
Johanna, thinking of Christine, went out hastily, to cut short further
explanations; but instead of her whom she expected to see, she was
confronted by a man, tall and broad-shouldered. "Dear Johanna!" he said,
advancing and holding out his hand.
"Ludwig!" she exclaimed, delighted. But she was instantly struck by his
pale, distressed look. "For God's sake, what has happened?" she asked,
keeping his hand tightly clasped in both her own. "What brings you
here?"
"I come from Hanover, from the death-bed of a friend. But that is not
what is the matter. I must consult you."
They whispered together for a few moments, then Ludwig followed
Christian up-stairs, and Johanna returned to the drawing-room.
With some hesitation she approached the Freiherr, who was now sitting
before the fire, surrounded by the children. "Dear grandfather," she
said, standing behind his chair, so that he could not see her face, "my
foster-brother, Dr. Ludwig Werner, has come."
"Dr. Ludwig Werner?" the Freiherr repeated. "Yes, yes, I recollect.
Well, where is he?"
Johanna used all her self-control. "He has not come for a visit," she
said. "He has been in Hanover, and was going directly back to Lindenbad,
but when the train stopped at Thalrode, Johann Leopold fell in leaving
it, and----"
"Dead!" cried the Freiherr, sitting erect in his chair. "Say the word at
once, without the torture of preparation," he added, as his sister came
to him and took his hand.
"No, he lives; be assured of that," said Johanna. "He is only stunned by
the fall, and that is why Ludwig has come with him. They have carried
him to his room."
For a moment the Freiherr seemed utterly crushed, but with a mighty
effort he rose and stood erect. "Come, Thekla," he said, in a monotone.
"So long as he breathes let us hope!"
CHAPTER X.
"THAT BLASE LIEUTENANT."
It was a sad New Year's day for Doenninghausen. Instead of the double
celebration, with its gay anticipations for the future, there were weary
anxious hours beside a sick-bed. Johann Leopold had not yet recovered
consciousness. The old family physician shrugged his shoulders and
admitted that he was powerless, and the physician summoned from town
pronounced that in his opinion the patient's condition would end either
in death or insanity. Ludwig alone did not relinquish hope, and the
calmness in his face and bearing inspired those about him with courage.
Therefore the Freiherr would not hear of his leaving them. "I beg you,
stay with us! If you can do but little for my grandson at present, I
still must consider your mere presence as a benefit," he said, when
Ludwig requested to be driven to Thalrode.
"Yes, if you possibly can, stay with us," Aunt Thekla added; and Ludwig
could not feel himself justified in refusing the entreaty of the old
brother and sister.
On New Year's evening some of the younger members of the family were
assembled in the drawing-room. Hedwig, the last to join them, went
shivering to the fire, and stretched out her hands before the blaze.
"I am cold to my very bones," she said. "As I passed the ball-room just
now, the door was open, and by the light of the hall-lamp, I saw the
long white-covered table, and thought how soon it might be replaced by
black trestles. Oh, I wish we were away! but Eduard says we mast stay it
out."
"Of course we must!" Hildegard exclaimed. "What would grandpapa think of
our leaving him alone now? At such times the family must hold together."
"I don't see what good our holding together can do," said Magelone.
"With the exception of Johanna, who sees that grandpapa and Aunt Thekla
do not starve beside the sick-bed----"
"They would be taken care of without her," Hildegard interposed.
"However, if she chooses to play Martha, let her; our task will be
different, and much more difficult, at the death-bed and the funeral."
"How can you think of death and a funeral all because of a fall on the
head!" exclaimed Magelone, rising and going to a window-recess.
Hildegard smiled disdainfully. "The fable of the ostrich," she said.
"But what is to be will be, however we may close our eyes to it."
"Do you really think, then, that he will die?" asked Hedwig.
"The physician from town has given him up," Hildegard replied.
Hedwig gazed into the fire. After a pause she said, scarce audibly, "If
he were to die, Otto would be the heir."
"And the wayward Magelone would be _vis-a-vis de rien_," Hildegard
added.
"I do not think so; it would only be the exchange of a lover for her.
Look there!" said Hedwig. She had observed in the mirror that Otto had
arisen from the table, where he had been reading the papers, and had
joined Magelone.
Hildegard smiled with an air of superiority. "Never fear," she said,
with conviction. "Magelone was very well suited for Johann Leopold,
unamiable and misanthropic as he was; but if Otto is ever the heir, he
may fairly look to make a brilliant match, which he will do. I know our
brother."
She might not have been so very sure if she had heard the conversation
in the window-recess.
"Are you sad, Magelone?" asked Otto, as he took her hand. "Are you
grieving for Johann Leopold?"
"Grieving? No; your sisters irritated me," she replied. "I detest to
have mountains made out of mole-hills. Imagine their talking of death
and a funeral!"
"You are right; there is no necessity for giving up all hope so soon,"
said Otto. "But, on the other side, is it not natural that every
possibility should present itself to the imagination? I, too, Magelone,
with all my trying not to look upon the dark side, have not been able to
refrain, since the accident, from asking myself how you would feel,
Magelone, if--if we were to lose Johann Leopold." And he bent over her
so that his moustache nearly touched her cheek as he added, "Would you
grieve?"
"I should be very sorry, as we should all be," she said.
"Not as for the loss of a lover?" he asked again.
She cast one quick glance up at him, and then her eyelids drooped. "I
cannot feign," she whispered. "But why do you tease me so? What does it
matter to you?"
She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held it fast.
"Magelone," he whispered,--and there was a passionate tremor in his
voice,--"have you never remembered that if Johann Leopold dies I am his
heir? Understand all that this means: you, too, would then be mine!"
"Hush!" she interrupted him, half in anger, half in terror. "For God's
sake, hush! I will not listen to another word!" And she turned from him
and joined his sisters again.
But his words had fallen upon fruitful soil. Magelone could not but
reflect upon the possibility at which he had hinted, and her fancy
painted a future based upon this possibility. There was an actual
change in her sentiments. Otto's words on this New Year's evening could
not have been uttered in mere dalliance, and her heart responded in
louder throbs than hitherto. There came now and then a fleeting
consciousness of wrong, when she would weep and consider herself
miserably unhappy; but she sought consolation in further imaginings, and
when she encountered Otto there was a degree of suppressed emotion in
her words and looks which lent a new charm to a creature usually so cool
and self-possessed. Otto was, as he confessed to himself, 'awfully in
love with her.'
Days passed without bringing any essential change in Johann Leopold's
condition. "About the same," was the comfortless answer which the
Freiherr made every morning to the anxious inquirers of the family, and
he sat more silent and gloomy than ever at the head of the table. The
only person with whom he sometimes conversed was Ludwig.
"If I could only understand what grandpapa can find in that pretentious
creature," said Hildegard. "He comes and goes, and gives his opinion
quite as if he belonged to us. But where should such people learn to
behave themselves?"
Magelone said, "So this is the famous foster-brother, Johanna's ideal.
The head of a bull-dog on the body of an elephant."
Eduard and Karl, after Ludwig had smoked a cigar with them, pronounced
him a 'first-rate fellow.' Otto found him tedious, and Aunt Thekla
called him the 'gentlest and kindest of men,' while Johanna was
constantly hurt and offended by his cynical tone.
The second day after his arrival she asked him to take a walk with her.
As they walked along under the gray wintry skies, the crows flying
cawing overhead and the snow crackling beneath their feet, Johanna said,
"This is like the good old times when you used to come home at Christmas
for the holidays. Do you remember how we used to make expeditions to
see how our summer resorts looked in their winter dress?"
"Yes," he replied; "but our walk to-day does not remind me of them. Then
your walks with me were not merely occasional; my home was yours.
Remember that since then you have rejected that home and chosen
Doenninghausen."
"I hoped you understood my choice and approved it."
"Understood,--yes; approved,--no," he replied, and changed the subject.
A few days later, after the family had all been together in the
drawing-room, he said, "I really believe, my dear Johanna, that you have
a talent for the stage, you play your part of fine lady so admirably.
You even receive the attentions of that blase lieutenant, who must be
intolerable to you, so graciously that any one who did not know you so
well as I do would be deceived by your manner."
Johanna blushed. "You are mistaken. I think my cousin Otto very
agreeable, and I like to talk with him," she rejoined.
Ludwig laughed bitterly. "Then I am forced to admire you still more. Not
only to seem, but actually to be, what every station in life may
require, to suit one's desires and opinions to one's surroundings,
requires a rare degree of talent."
"You misunderstand me," she said, offended.
"I always did," was his reply.
At the moment Johanna was hurt by such speeches from Ludwig, but she
never resented them for long. Perhaps she had an involuntary suspicion
that his mistrust and misconception sprang from disappointed affection,
or perhaps her heart was full of other things. The explanation she gave
herself was that for the sake of the help and comfort he gave to Johann
Leopold, to her grandfather, and to Aunt Thekla, she must forgive her
childhood's playmate any harshness of demeanour.
For a series of years it had been the custom for all the family to stay
over Twelfth-Night at Doenninghausen, and to leave on the seventh of
January. On the morning of the sixth the Wildenhayns were consulting
with Otto and Magelone as to whether they should depart as usual, or,
without any announcement of their intentions, stay until there was some
change in Johann Leopold, or, lastly, ask their grandfather what his
wishes were in the matter.
"I must go to-morrow; my leave is at an end," said Otto; and he added,
in a tone intended for Magelone alone, "I will come back for the
funeral."
"You should not talk so," she replied, reproachfully. She had been
thinking the same thing herself.
At this moment the Freiherr entered. "Children!" he cried, approaching
the group, "thank God with me. Johann Leopold is out of danger."
There were loud exclamations of delight. Otto's silence was unnoticed.
Magelone grew pale, tottered, and would have fallen if Eduard, who stood
next her, had not caught her in his arms.
"It is nothing,--nothing," she said, recovering herself. The Freiherr
looked keenly at her. "Dear Magelone, compose yourself," he said kindly;
but she could not endure his gaze. She bent down and kissed his hand,
bursting into tears as she did so.
"Nonsense, child! All is well now. Come, come, command yourself!" And as
he conducted her to a seat he said to himself, "She is a warm-hearted
little thing after all, and loves the lad better than I thought."
To reward her, the Freiherr addressed his account of the invalid
especially to her. She was obliged to listen to a detailed account of
Johann Leopold's return to consciousness, and recognition of his
grandfather and Aunt Thekla.
"He is sleeping now," the old Herr concluded. "Christian and Thekla are
watching him like dragons guarding a treasure, but as soon as he wakes
you shall see him, my dear child."
Ludwig entering overheard the last words. "I beg pardon, Herr von
Doenninghausen," he said in his decided way, "but there I must interpose
my veto. The sick man needs entire rest, and I must entreat that no one
except those who have hitherto been with him may enter his room without
my permission."
Hildegard stared in haughty surprise at the venturous mortal who dared
thus bluntly to contradict the Freiherr. "Dear grandfather," she said,
with the intention of provoking the old Herr still further, "if we must
all submit to the doctor's orders we are quite useless here, and had
better depart to-morrow."
She fully expected to hear a grim authoritative, "You will stay, and see
Johann Leopold as soon as possible!" Instead of which the Freiherr
replied, "Yes, children, go. You will come again for the celebration of
his recovery and betrothal." And, without noticing his grand-daughter's
mortification, he joined the Wildenhayns, who were discussing the
patient with Ludwig.
Hildegard drew her sister aside to the window. Otto went up to Magelone,
who was sitting in an arm-chair by the table, meditatively toying with
her bracelets.
"What now?" he asked in a low voice.
She looked up at him, but he could not tell whether the gleam in her
eyes meant pain, anger, or derision.
"What now?" he asked once more, and tried to take her hand, but the
slender fingers eluded his clasp.
"Take care!" she said, composedly. His face flushed. "That means, in
other words, that you are once more Johann Leopold's faithful,
submissive true-love," he said, bitterly. "You are like the cat; she
clings to the house, caring nothing about who its possessor may be."
"For shame! How can you talk to me thus?" Magelone whispered, as she
arose and looked at him with flashing eyes.
Hedwig's attention was roused. "Is it possible that you two are
quarrelling?" she said, approaching them.
Magelone instantly recovered her composure. "No, indeed; we are the best
of friends," she said, smiling, offering her hand to Otto, who, however,
did not kiss it as usual, but, after a slight pressure, relinquished it
and left the room. Magelone vowed inwardly that he should not escape
punishment.
But she had no opportunity for revenge. At meal-times the Freiherr,
elated by Johann Leopold's improved condition, was more talkative than
usual, and Otto took a lively part in the general conversation.
Immediately after breakfast he joined Karl and Eduard for a last ride in
the forest, and after dinner he never left Johanna's side.
She seemed to him more sympathetic than ever to-day. "This is genuine
truth, simplicity, kindness of heart," he said to himself, as he gazed
into her sparkling eyes. What power of expressing love lay in those
eyes! Perhaps if he had chosen they might have spoken love to him.
Perhaps if he took some pains they might still do so. If he were obliged
to depart on the morrow he could return, and in the mean time memory
should plead for him.
The longer he talked with Johanna, the warmer grew his tone, and even
his jesting words took a graver significance. Gradually the words
themselves grew grave.
He had been telling her of his garrison life, of his intercourse with
his comrades, and of the society to be found in the houses of the
married officers. "Pleasant and social as it all looks, and really is,"
he continued, "I find it very hard to leave Doenninghausen,--this time
especially: why, you surely know?"
"I can easily imagine," she replied, with a glance towards Magelone.
Did she not understand, or would she not understand? "I do not know
whether you are right," said Otto. "It is a new experience for me; I am
not yet used to it. Will you help me?"
"I do not understand you," she made answer, blushing beneath his gaze.
"What I desire is presumptuous!" he continued. "How can you help me?
What I have wasted, I have wasted----I must wait for new and better
days."
"What have you wasted?" Johanna asked.
"Opportunities to gain excellence, happiness,--and you!" he replied.
"From the first moment of our acquaintance I knew what you could be to
me, but, instead of testifying this to you, I have squandered my days,
from folly, from habit----" Here he glanced towards Magelone.
Johanna was pained. "Why will you deny----" she began.
Otto interrupted her:
"I deny nothing. I am only trying to explain to you--and, as for that,
to myself also--what is going on within me. You have often heard the
vanity of men bewailed, but not nearly enough, believe me. Against our
better selves, against the demands of our hearts, it gives us over
hopelessly into the power of every coquette who knows how to flatter
this same vanity. Coquetry itself is a flattery that we are powerless to
withstand. Yet how often, while we lie spell-bound, does our soul
thirst, and thirsting perish, unless true love comes to succor it!"
Johanna's heart beat tumultuously, but she tried to appear at her ease,
and said with a smile, and without looking up from her work,--
"Poor true love! How is it to manage if it does not know how to
coquette?"
"No need of that!" Otto rejoined, passionately. "It only needs to show
itself simply and seriously for what it is, to bring to shame all the
spells of sorcery. Believe me, Johanna, if I could ever find it,--and a
single look, a single tone, would reveal it to me,--I should be
liberated forever."
He had taken hold of the end of her embroidery, thus obliging her to
drop her hands in her lap, but she did not venture to speak or to look
up at him.
"Johanna!" he began again, after a pause, in a suppressed tone.
Just then the Freiherr called out, "Come, Otto; I want to take a hand on
this last evening with the Wildenhayns and you."
The young man arose. "_Du sublime au ridicule_," he said, with his
customary smile of gay mockery, as he went to the whist-table, and the
evening passed without any further opportunity for confidential words
with Johanna.
The next morning Aunt Thekla appeared for the first time since the
accident at the breakfast-table, in honor of the departing guests, who
were all going in the ten-o'clock train from Thalrode. She, too, was
full of hope for the invalid, and nodded an assent when the Freiherr
insisted that all the family should reassemble in Doenninghausen to
celebrate Johann Leopold's recovery.
"The Walburgs, of course; if they come, Waldemar will surely not stay
away, and the postponed festival will be all the gayer," the old Herr
concluded.
Magelone looked at Otto; he was calmly sipping his coffee, and she asked
herself, with some anxiety, whether he could really bring himself to
depart without a word of explanation with her.
"Let him--for all I care!" she said to herself, in a burst of offended
feeling, and after breakfast she devoted herself to the children, who
were brought in to say good-by. At the same time--involuntarily,
perhaps--she watched Otto. He spoke with his grandfather and with Aunt
Thekla, and then approached Johanna. Resolved to know what they were
saying to each other, she playfully chased little Johann Eduard around
the room until she came near to the pair, and then, kneeling down to tie
on the child's hat more securely, she heard Otto lament that he should
hear no tidings of Johann Leopold.
"Aunt Thekla never writes," he added, "and grandpapa, only when he wants
to read me a homily. Pray, dear Johanna, write to me sometimes, and tell
me how the invalid's recovery progresses."
In what a tone he spoke! Involuntarily Magelone sprang up to interrupt
their conversation, but Eduard called out at this moment, "Come, hurry;
it is time." Otto kissed Johanna's hand in farewell, and then turned to
Magelone. "_Au revoir_" he said, coldly. Magelone smiled and said as
calmly, "_Au revoir_."
But when embraces and farewells were over and the three carriages drove
out of the court-yard, gazed after by herself and Johanna, she could no
longer control herself, but burst into tears, and hurried into the
house.
The next instant Johanna was at her side. "Dear Magelone," she began,
gently, and would have taken her hand, but her cousin turned hastily
away. "Leave me!" she cried. And, rushing up-stairs to her room, she
closed the door and shot the bolt behind her.
"Oh, this hypocrite!" she exclaimed, and raised her clasped hands to
heaven. "She thrusts herself forward everywhere. I cannot endure it any
longer,--no, I cannot!"
She sank into an arm-chair, and wept in all the _abandon_ of a child.
Suddenly she sat erect, and wiped away her tears. "What folly!" she said
to herself. "Am I helpless and unarmed? I am more beautiful than my
rival; ought I not also to be more skilled,--cleverer? It is worth the
trial. Otto must and shall return to me."
CHAPTER XI.
RECOVERY.
Again the days passed calmly and quietly at Doenninghausen, but they wore
a different aspect from those which had preceded Christmas. Then the
Freiherr had been the centre around which everything revolved, now it
was Johann Leopold. Ludwig had pronounced all exciting causes dangerous
for his patient, and begged that all his wishes might, as far as
possible, be fulfilled. Therefore every one whose presence he requested
was relieved from all other claim; even the meals, from which at other
times only serious indisposition could excuse any member of the family,
might be disregarded for Johann Leopold's sake.
With the egotism of an invalid, he required that either Ludwig or Aunt
Thekla should be beside him all day, even when he was sleeping.
He took pleasure also in his grandfather's visits, so long as the old
Herr could sit still; but as soon as he began, according to his habit,
to pace the room to and fro, the sick man grew so restless as to oblige
Ludwig courteously to dismiss the Freiherr.
"The lad is like a nervous girl," the latter would then say, with an
irritated knitting of his brows; but the next moment he would add,
"Well, we must be satisfied with seeing him as well as he is; by and by
he will be perfectly reasonable again."
Perfect recovery, however, came but slowly. Only gradually did his
memory of people and events begin to revive. One morning when his
grandfather was sitting beside him he suddenly said, "Johanna!" and
after a while he added, "I want to see her; let her come to me."
"Yes, my dear boy, I will send her to you," the Freiherr replied; "but
send for Magelone too, or she will be hurt."
"Magelone!" he repeated, and his eyes expressed distress. "Magelone! No,
no, she must not come! I will not see her. It is all her fault."
The Freiherr was startled. Johann Leopold was more seriously ill than he
had supposed. "I will send Johanna," he said, rising; but the patient
refused now to see even her. "No; send Dr. Werner," he said, fretfully.
"I want him; he is the only one who knows what is good for me."
The next morning he insisted upon seeing Johanna, and she went to him.
"Sit down; I have much to say to you," he said, after her first
greeting. "Pray, Aunt Thekla, leave us alone."
The old lady withdrew with an air of surprise. Johann Leopold lay still,
staring before him, while Johanna contemplated him with compassion. His
sunken temples, his neglected beard, his haggard eyes, made him still
look very ill.
"Red Jakob,--what do you know of him?" he asked at last.
"I asked Ludwig--Dr. Werner, I mean--to take your place there," she
replied. "You can depend upon him----"
"I know that," he interrupted her. "Well, what does he think?--how is
Jakob?"
"Not well; Ludwig thinks his arm will always be useless."
"I thought so," said the sick man. "Does Christine know it?"
"Yes; I wrote her about it," Johanna made answer. "She was with him
yesterday, and came to me afterwards. She was very sad----"
"And has given the poor fellow up, of course," the invalid interposed.
"You do not really believe that," said Johanna. "Do you not remember
calling them the 'happy unfortunates'? Christine considers it a matter
of course that she is now to take care of the helpless man. 'God has
taken from me my little Jakob, and so I am better able to work for the
big one,' she said; adding that she would do it joyfully if he would
only be content, but that it would almost break his heart not to be able
to earn his own living."
"Perhaps he may do so yet. I may be able to help him in that," said
Johann Leopold. And after a pause he went on, in a hard tone, "Suppose I
were no longer the heir, but ill and a cripple for my lifetime, how
would my future betrothed behave to me? Do not reply. I know that our
opinions upon this point agree, and that I cannot lay any claim to
affection."
He looked so unhappy as he spoke that Johanna felt compelled to
contradict him, but he cut her words short impatiently.
"Let us consult about Red Jakob," he said. "With whole limbs he would
have had to go, for the sake of grandpapa's game; but crippled he may
stay. About a mile and a half from here, among the mountains, I have a
small estate, inherited from my mother. It is called Forest Hermitage,
and the house is little more than an observatory. The grounds about it I
have laid out as a forester's garden. The man who has had the care of it
wishes to move down among his children in the valley. What do you think?
Would Jakob and Christine like to live in that solitude?"
"They would be enraptured----" Johanna began.
The invalid interrupted her. "Then Dr. Werner shall propose it to
Jakob," he said, and, covering his eyes with his hand, he sighed
heavily. "It would enrapture no one to live in a solitude with me," he
said, as if to himself, as Johanna, filled with solicitude lest the
conversation should have been too much for him, called Aunt Thekla from
the next room.
But the exertion seemed to have enabled Johann Leopold completely to
conquer his disease. From this time he made rapid strides in
convalescence; he was soon able to leave his bed, and at the end of
January Aunt Thekla announced one morning with tears of joy, "He is
coming down at noon to-day."
Just after this news, as Johanna and Magelone were left alone in the
room, the latter said, "Have you written to Otto?"
"No, not yet." And Johanna bent over her work.
"He begged you so earnestly to do so. Why should you be so cruel to your
friend?" Magelone continued. "You really must do it; I ask you for my
own sake. Otto must have carried off with him my little ivory tablets
which he took from me to tease me. Write to him to send them back to
me."
"Why not do so yourself?" Johanna asked. "Then you could inform him
concerning Johann Leopold."
"I? What are you thinking of?" exclaimed Magelone. "I think he showed
great tact in asking you to write."
"Tact?" Johanna repeated. "I do not understand you."
"Why, yes; of course it would have been painful for me to destroy Otto's
hopes. You are unconcerned, and can do so much better. How you look at
me!" she went on. "Did you never think that if Johann Leopold were to
die, Otto would be the heir?"
"Magelone! You cannot believe that Otto reckoned upon that?" cried
Johanna.
"I do not believe it: I know it. He has talked with me of it more than
once," Magelone replied. And after a pause she added, with a mocking
smile, "How you look, my dear Johanna! Is it possible that you can have
been at all mistaken in our cousin Otto? His is no ideal character. He
is a thorough man of the world, selfish and grasping in the extreme."
Johanna made no reply, and was glad when Magelone soon after left the
room. How could it be that this woman, who had known Otto from
childhood, should judge him so falsely? A man of the world, yes; but far
too gay and warm-hearted to be capable of the calculation with which
Magelone accredited him. Johanna told herself that she had been wrong to
delay sending him the letter for which he had begged her, and she
resolved to write to him to-day.
But as she sat pen in hand with the paper before her, she discovered
that Magelone's remarks had produced an effect. The ease with which,
before hearing them, she could have expressed her delight in Johann
Leopold's recovery was gone. What she wrote seemed to her first like a
protest against Magelone's declaration, and then to be too warmly
expressed. When she had destroyed several beginnings she confined
herself to a mere announcement of Johann Leopold's rapid improvement,
with a request for the return of Magelone's memorandum-tablets. When the
letter had gone, she would fain have recalled it.
Ludwig had requested that there should be no demonstrations of pleasure
at Johann Leopold's reappearance in the family circle; and when the
convalescent joined them, the Freiherr, Aunt Thekla, and Johanna greeted
him quietly as if he had not been absent. Leo, however, would not be
repressed; he leaped up upon the friend whom he had so long missed,
barking loudly, and nearly knocked him down. At this moment Magelone
entered the room.
"Johann Leopold!" she cried joyously, and, hastening to him, she took
his hand in both her own and looked up at him with sparkling eyes. He
grew paler than before.
"Do not trouble yourself,--I know all you would say. I know my
friends," he said, in a tone audible only to herself, as he withdrew his
hand.
She changed color, but the next moment she smiled again, and, with a
slight shrug, took her usual seat at the window. Aunt Thekla, who had
heard nothing, but had observed the manner of the two, looked anxiously
at her brother, who, however, was talking with Ludwig, pacing the room
to and fro the while, and seemed to have noticed nothing of the meeting.
"Leave us! No, my dear doctor, you must not think of it," he said now,
pausing in his walk. "After all the sad days which you have passed with
us, you must learn something of the cheerful side of Doenninghausen."
"Cheerful side!" Magelone repeated to herself, casting an expressive
look upwards, while the Freiherr added, "You said lately that you were
about to write a book; do it here."
"Thank you, Herr von Doenninghausen," Ludwig replied; "but I could find
no leisure here for writing. Good work must be done among those who work
too."
The Freiherr tossed his head. "There we have the arrogance of the
scholar," he said, and his eyes flashed beneath his bent brows. "Do you
mean to imply that I do not work?"
Ludwig smiled. "Let us make a distinction. You work at your good
pleasure as the whim seizes you, while the work to which I allude must
be the result of a certain outward or inward pressure. Moreover, the
projected book will not be written at present. I am going to India."
"And you tell us this only when you are just going away?" Johanna cried,
reproachfully; and Aunt Thekla asked, dropping her work in her lap, "For
heaven's sake, my dear doctor, what can you want in India?"
Ludwig came to the window where they were sitting. "Study, madame," he
said. "An expedition, half scientific, half mercantile, is about to
start for Gujerat and the Vindhya Mountains. I join it as physician.
Moreover, my final decision was made only to-day."
"What does your father say to it?" asked Johanna.
"Of course he made all sorts of objections at first, but gradually he
relinquished his opposition, and now he admits that the journey will be
of great advantage to me."
The Freiherr again interrupted his walk. "Advantage!" he growled. "What
advantage can India bring to a German physician? But science and trade
are the idols of the present age, to which men sacrifice not only human
beings but sound sense into the bargain!"
With these words he left the room, closing the door behind him with a
crash.
Aunt Thekla grew pale and red by turns. "Pray do not be offended with my
brother," she began.
Johann Leopold interposed: "What is there to be offended about?" and he
smiled faintly. "You ought to feel flattered, my dear doctor. Grandpapa
wishes to keep you here, and is angry to think that you can prefer India
to our Doenninghausen. Doenninghausen, you must know, is in the eyes of
every member of the family the very ideal of perfection, a paradise on
earth."
"Not in my eyes," Magelone called out from the other window: it was
insufferable to have no one taking any notice of her.
"My child, how can you say so?" Aunt Thekla admonished her.
"And why not?" Magelone replied. "You all of you have such a passion for
the truth, why should I not say that I like Berlin a thousand, nay, a
million times better than Doenninghausen,--that I have been better
entertained in papa's meanest garrison-town than here?" She yawned.
"Every morning when I wake I wonder why the slumber of the Sleeping
Beauty does n
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