The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Noble Name, by Claire Von Glümer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Noble Name or Dönninghausen Author: Claire Von Glümer Translator: A.L. Wister Release Date: July 2, 2011 [EBook #36550] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS 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 DÖNNINGHAUSEN BY CLAIRE VON GLÜMER TRANSLATED BY MRS. A. L. WISTER PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1883 Copyright, 1882, by J. B. Lippincott & Co. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.—"All the World's a Stage" CHAPTER II.—Disappointed Aspirations CHAPTER III.—A Crisis CHAPTER IV.—Future Plans Decided CHAPTER V.—At Dönninghausen CHAPTER VI.—The Freiherr's Principles CHAPTER VII.—Johanna to Ludwig CHAPTER VIII.—Christmas at Dönninghausen CHAPTER IX.—New Year's Eve CHAPTER X.—"That Blasé Lieutenant" CHAPTER XI.—Recovery CHAPTER XII.—Cela n'engage à Rien CHAPTER XIII.—Johanna to Ludwig CHAPTER XIV.—An Unexpected Return CHAPTER XV.—A Birthday Fête CHAPTER XVI.—A Betrothal CHAPTER XVII.—Johanna to Ludwig CHAPTER XVIII.—Tannhagen CHAPTER XIX.—Professional Enthusiasm CHAPTER XX.—An Equestrian Artist CHAPTER XXI.—Shipwreck CHAPTER XXII.—Dönninghausen Obstinacy CHAPTER XXIII.—The Freiherr asserts his Authority CHAPTER XXIV.—Dr. Urban Wolf CHAPTER XXV.—A Wager and an Adviser CHAPTER XXVI.—Dr. Stein's Scheme CHAPTER XXVII.—The Freiherr's Weakness is Past CHAPTER XXVIII.—The Terrace-Cottage CHAPTER XXIX.—Changes at Dönninghausen CHAPTER XXX.—An Old Friend once more CHAPTER XXXI.—The Truth at Last CHAPTER XXXII.—Two Years Afterward OTHER POPULAR WORKS A NOBLE NAME; OR, DÖNNINGHAUSEN. 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 portière 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 Fräulein 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 Clärchen," 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. "Fräulein, 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 Fräulein 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 tête-à-tête 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 fête; 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 Dönninghausens, 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 Dönninghausen, Dönninghausen 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 Thüringian 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 fête, 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, Fräulein 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- scène 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-r...