Part 36 (1/2)
They rode the rest of the way in silence. As soon as they reached Donninghausen, the Freiherr seated himself at his writing-table, and wrote thus:
”DEAR JOHANNA,--When my sister told me of your departure this morning, I thought you wanting in respect to leave us as you did, without asking my permission, especially as you were going to people with whom I do not wish to have the slightest degree of intercourse. By way of excuse for you, I reflected that anxiety for your little sister had probably caused you to disregard for the moment the duty you owe to me and to the rules of my household. I take a different view of the matter now that I learn that your intercourse with the family of this circus-rider has been for some time the cause of serious disagreement between Otto and yourself. At first he was reluctant to explain, but upon my urgent desire to know the truth he has told me all. You know, my child, how much I love you, and how willing I am to have you act as you see fit; but here you are wrong and must submit. The honour of our family requires that you should sever all former ties. Come back, then, as soon as you can. Otto, whom I wished to send for you, declares that he cannot take you from the house of a circus-rider, which proves to me that he is more of a Donninghausen than I thought him. In your veins also flows the blood of our race, and I expect you to show yourself worthy of it. In spite of your mother's errors we have received you into the family as one of us, and we must now require you to have no further connection with your father's former wife and her child. Only explain to Otto that you are ready to agree to this, and all will be smooth again between you. Should your step-sister be seriously ill, I do not require you to leave her immediately; but you must do so as soon as you are relieved concerning her, and in the mean time you will carefully avoid appearing in public with any member of the circus-rider's family. Answer particularly at what time you intend to return, and accept the cordial good wishes of your affectionate grandfather,
”JOHANN FREIHERR V. DoNNINGHAUSEN.”
The Freiherr gave this letter to Otto to read and to supplement, saying, ”I have told the silly child what I require without circ.u.mlocution; now you can sweeten the pill of obedience to her as you please. You need not tone down what you want to say. I will not read what you write.
Love-letters are interesting only to those for whom they are composed.”
Would he have considered the following a love-letter?--
”Your hasty departure, dear Johanna, has unfortunately still further complicated matters. If you only would have granted me an interview, you would have forgiven me, I feel sure, and the delightful relations existing between our grandfather and yourself need not have been disturbed by any discord. But I have no idea of reproaching you. I only entreat you, as earnestly as I can, to deliver me from the false position you have forced me to take to our grandfather. One word of forgiveness and a promise to return, and all will be well.
Think of the happy hours we have pa.s.sed together, of the fair future that lies before us, and believe in the repentance and love of your
”OTTO.”
Aunt Thekla also wrote a long letter, in which some pa.s.sages were almost obliterated by her tears, repeating everything that she had said on the previous day, and then the epistles were all despatched, and the Freiherr awaited with certainty the answer he desired.
A letter from Johanna to her grandfather arrived after a week's delay, with an enclosure for Aunt Thekla, but not a line for Otto.
The Freiherr's letter ran thus:
”DEAR GRANDFATHER,--Since receiving your letter I have pa.s.sed the days and nights in terrible anxiety beside my little sister's bed. Her disease is nervous fever, and she was at first dangerously ill, but the fever is gradually, I trust, subsiding, and I am apparently able to take more repose. But only apparently, for since I have been somewhat easier in mind with regard to Lisbeth I have been all the more miserable with regard to myself; and if I have at last arrived at a conclusion, it is with no sense of victory, and my heart trembles as well as my hand while I write that I cannot return to Donninghausen. If Otto means to propose to me the alternative of severing myself either from you or from my father, whose memory I cherish in those he has left behind him, we have never understood each other, never loved each other, and I give him back his troth. That a separation from him deprives me also of you, of Aunt Thekla, and of a home which I love, is the severest trial that could befall me; but I must bear it. Farewell, dear, dear grandfather! Forgive me. Do not think me ungrateful; and, in spite of appearances, believe in the unalterable love and veneration of your grand-daughter
”JOHANNA.”
The Freiherr had long finished reading the letter, when he still sat gazing at the uncertain characters in which Johanna's usual firm, clear handwriting was hardly to be recognized. _This_ he had not expected,--had not thought possible. But if she could thus resign Donninghausen, without even asking if some compromise were not possible, he, too, would hold unalterably to the justice of his course.
”Read that!” he said at last, in a harsh, hoa.r.s.e tone, as he handed the sheet to his sister. ”Tell Otto how the matter stands. I do not want to speak of the foolish girl again.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
DR. URBAN WOLF.
Johanna had thought that the worst was over when she took her departure from Donninghausen; and, indeed, the first days and nights that she spent by her sister's bedside were occupied wholly with care and anxiety for the little one. The child lay in the delirium of fever,--raved in terror of a little black pony,--declared, screaming, that she never would dance again, never would appear in the circus; while Helena, with tears, confessed that Lisbeth's illness was the result of a fall she had while at a rehearsal.
Johanna's presence seemed to soothe the child, and, forgetting herself, she was always beside her bed; but then came the letters from the home she had left, and they recalled all the old pain and conflict.
Involuntarily she looked first for Otto's letter. Her heart had not yet forgotten to beat faster at the sight of his handwriting. But the more she read of it, the more it dulled her, and at its conclusion she laid it aside with a sensation of disgust. Did he think to lure her back thus? Did he know her so little? Had he so entirely lost all feeling of self-respect? One honest word from him, and all might have been well.
Without implicating Magelone, he might have said to the Freiherr, 'I have wronged Johanna; forgive me if she forgives.' Had she hoped for this? Had she for an instant thought this solution possible? No, oh, no!
Had she not written both to him and to Aunt Thekla--had she not repeated--did she not feel with every throb of her heart--that all was over between Otto and herself?
And this must be written to her grandfather. Otto had with great skill used her hint as to making her relations with these people the reason for their separation. Half the work was done; why should she delay to do the rest?
At first she found an explanation for this in her exertions as a nurse, which were unremitting. But when, at her earnest entreaty, Lisbeth was removed from the first story of the noisy hotel, where Batti had established himself, to a quiet back room in the third story, she daily grew better, and Johanna could no longer make her care the pretext for delay.
And, like all who earnestly strive after it, she, too, found 'the bitter word of liberating truth.' She pitilessly insisted to herself upon the fact that in his cool attempt at a reconciliation Otto's aim had been the preservation of friendly relations between himself and his grandfather, and that she should contribute more to his happiness by vanis.h.i.+ng from Donninghausen for his sake than by paving the way for her justification, and she determined to sacrifice herself. She would not--she could not love him any longer. She persuaded herself that she did not. But she might, without loss of self-respect, take upon herself the consequences of his fault. In this conviction she wrote to her grandfather.
When her letter was despatched she sank into a dull apathy. Slowly, monotonously, hour after hour, day after day pa.s.sed by. Her solitude was but rarely invaded. There was little to be done at present for the child. Helena, who had talked at first about taking her share of the nursing, was soon weary, and Batti was satisfied with asking every morning what kind of a night Lisbeth had pa.s.sed, and how she was at present. After receiving the usual answer, 'About the same!' and then standing for a while beside the bed looking down at the poor little figure lying motionless with half-closed eyes, he became, Helena declared, so depressed that it needed half a day's distraction to wear off the impression produced upon him by his visit to the sick-room.