Sendlingen went to his own quarters; his old manservant let him in and followed him with anxious looks into his study.
"You may go, Franz!" he said shortly and sharply. "I am not at home to anybody."
"And should Dr. Berger?"
"Berger?" He shook his head decidedly. Then he seemed to remember some one else. "I will see him," he said, drawing a deep breath.
The old man went out hesitatingly: Sendlingen was alone. But after a few minutes the voice of his friend was audible in the lobby, and Berger entered with a formidable bundle of documents under his arm.
"Well, how goes it now?" cried the portly man, still standing in the doorway. "Better, certainly, as you are going to preside to-morrow. Here are the papers."
He laid the bundle on the table and grasped Sendlingen's outstretched hand. "A mill-stone was rolled from my neck when the messenger came. In the first place, I knew you were better again, and secondly the chief object of my visit at noon to-day was attained without my own intervention."
"Did you come on that account?"
"Yes, Victor,--and not merely to greet you." The advocate's broad, open face grew very serious. "I wanted to draw your attention to to-morrow's trial, not only from motives of pity for the unfortunate girl, but also in the interests of Justice. Old Werner, who gets more and more impressed with the idea that he is combating the Revolution in every case of child-murder, is not the right Judge for this girl. 'There are cases,' once wrote an authority on criminal law, 'where a sentence of death accords with the letter of the law, but almost amounts to judicial murder.' I hope you will let this authority weigh with you, though you yourself are he. Now then, if Werner is put in a position to-morrow to carry out the practice to which he has accustomed himself in the last few weeks, we shall have one of these frightful cases."
Sendlingen made no reply. His limbs seemed to grow rigid and the beating of his heart threatened to stop. "How--how does the case stand?" he at length blurted out hoarsely and with great effort.
"Your voice is hoarse," remarked Berger innocently. "You must have caught cold on the journey. Well, as to the case." He settled himself comfortably in his chair. "It is only one of the usual, sad stories, but it moved me profoundly after I had seen and spoken to the poor wretch. Victorine Lippert is herself an illegitimate child and has never found out who her father was; even after her mother's death no hint of it was found among her possessions. As she was born in Radautz, a small town in the Bukowina, and as her mother was governess in the house of a Boyar, it is probable that she was seduced by one of these half-savages or perhaps even a victim to violence. I incline to the latter belief, because Hermine Lippert's subsequent mode of life and touching care for her child, are against the surmise that she was of thoughtless disposition. She settled in a small town in Styria and made a scanty living by music lessons. Forced by necessity, she hazarded the pious fraud of passing as a widow,--otherwise she and her child must have starved. After eight years a mere chance disclosed the deception and put an end to her life in the town. She was obliged to leave, but obtained a situation as companion to a kind-hearted lady in Buda-Pesth, and being now no longer able to keep her little daughter with her, she had her brought up at a school in Gratz. Mother and child saw one another only once a year, but kept up a most affectionate correspondence. Victorine was diligent in her studies, grave and accomplished beyond her years, and justified the hope that she would one day earn a livelihood by her abilities. This sad necessity came soon enough. She lost her mother when she was barely fifteen: the Hungarian lady paid her school fees for a short time, and then the orphan had to help herself. Her excellent testimonials procured her the post of governess in the family of the widowed Countess Riesner-Graskowitz at Graskowitz near Golotz. She had the charge of two small nieces of the Countess and was patient in her duties, in spite of the hardness of a harsh and utterly avaricious woman. In June of last year, her only son, Count Henry, came home for a lengthy visit."
Sendlingen sighed deeply and raised his hand.
"You divine the rest?" asked Berger. "And indeed it is not difficult to do so! The young man had just concluded his initiation into the diplomatic service at our Embassy in Paris, and was to have gone on to Munich in September as attaché. Naturally he felt bored in the lonely castle, and just as naturally he sought to banish his boredom by trying to seduce the wondrously beautiful, girlish governess. He heaped upon her letters full of glowing protestations--I mean to read some specimens to-morrow, and amongst them a valid promise of marriage--and the girl of seventeen was easily fooled. She liked the handsome, well-dressed fellow, believed in his love as a divine revelation and trusted in his oaths. You will spare me details, I fancy; this sort of thing has often happened."
"Often happened!" repeated Sendlingen mechanically, passing his hand over his eyes and forehead.
"Well to be brief! When the noble Count Henry saw that the girl was going to become a mother before she herself had any suspicion of it, he determined to entirely avoid any unpleasantness with his formidable mother, and had himself sent to St. Petersburg. Meantime a good-natured servant girl had explained her condition to the poor wretch and had faithfully comforted her in her boundless anguish of mind, and helped her to avoid discovery. Her piteous prayers to her lover remained unanswered. At length there came a letter--and this, too, I shall read to-morrow--in which the scoundrel forbade any further molestation and even threatened the law. And now picture the girl's despair when, almost at the same time, the countess discovered her secret,--whether by chance or by a letter of the brave count, is still uncertain. Certainly less from moral indignation than from fear of the expense, this noble lady was now guilty of the shocking brutality of having the poor creature driven out into the night by the men-servants of the house! It was a dark, cold, wet night in April: shaken with fever and weary to death, the poor wretch dragged herself towards the nearest village. She did not reach it; halfway, in a wood, some peasants from Graskowitz found her the next morning, unconscious. Beside her lay her dead, her murdered child."
Sendlingen groaned and buried his face in his hands.
"Her fate moves you?" asked Berger. "It is certainly piteous enough! The men brought her to the village and informed the police at Golotz. The preliminary examination took place the next day. It could only establish that the child had been strangled; it was impossible to take the depositions of the murderess: she was in the wildest delirium, and the prison-doctor expected her to die. But Fate," Berger rose and his voice trembled--"Fate was not so merciful. She recovered, and was sent first to Golotz and then brought here. She admitted that in the solitude of that dreadful night, overcome by her pains, forsaken of God and man, she formed the resolve to kill herself and the child--when and how she did the deed she could not say. I am persuaded that this is no lie, and I believe her affirmation that it was only unconsciousness that prevented her suicide. Doesn't that appear probable to you too?"
Sendlingen did not answer. "Probable," he at length muttered, "highly probable!"
Berger nodded. "Thus much," he continued, "is recorded in the judicial documents, and as all this is certainly enough to arouse sympathy, I went to see her as soon as the defence was allotted to me. Since that I have learnt more. I have learnt that a true and noble nature has been wrecked by the baseness of man. She must have been not only fascinatingly beautiful, but a character of unusual depth and purity. One can still see it, just as fragments of china enable us to guess the former beauty of a work of art. For this vessel is broken in pieces, and her one prayer to me was: not to hinder the sentence of death!... But I cannot grant this prayer," he concluded. "She must not die, were it only for Justice's sake! And a load is taken off my heart to think that a human being is to preside at the trial to-morrow, and not a rhetoric machine!"
He had spoken with increasing warmth, and with a conviction of spirit which this quiet, and indeed temperate man, seldom evinced.
His own emotion prevented him from noticing how peculiar was his friend's demeanour. Sendlingen sat there for a while motionless, his face still covered with his hands, and when he at length let them fall, he bowed his head so low that his forehead rested on the edge of the writing-table. In this position he at last blurted forth:
"I cannot preside to-morrow."
"Why not?" asked Berger in astonishment. "Are you really ill?" And as he gently raised his friend's head and looked into his worn face he cried out anxiously: "Why of course--you are in a fever."
Sendlingen shook his head. "I am quite well, George! But even if it cost me my life, I would not hand over this girl to the tender mercies of others, if only I dared. But I dare not!"
"Youdarenot!"
"The law forbids it!"
"The law? You are raving!"
"No! no!" cried the unhappy man springing up. "I would that I were either mad or dead, but such is not my good fortune! The law forbids it, for a father----"
"Victor!"
"Everything tallies, everything! The mother's name--the place--the year of birth--and her name is Victorine."
"Oh my God! She is your----"
"My daughter," cried the unfortunate wretch in piercing tones and then quite broke down.
Berger stood still for an instant as if paralysed by pity and amazement! Then he hurried to his friend, raised him and placed him in his arm-chair. "Keep calm!" he murmured. "Oh! it is frightful!... Take courage!... The poor child!" He was himself as if crushed by the weight of this terrible discovery.
Breathing heavily, Sendlingen lay there, his breast heaving convulsively; then he began to sob gently; far more piteously than words or tears, did these despairing, painfully subdued groans betray how exceedingly he suffered. Berger stood before him helplessly; he could think of no fitting words of comfort, and he knew that whatever he could say would be said in vain.
The door was suddenly opened loudly and noisily; old Franz had heard the bitter lamenting and could no longer rest in the lobby. "My Lord!" he screamed, darting to the sufferer. "My dear good master."
"Begone!" Sendlingen raised himself hastily. "Go, Franz--I beg!" he repeated, more gently.
But Franz did not budge. "We are in pain," he muttered, "and Fräulein Brigitta may not come in and I am sent away! What else is Franz in the world for?" He did not go until Berger by entreaties and gentle force pushed him out of the door.
Sendlingen nodded gratefully to his friend.
"Sit here," he said, pointing to a chair near his own. "Closer still--so! You must know all, if only for her sake! You shall have no shred of doubt as to whom you are defending to-morrow, and perhaps you may discover the expedient for which I have racked my brain in vain. And indeed I desire it on my own account. Since the moment I discovered it I feel as if I had lost everything. Everything--even myself! You are one of the most upright men I know; you shall judge me, George, and in the same way that you will defend this poor girl, with your noble heart and clear head. Perhaps you will decide that some other course is opened to me beside----"
He stopped and cast a timid glance at a small neat case that lay on his writing-table. Berger knew that it contained a revolver.
"Victor!" he cried angrily and almost revolted.
"Oh, if you knew what I suffer! But you are right, it would be contemptible. I dare not think of myself. I dare not slink out of the world. I have a duty to my child. I have neglected it long enough,--I must hold on now and pay my debt. Ah! how I felt only this morning, and now everything lies around me shivered to atoms. Forgive me, my poor brain can still form no clear thought! But--I will--I must. Listen, I will tell you, as if you were the Eternal Judge Himself, how everything came about."
After a pause he began: "I must first of all speak of myself and what I was like in those days. You have only known me for ten years: of my parents, of my childhood, you know scarcely anything. Mine was a frightful childhood, more full of venom and misery than a man can often have been condemned to endure. My parents' marriage--it was hell upon earth, George! In our profession we get to know many fearful things, but I have hardly since come across anything like it. How they came to be married, you know,--all the world knows. I am convinced that they never loved one another; her beauty pleased his senses, and his condescension may have flattered her. No matter! from the moment that they were indissolubly bound, they hated one another. It is difficult to decide with whom the fault began; perhaps it lay first of all at my father's door. Perhaps the common, low-born woman would have been grateful to him for having made her a Baroness and raised her to a higher rank in life, if only he had vouchsafed her a little patience and love. But he could not do that, he hated her as the cause of his misfortune, and she repaid him ten-fold in insult and abuse, and in holding him up, humbled enough already, to the derision and gossip of the little town.
"Betwixt these two people I grew up. I should have soon got to know the terms they were on even if they had striven anxiously to conceal them, but that they did not do. Or rather: he attempted to do so, and that was quite sufficient reason for her to drag me designedly into their quarrels, for she knew that this was a weapon wherewith to wound him deeply. And when she saw that he idolized me as any poor wretch does the last hope and joy that fate has left him, she hated me. On that account and on that account alone, she knew that every scolding, every blow, she gave me, cut him to the quick. No wonder that I hated and feared her, as much as I loved and honoured my father.
"What he had done I already accurately knew by the time I was a boy of six: he had married out of his rank and a Sendlingen might not do that! For doing so his father had disowned him, for doing so he had to go through life in trouble and misery, in a paltry hole and corner where the people mocked at his misfortune. My mother was our curse!--Oh, how I hated her for this, how by every fresh ill-usage at her hands, my heart was more and more filled with bitter rancour.
"You shudder, George?" he said stopping in his story. "This glimpse into a child's soul makes you tremble? Well--it is the truth, and you shall hear everything that happened.
"If I did not become wicked, I have to thank my father for it. I was diligent because it gave him pleasure. I was kind and attentive to people because he commanded it. He was often ill; what would have become of me if I had lost him then and grown up under my mother's scourge, I dare not think. I was spared this greatest evil: his protecting hand continued to be stretched out over me, and when we moved to Klagenfurth he began to live again. The intercourse with educated people revived him and he was once more full of hope and endeavour. My mother now began to be ill and a few months after our arrival she died. We neither of us rejoiced at her death, but what we felt as we stood by her open coffin was a sort of silent horror.
"And now came more happy days, but they did not last long. Mental torture had destroyed my father's vitality, and the rough mountain-climate had injured his lungs. The mild air of the plain seemed to restore him for a time, but then the treacherous disease broke out in all its virulence. He did not deceive himself about his condition, but he tried to confirm me in hope and succeeded in doing so. When, after a melancholy winter, in the first days of spring, his cough was easier and his cheeks took colour, I, like a thoughtless boy, shouted for joy,--he however knew that it was the bloom of death.
"And he acted accordingly. One May morning--I had just completed my fourteenth year--he came to my bed-side very early and told me to dress myself with all speed. 'We are going for an excursion,' he said. There was a carriage at the door. We drove through the slumbering town and towards the Wörther-see. It was a lovely morning, and my father was so affectionate--it seemed to me the happiest hour I had ever had! When we got to Maria Wörth, the carriage turned off from the lake-side and we proceeded towards the Tauer Mountains through a rocky valley, until we stopped at the foot of a hill crowned with a ruin. Slowly we climbed up the weed-grown path; every step cost the poor invalid effort and pain, but when I tried to dissuade him he only shook his head. 'It must be so!' he said, with a peculiarly earnest look. At length we reached the top. Of the old building, little remained standing except the outer walls and an arched gateway. 'Look up yonder,' he said, solemnly. 'Do you recognize that coat of arms?' It consisted of two swords and a St. Andrew's cross with stars in the field."
"Your arms?" asked Berger.
Sendlingen nodded. "They were the ruins of Sendlingen Castle, once our chief possession on Austrian soil. My father told me this, and began to recount old stories, how our ancestor was a cousin of Kaiser Conrad and had been a potentate of the Empire, holding lands in Franconia and Suabia, and how his grandson, a friend of one of the Hapsburgs, had come to Carinthia and there won fresh glory for the old arms. It was a beautiful and affecting moment,--at our feet the wild, lonely landscape, dreamily beautiful in the blue atmosphere of a spring day, no sound around us save the gentle murmur of the wind in the wild elder-trees, and with all this the tones of his earnest, enthusiastic voice. My father had never before spoken as he did then, and while he spoke, there rose before my eyes with palpable clearness the long line of honourable nobles who had all gloriously borne first the sword and then the ermine, and the more familiar their age and their names became, the higher beat my heart, the prouder were my thoughts and every thought was a vow to follow in their footsteps.
"My father may have guessed what was passing in my heart, he drew me tenderly to him, and as he told me of his own father, the first judge and nobleman of the land, tears started from his eyes. 'He was the last Sendlingen worthy of the name,' he concluded, 'the last!'
"'Father,' I sobbed, 'whatever I can and may do will be done, but you too will now have a better fate.'
"'I!' he broke in, 'I have lived miserably and shall die miserably! But I will not complain of my fate, if it serves as a warning to you. Listen to me, Victor, my life may be reckoned by weeks, perhaps by days, but if I know my cousins aright, they will not let you stand alone after my death. They will not forget that you are a Sendlingen, so long as you don't forget it yourself. And in order that you may continue mindful of it, I have brought you hither before I die! Unhappy children mature early; you have been in spite of all my love, a very unhappy child, Victor, and you have long since known exactly why my life went to pieces. Swear to me to keep this in mind and that you will be strict and honourable in your conduct, as a Sendlingen is in duty bound to be.'
"'I swear it!' I exclaimed amid my tears.
"'One thing more!' he continued, 'I must tell you, although you are still a boy, but I have short time to stay and better now than not at all! It is with regard to women. You will resist my temptations, I am sure. But if you meet a woman who is noble and good but yet not of your own rank, and if your heart is drawn to her, imperiously, irresistibly, so that it seems as if it would burst and break within your breast unless you win her, then fly from her, for no blessing can come of it but only curses for you both. Curses and remorse, Victor--believe your father who knows the world as it is.... Swear to me that you will never marry out of your rank!'
"'I swear it!' I repeated.
"'Well and good,' he said solemnly. 'Now I have fulfilled my duty and am ready ... let us go, Victor.'
"He was going to rise, but he had taxed his wasted lungs beyond their strength: he sank back and a stream of blood gushed from his lips. It was a frightful moment. There I stood, paralysed with fear, helpless, senseless, beside the bleeding man--and when I called for help, there was not a soul to hear me in that deep solitude. I had to look on while the blood gushed forth until my father utterly broke down. I thought he was dead but he had only fainted. A shepherd heard the cry with which I threw myself down beside him, he fetched the driver, they got us into the carriage and then to Klagenfurth. Two days later my poor father died."
He stopped and closed his eyes, then drew a deep breath and continued:
"You know what became of me afterwards. My dying father was not deceived in his confidence: the innocent boy, the last of the Sendlingens, was suddenly overwhelmed with favours and kindness. It was strange how this affected me, neither moving me, nor exalting, nor humbling me. Whatever kindness was done me, I received as my just due; it was not done to me, but to my race in requital for their services, and I had to make a return by showing myself worthy of that race. All my actions were rooted in this pride of family: seldom surely has a descendant of princes been more mightily possessed of it. If I strove with almost superhuman effort to fulfil all the hopes that were set on me at school, if I pitilessly suppressed every evil or low stirring of the heart, I owe it to this pride in my family: the Sendlingen had always been strong in knowledge, strict to themselves, just and good to others,--mustI not be the same? And if duty at times seemed too hard, my father's bitter fate rose before me like a terrifying spectre, and his white face of suffering was there as a pathetic admonition--both spurring me onward. But the same instinct too preserved me from all exultation now that praise and honour were flowing in upon me; it might be a merit for ordinary men to distinguish themselves, with a Sendlingen it was a duty!
"And so I continued all those years, first at school, then at the University, moderate, but a good companion, serious but not averse to innocent pleasures. I had a liking for the arts, I was foremost in the ball-room and in the Students' Réunions,--in one thing only I kept out of the run of pleasure: I had never had a love-affair. My father's warning terrified me, and so did that old saying: 'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel!' And however much travelling changed my views in the next few years, in this one thing I continued true to myself. Certainly this cost me no great struggle. Many a girl whom I had met in the society I frequented appeared lovable enough, but I had not fallen in love with any, much less with a girl not of my own rank, of whom I hardly knew even one.
"So I passed in this respect as an exemplary young man, too exemplary, some thought, and perhaps not without reason. But whoever had taken me at the time I entered upon my legal career, for an unfeeling calculator with a list of the competitors to be outstripped at all costs, in the place where other people carry a palpitating heart, would have done me a great injustice. I was ambitious, I strove for special promotion, not by shifts and wiles, but by special merit. And as to my heart,--oh! George, how soon I was to know what heart-ache was, and bliss and intoxication, and love and damnation!"
He rose, opened his writing-table, and felt for the secret drawer. But he did not open it; he shook his head and withdrew his hand. "It would be of no use," he murmured, and remained for awhile silently brooding.
"That was in the beginning of your career?" said Berger, to recall him.
"Yes," he answered. "It was more than twenty years ago, in the winter of 1832. I had just finished my year of probation at Lemburg under the eyes of the nearest and most affectionate of my relations, Count Warnberg, who was second in position among the judges there. He was an uncle, husband of my father's only sister. He had evinced the most cruel hardness to his brother-in-law, to me he became a second father. At his suggestion and in accordance with my own wish, I was promoted to be criminal Judge in the district of Suczawa. The post was considered one of the worst in the circuit, both my uncle and I thought it the best thing for me, because it was possible here within a very short time, to give conclusive proof of my ability. Such opportunities, however, were more abundant than the most zealous could desire: in those days there prevailed in the southern border-lands of the Bukowina, such a state of things as now exists only in the Balkan Provinces or in Albania. It was perhaps the most wretched post in the whole Empire, and in all other respects exceptionally difficult. The ancient town, once the capital of the Moldavian Princes, was at that time a mere confusion of crumbling ruins and poverty-stricken mud-cabins crowded with dirty, half-brutalized Roumanians, Jews and Armenians. Moreover my only colleague in the place was the civil judge, a ruined man, whom I had never seen sober. My only alternative therefore was either to live like an anchorite, or to go about among the aristocracy of the neighborhood.
"When I got to know these noble Boyars, the most educated of them ten times more ignorant, the most refined ten times more coarse, the most civilized ten times more unbridled than the most ignorant, the coarsest and the most unbridled squireen of the West, I had no difficulty in choosing: I buried myself in my books and papers. But man is a gregarious animal--and I was so young and spoiled, and so much in need of distraction from the comfortless impressions of the day, that I grew weary after a few weeks and began to accept invitations. The entertainments were always the same: first there was inordinate eating, then inordinate drinking, and then they played hazard till all hours. As I remained sober and never touched a card, I was soon voted a wearisome, insupportable bore. Even the ladies were of this opinion, for I neither made pretty speeches, nor would I understand the looks with which they sometimes favoured me. That I none the less received daily invitations was not to be wondered at; a real live Baron of the Empire was, whatever he might be, a rare ornament for their 'salons,' and to many of these worthy noblemen it seemed desirable in any case to be on a good footing with the Criminal Judge.
"One of them had particular reason for this, Alexander von Mirescul, a Roumanianised Greek; his property lay close to the Moldavian frontier and passed for the head-quarters of the trade in tobacco smuggling. He was not to be found out, and when I saw him for the first time, I realized that that would be a difficult business; the little man with his yellow, unctuous face seemed as if he consisted not of flesh and bone, but of condensed oil. It was in his voice and manner. He was manifestly much better educated and better mannered than the rest, as he was also much more cunning and contemptible. I did not get rid of this first impression for a long while, but at length he managed to get me into his house; I gradually became more favourable to him as he was, in one respect at least, an agreeable exception; he was a tolerably educated man, his daughters were being brought up by a German governess and he had a library of German books which he really read. I had such a longing for the atmosphere of an educated household that one evening I went to see him.
"This evening influenced years of my life, or rather, as I have learnt to-day, my whole life. I am no liar, George, and no fanciful dreamer, it is the literal truth: I loved this girl from the first instant that I beheld her."
Berger looked up in astonishment.
"From the first instant," Sendlingen repeated, and he struggled with all speed through his next words.
"I entered, Mirescul welcomed me: my eye swept over black and grey heads, over well-known, sharp-featured, olive-faces. Only one was unknown to me: the face of an exquisitely beautiful girl encircled by heavy, silver-blond, plaited hair. Her slender, supple figure was turned away from me, I could only see her profile; it was not quite regular, the forehead was too high, the chin too peculiarly prominent; I saw all that, and yet I seemed as if I had never seen a girl more beautiful and my heart began to beat passionately. I had to tear my looks away, and talk to the lady of the house, but then I stared again, as if possessed, at the beautiful, white unknown who stood shyly in a corner gazing out into the night. 'Our governess, Fräulein Lippert,' said Frau von Mirescul, quietly smiling as she followed the direction of my looks.
"'I know,' I answered nervously, almost impatiently; I had guessed that at once. Frau von Mirescul looked at me with astonishment, but I had risen and hurried over to the lonely girl: one of the most insolent of the company, the little bald Popowicz, had approached her. I was, afraid that he might wound her by some insulting speech. How should this poor, pale, timorous child defend herself alone against such a man? He had leant over her and was whispering something with his insolent smile, but the next instant he started back as if hurled against the wall by an invisible hand, and yet it was only a look of those gentle, veiled, grey eyes, now fixed in such a cold, hard stare that I trembled as they rested on me. But they remained fixed upon me and suddenly became again so pathetically anxious and helpless.
"At length I was beside her: I no longer required to defend her from the elderly scamp, he had disappeared. I could only offer her my hand and ask: 'Did that brute insult you?' But she took my hand and held it tight as if she must otherwise have fallen, her eyelids closed in an effort to keep back her tears. 'Thank you,' she stammered. 'You are a German, are you not Baron Sendlingen? I guessed as much when you came in! Oh if you knew!'
"But I do know all, I know what she suffers in this 'salon,' and now we begin to talk of our life among these people and our conversation flows on as if it had been interrupted yesterday. We hardly need words: I understand every sigh that comes from those small lips at other times so tightly closed, she, every glance that I cast upon the assembly. But my glances are only fugitive for I prefer looking straight into that beautiful face so sweetly and gently attractive, although the mouth and chin speak of such firm determination. She often changes colour, but it is more wonderful that I am at times suddenly crippled by the same embarrassment, while at the next moment I feel as if my heart has at length reached home after years and years,--perhaps a life-time's sojourn in a chill strange land.
"An hour or more passed thus. We did not notice it; we did not suspect how much our demeanour surprised the others until Mirescul approached and asked me to take his wife in to supper. We went in; Hermine was not there. 'Fräulein Hermine usually retires even earlier,' remarked Frau von Mirescul with the same smile as before. I understood her, and with difficulty suppressed a bitter reply: naturally this girl of inferior rank, whose father had only been a schoolmaster, was unworthy of the society of cattle-merchants, horse-dealers and slave-drivers whose fathers had been ennobled by Kaiser Franz!
"After supper I took my leave. Mirescul hoped to see me soon again and I eagerly promised: 'As soon as possible.' And while I drove home through the snow-lit winter's night, I kept repeating these words, for how was I henceforth to live without seeing her?"
"After the first evening?" said Berger, shaking his head. "That was like a disease!"
"It was like a fatality!" cried Sendlingen. "And how is it to be explained? I do not know! I wanted at first to show you her likeness, but I have not done so, for however beautiful she may have been, her beauty does not unsolve the riddle. I had met girls equally beautiful, equally full of character before, without taking fire. Was it because I met her in surroundings which threw into sharpest relief all that was most charming in her, because I was lonelier than I had ever been before, because I at once knew that she shared my feelings? Then besides, I had not as a young fellow lived at high pressure. I had not squandered my heart's power of loving; the later the passion of love entered my life, the stronger, the deeper would be its hold upon me.
"Reasons like these may perhaps satisfy you; me they do not. He who has himself not experienced a miracle, but learns of it on the report of another, will gladly enough accept a natural explanation; but to him whose senses it has blinded, whose heart it has convulsed, to him it remains a miracle, because it is the only possible conception of the strange, overmastering feelings of such a moment. When I think of those days and how she and I felt--no words can tell, no subtlest speculation explain it. Look at it as you may, I will content myself by simply narrating the facts.
"And it is a fact that from that evening I was completely metamorphosed. For two days I forced myself to do my regular duties, on the third I went to Oronesti, to Mirescul's. The fellow was too cunning to betray his astonishment, he brimmed over with pleasure and suggested a drive in sleighs, and as the big sleigh was broken we had to go in couples in small ones, I with Hermine. This arrangement was evident enough, but how could I show surprise at what made me so blessed? Even Hermine was only startled for a moment and then, like me, gave herself up unreservedly to her feelings.
"And so it was in all our intercourse in the next two weeks. We talked a great deal and between whiles there were long silences; perhaps these blissful moments of speechlessness were precisely the most beautiful. During those days I scarcely touched her hand: we did not kiss one another, we did not speak of our hearts: the simple consciousness of our love was enough. It was not the presence of others that kept us within these bounds; we were much alone; Mirescul took care of that."
"And did that never occur to you?" asked Berger.
"Yes, at times, but in a way that may be highly significant of the spell under which my soul and senses laboured at the time. A man in a mesmeric trance distinctly feels the prick of a needle in his arm; he knows that he is being hurt; but he has lost his sense of pain. In some such way I looked upon Mirescul's friendliness as an insult and a danger, but my whole being was so filled with fantastic, feverish bliss that no sensation of pain could have penetrated my consciousness."
"And did you never think what would come of this?"
"No, I could swear to it, never! I speculated as little about my love, as the first man about his life: he was on the earth to breathe and to be happy; of death he knew nothing. And she was just the same; I know it from her letters later, at that time we did not write. And so we lived on, in a dream, in exaltation, without a thought of the morrow."
"It must have been a cruel awakening," said Berger.
"Frightful, it was frightful!" He spoke with difficulty, and his looks were veiled. "Immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, happiness was succeeded by misery, the most intoxicating happiness by the most lamentable, hideous misery.... One stormy night in March I had had to stay at Mirescul's because my horses were taken ill, very likely through the food which Mirescul had given them.... I was given a room next to Hermine's.
"On the next day but one--I was in my office at the time--the customs superintendent of the neighbouring border district entered the room. He was a sturdy, honourable greybeard, who had once been a Captain in the army. 'We have caught the rascal at last,' he announced. 'He has suddenly forgotten his usual caution. We took him to-night in the act of unloading 100 bales of tobacco at his warehouses. Here he is!'
"Mirescul entered, ushered in by two of the frontier guards.
"'My dear friend!' he cried. 'I have come to complain of an unheard-of act of violence!'
"I stared at him, speechless; had he not the right to call me his friend,--how often had I not called him friend in the last few weeks.
"'Send these men away.' I was dumb. The superintendent looked at me in amazement. I nodded silently, he shrugged his shoulders and left the room with his officials. 'The long and the short of it is,' said Mirescul, 'that my arrest was a misunderstanding: the officials can be let off with a caution!'
"'The matter must first be inquired into,' I answered at length.
"'Among friends one's word is enough.'
"'Duty comes before friendship.'
"'Then you take a different view of it from what I do,' he answered coming still closer to me. 'It would have been my duty to protect the honour of a respectable girl living in my house as a member of the family. It would now be my duty to drive your mistress in disgrace and dishonour from my doors. I sacrifice this duty to my friendship!'
"Ah, how the words cut me! I can feel it yet, but I cannot yet describe it. He went, and I was alone with my wild remorse and helpless misery."
Sendlingen rose and walked up and down excitedly. Then he stood still in front of his friend.
"That was the heaviest hour of my life, George--excepting the present. A man may perhaps feel as helpless who is suddenly struck blind. The worst torture of all was doubt in my beloved; the hideous suspicion that she might have been a conscious tool in the hands of this villain. And even when I stifled this thought, what abominations there were besides! I should act disgracefully if for her sake I neglected my duty, disgracefully if I heartlessly abandoned her to the vengeance of this man! She had a claim upon me--could I make her my wife? My oath to my dying father bound me, and still more, even though I did not like to admit it, my ambition, my whole existence as it had been until I knew her. My father's fate--my future ruined--may a man fight against himself in this way? Still--'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel'--and how altogether differently this saying affected me compared to my father! He had only an offence to expiate, I had a sacred duty to fulfil: he perhaps had only to reproach himself with thoughtlessness--but I with dishonour.
"And did I really love her? It is incomprehensible to me now how I could ever have questioned it, how I could ever have had those hideous doubts: perhaps my nature was unconsciously revenging herself for the strange, overpowering compulsion laid on her in the last few weeks, perhaps since everything, even the ugliest things, had appeared beautiful and harmonious in my dream, perhaps it was natural, now that my heart had been so rudely shaken, that even the most beautiful things should appear ugly. Perhaps--for who knows himself and his own heart?
"Enough! this is how I felt on that day and on the night of that day. Oh! how I writhed and suffered! But when at last the faint red light of early morning peeped in at my window, I was resolved. I would do my duty as a judge and a man of honour: I would have Mirescul imprisoned, I would make Hermine my wife. I no longer had doubts about her or my love, but even if it had not been so, my conscience compelled me to act thus and not otherwise, without regard to the hopes of my life.
"I went to my chambers almost before it was day, had the clerk roused from bed and dictated the record of the superintendent's information and a citation to the latter. Then I wrote a few lines to Hermine, begging her to leave Mirescul's house at once and to come to me. 'Trust in God and me,' I concluded. This letter I sent with my carriage to Oronesti; two hours later I myself intended to set out to the place with gendarmes to search the house and arrest Mirescul. But a few minutes after my coachman had left the court, the Jewish waiter from the hotel of the little town brought me a letter from my dear one. 'I have been here since midnight and am expecting you.' The lady looked very unwell, added the messenger compassionately, and was no doubt ill.
"I hastened to her. When she came towards me in the little room with tottering steps, my heart stood still from pity and fear; shame, remorse and despair--what ravages in her fresh beauty had they not caused in this short space? I opened my arms and with a cry she sank on my breast. 'God is merciful,' she sobbed. 'You do not despise me because I have loved you more than myself: so I will not complain.'
"Then she told me how Mirescul--she had kept her room for the two last days for it seemed to her as if she could never look anyone in the face again--had compelled her to grant him an interview yesterday evening. He requested her to write begging me to take no steps against him, otherwise he would expose and ruin us both. 'Oh, how hateful it was!' she cried out, with a shudder. 'It seemed to me as if I should never survive the ignominy of that hour. But I composed myself; whatever was to become of me, you should not break your oath as Judge. I told him that I would not write the letter, that I would leave his house at once, and when he showed signs of detaining me by force, I threatened to kill myself that night. Then he let me go,--and now do you decide my fate: is it to be life or death!'
"'You shall live, my wife,' I swore, 'you shall live for me.'
"'I believe you,' said she, 'but it is difficult. Oh! can perfect happiness ever come from what has been so hideously disfigured!'
"I comforted her as well as I could, for my heart gave utterance to the same piteous question.
"Then we took counsel about the future; she could not remain in Suczawa: we could see what vulgar gossip there would be even without this. So we resolved that she should go to the nearest large town, to Czernowitz, and wait there till our speedy marriage. With that we parted: it was to have been a separation for weeks and it proved to be for a lifetime: I never saw the unhappy girl again.
"How did it come about that I broke my oath? There is no justification for it, at best but an explanation. I do not want to defend myself before you any more than I have done: I am only confessing to you as I would to a priest if I were a believer in the Church.
"A stroke of fate struck me in that hour of my growth, I might have overcome it but now came its pricks and stabs. When I left Hermine to return to my chambers, I met the customs superintendent. I greeted him. 'Have you received my citation?' I asked. He looked at me contemptuously and passed on without answering. 'What does this mean?' cried I angrily, catching hold of his arm.
"'It means,' he replied, shaking himself loose, 'that in future I shall only speak to you, even on official matters, when my duty obliges me. That, for a time, is no longer necessary. You released Mirescul yesterday, you did not record my depositions. Both were contrary to your duty: I have advised my superiors in the matter and await their commands.'
"He passed on; I remained rooted to the spot a long while like one struck down; the honourable man was quite right!
"But I roused myself; now at least I would neglect my duty no longer. Scarcely, however, had I got back to my chambers, when my colleague, the Civil-Judge entered; he was as usual not quite sober, but it was early in the day and he had sufficient control of his tongue to insult me roundly. 'So you are really going to Oronesti,' he began. 'I should advise you not, the manœuvre is too patent. After twenty-four hours nothing will be found, as we set about searching the house just to show our good intentions--eh?'
"'I don't require to be taught by you,' I cried flaring up.
"'Oh, but, perhaps you do, though!' he replied. 'I might for instance teach you something about the danger of little German blondes. But--as you like--I wish you every success!'
"Smarting under these sensations, I drove to Oronesti. Mirescul met me in the most brazen-faced way; he protested against such inroads undertaken from motives of personal revenge. And he added this further protest to his formal deposition; he would submit to examination at the hands of any Judge but me who had yesterday testified that the accusation was a mistake and promised to punish the customs officials, and to-day suddenly appeared on the scene with gendarmes. Between yesterday and to-day nothing had happened except that he had turned my mistress out of his house, and surely this act of domestic propriety could not establish his guilt as a smuggler. You know, George, that I was obliged to take down his protest--but with what sensations!
"The search brought to light nothing suspicious; the servants, carters, and peasants whom I examined had all been evidently well-drilled beforehand. I had to have Mirescul arrested: were there not the bales of tobacco which the superintendent had seized? Not having the ordinary means of transit at night, he had had them temporarily stored in one of the parish buildings at Oronesti under the care of two officials. I now had them brought at once to the town.
"When I got back to my chambers in the evening and thought over the events of this accursed day, and read over the depositions in which my honour and my bride's honour were dragged in the mire, I had not a single consolation left except perhaps this solitary one, that my neglect would not hinder the course of justice, for the smuggled wares would clearly prove the wretch's guilt.
"But even this comfort was to be denied me. The next morning Mirescul's solicitor called on me and demanded an immediate examination of the bales: his client, he said, maintained that they did not contain smuggled tobacco from Moldavia, but leaf tobacco of the country grown by himself and other planters, and which he was about to prepare for the state factories. The request was quite legitimate; I at once summoned the customs superintendent as being an expert; the old man appeared, gruffly made over the documents to my keeping and accompanied us to the cellars of the Court house where the confiscated goods had been stored. When his eye fell on them he started back indignantly, pale with anger: 'Scandalous!' he cried, 'unheard of! These bales are much smaller--they have been changed!'
"'How is it possible?'
"'You know that better than I do,' he answered grimly.
"The bales were opened; they really contained tobacco in the leaf. My brain whirled. After I had with difficulty composed myself, I examined the two officials who had watched the goods at Oronesti; the exchange could only have been effected there; the men protested their innocence; they had done their duty to the best of their ability; certainly this was the third night which they had kept watch although the Superintendent, before hurrying to the town, had promised to release them within a few hours. This too I had to take down; the proof namely that my hesitation in doing my duty had not been without harm. And now my conscience forbade me to arrest Mirescul, although by not doing so, I only made my case worse.
"So things stood when two days later an official from Czernowitz circuit arrived in Suczawa to inquire into the case. You know him George; he was a relation of yours, Matthias Berger, an honest, conscientious man. 'Grave accusations have been made against you,' he explained, 'by Mirescul's solicitor, by the Civil Judge and by the Customs Superintendent, But they contradict each other: I still firmly believe in your innocence: tell me the whole truth.'
"But that I could not do: I could not be the means of dragging my bride's name into legal documents, even if I were otherwise to be utterly ruined. So in answer to the questions why I had delayed twenty-four hours, I could only answer that an overwhelming private matter had deprived me of the physical strength to attend to my duties. With regard to Hermine, I refused to answer any questions. Berger shook his head sadly; he was sorry for me, but he could not help me. He must suspend me from my functions while the inquiry lasted and appoint a substitute from Czernowitz: moreover he exacted an oath from me not to leave the place without permission of the Court. Mirescul was let out on bail.
"A fortnight went by. It clings to my memory like an eternity of grief and misery. I have told you what I strove for and hoped for, you will be able to judge how I suffered. Four weeks before I was one of the most rising officers of the State: now I was a prisoner on parole, oppressed by the scorn and spite of men, held up to the ignominy of all eyes. I dared hope nothing from my relations, least of all from my uncle, Count Warnberg: I knew that he would not save me so that I might marry a governess about whom--Mirescul and his friends took care of that--there were the ugliest reports in circulation. And you will consider it human, conceivable, that every letter of Hermine's was a stab in my heart.
"She wrote daily. When she spoke of her feelings during our brief span of joy, it seemed to me as if she depicted my own innermost experiences. This at least gave me the consolation of knowing that I was not tied to an unworthy woman: but the bonds were none the less galling and cut into the heart of my life. Only rarely, very gently, and therefore with a twofold pathos, did she complain of her fate; but her grief on my account was wild and passionate; she had heard of my plight but not through me. I sought to comfort her as well as I might; but ah me! there was no word of release or deliverance: how could I have broached it, how have claimed it from her?
"One day there came her usual letter; it was written with a visibly trembling hand. My uncle had been to see her; he was hurrying from Lemberg in great anxiety to see me, and had stopped at Czernowitz to treat with her of the price for which she would release me. In every line there was the deepest pathos; she had shown him the door.
"'He will implore you to leave me,' she concluded; 'act as your conscience bids you. And I will tell you something that I refused to tell Count Warnberg; he asked me whether I had another, a more sacred claim upon you. I don't know, Victor, but as I understand our bond in which I live and suffer, that does not affect it; if you will not make me your wife for my own sake, neither could regard for the mother of your child be binding on you!'
"Two hours after I received this letter, my uncle arrived. I was terrified at the sight of him, his face was so dark, and hard, and strange. My father had once said to me shortly before his death: 'Take care never to turn that iron hand against you; it would crush you as it has crushed me.' I had never before understood these words, indeed I had completely forgotten them, but now they came back to me and I understood them before my uncle opened his mouth.
"'Tell your story,' he began, and his voice sounded to me as if I had never heard it before. 'Tell the whole truth. This at least I expect of you. You surely don't wish to sink lower than--than another member of your family. A Sendlingen has at all events never lied! Now tell your story.'
"I obeyed: he was told what you have just been told, though no doubt it sounded different; confused, passionate and scarcely intelligible. But he understood it; he had no single question to ask after I had finished.
"'The same story as before,' he said, 'but uglier, much uglier. The father only sullied his coat of arms, the son his judge's honour as well.'
"I fired up. I tried to defend myself, he would not allow it. 'Tirades serve no good purpose,' he said, coldly. 'You wish to convince me that you were not in criminal collusion with Mirescul? I have never thought so. That he is really guilty and can be convicted in spite of your neglect of duty? I have been through the papers and have just cross-examined the customs superintendent. The police are already on the way to re-arrest him; he will be put in prison. But your fault will be none the less in consequence; if there is no lasting stigma on the administration of justice, there is upon your honour. Your conduct in this man's house, your hesitation,--it would be bad for you if you had to suffer what you have merited! According to justice and the laws, your fate is sealed; it is only a question whether you will prove yourself worthy of pardon and pity!'
"'In anything that you may ask,' I answered, 'except only in one thing: Hermine is to be my wife. A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel.'
"He drew himself up to his full height and stepped close up to me. 'Now listen to me, Victor, I will be brief and explicit. Whether you stain your honour by marrying this girl, or whether you do so by not marrying her, the all-just God above us knows. We, His creatures, can only judge according to our knowledge and conscience, and in my judgment, the girl is unworthy of you. In this matter there is your conviction against my conviction. But what I do know better than you is, that this marriage would load you with ignominy before the whole world! You will perhaps answer: better the contempt of others than self-contempt, but that is not the question. If you marry this girl, I am as sure as I am of my existence, that you will soon be ashamed of it, not only before others but in your own heart. For pure happiness could not come of such a beginning--it is impossible. The gossip of the world, the ruin of your hopes, would poison your mind and hers,--you would be wretched yourself and make her wretched, and would at length become bad and miserable. The man who forgets his duty to himself and to the world for a matter of weeks and then recovers himself, is worthy of commiseration and help; but he who is guilty of a moral suicide deserves no pity. And therefore listen to me and choose. If you marry this girl your subsequent fate is indifferent to me; you will very likely be stripped of your office; or in the most favourable event, transferred, by way of punishment, to some out of the way place where your father's fate may be repeated in you. If you give her up you may still be saved, for yourself, for our family and for the State: then I will do for you, what my conscience would allow me to do for any subordinate of whose sincere repentance I was convinced, and I will intercede for the Emperor's pardon as if you were my own son. To-morrow I return to Lemberg, whether alone or with you--you must decide by to-morrow.' He went."
Sendlingen paused. "How I struggled with myself," he began again, but his voice failed him, until at length he gasped forth with hollow voice and trembling lips: "Oh! what a night it was! The next morning I wrote a farewell letter to Hermine, and started with Count Warnberg to Lemberg."
Then there followed a long silence. At length Berger asked: "You did not know that she bore your child in her bosom?"
"No, I know it to-day for the first time. In that last letter of mine I had offered her a maintenance: she declined it at once. Then I left that part of the country. A few months later I inquired after her; I could only learn that she had disappeared without leaving a trace. And then I forgot her, I considered that all was blotted out and washed away like writing from a slate, and rarely, very rarely, in the dusk, or in a sleepless night, did the strange reminiscence recur to me. But Fate keeps a good reckoning--O George! I would I were dead!"
"No, no!" said Berger with gentle reproof. He was deeply moved, his eyes glistened with tears, but he constrained himself to be composed. "Thank God, you are alive and willing, and I trust able to pay your debt. How great this debt may be--or how slight--I will not determine. Only one thing I do know: you are, in spite of all, worthy of the love and esteem of men, even of the best men, of better men than I am. When I think of it all; your life up to that event and what it has been since, what you have made of your life for yourself and others, then indeed it overcomes me and I feel as if I had never known a fate among the children of men more worthy of the purest pity. This is no mere sad fate, it is a tragic one. Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry, no petty concealments or prevarications will be of avail. You say it is against your feelings to preside at to-morrow's trial?"
"Yes," replied Sendlingen. "It seems to me both cowardly and dishonourable; cowardly, to sacrifice the law instead of myself, dishonourable to break my Judge's oath! But I shrink from doing so for another reason; an offence should not be expiated by an injustice; I dread the all-just Fates."
"I cannot gainsay you," said Berger rising. "But in this one thing we are agreed. Let us wait for the verdict, and then we will consider what your duty is. It is long past midnight, the trial will begin in seven hours. I will try and get some sleep. I shall need all my strength to-morrow. Follow my example, Victor, perhaps sleep may be merciful to you."
He seized his friend's hands and held them affectionately in his; his feelings again threatened to overcome him and he hastily left the room with a choking farewell on his lips.
Sendlingen was alone. After brooding awhile, he again went to the secret drawer of his writing-table. At this moment the old servant entered. "We will go to bed now," he said. "We will do it out of pity for ourselves, and Fräulein Brigitta, and me!"
His look and tone were so beseeching that Sendlingen could not refuse him. He suffered himself to be undressed, put out the lamp, and closed his eyes. But sleep refused to visit his burning lids.