A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen

CHAPTER XXX

AN OLD FRIEND ONCE MORE

A year and a half had passed since Johanna first went to live in 'Terrace-Cottage,' near the Kahlenberg Thor. It was the close of a gray December day; she could not see to write any longer. She rose from the table, and went to the window to read by the fading light, in a famous South German periodical brought her by Dr. Wolf, a favourable criticism of her book, which had recently appeared. As she read, she was both pleased and grieved. Where were all those in whose hearts her own joy might have found an echo?

But the next moment she raised her head, and brushed away her tears. Had she not reason to be glad and grateful? "Indeed I have," she said to herself. And as she gazed out in the twilight upon the gleaming expanse of snow, she reviewed in spirit all that life had brought her here.

First of all there was a long series of apparently monotonous, but in reality very beneficial, days of hard work, in which the joy and pain of her creative fancy had worn away her heart-ache, until there had come an hour which she never should forget.

It was in harvest; she was walking just after sunset beside a hedge-row. White gossamers floated in the clear air; all around her there was absolute silence. Suddenly a joyous note rang out from far above her. It was a belated lark. She looked up, surprised, and in that very moment she had the sudden consciousness of relief and freedom which had so long been unknown to her. Since then she had been able to think of Otto, without bitterness, as of an entire stranger. She still had a sense of having lost something fair and sweet; but her inmost self was untouched, her true life undisturbed.

Thus restored to mental health, she had learned to rejoice in her new existence, in her work for its own sake, in her gradual improvement and success, and the result which she achieved. Many an acknowledgment, many a word of encouragement, many a kindly salutation, had reached her in her solitude, and had given her the assurance that she had not written in vain.

And how her very heart and soul had been fed by Lisbeth's love, and the child's health and progress! When the terrible news had come from Brussels, the little one had cried bitterly for her dear pretty mamma, whom she should never see again. But childhood's tears are soon dried; Lisbeth soon smiled through hers. Her new home became her world, and every one in the house petted and loved the little orphan.

Johanna, however, was the dearest confidante of her childish heart, and an evening walk with her through the silent fields, the hour of quiet talk before she went to bed, the tête-à-tête of the sisters at their early breakfast, were Lisbeth's cherished enjoyments.

Johanna's hope that the child would be left solely to her care had been fulfilled. Batti had written only once after his first outpouring of despair and grief. He had then sent trunks full of expensive dresses, etc., to be kept for Lisbeth; and since no word had come from him. Johanna saw in the newspaper that he had passed the winter in Paris instead of St. Petersburg, and that was all that she knew, and even more than she wished to know, concerning him. She did not conceal from herself for a moment the magnitude of the responsibility which thus devolved upon her; but she felt strong and capable. She wrote upon her blotting-book the homely old motto, —

Thus far it had been given to her, and she would always heed Goethe's admonition, "Go to work and help yourself for the present, and hope and trust in God for the future."

And yet, in spite of all that she possessed, and most frequently when she was vividly conscious of how much this was, she was tormented by a painful sense of deprivation. Her intercourse with the members of the household was most friendly. Dr. Wolf visited her frequently, was her faithful adviser, brought her books and periodicals, intellectual food of all kinds; but with increasing hunger she longed for Aunt Thekla's maternal care, the society of her grandfather, and Ludwig's faithful, honest affection.

She never allowed herself any indulgence in this species of home-sickness; and now, as always when it attacked her, she strove to distract her thoughts; she would call Lisbeth, who was playing with the 'little ones,' and she had just opened her own door to do so, when the landing-door was hastily flung wide.

Involuntarily she stood still. The dogs barked, the door-bell rang violently with the shock, and a man addressed a question to her from the gathering darkness. She did not understand it, but she knew the voice.

"Ludwig!" she almost screamed, and the next moment she was clasped in his arms.

And then came the 'little ones' with the dogs and a light, to see what was the matter. Their shouts brought the rest of the family. There were delight, surprise, tears, and laughter. Dear Dr. Werner was conducted to the drawing-room in triumph, and there he sat beneath the hanging-lamp, to be gazed at by all. How brown he had grown! and how much darker were his hair and beard! His eyes, on the contrary, looked lighter. Sanna asked if the Indian sun had not faded them a little.

How strange that he had been in India, and yet here he was in Hanover, sitting at their little round table just as he had sat there three years ago! Thus the 'little ones' chattered on, learning, in answer to their questions, that he had just come from London, and was going to spend his Christmas at Lindenbad, whilst the older sisters consulted as to what should be served for supper in honour of their guest, and regretted that this was their father's glee-club evening. The poor mother's thoughts were filled with her lost darling, and Lisbeth stood in the background, with her arm about Johanna's neck, eying with some suspicion this stranger who called her sister 'Johanna' and seemed so glad to see her.

She would have remained at her post when Frau Rupprecht called her children from the room to give the foster-brother and sister an opportunity for a quiet talk, but Jetta carried her off without more ado.

"At last!" cried Ludwig, holding out both hands to Johanna, and then words seemed to fail him for what he wanted to say.

After a pause, Johanna asked, "Did you come to see me or the Rupprechts? I mean, did you know that I was here?"

"Yes, I have known it for a few days," he replied; and he added, with a gloomy air, and in his old harsh tone, "Bad enough it was to have to hear it from strangers. Why did you never write to me?"

"I could not!"

"You could not!" he repeated, and his lips quivered. Neither spoke. How they had longed for this meeting, and now – What still separated them? Suddenly Ludwig laughed derisively: "A game of hide-and-seek. I sit, absorbed in my work in London, supposing you married, and asking no further questions, and Johann Leopold imagines I know everything from yourself. And did you never write to Lindenbad?"

She shook her head. "My correspondence with Mathilde had languished for a long time, and I do not like to complain," she said. He took her words as a hint, and said, evasively, "Let me tell you how I discovered you. On a visit to a patient – I do not practise usually, but I could not refuse the urgent request of a few of my countrymen – I found her full of delight in a German book which she had just read. She showed me the title-page. The odd motto reminded me of you: 'Do thou but begin the weaving, God the yarn will aye be giving.' Do you remember how we quarrelled over it once? As I was recollecting this, I turned over the leaves mechanically. I seemed to recognize your manner of speech, your way of looking at men and things. Yes, there was Lindenbad, and even the garden-gate from which we have so often watched the sunset with my blessed mother. I took the book home with me, and read it steadily until I had finished it —I reading a woman's romance! And as I laid it aside I said to myself, 'Either she wrote it, or there exists somewhere her twin mind.' This was interesting psychologically. You can guess the rest. Day before yesterday I received an answer from your publisher. And now it is your turn to tell what you wish to. Only what you wish to," he added, with some bitterness. "I know that the old right is no longer mine, and I do not lay claim to it."

His last sentence hurt Johanna, and closed her heart and her lips. She gave him only the outlines of all that she had passed through. Ludwig supposed that it pained her too much to dwell upon it. Thus they still played 'hide-and-seek' with each other, and when they were no longer alone, Johanna scarcely knew whether to rejoice in their meeting again.

The next morning Ludwig was to leave Hanover: he was expected in Lindenbad; but he came early to Terrace-Cottage, knocked at Johanna's door, and found her alone.

"Now it is your turn to give an account of yourself," said Johanna, after the first salutations. And he told her, in his old, familiar way, of his travels, his researches, his work and its results. More than all it seemed to delight him that he had lately been proffered a chair in a German university. Johanna asked if he should accept it.

"I do not know; it depends," he replied, with some hesitation. "But enough of myself. I think you are changed; it strikes me to-day, by daylight, for the first time. You are pale, you look weary. Have you been ill?"

She shook her head.

"Then you work too much, you take too little exercise." And, with a glance toward her writing-table, he added, "How did you happen upon authorship? I cannot understand it."

"Recollect how I always loved to 'make up' stories," Johanna replied. "The love grew with my years. Thank God that it was so! My desire to go upon the stage was only a misconception of my task."

"Task?" he repeated. "You do not believe that anything, save the force of outward circumstances, drove you to write? Do not deceive yourself – "

"Most assuredly I do believe it!" she interrupted him, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure. "The longing for some little corner of the earth in which I could plant my flowers was there long before necessity forced me to labour; and then, when the crash came both in my outward and my inner life, the talent which I possessed supplied the place of home and friends and love, or rather, let me say, restored them to me; for all of these that I had ever possessed came back to me in the creations of my imagination."

Ludwig sat with downcast eyes, silent, his forehead contracted in a frown.

"Do not look so stern!" Johanna said. "I am my father's daughter; and if I have inherited only an atom of his grand artistic gift, I must receive it as the one talent intrusted to me, and trade with it as did the servant who was faithful in a few things."

Ludwig knew and loved the low, trembling tone in which the last words were spoken. And her eyes, too, shone as in their old youthful days. With a gentler expression he rejoined, "We'll say no more of that; it really is in your blood. Opposition is useless. Only one question: What did the Dönninghausens say to it?"

"They knew nothing about it," replied Johanna. "Sometimes, since my book has been so well received, I have thought it might have pleased them."

Ludwig did not appear to have heard the last part of her reply. "Your writing, then, was not the cause of your break with Otto?" he asked.

"No; Otto did not love me, – he never loved me, – I had proof of that," she replied. "Of course I tell this only to you. Grandpapa never would forgive Otto."

"Otto, Otto, always Otto!" thought Ludwig, as he rose. "I must go," he said; but when Johanna took the hand he held out to her, he seemed absolutely unable to leave her. "Come with me to Lindenbad," he begged. "That would be our best Christmas."

She shook her head. "Scarcely for your sister," she replied. "And what would become of Lisbeth? I cannot leave her alone, and if I could venture to take her such a journey in winter, she would feel strange and lonely at Lindenbad, and would be still less welcome than I to Mathilde, who is not fond of children."

Ludwig took up his hat. "Excuses of all kinds; I yield!" he said, in an irritated tone. "Farewell. Au revoir!" And, with one more cordial clasp of her hand, he was gone.

"Write to me!" Johanna begged. But the door closed quickly, and she could not be sure that he had heard the words.

He certainly was in no hurry to fulfil her request. The Holy-tide came and went, bringing her no word from him. Johanna took herself to task for continuing to watch and to hope, and for her inability to rid herself of the memories which seeing him again had aroused within her. Wherever she was – in church, in the Rupprecht family circle, at her writing-table – Lindenbad and Dönninghausen were always present to her.

And at last – Johanna could not avoid an impression that some subtile psychological influence had been at work – she received a sign of life from both places. The longed-for envelope from Lindenbad arrived, enclosing a letter to Ludwig from Johann Leopold, to which the former had only added a few lines. Johann Leopold wrote:

"Dönninghausen, December 23, 1876.

"My dear Friend, – Although it has now been for some years my custom to look to you for aid and counsel, I would spare you my present application if I knew of any one to turn to in your stead. Therefore I trust you will forgive me for alluding to painful subjects, which we have hitherto avoided mentioning to each other.

"I have just seen by the paper that the 'equestrian artist,' Carlo Batti, has gone with his circus to St. Petersburg for the winter. My cousin Otto recently procured a position there as an officer in the Guards, and a fear lest a meeting between Johanna and himself might give occasion to fresh scandal, and that Johanna's connection with our family might be used anew as an advertisement for the circus, leads me to write to you. I do not wish to blame Johanna for what she did in the glow of her first indignation; although I confess I thought hers a nobler nature than it proved itself to be. She should not have entirely forgotten all regard for our family, and especially for her grandfather's personal feeling, and she must not do it a second time. Will you represent this to her, my dear doctor? You have more influence with the unfortunate girl than I have. Also pray remind her that Waldemar, Otto's brother, with his young wife, lives in St. Petersburg. I hope that it will need only this reminder to induce Johanna, now that her first anger is past, to spare us. If – which I can scarcely suppose possible – you no longer have any intercourse with Johanna, and do not know her address, it will, I should think, be enough to direct your letter to Batti's circus, St. Petersburg.

"The post is just leaving, wherefore pray accept a hasty farewell for the present from your sincere friend,

"J. L. von Dönninghausen."

With this letter came a few lines from Ludwig, written in evident agitation:

"Dear Johanna, – Little as I am able from the scanty information furnished me by you to understand the contents of the enclosed letter, I gather from it that Herr O. v. D. has explained your separation from him by a tissue of vile falsehoods. You will instantly send me the requisite details, that I may acquaint your relatives with his rascality. Do not imagine that you can prevent me from doing so. I shall find means at any rate to learn the truth. It is bad enough that you, for the sake of a scoundrel, have suppressed it for so long."

This was not the salutation for which Johanna had longed, and yet in these angry lines she found once more the faithful dictatorial friend of her early girlhood, and a sensation of being protected, from which she had long been debarred, took possession of her. He must not, indeed, be allowed to interfere at Dönninghausen; but it did her good to know that he was ready to do battle for her with his old fiery zeal.

Thus cheered, she sat down to reply to his note. She could not, however, find words for just what she wished to say, and when she read over her finished letter it seemed to her cold and insufficient; nevertheless, it had to be sent immediately, lest Ludwig should be left to discover the truth after his own fashion.

She wrote: "I thank you from my heart, my dear Ludwig, for your care for me, and for all that you wish to do and would do in my interest, if you were right in your suppositions. But you have misunderstood my expressions, as well as Johann Leopold's letter. Otto is not to blame for the report that I am become a rider in the circus, but Carlo Batti himself, who hoped thus to force me to a career for which he thought I had a talent. Probably the enclosed notice, which was written by a friend of Batti's, has fallen into Johann Leopold's hands. Pray tell him the real state of the case, and that I am not responsible for the false statements of the newspaper. I pray you to forego all further explanations; not that Otto may be spared, but for my grandfather's sake, that he may be saved from fresh mortification and pain. Aunt Thekla, who knows all about it, not only agrees with me in this view of affairs, but desires that I should be silent to my grandfather as to the true reason for my break with Otto. That I concealed it from you also was the result – pray believe this – not of any regard for Otto, but of a certain sense of shame, and of repugnance to discuss the affair. In my own mind I am so entirely separated from Otto that even my memory of him seems something quite apart from myself. I had hoped that you perceived this at our last interview. Since you did not, I am glad of an opportunity to tell you that it is so, for I long to have you understand me thoroughly as in the dear old days. Were you perhaps led astray by some expression of mine of home-sickness for my grandfather or Dönninghausen? These are separations the pain of which I never shall overcome. But I know that they are irrevocable, and I pray you also to accept them as such. Write me that you do, and then tell me how you all are, and whether you have concluded to remain in Germany. How glad I shall be if you have!"