Wherefore had she died?
This question henceforth puzzled the whole town completely. In the
streets--at the tea-table, on the alehouse benches--it was the one
topic for discussion. People indulged in the most out-of-the-way
surmises, the most hazardous conjectures were put forward, and still no
one was one whit the wiser. Some spoke of an unhappy, others of an
over-happy love affair, and others again declared that they had always
predicted that she would not come to a good end.
During her life-time already, her proud, taciturn, reserved nature had
been a riddle to the good homely townfolk; now her death was a still
greater riddle to them.
Meanwhile it had got about that the physician had been the first to
receive news of the suicide, and the only one to whom she herself had
confided her intention. People crowded up to him; they almost stormed
his house; but he persisted in his silence. With all the bluffness of
which he was so particularly capable, he sent the importunate
questioners about their business. Olga's letter he had on the very
same day committed to the flames, for he feared that a court of law
might require it of him. As for the rest, the cause of death was so
evident that even a post-mortem examination could be dispensed with.
As might have been expected, the dead girl had not succeeded in
absolutely removing every trace of her deed. In the glass standing on
her night-table were found, adhering to its sides, drops of a fluid
whose flavour proved, even to a non-expert, that here a solution of
morphia was in question. The chain of evidence became complete when in
the garden, embedded under some hawthorn bushes, were found fragments
of glass bottles, to the necks of which a portion of the poisonous
solution still adhered in white crystallised streaks. They had
evidently been thrown out of the window, and still bore labels giving
the date of the prescription and directions for taking.
As matters stood, it would have been simple madness on the doctor's
part if he had dared to attempt to hush up the suicidal intention; for
even carelessness in taking the sleeping draught was quite out of the
question.
Nevertheless, he was tormented by the idea that he had been unable to
carry out the dying girl's last request, and he faithfully promised
himself that he would all the more truly at least keep the secret which
she had wrapped round her motives for the unhappy deed.
If only he himself could see his way clear at last! The days passed by,
however, and still he could not succeed in taking possession of the
legacy which Olga had left to him.
Mrs. Hellinger, senior, mistrusted him; she told him openly to his face
that he had always had some secret understanding with the dead girl,
and behind his back she added that if he had not prescribed such
unreasonably strong solutions of morphia, Olga would have been alive
and happy for a long time to come. She almost went so far as to ascribe
the blame of her niece's death to their old family friend.
At any rate she did not permit him henceforth to remain for one second
alone in the dead girl's room. She kept the door carefully locked, and
declared she would not suffer the dead girl's belongings, which to her
were sacred relics, to be defiled by the touch of strange hands, or by
strange glances.
Thus from hour to hour there was increasing danger that the book, in
which Olga had written down her confessions, might fall into the old
woman's hands.
She need only take it into her head one day to rummage among the little
collection of volumes which filled the book-shelf, and the mischief was
done.
Added to this anxiety, which drove the old doctor daily to the
Hellingers' house, came his growing uneasiness about Robert who, since
that disastrous hour, had fallen a prey to blank, despairing lethargy.
He seemed absolutely deprived of the power of speech, would endure no
one near him, and even taciturnly shunned and avoided him, his old
friend; by day he roamed about in the fields, by night he sat by his
child's cot, and stared down upon it with burning, reddened eyes.
So said the servants, who three times had found him in the morning in
this position.