A dozen times during the night Linda had remembered that her old
friend Fanny Heisse, now the wife of Max Bogen, lived at Augsburg,
and as she remembered it, she had asked herself what she would do
were she to meet Fanny in the streets. Would Fanny condescend to
speak to her, or would Fanny's husband allow his wife to hold any
communion with such a castaway? How might she dare to hope that her
old friend would do other than shun her, or, at the very least, scorn
her, and pass her as a thing unseen? And yet, through all the days
of their life, there had been in Linda's world a supposition that
Linda was the good young woman, and that Fanny Heisse was, if not a
castaway, one who had made the frivolities of the world so dear to
her that she could be accounted as little better than a castaway.
Linda's conclusion, as she thought of all this, had been, that it
would be better that she should keep out of the way of the wife of an
honest man who knew her. All fellowship hereafter with the wives and
daughters of honest men must be denied to her. She had felt this very
strongly when she had first seen herself in the dawn of the morning.
But now there had fallen upon her a trouble of another kind, which
almost crushed her,--in which she was not as yet able to see that,
by God's mercy, salvation from utter ruin might yet be extended to
her. What should she do now,--now, at this moment? The Black Bear,
to which her lover had directed her, was so spoken of that she did
not dare to ask to be directed thither. When a compassionate railway
porter pressed her to say whither she would go, she could only totter
to a seat against the wall, and there lay herself down and sob. She
had no friends, she said; no home; no protector except him who had
just been carried away to prison. The porter asked her whether the
man were her husband, and then again she was nearly choked with sobs.
Even the manner of the porter was changed to her when he perceived
that she was not the wife of him who had been her companion. He
handed her over to an old woman who looked after the station, and the
old woman at last learned from Linda the fact that the wife of Max
Bogen the lawyer had once been her friend. About two hours after that
she was seated with Max Bogen himself, in a small close carriage,
and was being taken home to the lawyer's house. Max Bogen asked her
hardly a question. He only said that Fanny would be so glad to have
her;--Fanny, he said, was so soft, so good, and so clever, and so
wise, and always knew exactly what ought to be done. Linda heard it
all, marvelling in her dumb half-consciousness. This was the Fanny
Heisse of whom her aunt had so often told her that one so given to
the vanities of the world could never come to any good!
Max Bogen handed Linda over to his wife, and then disappeared. "Oh,
Linda, what is it? Why are you here? Dear Linda." And then her old
friend kissed her, and within half an hour the whole story had been
told.
"Do you mean that she eloped with him from her aunt's house in the
middle of the night?" asked Max, as soon as he was alone with his
wife. "Of course she did," said Fanny; "and so would I, had I been
treated as she has been. It has all been the fault of that wicked old
saint, her aunt." Then they put their heads together as to the steps
that must be taken. Fanny proposed that a letter should be at once
sent to Madame Staubach, explaining plainly that Linda had run away
from her marriage with Steinmarc, and stating that for the present
she was safe and comfortable with her old friend. It could hardly
be said that Linda assented to this, because she accepted all that
was done for her as a child might accept it. But she knelt upon the
floor with her head upon her friend's lap, kissing Fanny's hands,
and striving to murmur thanks. Oh, if they would leave her there
for three days, so that she might recover something of her strength!
"They shall leave you for three weeks, Linda," said the other.
"Madame Staubach is not the Emperor, that she is to have her own way
in everything. And as for Peter--"
"Pray, don't talk of him;--pray, do not," said Linda, shuddering.
But all this comfort was at an end about seven o'clock on that
evening. The second train in the day from Nuremberg was due at
Augsburg at six, and Max Bogen, though he said nothing on the subject
to Linda, had thought it probable that some messenger from the former
town might arrive in quest of Linda by that train. At seven there
came another little carriage up to the door, and before her name
could be announced, Madame Staubach was standing in Fanny Bogen's
parlour. "Oh, my child!" she said. "Oh, my child, may God in His
mercy forgive my child!" Linda cowered in a corner of the sofa and
did not speak.
"She hasn't done anything in the least wrong," said Fanny; "nothing
on earth. You were going to make her marry a man she hated, and so
she came away. If father had done the same to me, I wouldn't have
stayed an hour." Linda still cowered on the sofa, and was still
speechless.
Madame Staubach, when she heard this defence of her niece, was hardly
pushed to know in what way it was her duty to answer it. It would be
very expedient, of course, that some story should be told for Linda
which might save her from the ill report of all the world,--that some
excuse should be made which might now, instantly, remove from Linda's
name the blight which would make her otherwise to be a thing scorned,
defamed, useless, and hideous; but the truth was the truth, and even
to save her child from infamy Madame Staubach would not listen to a
lie without refuting it. The punishment of Linda's infamy had been
deserved, and it was right that it should be endured. Hereafter, as
facts came to disclose themselves, it would be for Peter Steinmarc to
say whether he would take such a woman for his wife; but whether he
took her or whether he rejected her, it could not be well that Linda
should be screened by a lie from any part of the punishment which
she had deserved. Let her go seven times seven through the fire, if
by such suffering there might yet be a chance for her poor desolate
half-withered soul.
"Done nothing wrong, Fanny Heisse!" said Madame Staubach, who, in
spite of her great fatigue, was still standing in the middle of the
room. "Do you say so, who have become the wife of an honest
God-fearing man?"
But Fanny was determined that she would not be put down in her own
house by Madame Staubach. "It doesn't matter whose wife I am," she
said, "and I am sure Max will say the same as I do. She hasn't
done anything wrong. She made up her mind to come away because she
wouldn't marry Peter Steinmarc. She came here in company with her own
young man, as I used to come with Max. And as soon as she got here
she sent word up to us, and here she is. If there's anything very
wicked in that, I'm not religious enough to understand it. But I tell
you what I can understand, Madame Staubach,--there is nothing on
earth so horribly wicked as trying to make a girl marry a man whom
she loathes, and hates, and detests, and abominates. There, Madame
Staubach; that's what I've got to say; and now I hope you'll stop and
have supper with Max and Linda and me."
Linda felt herself to be blushing in the darkness of her corner as
she heard this excuse for her conduct. No; she had not made the
journey to Augsburg with Ludovic in such fashion as Fanny had,
perhaps more than once, travelled the same route with her present
husband. Fanny had not come by night, without her father's knowledge,
had not escaped out of a window; nor had Fanny come with any such
purpose as had been hers. There was no salve to her conscience in all
this, though she felt very grateful to her friend, who was fighting
her battle for her.
"It is not right that I should argue the matter with you," said
Madame Staubach, with some touch of true dignity. "Alas, I know that
which I know. Perhaps you will allow me to say a word in privacy to
this unfortunate child."
But Max Bogen had not paid his wife a false compliment for
cleverness. She perceived at once that the longer this interview
between the aunt and her niece could be delayed,--the longer that it
could be delayed, now that they were in each other's company,--the
lighter would be the storm on Linda's head when it did come. "After
supper, Madame Staubach; Linda wants her supper; don't you, my pet?"
Linda answered nothing. She could not even look up, so as to meet the
glance of her aunt's eyes. But Fanny Bogen succeeded in arranging
things after her own fashion. She would not leave the room, though in
sooth her presence at the preparation of the supper might have been
useful. It came to be understood that Madame Staubach was to sleep
at the lawyer's house, and great changes were made in order that
the aunt and niece might not be put in the same room. Early in the
morning they were to return together to Nuremberg, and then Linda's
short hour of comfort would be over.
She had hardly as yet spoken a word to her aunt when Fanny left them
in the carriage together. "There were three or four others there,"
said Fanny to her husband, "and she won't have much said to her
before she gets home."
"But when she is at home!" Fanny only shrugged her shoulders. "The
truth is, you know," said Max, "that it was not at all the proper
sort of thing to do!"
"And who does the proper sort of thing?"
"You do, my dear."
"And wouldn't you have run away with me if father had wanted me to
marry some nasty old fellow who cares for nothing but his pipe and
his beer? If you hadn't, I'd never have spoken to you again."
"All the same," said Max, "it won't do her any good."
The journey home to Nuremberg was made almost in silence, and things
had been so managed by Fanny's craft that when the two women entered
the red house hardly a word between them had been spoken as to the
affairs of the previous day. Tetchen, as she saw them enter, cast
a guilty glance on her young mistress, but said not a word. Linda
herself, with a veil over her face which she had borrowed from her
friend Fanny, hurried up-stairs towards her own room. "Go into my
chamber, Linda," said Madame Staubach, who followed her. Linda did
as she was bid, went in, and stood by the side of her aunt's bed.
"Kneel down with me, Linda, and let us pray that the great gift of
repentance may be given to us," said Madame Staubach. Then Linda
knelt down, and hid her face upon the counterpane.
All her sins were recapitulated to her during that prayer. The
whole heinousness of the thing which she had done was given in its
full details, and the details were repeated more than once. It was
acknowledged in that prayer that though God's grace might effect
absolute pardon in the world to come, such a deed as that which had
been done by this young woman was beyond the pale of pardon in this
world. And the Giver of all mercy was specially asked so to make
things clear to that poor sinful creature, that she might not be
deluded into any idea that the thing which she had done could be
justified. She was told in that prayer that she was impure, vile,
unclean, and infamous. And yet she probably did not suffer from the
prayer half so much as she would have suffered had the same things
been said to her face to face across the table. And she recognised
the truth of the prayer, and she was thankful that no allusion was
made in it to Peter Steinmarc, and she endeavoured to acknowledge
that her conduct was that which her aunt represented it to be in
her strong language. When the prayer was over Madame Staubach stood
before Linda for a while, and put her two hands on the girl's arms,
and lightly kissed her brow. "Linda," she said, "with the Lord
nothing is impossible; with the Lord it is never too late; with the
Lord the punishment need never be unto death!" Linda, though she
could utter no articulate word, acknowledged to herself that her aunt
had been good to her, and almost forgot the evil things that her aunt
had worked for her.