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 Woerther-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 Woerth, 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,--_must_ I 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' Reunions,--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, Fraeulein 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. 'Fraeulein 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 man[oe]uvre 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 Fraeulein 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.