Weighed down by sorrow, Berger proceeded homewards. To the solitary
bachelor Sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved
brother. He was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with
compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and
destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating
flood.
Would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers
and fruit? The strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future:
worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it
affected his friend. Alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid
soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! And it was just their
last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy
helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave
Berger the greatest uneasiness.
"And it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "Most certainly
it will not! Perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying
back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another
feeling, save that of his misery! And could anything else be expected?
That was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the
diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! Again he does
not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do.... And do I
know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?"
Had he deserved this fate?
"No!" cried Berger to himself. "No!" he passionately repeated as he
paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal.
Clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had
ordered things as they had come about. It seemed no better than some
rude elemental force. "He can no more help it," he muttered, "than the
fields can help a flood breaking in upon them."
But he could not long maintain this view, comforting as it was to him,
much as he strove to harbour it. "He has done wrong," he thought, "and
retribution is only the severer because delayed." Other cases in his
experience occurred to him: long concealed wrongs and sins that had
afterwards come into the light of day, doubly frightful. "And such
offences increase by the interest accruing until they are paid," he was
obliged to think. From the moment that he heard his friend's story, all
the facts it brought to light seemed to him like the diabolical sport
of chance; but now he no longer thought it chance but in everything saw
necessity, and he was overcome by the same idea to which he had given
voice at the conclusion of his friend's narration, namely that this was
no mere sad fate, but a tragic one.
It was a singular idea, compounded of fear and reverence. When Berger
reflected how one act dovetailed into another, how link fitted into
link in the chain of cause and effect, how all these people could not
have acted otherwise than they were obliged to act, how guilt had of
necessity supervened, and now retribution, the strong man shuddered
from head to foot: he had to bow his head before that pitiless,
all-just power for which he knew no name ... But was it really
all-just? If all these people, if Sendlingen and Victorine had not
acted otherwise than their nature and circumstances commanded, why had
they to suffer for it so frightfully? And why was there no end to this
suffering, a great, a liberating, a redeeming end?
"No!" cried an inward voice of his deeply agitated soul, "there must be
such a glorious solution. It cannot be our destiny to be dragged into
sin by blind powers which we cannot in any way control, like puppets by
the cords in a showman's hands, and then again, when it pleases those
powers, into still greater sins, or into an atonement a thousand times
greater than the sin itself, and so, on and on, until death snaps the
cords. No! that cannot be our destiny, and if it were, then we should
be greater than this Fate, greater, juster, more reasonable! There must
be in Sendlingen's case also, a solution bringing freedom, there
_must_--and in his case precisely most of all! It would have been an
extraordinary fate, no matter whom it had overtaken, but had it
befallen a commonplace man, it would never have grown to such a
crushing tragedy. A scoundrel would have lied to himself: 'She is not
my daughter, her mother was a woman of loose character,' and he would
have repeated this so often that he would have come to believe it. And
if remorse had eventually supervened, he would have buried it in the
confessional or in the bottle.
"Another man, no scoundrel,--on the contrary! a man of honour of the
sort whose name is Legion,--would not have hesitated for a moment to
preside in Court in order to obtain by his authority as Chief Justice,
the mildest possible sentence. Then he would have been assiduous in
ameliorating the lot of the prisoner by special privileges, and after
she had been set at liberty, he would have bought her, somewhere at a
distance, a little millinery business or a husband, and every time he
thought of the matter, he would have said with emotion: 'What a good
fellow you are!' This has only become a tragic fate because it has
struck one of the most upright, most sensitive and noble of men, and
because this is so, there must come from that most noble and upright
heart a solution, an act of liberation bursting these iron bonds! There
must be a means of escape by which he and his poor child and Justice
herself will have their due! There _must_ be--simply because he is what
he is!"
There was a gleam of light in Berger's usually placid, contented face,
the reflection of the thought that filled his soul and raised him above
the misery of the moment. Notwithstanding, his looks became serious and
gloomy again.
"But what is this solution?" he asked, continuing his over-wrought
reflections. "And how shall this broken-down, sick man, weary with his
tortures, find it? And I--I know of none, perhaps no one save himself
can find it. 'Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry
will be of any avail,' I said to him yesterday. But can small
expedients be of any use? Will it be a solution if I succeed with my
appeal, if the sentence of death is commuted to penal servitude for
life or for twenty years? Can this lessen the burden of the fate?--for
her, for him?"
"What to do?" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. He wrung his hands and
stared before him.
Suddenly there was a curious twitching about his mouth, and his eyes
gleamed with an almost weird light. "No, no!" he muttered vehemently,
"how can such a thought even occur to me. I feel it, I am myself
becoming ill and unstrung!"
He bounded up with a heavy stamp and hastily passed his hand over his
forehead, as though the thought which had just passed through his brain
stood written there and must be swiftly wiped away. But that thought
returned again and again and would not be scared away, that enticing
but fearful thought; how she might be forcibly liberated from prison
and carried off to new life and happiness in a distant country?
"Madness!" he muttered and added in thought: "He would rather die and
let her die, than give his consent to this or set his hand to such a
deed! He whose conscience would not allow him to preside at the trial!
And if in his perplexity and despair he were to go so far, I should
have to bar the way and stop him even if it cost me my life.... What
was it he said yesterday: 'An offence should not be expiated by an
injustice!' and will he attempt it by another offence. 'Cowardly and
dishonourable!' yes, that it would be, and not that great deed of which
I dream; greater and more just than Fate itself."
He seized the notes which he had made from the papers connected with
the trial, and forced himself to read them through deliberately, to
weigh them again point by point. This expedient helped him: that
horrible thought did not return, but a new thought rose, bringing
comfort in its train and took shape: "When a great act cannot be
achieved, we should not on that account omit even the smallest thing
that can possibly be done. I will set my energies against the sentence
of death, because it is the most frightful thing that could happen!"
And now he recovered courage and eagerness for work.
He sat at his writing table hour after hour, marshalling his reasons
and objections into a solid phalanx which in the fervour of the moment
seemed to him as if they must sweep away every obstacle, even
prejudice, even ill-will. He had bolted himself in, nobody was to
disturb him, he only interrupted himself for a few minutes to snatch a
hasty meal. Then he worked away until the last sentence stood on the
paper.
For the first time he now looked at the clock; it was pointing to ten.
It was too late to visit the poor prisoner, and he was grieved that he
had not kept his promise. If she was perhaps secretly nourishing the
hope of being saved, she would now be doubly despairing. But it could
not now be helped and he resolved to make good his remissness early the
next morning. Sendlingen, however, he would go and see. "Perhaps he is
in want of me," he thought. "I should be much surprised if he were not
now more helpless than ever."
He made his way through the wet, cold, foggy autumn night; things he
had never dreamt of were in store for him.
When he pulled the bell, the door was at once opened: Fraeulein Brigitta
stood before him. The candlestick in her hand trembled: the plump,
well-nourished face of the worthy lady was so full of anguish that
Berger started. "What has happened?" he cried.
"Nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all! It is only that I am so
silly." But her hand was trembling so much that she had to put down her
candle and the tears streamed down her cheeks as she continued with an
effort: "He went out--and has not come back--and so I thought--but I am
so silly."
"So it seems," Berger roughly exclaimed, trying to encourage both her
and himself, but a sudden anguish so choked his utterance that what he
next said sounded almost unintelligible. "May he not pay a visit to a
friend and stay to supper there? Is he so much under your thumb that he
must give you previous notice of his intention? He is at Baron
Dernegg's I suppose."
"No," she sobbed. "He is not there, and Franz has already looked for
him in vain in all the places where he might be. He was twice at your
house, but your servant would not admit him. And now the old man is
scouring the streets. He will not find him!" she suddenly screamed,
burying her face in her hands.
"Nonsense!" cried Berger almost angrily. He forced the trembling woman
into a chair, sat down beside her and took her hand. "Let us talk like
reasonable beings," he said, "like men, Fraeulein Brigitta. When did he
go out?"
"Seven hours ago, just after his dinner, which he hardly touched; it
must have been about four o'clock. And how he has been behaving ... and
especially since mid-day yesterday.... Dr. Berger," she cried
imploringly, clasping her hands, "what happened yesterday in Chambers?
When he came back from Vienna he was still calm and cheerful. It must
be here and yesterday that some misfortune struck him. I thought at
first that it was illness, but I know better now: it is a misfortune, a
great misfortune! Dr. Berger, for Christ's sake, tell me what it is!"
She would have sunk down at his feet, if he had not hastily prevented
her. "Be reasonable!" he urged, "It is an illness, Fraeulein
Brigitta,--the heart, the nerves."
She shook her head vigorously. "I guess what it is." She pointed in the
direction of the jail. "Something has happened in the prison over there
that is a matter of life and death to him."
He started. "Why do you suppose that?"
"Because he behaved so strangely--just listen to this." But she had
first the difficult task of calming herself before she could proceed.
"Well, when I went into his room to-day to tell him dinner was ready,
he was standing in front of his writing-table rummaging in all the
drawers. 'What are you looking for, my Lord?' I asked. 'Nothing,' he
muttered and he sent me away, saying he was just coming. Twenty minutes
later I ventured to go back again; he was still searching. 'Have you
ever,' he now himself asked, 'heard of any keys that my predecessor is
said to have handed over?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'the keys of the
residence.' 'No, others, and among them the key of the door which----'
He checked himself suddenly and turned away as though he had already
said too much. 'What door?' I asked in utter astonishment. He muttered
something unintelligible and then roughly told me the soup could wait.
It cuts me to the heart. Dear Heaven, how wretched he looks, and I am
not accustomed to be spoken to by him in that way; but what does that
matter? I went and spoke to Franz. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'he means the
keys that are in the top drawer of his business table.' So we went and
looked and there, sure enough, was a bunch of keys--quite rusty, Dr.
Berger."
"Go on, to the point," said Berger impatiently.
"Well, I took them to him; as I said, a whole bunch with a written
label on each. He looked through them with trembling hands. Dr. Berger,
and at last his face lit up. 'That's the one!' he muttered and took the
key off the bunch and put it in his breast pocket. Then he turned round
and when he saw me--great Heaven! what eyes he had--wicked, frightened
eyes. 'Are you still here?' he said flaring up into a rage. 'What do
you want playing the spy here?' Yes, Dr. Berger, he said 'playing the
spy'--and he has known me for fifteen years."
"He is ill you see!" said Berger soothingly. "But go on!"
"Then he sat down to dinner and there he behaved very strangely. God
forgive me ... Usually he only drinks one glass of Rhine-wine--you know
the sort--to-day he gulped down three glasses one after another, took a
few spoonfuls of soup and then went back to his room. And then I said:
Franz, I said--but you won't want to hear that. Dr. Berger. But what
follows you must hear; it's very strange--God help us! only too
strange."
"Well?"
"After about ten minutes or so, I heard his step in the lobby; the door
slammed; well, he had gone out. 'By all that's sacred!' thinks I in
great trouble of mind. Then Franz came in quite upset. 'Fraeulein!' he
whispered, 'he's going up and down in the court outside!' 'Impossible!'
said I, 'what does he want there?' We went to the bedroom window that
looks down into the court and there, sure enough, is his Lordship! He
was going--or rather he was creeping along by the wall that separates
our court from the prison yard. It was drizzling at the time and it was
no longer quite light, but I could see his face plainly: it was the
face of a man who doesn't know what to do--ah me! worse still--the face
of a man who doesn't know what he's doing. And he behaved like it, Dr.
Berger! He stopped in front of the little door in the wall, looked
anxiously up at the windows to see if anyone was watching him--but the
clerks and officials had all gone, we were the only people who saw
him--he pulled out that key from his breast pocket and tried to unlock
the door. For a long time he couldn't succeed, but at last the door
opened. However, he only shut it again quickly and locked it. Then he
began anxiously to pace up and down again. It was just as if he had
only wanted to try whether the key would open the door. What do you
think of that?"
"The door through which one can get from here into the prison?" Berger
spoke slowly, in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking to himself.
Then he continued in the same tone: "Oh, how frightful that would be!
This soul in the mire, this splendid soul!--Go on!" he then muttered as
he saw that the housekeeper was looking at him in amazement.
"Well, then he went quickly back through the hall into the street and
on towards the square. Franz crept after him at a distance. He seemed
at first as if he wanted to go to your house, then he came back here,
but to the other door, on the prison side. There he stood, close up to
it, for a long time, a quarter of an hour Franz says, and then went to
the left down Cross Street and then--what do you think, Dr. Berger?"
"Back the same way," said Berger slowly, "and again stood for a long
time in front of the prison."
"How can you know that?" asked the old lady in astonishment.
Berger's answer was a strange one. "I can see it!" he said. And indeed,
with the eyes of his soul, Berger could see his unhappy friend
wandering about in the misty darkness, dragged hither and thither, by
whirling, conflicting thoughts. "Perhaps he is at this moment standing
there again!" He had not meant to say this, but the thought had
involuntarily given itself voice.
"What now!" Fraeulein Brigitta crossed herself. "We will go and see at
once! Come! Oh, that would be a good thing! I will just go and fetch my
shawl. But you see I was right. This trouble is connected with the
prison; some injustice has been done, and he feels it nearly because he
is such a just judge."
"Because he is such a just judge," repeated Berger, mechanically,
without thinking of what he was saying, for while he spoke those words
he was saying to himself: "He has gone mad!"
Then, however, he shook off the spell of this horror that threatened to
cripple both soul and body. "You stay at home," he said in a tone of
command. "I will find him and bring him back, you may rely upon that.
One thing more, where did Franz leave him?"
"Ah, he was too simple! When his Lordship came into the square for the
third time, Franz went up to him and begged him to come home. Upon that
he became very angry and sent Franz off with the strongest language.
But he called after him that he was going to Baron Dernegg's, only as I
said, he has not been there, and----"
"Keep up your spirits, Fraeulein Brigitta! I shall be back soon." He
went down the steps, "Keep up your spirits!" he called back to her once
more; she was standing at the top of the steps holding the candle at
arm's length before her.
Berger stepped into the street and walked swiftly round the building to
the prison door. He himself was in need of the exhortation he had
given: he felt as if in the next moment he might see something
frightful.
But there was nothing to be seen when he at length reached the place
and approached the door, nothing save the muddy slippery ground, the
trickling, mouldy walls, the iron-work of the door shining in the
wet--nothing else, so far as the red, smoky light of the two lanterns
above the door could show through the fog and rain. And there was
nothing to be heard save the low pattering of the rain-drops on the
soft earth or, when a sudden gust of the east-wind blew, the creaking
of some loosened rafter and a whirring, long-drawn, complaining sound
that came from the bare trees on the ramparts when they writhed and
bent beneath its icy breath.
"Victor!"
There was a movement in the sentry box by the door; the poor, frozen
Venetian soldier of the Dom Miguel regiment who had sheltered himself
inside as well as he could from the rain and cold, poked out his heavy
sleepy head so that the shine of his wet leather shako was visible for
an instant. He muttered an oath and wrapped himself the closer in his
damp overcoat.
Berger sighed deeply. A minute before he was sure he had seen the poor
madman standing motionless in the desolate night, his eyes rigidly
fixed upon the door that separated him from his daughter, and now that
he was spared the sight, he could take no comfort, for a far worse
foreboding convulsed his brain.
Hesitatingly he returned to the front part of the building and,
increasing his pace, he went down the street towards the market-place,
aimlessly, but always swifter, as if he had to go where chance led him,
so as to arrive in time to stop some frightful deed.
The streets were deserted, nothing but the wind roamed through the
drenching solitude, nothing but the voices of the night greeted his
ear; that ceaseless murmur and rustle and stir, which, drowned by the
noise of the day, moves in the dark stillness, as though dead and dumb
things had now first found a voice to reach the sense of men.
He often had to stop; it seemed to him as if he heard the piteous
groaning of a sick man, or the half stifled cry for help of one
wounded. But it was nothing; the wind had shaken some rotting roof, or
somewhere in the far distance a watch-dog had given a short, sharp
bark. The lonely wanderer held his breath in order to hear better,
looked also perhaps into some dark corner and then hurried on.
He reached the market place. Here he came upon human beings again, the
sentries before the principal guard-house, and as he passed the column
commemorative of the cholera in the middle of the square, there was the
night-watchman who had pitched upon a dry sleeping place in one of the
niches of the irregular monument. Berger stopped irresolutely; should
he wake him up and question him?
Another form at this moment emerged from a neighbouring street; a man
who with bowed head and halting pace glided along by the houses: was
this not Franz? Berger could not yet, by the light of the meagre lamps,
accurately distinguish him in the all-pervading fog. But the man came
nearer and nearer; he was behaving peculiarly; he was looking into
every door-way, and when he came to the "Sign of the Arbour," a very
ancient shop full of recesses, he went into each of these recesses, so
that a spectator saw him alternately appearing and disappearing. When
he at length reappeared just under a lamp Berger recognised him; it was
really the old servant. "Like a faithful dog seeking his master," he
said to himself as he hurried towards him.
Franz rushed to meet him. "You know nothing of him?"
"Be quiet, man. We will look for him together."
"No, separately!" He seized Berger's arm and grasped it convulsively.
"You by the river-side and I up here. There is not a moment to lose."
Berger asked no more questions but hurried down the broad, inclined
street that led to the river. Here, in Cross Street, where most of the
pleasure-resorts were, there were still signs of life; he had
repeatedly to get out of the way of drunken men who passed along
bawling; poor forlorn looking girls brushed past him. In one of the
quieter streets he noticed a moving light coming nearer and nearer: it
was a large lantern in the hand of a servant who was carefully lighting
the gentleman who followed him.
Berger recognised the features of the little, wizened creature who, in
spite of the awful weather was contentedly tripping along, with
satisfaction in every lineament, under the shelter of a mighty
umbrella; it was the Deputy Chief-Justice, Herr von Werner. He would
have passed by without a word, but Werner recognised him and called to
him.
"Eh! eh! it's Dr. Berger!" he snickered. "Out so late! Hee, hee! I seem
to be meeting all the important people! First--hee! hee! the Lord Chief
Justice and now----"
"Have you seen him?"
"Why yes. You are surprised? So was I! Just as I stepped out of my
son-in-law's house, he passed by. I called after him because I wanted
to tell him the news. For you may congratulate me, Dr. Berger.
Certainly, you annoyed me this morning, you annoyed me very much I but
in my joy I will forgive you! My first grandson, a splendid boy, and
how he can cry!"
"Where did you see him? When?"
"Eh! goodness me, what is the matter with you? It was scarcely five
minutes ago, he was going--only fancy--towards Wurst Street. You seem
upset! And he wouldn't listen to me! Why, what is the matter?"
Berger made no reply. Without a word of farewell, he rushed
precipitately down the street out of which Werner had come and turned
to the right into a narrow, dirty slum which led by a steep incline to
the river.
This was Wurst Street, the poorest district of the town, the haunt of
porters, boatmen and raftsmen; alongside the narrow quay in which the
street ended, lay their craft; the corner building next the river was
the public house which they frequented. A light still glimmered behind
its small window-panes and, as Berger hurried by, the sound of rough
song and laughter greeted his ears.
He did not stop till he came right up to the river's edge. Its waters
were swollen by the autumn rains; swift and tumultuous they coursed
along its broad bed, perceptible to the ear only, not to the eye, so
fearfully dark was the night. Berger could not even distinguish the
wooden foot-bridge that here crossed the river, until he was close up
to it.
Hesitatingly he stepped upon the shaky structure. The bridge was
scarcely two foot broad, its balustrade was rotten and the footway
slippery. Over on the other side a solitary light, a lantern, was
struggling against wind and fog; its reflection swayed uncertainly on
the soaking bridge; when it suddenly flared up in the wind, its
flickering, red light revealed for a moment the angry, swollen flood.
Berger stood still irresolutely; the place was so desolate, so uncanny;
should he stay any longer? Then suddenly a low cry escaped him and he
darted forward a step. The lantern opposite had just flared up and by
its reflection he had seen a man approach the bridge and step upon it.
It seemed to Berger as if this were Sendlingen, but he did not know for
certain, as the lantern was again giving only the faintest glimmer.
The man approached nearer, slowly, and with uncertain step, groping for
the balustrade as he came. Once more the lantern flared up--there was
the long Inverness, the gray hat--Berger doubted no longer.
"Victor!"
He would have shouted at the top of his voice, but the word passed over
his lips huskily, almost inaudibly: he would have darted forward ...
but could only take one solitary step more, so greatly had the
weirdness of the situation overpowered him.
Sendlingen did not perceive him: he stopped scarcely ten paces from his
friend and bent over the balustrade. Resting on both arms, there he
stood, staring at the wild and turbulent water.
Thus passed a few seconds.
Again the lantern flickered up, for a moment only it gave a clear
light. Sendlingen had suddenly raised himself and Berger saw, or
thought he saw, that the unfortunate man was now only resting with one
hand on the railing, that his body was lifted up....
"Victor!"
In two bounds, in two seconds, he was beside him, had seized him,
clasped him in his arms.
"George!"
Awful, thrilling was the cry--a cry for help?--or a cry of baffled
rage?
Then Berger felt this convulsive body suddenly grow stiff and heavy--he
was holding an unconscious burden in his arms.