NEW YEAR'S EVE.
The sleighing-party did not return to the second breakfast. The
dinner-hour first assembled the various members of the family.
"Was grandpapa angry?" Magelone whispered to Johanna. Just then the
Freiherr was wheeled into the room, and his frowning brow answered her
question only too clearly.
Hildegard was not to be intimidated.
"Do not be angry, dear grandpapa," she said, with an air of arrogant
ease quite her own. "It was my fault that we stayed so long; I had not
seen the Klausenburgs for an age, and they begged us so to stay that it
was impossible to say no."
"But you found it quite possible to keep us waiting here," the Freiherr
rejoined. "Another time please to remember that such want of
consideration has never been the rule of my household, and never shall
be. Be seated!"
"I told you so," Karl Wildenhayn whispered to his wife as she passed
him.
"You are all cowards!" she rejoined, and then seated herself with head
erect and knitted brows on the left of the Freiherr, for whom she seemed
no longer to have any existence.
The meal was very monosyllabic. Now and then Otto would whisper
something to Johanna, and she would listen with a smile. Then Johann
Leopold, who looked paler and more weary than usual, would look up from
his plate, gaze at her, and then sink again into his usual apathy, from
which Magelone to-day did not try to rouse him.
When they went to the drawing-room she left Johann Leopold, and,
approaching Otto, said, "Pray suggest some folly to me,--I am dying of
ennui."
"'Ah! fly with me, and be my love,'"
he began to sing in an undertone, and his eyes expressed the passion
which was suppressed in his half-teasing voice. Magelone shrugged her
shoulders.
"Nonsense! even the poet himself called that tragedy," she replied. "I
want something merry to do. But you are afflicted with the Doenninghausen
stupidity."
"How unjust!" cried Otto. "Was it not a merry thing to whisk you away
from Klausenburg--right from under Johann Leopold's long nose--into the
sleigh with me, and drive off with you?"
Magelone laughed. Otto continued passionately: "I should have liked to
carry you off to the end of the world. The thought of seeing you in
Johann Leopold's arms makes me frantic. Why do you look at me so
disdainfully, and what does that smile mean?"
"Perhaps it means what did you whisper to Johanna at table with just the
same look you wear at present?"
"I thought I was to obey orders and pay court to her," said Otto. "Do
you command the contrary?"
"Indeed I do not."
"It really would be better to continue the farce," Otto went on in a
graver tone. "Johann Leopold's jealousy is evident; it would be better
to lead him upon a false scent----"
"And beguile two female hearts at the same time," Magelone interposed,
laughing. "Oh, Don Juan, Don Juan!"
"Play the 'Don Giovanni' overture," Otto begged her. "You play it
magnificently."
"Not to-day. There must be nothing but chorales to-day," she said. And
with a coquettish glance she turned away towards the fire, where were
her cousins and Aunt Thekla.
During this conversation Johann Leopold had approached Johanna at her
coffee-table.
"How do you like your new cousin?" he asked; "but I need hardly ask, for
you seem to have become excellent friends with him since last evening."
"Not quite since last evening," Johanna replied, blushing slightly. "He
came to see me just after my father's death, and was so kind----"
"I can easily imagine it," Johann Leopold interrupted her. "He knows how
to strike the right chord everywhere, modern Piper of Hamelin that he
is. Have a care of him."
She looked up at him inquiringly, but the telltale blush would return;
involuntarily she turned away to conceal it, and suddenly, she did not
know why, she remembered the lovers whom she had promised to befriend.
"I have a favour to ask of you," she said, gravely. "It concerns Red
Jakob."
"What is it?" he asked, taking a chair by her side; and, encouraged by
his sympathy, she told him of the scene in the forest lodge and of poor
Christine's sorrows. Johann Leopold readily promised his help to the
girl, and together they discussed what should be done.
"Let me beg you, Magelone, to look towards the coffee-table," said
Hildegard, after she had watched the pair for a while. "They have been
engaged in that interesting conversation for a quarter of an hour. Are
you not jealous?"
Magelone laughed. "Jealous of Johanna? Oh, no," she declared,
confidently.
"Don't be so sure, my dear child," was Hildegard's sneering reply. "In
spite of your irresistible charms, you have never succeeded since I
have been here in making Johann Leopold talk as he is now talking to
Johanna."
"Yes, he actually seems transformed," said Hedwig. "He certainly is
talking and listening now, while beside you he sits like a wooden doll."
"Of course, ''tis love, 'tis love that makes men mute,'" Magelone said,
with a smile; but her eyes gleamed, and a sensation of mistrust of
Johanna stirred in her heart,--faint and fleeting, it is true, but it
was the beginning, nevertheless, of a change in the relations between
the cousins.
The next morning Johann Leopold rode to the forest lodge. When he
returned, meeting Johanna in the corridor, he told her that the rough
fellow had wept bitterly when told of the death of his child, and had
entreated that he might see Christine.
"It would be best for you to go up to the lodge with her to-morrow
morning early," he added; "it would lighten the weary way for her, and I
will be there to take her to the invalid."
"I will certainly have her there," Johanna replied, "punctually at
eleven o'clock. Oh, Johann Leopold, how kind you are!"
They had just reached the drawing-room door. Magelone, gliding
noiselessly down-stairs, heard Johanna's last words.
"What has he been doing that is so kind?" she asked. "Tell me, that I
may admire it too."
Johanna was embarrassed. Her cousin came to her assistance. "Never mind,
my dear Magelone," he said, in his usual cold, deliberate tone. "You
would consider it the mere dilettantism of philanthropy, upon which you
but lately expended your ridicule."
As he spoke he opened the drawing-room door. Magelone passed him with an
angry blush. How silly to take her words so seriously! Of course
Johanna never said such things. The girl was growing positively
disagreeable.
According to agreement, Johanna presented herself with her protegee at
the forester's the next morning. Christine could not yet believe that
she should see Red Jakob. "His sister will certainly prevent it," she
kept saying.
But Johann Leopold's authority had successfully opposed the forester's
wife. As soon as she saw Johanna and Christine approaching she sullenly
withdrew, and contented herself with watching them through the chink of
the door.
She did not see much. Johann Leopold went to meet the visitors. "Come,
my child, Jakob is expecting you," he said, with a gentle kindness that
aggravated Frau Kruger's ill humour. He had never spoken so to either
her husband or herself. "Do not be afraid," he went on; "no one shall
molest you. If any should try to do so, let me know." And he opened the
door of the sick-room.
"Christine, have you come at last?" Jakob's voice called from the bed.
With a cry the girl rushed to him, and Johann Leopold closed the door
upon them. "Come, Johanna, we have nothing further to do here," he said,
and together they left the house.
When the forester's wife looked from the window, they were walking down
the forest-path. She smiled scornfully. "No one could persuade me," she
thought, "that those two came up here for the sake of Jakob and
Christine; but I'll see to it, they may depend upon it. If I could only
hear what they are talking about! She looks up at him as if he were the
Herr Pastor in the pulpit."
Their talk was strange enough,--it was rather a monologue of Johann
Leopold's to which Johanna listened.
"Happy unfortunates!" he began, looking sadly abroad into space. "Even
yesterday, when Jakob was weeping for his boy and crying out after
Christine, I envied him. How such emotion must enlarge and strengthen
the soul! Happiness or misery is of no moment, but an absorbing passion,
that possesses and rules the entire man----Yet who experiences such?
Only some half-savage like my poor Jakob. We superior beings, as we are
called, with our boasted culture, pay for our position with doubt,
hesitation, half-heartedness."
Johanna listened to him with pained surprise. How could he thus forget
or ignore his own past, his love for his dead betrothed, which Aunt
Thekla maintained he still cherished in his heart? She could not venture
to remind him of it, however, and she said, after a pause, "I think you
are mistaken; love is not influenced by rank or culture. Remember my
mother."
He did not seem to hear her, but went on: "And naturally we are drawn on
from year to year by half-desires, half-resolves; our goal seems to us
not worthy of exertion to attain it. And if some caprice places what we
desire within our reach, we scarcely know whether to grasp it and hold
it fast, for to grasp it gives trouble, and to hold it fast calls for
exertion."
Was he speaking with reference to himself? Was Magelone what he desired?
Johanna would have liked to help him to unburden his mind, but any
mention of Magelone seemed to her to be indiscreet, so she merely
remarked, "I cannot imagine any one's being too indolent to grasp an
offered happiness."
"Happiness!" he repeated, with a melancholy smile. "Happiness! Who
believes in it? You do not know how much strength is required for
belief; much more than for passionate desire. Therefore the man who
rushes blindly, head first, into the maddest, unworthiest passion,
regardless of the harm that may result from it, seems to me not only
more enviable, but more estimable even, than the prudent doubter, who is
cold to-day and warm to-morrow, unable either to grasp or to
relinquish. There stands the lovely being before you; your heart throbs
at the sight of her; you long to call her your own, to belong to her, to
lose yourself in her. But in the midst of your intoxication you know
that she is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that she does not
understand you, or wish to understand you, and that if your longing were
fulfilled your desire would become satiety and disgust. You tell
yourself that you never would be able to excuse to yourself the illusion
of the past, and there are moments in which you even despise your
desire."
He drew a long breath, paused, and stroked back the hair from his pale
forehead. "Do I startle you?" he then said, in a quiet tone. "Forgive
me, and forget what I have said. When you have known me longer you will
understand that I am apt to be lost in illusions, and that I readily
take phantoms for creatures of flesh and blood."
The Freiherr was able to leave his wheeled chair on this same day; he
declared that nothing any longer stood in the way of the contemplated
New Year's dinner, and preparations were begun for it. Johanna and Otto
wrote the invitations; Aunt Thekla passed cellar and pantries in review,
and had conferences with the housekeeper; old Christian polished up the
'ancestral plate,' as Hildegard reverently called it, and from spacious
cupboards were produced treasures of antique glass and porcelain.
Magelone was more whimsical than usual, beginning one thing after
another only to lay it aside, and ridiculing the 'ceremonial state' in
progress, but with a forced gayety that troubled Johanna. Hildegard
strutted like a peacock in hopes of outshining in a new velvet gown all
the ladies of the surrounding county, while Hedwig ascribed still more
dazzling properties to her old Venetian lace. The Freiherr anticipated
the New Year's dinner with the satisfaction with which an architect
contemplates the laying of the corner-stone of a structure that has been
long planned. Even the Herr Pastor was busy with the dinner. He was
composing a toast to be given at it in honour of the betrothal.
What Johann Leopold's sensations were upon this occasion it would be
difficult to say. By no hint did he betray his knowledge of the
significance of the festival. His conduct towards Magelone was as cool
and deliberate as ever. As long as the Freiherr remained amid the family
circle, Johann Leopold was there also. So soon as the old gentleman
withdrew, he also vanished. Johanna, in whom the impression of his talk
in the forest was still vivid, watched him narrowly, but she looked in
vain for any echo of that hour, and began to believe that not only
Johann Leopold but also she herself had seen phantoms.
Thus the day before the first of the new year arrived. The clear
Christmas weather had given place to thick gray clouds that, lashed by
the winds, sailed above the mountains. The Freiherr, too, whose mood had
been more cheerful since the gout had left him, looked as gloomy
within-doors as did the skies without. "I do not know what to think of
Waldemar," he said, as he paced the room to and fro, smoking his morning
pipe. "It is a little too much to have no word from him since the
telegram on Christmas-eve."
"Since that announced his arrival here to-day, he probably thought
nothing further necessary," said Aunt Thekla.
"Indeed! And do you agree with him?" the Freiherr said, turning upon
her. "Then see what this new-fangled want of consideration comes to.
What is to be done about sending for him? I cannot have the carriage go
to every train."
"Waldemar always comes by the express-train, which is due at five
o'clock in Thalrode," said Hildegard, who sat opposite Aunt Thekla
engaged on some embroidery.
"Nonsense! He comes sometimes at noon, and sometimes at eight in the
evening," the Freiherr rejoined. "But that's of no consequence. Let him
come when he chooses, he must send word when he will be here, and if he
does not he will not be sent for. _Basta!_"
His tone was such as to admit of no reply. All were silent, while the
old Herr continued to pace to and fro, puffing out thick clouds of
smoke. Magelone alone ventured, when he was at the other end of the
room, to whisper to Aunt Thekla, "A great fuss about nothing! You will
see we shall have a letter or a telegram from Waldemar saying he cannot
come. I wouldn't come either, if I could amuse myself in Vienna as he
can."
But the hours passed, and neither letter nor telegram made its
appearance. The early twilight came on, made still more dim by the
snow-storm which had begun at noon, and which was increasing in
violence. The wind howled and shrieked around the castle.
A bright fire was burning in the drawing-room, where stood the
Christmas-tree, which was, according to custom, to be relighted, then
thoroughly stripped, chopped up, and burned on New Year's eve. Magelone
and Johanna were busy replacing upon it candles which had burned down.
Aunt Thekla and Hildegard sat beside the fire; Hedwig stood at the
window, looking out into the driving snow. "If our husbands were only
back again!" she said. "Inconceivable to wish to ride out in such a
storm."
"It looks worse than it is," said Johanna. "I came back only half an
hour ago from the village; it was glorious to breast the wind."
"A strange predilection!" Hildegard exclaimed. "But you did not go
alone?"
Before Johanna could reply, the door was noisily opened, and the
Freiherr entered. It was so unusual for him to join the family at this
hour that Aunt Thekla, startled, arose and went towards him.
"Do not disturb yourself!" he said, beginning to pace the room to and
fro. "Detestable weather!" he exclaimed, as a blast of wind shook the
windows. "I ought to have sent the carriage. There's no knowing whether
or not Waldemar can get a conveyance in Thalrode now; it is too late."
"The carriage is at Thalrode, grandpapa," said Johanna. "Johann Leopold
drove over."
"Without my knowledge?" cried the Freiherr, standing still in the middle
of the room. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.
"You were asleep, grandpapa, and Johann Leopold had to hurry to catch
the two-o'clock train. He had something to attend to in town, he said,
but would return to Thalrode in the four-o'clock train. If my cousin
Waldemar comes, they will surely meet."
"Indeed they will. We may rely upon that. From their very infancy they
always stood by each other in every silly prank," the Freiherr said, but
in a tone so kindly that Aunt Thekla breathed afresh.
"How did you know all this, my dear Johanna?" Magelone asked, as the
Freiherr resumed his walk.
"As I was starting for the village, Johann Leopold was just driving
off," she replied, "and he took me and my bundles as far as the
parsonage----"
"It was odd not to bid us good-by!" said Magelone.
Hildegard approached her. "Why, child, he probably feared your tender
remonstrances," she said, scornfully, "or it may perhaps have occurred
to him at the twelfth hour to purchase you a betrothal-gift."
Magelone shrugged her shoulders impatiently. At this moment old
Christian entered with the lamp, followed by Otto, who handed a letter
to the Freiherr. "From Waldemar," he said. "It has just been brought by
an express from Thalrode."
"He's not coming; I knew it," whispered Magelone.
The Freiherr went to the light and began to read, his face brightening
at every word. Before he had finished the sheet he cried out, "This is a
surprise! The boy could not have pleased me more. He is betrothed!"
"Waldemar! Betrothed? To whom?" several voices exclaimed together.
"Hear what he says," said the Freiherr. "The letter is from Vienna. We
now know what the urgent business was that kept him away at Christmas.
But listen. I will spare you the beginning. Here: 'Since yesterday the
happiest of men----' Of course. 'My betrothed, Maria Therese Antoinette
Walburg, is the second daughter of Count Anton, the chief of the
elder--that is, of the Protestant--branch. Her mother was a Rothkirch;
her grandmother, Theodora Klausenburg, you used to know, my dear
grandfather. Antoinette is said to resemble her. She is eighteen years
old, with light-brown hair, blue eyes, a lovely colour, and is tall and
stately, like all the Klausenburg women,--only, between ourselves, more
graceful and elegant. Her loveliness, her modesty, her childish gayety,
make all hearts her captives----' and so forth, and so on! He continues
in that strain a long while, which is of small account, for the lad is
in love. But the family is good, and this child probably takes after
them. God bless them both!"
Aunt Thekla wiped her eyes; the Freiherr rose, and again paced the room
to and fro. "To-morrow we will celebrate a double betrothal, and as soon
as possible a double marriage!" he began again after a while. "This joy
is quite unexpected. All my Doenninghausens shall rejoice with me. I will
give an entertainment that shall be the talk of their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. As for you, Thekla, tell my steward to give you
whatever you need for your infant-school."
"Thank you, dear Johann, a thousand times!" she said, blushing with
pleasure, as she went to her brother and embraced him.
"That will do, sister, that will do!" he said, extricating himself from
her embrace. "Come, be quick! Light the tree and send for the children.
I want merry faces about me!"
In a few moments the room was illumined by the magic light of the
Christmas-tree, and rang with merry childish voices, while little hands
were eagerly lifted to receive the last of the tree's sweet fruits,
which the great-grandfather detached and put into them. Hildegard and
Hedwig, much excited, exchanged with Magelone and Otto information with
regard to the Walburgs and Rothkirchs, while Aunt Thekla listened to the
raging of the storm.
"Where can the Wildenhayns be, and Johann Leopold?" she said. "The
carriage ought to have been back from Thalrode as soon as the express."
"Perhaps it is waiting for the eight-o'clock train," said Johanna.
"If I knew that it was waiting in Thalrode, a messenger might be sent,"
said Aunt Thekla. "But if Johann Leopold has remained in town----"
She did not finish the sentence. Old Christian entered, and begged
Johanna to come into the corridor for a moment.
"What is the matter?" asked Aunt Thekla.
"Some one wishes to speak to the Fraeulein Johanna," the old man said, in
evident agitation.
Johanna, thinking of Christine, went out hastily, to cut short further
explanations; but instead of her whom she expected to see, she was
confronted by a man, tall and broad-shouldered. "Dear Johanna!" he said,
advancing and holding out his hand.
"Ludwig!" she exclaimed, delighted. But she was instantly struck by his
pale, distressed look. "For God's sake, what has happened?" she asked,
keeping his hand tightly clasped in both her own. "What brings you
here?"
"I come from Hanover, from the death-bed of a friend. But that is not
what is the matter. I must consult you."
They whispered together for a few moments, then Ludwig followed
Christian up-stairs, and Johanna returned to the drawing-room.
With some hesitation she approached the Freiherr, who was now sitting
before the fire, surrounded by the children. "Dear grandfather," she
said, standing behind his chair, so that he could not see her face, "my
foster-brother, Dr. Ludwig Werner, has come."
"Dr. Ludwig Werner?" the Freiherr repeated. "Yes, yes, I recollect.
Well, where is he?"
Johanna used all her self-control. "He has not come for a visit," she
said. "He has been in Hanover, and was going directly back to Lindenbad,
but when the train stopped at Thalrode, Johann Leopold fell in leaving
it, and----"
"Dead!" cried the Freiherr, sitting erect in his chair. "Say the word at
once, without the torture of preparation," he added, as his sister came
to him and took his hand.
"No, he lives; be assured of that," said Johanna. "He is only stunned by
the fall, and that is why Ludwig has come with him. They have carried
him to his room."
For a moment the Freiherr seemed utterly crushed, but with a mighty
effort he rose and stood erect. "Come, Thekla," he said, in a monotone.
"So long as he breathes let us hope!"