A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen

For a series of years it had been the custom for all the family to stay over Twelfth-Night at Dönninghausen, and to leave on the seventh of January. On the morning of the sixth the Wildenhayns were consulting with Otto and Magelone as to whether they should depart as usual, or, without any announcement of their intentions, stay until there was some change in Johann Leopold, or, lastly, ask their grandfather what his wishes were in the matter.

"I must go to-morrow; my leave is at an end," said Otto; and he added, in a tone intended for Magelone alone, "I will come back for the funeral."

"You should not talk so," she replied, reproachfully. She had been thinking the same thing herself.

At this moment the Freiherr entered. "Children!" he cried, approaching the group, "thank God with me. Johann Leopold is out of danger."

There were loud exclamations of delight. Otto's silence was unnoticed. Magelone grew pale, tottered, and would have fallen if Eduard, who stood next her, had not caught her in his arms.

"It is nothing, – nothing," she said, recovering herself. The Freiherr looked keenly at her. "Dear Magelone, compose yourself," he said kindly; but she could not endure his gaze. She bent down and kissed his hand, bursting into tears as she did so.

"Nonsense, child! All is well now. Come, come, command yourself!" And as he conducted her to a seat he said to himself, "She is a warm-hearted little thing after all, and loves the lad better than I thought."

To reward her, the Freiherr addressed his account of the invalid especially to her. She was obliged to listen to a detailed account of Johann Leopold's return to consciousness, and recognition of his grandfather and Aunt Thekla.

"He is sleeping now," the old Herr concluded. "Christian and Thekla are watching him like dragons guarding a treasure, but as soon as he wakes you shall see him, my dear child."

Ludwig entering overheard the last words. "I beg pardon, Herr von Dönninghausen," he said in his decided way, "but there I must interpose my veto. The sick man needs entire rest, and I must entreat that no one except those who have hitherto been with him may enter his room without my permission."

Hildegard stared in haughty surprise at the venturous mortal who dared thus bluntly to contradict the Freiherr. "Dear grandfather," she said, with the intention of provoking the old Herr still further, "if we must all submit to the doctor's orders we are quite useless here, and had better depart to-morrow."

She fully expected to hear a grim authoritative, "You will stay, and see Johann Leopold as soon as possible!" Instead of which the Freiherr replied, "Yes, children, go. You will come again for the celebration of his recovery and betrothal." And, without noticing his grand-daughter's mortification, he joined the Wildenhayns, who were discussing the patient with Ludwig.

Hildegard drew her sister aside to the window. Otto went up to Magelone, who was sitting in an arm-chair by the table, meditatively toying with her bracelets.

"What now?" he asked in a low voice.

She looked up at him, but he could not tell whether the gleam in her eyes meant pain, anger, or derision.

"What now?" he asked once more, and tried to take her hand, but the slender fingers eluded his clasp.

"Take care!" she said, composedly. His face flushed. "That means, in other words, that you are once more Johann Leopold's faithful, submissive true-love," he said, bitterly. "You are like the cat; she clings to the house, caring nothing about who its possessor may be."

"For shame! How can you talk to me thus?" Magelone whispered, as she arose and looked at him with flashing eyes.

Hedwig's attention was roused. "Is it possible that you two are quarrelling?" she said, approaching them.

Magelone instantly recovered her composure. "No, indeed; we are the best of friends," she said, smiling, offering her hand to Otto, who, however, did not kiss it as usual, but, after a slight pressure, relinquished it and left the room. Magelone vowed inwardly that he should not escape punishment.

But she had no opportunity for revenge. At meal-times the Freiherr, elated by Johann Leopold's improved condition, was more talkative than usual, and Otto took a lively part in the general conversation. Immediately after breakfast he joined Karl and Eduard for a last ride in the forest, and after dinner he never left Johanna's side.

She seemed to him more sympathetic than ever to-day. "This is genuine truth, simplicity, kindness of heart," he said to himself, as he gazed into her sparkling eyes. What power of expressing love lay in those eyes! Perhaps if he had chosen they might have spoken love to him. Perhaps if he took some pains they might still do so. If he were obliged to depart on the morrow he could return, and in the mean time memory should plead for him.

The longer he talked with Johanna, the warmer grew his tone, and even his jesting words took a graver significance. Gradually the words themselves grew grave.

He had been telling her of his garrison life, of his intercourse with his comrades, and of the society to be found in the houses of the married officers. "Pleasant and social as it all looks, and really is," he continued, "I find it very hard to leave Dönninghausen, – this time especially: why, you surely know?"

"I can easily imagine," she replied, with a glance towards Magelone.

Did she not understand, or would she not understand? "I do not know whether you are right," said Otto. "It is a new experience for me; I am not yet used to it. Will you help me?"

"I do not understand you," she made answer, blushing beneath his gaze.

"What I desire is presumptuous!" he continued. "How can you help me? What I have wasted, I have wasted – I must wait for new and better days."

"What have you wasted?" Johanna asked.

"Opportunities to gain excellence, happiness, – and you!" he replied. "From the first moment of our acquaintance I knew what you could be to me, but, instead of testifying this to you, I have squandered my days, from folly, from habit – " Here he glanced towards Magelone.

Johanna was pained. "Why will you deny – " she began.

Otto interrupted her:

"I deny nothing. I am only trying to explain to you – and, as for that, to myself also – what is going on within me. You have often heard the vanity of men bewailed, but not nearly enough, believe me. Against our better selves, against the demands of our hearts, it gives us over hopelessly into the power of every coquette who knows how to flatter this same vanity. Coquetry itself is a flattery that we are powerless to withstand. Yet how often, while we lie spell-bound, does our soul thirst, and thirsting perish, unless true love comes to succor it!"

Johanna's heart beat tumultuously, but she tried to appear at her ease, and said with a smile, and without looking up from her work, —

"Poor true love! How is it to manage if it does not know how to coquette?"

"No need of that!" Otto rejoined, passionately. "It only needs to show itself simply and seriously for what it is, to bring to shame all the spells of sorcery. Believe me, Johanna, if I could ever find it, – and a single look, a single tone, would reveal it to me, – I should be liberated forever."

He had taken hold of the end of her embroidery, thus obliging her to drop her hands in her lap, but she did not venture to speak or to look up at him.

"Johanna!" he began again, after a pause, in a suppressed tone.

Just then the Freiherr called out, "Come, Otto; I want to take a hand on this last evening with the Wildenhayns and you."

The young man arose. "Du sublime au ridicule," he said, with his customary smile of gay mockery, as he went to the whist-table, and the evening passed without any further opportunity for confidential words with Johanna.

The next morning Aunt Thekla appeared for the first time since the accident at the breakfast-table, in honor of the departing guests, who were all going in the ten-o'clock train from Thalrode. She, too, was full of hope for the invalid, and nodded an assent when the Freiherr insisted that all the family should reassemble in Dönninghausen to celebrate Johann Leopold's recovery.

"The Walburgs, of course; if they come, Waldemar will surely not stay away, and the postponed festival will be all the gayer," the old Herr concluded.

Magelone looked at Otto; he was calmly sipping his coffee, and she asked herself, with some anxiety, whether he could really bring himself to depart without a word of explanation with her.

"Let him – for all I care!" she said to herself, in a burst of offended feeling, and after breakfast she devoted herself to the children, who were brought in to say good-by. At the same time – involuntarily, perhaps – she watched Otto. He spoke with his grandfather and with Aunt Thekla, and then approached Johanna. Resolved to know what they were saying to each other, she playfully chased little Johann Eduard around the room until she came near to the pair, and then, kneeling down to tie on the child's hat more securely, she heard Otto lament that he should hear no tidings of Johann Leopold.

"Aunt Thekla never writes," he added, "and grandpapa, only when he wants to read me a homily. Pray, dear Johanna, write to me sometimes, and tell me how the invalid's recovery progresses."

In what a tone he spoke! Involuntarily Magelone sprang up to interrupt their conversation, but Eduard called out at this moment, "Come, hurry; it is time." Otto kissed Johanna's hand in farewell, and then turned to Magelone. "Au revoir" he said, coldly. Magelone smiled and said as calmly, "Au revoir."

But when embraces and farewells were over and the three carriages drove out of the court-yard, gazed after by herself and Johanna, she could no longer control herself, but burst into tears, and hurried into the house.

The next instant Johanna was at her side. "Dear Magelone," she began, gently, and would have taken her hand, but her cousin turned hastily away. "Leave me!" she cried. And, rushing up-stairs to her room, she closed the door and shot the bolt behind her.

"Oh, this hypocrite!" she exclaimed, and raised her clasped hands to heaven. "She thrusts herself forward everywhere. I cannot endure it any longer, – no, I cannot!"

She sank into an arm-chair, and wept in all the abandon of a child. Suddenly she sat erect, and wiped away her tears. "What folly!" she said to herself. "Am I helpless and unarmed? I am more beautiful than my rival; ought I not also to be more skilled, – cleverer? It is worth the trial. Otto must and shall return to me."

CHAPTER XI

RECOVERY

Again the days passed calmly and quietly at Dönninghausen, but they wore a different aspect from those which had preceded Christmas. Then the Freiherr had been the centre around which everything revolved, now it was Johann Leopold. Ludwig had pronounced all exciting causes dangerous for his patient, and begged that all his wishes might, as far as possible, be fulfilled. Therefore every one whose presence he requested was relieved from all other claim; even the meals, from which at other times only serious indisposition could excuse any member of the family, might be disregarded for Johann Leopold's sake.

With the egotism of an invalid, he required that either Ludwig or Aunt Thekla should be beside him all day, even when he was sleeping.

He took pleasure also in his grandfather's visits, so long as the old Herr could sit still; but as soon as he began, according to his habit, to pace the room to and fro, the sick man grew so restless as to oblige Ludwig courteously to dismiss the Freiherr.

"The lad is like a nervous girl," the latter would then say, with an irritated knitting of his brows; but the next moment he would add, "Well, we must be satisfied with seeing him as well as he is; by and by he will be perfectly reasonable again."

Perfect recovery, however, came but slowly. Only gradually did his memory of people and events begin to revive. One morning when his grandfather was sitting beside him he suddenly said, "Johanna!" and after a while he added, "I want to see her; let her come to me."

"Yes, my dear boy, I will send her to you," the Freiherr replied; "but send for Magelone too, or she will be hurt."

"Magelone!" he repeated, and his eyes expressed distress. "Magelone! No, no, she must not come! I will not see her. It is all her fault."

The Freiherr was startled. Johann Leopold was more seriously ill than he had supposed. "I will send Johanna," he said, rising; but the patient refused now to see even her. "No; send Dr. Werner," he said, fretfully. "I want him; he is the only one who knows what is good for me."

The next morning he insisted upon seeing Johanna, and she went to him.

"Sit down; I have much to say to you," he said, after her first greeting. "Pray, Aunt Thekla, leave us alone."

The old lady withdrew with an air of surprise. Johann Leopold lay still, staring before him, while Johanna contemplated him with compassion. His sunken temples, his neglected beard, his haggard eyes, made him still look very ill.

"Red Jakob, – what do you know of him?" he asked at last.

"I asked Ludwig – Dr. Werner, I mean – to take your place there," she replied. "You can depend upon him – "

"I know that," he interrupted her. "Well, what does he think? – how is Jakob?"

"Not well; Ludwig thinks his arm will always be useless."

"I thought so," said the sick man. "Does Christine know it?"

"Yes; I wrote her about it," Johanna made answer. "She was with him yesterday, and came to me afterwards. She was very sad – "

"And has given the poor fellow up, of course," the invalid interposed.

"You do not really believe that," said Johanna. "Do you not remember calling them the 'happy unfortunates'? Christine considers it a matter of course that she is now to take care of the helpless man. 'God has taken from me my little Jakob, and so I am better able to work for the big one,' she said; adding that she would do it joyfully if he would only be content, but that it would almost break his heart not to be able to earn his own living."

"Perhaps he may do so yet. I may be able to help him in that," said Johann Leopold. And after a pause he went on, in a hard tone, "Suppose I were no longer the heir, but ill and a cripple for my lifetime, how would my future betrothed behave to me? Do not reply. I know that our opinions upon this point agree, and that I cannot lay any claim to affection."

He looked so unhappy as he spoke that Johanna felt compelled to contradict him, but he cut her words short impatiently.

"Let us consult about Red Jakob," he said. "With whole limbs he would have had to go, for the sake of grandpapa's game; but crippled he may stay. About a mile and a half from here, among the mountains, I have a small estate, inherited from my mother. It is called Forest Hermitage, and the house is little more than an observatory. The grounds about it I have laid out as a forester's garden. The man who has had the care of it wishes to move down among his children in the valley. What do you think? Would Jakob and Christine like to live in that solitude?"

"They would be enraptured – " Johanna began.

The invalid interrupted her. "Then Dr. Werner shall propose it to Jakob," he said, and, covering his eyes with his hand, he sighed heavily. "It would enrapture no one to live in a solitude with me," he said, as if to himself, as Johanna, filled with solicitude lest the conversation should have been too much for him, called Aunt Thekla from the next room.

But the exertion seemed to have enabled Johann Leopold completely to conquer his disease. From this time he made rapid strides in convalescence; he was soon able to leave his bed, and at the end of January Aunt Thekla announced one morning with tears of joy, "He is coming down at noon to-day."

Just after this news, as Johanna and Magelone were left alone in the room, the latter said, "Have you written to Otto?"

"No, not yet." And Johanna bent over her work.

"He begged you so earnestly to do so. Why should you be so cruel to your friend?" Magelone continued. "You really must do it; I ask you for my own sake. Otto must have carried off with him my little ivory tablets which he took from me to tease me. Write to him to send them back to me."

"Why not do so yourself?" Johanna asked. "Then you could inform him concerning Johann Leopold."

"I? What are you thinking of?" exclaimed Magelone. "I think he showed great tact in asking you to write."

"Tact?" Johanna repeated. "I do not understand you."

"Why, yes; of course it would have been painful for me to destroy Otto's hopes. You are unconcerned, and can do so much better. How you look at me!" she went on. "Did you never think that if Johann Leopold were to die, Otto would be the heir?"

"Magelone! You cannot believe that Otto reckoned upon that?" cried Johanna.

"I do not believe it: I know it. He has talked with me of it more than once," Magelone replied. And after a pause she added, with a mocking smile, "How you look, my dear Johanna! Is it possible that you can have been at all mistaken in our cousin Otto? His is no ideal character. He is a thorough man of the world, selfish and grasping in the extreme."

Johanna made no reply, and was glad when Magelone soon after left the room. How could it be that this woman, who had known Otto from childhood, should judge him so falsely? A man of the world, yes; but far too gay and warm-hearted to be capable of the calculation with which Magelone accredited him. Johanna told herself that she had been wrong to delay sending him the letter for which he had begged her, and she resolved to write to him to-day.

But as she sat pen in hand with the paper before her, she discovered that Magelone's remarks had produced an effect. The ease with which, before hearing them, she could have expressed her delight in Johann Leopold's recovery was gone. What she wrote seemed to her first like a protest against Magelone's declaration, and then to be too warmly expressed. When she had destroyed several beginnings she confined herself to a mere announcement of Johann Leopold's rapid improvement, with a request for the return of Magelone's memorandum-tablets. When the letter had gone, she would fain have recalled it.

Ludwig had requested that there should be no demonstrations of pleasure at Johann Leopold's reappearance in the family circle; and when the convalescent joined them, the Freiherr, Aunt Thekla, and Johanna greeted him quietly as if he had not been absent. Leo, however, would not be repressed; he leaped up upon the friend whom he had so long missed, barking loudly, and nearly knocked him down. At this moment Magelone entered the room.

"Johann Leopold!" she cried joyously, and, hastening to him, she took his hand in both her own and looked up at him with sparkling eyes. He grew paler than before.

"Do not trouble yourself, – I know all you would say. I know my friends," he said, in a tone audible only to herself, as he withdrew his hand.

She changed color, but the next moment she smiled again, and, with a slight shrug, took her usual seat at the window. Aunt Thekla, who had heard nothing, but had observed the manner of the two, looked anxiously at her brother, who, however, was talking with Ludwig, pacing the room to and fro the while, and seemed to have noticed nothing of the meeting.

"Leave us! No, my dear doctor, you must not think of it," he said now, pausing in his walk. "After all the sad days which you have passed with us, you must learn something of the cheerful side of Dönninghausen."

"Cheerful side!" Magelone repeated to herself, casting an expressive look upwards, while the Freiherr added, "You said lately that you were about to write a book; do it here."

"Thank you, Herr von Dönninghausen," Ludwig replied; "but I could find no leisure here for writing. Good work must be done among those who work too."

The Freiherr tossed his head. "There we have the arrogance of the scholar," he said, and his eyes flashed beneath his bent brows. "Do you mean to imply that I do not work?"

Ludwig smiled. "Let us make a distinction. You work at your good pleasure as the whim seizes you, while the work to which I allude must be the result of a certain outward or inward pressure. Moreover, the projected book will not be written at present. I am going to India."

"And you tell us this only when you are just going away?" Johanna cried, reproachfully; and Aunt Thekla asked, dropping her work in her lap, "For heaven's sake, my dear doctor, what can you want in India?"

Ludwig came to the window where they were sitting. "Study, madame," he said. "An expedition, half scientific, half mercantile, is about to start for Gujerat and the Vindhya Mountains. I join it as physician. Moreover, my final decision was made only to-day."

"What does your father say to it?" asked Johanna.

"Of course he made all sorts of objections at first, but gradually he relinquished his opposition, and now he admits that the journey will be of great advantage to me."

The Freiherr again interrupted his walk. "Advantage!" he growled. "What advantage can India bring to a German physician? But science and trade are the idols of the present age, to which men sacrifice not only human beings but sound sense into the bargain!"

With these words he left the room, closing the door behind him with a crash.

Aunt Thekla grew pale and red by turns. "Pray do not be offended with my brother," she began.

Johann Leopold interposed: "What is there to be offended about?" and he smiled faintly. "You ought to feel flattered, my dear doctor. Grandpapa wishes to keep you here, and is angry to think that you can prefer India to our Dönninghausen. Dönninghausen, you must know, is in the eyes of every member of the family the very ideal of perfection, a paradise on earth."

"Not in my eyes," Magelone called out from the other window: it was insufferable to have no one taking any notice of her.

"My child, how can you say so?" Aunt Thekla admonished her.

"And why not?" Magelone replied. "You all of you have such a passion for the truth, why should I not say that I like Berlin a thousand, nay, a million times better than Dönninghausen, – that I have been better entertained in papa's meanest garrison-town than here?" She yawned. "Every morning when I wake I wonder why the slumber of the Sleeping Beauty does not overtake us."

As she said this, she glanced from beneath her drooping eyelids towards Johann Leopold. She wanted to vex him: he had been too disagreeable. But he rose with an air of indifference, – the bell for the second breakfast had just rung, – approached her, and offered her his arm.

"With your views I should have you on my side if I were to imitate the doctor and take a flight into the world," he said. "But no more at present; our grandfather must know nothing of it as yet."

Again they sat at table side by side as before the accident, and Magelone forced herself to discuss indifferent topics indifferently, but all the while the question would obtrude itself, "What did her cousin's 'into the world' mean?" Was he only jesting, or was it a concealed menace, or the mere whim of a sick man?

"He is too indolent to go away," – it was thus she consoled herself, – "and grandpapa would not allow it, nor would I." So long as she could consider Johann Leopold as securely her own he was more than indifferent to her, but now when it looked as if he were freeing himself, withdrawing from her sway, she wanted at all hazards to hold him fast, and this not from calculation alone. He had repulsed her advances to-day, but ice does not melt beneath the first sunbeam, and her amiability must conquer, like the sunshine, through persistency. If the doctor were only gone! His keen, observing glance made her uncomfortable.

Her wish was shortly to be fulfilled; Ludwig departed on the following morning. Very early, while he was busy packing, Johann Leopold came to his room. "I do not mean to disturb you," he said, throwing himself down on a sofa, "but I cannot spare one moment of you. You have spoiled me; I shall be doubly lonely now."

Ludwig frowned. "Do not be so weak," he said; "it is not fitting. You look badly, – you have not slept well."

"I have not slept at all," Johann Leopold replied. "After our conversation of last evening, after your answer to my questions – "