A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen. Claire von Glümer
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fair soul,'" said Johanna.
"You are laughing. Oh, you are good and kind!" Magelone declared. "I never will be cross to you again. I will love you so dearly. Believe me, Johanna, I have always wanted some one like you."
"You hardly know me," said Johanna.
"But I know that you have everything which I lack. The repose of your manner, – how I envy and admire you for it! You can sit perfectly quiet all the while grandpapa is reading the papers. It drives me about like a will-o'-the-wisp."
"That is your nature," Johanna rejoined. "There is always something about you, not like a will-o'-the-wisp, but like a rippling wave."
Magelone shook her head. "Far more like a will-o'-the-wisp. The wave has its goal, flows in a destined course; I go I know not whither."
"But you are gay and happy; what more would you have?" exclaimed Johanna.
Magelone replied, "Not always. Latterly I have been rather gloomy than gay. What do you think of Johann Leopold?" she added, after a pause.
"I cannot judge yet," Johanna replied. "I have hardly talked with him."
"He does not talk," Magelone interrupted her. "He is just what you have seen him day out and day in. It is the same with every one. Grandpapa is always dictatorial, Aunt Thekla always good and tiresome, Johann Leopold always odd. Doesn't he look like the marble guest?"
"He looks melancholy and ill."
"And yet he has no positive complaint that I know of," said Magelone. "His hobby is chemistry. Whenever he is not on duty with grandpapa he is shut up in his laboratory in the garden, with all sorts of sounds and smells. It is a perfect witch's kitchen there. Can you imagine an odder match than he and myself?"
"Magelone!" cried Johanna. "You do not mean to say – "
"Yes, yes; we wish – or rather we ought to marry," Magelone interposed. "Grandpapa devised the match, and of course it must be. I am a widow; Johann Leopold's betrothed died; I have lost my property; he is the heir. We are equals in rank; he is thirty years old, I am twenty-one. In short, the match is the most suitable that can be imagined."
"But you will not consent?"
"What am I to do?" Magelone asked, shrugging her shoulders. "I am spoiled. Poor Willfried ran through all my money to the last farthing. I have no chance of making conquests in this wilderness; and, besides, who would marry a widow with no money?"
"Whoever loved her."
"Do you believe in love?" asked Magelone. "I don't. All I have seen of what is called love was mere play. People flirt, and try to befool one another, to outdo a rival, but love, which might induce one to contract a disadvantageous marriage, never. Marriage is a business transaction."
"Yours does not seem to have been such," Johanna said.
"Do you suppose I was enamoured of my stout captain?" asked Magelone. "Not in the least! It suited me to marry before I was quite eighteen an officer of the Garde du Corps; it suited me to go to Berlin, and to court; but I never imagined for a moment that Willfried would forego his ballet-girls and his cards for longer than the honeymoon. My folly lay in never reflecting upon how quickly a fortune may be gambled away. My good father ought to have thought of that; but he was ill, and wanted to see me established, as they say, before his death, and so it all happened."
"Poor child!" said Johanna, taking her hand. "It was the fault of circumstances. You will learn to look upon life differently. Only have courage, and hope."
"If I could!" Magelone said, her melancholy smile contrasting oddly with her sparkling eyes. "Do you know I sometimes fancy that I have no heart? It has something to do with my name. The water-witch Magelone, after whom I am called, bequeathed to me her own uncanny nature."
"No, no; you will learn to love," Johanna interrupted. She thought of Otto, and of the way in which he had spoken of Magelone. "You are not actually betrothed yet?" she added.
"Not yet," Magelone replied. "Thus far grandpapa has only informed us both, Johann Leopold and myself, of his desire. He called us into his study and addressed us very solemnly."
"And you?" Johanna asked.
"Johann Leopold bowed, as he always does, like an automaton, —cela n'engage à rien, – and I suppose I smiled. But what does it matter what we say? You may be sure that if we employed all the eloquence in the world to combat grandpapa's arrangements it would avail nothing. At Christmas, when all the noble family are assembled here, the betrothal will take place, and at the hour that grandpapa shall appoint we shall stand before the altar and exchange rings whether we will or not."
"That I cannot understand," said Johanna.
"You will understand it when you have once seen how terrible grandpapa's anger is," Magelone rejoined, – "when he frowns, and his eyes flash from beneath his bushy white eyebrows, and his voice thunders and roars. It occurs but rarely, but the terror of it is in our very blood, or has been taught us from childhood, I cannot tell which."
"Did you ever see grandpapa so?" asked Johanna.
"Only once, when Otto, who is very hasty, had boxed the forester's ears. Grandpapa roared out that so to treat an honest man, who could not demand satisfaction for the insult, was the act of a blackguard; Otto was not worthy to bear the name of Dönninghausen. As I tell it it seems nothing, but when grandpapa flew out at the poor boy I really thought he would have felled him to the earth, and every one present – it happened during the charmingly social hour after breakfast – was petrified with horror."
"But grandpapa was right!" exclaimed Johanna. "Cousin Otto must have acknowledged that, for he speaks of him with the greatest reverence, and calls him a nobleman in the fullest sense of the word."
Magelone shrugged her shoulders. "My dear child, that is the Dönninghausen craze. They all imagine that because they bear this name they are superior to all other human beings; and since they are not so, – I mean the younger generation, – they fall down and worship the old gentleman, in whom the family craze has become flesh and blood. But what have we to do with that?" she went on, jumping up and throwing her arms around Johanna. "You are not weighted with the sacred name. I have, for a while at least, thrown it aside, and I only wish we could really and truly enjoy life. There it goes again!" she added, with an expression of comic despair, – "that dreadful bell, for the second breakfast, and then four vacant hours before it rings again to call us to dinner. Poor Johanna! Day after day passes here, each the exact counterpart of these last twenty-four hours, year out, year in, and there is nothing for it but to lament with Heine's Proserpine, —
''Mid corpses pale,
While Lemurs wail,
To grieve away my youthful days.'"
Whilst Magelone was revealing this melancholy prospect to the new inmate of the castle, the Freiherr had gone to his sister in the morning-room, where, as he paced to and fro after his wonted fashion, with his hands clasped behind him, he said, "I am surprised and delighted to find how well Johanna suits us. Although she has been here so short a time, I seem nearer to her than to Magelone."
"Yes, because she has more soul," said the old lady.
The Freiherr shrugged his shoulders. "My dear Thekla, what is her soul to me? She is clever and – strange as it sounds, and much as the word irritated me, coming from Magelone – she has race. More than any other of my grandchildren is she flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone."
Aunt Thekla nodded assent, and the Freiherr went on:
"It makes me anxious, too. What is to become of the child? She does not belong in our circle. She is too good to be married to one of these new-fangled noblemen, who, in spite of their descent, are quite ready to throw themselves away upon any peasant's or tradesman's daughter provided she has money; and to allow her to fall back into a rank which would separate her from us entirely, – a great pity, a great pity!"
"But must she of necessity be married?" asked Aunt Thekla.
"Of course!" said the Freiherr.
"I have not been – " the old lady began.
Her