A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen. Claire von Glümer
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let you come here to this step-mother!" Ludwig exclaimed, and his lips quivered, as they always did when he controlled his indignation.
"She could not but let me; I wanted to come, and my father wanted me again."
"So suddenly?" Ludwig interposed. "Since your mother's death he had not apparently given you a thought. My father's house was your home, your holidays were spent with us, you came to us when you left boarding-school; you belong to us, and to us only! Your father has his fame, his luxury, his wife, the woman who was your mother's death – "
"Ludwig!" Johanna interrupted him reprovingly.
He coloured. "It is the truth, and you are old enough to know it," he said, sullenly. "You do know it, but would not for worlds acknowledge it! Deceit – falsehood – hypocrisy everywhere. In your case I suppose it would be called filial piety."
He threw himself into the nearest chair and frowned darkly.
"Hard and unjust as ever," Johanna exclaimed, and her voice trembled.
"As ever?" he repeated. "You forget: formerly you trusted to my judgment, you saw with my eyes and followed willingly where I led."
"Possibly," said Johanna; "but since then I have learned to see with my own eyes, and to walk alone. It was high time: I am no longer a child."
She was right; Ludwig reflected that she must be nearly twenty years old, although she looked scarcely sixteen, so immature was her slender figure, so youthful the pale face that looked dreamily into the world from beneath a luxuriance of brown braids.
"Well, let bygones be bygones," he rejoined with bitterness. "I may surely be allowed to ask what snatched you from us so suddenly. You were going to tell me."
Johanna seated herself opposite him. "If I only knew how to tell you, how to convince you that I could not do otherwise," she said. "From the expressions you have let fall you seem to me to think that I was influenced by vanity, love of pleasure, and a desire for luxury. Your sister accused me of the same motives."
"Let that go; what is Mathilde to us? Go on!" Ludwig interposed, impatiently.
Johanna obeyed; the dictatorial tone to which she had submitted for so long exercised its old influence upon her.
"You went away in the autumn," she began; "the winter passed as peacefully as usual, and summer brought the usual throng of guests to the baths. Suddenly we heard that my father was starring in Weimar. One of our friends took me to the first performance. When we arrived it was too late to see my father before the play, and so I sat in the corner of our box in trembling expectation of beholding him after nearly eight years – "
"Eight years! – a tender parent!" Ludwig interrupted; she paid him no heed.
"But it was not my father whom I saw," she went on with increasing agitation: "it was Hamlet. I thought I knew the play, but what heights and depths were disclosed to me by this representation! This was no acting, it was actual life: suffering – doubt – despair. I sat trembling as if from a fever-fit, and after the performance I hastened to him. I do not know what I said to him, but my enthusiasm touched and delighted him. He kept me with him at first only during his stay in Weimar, afterwards for always. He went with me to Lindenbad to demand me of my foster-parents, and they thought it but natural that he should do so."
"Yes, so my mother wrote me," said Ludwig, "in the last letter I had from her before she was taken ill."
"I had no idea how ill she was," the young girl whispered, "or I should not have left her."
He made no rejoinder; his expression, as he gazed moodily upon the ground, grew darker still.
After a pause, Johanna said, "I wrote to you then; why did you not answer me?"
"I could not," he replied. "Amid all your grief at my mother's death there was a tone of relief in your letter."
"There was," said Johanna. "It is not in vain that I am the child of a great artist. The revelations he makes to me of the world of art are like my native air to me. Unconsciously I missed them and longed for them before I ever knew them."
"The intoxication has lasted, then?" Ludwig asked, with his bitterest smile.
"Intoxication!" she repeated. "You may call it so; but it is something better and nobler. I cannot define it, but its effect upon me is the same, only intensified, if possible. Everything within me that is dim and confused becomes clear and distinct when my father interprets for me – "
"Johanna!" Ludwig exclaimed, "you would not – you cannot go upon the stage!"
"If I only could!" she cried, with sparkling eyes; "if I only could!"
"You must not!" he said angrily, and seized her hands. "Bethink yourself; a man can assert himself, isolate himself upon the stage as elsewhere, a woman never; she loses her identity, degrades herself – "
"There is no reason why she should do so," Johanna exclaimed, clasping tightly the hands which she had withdrawn from his grasp. "The inspiration which animates and strengthens a man can exalt a woman also above all petty, low considerations. I have been here more than a year, and have kept my eyes open. I have seen what has been mean and paltry, nay, disgusting, but never in my father, never! He is not only great in his art, he is a man great and complete as only an artist can be."
Ludwig changed colour. "Do you really mean this, Johanna?" he asked. "Is it only in an artist that you can find a 'complete' man? Think what you are saying."
"Yes, yes; I mean it!" she cried passionately, and her cheeks glowed. She seemed transformed.
"Then I have nothing more to say," said Ludwig, as he arose.
Then first Johanna was conscious of what she had done.
"Oh, do not go!" she cried, confronting him. "I cannot let you go so. You did not understand me; I only meant – "
"I not understand you, child?" said Ludwig, controlling himself. "I might deceive myself while I was absent from you; but now that we are together, I see into your heart just as I always did."
"No, no; you do not see clearly. You do not understand me. You are offended – "
"Hush, hush!" Ludwig interrupted her, leading her to her seat again. "Come, sit down, and listen to me. Why should I be offended? We all embody for ourselves an ideal of beauty and dignity. I have done the same. Shall I tell you how?"
She only nodded an assent. There was something in his manner that confused her.
"My ideal," he began, taking a seat opposite her, – "a woman, of course, – was a gay, simple-hearted creature, looking out upon life with clear, truthful eyes; not exacting much, but always ready to do her best, interested in all that was good, beautiful, and great, but with a keen sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, never neglectful of the daily tasks of life, but consecrating, as it were, the meanest among them by her performance of it, and surrounded as by a purer ether, diffusing harmony and content wherever she might be."
"Your mother!" Johanna said, when he paused.
"My mother," he repeated, with a sudden smile that wonderfully transfigured his set, determined face. And the earnest look that he turned upon Johanna was a strange mixture of gentleness, entreaty, and menace.
"My mother," he repeated. "Yes, and one other who was like her; one who I believed for years would exactly resemble her. It was an illusion; it is past."
Johanna looked down with a blush. She could not but perceive that he meant herself. But could this be love? Impossible! One does not so quickly and causelessly resign what one loves. What had she done? Left his father's house to go to her own father's house. And the thoughtless words she had just spoken? If he loved her he would know that they had been uttered too hastily. Anger and obstinacy conquered every gentler emotion, and after a short pause she rejoined coldly, without looking up, "It is not given to every one to achieve content as did your mother."
"Content!" Ludwig exclaimed; "she was a happy woman."
"Do you think so?" said Johanna, raising her eyes to his. "Had she hoped and longed for nothing more in life than the companionship