A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen. Claire von Glümer
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and happiness of former days, – vanished now forever.
"Would Roderich feel some pity if he knew how vital within me is still the memory of every word of his, – the very tone in which each word was uttered? Ah, Louise! those words, those tones, possessed the power to create thrones and altars, and transformed the fortunate creature for whom they were spoken into a queen, a goddess: he constituted her such.
"I was his from the first moment that I saw him. I was with my parents in Berlin, where he was playing. I saw him first in 'Torquato Tasso,' and then at a ball at the French ambassador's. He asked to be presented to me. I stood before him trembling, and when he held out his hand to me I was his slave for life. There was no longer any question of will or choice, nothing but a blessed necessity. I could not but resign everything for him, – home, parents, brothers, family, rank, and wealth. He was still only a beginner in his art. My enthusiasm, my devotion, flattered him; my intelligence fired his genius; my beauty intoxicated his senses. Yes, there were years when I made him happy, in which I filled his heart and his imagination.
'Though 'tis torture, yet that time
Can never be forgot.'
"In the first year of our marriage Johanna was born. I announced her birth to my parents, and hoped, from my mother at least, for a kind word. Instead of this I saw the notice of her death in the papers. Two years later God sent me a son, but he lived only a few hours, and my life was in danger for months, while I was confined for years to my room. That was the beginning of my unhappiness. Roderich was still so young, – he had married when only twenty-three. He needed change and excitement to counterbalance his close application to the duties of his profession. Often, when in the flush of some fresh triumph he would come to my room to make me a partaker in his delight, both doctor and nurse would caution him not to fatigue me. He was obliged to walk on tiptoe, to sit in semi-darkness, to speak in a whisper. All this he could not endure. He went, and I was left alone, – more and more alone, of course, as time passed on.
"August 22.
"I could not write more. This pain in my heart has debarred me from all exertion for the last few days, during which you, dear Louise, have been, as always, my stay and comfort. Let these lines thank you for your kindness when my lips can do so no longer.
"I know how near the end is now, and the consciousness fills me with a despair beyond words. To vanish – to be forgotten – to leave to others what was once my own —
"But I did not mean to speak of myself. My last thought and care are for my poor Johanna, who will so soon be orphaned. If it is possible, Louise, let my child stay with you. I will write to Roderich and entreat him to send the child to some school here in your neighbourhood. Then give her that home in your heart which she loses in mine. Her father hardly knows her, and will hardly miss her, as she on her part will scarcely miss him. On the other hand, she is warmly attached to you and to your children, and in your house she will find the pure domestic atmosphere which can never be hers in her father's. Hard though it be to say it, it must be said: the thought of leaving my child in the hands of the woman who has robbed me of Roderich's love poisons my last hours, and will leave me no rest in the grave. Johanna must not love that woman, must not owe her anything. I am sure you understand this feeling, even although you do not approve of it.
"Later.
"More bad days and nights, – how many I do not know; and through them all this terrible anxiety about Johanna's future. If you cannot grant my request and keep her yourself, then, I entreat you, see that she takes refuge with my people. They will receive her kindly. Three years ago, when Roderich's passion for this actress became notorious, my father wrote to me asking me to come to him with my child. His only condition was my legal separation from Roderich and the dropping of the name which he so hated. I could not bring myself to consent to this; but twice since then, when my two brothers died, I wrote to my father, now quite desolate, and each time he answered me and made me the same proposal. He will certainly receive my orphan child kindly.
"Understand me aright, dear Louise. I would rather know Johanna at home with you than anywhere else. In your home-circle her youth would be gayer and simpler. Only if you cannot adopt her, send her to my father, to the Freiherr Johann von Dönninghausen, Dönninghausen on the Harz, or write to him and commend my child to her grandfather's heart.
"The morning dawns. Perhaps when the phantoms of the night flee I can sleep —
'To die – to sleep!
To sleep! perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.'
"Did you ever hear Roderich utter those words? They ring in my ears now as if I had just heard him say them. I must hear him say them once more. No, no, – I cannot die."
Here the letter ended. Death had come suddenly and painlessly. Johanna remembered the peaceful smile upon her mother's beautiful face as she lay in her coffin. She kissed the last lines written by her dear hand, and her heart overflowed with tenderness.
The impression made upon her by the letter, however, was far other than Ludwig seemed to expect it would produce. Not for a moment did it alter Johanna's love for her father. On the contrary, its passionate pain seemed to justify her feeling for him. Weary unto death, and tortured with jealousy, her mother had turned to him in love and longing, and her last words were the utterance of a desire to see him once more.
"This is love," Johanna said to herself, – "the only true love, – that of which it stands written, 'beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.' Whoever can merely say as Ludwig does, 'I loved you so long as you thought and felt thus and so,' has never really loved."
Even her mother's desire that she should go to her grandfather did not disturb Johanna. The letter said expressly, 'Her father hardly knows her, and will hardly miss her.' Now that he knew her and loved her, her mother would not, Johanna was convinced, wish her to leave him. Only if her father should come to consider her a burden, or if her lack of talent should estrange him from her, or if her step-mother's dislike of her should lead to misunderstandings, could it be her duty to leave her father's roof.
But it was useless to pursue such reflections as these. If her step-mother did not like her, her father's love and her little sister's devotion more than indemnified her. To attach to herself the lovely little creature who before her sister's arrival had spent all her time with the servants, to make good the deficiencies in the little girl's training, these were tasks after Johanna's own heart, and in them she could find abundant content; if she applied herself to these and restrained her thoughts and desires from wandering in other realms, she could surely be once more for Ludwig what she had been formerly.
She sat with clasped hands gazing into the flame of the candle. The little watering-place in the Thüringian forest, so long her home, rose vividly in her memory. There stood the vine-wreathed cottage of the resident physician, where Ludwig would dwell as his father's successor; the garden, with its dwarf fruit-trees, vegetable patch, and flower-beds; the hawthorn arbour by the hedge, with the vista of the chestnut avenue, along which the guests at the baths used to saunter; the little stream with its grassy banks; and, enclosing all, the wooded heights, a fitting frame for the lovely peaceful picture.
"But it would be no life for me," Johanna said to herself. "Why not? Why cannot I be content with what has satisfied thousands? Why am I possessed by this desire for – I know not what – for giving shape and expression to something? Is it not vanity, or ambition, or self-conceit?"
She was more than ever conscious of the loneliness in which she had lived since the death of her foster-mother, who had been her refuge in all doubt and distress, while her husband, Uncle Werner, as Johanna called him, had ministered only to the physical ailments of his family. She had found but little sympathy from Mathilde, Ludwig's sister, whose nature was cold and narrow; even Ludwig, sensitive as he was, had not understood her. But her father, – he must have known such times of doubt and uncertainty, – he might help her.
"I will pluck up courage and tell him everything to-morrow," she said to herself. Then, calmed and quieted by this resolve,