A Noble Name Part 16

"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 Donninghausen,--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, pa.s.sionately. "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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sent when the Freiherr insisted that all the family should rea.s.semble in Donninghausen 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 pa.s.sed calmly and quietly at Donninghausen, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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."