A Noble Name Part 17

The old lady withdrew with an air of surprise. Johann Leopold lay still, staring before him, while Johanna contemplated him with compa.s.sion. 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. 'G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed with us, you must learn something of the cheerful side of Donninghausen."

"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 Donninghausen," 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 Donninghausen. Donninghausen, 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 pa.s.sion for the truth, why should I not say that I like Berlin a thousand, nay, a million times better than Donninghausen,--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."