A Noble Name Part 19

The Freiherr stopped pacing to and fro and stood still before the young man. "Impossible!" he said,--"impossible! You imagine all this; you are a hypochondriac. We, Thekla and I, would have known of it."

"Old Christian knows it," the other rejoined. "My mother delivered me into his care, and like a mother he has guarded me and my sad secret.

The attacks are rare, but very sudden. My fall on the Thalrode railway platform was in consequence of one of them."

Again the Freiherr began his walk; but his step, usually so firm, was now uncertain, and his head, usually so proudly carried, was bowed.

After a while he went up to Johann Leopold, who sat buried in thought.

"It is a trial,--a terrible trial," he said, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder; "but I think it will be easier for you, my poor boy, if we all help you to bear it. Magelone, too, will help,--she loves you----"

"No, sir," Johann Leopold interrupted him. "Magelone consented only to marry the heir; but to love him----!" He smiled bitterly. "And, even if she did, I never would consent to bind her fresh young life to mine. I love her too well for that. Apart, indeed, from all personal considerations, how could I consent to taint the pure blood of the Donninghausens with the poison of epilepsy?"

"The pure blood of the Donninghausens." The most powerful chord in the old Freiherr's soul vibrated to these words; at the same time they made the grandson, whose thoughts were so after his own heart, doubly dear to him and the desire to help him all the more fervent. He sat down beside him and took his hand.

"Diseases can be cured," he said again. "What is the lauded advance of science, if it can be of no service here? Did you speak of this to Dr.

Werner?"

"Yes; his verdict is 'incurable,'" the other replied.

The Freiherr sprang to his feet. "Nonsense! How can he know that?" he cried, angrily. "Dr. Werner is young, inexperienced. We must consult distinguished authorities. I will go with you to Paris, to London, to Vienna,--wherever you choose."

"I thank you," the young man rejoined. "Your sympathy and kindness do me good; but I entreat you to spare yourself and me the pain of any such consultations. Quiet--ease of mind, as Werner says--is the only preservative against the attacks, and this I can find, not in any medical advice, but in absence,--in separation from Magelone."

The Freiherr was silent for a while, and then said, "Have you any plan of travel?"

"Yes; I should like to join Werner and go to India with him."

The Freiherr turned short upon him again: "To India? In your condition the fatigue of the journey, the influence of the climate----"

"All better for me than staying here," Johann Leopold interrupted him, and his pale face flushed for an instant. After a pause he went on more calmly: "I have been corresponding with Dr. Werner about it. He made at first the same objections that you make; but he finally acknowledged that my morbid desire for just this journey is perhaps a true instinct,--a suggestion of nature."

The Freiherr breathed more freely. "There, you see,--a suggestion of nature. Then Dr. Werner thinks your recovery possible. And it is so; you _must_ be well. Yes, my lad, go,--go as soon as you choose; and if I can be of any service to you, rely upon me."

"If you would have an eye upon Moorgarten and Elgerode I should be greatly obliged to you."

"Certainly I will; refer your people to me," said the Freiherr. "But I have one condition to make: we will explain that you are ill, and are to travel in search of health. What your illness is must remain our secret.

If you come back well, it need never be known."

Johann Leopold pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and eyes with his own peculiar gesture of weariness. "Magelone must be told."

"Least of all Magelone!" cried his grandfather. "If she cannot be spared it always--well, then she must endure it; but let her hope as long as she can. She deserves it at your hands. She loves you. I saw that plainly while you were ill."

The young man smiled bitterly again, arose, and went to the window. Before him lay the park, with its lindens of a hundred years, which had shaded his childish games; beyond it soared the mountain-peaks,--Eichberg, Klettberg, and Elbenhohe,--with their magnificent forests and hunting-grounds, which he had been taught from infancy to regard as his inheritance, and for the care of which he felt himself responsible, as well as for the villagers nestling in the valley under the protection of the ancient castle of Donninghausen.

To resign it all voluntarily was hard; and yet how much harder was it to resign his claim--superficial although it were--upon Magelone! He had long been convinced that it must be done, but he had always shrank and hesitated. Ludwig's words--'Never delay where the knife is necessary'--occurred to him. He would not any longer keep himself and others in useless suspense.

"Grandfather," he said, in a tone of forced composure, "it would be best to put a speedy end to it all,--to give me up as a forlorn hope. Let the heirship devolve upon Otto; and Magelone----"

"The heirship to Otto!" the Freiherr interposed, in a voice of thunder.

"Never, so long as I have a voice in the matter! That would be certain ruin for Donninghausen. Remember. Scarcely two years ago Otto made away with everything he had inherited from his mother, and think of the debts I have paid for him since!"

"That is over, sir," said Johann Leopold. "Since Otto promised you he would never play again, he has never--my information comes from a trustworthy source--touched a card."

The Freiherr, who was again pacing to and fro, waved his hand in sign of disapproval. "I do not trust the fellow," he murmured; and then went on aloud, "Why discuss matters which are quite out of the question? You are the heir, and the heir you will remain, even although"--he hesitated a moment--"even although you should decide not to marry. I can transfer to you the work of my life in full confidence that you will continue it after my own fashion. I rely upon you to do so, difficult as you may find it, and even although the task requires you to resign one or another of your own inclinations. A lofty position in this world entails upon us certain duties. Men of our rank, my dear boy, cannot choose a sphere of action. We are born into it, and it is our duty--we owe it to ourselves--to shape ourselves to it to the best of our ability."

Johann Leopold looked down; he breathed heavily, and his lips were tightly compressed. He had laboured hard for months to form a resolution, and when it was formed to carry it out, and now he perceived, with a kind of terror, that his grandfather's words had shaken his decision. Was it not as the Freiherr said? Was it not a cowardly desertion of the post which fate had accorded him to resign the inheritance of his ancestors, and to break with the duties and traditions of his rank and family? But besides his grandfather's voice others were speaking aloud within him, requiring as urgently that he should abide by what he thought right. When the Freiherr paused before him, saying, "I trust, Johann Leopold, that I may rely upon you," he looked up; he was not yet clear in his mind, and in every way strength failed him for a final decision. "I will try to get well," he replied, although he did not believe in the possibility of recovery.

His grandfather grasped his hand. "That's right, my boy! Only try, and you will do it!" he exclaimed, with a joyous hopefulness that, old as he was, always lent him a certain youthful freshness. "Let us have no hypochondriacal complaints,--no morbid self-examinations. It is well for you to go away for a while; it will give you something else to think of. Now for your preparations for your journey, that you may go as soon as possible."

The young man then confessed that, relying upon his grandfather's consent, he had already empowered Dr. Werner to arrange for his journey as far as possible; all that remained to be done he would himself attend to in Vienna, where he wanted to pa.s.s a few days.

"It would be best to follow Dr. Werner on the day after to-morrow," he added. "The vessel sails from Trieste on the 14th of this month.

Everything here is arranged and attended to."

The Freiherr was surprised; he had not looked for so speedy a departure, but he was ashamed to seem averse to it.

"Well, then, the day after to-morrow," he said; "only bear up, my boy, against the women's tears."

"No one will grieve," Johann Leopold replied, with a melancholy smile.

Indeed, what with bustle and excitement, there was scarcely time for grief; but Aunt Thekla supplied tears and lamentations enough as she superintended the packing of the trunks.

It was bad enough that such a dear good creature as Dr. Werner would insist upon undertaking such a foolish expedition; and then, too, he did it for the love of science. But what a Donninghausen could find to do in India the old lady could not for the life of her conceive; and still less did she understand how her brother could let the lad, hardly recovered as he was, leave Donninghausen. But the Freiherr seemed better friends than ever with Johann Leopold. His voice and look when he addressed him were most kind, and sometimes when he thought himself unperceived he would gaze at his grandson with an expression of such anxiety as went to Aunt Thekla's very heart.

To Johanna Johann Leopold had much to say; he commissioned her to install Red Jakob and Christine in the Forest Hermitage; told her where to address her letters to him, and promised to write to her in return.

He was as taciturn as ever with Magelone, but his eyes spoke a different language from any she had read in them before. What was the meaning in those deep, grave, melancholy eyes?

The last morning he handed his grandfather a letter. "For Magelone," he said. "Let her give you her answer, and you will write me what it is. Do not urge her, do not influence her; and if she thinks she can find her happiness elsewhere, let no consideration for me prevent her from grasping it."

The letter ran thus:

"DEAR MAGELONE,--You know that considerations of health have determined me to this journey, which will keep me absent for an uncertain period from you and from my home. Only my grandfather and yourself must know that I am very ill, perhaps hopelessly so, and it is with great pain that I add that under these circ.u.mstances it seems to me dishonourable to hold you bound by the half betrothal at present existing between us. If I should one day return well, and find you still free, and ready anew to bestow upon me your heart and hand, my most ardent desire will be fulfilled; and perhaps, dear Magelone, I might then be better qualified to win you than now, when illness depresses and embitters me. But your future must not depend upon this _perhaps_; you must not, upon my account, reject or turn away from what might make you happy. _You are free, perfectly free._ Show our grandfather this letter, that he may know how we stand with regard to each other. If you can give him a kind word of comfort for me--no promise; I cannot accept any such from you now--I shall be heartily grateful to you. Once more, dear Magelone, you are free, whilst I am now and forever yours,

"JOHANN LEOPOLD."

As soon as the carriage bearing away the traveller had vanished from the eyes that were watching its departure, the Freiherr handed this letter to Magelone. He pitied 'the warm-hearted little thing,' as he had called her ever since Johann Leopold's accident, all the more since she bore her grief with astonishing fort.i.tude. Not a tear, not a sob, not a fainting-fit,--nothing of all that he so detested. She had extricated herself from Johann Leopold's last embrace like a little heroine, merely pressing her handkerchief once to her eyes. Not one of the women among his vaunted ancestry could have conducted herself better upon the departure of a Donninghausen for the Holy Land.

"G.o.d willing, she shall be the lad's wife yet, and the mistress of this old cradle of our race!" the Freiherr thought, and handed her the letter.

And then the 'little heroine' went to her own room, where she read and reread the strange farewell lines. Oddly enough, although they contained none of the flattering words of love which she had often heard from others, there breathed from them a deep, ardent affection, and while the writer's words declared her free, she felt more than ever how he longed to bind her fast. Had the suspicions she had felt of him and of Johanna been groundless, then? or was he tired of straying and returning to her repentantly? However it might be, she determined to forgive him, since he lay at her feet once more. It was a pity that she must do so from such a distance! It made her laugh to think of it.

After a short period of reflection, she took the letter to her grandfather.

"Well, what am I to write to Johann Leopold?" he asked, when he had read it through, and he looked fixedly at her; but ah! his frank, honest gaze could not sound the depths of those flashing, glimmering, elfish eyes.

"I send him a thousand greetings, and wish and hope for his speedy return well and strong," Magelone replied, with a sweet smile.

"Right, child; those are the kind words which the silly fellow asks of you," said the Freiherr. "He has, as I see, forbidden you to give him any promise; but that is no affair of mine. Tell me frankly,--I had better know the truth,--do you, as well as he, in spite of this letter, hold yourself bound?"

He held out his broad hand to her, and she laid her rosy fingers in it.