A Noble Name Part 4

"Of course I cannot withdraw my stipulations," Roderich added, "and therefore cannot renew my contract, favourable as its conditions were for me."

"You can get another anywhere else quite as favourable, and even more so," said Helena.

"But not the accessories which I have here," Roderich declared. "Not the intelligent public, nor the charming _mise-en-scene_ which makes each separate performance a work of art."

"That is no affair of yours," said Helena. "Each for himself, and G.o.d for us all. And as for the public, I can't see that it is especially intelligent. Wherever else you go you receive more applause than you get here, and so do I."

"Applause!" he repeated, with an impatient shrug. "Dear Helena, there is a kind of applause that makes me blush with mortification; but from your point of view you can hardly understand this."

How gladly would Johanna have a.s.sured him that she understood him perfectly! But while she was struggling with her natural shyness, Helena exclaimed, "If you think so meanly of me, pray do not proclaim it before other people; it is more than I can bear."

Roderich changed colour. "To accuse me of unkindness just when I am sacrificing all my plans for your sake is rather hard!" he said. And, rising from table, he left the room suddenly, slamming the door noisily behind him.

Lisbeth, terrified, began to cry, the others were amazed. Never before had he allowed himself to be so carried away by temper.

"He must be ill," said Johanna.

"Nonsense! he is out of temper," said Helena, "and he shall not hear a kind word from me until he begs my pardon."

Johanna was right. In half an hour Friedrich announced that the Herr had one of his attacks of headache, and could see no one.

On such days there seemed to be a spell upon the entire household. Every voice was lowered, every footfall was as light as possible, and Friedrich m.u.f.fled the bell upon the landing.

This time, Johanna learned from Friedrich, the pain was not so intense as usual, but it did not pa.s.s away at the end of twenty-four hours.

When, in spite of it, Roderich went to rehearsal the next day, he returned more ill than ever. The third day fever set in, and the physician ordered him to bed.

Helena had not forgiven the scene at table.

"It surely is not very bad, doctor," she said, as she accompanied the physician from the room. "I am just ordering a magnificent costume for Desdemona. Oth.e.l.lo comes out next week; you must have him well by that time."

"We will hope for the best," the old man said, as he took his leave.

Johanna, who overheard his words, was startled. She knew from Dr. Werner what these words signified in a physician's mouth. Whilst Helena carelessly returned to her costume, Johanna waited with a throbbing heart at her father's door until the servant made his appearance.

"Pray ask papa, Friedrich, whether I may not come in," she said.

The sick man heard her. "Come!" he called. His voice, usually so full and sonorous, sounded m.u.f.fled, and his face was still more changed: it was colourless, and looked pinched and wan upon the pillow.

Johanna went to his bedside, with difficulty suppressing all signs of emotion. "Papa," she entreated, "let me stay with you. You have Friedrich, it is true, but I know better than he how to nurse an invalid."

For a while he gazed at her as if he scarcely understood her words.

"Yes, stay with me," he said; "I think I am really very ill, and you are more careful, quieter, stronger----"

He did not finish the sentence, but she understood what he meant.

"Ah, thank you!" she said, kissing his burning hand.

He drew his daughter closer to him. "My dear, good child!" he said, pressing his feverish lips to her forehead. She did not dream that it was a farewell caress.

The disease progressed rapidly, and was p.r.o.nounced by the physician the next day to be a nervous fever. He was quite content with Johanna's calm, careful treatment of his patient, but he begged Helena, who could not control her agitation, to spare her own delicate health for the sake of her child, and to be as little as possible in the sick-room. She sighed and submitted.

But, indeed, neither she nor any one else could have disturbed the sick man after a few days had pa.s.sed; he lay in a state of entire unconsciousness.

The whole city was interested in the artist's condition; the inquiries after his health were countless; the door was besieged by friends and acquaintances. He had always been a kind, ungrudging comrade to his fellow-actors, and now when he could no longer excite their envy, they remembered his own freedom from it, and did all in their power to testify their esteem and friendship for him.

For Helena it was a kind of consolation to receive their visits; her nature was of those for which distraction is possible. After she had with many tears given an account of the sick man's state, she would listen with interest to theatrical gossip, and forget for a while her own sorrow. It overcame her, indeed, with redoubled violence when she was once more alone. Often, when she had been laughing with a visitor at some jest, Johanna would find her in a state of most pitiable distress.

"He is going to die, I know he is; such happiness as ours was too great for this world of misery," she would declare, sobbing as if her heart would break; or she would cry out as if bereft of her senses, "O G.o.d, you cannot take him from me! He must be spared for me and for his art."

She was most helpless and hopeless in the sick-room, where she would throw herself on her knees by Roderich's bedside, cover his hand with kisses, and exhaust every pa.s.sionate term of endearment, nearly fainting when there was no response from her unconscious husband. But if one of the physicians or a friend wished to speak to her, she would arise, and, with a look of anguish as she left the room, involuntarily adjust artistically the soft folds of her white cachemire peignoir.

Johanna was too young and unsophisticated to appreciate her step-mother.

She did her injustice when she accused her of heartlessness, and she added to her own burden by a daily increasing dislike for Helena.

But she could not help it. The sleep of exhaustion, which now and then overcame her, was all the rest and forgetfulness that she had. If she forced herself to talk with little Lisbeth, she had to struggle continually with rising tears, and when she heard others speaking of the events of the day, she could hardly comprehend how the affairs of the world could pursue their usual course outside of the sick-room. That was her realm, and her father's death seemed to her the end of all things.

Week after week pa.s.sed. The physician gave Johanna no hope. She had herself watched from day to day, and from hour to hour, the inexorable approach of the Destroyer, and when the last moment came, she had lived it over in thought a hundred times.

It was the gray dawn of a morning in November. She was sitting alone at her father's bedside. Helena was asleep upon a lounge in the next room, when Roderich once more opened his eyes, in which there was a last ray of consciousness; his lips moved, and when Johanna leaned over him, she heard him whisper, 'Helena.' His features were convulsed for an instant, and when Helena rushed into the room in answer to her low cry, it was too late. Her husband had breathed his last. His heart had ceased to beat.

Johanna closed his eyes and took her usual place beside him. She seemed paralyzed; she could not weep, she could not even think. Helena's noisy grief distressed her, but it seemed to reach her ear from some great distance, and soon died away altogether. Only two images remained in her memory from this terrible time,--the ideal beauty of her beloved dead as he lay in the coffin crowned with laurel, and the dreary aspect of the funeral cortege as it moved endlessly along the streets in the pouring rain, while the wind tore away from the hea.r.s.e and whirled in air some of the flowers and wreaths with which it was bedecked.

It was Lisbeth who at last aroused Johanna from her lethargy. To spare the imaginative child the sad impression of her father's dying moments, she had been intrusted to the care of an actress friend, returning to her home only when the funeral was over. Helena rushed to her, clasped her in her arms, loaded her with caresses, declaring that she was all that was left her in life, all that she had to live for, and then turned away to receive a couple of her friends who had called to see her. They were all soon absorbed in an animated discussion of mourning gowns and Helena's broken heart, the impossibility of recovering from Roderich's loss, his widow's plans for the future, the intrigues of the Kronberg, and the inconceivable partiality of the manager for one so utterly without talent. The child felt herself forgotten, and left the room to look for her sister.

Johanna was not in her usual place at the work-table in Helena's dressing-room, nor was she in her own sleeping apartment. But when Lisbeth timidly entered her father's study, she found Johanna, looking pale and white in her black gown, still sitting by the window whence she had seen the funeral procession disappear. She sat in an arm-chair, her head leaning back, her arms hanging idly down, gazing into s.p.a.ce with such an expression of dull anguish that the little girl was frightened.

"Johanna, dear Johanna, please do not be ill, do not die!" she cried, throwing her arms around her sister's neck; and these first tender words, the nestling close to her of the little one, dissolved the spell that had bound the poor girl, and she burst into tears.

Afterwards, when longing for sympathy, she went to her step-mother, Helena said in her coldest tone,--

"Has it really occurred to you to remember my existence? I think it was high time. Everything comes upon me,--it will kill me."

Not a word was said of all that Johanna had done during the long weeks of illness, and the gulf between Helena and herself widened.

The next morning Johanna was handed the card of Lieutenant Otto von Donninghausen. She would gladly have refused to see him, but written in pencil upon the card was 'Commissioned by our grandfather,' and she could not deny herself to one so accredited.

In the drawing-room she found a tall, fair man, about thirty years old, whose military carriage betrayed the soldier in spite of his civilian's dress.

"Cousin Johanna?" he said, advancing towards her, while his bright, resolute blue eyes scanned her keenly. Then he held out his hand.

"Forgive me for intruding at such a time," he continued. "Let me plead the right of kinship, and believe in the sincerity of my sympathy."

Johanna's eyes filled with tears. She mutely returned the pressure of his hand, and motioned him to a seat.

"Our grandfather has requested me to put this letter into your own hands," he began again when both were seated. "The commission was a welcome one to me; I take a sad satisfaction in a.s.suring you personally of my sympathy. I have had the pleasure of seeing your father repeatedly upon the stage, and I never can forget him."

"I thank you," said Johanna, and for an instant her pale face glowed with the same fire which had distinguished her father. Her cousin's simple cordiality of tone did her good, inspired her with confidence, and yet she felt a timidity in his presence quite foreign to her.

"It is the result of the distressing consciousness of knowing nothing of my nearest relatives," she thought.

"Grandpapa requests you to come to him," the young man said, handing Johanna a sealed letter. "Do not be led astray by his manner of expression, which is probably as blunt and cold in this letter as it is in daily personal intercourse. There is much kindliness beneath his rough exterior. Our grandfather is a n.o.bleman in the full sense of the word, with all the prejudice and narrowness of his cla.s.s. You will soon understand and value him, and I hope soon to see you in Donninghausen."