The Benefactress Part 52

"Then to-morrow the first thing. That is, if I am still here."

The lawyer grinned. "It is not so easy to get out of these places as it is to get in," he said, drawing on his gloves. "By the way, my fees in such cases are payable beforehand."

Axel flushed. He could hardly believe the evidence of his senses that this was the obsequious person who had for so long managed his affairs.

"My brother Gustav will arrange all that," he said stiffly. "You know I can do nothing here. He is coming this afternoon."

"Oh, is he?" said the lawyer sceptically. "Is he indeed, now? That will be a remarkable instance of brotherly devotion. I am truly glad to hear that. Good-afternoon," he nodded; and went out, leaving Axel in a fury.

The one good result of his visit was that some time later Axel was provided with writing materials. He immediately fell to writing letters and telegrams; urgent letters and telegrams, of a desperate importance to himself. When his coffee was brought he gave them to the warder, and begged him to see that they were despatched at once; then he paced up and down again, relieved at least by feeling that he could now communicate with the outer world.

"They have gone?" he asked anxiously, next time he saw the warder.

"_Jawohl_," was the reply. And gone they had, but only by slow stages to the office of the Examining Judge Schultz, where they lay in a heap waiting till he should have leisure and inclination to read them, and, if he approved of their contents, order them to be posted. There they lay for three days, and most of them were not pa.s.sed after all, because the Examining Judge disliked the tone of the a.s.surances in them that the writer was innocent. He knew that trick; every prisoner invariably protested the same thing. But these protestations were unusually strong.

They were of such strength that they actually produced in his own hardened and experienced mind a pa.s.sing doubt, absurd of course, and not for one moment to be considered, whether the Stralsund authorities might not have blundered. It was a dangerous notion to put into people's heads, that the Stralsund authorities, of whom he was one, could blunder. Blunders meant a reproof from headquarters and a r.e.t.a.r.ded career; their possibility, therefore, was not to be entertained for a moment. Even should they have been made, it must not get about that they had been made. He accordingly suppressed nearly all the letters.

Gustav must have missed the second train as well, for when the sky grew rosy, and Axel knew that the sun was setting, he was still alone.

The few hours he had thought to stay in that place were lengthening out into days, he reflected. If Gustav did not come soon, what should he do?

Someone he must have to look after his affairs, to arrange with the lawyer, to be a link connecting him with outside. And who but his brother and heir? Still, he would certainly come soon, and Trudi too.

Poor little Trudi--he was afraid she would be terribly upset.

But the hours pa.s.sed, and no one came.

That evening he was given a lamp. It burnt badly and smelt atrociously.

He asked if the window might be opened a little wider. The request had to be made in writing, said the warder, and submitted through the usual channels to the Public Prosecutor, without whose permission no window might be touched. Axel wrote the request, and the warder took it away.

It came back two days later with an intimation scrawled across it that if the prisoner von Lohm were not satisfied with his cell he would be given a worse one.

The night came, and had to be gone through somehow. Axel sat for hours on the side of his bed, his head supported in his hands, struggling with despair. A profound gloom was settling down on him. The knowledge that he had done nothing had ceased to rea.s.sure him. The lawyer was right when he said that it was easier to get into such a place than to get out again. Klutz had denounced him, to save himself; of that he had not a doubt. And Dellwig, well known and greatly respected, had supported Klutz. This explained Dellwig's conduct lately completely. Axel's courage was perilously near giving way as he recognised the difficulty he would have in proving that he was innocent. If no one helped him from outside, his case was indeed desperate. He did not remember ever to have turned his back on a friend in distress; how was it, then, that not a friend was to be found to come to him in his extremity? Where were they all, those jovial companions who shot over his estate with him so often, driving any distance for the pleasure of killing his game? What was keeping Gustav back? Why did he not even send a message? How was it that Manske, who professed so much attachment to his house, besides such stores of Christian charity, did not make an effort to reach him? He had never asked or wanted anything of anyone in his life; but this was so terrible, his need was so extreme. What a failure his whole life was. He had been alone, always. During all the years when other men have wives and children he had been working hard, alone. He had had no happy days, as the old Romans would have said. And now total ruin was upon him.

Sitting there through the night, he began to understand the despair that impels unhappy beings in a like situation, forsaken of G.o.d and men, to make wild efforts to get out of such places, conscious that they avail nothing, but at least bruising and crushing themselves into the blessed indifference of exhaustion.

The hours dragged by, each one a lifetime, each one so packed with opportunities for going mad, he thought, as he counted how many of them separated him already from his free, honourable past life. By the time morning came, added to his other torturing anxieties, was the fear lest he should fall ill in there before any steps had been taken for his release. He sat leaning his head against the wall, indifferent to what went on around him, hardly listening any more for Gustav's footsteps. He had ceased to expect him. He had ceased to expect anyone. He sat motionless, suffering bodily now, a strange feeling in his head, his thoughts dwelling dully on his physical discomforts, on the closeness of the cell, on the horrible nights. He made a great effort to eat some dinner, but could not. What would become of him if he could neither eat nor sleep? On what stores of energy would he be able to draw when the time came for defending himself? He was sitting by the table, leaning his head against the wall, his eyes closed, when the prisoner-attendant came to take away his dinner. "Ill?" inquired the young man cheerfully.

Axel did not move or answer. It was too much trouble to speak.

The warder, upon the attendant's remarking that No. 32 seemed unwell, examined him through the peep-hole in the door, but decided that he was not ill yet; not ill enough, that is. In another week he would be ready for the prison doctor, but not yet. These things must take their course.

It was always the same course; he had been a warder twenty years, and knew almost to an hour the date on which, after the arrest, the doctor would be required.

Axel was sitting in the same position when, about three o'clock, the door was unlocked again. He did not move or open his eyes.

"_Ihr Fraulein Braut ist hier_," said the warder.

The word _Braut_, betrothed, sent Axel's thoughts back across the years to Hildegard. His betrothed? Had he heard the mocking words, or had he been dreaming? He turned his head and looked vaguely towards the door.

All the sunlight was out there in the wide corridor, and in it, on the threshold, stood Anna.

What had she meant to say? She never could remember. It had been something deeply apologetic, ashamed. But her fears and her shame fell from her like a garment when she saw him. "Oh, poor Axel--oh, poor Axel----" she murmured with a quick sob.

He tried to get up to come to her. In an instant she was at his side, and, stumbling, he fell on his knees, holding her by the dress, clinging to her as to his salvation. "It is not pity, Anna?" he asked in a voice sharp with an intolerable fear.

And Anna, half blinded by her tears, deliberately put her arms round his neck, relinquishing by that one action herself and her future entirely to him, hauling down for ever her flag of independent womanhood, and bending down her face to that upturned face of agonised questioning laid her lips on his. "No," she whispered, and she kissed him with a pa.s.sionate tenderness between the words, "it is only love--only love----"

CHAPTER x.x.xII

There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of ordinary lovemaking. All that was not simple truth fell away from them both like tawdry ornaments, for which there was no use in that sad place. Soul to soul, unseparated by even the flimsiest veil of conventionality, of custom; soul to soul, clear-visioned, steadfast, as those may be who are quietly watching the approach of death, they looked into each other's eyes and knew that they were alone, he and she, against the world. To cleave to one another, to stand together, he and she, against the whole world,--that was what their betrothal meant.

Axel, cut off for ever from his kind if he should not be able to clear himself, Anna, cutting herself off for ever to follow him. Her feet had found the right path at last. Her eyes were open. As two friends on the eve of a battle in which both must fight and whose end may be death, or as two friends starting on a long journey, whose end too, after tortuous ways of suffering, may well be death, they quietly made their plans, talked over what was best to be done, gravely encouraging each other, always with the light of perfect trustfulness in their eyes. How strong they felt together! How able to go fearlessly towards the future to meet any pain, any sorrow, together! The warder standing by, the miserable little room, the wretched details of the situation, no longer existed for either of them. Nothing could harm them, nothing could hurt them any more, if only they might be together. They were safe within a circle drawn round them by love--safe, and warm, and blest. So long as he had her and she him, though they saw how great their misery would be if they came to be less brave, they could not but believe in the benevolence of the future, they could not but have hope. If he were sentenced, she said, what, at the worst, would it mean? Two years', three years', waiting, and then together for the rest of their life. Was not that worth looking forward to? Would not that take away every sting? she asked, her hands on his shoulders, her face beautiful with confidence and courage. When he told her that she ought not now to cast in her lot with his, she only smiled, and laid her cheek against his sleeve. All her childish follies, and incert.i.tudes, and false starts were done with now. Life had grown suddenly simple. It was to be a cleaving to him till death. Yet they both knew that when that golden hour was over, and she must go, the suffering would begin again. She was only to come twice a week; and the days between would be days of torture. And when the moment had come, and they had said good-bye with brave eyes, each telling the other that so short a separation was nothing, that they did not mind it, that it would be over before they had had time to feel it, and the door was shut, and he was left behind, she went out to find misery again, waiting for her there where she had left it, taking entire possession of her, brooding heavily, immovably over her, a desolation of misery that threatened by its dreadful weight to break her heart.

A sense of physical cold crept over her as she drove home with Letty--the bodily expression of the unutterable forlornness within. Away from him, how weak she was, how unable to be brave. Would Letty understand? Would she say some kind word, some little word, something, anything, that might make her feel less terribly alone? With many pauses and falterings she told her the story, looking at her with eyes tortured by the thought of him waiting so patiently there till she should come again. Letty was awestruck, as much by the profound grief of Anna's face as by the revelation. She knew of course that Axel had been arrested--did anyone at Kleinwalde talk of anything else all day long?--but she had not dreamt of this. She could find nothing to say, and put out her hand timidly and laid it on Anna's. "I am so cold," was all Anna said, her head drooping; and she did not speak again.

As they pa.s.sed between his fields, by his open gate, through the village that belonged, all of it, to him, she shut her eyes. She could not look at the happy summer fields, at the placid faces, knowing him where he was. Not the poorest of his servants, not a ragged child rolling in the dust, not a wretched, half-starved dog sunning itself in a doorway, whose lot was not blessed compared to his. The haymakers were piling up his hay on the waggons. Girls in white sun-bonnets, with bare arms and legs, stood on the top of the loads catching the fragrant stuff as the men tossed it up. Their figures were sharply outlined against the serene sky; their shouts and laughter floated across the fields. Freedom to come and go at will in G.o.d's liberal sunlight--just that--how precious it was, how unspeakably precious it was. Of all G.o.d's gifts, surely the most precious. And how ordinary, how universal. Only for Axel there was none.

When they reached the house, the hall seemed to be full of people. The supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell bows to the a.s.sembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day, accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful, the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.

"_Um Gottes Willen!_" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as she knew, an offer of marriage.

Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort, any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.

"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.

"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.

A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.

"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We shall be married--we shall be married--when--when it pleases G.o.d."

CONCLUSION

The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a dear friend, plainly is that all females--_alle Weiber_--are best married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit to the n.o.blest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were n.o.bility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only material in the raw."

"What?" cried his wife.

"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in the raw. And it is never of any practical use till the hand of the master has moulded it into shape."

"_Sehr richtig_," agreed the friend; with the more heartiness that he was conscious of a wife at home who had successfully withstood moulding during a married life of twenty years.

"That," said Manske, "is the most obvious moral. But there is yet another."

"The story is full of them," said the friend, who had had them all pointed out to him, different ones each time, during those evenings of howling tempests and indoor peace--the perfect peace of pipes, hot stoves, and _Gluhwein_.

"The other," said Manske, "is, that it is very sinful for little girls to write love-poetry in the name of their aunts."

"To write love-poetry is at no time the function of little girls," said the friend.

"Such conduct cannot be too strongly censured," said Manske. "But to do it in the name of someone else is not only not _madchenhaft_, it is sinful."