The Chief Justice Part 6

"I fired up. I tried to defend myself, he would not allow it. 'Tirades serve no good purpose,' he said, coldly. 'You wish to convince me that you were not in criminal collusion with Mirescul? I have never thought so. That he is really guilty and can be convicted in spite of your neglect of duty? I have been through the papers and have just cross-examined the customs superintendent. The police are already on the way to re-arrest him; he will be put in prison. But your fault will be none the less in consequence; if there is no lasting stigma on the administration of justice, there is upon your honour. Your conduct in this man's house, your hesitation,--it would be bad for you if you had to suffer what you have merited! According to justice and the laws, your fate is sealed; it is only a question whether you will prove yourself worthy of pardon and pity!'

"'In anything that you may ask,' I answered, 'except only in one thing: Hermine is to be my wife. A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel.'

"He drew himself up to his full height and stepped close up to me. 'Now listen to me, Victor, I will be brief and explicit. Whether you stain your honour by marrying this girl, or whether you do so by not marrying her, the all-just G.o.d above us knows. We, His creatures, can only judge according to our knowledge and conscience, and in my judgment, the girl is unworthy of you. In this matter there is your conviction against my conviction. But what I do know better than you is, that this marriage would load you with ignominy before the whole world! You will perhaps answer: better the contempt of others than self-contempt, but that is not the question. If you marry this girl, I am as sure as I am of my existence, that you will soon be ashamed of it, not only before others but in your own heart. For pure happiness could not come of such a beginning--it is impossible. The gossip of the world, the ruin of your hopes, would poison your mind and hers,--you would be wretched yourself and make her wretched, and would at length become bad and miserable.

The man who forgets his duty to himself and to the world for a matter of weeks and then recovers himself, is worthy of commiseration and help; but he who is guilty of a moral suicide deserves no pity. And therefore listen to me and choose. If you marry this girl your subsequent fate is indifferent to me; you will very likely be stripped of your office; or in the most favourable event, transferred, by way of punishment, to some out of the way place where your father's fate may be repeated in you. If you give her up you may still be saved, for yourself, for our family and for the State: then I will do for you, what my conscience would allow me to do for any subordinate of whose sincere repentance I was convinced, and I will intercede for the Emperor's pardon as if you were my own son. To-morrow I return to Lemberg, whether alone or with you--you must decide by to-morrow.' He went."

Sendlingen paused. "How I struggled with myself," he began again, but his voice failed him, until at length he gasped forth with hollow voice and trembling lips: "Oh! what a night it was! The next morning I wrote a farewell letter to Hermine, and started with Count Warnberg to Lemberg."

Then there followed a long silence. At length Berger asked: "You did not know that she bore your child in her bosom?"

"No, I know it to-day for the first time. In that last letter of mine I had offered her a maintenance: she declined it at once. Then I left that part of the country. A few months later I inquired after her; I could only learn that she had disappeared without leaving a trace. And then I forgot her, I considered that all was blotted out and washed away like writing from a slate, and rarely, very rarely, in the dusk, or in a sleepless night, did the strange reminiscence recur to me. But Fate keeps a good reckoning--O George! I would I were dead!"

"No, no!" said Berger with gentle reproof. He was deeply moved, his eyes glistened with tears, but he constrained himself to be composed.

"Thank G.o.d, you are alive and willing, and I trust able to pay your debt. How great this debt may be--or how slight--I will not determine.

Only one thing I do know: you are, in spite of all, worthy of the love and esteem of men, even of the best men, of better men than I am. When I think of it all; your life up to that event and what it has been since, what you have made of your life for yourself and others, then indeed it overcomes me and I feel as if I had never known a fate among the children of men more worthy of the purest pity. This is no mere sad fate, it is a tragic one. Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry, no petty concealments or prevarications will be of avail.

You say it is against your feelings to preside at to-morrow's trial?"

"Yes," replied Sendlingen. "It seems to me both cowardly and dishonourable; cowardly, to sacrifice the law instead of myself, dishonourable to break my Judge's oath! But I shrink from doing so for another reason; an offence should not be expiated by an injustice; I dread the all-just Fates."

"I cannot gainsay you," said Berger rising. "But in this one thing we are agreed. Let us wait for the verdict, and then we will consider what your duty is. It is long past midnight, the trial will begin in seven hours. I will try and get some sleep. I shall need all my strength to-morrow. Follow my example, Victor, perhaps sleep may be merciful to you."

He seized his friend's hands and held them affectionately in his; his feelings again threatened to overcome him and he hastily left the room with a choking farewell on his lips.

Sendlingen was alone. After brooding awhile, he again went to the secret drawer of his writing-table. At this moment the old servant entered. "We will go to bed now," he said. "We will do it out of pity for ourselves, and Fraulein Brigitta, and me!"

His look and tone were so beseeching that Sendlingen could not refuse him. He suffered himself to be undressed, put out the lamp, and closed his eyes. But sleep refused to visit his burning lids.

CHAPTER V.

When the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up, dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors.

It was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. The lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he did, it was unconsciously. Most of them looked after him in utter astonishment; what could have brought the Chief Justice so early out of doors? It seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. And how broken down, how weary he looked today!--as if he had suddenly become an old man, the people thought.

Freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first this way, then that, until the morning bells of the Cathedral sounded in his ears. He stood still and listened as if he had never heard their mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords, he hurried faster and faster towards the Cathedral. But when he stood before its open door and looked into the dark s.p.a.ce, lit only by a dim light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their gloomy, painful look.

He looked up at the Cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven.

"An hour more," he murmured and went over towards the Court-House. It was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own ground. In front were the Chief Justice's residence and the offices; at the back the criminal prison.

He turned towards his own quarters. He had just set his foot on the steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. He hesitated. "I must,"

he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails ran painfully into the flesh; "I must, if only for a minute."

He stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the door at the back. It was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it.

He rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the Chief Justice respectfully pulled off his hat.

"Fetch the Governor," muttered Sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man hardly understood him. But he hurried away and the Governor of the prison appeared. He was visibly much astonished. "Does your Lordship wish to make an inspection?" he asked.

"No, only in one or two particular cases."

"Which are they, my lord?"

But the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "Later on,"

he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support himself. "Another time."

The Governor hastened towards him. "Your Lordship is ill again--just as you were yesterday--we are all much concerned! May I accompany you back to your residence? The nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you choose."

He opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high, slippery wall. It seemed to be seldom used; the Governor was a long time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the lock and hinges creaked loudly.

"Thank you," said Sendlingen. "I have never observed this means of communication before."

"Your predecessor had it made," answered the Governor, "so that he might inspect the prison without being announced. The key must be in your possession."

"Very likely," answered Sendlingen, and he went back to his residence.

Franz placed his breakfast before him. "There'll be a nice ending to this," he growled. "We are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the streets in all weathers. Dr. Berger, too, is surprised at our new ways."

"Has he been here already?"

"He was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight.... But now we have got to drink our tea." He did not budge till the cup had been emptied.

With growing impatience Sendlingen looked at the clock. "He can have nothing fresh to say," he thought. "He must guess my intention and want to hinder me. He will not succeed."

But he did succeed. As he entered, Sendlingen had just taken up his hat and stick.

"You are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly, "You must not, Victor, I implore you. I forbid you. What will the judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be present with no apparent object. But the main thing is not to torment yourself, it is unmanly. Do not lessen your strength, you may require it."

He wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair.

"My restlessness will kill me if I stay here," muttered Sendlingen.

"You would not be better in there, but worse. I shall come back to you at once; I think, I fear, it will not last long. Don't buoy yourself up with any hopes, Victor. Before a jury, I could get her acquitted, with other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term of imprisonment ... but now----"

"Death!" Like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast.

"But she may not, she will not die!" continued Berger. "I will set my face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, I would have done so even if she had not been your daughter. G.o.d bless you, Victor."

Berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court where the trial was to take place. Even here a hum of noise reached him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. As far as he could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which ladies preponderated. "Naturally," he muttered contemptuously.

For a few seconds eye-gla.s.ses and opera-gla.s.ses were directed upon him, to be then again immediately turned on the accused. But her face could not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side.

Public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her.

Berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he gently touched her icy cold hand. "Be brave, my poor child," he whispered.

She started up in terror. "Ah!" went from every mouth in Court: now at length they could see her face. Berger drew himself up to his full height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the crowd.

"Oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. Her cheeks and forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and faint. "To think that one should have to suffer so much before dying."