A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen

A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen
Claire Glümer

Claire von Glümer

A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen

CHAPTER I

"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."

At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense satisfaction.

"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from between the curtains of the portière of the door of the adjoining sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.

"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown to the little one's assistance.

"I haven't hurt myself," the child immediately declared, looking up beseechingly at her mother, who, nevertheless, seized her impatiently by the arm and tore off the sash from her shoulders. "All this beautiful ribbon crushed and spoiled!" she said, crossly. "If you can take no better care of Lisbeth, my dear Johanna, the child must stay with Lina. Go, go to the nursery, and don't disturb me again to-day," she added, turning to the little girl; and then, sitting down before the dressing-table, she began to arrange her abundant fair hair.

Lisbeth went to Johanna and seized her hand. "Don't be vexed with Lisbeth, mamma," the young girl entreated. "She is not to blame. I was not attending to her; I was going over my part."

"If you do not know it perfectly by this time you had better give it up," the other said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Make up your mind to do so, and I will give it to Fräulein Dornbach. She can easily learn those few words before to-morrow evening."

"Oh, no! let me try," the young girl exclaimed. "I have just said them without stumbling. And my dress is nearly finished. I wanted to ask you – "

"Well?" the other asked, when Johanna hesitated.

"To let me go to the theatre to-night," she replied, without looking up.

"What! again? You went only a couple of days ago."

"Yes, but I should so like to see papa as Egmont, and – " She hesitated again and blushed. "And you as Clärchen," was what she meant to add, knowing that this addition would have secured her the desired enjoyment; but her innate integrity triumphed; her step-mother's acting was distasteful to her, and she suppressed the end of her sentence.

With a degree of artistic instinct the lady divined her step-daughter's thoughts. "You had better study your part," she said, rising. "And, besides, I want you to trim my lace overdress with fresh ribbons; you will have too much to do to-morrow to attend to it."

"There comes papa!" exclaimed Lisbeth, who had gone to the window and was looking out. "He is just crossing the street." And she was hurrying out of the room, when her mother called her back.

"Stay where you are!" she said. "You must not disturb papa now; we are just going to the theatre. My hat and wrap, Johanna, and my gloves; be quick, be quick!" And beginning to sing 'Joyous and sorrowing,' with a languishing expression she took from her step-daughter the articles brought to her and left the room.

Johanna sat down and went on with her sewing. She heard her father's step in the anteroom, heard his sonorous voice. How many would be delighted, enthralled, inspired by that voice this evening! She alone, his most enthusiastic, rapt admirer, could not enjoy it. Tears rose to her eyes and dropped unheeded upon her busy hands.

"Tell me a story," Lisbeth begged, standing beside her sister at the window. "Oh, you are crying!" she added distressed as she looked round. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing, darling," Johanna replied, hastily wiping her eyes. "What shall I tell you? Cinderella, or Snowdrop and the Dwarfs?"

"No, no! nothing about bad step-mothers," the little girl exclaimed; and then, with her eyes opened to their widest extent, she went on: "Only think, Lina says that mamma is a step-mother, – so stupid of her, – my dear pretty mamma. Friedrich laughed at her, and told her it was not true; but then he is just as stupid himself, for he told her you were not my sister, only an adopted child, and I won't have it; you shall be my sister!"

She stamped her little foot. Johanna took her in her arms. "Hush, darling; I am really your sister," she said, stroking the little curly head.

"Then why were you not always with me?" Lisbeth went on, pettishly. "All the sisters I know are always together."

"I was far away from here, at boarding-school," Johanna replied. "Papa sent me there when my poor dear mother died, and he did not know what to do with me. He travelled about from one town to another; and then he married your mamma, and then you were born, and he has grown very famous. I think he had almost forgotten me – "

Here old Lina, Lisbeth's former nurse, entered.

"Fräulein, a gentleman wishes to see you," she said, handing Johanna a card.

"Dr. Ludwig Werner," the girl read, and started up with a joyous exclamation. "Uncle, dear uncle!" she cried, and hurried into the antechamber, where, however, instead of the old gentleman whom she had expected to see, she was met by a young man.

"Johanna!" he exclaimed, with evident emotion, and he would have clasped her in his arms, but she retreated and only gave him her hand. He laughed, half confusedly, half derisively.

"It is you!" she said, and her voice, too, trembled. "I thought it was your father. Pray come in."

She led the way to the drawing-room. Lina, who was standing holding Lisbeth by the hand at the dressing-room door, looked after her in surprise. How could Fräulein Johanna receive so familiarly a young man who paid visits in a shooting-jacket and shabby crush hat?

He himself became conscious of the contrast that he presented to his surroundings as soon as he entered the drawing-room. As he looked about him in the luxurious apartment, now lit up by the last rays of the September sun, all trace of tenderness vanished from his face, leaving there only the cynical expression which Johanna knew so well.

"And this is now your home," he said. "I begin to understand, – I have not been able to do so hitherto. And you yourself, – are you as changed as your surroundings?"

He had stepped out upon the balcony with her, and as he spoke looked at her fixedly. There was no change in the grave unembarrassed expression of the girl's large gray eyes as she returned his gaze.

"What have you been unable to understand?" she asked.

"How you could leave us and come hither – to this house – "

"To my father's house?" she interrupted him, and her eyes flashed. "Let me tell you how it happened," she went on more gently, "and you will easily comprehend."

They stood leaning against the balustrade of the balcony. The shady little garden beneath them, the golden light of evening streaming from the western sky awakened the same memory in each, but Johanna alone gave it utterance. "Do you remember," she asked, "how we stood at your garden wicket the evening before you left Lindenbad and watched the setting sun? It was not quite two years ago, and yet how much has happened since then! you have made a home both in Paris and in London."

"A home!" he interrupted her; "no, Johanna, not for a moment. I worked hard in London and Paris, I studied day and night, looking neither to the right nor to the left, for I had but one aim, one desire, – to return to my home well skilled in my profession. I may have become a skilful physician, but my home is desolate, – my mother dead, – you here."

"Your dear mother!" Johanna whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. He did not see them.

"If I had been at home you should not have gone," he went on; "but my father has grown to be a weak old man, and my mother was enfeebled by illness before her death, or she would have kept her promise better."

"Do you mean the promise that she made to my dying mother?" Johanna asked. "She kept that perfectly."

"She let you come here to this step-mother!" Ludwig exclaimed, and his lips quivered, as they always did when he controlled his indignation.

"She could not but let me; I wanted to come, and my father wanted me again."

"So suddenly?" Ludwig interposed. "Since your mother's death he had not apparently given you a thought. My father's house was your home, your holidays were spent with us, you came to us when you left boarding-school; you belong to us, and to us only! Your father has his fame, his luxury, his wife, the woman who was your mother's death – "

"Ludwig!" Johanna interrupted him reprovingly.

He coloured. "It is the truth, and you are old enough to know it," he said, sullenly. "You do know it, but would not for worlds acknowledge it! Deceit – falsehood – hypocrisy everywhere. In your case I suppose it would be called filial piety."

He threw himself into the nearest chair and frowned darkly.

"Hard and unjust as ever," Johanna exclaimed, and her voice trembled.