A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen

"As ever?" he repeated. "You forget: formerly you trusted to my judgment, you saw with my eyes and followed willingly where I led."

"Possibly," said Johanna; "but since then I have learned to see with my own eyes, and to walk alone. It was high time: I am no longer a child."

She was right; Ludwig reflected that she must be nearly twenty years old, although she looked scarcely sixteen, so immature was her slender figure, so youthful the pale face that looked dreamily into the world from beneath a luxuriance of brown braids.

"Well, let bygones be bygones," he rejoined with bitterness. "I may surely be allowed to ask what snatched you from us so suddenly. You were going to tell me."

Johanna seated herself opposite him. "If I only knew how to tell you, how to convince you that I could not do otherwise," she said. "From the expressions you have let fall you seem to me to think that I was influenced by vanity, love of pleasure, and a desire for luxury. Your sister accused me of the same motives."

"Let that go; what is Mathilde to us? Go on!" Ludwig interposed, impatiently.

Johanna obeyed; the dictatorial tone to which she had submitted for so long exercised its old influence upon her.

"You went away in the autumn," she began; "the winter passed as peacefully as usual, and summer brought the usual throng of guests to the baths. Suddenly we heard that my father was starring in Weimar. One of our friends took me to the first performance. When we arrived it was too late to see my father before the play, and so I sat in the corner of our box in trembling expectation of beholding him after nearly eight years – "

"Eight years! – a tender parent!" Ludwig interrupted; she paid him no heed.

"But it was not my father whom I saw," she went on with increasing agitation: "it was Hamlet. I thought I knew the play, but what heights and depths were disclosed to me by this representation! This was no acting, it was actual life: suffering – doubt – despair. I sat trembling as if from a fever-fit, and after the performance I hastened to him. I do not know what I said to him, but my enthusiasm touched and delighted him. He kept me with him at first only during his stay in Weimar, afterwards for always. He went with me to Lindenbad to demand me of my foster-parents, and they thought it but natural that he should do so."

"Yes, so my mother wrote me," said Ludwig, "in the last letter I had from her before she was taken ill."

"I had no idea how ill she was," the young girl whispered, "or I should not have left her."

He made no rejoinder; his expression, as he gazed moodily upon the ground, grew darker still.

After a pause, Johanna said, "I wrote to you then; why did you not answer me?"

"I could not," he replied. "Amid all your grief at my mother's death there was a tone of relief in your letter."

"There was," said Johanna. "It is not in vain that I am the child of a great artist. The revelations he makes to me of the world of art are like my native air to me. Unconsciously I missed them and longed for them before I ever knew them."

"The intoxication has lasted, then?" Ludwig asked, with his bitterest smile.

"Intoxication!" she repeated. "You may call it so; but it is something better and nobler. I cannot define it, but its effect upon me is the same, only intensified, if possible. Everything within me that is dim and confused becomes clear and distinct when my father interprets for me – "

"Johanna!" Ludwig exclaimed, "you would not – you cannot go upon the stage!"

"If I only could!" she cried, with sparkling eyes; "if I only could!"

"You must not!" he said angrily, and seized her hands. "Bethink yourself; a man can assert himself, isolate himself upon the stage as elsewhere, a woman never; she loses her identity, degrades herself – "

"There is no reason why she should do so," Johanna exclaimed, clasping tightly the hands which she had withdrawn from his grasp. "The inspiration which animates and strengthens a man can exalt a woman also above all petty, low considerations. I have been here more than a year, and have kept my eyes open. I have seen what has been mean and paltry, nay, disgusting, but never in my father, never! He is not only great in his art, he is a man great and complete as only an artist can be."

Ludwig changed colour. "Do you really mean this, Johanna?" he asked. "Is it only in an artist that you can find a 'complete' man? Think what you are saying."

"Yes, yes; I mean it!" she cried passionately, and her cheeks glowed. She seemed transformed.

"Then I have nothing more to say," said Ludwig, as he arose.

Then first Johanna was conscious of what she had done.

"Oh, do not go!" she cried, confronting him. "I cannot let you go so. You did not understand me; I only meant – "

"I not understand you, child?" said Ludwig, controlling himself. "I might deceive myself while I was absent from you; but now that we are together, I see into your heart just as I always did."

"No, no; you do not see clearly. You do not understand me. You are offended – "

"Hush, hush!" Ludwig interrupted her, leading her to her seat again. "Come, sit down, and listen to me. Why should I be offended? We all embody for ourselves an ideal of beauty and dignity. I have done the same. Shall I tell you how?"

She only nodded an assent. There was something in his manner that confused her.

"My ideal," he began, taking a seat opposite her, – "a woman, of course, – was a gay, simple-hearted creature, looking out upon life with clear, truthful eyes; not exacting much, but always ready to do her best, interested in all that was good, beautiful, and great, but with a keen sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, never neglectful of the daily tasks of life, but consecrating, as it were, the meanest among them by her performance of it, and surrounded as by a purer ether, diffusing harmony and content wherever she might be."

"Your mother!" Johanna said, when he paused.

"My mother," he repeated, with a sudden smile that wonderfully transfigured his set, determined face. And the earnest look that he turned upon Johanna was a strange mixture of gentleness, entreaty, and menace.

"My mother," he repeated. "Yes, and one other who was like her; one who I believed for years would exactly resemble her. It was an illusion; it is past."

Johanna looked down with a blush. She could not but perceive that he meant herself. But could this be love? Impossible! One does not so quickly and causelessly resign what one loves. What had she done? Left his father's house to go to her own father's house. And the thoughtless words she had just spoken? If he loved her he would know that they had been uttered too hastily. Anger and obstinacy conquered every gentler emotion, and after a short pause she rejoined coldly, without looking up, "It is not given to every one to achieve content as did your mother."

"Content!" Ludwig exclaimed; "she was a happy woman."

"Do you think so?" said Johanna, raising her eyes to his. "Had she hoped and longed for nothing more in life than the companionship of a good man, but one who wore himself out in the discharge of the duties of his profession? Do you imagine that the letting of lodgings to visitors to the baths was the true vocation for your mother's sensitive, refined nature? And could the society of two silly girls like your sister and myself indemnify her for the tedious solitude of the long winter?"

"And yet this life satisfied her," said Ludwig. "So spiritual a nature is always satisfied with love and a round of duties."

Johanna shook her head. "It is comfortable to suppose so," she said; "but let me recall one expression of your mother's which, child as I was, made a deep impression upon me. My mother was already ill; yours sat beside her bed, while I was busied with a book at the window. Mamma must have been speaking of her past life. I had been paying no attention, when suddenly I heard her say, 'Ah, dear Louise, you pity me!' Your mother dried her tears, and said, in a tone which I never can forget, 'No, Agnes, I envy you! It is sad to be driven forth from Paradise, but infinitely sadder never to have entered it.'"

Ludwig gazed gloomily into space. "There are various Paradises," he said, at last, "and they are found in various ways. My mother, I am convinced, found hers later. But you are right; hers was not for every one. You could hardly find it as she did."

"I should never seek it in that direction," she replied, quite conscious that she was paining him; it grieved her to do so, but she could not help it.

Ludwig arose once more; his face was pale and set. "I must take leave of you," he said; "I have an appointment with a couple of college friends."

"When shall I see you, – to-morrow? When will you come?" asked Johanna. "Of course I shall be at home for you all day long."

"I take the first train to-morrow for the north," he replied.

"Oh, you must not!" she exclaimed. "You must be here to-morrow evening. It is my father's birthday, and you must be present at its celebration."

"Impossible; I cannot postpone my departure," he made answer. "And even if I could, where could I find a place among your friends? I am – you remember how often my father said so – a faithful, cross, ugly dog. In a tête-à-tête the old playfellow is all very well, but he does not belong in the drawing-room."

Johanna took his hand. "I will not let you go," she said, "until you promise to come to-morrow evening. We have a little play, – I make my first histrionic essay. You must be present."

"No, my dear Johanna, I cannot see you act," he said, in a calm voice, but with lips that quivered in spite of himself. "And independently of that, I really must go. I must get to my work. I have just come from a six-weeks' tour through Switzerland and the Tyrol, and my holiday is over."

"But you have told me absolutely nothing of your work, of your plans. I do not know where to picture you in my thoughts!" she exclaimed.