Saint Michael

"I am sorry to touch upon such a subject to a son, but unfortunately I cannot avoid doing so. You are entirely guiltless in the matter, and you will hardly be a sufferer by it. Your intimate connection with Professor Wehlau prevents any annoying investigations. I hear that you pass for the son of an early friend of his, who has been brought up in his household; a perfectly satisfactory expedient. Moreover, your father has been dead more than twenty years, and he spent the latter part of his life in foreign countries. Then, too, so far as I know, he never openly transgressed any law of the land."

The words were like a dagger thrust,–'so far as I know!' Michael had grown ghastly pale; he made no reply, but shot a baleful glance at the man who so pitilessly stretched him on the rack, and who continued in the same cold, calm manner: "The affair would wear an entirely different aspect if you should mention your mother's name. It would, of course, create a vast sensation in aristocratic circles, and in the army it would give rise to endless gossip, which would be annoying, and perhaps dangerous, for in such cases rumour always transcends reality, and all that has been buried in oblivion for half a lifetime would be ruthlessly dragged to light. I leave it to you whether you could or would endure to have your father's memory thus resuscitated. With regard to my position in the matter, I can only appeal to your sense of justice, which will tell you–"

"Stay!" the young officer interrupted him in a half-stifled tone. "Spare me further words, your Excellency. I have already told you that this entire explanation was superfluous, since I have never for an instant contemplated giving publicity to a relationship quite as distasteful to me as to you. I thought I had made this sufficiently clear at our first interview, when I declined your offered 'patronage.' I see now that it was to have been the price of my silence."

Michael's words were uttered with extreme bitterness, and his hand rested heavily upon the hilt of his sword, but he preserved his self-control, although by an extreme effort of will. The general probably perceived this, for he said, in a tone perceptibly gentler, "That is a very erroneous view of the case. I repeat, I do not wish to offend you."

"You do not?" Michael burst forth, indignantly. "What is this entire interview but an offence, an insult, from first to last? What do you call it, then, this subjecting a son to listen to such words regarding his father, clearly explaining to him the while that therefore he himself has forfeited all claim to consideration? I can neither defend nor avenge my father,–he has deprived me of the right to do so,–and you suppose that I do not suffer under this consciousness! There was a time when it wellnigh ruined me, until I roused myself to do battle with the phantom. I am but at the outset of my career. I have no record to show as yet. When a lifetime filled with honest effort and fulfilment of duty lies behind me, that old phantom will have vanished. Men are not all as pitiless as yourself, Count Steinrück, and, thank God! all have not an escutcheon that must be kept free from stain."

The general suddenly arose with the commanding air with which he was wont to rebuke presumption or arrogance. "Take care, Lieutenant Rodenberg; you forget in whose presence you are."

"In that of my grandfather, who can, perhaps, forget for a few moments that he is also my general. Fear nothing; it is the first time that I ever called you thus, and it will be the last. For me there are no tender or sacred associations with the name. My mother died in misery and want, in agony and despair, but she never once opened her lips to ask aid of him who could have saved both her child and herself by a word. She knew her father."

"Yes, she knew him," said Steinrück, sternly. "When she fled from her father's house to be the wife of an adventurer she knew that every tie binding her to her home was severed, that there could be no return, and no reconciliation. Will her son presume to condemn the severity of an outraged father?"

"No," replied Michael; "I know that my mother openly defied you, that she had forfeited her home, and that if the father's heart was silent, and only his sense of justice spoke, he could not but repudiate her. But I know, also, that her worst crime lay in her following a bourgeois adventurer. Had he been her equal in rank, the prodigal, debauched son of some noble family, she would not have been so irrevocably condemned, her father's arms would have been opened to her in her misery, and her son would not now have had his father's memory cast up to him as a disgrace. I should have inherited an ancient name; all else would have been carefully suppressed. Most assuredly I should not have been consigned to the hands of a Wolfram, that I might go to ruin."

The general's eyes flashed, but he gave up treating the young officer any longer as a stranger; he now spoke angrily, but it was to a grandson: "Not another word, Michael! I am not accustomed to be thus addressed. Of what do you dare to accuse me?"

"Of what I can vouch for, for it is the truth," declared Michael, returning the Count's look of menace. "It would have been easy for you to place the orphaned boy in some remote educational establishment, where you never would have seen or heard of him, but where at least he might have been made fit for something in life; but this was just what must not be. Therefore I was exiled to a lonely forest, where, with only rude and rough companionship, blows and hard words were all the instruction I received; where all intellectual aspiration was suppressed, all talent ignored, and the only aim was to make of me a rude, ignorant boor, whose life was to be wasted in the depths of the forest. A stranger hand snatched me from that misery. I owe my education, the social position in which I now confront you, to a stranger. To my near relatives I should have owed only intellectual death."

Steinrück seemed speechless at the young officer's incredible audacity, but it was not that alone that silenced him. Once before, years previously, he had heard similar words; the same reproach had been uttered by a priest. Now they were hurled in his face with fiery energy, and the accusation came from the lips of him whom he certainly had hoped to make harmless by a 'peasant life.' Count Michael was not the man to receive an offence or an insult in silence; but now he had no reply to make, for he felt the truth of what the young officer had said. If he had formerly refrained from any clear analysis of his mode of action, it was distinctly revealed to him now as in a mirror, and it was an ugly sight,–one quite unworthy the proud wearer of the Steinrück name.

"You seem not yet to have entirely forgotten Wolfram's teaching," he said at last. "Do you wish to raise another disturbance, as you did formerly at Steinrück? This looks like it."

He could not have done worse than to evoke this memory. Ten years had passed, but Michael's blood still boiled at the remembrance which goaded him to fresh indignation. "Then you called me thief," he said, in a terrible tone; "without proof, without examination, upon a mere suspicion! You would have allowed any one of your servants to exculpate himself, but your grandson was immediately pronounced a criminal. Yes, I then seized upon the first thing at hand that could serve as a weapon; I did not know that it was my own grandfather that had so disgraced me, but from the hour when I learned it I was filled with a burning desire for retribution."

"Michael!" the general interrupted him, warningly "Not another word in that tone, which is unbecoming both to your superior officer and to your mother's father. I forbid it, and you must obey!"

When Count Steinrück spoke in this tone he was accustomed to implicit obedience; but here, for the first time, his personality failed of its effect. Even Raoul, who was by no means easily daunted, bowed before the angry glance of those eyes, but Michael did not bow. He did, indeed, by an effort recover his self-possession, but if his voice sounded more quiet and controlled, it had lost none of its firmness.

"As your Excellency commands. I did not seek this interview: it was forced upon me; but I imagine you are now entirely relieved of all fear lest I should presume upon any tie of relationship. You fancy yourself, with your ancient pedigree, exalted far above the world around us; you have, with an iron hand, thrust out and blotted from your life the only member of your family who dared to defy your pride of ancestry. But your escutcheon is not, after all, as high as the sun in the heavens; there may come a day when it will wear a stain that you cannot wipe out. Then you will know what it is to be obliged, while a passionate love of honour glows in your heart, to atone for the sin and the disgrace of another, as you now force me to expiate the memory of my father; then you will comprehend what a pitiless judge you have been towards my mother. May I consider myself dismissed, your Excellency?"

He stood erect in stiff military guise. The general did not reply; something like a shudder thrilled through him at Michael's words, sounding as they did almost prophetic; for an instant there rose before his mind something dark and formless, like a foreboding of coming evil, but it faded instantly. He mutely motioned to the young officer to withdraw, and Michael went without one backward glance. In another minute the door was closed behind him.

When Steinrück was alone he began to pace the room restlessly to and fro, but his glance rested again and again upon a portrait on the wall of himself as a young officer. No, there was no resemblance between that handsome head, with its nobly-formed, regular features, and that other characteristic but plain face, not the least! And yet those very eyes had flashed at him from that face; it was his voice that he had heard from Michael's lips, and his was the inflexible pride, the iron resolve which did not shun a strife with whatever life might bring; the resemblance lay, not in the features, but in the look and the air.

This was borne in irresistibly upon the mind of the Count, as he stood still at last, and gazed fixedly and gloomily at his youthful presentment. He was indignant, offended, and yet there was in his soul a glimmer of something which had always been lacking in his thoughts of his son and his grandson,–the consciousness that there existed an heir of his blood, and of his character. He had tried in vain to discover a trace of it in Raoul,–in vain! But the repudiated son of the outcast daughter, the young man who had just left his presence as a stranger, had this blood in his veins, and in spite of all his hatred and indignation his grandfather felt that he was an offshoot of his race.

Professor Wehlau occupied a moderately-sized but very pretty villa in the western part of the city. The garden attached to it was large, and the comfortable and tasteful arrangement of the whole bore witness to the fact that advanced science is in no wise hostile to the amenities of life.

The winter was nearing its end; March had begun, and the air was full of hints of spring. In the Wehlau mansion, however, there was always a threatening of storm; the discord between father and son was still far from being resolved into harmony, and the 'thunder-cloud,' as Hans disrespectfully dubbed his father's mood, frequently lowered above his head. This was the case to-day, when the young artist was sitting in the study of the Professor, who had just emptied the vials of his wrath upon his disobedient son.

"Look at Michael," he said at last, in conclusion. "He knows what it is to work, and he gets on in the world. Here he is a captain at only twenty-nine,–and what are you?"

"I wish Michael would for once make an infernal ass of himself!" Hans said, fretfully, "just that I might not have his excellence forever dinned into my ears. You behold in the new-fangled captain the future general field-marshal, who will win no end of battles for our country, and in your son, your own flesh and blood, a fellow of undoubted genius, you see nothing to admire. Really, father, it is past endurance."

"Have done with your nonsense!" Wehlau interrupted him in the worst possible humour. "You would fain persuade me that you are 'industrious'! Of course, according to your artistic conception of the word! Run about and amuse yourself for half the day, under the pretence of making studies, and spend the rest of it playing all kinds of pranks in the various studios! And then comes the inevitable Italian tour, when amusement is the order of the day, all of course in the interest of art! And that you call working industriously! Oh, the life is precisely to your taste, and, moreover, it is the only one for which you are fit."

These reproaches, unfortunately, produced not the slightest effect. Hans seated himself astride of his chair and rejoined without any irritation, "Don't scold, papa, or I will paint you life-size and present the portrait to the university, which will, you may be sure, return me a vote of thanks. I have long wanted to ask you to sit to me."

"This is too much!" the Professor burst forth. "I positively forbid you to represent me with your daubs."

"Then come at least and see my studio. You have never seen one of my 'daubs.'"

"No," growled Wehlau, "I will not put myself in the way of being so irritated; crazy, idealistic stuff,–faded sentimentality,–at best some exasperating caricature. You never can go beyond that, as I know well enough. I do not want to see or to hear anything of the matter."

"But you have heard something of it already," the young artist said, with exultation. "When I sent the portrait of my master, Professor Walter, to the exhibition, various newspapers discussed it; one of them even introduced a very agreeable variation of the usual theme, 'the son of our distinguished investigator;' it said, 'the talented son of a distinguished father!' Take care, papa, I shall one day cast all your scientific fame into the shade. But will you excuse me now? I am to have some distinguished visitors."

Wehlau shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "Fine visitors, I've no doubt!"

"The Countesses Steinrück, an it please you."

"What! they are going to pay you a visit?" The Professor gazed at his son in surprise.

"Of course; we are beginning to be famous, and we receive the aristocracy in our studio. It is not all in vain to be the 'talented son of a distinguished father.' Are you really determined not to sit to me for your portrait, papa?"

"Confound you, no!" shouted the Professor.

"Very well; then I shall paint you clandestinely, and shall send you treacherously to the exhibition. Adieu, papa!"

And with the most amiable smile, as if the best understanding reigned between himself and his father, Hans withdrew. Outside the door he encountered Michael, who had just come home, and who asked him whether the Professor were in his study.

"Yes; but there is thunder in the air again," said Hans. "Come to the studio for half an hour, Michael, after you have seen my father. I want to make a slight change in my picture, and I must have you."

The young officer nodded compliance, and went to the Professor, whose gloomy face brightened somewhat at his entrance.

"I am glad you are come," he said. "Hans has just irritated me to such a degree that I fairly long for the sight of a sensible man."

"What has Hans been doing now?"

"Nothing at all; that's just it. I have been remonstrating with him about the idleness to which he has been given over for the past five months, and which he is pleased to call work. And what effect do you suppose I produced? None, except to make him more nonsensical than ever. That boy will be my death."

"Do not be unjust, uncle," said Michael, reproachfully. "You know that Hans is at work upon an important picture, and I assure you that he works very hard, although you persistently refuse to bestow a glance upon it. I should suppose that you, as well as the rest of us, have had sufficient proof of his talent. His portrait of Professor Walter made quite a sensation; it was universally admired, and the newspapers even alluded to–"

"To 'the talented son of a distinguished father!'" Wehlau angrily interrupted him. "Are you going to harp upon the same string? Have I not had to endure all sorts of congratulations, and have I not been rude enough in reply to them? But 'tis of no use. Every one sides with the boy; everybody takes his part, and is immensely delighted with the trick he played me at the university."

"Even Professor Bauer took his part, as you call it, when he stopped to see you on his way through the city," interposed Michael.

"Yes, that capped the climax. 'Do you know,' I asked him, 'how that wretched lad of mine employed himself at your lectures? He caricatured you and your audience. He made a sketch of you, recognizable at once, surrounded by all the emblems of natural science, stirring up the four elements in a witches' caldron, while your favourite pupils were blowing the fire.' And what was his reply? 'I know, my dear friend, I know. I saw the picture, and it really was so clever, so capitally done, that I had to laugh and forgive my recreant pupil on the spot; do you do the same.'"

"You had better take his advice, uncle. However, I only meant to say good-morning. I promised Hans to go to his studio."

"To his studio?" the Professor said, with a sneer. "There must be a deal going on there. I wish that pavilion in the garden had been dark as pitch, and foul with damp, rather than have that fellow daubing there. He has taken up his abode right under my nose, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Go, go, for all I care, to the 'studio'! The aristocracy may stare, if they choose, at what it contains,–I'll not set my foot inside it, you may rely upon that."

He turned grumbling to his books, and Michael, who knew that it was best to leave him alone in his present mood, betook himself to his friend.

The pavilion in which the young painter had temporarily set up his modest studio was at the end of the garden, and contained one good-sized room. A window had been closed up, another enlarged, a skylight had been put in, and thus had been arranged the studio that so outraged the Professor, all the more that his permission had never been asked for these changes. Hans always pursued the same line of conduct with his father. 'Certainly, sir,' was his constant phrase, while he calmly and persistently acted in direct opposition to his parent's commands; this being in fact the only way to deal with the choleric old Herr.