The Chief Justice: A Novel

He turned away and was silent. "No," he then murmured, "how should I know him?"

"Then why do you dissent from me with such conviction? Oh, I understand," she went on bitterly, "you, even you, don't think my mother's words trustworthy, and simply because she allowed herself to be deluded by a wretch!"

"No, indeed!" returned Berger, trying to compose himself, "for I know how noble, how true and good your mother was, I know it from her letters. The remark escaped me unawares. But you are right. Let us drop this subject."

Then he asked her if she would like to have some books. She answered in the negative and he left the cell.

"Sendlingen must never see her!" he thought when he was back in the street. "If he were to enter her cell he would betray himself and then learn what she thinks of him! It would utterly crush him. That, at least, he shall be spared."

But the next few minutes were to show him that he had been planning impossibilities. As he passed the Chief Justice's residence, an upstairs window opened; he heard his name called loud and anxiously. It was Fräulein Brigitta. "Quickly," cried she, beckoning him to come up.

He hurried up the stairs, she rushed to meet him. "Heaven has sent you to us," she cried, weeping and wringing her hands. "How fortunate that I accidentally saw you passing. We were at our wits' end? He insists on going out. Franz is to dress him. We do not know what has excited him so. Father Rohn has been to see him, but he talked so quietly with him that we breathed again indeed. It is manifestly a sudden attack of fever, but we cannot use force to him."

Berger hurried to the bedroom. Sendlingen was reclining in an arm-chair, Franz was attending to him. At his friend's entrance he coloured, and held up his hand deprecatingly. "They have fetched you," he cried impatiently. "It is useless! I am not going to be prevented!"

Berger signed to Franz to leave the room. Not until the door was closed behind him did he approach the sick man, and take his hand, and look searchingly into his face. It reassured him to see that, though his eyes were dim, they no longer looked wild and restless as they did a few hours ago.

"You are going to her?" he asked. "That must not be."

"I must!" cried Sendlingen despairingly. "It is the one thought to which I cling to avoid madness. When I awoke-I was so perplexed and desolate, I felt my misery returning-then I heard Rohn's voice in the next room. They were going to send him away: I was still asleep, they said, – but I made him come in, because I wanted to hear some other voice than that of my conscience, and because I was afraid of myself. I did not dream that he was bringing me a staff by which I could raise myself again."

"You asked him about her?"

"No, by the merest chance he began to tell me of his talk with her yesterday, and how she was wasting away because there was no one on earth for whose sake she could or would rouse herself. Oh, what I felt! Despair shook my heart more deeply than ever, and yet I could have thanked him on my knees for these good tidings. Now my life has an object again, and I know why Fate has allowed me to survive this day."

Berger was silent-should he, dared he, tell the truth? "Think it over a while," he begged. "If you were to betray yourself to the officials-"

"I shall not do so. And if I did, how could that trouble me? Don't you see that a man in my situation cannot think of himself or any such secondary consideration?"

"That would be no secondary consideration. And could you save her by such a step? The situation remains as it was!"

"Are you cruel enough to remind me of that?" cried Sendlingen. "But, thank God! I am clear enough to give you the right answer instead of allowing myself to be oppressed by misery. Now listen; I shall do what I can! From the hangman, from the prison, I may not be able to save my child, but perhaps I can save her from despair, from wasting away. I shall say to her: live for your father, as your father lives for you! Perhaps this thought will affect her as it has affected me; it has saved me from the worst. Another night like last night, George!" He stopped and a shudder ran through his body. "Such a night shall not come again! I do not know what is to be done later on, but my immediate duty is clear. I have been fighting against the instinct that drew me to her, as against a suggestion of madness; I now see that it was leading me aright."

He laid his hand on the bell to summon Franz. Berger prevented him, "Wait another hour," he implored. "I will not try to hinder you any more; I see that it would be useless, perhaps unjust. But let me speak to her first. Humour me in this one thing only. You agreed to do so yesterday."

"So be it!" said Sendlingen. "But you must promise not to keep me waiting a minute longer than is absolutely necessary."

Berger promised and took his leave. He was not a religious man in the popular sense of the word, and yet as he again rang the prison bell, he felt as if he must pray that his words would be of effect as a man only can pray for a favour for himself.

The warder was astonished when he again asked admission to the cell, and Victorine looked at him with surprise.

He went up to her. "Listen to me," he begged. "I have hitherto wished to conceal the truth from you, with the best intentions, but still it was not right. For falsehood kills and truth saves, always and everywhere-I ought to have remembered that. Well then; I know your father; he is my best friend, a man so noble and good, so upright and full of heart, as are few men on this poor earth."

She rose. "If that were so my mother would have lied," she cried. "Can I believe you rather than my mother? Can you expect that of me?"

"No," he replied. "Your mother judged him quite correctly. He did not betray her through thoughtlessness, nor forsake her through weakness. But much less still from cold-blooded calculation. No external constraint weighed upon him but an internal, – the constraint of education, of his convictions, of his views of the world and men, in short, of his whole being, so that he could hardly have acted differently. With all this there was such a fatal, peculiar concatenation of external circumstances, that it would have needed a giant soul not to have succumbed. We are all of us but men. I would not trust anyone I know, not even myself, to have been stronger than he was! Not one, Victorine! Will you believe me?"

"My mother judged otherwise!" she replied. "And will you perhaps also attempt to justify the fact that he never concerned himself about his child?"

"He knew nothing of you," cried Berger. "He did not dream that he had a child in the world! And one thing I can assure you: if he had accidentally heard that you were alive, he would not have rested until he had drawn you to his heart, he would have sheltered you in his arms, in his house, from the battle with misery and the wickedness of men. Not only his heart would have dictated this, but the absence of children by his marriage, and his sense of justice: so as to make good through you what he could no longer make good to your poor mother. If you could only imagine how he suffers! – You must surely be able to feel for him: a noble man, who suddenly learns that his offence is ten times greater than he had thought or dreamt; that he has a child in the world against whom also he has transgressed, and who learns all this at a moment when he can make no reparation-in such a moment-can you grasp this, Victorine?"

Her face remained unmoved. "What shall I say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "If he really suffers, the punishment is only just. What did my mother not suffer on his account! And I!"

"But can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "All, Victorine?"

"Perhaps," she answered. "But if not all, then the most, so much that I will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. Still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! And is my guilt greater than his? And has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?"

"Quite possibly!" he cried. "Perhaps with his life, seeing that he cannot, situated as he now is, expiate it with his honour. Oh, if you knew all! If you knew what an unprecedented combination of circumstances has heightened the sense of his guilt, has increased his sorrow to infinite proportions. And you shall know all."

"I will not hear it," she cried with a swift movement of repulsion, "I do not care, I may not care about it. I will not be robbed of my feelings against this man. I will not! His punishment is just-let us drop the subject."

"Just! still this talk about just! You are young but you have experienced enough of life, you have suffered enough, to know how far this justice will bring us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth-shall this pitiless web of guilt and expiation continue to spin itself everlastingly from generation to generation? Can't you understand that this life would be unendurable if a high-minded deed, a noble victory over self, did not at times rend the web? You should understand this, poor child, you more than anyone. Do such a deed, forgive this unhappy man!"

"Did he send you to me on this mission?"

"No. I will be truthful in the smallest detail: I myself wrested from him permission to prepare you for his coming. I wished to spare you and him the emotions of a melancholy contest. For he does not even suspect what you think of him."

"He does not suspect it?" she cried. "He thinks that the balance is struck, if he graces a fallen, a condemned creature with a visit! Oh, and this man is noble and sensitive!"

"You are unjust to him in that, too," protested Berger. "And in that most of all. That he who can usually read the hearts of men like a book, has not thought of this most obvious and natural thing, shows best of all how greatly his misery has distracted and desolated him. He only wants one thing: to come to you, to console you, to console himself in you."

"I will not see him, you must prevent it."

"I cannot. I have tried in vain. He will come; his reason, perhaps his life, depend upon the way you may receive him."

"Do not burden me with such responsibilities," she sobbed despairingly. "I cannot forgive him. But I desire nobody's death, I do not wish him to die. Tell him what you like, even that I forgive him, but keep him away, I implore you."

She would have thrown herself at his feet but he prevented her. "No, not that," he murmured. "I will not urge any more. As God wills."

A few minutes later he was again with Sendlingen. "She knows all," he told him, "except your name and station. She does not desire your visit-she-dreads the excitement."

He stopped short and looked anxiously at his friend; he feared another sudden outburst of despair.

But it did not come. Sendlingen certainly started as in pain, but then he drew himself up to his full height. "You are concealing the truth from me," he said. "She does not wish to see her mother's betrayer. I did not think of it before, but I read it at once in your looks of alarm. That is bad, very bad-but stop me, it cannot. Where the stranger has tried in vain the father will succeed. My heart tells me so."

He called for his hat and stick and leaning on Berger's arm, went down the steps. In the street he loosed his hold: the energy of his soul had given his body new strength. With a firm step he walked to the prison door, and the quiver in his voice was scarcely perceptible as he gave the warder the order to open Victorine Lippert's cell.

The official obeyed. The prisoner hardly looked up when she heard the bolts rattle yet another time. The warder felt himself in duty bound to call her attention to the importance of the visit she was about to receive. "His Lordship, the Chief Justice, Baron Sendlingen!" he whispered to her. "Inspection of the Cells. Stand up." He stepped back respectfully to admit Sendlingen and locked the door after him.

The two were alone. Victorine had risen as she had been told: once only did she cast a transient and nonchalant look at the tall figure before her, then she remained standing with bowed head. Similar inspections had frequently taken place before; in each case the functionary had briefly asked whether the prisoner wished anything or had any complaint to make. This question she was waiting for now in order to reply as briefly in the negative; she wanted nothing more.

But he was silent, and as she looked up surprised-"Merciful God!" she cried, and reeled back on to her couch, covering her face with her trembling hands.

She knew who this man was at once, at the first glance. How she had recognised him with such lightning speed, she could not determine, even later when she thought the matter over. It was half dark in the cell, she had not properly seen his features and expression. Perhaps it was his attitude which betrayed him. With bowed head, his hands listlessly hanging by his sides, he stood there like a criminal before his judge.

At her exclamation, he looked up and came nearer. "Victorine," he murmured. She did not understand him, so low was his stifled articulation. "My child!" he then cried aloud and darted towards her. She rose to her feet and stretched out her hands as if to repel him, gazing at him all the while with widely opened eyes. And again she did not know what it was that suddenly penetrated and moved her heart. Was it because his face seemed familiar to her, mysteriously familiar, as if she had seen it ever since she could think?.. Yes, it was so! For what unknown to herself, had overpowered her, was the likeness to her own face. Or was it perhaps the silent misery of his face, the beseeching look of his eyes? She felt the bitter animosity to which she had despairingly clung, the one feeling of which she would not be robbed, suddenly melt away.

"I cannot," she still faltered, but in the same breath she lifted up her arms. "Father!" she cried and threw herself on his breast.