The Eichhofs: A Romance

"He lost a large sum at play last night," Bernhard continued. "But-"

Then Thea looked up. For an instant her face looked transfigured with hope, like that of a criminal reprieved when under sentence of death. Involuntarily she seized Bernhard's hand, and asked, with a passionate excitement such as Bernhard had never before known her to express, "Do you believe that that was why he shot himself? Do you believe it? Can it be?"

Her eyes as she looked up at him were full of imploring anguish, and he, in his turn, thrust away her hand, and said, in a cold, hard voice, "No! I see you do not believe it, and I-neither do I believe it!"

At this moment Alma entered with Herr von Rosen, who had come over immediately upon hearing the sad news. This put an end to Bernhard's and Thea's tête-à-tête, and neither of them at this time could have wished it prolonged.

Nor was there any opportunity for renewing it during the next few days. The dowager Countess had hastened to Eichhof upon hearing of her son's sudden death, and her grief and suffering were of so exacting a nature as to employ the time and energies of at least one member of the family, and sometimes several of them, all the time. She called herself the unhappiest, the most sorely tried of women; but when Bernhard proposed that she should remain at Eichhof with Thea, she thought it but right to inform him that she had been offered the position of abbess in the aristocratic institution of B-, and that she intended to accept it and retire thither as soon as possible, since it seemed to offer her the advantages to which her birth and rank entitled her.

Thea suffered terribly, but she was cold and repellant towards Bernhard, who was very much occupied and rather avoided her than otherwise. The physician shook his head; he was far from satisfied with his patient's condition, although he still maintained that she was only suffering from prolonged nervous agitation.

On the day after Lothar's funeral Thea was lying back on her lounge, not sleeping, but with closed eyes. She could not sleep either by night or by day, for so soon as she began to dream she saw either Lothar or Bernhard before her, and the thought of them banished repose. Was she not guilty of Lothar's death? Ought she not, instead of turning angrily away, to have tried gently to lead him back to the right path? If there had been no shadow between Bernhard and herself, this torturing self-reproach would not have taken shape; her conscience would not have been so morbidly sensitive, inclining her to the gloomiest reflections. But the shadow was there, and it was therefore impossible for her to seek refuge with her husband, and be consoled and soothed in his arms. Agitated as she was, she saw Bernhard's relations with Frau von Wronsky in the darkest light. She attributed his altered demeanour entirely to these, and never for an instant suspected that he too was tormented by doubts and suspicions with regard to herself. And Bernhard? All through these days he scarcely thought of Julutta; he never suspected that his friendship for her could have given rise to remarks and comments which Thea had overheard, and if he had suspected this he would have been indignant that Thea should give ear to such scandal. In all that concerned that 'poor persecuted woman' his conscience felt perfectly pure, and the struggle between his love for Thea and his dead brother, and the hate which now threatened to arise within him for both of them, left no space for thoughts of aught else.

And now the time for his return to Berlin was at hand. He resolved that certainty should at least be his. Thea, apparently calmly passive, and yet wretchedly restless, had just adopted a resolve to entreat Bernhard to tell her frankly of his sentiments for Frau von Wronsky. She would make no claim upon his affection, since she had never possessed it, but she would be his true and honest friend, asking nothing from him save confidence and truth. For their child's sake they must remain friends, – friends, but nothing more! Yes, she would say all this to him to-day-this very hour. Suddenly she started: a cold, heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder. She raised her head. Bernhard had entered softly, and had only been aware when he stood close beside her that she was not sleeping. His hand was upon her shoulder, and he said, gazing at her the while with eyes so changed, so darkly stern, "I must speak with you, Thea, before I leave for Berlin. I have a question to put to you."

She looked up at him startled. She had just been thinking of him, but the face she saw before her in no wise resembled the image of him in her mind, and there was an unusual imperious tone in his voice that offended her.

"Go on," she said, looking away from him.

"What occurred between yourself and Lothar?"

Thea started up. All her lately-formed resolutions were forgotten. He, against whom she believed herself to have such just cause for complaint, dared to take her to task thus!

She could not and would not lie; it was just as impossible for her at this moment to answer his question frankly. She stood erect before him. Her pale cheeks glowed, and her eyes gleamed angrily.

"You certainly have no right to ask that question. You less than all others."

The words passed her lips quick as thought. The next instant she repented of them, but they were spoken, and they had their effect. A terrible alteration took place in Bernhard's face. For an instant he looked as though about to crush to the earth the woman before him; then he suddenly turned away, without a word, and left the room.

"Bernhard!" Thea called after him; but the door was shut and he did not return.

"Past and gone!" echoed in Thea's soul.

"Past and gone!" a voice muttered in Bernhard's heart. Of what avail was it that she wrung her hands, and that he, in his room, hid his face and wished himself dead in Lothar's place rather than live through all this? The doors between the husband and wife were closed, and neither could overcome self so far as to open them and cry out to the other, "I love you, – I love you in spite of everything!"

The reconciling words remained unspoken.

Thus they parted. Bernhard returned to Berlin to await the close of the Reichstag, and Thea was alone again, – really alone now, since she knew that there was no union between Bernhard and herself even in thought.

Werner had departed immediately after Lothar's funeral, and Thea shortly afterwards sent Alma home. Their mother was quite ill; there were fears of her becoming blind, and Alma was much more needed there than at Eichhof. Thea exacted from her a solemn promise that she would never mention the contents of Adela's letter. What the future had in store for her she could not tell, only one thing she was resolved upon, that the unhappy state of affairs existing between Bernhard and herself should be concealed from the world as long as possible. While he had been in Eichhof her illness had made such concealment entirely feasible, and in future-yes, what was to be done in future she could ponder upon in her solitude at her leisure.

But upon this Bernhard had also pondered, and a few days after his departure Thea received a letter from him.

Her heart beat so strongly when this letter arrived that she held it for a moment in her hand without being able to open it. And when at last she did so, the characters of the familiar handwriting danced so before her eyes that at first she could scarcely decipher them. Bernhard wrote:

"From what you said to me on the day before I left Eichhof, I conclude that you find it impossible to bestow your confidence and affection upon me any longer. I do not ask why this is so; you know the reason for it, and it is better that it should not be discussed between us. To what is inevitable we must resign ourselves as best we may. After what has passed you probably desire to return to your parents, as life with me would be only a constant pain to you. I should not oppose your wish in this regard were it not for the existence of one for whose sake it seems to me best that we should maintain at least the appearance of union before the world, – I mean our child. For his sake we must avoid a public separation. Therefore it is that I pray you to remain in Eichhof, even although I should return thither. My sphere of action must enlarge with time. I shall travel much, and thus the brief duration of our meetings in Eichhof will seem not unnatural. You can shorten them still further by visits to watering-places, if it so pleases you. Before the world due regard must be paid to les convenances; of course the cause of our separation must never be mentioned between ourselves. In this wise our relations to each other may be duly arranged, and I pray you to inform me as soon as possible if your views in this respect coincide with mine.

    "Bernhard Eichhof."

This was the letter which Thea read over and over again amid floods of tears, the letter the composition of which had cost Bernhard a sleepless night. What a night it had been! Anger and pain strove within him for the mastery, and pain at length conquered. He thought of Thea's youth, of her solitude and inexperience, and he thought of Lothar's thoughtless gayety, of his susceptible nature, and of all his winning qualities. And he, Bernhard, had been fool enough to leave these two children dependent upon each other for society! Through his own fault his happiness was destroyed, and he had lost the woman whom he loved, – lost her forever!

He was overcome with compassion for himself, for Lothar, who had sought by his death to expiate his fault, for Thea! While writing that letter to her his heart was filled with sympathy for her. He pitied the poor young creature whom he had delivered over to her destruction; she could be nothing more to him, but his roof should shelter her at least from further harm.

These were Bernhard's reflections; but Thea thought she could read between the lines, and that it was not his insulting suspicions of her fidelity, but his own sentiments for Julutta Wronsky that made it easy indeed for him to give up his wife, if only appearances were kept up before the world. She accepted what he proposed with a dull resignation. In the tormenting self-accusations in which she so often indulged in her solitude, she seemed to have a crime to expiate. She repeatedly recalled every conversation, every interview, she had ever had with Lothar. She thought now that she had often been too cordial and friendly to him, she reproached herself for the ease and carelessness of her manner towards him, and she regarded Bernhard's estrangement from her as a punishment from heaven, which she must patiently endure. She grew paler and more silent, so that the old family physician often shook his head anxiously when he visited her, although he could not pronounce her really ill. Once he wrote to Bernhard about her, and Bernhard thought 'of course she cannot recover from Lothar's loss,' and, in spite of his pity for her, he crushed the innocent letter in his hand and flung it from him as if it contained some poison that he feared to touch. And then he carried his gloom, his pain, and his sore heart to Julutta Wronsky, not for consolation, as he said to himself, – who could console him? – but for some distraction of mind, to listen to her glorious contralto as she sang his favorite songs, and to discuss the events of the day. Meanwhile he could not but be conscious of the influence that he exerted upon this woman, and of how entirely she looked at the world through his eyes.

CHAPTER XX.

DR. NORDSTEDT

Spring had come, and life in Eichhof had developed into just what Bernhard had foreseen. He had taken an active part in a new railway enterprise which was to bring his secluded estates more into contact with the world and to connect a great Russian branch-line with a German trunk-line. By degrees he had become a prime mover in this scheme, and when he returned to Eichhof every moment of his time and every thought of his mind were put under requisition. He had to go to Russia, and backwards and forwards to and from Berlin; guests of every social rank came to Eichhof in the interests of the new railway, a prominent banking-house had to be induced to join in the scheme, and there were all kinds of foreseen and unforeseen obstacles to be overcome. And Bernhard was wanted everywhere. A great work was to be undertaken, one that would be of immense benefit to his section of the country, and the less satisfaction Bernhard took in his home-life the more did he devote himself to these outside interests, that were to be, as he thought, so productive of good. It was natural that Julutta Wronsky should understand and sympathize with him in these interests more than Thea possibly could. The time was past when Thea, for love of him, would interest herself in subjects that else would never have occupied her thoughts. And, besides, she was so very far from well that she no longer refused to heed the advice of the physician, who urged her to try change of air and scene at one of the well-known baths.

So she made ready for the journey, upon which her little son was to be her only companion and consolation. Yes, her only consolation, for except in her boy's laughing eyes she could see no brightness anywhere. At Schönthal, Frau von Rosen had been seriously ill, and when she began to recover her disease settled in her eyes, so that at the end of a few weeks her sight was almost entirely gone. It was a sad picture, that of one who had been so active now so entirely helpless, and Herr von Rosen and Alma vied with each other in devotion to the invalid. Care for her mother helped Alma to conceal and to overcome her grief for Lothar far more easily than would otherwise have been the case. She had no time to think of it, – the present claimed all her powers of mind and body, and the past retreated into a dim distance. While Thea was preparing for her journey, her mother was about to travel also; but while Thea's goal was a mountain watering-place, Frau von Rosen was going to Berlin to consult Walter's friend, Dr. Nordstedt. He advised her to place herself entirely under his care for a while, and accordingly Frau von Rosen and Alma were soon established in two quiet rooms in a wing of the Nordstedt mansion, the windows of which looked out upon the blossoming fruit-trees and green grass-plats of the pleasant garden. Soon this prospect was shut out from one of the rooms by blue curtains, for Frau von Rosen was to undergo an operation which would decide whether she should henceforth dwell in perpetual night or once more look upon the light of day and the faces of those whom she loved. They were weary days that Alma now passed beside her mother's couch, hovering between fear and hope. Herr von Rosen left them immediately after the operation, for pressing business at home prevented him from awaiting the final decision, and Walter Eichhof and Adela Hohenstein were the only friends from home who came now and then to ask after Frau von Rosen and to chat awhile with Alma. Oddly enough, the two had never met upon any of their visits; 'fortunately,' Walter said, 'unfortunately,' Adela thought, although not for worlds would she have uttered the word aloud. At last after days of prolonged anxiety the bandage could be removed from the invalid's eyes, and Dr. Nordstedt pronounced the operation entirely successful. That was the first happy day that Alma had known since Lothar's death. A smile transfigured for a moment Dr. Nordstedt's grave face as he announced the glad tidings to Alma, and tears glittered in the girl's eyes as she held out both hands to him, and, forgetting all her shyness, cried, "Ah, how I thank you, Dr. Nordstedt! If I only had some way in which to show you how grateful I am!"

He held her little white hands in a firm clasp for an instant, and replied, "Such moments are the bright spots in a physician's life, Fräulein von Rosen, and they atone for many a gloomy day."

On the evening of that day Alma stood at the open window of her room, looking out into the starry June night. The leaves of the trees whispered gently in the evening breeze, and the garden lay silent and dark below her, while beyond the gardens and court-yard that surrounded the Nordstedt mansion there was the glimmer of distant gas-lights, and the street-noises fell upon her ear like a muffled hum. Alma was so grateful that she longed to be happy and glad, and yet precisely at this time, when she was relieved from her weight of care and could breathe freely, she felt doubly lonely in the strange great city. She seemed to herself to be upon a lonely island in the midst of a roaring ocean. As she stood thus looking out, she thought of that winter night in Eichhof when she had stood at the window gazing thus. Lothar's image, which her recent care had banished to the background of her thoughts, arose vividly before her, and she was conscious of a painful yearning for her home. She clasped her hands against the window-frame, and leaned her head upon them. The air was sultry; she had loosened her fair hair, and it fell down about her shoulders, as she remained thus lost in thoughts of the past. Suddenly the door was opened, and a woman with a lighted candle entered the room. It was the nurse to whose care Frau von Rosen was specially intrusted.

"Good gracious, Fräulein dear, you are in pitch darkness!" she exclaimed, putting the candle on the table, "and with the window open too! Have you closed the door, that your mother may not feel the draught?"

"Indeed I have, Marianne," Alma replied, half turning round. "My mother is asleep, and I came here to get a little fresh air."

"Yes, yes, you ought to have more fresh air, Fräulein dear; the Herr Doctor always says you ought to walk in the garden every day. The Herr Doctor is not at all pleased to see you grow so pale here. He looks at you, – yes, just as he always does at people with whom he is not satisfied, and for whom he would like to prescribe. No offence, Fräulein, but he does; such a sad look, and yet so kind. Good gracious! I know the look well enough. And he has, perhaps, a particular reason for it in your case."

Alma was only lending half an ear to the woman's chatter, and it was more out of kindness than from interest that she asked, "Indeed? How so?"

Marianne put on an air of mystery. "Ah, you see, 'tis a long story. You look like somebody," she replied.

"Indeed?"

"Somebody who is dead; of course it was a woman," Marianne chattered on. "She had braids just like yours. Now your hair is down, I can see that she had the very same. And she had blue eyes, too, and was so like you in some way, I cannot exactly tell how; but as soon as you came you reminded me of her, and our doctor saw it too, – I knew that in a moment, for I know him well."

"Well, and who was this other?" Alma asked, with more interest.

Marianne sighed, and then told Alma of the unfortunate young woman whom her doctor had once intrusted to her care. "And only think, Fräulein dear, the woman had once been so rich that she did not know what to do with her money, and-but this is a secret; I only happen to know it because my husband, who is dead, was once a footman in her house. Only since you look so like her I'll tell it to you. Well, our doctor loved this woman dearly when she was a girl. But he was very young, and the girl's parents, and the girl herself, perhaps, thought he was not rich enough for her. At all events, she wouldn't marry him, and that's the only reason why he has never married, although now he might choose a wife where he would and thank you, too. But he cannot forget his Hedwig. And when he found her so sick and miserable, and got me to nurse her, and then at last when she died, any one could see how fond he was of her. Our doctor is an angel to all sick people, but then-then he was something more."

Alma listened now with keen interest, and was almost sorry when Marianne had finished arranging her room for the night and was obliged to attend to some other patients.

"Yes, yes, Fräulein dear, the best of men must have trials. Well, good-night."

And the nurse left the room, and Alma was again alone at the window. And so this calm, grave Dr. Nordstedt had also lived through his romance. He had lost his love, and lost her so cruelly! "Poor man!" Alma whispered, thinking of what she had just heard. Then she heard footsteps on the garden gravel path below her window. She leaned out, and saw a tall, manly figure slowly walking towards the house. She hurriedly withdrew, as though fearing that the doctor might suspect that she was thinking of him and that she knew his secret. Still, she no longer felt lonely as before; it was a certain consolation to her to reflect that in the heart of the man walking alone beneath the trees on this sultry evening there might perhaps be thoughts similar to her own.

From this day it was not gratitude solely that prompted her to observe the doctor with greater interest than hitherto. There seemed a certain resemblance between his fate and her own. She thought she could understand him; and when he paced the garden to and fro alone in the evening, and she stood alone at her window, she thought that surely there was some mysterious sympathy between them.

Thus some time passed, and at last Frau von Rosen was allowed to leave her room. When she spent an hour for the first time in an arbour in the garden, Herr von Hohenstein and his daughter came to wish their old friend joy in her restoration to health, and to inform her at the same time that Herr von Hohenstein had purchased a country-house with a little land, and that they were to occupy it the ensuing week. The house was in the vicinity of one of the larger cities of their native province, and Adela was enthusiastic in her praises of its lovely situation, while her head was filled with plans for gardens of roses, asparagus-beds, dove-cotes, and chicken-yards. Herr von Hohenstein, who had entirely recovered his health, although he was greatly changed and found his memory often defective, so that he was obliged to turn to Adela for aid, agreed to everything, and spoke of employing his leisure in the quiet of the country, if his strength admitted of it, in collecting his varied experience on the subject of the breeding of horses, and in publishing it for the use and enlightenment of posterity. Adela had taken a pencil out of her pocket, and was just about to draw a ground-plan of her future home on a leaf of her note-book for Alma, when a shadow fell upon her paper, and a familiar voice that had not fallen upon her ears for a long time bade 'good-morning' to the little circle in the arbour. Adela started up and confronted Walter Eichhof. Perhaps each was at first inclined, so unexpected was this meeting, to run away; but Adela was imprisoned in the arbour, and Dr. Nordstedt's broad shoulders appeared just behind Walter. As there was no way of avoiding each other, they each had recourse to the same line of conduct; Walter devoted himself to the Rosens, and Adela found inexhaustible matter for conversation with Dr. Nordstedt in his establishment and his methods of treatment, in which she expressed the greatest interest. Both Walter and Adela, however, took occasion to scan each other furtively, and at times replied rather vaguely to remarks addressed to them, from an anxiety on the part of each to hear what the other was saying. At last Dr. Nordstedt expressed a fear lest so much conversation around her might fatigue Frau von Rosen, and proposed that she should be left for a while with the Baron von Hohenstein, while he conducted Walter and the young ladies through the garden, and the establishment in which Fräulein von Hohenstein expressed such an interest.

Adela immediately declared herself ready to go, and, as Walter was standing by Alma's side, it fell to Dr. Nordstedt to conduct Fräulein von Hohenstein. He showed them through various rooms in the house, and told them how they had been enlarged to their present size from small beginnings, until he had ended by adding the present spacious wings to the original mansion. The waiting-rooms were filled with all kinds of costly objets d'art, mementos from grateful patients from near and far. Adela, who had chattered fast enough at first, gradually became silent, and looked up with a kind of awe at the tall, serious man who had made himself what he was. Then she cast a stolen glance at Walter. He was right to be proud of this friend, she thought, and then she wondered whether Walter possessed sufficient energy and industry to be like him. She could not but observe meanwhile that in the course of the last year Walter had grown far more manly, and at last she arrived at the conclusion that she never should suspect either Walter or Dr. Nordstedt of being doctors if she had not known about them. The image of a 'doctor' in her mind was inseparably connected with a large pair of spectacles and a strong odour of ether, – both attributes of the family physician at Rollin, and of a certain professor who had been called in at the time of her father's illness. They had hitherto been the only representatives of the medical profession known to her.

"Fräulein Alma would like to see your study," Walter suddenly said to Nordstedt, who turned to the girl with a smile, and said, -