The Chief Justice Part 11

She nodded; a faint red overspread her pale cheeks.

"And you answered?"

"What I have told you: that I did not know him, that if he were living I should not love and reverence him as my father, but hate and despise him as the wretch who ruined my mother!" She had half raised herself, and had spoken with a strength and energy that Berger had not believed possible. Now she sank back on her couch.

He sighed deeply. "And you adhered to that," he began again, "whatever Father Rohn might say? He told you that on the threshold of--that in your situation one should not hate, but forgive, that whoever hopes for G.o.d's mercy must not himself condemn unmercifully!"

"Yes," she replied, "he said so, if perhaps in gentler words. For he seemed to feel that I did not require to depend on G.o.d's mercy, but only on His justice."

"Forgive me!" muttered Berger. "For I know your fate and know you.

But just because I know your affectionate nature and your need of affection----" He stopped. "Gently," he thought, "I must be cautious."

"Don't consider me unfeeling," he then continued, "if I dwell upon this matter, however painful it may be to you. Just this one thing: does it follow that this man must be a wretch? Were there not perhaps fatal circ.u.mstances that bound him against his will and prevented him doing his duty to your poor mother?"

"No," she answered. "I know there were not!"

"You know there were not?" murmured Berger in the greatest consternation. "But do you know him?"

"Yes. I know his heart, his character, and that is enough. What does it matter to me what his name is, or his station? Whether he is living or dead? To me he has never lived! I know him from my mother's judgment, and that she, the gentlest of women, could not judge otherwise, proves his unworthiness. Only one single time did she speak to me of him, when I was old enough to ask and to be told why people sometimes spoke of us with a shrug of the shoulders. 'If he had been thoughtless and weak,'

she said to me, 'I could have forgiven him. But I have never known a man who viewed life more earnestly and intelligently: none who was so strong and brave and resolute as he. It was only from boundless selfishness, after mature, cold-blooded calculation that he delivered me to dishonor, because I was an obstacle in his career.' You see he was more pitiless than the man whom I trusted."

"No," cried Berger in the greatest excitement. "You do him injustice!"

"Injustice! How do you know that? Do you know him?"

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 n.o.ble, 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 pa.s.sed the Chief Justice's residence, an upstairs window opened; he heard his name called loud and anxiously. It was Fraulein 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 pa.s.sing. 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 rea.s.sured 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 G.o.d! 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances, that it would have needed a giant soul not to have succ.u.mbed. 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 a.s.sure 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.ble 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."