Part 4

Nearer and nearer came the turrets of the little town; higher and higher they stretched up behind the alder thickets. And a quarter of an hour later the carriage drove into the roughly-paved street.

Soon after entering the gates Robert made the discovery that people who met him to-day behaved towards him in the most peculiar manner. Some avoided him, others in evident confusion doffed their caps and then as quickly as possible fled from his presence. On the other hand, the windows of every house past which the carriage drove, filled with heads that stared at him gravely and disappeared hurriedly behind the curtains at his greeting.

He shook his head doubtfully. But as his mind was so full of the approaching struggle, he took not much notice, and henceforth looked neither to the right nor to the left. At the corner of the marketplace, where there used to be the little excise-office, stood his uncle's, the doctor's, old housekeeper, holding her hands hidden under her blue apron, and with an expression on her face like that of an undertaker.

As the carriage approached, she signed to him to stop.

"Well, Mrs. Liebetreu," he said, amused, "you at least do not take to your heels at my approach to-day."

The old woman gazed up at the sky, so that she might not have to look him in the face.

"Oh! young master," said she--he was always called "young master," to distinguish him from his father, though he was long past thirty--"the doctor wishes me to ask if you will kindly just step round there first; he has something to say to you."

"Is what he has to say to me very pressing?"

The woman was very much terrified, for she thought the unhappy intelligence would now fall to her lot to tell.

"Oh, gracious me!" she said; "he only put it like that."

"Well, then, give my kindest regards to my uncle the doctor, and the message, that I only just wanted first to have a little talk with my parents--he knows what about--and will then come round to him at once."

The old woman muttered something, but the words stuck in her throat. The carriage rolled on in the direction of old Hellinger's villa, that lay there under mighty old lime-trees, as if resting beneath a canopy. The bright plate-glass windows greeted him cheerily, the shining tiled roof gleamed in the light, the tranquillity of a well-provisioned old age rested, as usual, over all. He tied his horse to the garden-railings, and strode with heavy, noisy tread up the small flight of steps, on the parapet of which, in wide-bellied urns, half-faded aster plants mournfully drooped their heads.

The hall-bell sounded in shrill tones through the house, but no one put in an appearance to receive him. He threw down his rain-soaked cloak on one of the oak chests in which his mother's linen treasures were hidden away. Then he stepped into the sitting-room--it was empty.

"The old people are probably taking their afternoon nap," he muttered; "and I think it will be advisable to let them have their sleep out to-day."

He flung himself into a corner of the sofa, and gazed towards the door; for he privately hoped that Olga might have noticed his conveyance in front of the house, and would come down to shake hands with him.

He began to get impatient. "Can she have gone out to the manor?" he asked himself But, no--she would not do that; for she knew he would come to speak to his parents.

"I will knock at her door," he decided, and got up.

He smiled anxiously, and stretched his mighty limbs. After having longed for her incessantly since yesterday evening, now, at the moment of beholding her again, he was filled with a peculiar fear of facing her. The feeling of humble reverence, which always took possession of him in her presence, now again made itself evident. Was it possible that this woman had yesterday hung upon his neck? And what if she regretted it to-day--if she went back from her word?

But at this moment all his defiance awoke within him. He opened his arms wide, and with a smile which reflected the memory of happy hours recently lived through, he cried:

"Let her but dare such a thing! With these hands of mine I will lift her up and carry her to my home! If Martha gives her consent, I wonder who should object."

On tip-toe, so as not to wake his parents, he climbed up the stairs, which nevertheless creaked and groaned under the weight of his body.

Before Olga's door he started back, for he saw the gleam of light which fell through the broken panel on to the corridor.

No one answered to his knocking. Nevertheless, he entered.

* * * * *

A moment later the whole house trembled in its foundations, as if the roof had fallen in.

The two old people, who had retired to their bedroom to recuperate their strength after those trying hours of the forenoon, started up in terror. They called the maids. But these had run off, so that the town should no longer be kept in ignorance of the newest details about the sad occurrence.

"You go up," said the energetic woman to her husband, and tremblingly put out her hand for the little bottle of sulphuric ether which she always kept at hand. It was the first time in her life that she felt frightened.

When old Hellinger entered the gable-room, he saw a sight which froze the blood in his veins.

His son's body lay stretched on the ground. As he fell he must have clutched the supports of the bier on which the dead girl had been placed, and dragged down the whole erection with him; for on the top of him, between the broken planks, lay the corpse, in its long white shroud, its motionless face upon his face, its bared arms thrown over his head.

At this moment he regained consciousness, and started up. The dead girl's head sank down from his, and bumped on to the floor.

"Robert, my boy!" cried the old man, and rushed towards him.

With wide-open, glassy eyes, Robert stared about him. He seemed not yet to have recovered his senses. Then he perceived one of the arms, which, as the body dropped sidewards, had fallen right across his chest. His gaze travelled along it up to the shoulder, as far as the neck--as far as the white rigidly-smiling face.

Supported by the old man's two arms, he raised himself up. He tottered on his legs like a bull that has received a blow from an axe.

"Good God, boy, do come to your senses!" cried his father, taking him by his shoulders. "The misfortune has taken place; we are men, we must keep our composure."

His son looked at him vacantly, helplessly as a child. Then he bent over the dead body, lifted it up, and laid it across the bed, pushing the fragments of the bier to one side with his foot.

Then he seated himself close to her on the pillow, and mechanically wound a coil of her flowing hair round his finger.

The old man began to entertain fears of his son's sanity.

"Robert," he said, coming close up to him again, "pull yourself together. Come away from here; you cannot bring her back to life again."

Then he broke into a laugh so shrill and horrible, that it froze the very marrow in his father's bones.

All of a sudden his stupor left him; he jumped up, his eyes glowed, and on his temples the veins swelled up.

"Where is mother?" he screamed, advancing towards the old man.

He sought to pacify him.

"Good heavens! do have patience! We will tell you all."

The old lady, who had already been standing for a long time listening on the stairs, at this moment put in her head at the door.

He rushed past his father and at her as if about to strangle her; but he had at least so much reason left as to be sensible of the monstrousness of his proceeding. His arms fell down limp at his sides--he set his teeth as if to choke down his pent-up rage. "Mother," said he, "you shall account to me for this. I demand an explanation of you. Why did she die?"

The old woman came towards him with tender compassion, and made as if she would burst into tears upon his neck.

With a rough movement he shook her off.

"Leave that, mother," he said, "I claim her from you!"

"But, Robert," whined the old woman, "is this the way for a son to treat his mother? Adalbert, just tell him how he ought to treat his mother!"

He took hold of the old man's hands. "You keep out of the game, father," he said. "The account which I have to settle to-day with my mother concerns us two alone. Mother, I ask you once more: why did she die?" He was leaning against the wall and stared at her with half-closed, blood-shot eyes.

Mrs. Hellinger had meanwhile commenced to cry.

"Do you suppose I know?" she sobbed; "do you suppose anybody at all knows? We found her in her bed, that is all. She has brought disgrace upon our house, the miserable creature, in return for----"

"Do not abuse her, mother," he said, wildly, speaking in an angry undertone; "you know very well that she was my bride!"

His mother gave vent to a cry of astonishment, and her husband too made a movement of surprise.

"What! you do not know that? Mother," he cried, and pressed both his fists to his temples, "did she say nothing to you? Did she not come to you last night, and tell you what had taken place between her and me during the day?"

"Heaven forbid!" groaned the old woman. "Scarce a syllable did she speak to me, but went and locked herself up in her room."

"Mother," he said, and stepped close up to her. "When she had confessed all to you, did you not work upon her conscience? Did you not impress it upon her that if she truly loved me she must give me up, that she would bring misfortune upon me, and Heaven knows what besides! Mother, did you not do this?"

"My own son does not believe me! My own son gives me the lie," whimpered the old woman. "These are the thanks that I get from my children to-day."

He grasped her right hand. "Mother," he said, "you have done me many a wrong in all these years. The worst and bitterest I ever experienced came to me through you."

"Merciful Heavens," shrieked the old woman, "these are the thanks--these are the thanks!"

"But all the evil you did to me and Martha I will forgive you, mother," he continued, "nay, more even! On my bended knees I will ask your forgiveness for ever having harboured a bitter thought against you; but one thing you must do for me--here by her dead body you must swear that you knew of nothing, that in all things you were speaking the truth." And he dragged her to the corpse that stared up at him with its ecstatic smile--a bride's smile to her bridegroom.

"That such a thing should be necessary between us," complained the old woman, and cast a glance of bitter hatred at him out of her swollen eyes. But she suffered him to lay her right hand on the dead girl's forehead; she stroked it and sobbed, "I swear it, my sweet one, you know best that I knew nothing and never required anything wrong of you." Thereupon she gave a sigh of relief, as if she had suddenly come to understand what a gain this tragic deed would mean for her and her family. Sincere gratitude lay in the tender caress with which she fondled the dead face.

At this moment the old physician came rushing into the room. He had hoped to overtake Robert and prepare him for the worst, and saw in terror that he had come too late.

Old Hellinger hurried towards him and whispered in his ear: "Take him away, he is out of his senses! We can do nothing with him here!"

Robert stood there clutching at the bed-posts, his chest heaving, his face as if turned to stone with gloomy, tearless misery.

The old doctor rubbed his stubbly grey beard against his shoulder, and growled in that roughly compassionate way which goes quickest to the hearts of strong men.

"Come away, my boy; don't do anything foolish; do not disturb her rest."

Robert started and nodded several times.

Then suddenly--as if overpowered by his misery--he fell down in front of the bed and cried out, "Wherefore didst thou die?"

IV.

Wherefore had she died?

This question henceforth puzzled the whole town completely. In the streets--at the tea-table, on the alehouse benches--it was the one topic for discussion. People indulged in the most out-of-the-way surmises, the most hazardous conjectures were put forward, and still no one was one whit the wiser. Some spoke of an unhappy, others of an over-happy love affair, and others again declared that they had always predicted that she would not come to a good end.

During her life-time already, her proud, taciturn, reserved nature had been a riddle to the good homely townfolk; now her death was a still greater riddle to them.

Meanwhile it had got about that the physician had been the first to receive news of the suicide, and the only one to whom she herself had confided her intention. People crowded up to him; they almost stormed his house; but he persisted in his silence. With all the bluffness of which he was so particularly capable, he sent the importunate questioners about their business. Olga's letter he had on the very same day committed to the flames, for he feared that a court of law might require it of him. As for the rest, the cause of death was so evident that even a post-mortem examination could be dispensed with. As might have been expected, the dead girl had not succeeded in absolutely removing every trace of her deed. In the glass standing on her night-table were found, adhering to its sides, drops of a fluid whose flavour proved, even to a non-expert, that here a solution of morphia was in question. The chain of evidence became complete when in the garden, embedded under some hawthorn bushes, were found fragments of glass bottles, to the necks of which a portion of the poisonous solution still adhered in white crystallised streaks. They had evidently been thrown out of the window, and still bore labels giving the date of the prescription and directions for taking.

As matters stood, it would have been simple madness on the doctor's part if he had dared to attempt to hush up the suicidal intention; for even carelessness in taking the sleeping draught was quite out of the question.

Nevertheless, he was tormented by the idea that he had been unable to carry out the dying girl's last request, and he faithfully promised himself that he would all the more truly at least keep the secret which she had wrapped round her motives for the unhappy deed.

If only he himself could see his way clear at last! The days passed by, however, and still he could not succeed in taking possession of the legacy which Olga had left to him.

Mrs. Hellinger, senior, mistrusted him; she told him openly to his face that he had always had some secret understanding with the dead girl, and behind his back she added that if he had not prescribed such unreasonably strong solutions of morphia, Olga would have been alive and happy for a long time to come. She almost went so far as to ascribe the blame of her niece's death to their old family friend.

At any rate she did not permit him henceforth to remain for one second alone in the dead girl's room. She kept the door carefully locked, and declared she would not suffer the dead girl's belongings, which to her were sacred relics, to be defiled by the touch of strange hands, or by strange glances.

Thus from hour to hour there was increasing danger that the book, in which Olga had written down her confessions, might fall into the old woman's hands.

She need only take it into her head one day to rummage among the little collection of volumes which filled the book-shelf, and the mischief was done.

Added to this anxiety, which drove the old doctor daily to the Hellingers' house, came his growing uneasiness about Robert who, since that disastrous hour, had fallen a prey to blank, despairing lethargy. He seemed absolutely deprived of the power of speech, would endure no one near him, and even taciturnly shunned and avoided him, his old friend; by day he roamed about in the fields, by night he sat by his child's cot, and stared down upon it with burning, reddened eyes.

So said the servants, who three times had found him in the morning in this position.

V.

The lights round Olga's coffin had burnt down.

The guests, who for so long had surrounded the bier in solemn silence, began to move to and fro, and to look round for refreshments.

Mrs. Hellinger, who was receiving condolences, and at the same time, with a great profusion of tears and pocket handkerchiefs, extolling the virtues of the deceased, suddenly, in the midst of her grief, proved herself an attentive and liberal hostess. The guests gave a sigh of relief when the doors of the dining-room were thrown open, and from the resplendent table a sweet odour of roast meats, _compotes_ and herring salad greeted them.

Mr. Hellinger, senior, praised the Lord, and with a few privileged friends, drank the specially fine claret which he set before them in honour of the occasion. They were not yet agreed whether an innocent game of cards would be disparaging to the general mourning, and decided to send delegates to the hostess to obtain her permission.

There was plenty of life and bustle in the Hellingers' house--one might have imagined one were at a wedding.

The physician, who dropped in late upon this merry company, looked about anxiously for Robert. He was nowhere to be seen.

Thereupon he took one of the guests aside and inquired after him. Yes, he had been there, had looked about him with startled eyes, and had silently moved aside when any one wanted to shake hands with him. But after a very few minutes his disappearance had been noticed.

The physician went into the entrance-hall, and hunted among the guests' wraps for Robert's cloak. It was lying there yet.

With the freedom of an old friend of the family, he then commenced his search through the back rooms of the house, which were quiet and deserted; for the servants were busy waiting at table.

In a narrow, dark chamber, where disused furniture was piled up, he found him sitting on an overturned wooden case, brooding with his head in his hands.

"Robert, my boy, what are you doing here?" he cried out to him.

He raised his head slowly and said, "I suppose there are merry goings-on in the other part of the house?"

The physician laid his hands on his shoulders:

"I am anxious about you, my boy. Since three days you grudge a word to any of us; you are on the road to madness, if you go on like this."

"What do you want?" answered Robert, with a sigh that broke from him like a cry of anguish. "I am calm, quite calm." Then he once more rested his bushy head upon his two hands, and fell again to brooding.

The old man sat down at his side and began to remonstrate with him. He forgot no single thing that one is won't to say in such cases, and added many a comforting, strengthening word of his own making. Robert sat there motionless, he hardly gave any sign of interest. But when the old man came to no stop, he interrupted him, and said:

"Leave that, uncle, that is sweet stuff for little children. To the one question on which for me depends life and death, you, too, can give me no answer."

"What question?"

"Uncle, see, I am calm now--wonderfully calm--no fever, no frenzy is upon me as I speak, and so you will believe me when I tell you that I do not know--how I shall live through this night!"

"For God's sake, what are you about to do?"

Robert shrugged his shoulders.

"I do not know," he said, "whatever suggests itself at the moment will do for me. I am only sorry for the poor little mite that will have to go on living without a father--perhaps I shall take it with me on my journey--I do not know. I only know the one thing, that I cannot go on like this any longer!"

The old man, trembling with fear in every limb, heaped reproaches upon him. That would be cowardly, that would be unmanly, and only worthy of a miserable weakling.

Robert listened to him calmly, then he said:

"You would be right, uncle, if it were her death which made me despair of myself and of my happiness! But, good heavens!"--he laughed harshly and bitterly--"I have long since accustomed myself to lay no claim to happiness. As for me, I would quietly bear my affliction,--(I have experience in that, as you know, for I have already lowered one loved being into the grave),--and go on raking and scraping money together, as I have been doing for so long, and doing in the midst of the deepest sorrow; for the interests, you know, they take little notice of the state of one's feelings, and even if one's hand grows numb with pain and despair--they have to be paid! But that is not what makes my brain so disorganised--for I am disorganised, you may believe me; before my eyes sparks are constantly dancing, my body is convulsed, and my blood rushes like fire through my veins. And yet I am quite calm with it all, and see everything all around as clearly as if I could look right through it. Only the one thing I cannot comprehend--it haunts me like a terrible phantom by day and by night, and when I seek to grasp it, it escapes me--this one thing: _Wherefore_ did she die?"

The old man started. He thought of the letter and the promise that the dead girl had therein required of him.

Robert continued: "There is a voice which constantly screams into my ears, 'It is _your_ fault!' _How_ so I do not know; for however much I probe the depths of my soul, I find no wrong there that I did her; and yet the voice will not be silenced. I tell myself,--'This is a fixed idea.' I tell myself, 'You are tormenting yourself; you are a fool and wicked--wicked towards yourself and your child;' but it is no good, uncle!--it will not be silenced. And, after all, there may be something in it, uncle? Would Olga not be alive yet, if it were not for me? If, on the preceding evening, things had not happened----"

He stopped, shuddering, and covered his face with his hands. Tearless sobs shook his mighty frame. Then he said: "Uncle, I cannot--I dare not think of it; it drives me out of my senses. I feel--as if I must break and dash to pieces everything with these fists."

"And yet you must pull yourself together, my boy," said the old man, "and tell me everything successively; for that is the only way to throw light upon the mystery."

There ensued a silence in the dark room. The old man trembled in every limb. He saw the outlines of the massive figure that stood out darkly against the light window of the chamber; he saw the heaving of the chest which rose and sank and panted and groaned like the crater of a volcano; he felt on his skin the hot waves of breath from Robert's mouth.

"Pull yourself together, my boy," he repeated softly.

Robert waged a conflict within himself Then he stretched himself as if with newly awakening energy and said:

"All right, uncle; you shall know all....

"Since the day on which she so proudly and coldly refused my offer I had not met her again. It is true she came as before to the manor to look after the child and the household. I know now that it was for Martha's and not for my sake; but there was a silent understanding between us, so that we avoided meeting each other. She chose the hours when she knew I was busy out in the sheds and stables, and I did not return to the house until I had seen her disappear through the gate.

"On Tuesday, as it happened, I was obliged to go out to the manor farm; but half a mile outside the town, on that bad road, my axle broke. As I had taken no driver with me, and far and wide there was no one in sight, I myself mounted the harnessed horse and rode back to fetch help. At the manor the overseer told me that the young lady had gone home some time before. It was, in fact, already beginning to grow very dark. 'Well, then there's no danger,' I think to myself, and walk into the house.

"When I open the door of the sitting-room, I see in the dusk a dark shadow that flits hurriedly out of the room.

"'Who may that be?' I think, and follow in pursuit.