Through Night to Light Part 63

"I cannot tell you," said Melitta; "do you know, Oldenburg?"

"No; I lost him at the meeting at the Booths from my arm, and could not find him again in the crowd. I am quite sure, however, that he will yet come."

"Problematic characters!" repeated Franz, who had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not heard the last words. "Do you know, baron, that when I heard that expression of Goethe's the first time it was in connection with your name, and from the lips of a man who was once very dear to me, and in whom you also, as far as I know, once took a very lively interest? You need not beat the devil's tattoo on the table, Bemperlein; I know that you, who are generally as gentle as a lamb, have talked yourself into a most unchristian hatred against Oswald Stein, and I only mention our former friend because he, as well as his teacher, Berger, appeared to me always as a type of such problematic characters."

As Franz had not the least suspicion of Oswald's former relations to Melitta, to Oldenburg, and to Bemperlein, he did not notice the blush which suddenly spread over Melitta's cheeks so that she bent low over her work in order to conceal it; and the vehemence with which Bemperlein exclaimed: "I should think, Franz, that man does not deserve being mentioned here," only excited his opposition.

"Do you too think so, baron?" he said, turning to Oldenburg; "would you relentlessly condemn a man whose greatest misfortune it probably was to have been born in these days?"

"No," said Oldenburg, calmly and solemnly; "I have not yet forgotten the old word, that we must not judge if we do not wish to be judged. I have always sincerely admired the brilliant talents which nature has lavished upon that man, and I have as sincerely regretted that a mind so richly endowed should, like a luxuriant tree, bear only sterile blossoms, which can produce no fruit whatever."

While Oldenburg spoke thus his eyes had been steadily fixed on Melitta, who had raised her face once more and now looked as eagerly up to him as if she wished to read him to the bottom of his soul. Franz was still too warmly interested in Oswald to be really satisfied by Oldenburg's words. He replied, therefore, in his earnest, hearty manner:

"I was sure you would judge Stein fairly. I have heard Stein himself quote you too often not to know how fully you understood the peculiar condition of his mind, and your intimacy with Berger was a guaranty for me that you are a physician for the sick, and not for the healthy, who, Bemperlein, need no physician. Berger and Stein are two characters strikingly alike in talents and temper. How else could they have formed so close a friends.h.i.+p, with their great difference in age?--a friends.h.i.+p which, I fear, has contributed more than anything else to develop in Oswald those eccentricities which sooner or later must lead him to insanity or suicide."

"But don't you see, Franz," said Bemperlein, who was always particularly tenacious in matters connected with Oswald, "that Berger has successfully rid himself of the alp of his disease, which was evidently more bodily than mental, and has thus shown that there is a very different energy in him from Stein?"

"Do not praise the day before the evening comes!" replied Franz. "I desire, of course, as anxiously as either of you, the complete recovery of Professor Berger; but I am bound to say, as a medical man, that I do not consider a relapse yet out of question. And if I am not mistaken, Bemperlein, you mentioned only last night that my father-in-law had expressed himself in the same manner?"

"But would not that be fearful?" said Melitta.

"I do not say, madame, that it will be so; I only say it may be so."

"Have you lately noticed anything peculiar in Berger?" asked Melitta, turning to Oldenburg.

"Yes!" said the latter, after some hesitation. "I cannot deny that his manner has seemed to me lately much more excited than before. Since the revolution in February, in which, you know, he took an active part, he seems to be undermined by a kind of feverish impatience, which often reminds me of the restlessness of a lion who walks growling up and down behind the bars of his cage. Minutes seem to grow into hours to him, and hours into days. I have told him in vain that the history of great ideas counts only by thousands of years. 'I have no time,' is his invariable answer. 'If you had, like myself, wandered forty years through the desert, you would comprehend the longing of the weary pilgrim to breathe at last the air of the promised land. This delaying and deferring, this hesitating and halting, will cause me to despair.'

But, gentlemen, what is that?"

All listened. From afar off there came a low but steady sound, louder than the rattling of carriages.

"That is the beating to arms!" said Oldenburg, and his cheeks flushed up. "I know the sound; I heard it just so on the evening of the twenty-third of February, along the _Boulevard des Capucins_."

Oldenburg had hardly said these words, and they were all rising to go to the window, when the door was hastily opened, and a man rushed in, whom they found it difficult to recognize as Berger. His long gray hair hung in matted locks around his head; his face and beard were covered with blood, which seemed to come from a wound in his forehead; his coat was torn to pieces, as if sharp instruments had cut and pierced it in different places. His eyes were glowing, his breath came with an effort, as he stepped close up to the table and, gazing at the company, said, in a hoa.r.s.e voice,

"Up! up! You sit and talk, while without your brothers and your sisters are murdered! Up! up! With these our bare hands we will turn aside their bayonets and strangle these executioners."

"He is fainting," cried Franz, seizing Berger, who had already while he was yet speaking begun to sway to and fro, and now broke down completely.

The men ran up and carried their fainting friend to a sofa.

"Some cologne, madame," said Franz; "thank you. Do not be afraid; it amounts to nothing this time, but I fear for the future."

They all stood around the patient, whose breathing became more quiet in proportion as the beating of the drums became more subdued in the streets.

CHAPTER IX.

While the small company in Frau von Berkow's rooms in the second story had been so suddenly and so terribly startled, there was a young lady sitting quietly in a room a story higher, who had only arrived at the house a few hours before with her husband (at least they took the young man who had accompanied her to be her husband). As the luggage was marked "Paris," and the gentleman had spoken French to the lady, the people of the house took it for granted that they were French, especially as the hotel was always full of French travellers. Mrs.

Captain Black, the owner of the hotel, had herself shown the strangers to their rooms, and as the young lady seemed to be tired and suffering, she had asked her very kindly if she could do anything for madame? The young man (the young lady did not open her lips) had asked her to send up some tea, but declined all other a.s.sistance. Soon afterwards the young man had left the house.

He had not been gone five minutes when a cab, which had been waiting at a little distance up the street ever since the strangers had arrived, drove up to the house. A young man stepped out and asked the porter if a gentleman and a lady who had arrived from Paris perhaps a quarter of an hour ago were at home? When the porter replied that the gentleman had just left, remarking he would be back in an hour, but that madame was, as far as he knew, in her rooms. The young man asked him to show him up at once. The porter--a man of great experience--saw that the young man, who evidently belonged to the higher cla.s.ses of society, was in a state of great excitement; and as nine o'clock at night did not seem to him the most suitable hour for visiting a lady who, besides, was alone in her room, he replied that he did not think the lady could be seen now. Would not the gentleman be pleased to call again to-morrow morning?

"I am in a great hurry," said the young man; "I--I must see the young lady--on family business. Will you be good enough to inquire if she receives company, and carry this--this card?" he added, after some reflection.

With these words he took a small card-case from his pocket and gave the porter a card. It had on it the name of Adolphus Baron Breesen.

The young man's hand trembled so violently as he gave him the card, and his face looked so pale and disturbed, that the porter was more convinced than ever that all was not right, and that the interview of the newcomer with the French lady was probably possible only at the expense of the gentleman who had gone out.

"Why, I forgot," he said; "there is the key! They are both out."

The young man still held the case in his hand.

"I am sure," he said, drawing a gold-piece from a side pocket and slipping it into the porter's hand, "that the lady is at home, and that she will receive me when she sees the card."

The porter was an honest man, but he had a large family, and to-morrow the school-money for his two eldest children was due.

"Third story, second door in the pa.s.sage, on the left," he said, grumbling.

The young man did not wait for more. He ran up, taking three steps at once, and knocked at the door.

"_Entrez!_" answered a low voice.

When her companion had left her, to take a stroll through the streets, the young lady had remained seated where she was, immoveable, her head supported in one of her hands, and the other hanging listlessly by her side. The light of the two wax candles on the table fell bright upon her face. The face was evidently a lovely one when it beamed with joy and exuberant spirits, as it was wont to do; but now it was pale, and disfigured by much weeping. The large gray eyes stared fixedly at the ground, the beautifully arched brows were painfully contracted, and the lips closed firmly. Mechanically she said "_Entrez!_" when the waiter knocked to bring tea; she did not even look up while he set the things upon the table; and he had to ask twice if she had any more orders before she answered a short "No!" She had totally forgotten that he had been there as soon as the door closed behind him, and when another knock came she said, quite as mechanically as before, "_Entrez!_"

"Emily!"

The young lady started up with a cry, and stared with wide-open eyes at the young man who stood before her, as if she had been suddenly roused from a deep sleep and did not know whether she were still in a dream or saw what was real before her.

"Emily!" the young man said once more, and opened his arms.

"Adolphus!" she cried, and threw herself on his breast.

The two held each other embraced as they had done in the days of their childhood when the brother came home during vacations, and the sister had gone to meet him at the park gate.

But the days of childhood's innocence were long past. Emily tore herself from her brother's arms, and cried, stretching out her hands as if to keep him away from her,

"Where do you come from? What do you want here?"

"Can you ask that, Emily?" he replied, sadly; "What I want here? You!

Where I come from? From Paris; where I have searched for you months and months; where I found a trace of you at last, just as you were leaving town, and from whence I have followed you from town to town, from hotel to hotel, without ever succeeding in finding you alone. Not that I am afraid of him!" said the young man, unconsciously drawing himself up proudly to his full height, "but I wanted to speak to you kindly and gently, and I knew I should not be able to do that in his presence."

Adolphus approached his sister to seize her hand. She stepped back.

"What do you want of me?" she murmured.