Transcriber's Notes:
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THE WISH

A NOVEL

BY

HERMANN SUDERMANN

TRANSLATED BY

LILY HENKEL

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION BY

ELIZABETH LEE

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1895

Authorized Edition.

INTRODUCTION.

Since the beginning of time men have been accustomed to regard the end of a century as a period of decadence. The waning nineteenth century is no more fortunate than its predecessors. We are continually being invited to speculate on the signs around us of decay in politics, in religion, in art, in the whole social fabric. It is not for us to inquire here concerning the truth or the ethics of that belief. But, as far as literature is concerned, it is very certain that the last years of the present century will be remembered for the extraordinary talent shown by a few young novelists and dramatists in most of the countries of Europe. In England, we can point to Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. J. M. Barrie; in France, to M. Paul Margueritte and M. Marcel Prévost; in Belgium, to M. Maurice Maeterlinck; in Germany, to Gerhard Hauptmann, Ludwig Fulda, and Hermann Sudermann.

The events of Sudermann's life are few; and he has the good sense to prefer to be known through his works rather than through the medium of the professional interviewer. The facts here set down, however, we owe to the courtesy of Sudermann himself a circumstance that lends them an additional interest.

Hermann Sudermann was born September 30, 1857, in Matzicken, a poor village in Heydekrug, a district of East Prussia, situated on the Russian frontier. It is not unlikely that the following passage taken from one of his novels bears some resemblance to the place:--

"The estate that my father farmed was situated on a high hill close to the Prussian frontier; an uncultivated, wild park sloping gently towards the open fields formed one side of the hill, while the other sank steeply down to a little river. On the farther side of the stream you could see a dirty little Polish frontier village.

"Standing at the edge of the precipice you looked down on the ruinous shingle roofs; the smoke came up through the rifts in them. You looked right into the midst of the miserable life of the dirty streets where half naked children wallowed in the filthy where the women squatted idly on the threshold, and where the men in torn smocks, with spade on shoulder, betook themselves to the alehouses.

"There was nothing attractive about the town, and the rabble of frontier Cossacks, who galloped here and there on their catlike, drowsy nags, did not increase the charm."

Sudermann began his education at the school of Elbing. But his parents were in poor circumstances, and at the age of fourteen he found it necessary to think about earning a living, and was apprenticed to a chemist. He continued his studies in his leisure time with such good results that he returned to school, this time at Tilsit. In 1875 he went to the university of Königsberg, and in 1877 to that of Berlin. His first intention was to become a teacher, and while still pursuing his studies undertook for a few months the duties of tutor in the house of the poet Hans Hopfen. But in 1881, after six years spent in studying history, philosophy, literature, and modern languages (Sudermann understands English perfectly), he turned to journalism, and edited the Deutsches Reichsblatt, a political weekly. He soon threw aside newspaper work for true literature, for what the Germans call belletristik, and he has become famous through his novels, short stories, and plays. He is good-looking, with a dark melancholy face that lights up with a most remarkable and expressive smile when he speaks; nothing could be more unaffected than his manner, nor more charming than his whole personality. As yet there is no Sudermann Society for the discussion of the author's works, but in Berlin, where he has many admiring friends, Sudermann occasionally reads to them his productions while they are yet unpublished. The little story called Iolanthe's Hochzeit was first heard in that way.

Although Sudermann's work is in all its aspects essentially modern, indeed all the conditions and problems of modern life have the highest interest for him, he belongs to no class, ranges himself with neither realists nor idealists, and bows to the yoke of no literary fashion. In common with all great artists, Sudermann paints his own age, but while portraying men and women as he knows them, in the nineteenth century, he gives them, at least in his novels and tales, the human nature that is the same through all time. He has lived in Berlin, and his dramas give us life in that city both among the proletariat and the rich middle class. He has lived in East Prussia, and there is laid the scene of his longer novels. He is familiar with other parts of Germany, with Italy, and with Paris, and everywhere he has used his gift of keen observation to good purpose. A certain melancholy, a feeling of the "inevitableness" of things, if we may be allowed the expression, runs through all his writings, and may perhaps be traced to the effect on his sensitive and high-strung nature of the East Prussian landscape, amid which he spent his boyhood. The meadow-flats and corn-lands, the meagre pine-woods, and dark, lonely pools of his native district, form the background of most of his tales. Numerous passages might be quoted which would serve to show the melancholy and loneliness of the landscape. As an example we may take:--

"Thick and heavy as if you could grasp them with your hands, the clouds spread over the flat land. Here and there the trunk of a willow stretched forth its rugged knots to the air, heavily laden with moisture. The tree was soaked with damp, and glistened with the drops that had hung in rows on the bare boughs. The wheels sank deep into the boggy road that ran between withered reeds and sedge.

* * * * *

"The moon stood high in the heavens and shed her calm, bluish light far over the sleeping heath. The clumps of alders on the moor bore wreaths of lights and from the slender silvery trunks of the birches which bordered the broad straight road in endless rows, came a sparkle and brightness that made the road seem as if lost far below in the silvery distance.

"Silence all around. The birds had long ceased singing. A stillness of the late summer time, the complacent stillness of departing life lay over the broad plain. You scarcely heard the sound of a cricket in the ditches, or a field-mouse disturbed in its slumbers, gliding through the tall grass with its low chipping whistle."

Such pictures constantly meet us in the pages of Sudermann's books; taken in connection with their setting, they are often of great force and beauty. Nothing, however, is obtruded; there is no searching after a dramatic background, or undue word-painting; everything is in keeping with and subordinate to the main interest of the tale.

With such surroundings, Sudermann cleverly assimilates his characters. They are mostly the victims of circumstances which they are more or less unable to overcome. In some cases the fault, as with Leo Sellenthin in Es war, Sudermann's latest novel, lies in the weakness or sinfulness of the man; in others, in surroundings and events for which the man is not himself directly responsible. Sometimes the noble unselfish love and devotion of a woman make a happier state of things possible; Sudermann is a firm believer in the power and influence of good women in human life. His women are not so sharply outlined as Ibsen's, but he recognises in the sex, though much more vaguely, like possibilities. For example, Leonore in Die Ehre sees the folly and emptiness of fashionable life and has the courage to give her hand where she loves, to a man who, by her set, would be considered far beneath her. Magda, in Heimat, refuses to desert her child. And his young girls are even more charming, more natural than those of Ibsen. Eager-hearted Dina Dorf, with her desire for a larger life in the world; hard-working Petra Stockman with her delight in her work and her unflinching truth and honesty; Bolette Wangel with her desire for knowledge, "to know something about everything" are, as everybody knows, among Ibsen's most delightful creations. In Es War Sudermann gives us as perfect and natural a study of a young girl as we have met with in fiction or the drama for a very long while. Hertha cherishes a secret love for a man much older than herself but has reason to fear that his affections are set on a married woman, the wife of his best friend. To Hertha's innocent and unworldly mind this is a great puzzle; to her the sacredness of love between husband and wife seems a matter of course.

"Certainly the beautiful woman was a thousand times lovelier than poor Hertha--and she was, moreover, much cleverer.... But could she--and therein lay the great puzzle, the invincible contradiction that knocked all suspicion on the head--could she as a married woman possibly be an object of love to a man other than her husband? Wives were loved by their husbands--that is why they are married and by no one else in the world."

But Hertha determines to take such means as are within her power of discovering if suck things are possible, if such things exist. She first consults her books--books, of course, suited to a young girl's library. She goes through her novels, but nothing in them points to the enormity. Then she turns to the classics, to Schiller!

"Amalie was a young girl--so was Luise--but then there was the queen of Spain! However, in that case it was clear as noonday how little poets deserved to be trusted, for that a man should fall in love with his stepmother could only take place in the world of imagination where genius, drawn away from the earth, intoxicated with inspiration, soars aloft. Not in vain had she, a year and a half before, written a school composition on 'Genius and Reality,' in which she had treated the question in a most exhaustive manner."

She next tries her friend Elly, a girl of her own age, but much more experienced in the ways of the world.

"'Listen, dear, I want to ask you a very important question. You're in love, aren't you?'

"'Yes'; replied Elly.

"'And you're sure the man's in love with you?'

"'Why do you say "man"?' asked Elly. 'Curt is my ideal. A little time ago it was Bruno--and before that it was Alfred--but now it's Curt, Yet he's not a man.'

"'What is he, then?'

"'He's a young man.'

"'Oh! that's it, is it? No, he's certainly not a man.' And Hertha's eyes shone: she knew what a 'man' looked like. 'Well, darling,' she went on, 'do you think that a "man," or a young man--it's all the same--could possibly love a married woman?'

"'Of course--naturally he would,' replied Elly, with perfect calmness.

"Hertha smiled indulgently at such want of intelligence.

"'No, no, little one,' she said. 'I don't mean his own wife, but a woman who is the wife of another?'

"'So do I! replied Elly.

"'And that seems to you quite a matter of course?'

"'My dear child, I didn't think you were so innocent! said Elly; 'everybody knows as much as that. And formerly it was even worse. A true knight always loved another man's wife: it was a great crime to love his own wife. He would cut off his right hand for the stranger's sake, and would die for her, pressing her blue favour to his lips; for you see at that time they always wore her blue favour. You'll find it in every history of literature.'

"Hertha became very thoughtful. 'Ah! in those days!' she said, with the ghost of a smile; 'in those days men went to tournaments and stabbed each other in sport with their lances.'

"'And to-day,' whispered Elly, 'men shoot each other dead with pistols.'

"Hertha felt as if she had been stabbed to the heart, and the little pink and white daughter of Eve continued, 'I think it must be quite delightful when one is married to know that some one is hopelessly in love with you. It's quite certain that most unhappy love affairs arise in that way.'

"The next day Hertha questioned her grandmother.

"'Grandmother, I'm grown up now, aren't I?'

"'Yes--so, so,' answered the old lady.

"'And probably I shall soon be married.'

"'You!' shouted her grandmother, in deadly terror. Doubtless the wretched child had come to confide in her the addresses of some booby of a neighbour.

"'Yes.' continued Hertha, inarticulately and with great hesitation; 'with my big fortune I am not likely to be an old maid.'

"'Child!' exclaimed the old lady, 'of whom are you thinking?'

"Hertha blushed to her neck. 'I?' she stammered, trying to preserve an indifferent tone of voice, 'of nobody.'

"'Oh, then you were merely talking generally?'

"'Of course; I only meant generally'

"'Well, and what do you want to know?'

"'I want to know--how it is with--you understand--with love when one----'

"'When one----'

"'Well, when one is married?'

"'Then you go on loving just as you did before.' replied her grandmother, lightly.

"'Yes, I know that. But suppose you love another man to whom you aren't married?'

"'Wha--t!' In her terror the old lady let her spectacles fall off her nose. 'What other?'

"Hertha suddenly felt as if she must collapse. She had to summon all her courage and pull herself together in order to go on.

"'Can't it happen, grandmother dear, that some one to whom you're not married takes it into his head----'

"'My dear child' replied the grandmother, 'never come to me with such foolish questions. You cannot understand such things. Now give me a kiss and get your knitting.'"

So that plan did not answer. There was still one further possibility of discovery. Hertha had a school friend who had lately got married. She would ask her. So she began:--

"'Wives love their husbands, that goes without saying. But do you think it possible that wives can be loved by other men?'

"'How odd you are', replied Meta. 'You can't prevent people loving.'

"'I know that. But a man, don't you see, who would----'

"'Well, that sort of thing does happen.'

"'What! is some one in love with you?'

"Meta blushed, 'I don't bother about it. It's quite enough that Hans loves me, and of course I should very politely forbid anything of the sort.'

"'Then people do forbid such things?'

"'Certainly, if they're told of it.'

"'What! you might be told?'

"'Sometimes, if the man who is in love with you is very bold.'

"'Good gracious,' said Hertha, shocked, 'If anyone behaved like that to me, I should box his ears.' But in great anxiety she continued, 'Do you think it likely that there are women who have a different opinion?'

"'Oh, yes!' said Meta.

"'Who--in the end--return the bold mans love?'

"'Even so.'"

Then Meta repeats certain gossip that confirms Hertha's worst fears. The whole chapter should be read in order to appreciate rightly the charm and pathos and naturalness of the delightful piece of character drawing.

Like Ibsen and Zola, Sudermann does not hesitate to set the truth before us even when it is terrible or brutal or revolting. But he differs from them in having a less gloomy outlook, in firmly believing that, at the same time as human nature is coarse and brutal, stupid and violent, it is loving, capable of sacrifice and of deep feeling. He sees the strange not to say the inexplicable mixture of good and evil in all things human, and knows man to be neither all gold nor all alloy. This we take it is the true realism.

To make Sudermann's point of view clear to English readers there is perhaps no better nor more direct way than to give a brief account of his works. They are three novels, Frau Sorge (Dame Care), published in 1886, Der Katzensteg (the name of a small wooden bridge over a waterfall that plays a prominent part in the story), 1888, Es war (It Was), 1893; three volumes of short tales, Geschwister (Brothers and Sisters), first published in the Berliner Tageblatt in 1884 and 1886 respectively (one of the stories, Der Wunsch, appears in the present volume), Im Zwielicht (In the Twilight), novelettes written in various newspapers, and Iolanthe's Hochzeit (Iolanthe's Wedding), 1892; and three dramas, Die Ehre (Honour), Sodom's Ende (The Destruction of Sodom), and Heimat (The Paternal Hearth).

The most perfectly artistic of his longer novels, and that most deeply impregnated with the peculiar characteristics of East Prussian landscape is Frau Sorge. Paul, the hero, is born just at the moment when his father's difficulties make it necessary for him to sell his house and land: this gloomy circumstance overshadows the whole of Paul's life. While his brothers and sisters in spite of the family poverty are, in their careless, unthinking way, happy and even prosperous, wilfully blind to the fact that they owe all to the industry and continual self-sacrifice of Paul, his life is one long toil and struggle, one long fidelity to duty as he conceives it, one long effacement and suppression of self. For this he receives no thanks, no acknowledgment. His spirit becomes crushed, almost extinguished. After long years of toiling, struggling, and suffering, he is redeemed through the love of a woman, but only when he has sacrificed to "Dame Care" all he held most precious, and when the capacity in him for joy and hope has been well-nigh destroyed. The character portrayed with perfect art is, at the same time, faithful to nature: such men are rare, perhaps, but it is well that the novelist should remind us of their existence, and thus help us to recognise the potency for good that dwells in mankind.

Der Katzensteg is more powerful but less artistic than Frau Sorge. The German critics, however, consider it to be not only the most important of Sudermann's writings, but the finest novel produced in Germany during this century. The character of the heroine, Regine, a veritable child of nature, in whom savagery and lack of intelligence and education exist side by side with the nobility and power of sacrifice, of which nature in the rough is often capable, forms the main interest of the tale, and is a marvellous and original conception. There is one scene that for realism, intensity, and horror has scarcely been surpassed in any novel of modern times.

Before turning to the short tales in which we find some of Sudermann's best and most characteristic work, it would be well to point out one of his chief titles to genius. He has the gift of being able to describe terrible and heart-stirring scenes, joyful or pathetic or humorous scenes, with the utmost simplicity of style. In a few words of the simplest sort he brings before our eyes living pictures. Each sentence palpitates with life. As we read, we seem to live with the men and women of his creation through their agony; we suffer as they do, and rejoice with them when they are glad: at times we are breathless as they are with suspense and excitement. And this is done without any of the analytical introspection with which we have become only too familiar in recent novels. The characters, at least in the novels and tales, are not mere nervous organisms, but livings loving, erring, feeling, human beings. The gift of terse narration joined to great simplicity of language is found in French writers like Flaubert and Maupassant, but it is new to Germany. It is, then, perhaps, Sudermann's highest praise that we can say of him that he possesses the strength without the unpleasantness of the great French writers of our day, and combines their artistic feeling, their power and their fine wit with all that is soundest and best in the Teutonic mind and character.

Many of the short tales are of a less specially German cast, and possess an interest that is universal. Der Wunsch (The Wish), for instance, is a powerful psychological study, set forth with wonderful directness and simplicity. Although the tale deals with the old theme of a woman who falls in love with her sister's husband, it is instinct with passion and original in treatment. Olga loved her sister Martha dearly, and had, indeed, brought about Martha's marriage with Robert Hellinger almost by her own efforts, but in so doing had herself, though unconsciously, fallen in love with Robert. Martha, always frail and delicate, after the birth of her child, falls dangerously ill. Olga goes to her to nurse her, and love for her sick sister and passion for Robert struggle for mastery in her soul. Thus, into a character entirely good, noble, and self-sacrificing, steals the wish, "if only she were to die!" In the event Martha does die. Then Robert's eyes are opened; he knows that he loves--has all along loved Olga, and he asks her to be his wife. At first she refuses, then consents; but the same night, having felt all the while that the wish for Martha's death, though never expressed by sign or word, makes her in a sense her sister's murderer, she puts an end to her life. She herself relates all the circumstances in a document written to explain her act to her old friend the physician. A couple of quotations will give a better idea of Sudermann's style than pages of criticism. In a few marvellous strokes he paints the effect on Robert of his first sight of Olga's corpse:--

"When the elder Hellinger entered the room he saw a picture that froze the blood in his veins.

"His son's body lay stretched on the floor. In falling he must have clung to the posts of the bier on which they had placed the dead woman, thus bringing down the whole erection with him, for on top of him--among the broken boards--lay the corpse in its long white shroud, the stiffened face on his face, the bare arms thrown over his head."

The scenes in Martha's sick room are portrayed with an art that makes them live in our memory. Here is one of them, Martha lies in bed sick unto death. Olga and Robert, wearied out with sleepless nights and with their terrible anxiety, are watching her.

"There was absolute silence in the half-darkened room; only the wind with gentle rustling, swept past the window, and the mice scratched among the rafters of the ceiling.

"Robert buried his face in his hands and listened to Martha's dismal ravings. Gradually he seemed to grow calmer; his breathing became slower and more regular; now and again his head inclined to one side, but the next moment he drew it up again.

"Sleep overpowered him, I wanted to persuade him to go to bed but I was feared at the sound of my own voice and kept silent.

"The upper part of his body leaned over more and more frequently to one side; at times his hair touched my cheek, and groping he sought a support.

"And then suddenly his head sank down on my shoulder and remained there.

"My body trembled as if an incredible happiness had befallen me, I was seized with an irresistible desire to stroke the bushy hair that fell over my face. Close to my eyes I saw a few silver threads. 'He is beginning to get grey,' I thought, 'it is high time that he should know what happiness means,' and then I actually stroked his hair.

"He sighed in his sleep and tried to place his head more comfortably.

"'He is lying uncomfortably,' I said to myself 'you must get close to him.' I did so. His shoulder lay against mine, and his head sank down on my bosom.

"'You must put your arm round him,' something within me cried out, 'otherwise he cannot find rest!

"Twice, thrice, I tried to do so, but as often drew back.

"If Martha should suddenly wake! But her eyes saw nothing, her ears heard nothing.

"And I did it.

"Then a wild joy took possession of me, and stealthily I pressed him to me; something within me shouted joyously: 'Oh! how I would cherish and protect you; how I would kiss away the furrows misery has made in your brow, and the cares from your soul! How I would toil for you with all my young strength, and never rest till your eyes were fill of gladness, and your heart of sunshine. But to do that----'

"I glanced over at Martha. Yes, she lived, still lived. Her bosom rose and sank in short, quick sobs. She seemed more alive than ever.

"And suddenly there flamed before me, and it was as if I read written clearly on the wall the words:

"'If only she were to die!'

"'Yes, that was it, that was it. Oh! if only she were to die! Oh! if only she were to die!'"

We have only to read Jean Ricard's Sœ urs, a novel lately published in Paris, and dealing with the same theme, to recognise how very far superior is Sudermann's treatment of it.

The volume of short tales entitled Im Zwielicht is of a somewhat different character. Though coloured to some extent by the melancholy and "inevitableness" of the longer novels, those qualities are less intense, and we have lively touches of satire and brilliant flashes of wit that remind us of the sprightliness of French writers. The tales are told in the twilight by one or other of two friends, a man and a woman, between whom there exists merely an intellectual bond of sympathy and union. The stories laugh good-naturedly at narrow-mindedness and silly prejudice, an evil that Sudermann wisely recognises as existing everywhere, in the big city as in the small village. Women's social aspirations, their immense delight in entertaining celebrities, and their belief that in so doing they are moving in the stream of the world's history, are satirised with keenness and truth. He strikes a deeper note in the tale that sets forth the difficulties of friendship and love between a woman of mature years and a young man, a subject ably treated by Jean Richepin in his fine novel, Madame André, and it is very interesting to note the coincidence of view of the French and German writer. Perhaps Sudermann's views may help towards a satisfactory solution of that ever-recurring will-o'-the-wisp--platonic affection. His heroine declares that to turn friendship into love, or love into friendship, is impossible, because where such a transformation does take place, there must, in the first instance, have been either not friendship or not love. "From the day on which we reap love where we sowed friendship, the magic charm would be broken," she says, "Till then I was all and everything--then I should be merely one more." And again, "Love begins in the intoxication of the senses, and ends in the peace of calm friendship, that is marriage; the contrary is not forbidden, but it leads--to the desert."

In Iolanthe's Hochzeit, Sudermann proves himself the possessor of the humour that borders on pathos. The little story has no tendency, it preaches no sermon, Onkel Hanckel, "a good fellow (ein guter Kerl) by profession," relates how he had to live up to the title, and how, at the mature age of forty-seven, he became, almost against his will, engaged to a young girl. His feelings at the wedding ceremony, his horror and shyness at the notion of being left alone with his bride afterwards, form a most delightful piece of comedy. Pütz, a surly, grasping, miserly, rich old man; Lothar, a dashing young lieutenant of dragoons; the maiden sister; and Iolanthe herself--are portrayed with a quaint humour of which the earlier works gave little indication, while the vigour, simplicity, and directness of the narrative are as fine as ever. The East Prussian dialect lends the original a local colour that would be difficult to reproduce in a translation.

In his dramas Sudermann treats life very much from the same standpoint as Ibsen does. His characters talk a great deal, and do next to nothing. He wages war against shams, thinks people should live out their own lives and develop their individuality at all hazards. He presents abnormal types, men and women who would be abnormal anywhere, in civilised society or the reverse, and who must not be taken as representative of modern life. Each of the three dramas he has as yet given us presents a moral problem to the consideration of the spectators.

Die Ehre was first performed at the Lessing Theatre in Berlin, on November 27, 1889, and had an immense success. The dramatist ruthlessly and boldly draws aside the curtain from the false ideas of honour held by high and low alike, not only by the middle class and proletariat of Berlin, but by civilised men in general: such social conventions, according to Sudermann, tend to make money-getting the sole aim of the citizen, and help to undermine the peace and happiness of family life. The revelation is undoubtedly unpleasing, but all the same a great truth underlies it, and in the end of the play the virtuous are not sacrificed to the wicked. In the speeches of Count Trast, the good angel, the god from the machine of the drama, it is not perhaps altogether fanciful to see the beliefs and opinions of Sudermann himself. Trast's conclusion is that we shall do better to substitute duty for the many and varied sorts of honour recognised by society.

Sodom's Ende is a startling play. Even the Berlin censorship required alterations before it could permit the production of the drama on the stage of the Lessing Theatre. It still contains one scene that would effectually prevent its performance in an English playhouse. The drama takes its name from the title of a picture painted by Willy Janowski, who bids fair to become a great artist. But he has fallen under the influence of Adah Barcinowski, a cold, heartless, pleasure-loving woman, the wife of a wealthy stockbroker. That connection and his own weak nature have ruined Willy mentally, morally, and physically. He ceases to work, leads a life of self-indulgence, heedless of the hurt he does to others. The character, unpleasing as it is, is consistently drawn by the dramatist, for even in the pangs of death Willy does not cease to note the artistic pose taken by the dead body of the girl he has injured and betrayed. Never, perhaps, has the worst side of that section of frivolous idle society we are accustomed to call "smart" been more ably painted: its foolish vapidity, its utter futility, and its elegant wickedness and sinfulness, are boldly displayed. Unfortunately men and women without conscience, without comprehension of duty, have always existed and still exist, but we doubt if their evil influence is as far-reaching and all-important as latter-day novelists and dramatists would have us believe.

In his latest play, Heimat, produced January 7, 1893, Sudermann takes for theme the duty owed by the child to the parent, and that due from parent to child. A high-spirited and talented girl, daughter of commonplace, conventional parents, to the scandal of all concerned, leaves her home to carve for herself a career in the world, and by reason of her fine voice becomes a celebrated singer. After an absence of many years chance brings her professionally to her native town, and a very natural desire is awakened in her to revisit her parents and her home. Her father, whose health had been destroyed through the effects of her former disobedience, wishes her to come back provided she renounces for ever the life she has been leading. This she has no desire to do, but for her father's sake she is not all unwilling to yield. When, however, she is further required to break with certain ties very dear to her, she refuses, and the father dies from the shock. Now when we carefully read the play, or see it acted by competent artists, it is clear that much might be said on both sides. But as there is nothing in the world more beautiful and holy than the tie that binds parent and child, so is the contemplation of conflict between them always unlovely. We grant that in the storm and stress of modern life such conflict is at times unavoidable, but it is scarcely the stuff of which works of art should be formed.

A new play, a comedy, Schmetterling-Schlacht (Butterfly Battle), is to be produced shortly at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna. Again a moral problem is to be presented to the consideration of the public. The three heroines, honest working girls, paint butterflies on fans for a living. Two of the girls, tired of being sweated, give up fan painting; they take to painting their faces instead, and practice other abominations. The third girl continues her work, and remains virtuous. The play chiefly consists of a series of discussions between the girls as to which way of life is preferable.

Like his contemporaries, Ibsen and Björnson, Zola and Tolstoi, Sudermann would transfer the sermon from the pulpit to the stage: he sets before us certain phases of life that have come under his notice in all their ugliness and brutality, and would have us forthwith leave the theatre sworn enemies of the evils he denounces. But his characters are contented to preach and discuss, they never feel that they are called upon to act. Thus they lack life and reality, we have little sympathy with them, and are never profoundly touched.

As a writer of fiction, however, Sudermann's high position is unassailable. He ranks with the great masters in all countries who have sought, and are still seeking, to set before us modern life in its manifold aspects, in its complexity and its difficulties, but who, unlike the more pronounced school of naturalists, remember Joubert's maxim that "fiction has no business to exist unless it is more beautiful than reality."

August, 1894.

THE WISH.

I.

In the old doctor's bedroom a cheerful fire was flickering. He himself still lay a-bed, quite penetrated by the delightful sensation of a man who knows his life's work is completed. When one has been sitting half a century through, for twelve long hours every day, in the rumbling conveyance of a country doctor, thumped and bumped along over stones and lumps of clay, one may now and again lie in bed till daylight, especially when one knows one's work is safe in younger hands.

He stretched and straightened his stiff old limbs, and once more buried in the pillows his weather-beaten, yellowish-grey face, covered with white stubble like granite with Iceland moss. But habit, that austere mistress, who had for so many years driven him forth from his bed before dawn, whether it was necessary or not, would not let him rest even now.

He sighed, he yawned, he abused his laziness, and then reached for the bell standing on the little table at his bedside.

His housekeeper, an equally grey, tumble-down specimen of humanity, appeared on the threshold.

"What time is it, Frau Liebetreu?" he called out to her.

Since the day on which the young assistant arrived in Gromowo, the old Black Forest clock hanging at the doctor's bedside, and whose rattling alarum had often unpleasantly jarred upon his morning slumbers, was no longer wound up. "So that I know that my life too henceforth stands still," as he was wont to say.

"A quarter to eight, doctor," the old woman answered, beginning meanwhile to busy herself about the stove.

"For shame! for shame!" cried he, raising himself up, "what a lazybones I am getting to be! I say, have any letters come?"

"Yes, a few by post, and one that young Mr. Hellinger brought himself two hours ago."

"Two hours ago! Why, it was dark yet at that time!"

"Yes; he said he had to drive out to the manor farm, and could wait no longer. Yesterday evening, too, when you were at the 'Black Eagle,' sir, he called, and sat here for about two hours."

"Why didn't you send for me?" cried the doctor, in the blustering tone of voice of old, good-natured grumblers.

"Well, and hadn't he forbidden us to do so?" cried his housekeeper, in exactly the same tone of voice, which seemed, however, more an echo of her master's manner than personal defiance. "He was sitting in the study till ten o'clock--or rather he was not sitting, he raced about like a madman, and laughed and talked to himself--I hardly knew the calm, quiet man again; and then I brought him beer--six bottles--he drained them all; and I had to drink with him. As I tell you, he was quite beside himself."

"Ah, indeed, indeed," muttered the old man smiling to himself with satisfaction. "I should say Olga had something to do with that. Perhaps after all she----. Well, do you intend bringing me my letters to-day, or not?" he suddenly shouted, as if he were goodness knows how wild, but his face laughed the while. And when his housekeeper had grumblingly done his bidding, he drew out with a sure hand from the little heap of letters one without a stamp, not deigning to look at the others at all. His hands trembled with happy excitement as he unfolded the paper; and he read, while his grey face beamed with pleasure:

"Dear old Uncle,--You shall be the first to know it. If only I had you with me, that I might press your dear old hands and tell you face to face what is in my heart! I do not realise it yet--my head whirls when I think of it! Uncle, you were at my side in the days of darkest trouble, helping and protecting. You were the only one to take Martha's part when all--even my parents turned their backs on her with coldness and suspicion.

"You could not save her for me, uncle--the Lord asked her back of me. But when, at the bedside of my dead wife, my reason threatened to give way, you took my poor head between your hands and spoke to me--as a preacher speaks. And you were right. Of course I do not believe that I can ever quite revive and become again as I was before the cares of existence and my longing for Martha made my head dull and heavy; for even Martha--even my wife--could not accomplish that in the three years of our quiet happiness. But life seems about to give me whatever it has left for me yet of joy and peace. You know, uncle, how in the midst of my sorrow for my dead wife, I learnt to love her sister. Cousin Olga, more and more. I confessed all to you, and sought comfort with you when tortured by self-reproach at the thought that I was breaking my troth to my wife already in the year of mourning. And you said to me at that time: 'If the dead woman might seek a second mother for her child, whom else would she choose but the sister whom, next to you, she loved best in the world?' I was startled to the very depths of my soul, for I should never have dared to raise my eyes to her. But you never ceased to encourage me, until, a week ago, I took heart and begged her to share my fortunes.

"You know she refused me.

"She grew deathly pale--then gave me her hand, and standing up rigidly said to me: 'Put it from your thoughts, Robert, for I can never be your wife.' Then I slunk away, and thought to myself, 'It serves you right for your presumption.' And now, to-day----. Uncle, I cannot put it on paper!--my hand fails me. This happiness is too great--it came so unexpectedly, it almost overpowers me! To-morrow, uncle--to-morrow I will tell you all.

"I have to go out early to the manor farm. At mid-day I shall return, and then forthwith shall undertake the dreaded visit to my parents. My mother suspects nothing as yet. Her plans have once again been frustrated, and Olga will have to suffer heavily enough for it. I fear she may even turn her out of the house. If only I had her already under my own roof!

"It is three o'clock in the morning. Enough for to-day. Your grateful and happy

"Robert Hellinger."

The old doctor wiped a tear from his cheek.

"The dear boy," he murmured. "How his emotions crowd each other in his over-heated brain; and how simple, how honest everything is to the last jot! In truth, he deserves you, my brave, proud girl; he is the only one to whom I do not grudge you. And now I will put you to the test, and see if you too put confidence in your old uncle. Straightway I will do it."

Laughing and growling he burrowed with his head in the pillows. And then he suddenly shouted with a voice resounding through the house like thunder:

"Confound it, where are my trousers?"

The trousers were brought, and five minutes later the old man stood quite ready before his glass, all except his greyish-yellow wig.

"My hat, cloak, stick!" he shouted out into the corridor.

"But the breakfast," the old woman shouted back, if possible louder still, from the kitchen.

"Well, then, hurry up," he blustered. "Before I have read these letters I must have it here."

With an impatient oath he set to work upon the little heap that had so far been lying unnoticed on the pedestal. Offers of wine--profitable investments--a poor, blind father with a new-born infant--and then suddenly he stopped short, while once more a satisfied smile overspread his features.

"Upon my word! I should not have expected this," he growled, contentedly. "She, too, could not rest without confiding her happiness to her old uncle. That is nice of you, children! You shall have your reward for this."

With the same happy haste with which he had opened Hellinger's letter, he tore this envelope asunder.

But hardly had he commenced reading when with a low moaning cry he staggered back two paces, like one who has been dealt a treacherous blow. His grey face became ashy pale; his eyes started from their sockets, and like claws his old withered fingers clutched the fluttering paper.

When his housekeeper brought in the coffee, she found her master sitting as stiff as a log in the corner of the sofa, his forehead covered with great drops of perspiration, and staring with fixed lustreless eyes at the paper which his hands still held as if in a cramp.

"Gracious heavens, doctor!" she cried, and let the tray drop clattering on to the table. Her lamentations brought him back to consciousness. He asked for water, and drank two long eager draughts, wetted his forehead and temples with the remainder, and signed to his housekeeper to leave him.

Hereupon he bolted the door, picked up the letter from the floor, and read with trembling, choking voice:

"My dear, my Fatherly Friend,--When you read these lines I shall have ceased to live. The draughts of morphium which you gave me when I had forgotten how to sleep after Martha's death were carefully collected and kept by me; I trust they will be powerful enough to give me peace.

"You who have watched over me like a second father, you shall be the only one to learn why I have decided to take this terrible step. In long winter nights, when the storm shook my gable-roof and I could not sleep, I wrote down everything that has been tormenting me for so long, and will not let me be at rest till I fall asleep for ever. On my bookshelf, hidden behind some volumes of Heine, you will find a blue exercise-book. Take it with you, without letting the others notice. And when you have read all, go out to my grave and there say a prayer for my soul.

"See that I am laid to rest at Martha's side.

"I loved her dearly. It is she who is calling me to her.

"You will understand all when you have read my story. Perhaps you know more of my secret than I suspect. I suppose I must have spoken evil words during the delirium of my illness, else why should you have sent away my relations from my bedside?

"Did you shudder at the things that my wretched tongue brought to light?

"Do you pity me? Do you despise me? No, surely you do not despise me; or how could you have bestowed so much love upon me? And now read. Everything is set down there. It was not originally intended for you. I meant to send it after many years--when we young ones too should have grown old--to the man to whom my whole being belongs, so that he might know why I once denied myself to him.

"Things have gone differently. To-day, in a moment of forgetfulness, I threw myself upon his neck. Too late I comprehended that now escape from him was no longer possible. But, rather than be his, I will seek death.

"And I have yet another request in my heart. It is the request of one about to die--if you can, I know you will fulfil it.

"Keep secret from the world, and especially from the man I love, that I took my own life. Let him believe that my happiness killed me. I shall destroy everything that might point to suicide; there will only be indications that I died of syncope or apoplexy.

"From the depths of my heart I implore you to grant me this one last favour. I die gladly and have no fear. It is so long since I slept well, that I have need of rest.

"Olga Bremer."

The old man felt himself in a state of utter helplessness.

He staggered, clenched his fists, beat his brow, and then once more he fell back in his chair.

"This is madness, utter madness," he groaned, wiping the cold perspiration from his forehead. "Child, what were you thinking of? What could cloud your reason like this? My poor, poor, darling child?"

Then he once more jumped up and groped with trembling fingers for his hat and cloak.

"To help! To help!" He must wrest this victim even yet from death's hand! That was what absorbed his whole mind at present. For a moment the thought came to him that perhaps after all she had not carried out her serious intention, but he dismissed it forthwith. He must have had a different knowledge of her character, to credit her with a feeling of fear or a failing of energy.

But possibly the dose she had taken was too small, perhaps the long period of time--for it was more than a year since Martha died in child-bed, and it was then he had given her the sleeping draughts--perhaps the long period of time that had elapsed since then had weakened the efficacy of the poison. Yes, yes, it was so; it must be so! When badly preserved, morphia decomposes and becomes ineffectual.

So forward to the rescue! To save what can be saved!

He ran about the room in search of something: he hardly knew what he was seeking. Then once more he grasped the letter.

"And what do you ask of me? Child, child, do you think it is such a light matter to perjure one's self? To throw aside like rotten eggs the duties to which one has been faithful for half a century? Child, you do not realise what you are asking of an honest man!" He Held the paper up close to his eyes, and once more read the passage: "It is the request of one about to die.... From the depths of my heart I implore you to grant me this one last favour."

Heavy tears rolled down his weather-beaten cheeks.

"It cannot be, child, it cannot be done, however well you may know how to plead. And even if I wished to do it, I should betray myself. I am an old, weak wreck; I no longer have such control over my features. They would notice it at the first glance. But so that you may not have asked it--of your old uncle--in vain--I will--at least attempt it--for your own sake and Robert's sake you must first of all be saved. Confound it all, old fellow, for once more in your life be a man you must save her--you must--must--must!"

And as quickly as his stiff old legs would carry him, he rushed out--past his housekeeper, who stood listening at the keyhole--out into the wintry morning air which a cold drizzling mist filled with damp, prickling crystals.

II.

A very picture of perfect serenity and peace of mind the couple Hellinger senr. made, as they sat at the breakfast-table. Out of the spout of the brass coffee-machine on the brightly-polished body of which the fire-flames produced a purple reflection, there rose up thin, bluish steam which sank down towards the table in little clouds, cast a film over the silver sugar-basin and wreathed the coffee-cups with delicate, tiny dewdrops.

Mr. Hellinger, with his snow-white, carefully trimmed beard, and handsome, rosy, boyish face beaming with good nature and the pleasure of living, was leaning back comfortably in the blue chintz armchair, his Turkish dressing-gown pulled over his knees, and apparently awaiting with calmest resignation whatever fate, in the shape of his wife, might be about to bestow upon him.

She (his wife) was just throwing a pinch of soda into the little coffee-pot, whereupon she circumstantially wiped her powdery fingers on her white damask apron, which was edged in Russian fashion with broad red and many coloured stripes. Her white matron's cap, the ribbons of which were tightly knotted together like a chin strap under her fleshy chin, had shifted somewhat towards the left ear, and from out its frilly frame there shone, full of energy and enterprise, her coarse, comfortable, sergeant-like face, whose features were rather puffed out, as is often observable in old women who like to share their husband's glass of brandy.

One could see that she was accustomed to rule and to subdue, and even the smile of constant injured feeling that played about her broad mouth went to prove how inconsiderately she was wont to carry through her plans.

So that she might not sit unoccupied while waiting for the coffee to draw, she took up her coarse woollen knitting, which, in her capacity of president of the ladies' society and directress of the charity organisation, was never allowed to leave her hands, and the needles ran with remarkable rapidity through her bony, work-used fingers.

"Have you heard nothing from Robert, Adalbert?" she asked, with a hard metallic voice, which must have penetrated the house to its last corner.

The question appeared to be unpleasant to the old man. He shook his head as if he would shake it off; it disturbed his morning tranquillity.

"An affectionate son, one must say," she continued, and the injured smile grew in intensity. "Since a week we have neither heard nor seen anything of him; if he lived in the moon he could not come more rarely."

Mr. Hellinger muttered something to himself, and busied himself with his long pipe.

"It looks as if something were brewing again in that quarter," she began anew; "he has altogether been so peculiar lately; come slinking round me without a word to say for himself. It seems to me there is some debt hanging over him again that he can't satisfy."

"Poor fellow," said the old man, and smacked his lips, perhaps to get rid of the unpleasant idea by this means.

"Poor fellow, indeed!" she mocked him; "I suppose you pity him into the bargain; perhaps even you have been helping him on the sly?"

He raised up his white, well-kept hands in protest and defence of himself, but he had not the courage to look her in the face.

"Adalbert," she said, threateningly, "I make it a condition that such a thing does not happen again. Whatever you give him, you take from us and from our other children. And if at least he deserved it! but he that will not hear advice must suffer. If he is ruined, with his obstinacy and stubbornness----"

"Allow me, Henrietta," he interrupted her timidly.

"I allow nothing, Adalbert, my dear," replied she. "'He that will not hearken to advice must suffer!' say I; and if through his abominable ingratitude his poor mother, who is only anxious for his welfare, and who bothers and worries herself whole nights through, thinking----"

With the many-coloured border of her apron she rubbed her eyes as if there were tears there to be wiped away.

"But, Henrietta," he began again.

"Adalbert, do not contradict me! You know I close an eye to all your follies. I allow you to sit as long as ever you like at the 'Black Eagle'; I let you drink as much as ever you can do with of that bad, expensive claret. I even put your supper ready for you when you come home late though it is hardly necessary that you should on such occasions upset three chairs, as you did yesterday. I consider altogether that you have very little regard for the feelings of your old and faithful wife. But--yes, what I was going to say is--that, once for all, I will not have you meddle with my plans: as it is you understand nothing of such matters. Have you, altogether, any idea of all I have done already for that good-for-nothing Robert? I have run about, and driven about, made calls, and written letters, and Heaven knows what else. Five or six well-to-do--nay, very wealthy girls I have, so to say, brought ready to his hand, any of whom he could have had for the taking. But what did he do? Well, I should think you still remember how I was seized with convulsions when, four years ago, he arrived with that miserable, delicate creature, Martha? My whole illness dates from then."

"But, Henrietta!"

"My dear Adalbert, I beg of you, do not again harp upon the same old string about her being my own flesh and blood! If she wished to be a loving and grateful niece to me, why did she not bring the necessary dowry with her? She had nothing--of course she had nothing! My departed brother died as poor as a church mouse. Is that fitting for one of my family? But after all--he had a right to do as he liked with his own--what business is it of mine? Only he need not have saddled us with his daughter."

"Well, but she is dead now," remarked Herr Hellinger.

"Yes, she is dead," replied she, and folded her hands. "It were a sin to say, thank God for that. But as our Lord has so ordained it, I will at least profit by the circumstance, and endeavour to rectify his folly of then. While you were sitting in the 'Black Eagle,' drinking your claret, I was once more toiling and moiling and inquiring round, so that he has but to pick and choose. There is Gertrude Leuzmann; will get fifty thousand cash down and as much more when the old man dies. There is that little von Versen; very young yet certainly--only just confirmed--but she will get even more! And besides these, at least three or four others! But what do you imagine he will say to it all? 'Mother,' he will say, 'if you start that theme again, you will never more set sight on me.' Was ever such a thing heard of? He has only to marry the second sister now in place of the other one, to bring his good old mother to her grave! By the by where can the young lady be to-day? It is nearly nine o'clock, and she has not yet appeared. In my brother's Bohemian home it may very probably have been the fashion to lie a-bed till noon; but in my well-ordered household, I beg to say, most emphatically and politely, I will not have it, Adalbert."

"I cannot conceive, dear Henrietta," he said, "why you heap reproaches upon me which are meant for your niece!"

"If only for once you would not take her part, Adalbert. But, of course, there is nothing left for me to say. I am duped and betrayed in my own house! However, I shall very soon put an end to the matter. I have kept her here now for a whole year; now she begins to be very much de trop."

"But does she not toll and moil in Robert's household from early morn till late at night? Does a day pass on which she does not betake herself to the manor farm? Do not be unjust towards her, Henrietta."

She gave him a pitying look. "If you had not remained such a child, Adalbert, one might talk reason to you. Don't you see that that is just where the danger lies? Don't you imagine that she has her reasons for flaunting about every day at the manor and for behaving herself as mistress there before him and the servants? Ah--she--she is a deep one--is my niece Olga. Be sure she has done her part towards getting him accustomed to the idea that she--and she alone--has a right to the place of her dead sister. What else should she be looking for, day after day, at the manor, if it is not that?"

"I should think Martha's child is sufficient explanation."

"Of course, of course! Any nursery tale is good enough to impose upon you! She knows exactly why she behaves as she does, and why she is almost ready to eat up the poor little mite for very love. She knows exactly how to find the way to its father's heart!"

"But perhaps she does not love him at all," old Hellinger interposed.

She laughed out loud.

"My dear Adalbert, a man who owns an estate just outside the town-gates is always loved by a poor girl, and if I do not make an end now and send her about her business, it may very possibly come to pass that our dear Robert will take her by the hand one fine day and say to us, 'Here, papa and mamma, now be good enough to give us your blessing.' And rather than live to see that, Adalbert----"

At this moment the sound of lumbering male steps was audible in the entrance-hall; directly after these came a loud and violent knock at the door.

"Well!" said Mrs. Hellinger, "some one is making a noise as if the bailiffs were outside--we have not got as far as that yet." And very slowly and deliberately she said, "Come in."

The old doctor stepped into the room. His hat sat awry at the back of his head, his necktie hung loose over his shoulders, and his chest heaved as with breathless running. He forgot his "Good-morning" greeting, and only gave a wild, searching glance around.

"Good heavens, doctor!" cried Mr. Hellinger, senr., hastening towards him, "why, you burst in upon us like a bull into a china-shop."

Mrs. Hellinger once more assumed her injured air, and muttered something about pot-house manners.

When the old doctor saw the undisturbed breakfast-table and the astonished, every-day faces of his friends, he let himself drop into an armchair with a sigh of relief. Then it had not taken place after all--this terrible thing! But next moment his fears took possession of him anew.

"Where is Olga?" he faltered, and fixed his gaze on the door as if he might see her enter there any moment.

"Olga?" said Mrs. Hellinger, shrugging her shoulders. "My goodness, she probably will be here shortly. Are you in such a hurry?"

"God be praised!" cried he, folding his hands. "Then she has been down already?"

"No--not so," remarked Mrs. Hellinger, "her ladyship thinks well to sleep somewhat long this morning."

"For God's sake," he cried, "has no one looked after her? Does no one know anything of her?"

"Doctor, what ails you?" cried old Hellinger, who was now beginning to be alarmed.

The physician may at this moment have recollected the request with which Olga's letter of farewell had closed. He felt that in this way his desire to comply with her request would, from the very first, become impossible, and made a last wretched attempt to preserve the secret.

"What ails me?" he faltered, with a miserable laugh. "Nothing ails me!--What should ail me? Confound it all!" And then, casting aside all dissimulation, he cried out: "My God! my God! Thou hast permitted this terrible thing! Thou hast withdrawn Thy hand from her." And he was about to sink down weeping, but he once more gathered up all the energy still remaining in his rickety old body, raised himself bolt upright, and--"Come to Olga," he said, "and do not be terrified--however--you may--find her."

Old Hellinger grew pale, and his wife commenced to scream and sob; she clung to the doctor's arm, and wished to know what had happened; but he spoke no further word.

So they all three climbed up the stairs leading to Olga's gable-room, and in the entrance-hall the servants collected and stared after them with great, inquisitive eyes.

Before Olga's door Mrs. Hellinger was seized with a paroxysm of despair.

"You knock, doctor," she sobbed, "I cannot."

The old man knocked.

All remained quiet.

He knocked again, and put his ear to the keyhole.

As before.

Then Mrs. Hellinger began to scream:

"Olga, my beloved, my dear child, do open--we are here--your uncle and aunt and old uncle doctor are here. You may open without fear, my love."

The physician pressed the latch; the door was locked. He looked through the key-hole; it was stopped up.

"Have the locksmith fetched, Adalbert," he said.

"No," cried Mrs. Hellinger, suddenly casting all sorrow to the winds, "that I shall not permit--that will on no account be done. The disgrace would be too great: I could never survive it--such a disgrace--such a disgrace!"

The doctor gave her a look of unmistakable loathing and contempt. She took little notice of it.

"You are strong, Hellinger," she said, "bear up against the door; perhaps you may succeed in breaking the lock."

Mr. Hellinger was a giant. He set one of his powerful shoulders against the woodwork, which at the first pressure began to crack in its joints.

"But softly," his wife admonished, "the servants are standing in the entrance-hall. Be off with you into the kitchen, you lazy beggars!" she shouted scolding down the stairs.

Down below doors banged. A second push----one of the boards broke right through the middle. Through the splintry chink a bright ray of daylight broke through into the semi-dark corridor.

"Let me look through," said the doctor, who now, in anticipation of the worst, was calm and collected.

Hellinger broke off a few splinters, so that through the aperture the whole room could be overlooked.

Opposite the door, a few paces removed from the window, stood the bed. The coverlet was dragged up, and formed a white hillock behind which a strip of Olga's light brown hair shone forth. A small portion of the forehead was also visible--white as the bed-clothes it gleamed. The feet were uncovered; they seemed to have been firmly set against the foot end of the bed and then to have relaxed.

By the pillow, on a chair, lay her clothes neatly folded. Her skirts, her stockings, were laid one upon the other in perfect symmetry, and on the carpet stood her slippers, with their heels turned towards the bed, so as to be quite ready for slipping into on rising.

On the marble slab of the pedestal, half leaning against the lamp, lay a book, still open, as if it had been placed there before extinguishing the light. Over everything there seemed to rest a shimmer of that serene, unconscious peace which irradiates a pure maiden's soul. She who dwelt here had fallen asleep yesterday with a prayer on her lips, to awaken to-day with a smile.

After the physician had held silent survey, he stepped back from the aperture.

"Put your arm through, Adalbert," he said, "and try to reach the lock. She has bolted the door from the inside."

But Mrs. Hellinger squeezed herself up against the door, and with loud cries implored her sweet one to wake up and draw the bolt herself. At last it was possible to push her on one side, and the door was opened. The three stepped up to the bedside.

A marble-white countenance, with lustreless, half-open eyes, and an ecstatic smile on its lips, met their gaze. The beautiful head, with its classic, refined features, was slightly bowed towards the left shoulder, and the unbound hair fell down in great shining waves upon the regal bust, over which the nightdress was torn. A white button with a shred of linen attached, which hung in the buttonhole, was the only sign that a state of excitement must have preceded slumber.

"My sweet one, you are sleeping, are you not?" sobbed Mrs. Hellingen "Say that you are sleeping! You cannot have brought such disgrace upon your aunt, your dear aunt, who cared for you and watched over you like her own child." With that she seized the unconscious girl's pale, pendant, white hand, and endeavoured to drag her up by it.

Her tender-hearted husband had covered his face with his hands, and was weeping. The physician gave himself no time for emotion. He had pulled out his instruments, pushed Mrs. Hellinger aside with scant politeness, and was bending over the bosom, which with one rapid touch he entirely freed of its covering.

When he rose up, every drop of blood had left his face.

"One last attempt," he said, and made a quick incision straight across the upper arm, where an artery wound itself in a bluish line through the white, gleaming flesh. The edges of the wound gaped open without filling with blood; only after some seconds a few sluggish, dark drops oozed forth.

Then the old man threw the shining little knife far from him, folded his hands and--struggling with his tears--uttered a prayer.

III.

On the afternoon of the same day, a light one-horse cabriolet sped over the common which extends across country for several miles northwards of Gromowo, and in the direction of the little town.

Dark and lowering, as if within reach of one's hand, the clouds lay over the level plain. Here and there a willow stump stretched its gnarled excrescences into the fog-laden air, all saturated with moisture and glistening with the drops which hung in long rows on its bare branches. The wheels sank deep into the boggy road, winding along between withered reed-grass, and often the water splashed up as high as the box-seat.

The man who held the reins took little heed of the surrounding landscape; quite lost in thought he sat huddled up, only occasionally starting up when the reins threatened to slip from his careless fingers. Then the herculean build of his limbs became apparent, and his broad, high-arched chest expanded as if it would burst the coarse grey cloak which stretched across it in scanty folds.

The man's stature was similar to that of old Hellinger, perhaps even superior, and the face, too, bore an undeniable family resemblance; but what had there remained pleasing and soft and undefined even in old age, had here developed into harsh, impressive lines, testifying to defiance and gloomy brooding. A curly, terribly-neglected beard in dark disorder encompassed the firm-set jaw, assumed a lighter dye near the corners of the mouth, and fell upon the breast in two fair points.

This was Robert Hellinger, the owner of Gromowo manor, Olga's betrothed. Of the happiness that had come to him yesterday there was little written in his face. His grey, half-veiled eyes stared moodily into the distance, and the wrinkles between his eyebrows never for one moment disappeared. He well knew that hard work was in store for him before he could lead home his bride--hours of bitterest struggle were imminent, and even victory would bring him nothing but care and anxiety. His thoughts travelled back over the dark times that lay in the past, and that had hardly ever been illumined by a ray of light.

It was now six years since his father had solemnly made over to him, as eldest son, the old family inheritance, the manor, and had himself retired to a comfortable quiet life in the little town. On this day his period of suffering had commenced, for he was burdened with a yoke so heavy that even his herculean shoulders threatened to break under its weight; everything he gained by the work of his sinewy hands--everything of which he positively pinched himself--melted away and was swallowed up by the claims which his family laid upon him. He had no right to complain. Was it not all according to strict law? The inheritance had been exactly divided to the very last farthing among him and his six brothers and sisters, not counting the reserve which his parents claimed for themselves.

Every brick of his house, every clod of his land, was encumbered--on every ear of corn ripening in his fields his mother's suspicious gaze was fixed, for she kept strict watch lest the interests should come in a minute late. And was she not justified in so doing? Had he a right to claim more love from her than she gave to her other children? There were brothers who wanted to make their way in the world; sisters who had only been married for the sake of their dowry: they all looked anxiously and eagerly towards him as the promoter and preserver of their happiness.

The interests! That was the dreadful word that henceforth hour by hour droned in his ears, that by night startled him from his sleep and filled his dreams with wild visions. The interests! How often on their account he had beaten his brow with clenched fists! How often he had run without sense or feeling through the loamy fields, to escape from this host of glinting, gleaming devils! How often in a blind fit of rage he had smashed to pieces some tool, a ploughshare, a waggon-pole, with his fist, as if he did not mind with what weapon he fought them! But they did not leave him. All the more tenaciously did they fasten themselves on to his heels; all the more thirstily did they suck the marrow from his young bones.

What good was it that he sometimes succeeded in mastering them? This hydra everlastingly brought forth new heads; from quarter to quarter it stood there before his terrified gaze, more and more monstrous, more and more gigantic, growing and swelling, ready to pounce upon him and crush him with the weight of its body. Thus from one reprieve to the next his life had dragged along since that day which was so merrily celebrated at the "Black Eagle" with drinking of claret and champagne.

If only his mother had exercised some leniency! But she did not even exempt him from the stipulated asparagus in spring, nor even from the loan of the carriage for drives during harvest-time when the horses were so badly wanted in the fields.

"He that will not hearken to advice must suffer," she was wont to say, and he would not hearken; no, indeed not! With one short, simple "yes" he might have put a stop to all his misery, might have lived in the lap of luxury to the end of his days; and because he would not do it, out of sheer, inconceivable stubbornness, because all her wife-hunting had been to no purpose--that was why his mother could not forgive him.

Thus two years passed away. Then he began to feel that such a life must sooner or later make a wreck of him. This anxiety and worry was exhausting him more and more; he decided to put an end to it all and to demand of fate that modest share of happiness which was pledged and promised to him by a pair of faithful blue eyes, and a pale, gentle mouth. Then came a day when he brought home, as wife to his hearth, the love of his youth, who had shortly become orphaned and homeless.

It was a dreary, sad November day, and dark clouds sped like birds of ill omen across the sky. Trembling and pale, in her black mourning dress, the frail, delicate creature hung on his arm and quaked beneath every half-compassionate, half-contemptuous glance with which the strange people examined her.

As for his mother, she had received her with reproaches and maledictions, and a year had elapsed before tolerable relations were established between the two.

Martha had kept up bravely, and in spite of her delicate health, had worked from morn to night in order to set to rights what had all gone topsy-turvy during the master's long bachelorhood.

And when, after three years of quiet, cheering companionship. Heaven was about to bless their union, she had--even when her condition already required the greatest care--always been up and doing, working and ordering in kitchen, attic, and cellar.

It almost seemed as if thus by labour she wanted to give an equivalent for her missing dowry.

Then--two days after the birth of a child--Olga had suddenly arrived in Gromowo. He had not seen her since his marriage. At first sight of her he was almost startled. She came towards him with an expression of such proud reserve and bitterness; she had blossomed forth to such regal beauty.

And this woman he was to-day to call his own! Yet what a world of suffering, how many days of gloomiest brooding and despair, how many nights full of horrible visions lay between now and then!

He shuddered; he did not like to recall it any more. To-day everything seemed to have turned out well; Martha's glorified image smiled down in peace and benediction, and, like a flower sprung from her grave, happiness was blooming anew for him.

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: