"Oh, if only you wouldn't be tragic——"

"Do you mean to say that is the reason?"

"Oh, isn't it sufficient——"

"No. If you cared for me it would be no reason at all."

She cried bitterly. "But I don't," she sobbed. "Not like that—not in that way. It is atrocious of me not to—I know how good you are, how kind, how—how everything. And still I don't. I don't know why I don't, but I don't. Oh, Axel, I am so sorry—don't look so wretched—I can't bear it."

"But what can it matter to you how I look if you don't care about me?"

"Oh, oh," sobbed Anna, wringing her hands.

He caught hold of her wrist. "See here, Anna. Look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Look at me. I don't believe you know your own mind. I want to see into your eyes. They were always honest—look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Surely you will do that—only that—for me."

"There isn't anything to see," she wept, "there really isn't. It is dreadful of me, but I can't help it."

"Well, but look at me."

"Oh, Axel, what is the use of looking at you?" she cried in despair; and pulled her handkerchief away and did it.

He searched her face for a moment in silence, as though he thought that if only he could read her soul he might understand it better than she did herself. Those dear eyes—they were full of pity, full of distress; but search as he might he could find nothing else.

He turned away without a word.

"Don't, don't be tragic," she begged, anxiously following him a few steps. "If only you are not tragic we shall still be able to be friends——"

But he did not look round.

A servant with a tray was outside coming in to take the coffee away. "Oh," exclaimed Anna, seeing that it was impossible to hide her tear-stained face from the girl's calm scrutiny, "oh, Johanna, the poor baroness—she is so ill—it is so dreadful——" And she dropped into a chair and hid herself in the cushions, weeping hysterically with an abandonment of woe that betokened a quite extraordinary affection for the baroness.

"Gott, die arme Baronesse," sympathised Johanna perfunctorily. To herself she remarked, "This very moment has the Miss refused to marry gnaediger Herr."



CHAPTER XXIX

What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes had a wistful, starved look when she thought it, "if I only had a mother, a sweet mother all to myself, of my very own, I'd put my head on her dear shoulder and cry myself happy again. First I'd tell her everything, and she wouldn't mind however silly it was, and she wouldn't be tired however long it was, and she'd say 'Little darling child, you are only a baby after all,' and would scold me a little, and kiss me a great deal, and then I'd listen so comfortably, all the time with my face against her nice soft dress, and I would feel so safe and sure and wrapped round while she told me what to do next. It is lonely and cold and difficult without a mother."

The house was in confusion. The baroness had come out of her unconsciousness to delirium, and the doctors, knowing that she was not related to anyone there, talked openly of death. There were two doctors, now, and two nurses; and Anna insisted on nursing too, wearing herself out with all the more passion because she felt that it was of so little importance really to anyone whether the baroness lived or died.

They were all strangers, the people watching this frail fighter for life, and they watched with the indifference natural to strangers. Here was a middle-aged person who would probably die; if she died no one lost anything, and if she lived it did not matter either. The doctors and nurses, accustomed to these things, could not be expected to be interested in so profoundly uninteresting a case; Frau von Treumann observed once at least every day that it was schrecklich, and went on with her embroidery; Fraeulein Kuhraeuber cried a little when, on her way to her bedroom, she heard the baroness raving, but she cried easily, and the raving frightened her; the princess felt that death in this case would be a blessing; and Letty and Miss Leech avoided the house, and spent the burning days rambling in woods that teemed with prodigal, joyous life.

As for Anna, to see her in the sick-room was to suppose her the nearest and tenderest relative of the baroness; and yet the passion that possessed her was not love, but only an endless, unfathomable pity. "If she gets well, she shall never be unhappy again," vowed Anna in those days when she thought she could hear Death's footsteps on the stairs. "Here or somewhere else—anywhere she likes—she shall live and be happy. She will see that her poor sister has made no difference, except that there will be no shadow between us now."

But what is the use of vowing? When June was in its second week the baroness slowly and hesitatingly turned the corner of her illness; and immediately the corner was turned and the exhaustion of turning it got over, she became fractious. "You will have a difficult time," Axel had said on the day he spoilt their friendship; and it was true. The difficult time began after that corner was turned, and the farther the baroness drew away from it, the nearer she got to complete convalescence, the more difficult did life for Anna become. For it resumed the old course, and they all resumed their old selves, the same old selves, even to the shadow of an unmentioned Lolli between them, that Axel had said they would by no means get away from; but with this difference, that the peculiarities of both Frau von Treumann and the baroness were more pronounced than before, and that not one of the trio would speak to either of the other two.

Frau von Treumann was still firmly fixed in the house, without the least intention apparently of leaving it, and she spent her time lying in wait for Anna, watching for an opportunity of beginning again about Karlchen. Anna had avoided the inevitable day when she would be caught, but it came at last, and she was caught in the garden, whither she had retired to consider how best to approach the baroness, hitherto quite unapproachable, on the burning question of Lolli.

Frau von Treumann appeared suddenly, coming softly across the grass, so that there was no time to run away. "Anna," she called out reproachfully, seeing Anna make a movement as though she wanted to run, which was exactly what she did want to do, "Anna, have I the plague?"

"I hope not," said Anna.

"You treat me as if I had it."

Anna said nothing. "Why does she stay here? How can she stay here, after what has happened?" she had wondered often. Perhaps she had come now to announce her departure. She prepared herself therefore to listen with a willing ear.

She was sitting in the shade of a copper beech facing the oily sea and the coast of Ruegen quivering opposite in the heat-haze. She was not doing anything; she never did seem to do anything, as these ladies of the busy fingers often noticed.

"Blue and white," said Anna, looking up at the gulls and the sky to give Frau von Treumann time, "the Pomeranian colours. I see now where they come from."

But Frau von Treumann had not come out to talk about the Pomeranian colours. "My Karlchen has been ill," she said, her eyes on Anna's face.

Anna watched the gulls overhead in the deep blue. "So has Else," she remarked.

"Dear me," thought Frau von Treumann, "what rancour."

She laid her hand on Anna's knee, and it was taken no notice of. "You cannot forgive him?" she said gently. "You cannot pardon a momentary indiscretion?"

"I have nothing to forgive," said Anna, watching the gulls; one dropped down suddenly, and rose again with a fish in its beak, the sun for an instant catching the silver of the scales. "It is no affair of mine. It is for Else to forgive him."

Frau von Treumann began to weep; this way of looking at it was so hopelessly unreasonable. She pulled out her handkerchief. "What a heap she must use," thought Anna; never had she met people who cried so much and so easily as the Chosen; she was quite used now to red eyes; one or other of her sisters had them almost daily, for the farther their old bodily discomforts and real anxieties lay behind them the more tender and easily lacerated did their feelings become.

"He could not bear to see you being imposed upon," said Frau von Treumann. "As soon as he knew about this terrible sister he felt he must hasten down to save you. 'Mother,' he said to me when first he suspected it, 'if it is true, she must not be contaminated.'"

"Who mustn't?"

"Oh, Anna, you know he thinks only of you!"

"Well, you see," said Anna, "I don't mind being contaminated."

"Oh, dear child, a young pretty girl ought to mind very much."

"Well, I don't. But what about yourself? Are you not afraid of—of contamination?" She was frightened by her own daring when she had said it, and would not have looked at Frau von Treumann for worlds.

"No, dear child," replied that lady in tones of tearful sweetness, "I am too old to suffer in any way from associating with queer people."

"But I thought a Treumann——" murmured Anna, more and more frightened at herself, but impelled to go on.

"Dear Anna, a Treumann has never yet flinched before duty."

Anna was silenced. After that she could only continue to watch the gulls.

"You are going to keep the baroness?"

"If she cares to stay, yes."

"I thought you would. It is for you to decide who you will have in your house. But what would you do if this—this Lolli came down to see her sister?"

"I really cannot tell."

"Well, be sure of one thing," burst out Frau von Treumann enthusiastically, "I will not forsake you, dear Anna. Your position now is exceedingly delicate, and I will not forsake you."

So she was not going. Anna got up with a faint sigh. "It is frightfully hot here," she said; "I think I will go to Else."

"Ah—and I wanted to tell you about my poor Karlchen—and you avoid me—you do not want to hear. If I am in the house, the house is too hot. If I come into the garden, the garden is too hot. You no longer like being with me."

Anna did not contradict her. She was wondering painfully what she ought to do. Ought she meekly to allow Frau von Treumann to stay on at Kleinwalde, to the exclusion, perhaps, of someone really deserving? Or ought she to brace herself to the terrible task of asking her to go? She thought, "I will ask Axel"—and then remembered that there was no Axel to ask. He never came near her. He had dropped out of her life as completely as though he had left Lohm. Since that unhappy day, she had neither seen him nor heard of him. Many times did she say to herself, "I will ask Axel," and always the remembrance that she could not came with a shock of loneliness; and then she would drop into the train of thought that ended with "if I had a mother," and her eyes growing wistful.

"Perhaps it is the hot weather," she said suddenly, an evening or two later, after a long silence, to the princess. They had been speaking of servants before that.

"You think it is the hot weather that makes Johanna break the cups?"

"That makes me think so much of mothers."

The princess turned her head quickly, and examined Anna's face. It was Sunday evening, and the others were at church. The baroness, whose recovery was slow, was up in her room.

"What mothers?" naturally inquired the princess.

"I think this everlasting heat is dreadful," said Anna plaintively. "I have no backbone left. I am all limp, and soft, and silly. In cold weather I believe I wouldn't want a mother half so badly."

"So you want a mother?" said the princess, taking Anna's hand in hers and patting it kindly. She thought she knew why. Everyone in the house saw that something must have been said to Axel Lohm to make him keep away so long. Perhaps Anna was repenting, and wanted a mother's help to set things right again.

"I always thought it would be so glorious to be independent," said Anna, "and now somehow it isn't. It is tiring. I want someone to tell me what I ought to do, and to see that I do it. Besides petting me. I long and long sometimes to be petted."

The princess looked wise. "My dear," she said, shaking her head, "it is not a mother that you want. Do you know the couplet:—

Man bedarf der Leitung Und der maennlichen Begleitung?

A truly excellent couplet."

Anna smiled. "That is the German idea of female bliss—always to be led round by the nose by some husband."

"Not some husband, my dear—one's own husband. You may call it leading by the nose if you like. I can only say that I enjoyed being led by mine, and have missed it grievously ever since."

"But you had found the right man."

"It is not very difficult to find the right man."

"Yes it is—very difficult indeed."

"I think not," said the princess. "He is never far off. Sometimes, even, he is next door." And she gazed over Anna's head at the ceiling with elaborate unconsciousness.

"And besides," said Anna, "why does a woman everlastingly want to be led and propped? Why can't she go about the business of life on her own feet? Why must she always lean on someone?"

"You said just now it is because it is hot."

"The fact is," said Anna, "that I am not clever enough to see my way through puzzles. And that depresses me."

"I well know that you must be puzzled."

"Yes, it is puzzling, isn't it? I can talk to you about it, for of course you see it all. It seems so absurd that the only result of my trying to make people happy is to make everyone, including myself, wretched. That is waste, isn't it. Waste, I mean, of happiness. For I, at least, was happy before."

"And, my dear, you will be happy again."

Anna knit her brows in painful thought. "If by being wretched I had managed to make the others happy it wouldn't have been so bad. At least it wouldn't have been so completely silly. The only thing I can think of is that I must have hit upon the wrong people."

"I Gott bewahre!" cried the princess with energy. "They are all alike. Send these away, you get them back in a different shape. Faces and names would be different, never the women. They would all be Treumanns and Elmreichs, and not a single one worth anything in the whole heap."

"Well, I shall not desert them—Else and Emilie, I mean. They need help, both of them. And after all, it is simple selfishness for ever wanting to be happy oneself. I have begun to see that the chief thing in life is not to be as happy as one can, but to be very brave."

The princess sighed. "Poor Axel," she said.

Anna started, and blushed violently. "Pray what has my being brave to do with Herr von Lohm?" she inquired severely.

"Why, you are going to be brave at his expense, poor man. You must not expect anything from me, my dear, but common sense. You give up all hope of being happy because you think it your duty to go on sacrificing him and yourself to a set of thankless, worthless women, and you call it being brave. I call it being unnatural and silly."

"It has never been a question of Herr von Lohm," said Anna coldly, indeed freezingly. "What claims has he on me? My plans were all made before I knew that he existed."

"Oh, my dear, your plans are very irritating things. The only plan a sensible young woman ought to make is to get as good a husband as possible as quickly as she can."

"Why," said Anna, rising in her indignation, and preparing to leave a princess suddenly become objectionable, "why, you are as bad as Susie!"

"Susie?" said the princess, who had not heard of her by that name. "Was Susie also one who told you the truth?"

But Anna walked out of the room without answering, in a very dignified manner; went into the loneliest part of the garden; sat down behind some bushes; and cried.

She looked back on those childish tears afterwards, and on all that had gone before, as the last part of a long sleep; a sleep disturbed by troubling and foolish dreams, but still only a sleep and only dreams. She woke up the very next day, and remained wide awake after that for the rest of her life.



CHAPTER XXX

Anna drove into Stralsund the next morning to her banker, accompanied by Miss Leech. When they passed Axel's house she saw that his gate-posts were festooned with wreaths, and that garlands of flowers were strung across the gateway, swaying to and fro softly in the light breeze. "Why, how festive it looks," she exclaimed, wondering.

"Yesterday was Herr von Lohm's birthday," said Miss Leech. "I heard Princess Ludwig say so."

"Oh," said Anna. Her tone was piqued. She turned her head away, and looked at the hay-fields on the opposite side of the road. Axel must have birthdays, of course, and why should he not put things round his gate-posts if he wanted to? Yet she would not look again, and was silent the rest of the way; nor was it of any use for Miss Leech to attempt to while away the long drive with pleasant conversation. Anna would not talk; she said it was too hot to talk. What she was thinking was that men were exceedingly horrid, all of them, and that life was a snare.

Far from being festive, however, Axel's latest birthday was quite the most solitary he had yet spent. The cheerful garlands had been put up by an officious gardener on his own initiative. No one, except Axel's own dependents, had passed beneath them to wish him luck. Trudi had telegraphed her blessings, administering them thus in their easiest form. His Stralsund friends had apparently forgotten him; in other years they had been glad of the excuse the birthday gave for driving out into the country in June, but this year the astonished Mamsell saw her birthday cake remain untouched and her baked meats waiting vainly for somebody to come and eat them.

Axel neither noticed nor cared. The haymaking season had just begun, and besides his own affairs he was preoccupied by Anna's. If she had not been shut up so long in the baroness's sick-room she would have met him often enough. She thought he never intended to come near her again, and all the time, whenever he could spare a moment and often when he could not, he was on her property, watching Dellwig's farming operations. She should not suffer, he told himself, because he loved her; she should not be punished because she was not able to love him. He would go on doing what he could for her, and was certainly, at his age, not going to sulk and leave her to face her difficulties alone.

The first time he met Dellwig on these incursions into Anna's domain, he expected to be received with a scowl; but Dellwig did not scowl at all; was on the contrary quite affable, even volunteering information about the work he had in hand. Nor had he been after all offensively zealous in searching for the person who had set the stables on fire; and luckily the Stralsund police had not been very zealous either. Klutz was looked for for a little while after Axel had denounced him as the probable culprit, but the matter had been dropped, apparently, and for the last ten days nothing more had been said or done. Axel was beginning to hope that the whole thing had blown over, that there was to be no unpleasantness after all for Anna. Hearing that the baroness was nearly well, he decided to go and call at Kleinwalde as though nothing had happened. Some time or other he must meet Anna. They could not live on adjoining estates and never see each other. The day after his birthday he arranged to go round in the afternoon and take up the threads of ordinary intercourse again, however much it made him suffer.

Meanwhile Anna did her business in Stralsund, discovered on interviewing her banker that she had already spent more than two-thirds of a whole year's income, lunched pensively after that on ices with Miss Leech, walked down to the quay and watched the unloading of the fishing-smacks while Fritz and the horses had their dinner, was very much stared at by the inhabitants, who seldom saw anything so pretty, and finally, about two o'clock, started again for home.

As they drew near Axel's gate, and she was preparing to turn her face away from its ostentatious gaiety, a closed Droschke came through it towards them, followed at a short distance by a second.

Miss Leech said nothing, strange though this spectacle was on that quiet road, for she felt that these were the departing guests, and, like Anna, she wondered how a man who loved in vain could have the heart to give parties. Anna said nothing either, but watched the approaching Droschkes curiously. Axel was sitting in the first one, on the side near her. He wore his ordinary farming clothes, the Norfolk jacket, and the soft green hat. There were three men with him, seedy-looking individuals in black coats. She bowed instinctively, for he was looking out of the window full at her, but he took no notice. She turned very white.

The second Droschke contained four more queer-looking persons in black clothes. When they had passed, Fritz pulled up his horses of his own accord, and twisting himself round stared after the receding cloud of dust.

Anna had been cut by Axel; but it was not that that made her turn so white—it was something in his face. He had looked straight at her, and he had not seen her.

"Who are those people?" she asked Fritz in a voice that faltered, she did not know why.

Fritz did not answer. He stared down the road after the Droschkes, shook his head, began to scratch it, jerked himself round again to his horses, drove on a few yards, pulled them up a second time, looked back, shook his head, and was silent.

"Fritz, do you know them?" Anna asked more authoritatively.

But Fritz only mumbled something soothing and drove on.

Anna had not failed to notice the old man's face as he watched the departing Droschkes; it wore an oddly amazed and scared expression. Her heart seemed to sink within her like a stone, yet she could give herself no reason for it. She tried to order him to turn up the avenue to Axel's house, but her lips were dry, and the words would not come; and while she was struggling to speak the gate was passed. Then she was relieved that it was passed, for how could she, only because she had a presentiment of trouble, go to Axel's house? What did she think of doing there? Miss Leech glanced at her, and asked if anything was the matter.

"No," said Anna in a whisper, looking straight before her. Nor was there anything the matter; only that blind look on Axel's face, and the strange feeling in her heart.

A knot of people stood outside the post office talking eagerly. They all stopped talking to stare at Anna when the carriage came round the corner. Fritz whipped up his horses and drove past them at a gallop.

"Wait—I want to get out," cried Anna as they came to the parsonage. "Do you mind waiting?" she asked Miss Leech. "I want to speak to Herr Pastor. I will not be a moment."

She went up the little trim path to the porch. The maid-of-all-work was clearing away the coffee from the table. Frau Manske came bustling out when she heard Anna's voice asking for her husband. She looked extraordinarily excited. "He has not come back yet," she cried before Anna could speak, "he is still at the Schloss. Gott Du Allmaechtiger, did one ever hear of anything so terrible?"

Anna looked at her, her face as white as her dress. "Tell me," she tried to say; but no sound passed her lips. She made a great effort, and the words came in a whisper: "Tell me," she said.

"What, the gracious Miss has not heard? Herr von Lohm has been arrested."

It was impossible not to enjoy imparting so tremendous a piece of news, however genuinely shocked one might be. Frau Manske brought it out with a ring of pride. It would not be easy to beat, she felt, in the way of news. Then she remembered the gossip about Anna and Axel, and observed her with increased interest. Was she going to faint? It would be the only becoming course for her to take if it were true that there had been courting.

But Anna, whose voice had failed her before, when once she had heard what it was that had happened, seemed curiously cold and composed.

"What was he accused of?" was all she asked; so calmly, Frau Manske afterwards told her friends, that it was not even womanly in the face of so great a misfortune.

"He set fire to the stables," said Frau Manske.

"It is a lie," said Anna; also, as Frau Manske afterwards pointed out to her friends, an unwomanly remark.

"He did it himself to get the insurance money."

"It is a lie," repeated Anna, in that cold voice.

"Eye-witnesses will swear to it."

"They will lie," said Anna again; and turned and walked away. "Go on," she said to Fritz, taking her place beside Miss Leech.

She sat quite silent till they were near the house. Then she called to the coachman to stop. "I am going into the forest for a little while," she said, jumping out "You drive on home." And she crossed the road quickly, her white dress fluttering for a moment between the pine-trunks, and then disappearing in the soft green shadow.

Miss Leech drove on alone, sighing gently. Something was troubling her dear Miss Estcourt. Something out of the ordinary had happened. She wished she could help her. She drove on, sighing.

Directly the road was out of sight, Anna struck back again to the left, across the moss and lichen, towards the place where she knew there was a path that led to Lohm. She walked very straight and very quickly. She did not miss her way, but found the path and hastened her steps to a run. What were they doing to Axel? She was going to his house, alone. People would talk. Who cared? And when she had heard all that could be told her there, she was going to Axel himself. People would talk. Who cared? The laughable indifference of slander, when big issues of life and death were at stake! All the tongues of all the world should not frighten her away from Axel. Her eyes had a new look in them. For the first time she was wide awake, was facing life as it is without dreams, facing its absolute cruelty and pitilessness. This was life, these were the realities—suffering, injustice, and shame; not to be avoided apparently by the most honourable and innocent of men; but at least to be fought with all the weapons in one's power, with unflinching courage to the end, whatever that end might be. That was what one needed most, of all the gifts of the gods—not happiness—oh, foolish, childish dream! how could there be happiness so long as men were wicked?—but courage. That blind look on Axel's face—no, she would not think of that; it tore her heart. She stumbled a little as she ran—no, she would not think of that.

Out in the open, between the forest and Lohm, she met Manske. "I was coming to you," he said.

"I am going to him," said Anna.

"Oh, my dear young lady!" cried Manske; and two big tears rolled down his face.

"Don't cry," she said, "it does not help him."

"How can I not do so after seeing what I have this day seen?"

She hurried on. "Come," she said, "we must not waste time. He needs help. I am going to his house to see what I can do. Where did they take him?"

"They took him to prison."

"Where?"

"Stralsund."

"Will he be there long?"

"Till after the trial."

"And that will be?"

"God knows."

"I am going to him. Come with me. We will take his horses."

"Oh, dear Miss, dear Miss," cried Manske, wringing his hands, "they will not let us see him—you they will not let in under any circumstances, and me only across mountains of obstacles. The official who conducted the arrest, when I prayed for permission to visit my dear patron, was brutality itself. 'Why should you visit him?' he asked, sneering. 'The prison chaplain will do all that is needful for his soul.' 'Let it be, Manske,' said my dear patron, but still I prayed. 'I cannot give you permission,' said the man at last, weary of my importunity, 'it rests with my chief. You must go to him.'"

"Who is the chief?"

"I know not. I know nothing. My head is in a whirl."

"He must be somewhere in Stralsund. We will find him, if we have to ask from door to door. And I'll get permission for myself."

"Oh, dearest Miss, none will be given you. The man said only his nearest relatives, and those only very seldom—for I asked all I could, I felt the moments were priceless—my dear patron spoke not a word. 'His wife, if he has one,' said the man, making hideous pleasantries—he well knew there is no wife—or his Braut, if there is one, or a brother or a sister, but no one else."

"Do his brothers and Trudi know?"

"I at once telegraphed to them."

"Then they will be here to-night."

The women and children in the village ran out to look at Anna as she passed. She did not see them. Axel's house stood open. The Mamsell, overcome by the shame of having been in such a service, was in hysterics in the kitchen, and the inspector, a devoted servant who loved his master, was upbraiding her with bitterest indignation for daring to say such things of such a master. The Mamsell's laments and the inspector's furious reproaches echoed through the empty house. The door, like the gate, was garlanded with flowers. Little more than an hour had gone by since Axel passed out beneath them to ruin.

Anna went straight to the study. His papers were lying about in disorder; the drawer of the writing-table was unlocked, and his keys hung in it He had been writing letters, evidently, for an unfinished one lay on the table. She stood a moment quite still in the silent room. Manske had gone to find the coachman, and she could hear his steps on the stones beneath the open windows. The desolation of the deserted room, the terrible sense of misfortune worse than death that brooded over it, struck her like a blow that for ever destroyed her cheerful youth. She never forgot the look and the feeling of that room. She went to the writing-table, dropped on her knees, and laid her cheek, with an abandonment of tenderness, on the open, unfinished letter. "How are such things possible—how are they possible——" she murmured passionately, shutting her eyes to press back the useless tears. "So useless to cry, so useless," she repeated piteously, as she felt the scalding tears, in spite of all her efforts to keep them back, stealing through her eyelashes. And everything else that she did or could do—how useless. What could she do for him, who had no claim on him at all? How could she reach him across this gulf of misery? Yes, it was good to be brave in this world, it was good to have courage, but courage without weapons, of what use was it? She was a woman, a stranger in a strange land, she had no friends, no influence—she was useless. Manske found her kneeling there, holding the writing-table tightly in her outstretched arms, pressing her bosom against it as though it were something that could feel, her eyes shut, her face a desolation. "Do not cry," he begged in his turn, "dearest Miss, do not cry—it cannot help him."

They locked up his papers and everything that they thought might be of value before they left. Manske took the keys. Anna half put out her hand for them, then dropped it at her side. She had less claim than Manske: he was Axel's pastor; she was nothing to him at all.

They left the dog-cart at the entrance to the town and went in search of a Droschke. Manske's weather-beaten face flushed a dull red when he gave the order to drive to the prison. The prison was in a by-street of shabby houses. Heads appeared at the windows of the houses as the Droschke rattled up over the rough stones, and the children playing about the doors and gutters stopped their games and crowded round to stare.

They went up the dirty steps and rang the bell. The door was immediately opened a few inches by an official who shouted "The visiting hour is past," and shut it again.

Manske rang a second time.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the man angrily, thrusting out his head.

Manske stated, in the mildest, most conciliatory tones, that he would be infinitely obliged if he would tell him what steps he ought to take to obtain permission to visit one of the inmates.

"You must have a written order," snapped the man, preparing to shut the door again. The street children were clustering at the bottom of the steps, listening eagerly.

"To whom should I apply?" asked Manske.

"To the judge who has conducted the preliminary inquiries."

The door was slammed, and locked from within with a great noise of rattling keys. The sound of the keys made Anna feel faint; Axel was on the other side of that ostentation of brute force. She leaned against the wall shivering. The children tittered; she was a very fine lady, they thought, to have friends in there.

"The judge who conducted the preliminary inquiries," repeated Manske, looking dazed. "Who may he be? Where shall we find him? I fear I am sadly inexperienced in these matters."

There was nothing to be done but to face the official's wrath once more. He timidly rang the bell again. This time he was kept waiting. There was a little round window in the door, and he could see the man on the other side leaning against a table trimming his nails. The man also could see him. Manske began to knock on the glass in his desperation. The man remained absorbed by his nails.

Anna was suffering a martyrdom. Her head drooped lower and lower. The children laughed loud. Just then heavy steps were heard approaching on the pavement, and the children fled with one accord. Immediately afterwards an official, apparently of a higher grade than the man within, came up. He glanced curiously at the two suppliants as he thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. Before he could fit it in the lock the man on the other side had seen him, had sprung to the door, flung it open, and stood at attention.

Manske saw that here was his opportunity. He snatched off his hat. "Sir," he cried, "one moment, for God's sake."

"Well?" inquired the official sharply.

"Where can I obtain an order of admission?"

"To see——?"

"My dear patron, Herr von Lohm, who by some incomprehensible and appalling mistake——"

"You must go to the judge who conducted the preliminary inquiries."

"But who is he, and where is he to be found?"

The official looked at his watch. "If you hurry you may still find him at the Law Courts. In the next street. Examining Judge Schultz."

And the door was shut.

So they went to the Law Courts, and hurried up and down staircases and along endless corridors, vainly looking for someone to direct them to Examining Judge Schultz. The building was empty; they did not meet a soul, and they went down one passage after the other, anguish in Anna's heart, and misery hardly less acute in Manske's. At last they heard distant voices echoing through the emptiness. They followed the sound, and found two women cleaning.

"Can you direct me to the room of the Examining Judge Schultz?" asked Manske, bowing politely.

"The gentlemen have all gone home. Business hours are over," was the answer. Could they perhaps give his private address? No, they could not; perhaps the porter knew. Where was the porter? Somewhere about.

They hurried downstairs again in search of the porter. Another ten minutes was wasted looking for him. They saw him at last through the glass of the entrance door, airing himself on the steps.

The porter gave them the address, and they lost some more minutes trying to find their Droschke, for they had come out at a different entrance to the one they had gone in by. By this time Manske was speechless, and Anna was half dead.

They climbed three flights of stairs to the Examining Judge's flat, and after being kept waiting a long while—"Der Herr Untersuchungsrichter ist bei Tisch," the slovenly girl had announced—were told by him very curtly that they must go to the Public Prosecutor for the order. Anna went out without a word. Manske bowed and apologised profusely for having disturbed the Herr Untersuchungsrichter at his repast; he felt the necessity of grovelling before these persons whose power was so almighty. The Examining Judge made no reply whatever to these piteous amiabilities, but turned on his heel, leaving them to find the door as best they could.

The Public Prosecutor lived at the other end of the town. They neither of them spoke a word on the way there. In answer to their anxious inquiry whether they could speak to him, the woman who opened the door said that her master was asleep; it was his hour for repose, having just supped, and he could not possibly be disturbed.

Anna began to cry. Manske gripped hold of her hand and held it fast, patting it while he continued to question the servant. "He will see no one so late," she said. "He will sleep now till nine, and then go out. You must come to-morrow."

"At what time?"

"At ten he goes to the Law Courts. You must come before then."

"Thank you," said Manske, and drew Anna away. "Do not cry, liebes Kind," he implored, his own eyes brimming with miserable tears. "Do not let the coachman see you like this. We must go home now. There is nothing to be done. We will come early to-morrow, and have more success."

They stopped a moment in the dark entrance below, trying to compose their faces before going out. They did not dare look at each other. Then they went out and drove away.

The stars were shining as they passed along the quiet country road, and all the way was drenched with the fragrance of clover and freshly-cut hay. The sky above the rye fields on the left was still rosy. Not a leaf stirred. Once, when the coachman stopped to take a stone out of a horse's shoe, they could hear the crickets, and the cheerful humming of a column of gnats high above their heads.



CHAPTER XXXI

Gustav von Lohm found Manske's telegram on his table when he came in with his wife from his afternoon ride in the Thiergarten.

"What is it?" she inquired, seeing him turn pale; and she took it out of his hand and read it. "Disgraceful," she murmured.

"I must go at once," he said, looking round helplessly.

"Go?"

When a wife says "Go?" in that voice, if she is a person of determination and her husband is a person of peace, he does not go; he stays. Gustav stayed. It is true that at first he decided to leave Berlin by the early train next morning; but his wife employed the hours of darkness addressing him, as he lay sleepless, in the language of wisdom; and the wisdom being of that robust type known as worldly, it inevitably produced its effect on a mind naturally receptive.

"Relations," she said, "are at all times bad enough. They do less for you and expect more from you than anyone else. They are the last to congratulate if you succeed, and the first to abandon if you fail. They are at one and the same time abnormally truthful, and abnormally sensitive. They regard it as infinitely more blessed to administer home-truths than to receive them back again. But, so long as they do not actually break the laws, prejudice demands that they shall be borne with. In my family, no one ever broke the laws. It has been reserved for my married life, this connection with criminals."

She was a woman of ready and frequent speech, and she continued in this strain for some time. Towards morning, nature refusing to endure more, Gustav fell asleep; and when he woke the early train was gone.

In the same manner did his wife prevent his writing to his unhappy brother. "It is sad that such things should be," she said, "sad that a man of birth should commit so vulgar a crime; but he has done it, he has disgraced us, he has struck a blow at our social position which may easily, if we are not careful, prove fatal. Take my advice—have nothing to do with him. Leave him to be dealt with as the law shall demand. We who abide by the laws are surely justified in shunning, in abhorring, those who deliberately break them. Leave him alone."

And Gustav left him alone.

Trudi was at a picnic when the telegram reached her flat. With several of her female friends and a great many lieutenants she was playing at being frisky among the haycocks beyond the town. Her two little boys, Billy and Tommy, who would really have enjoyed haycocks, were left sternly at home. She invited the whole party to supper at her flat, and drove home in the dog-cart of the richest of the young men, making immense efforts to please him, and feeling that she must be looking very picturesque and sweet in her flower-trimmed straw hat and muslin dress, silhouetted against the pale gold of the evening sky.

Her eye fell on the telegram as the picnic party came crowding in.

"Bill coming home?" inquired somebody.

"I'm afraid he is," she said, opening it.

She read it, and could not prevent a change of expression. There was a burst of laughter. The young men declared they would never marry. The young women, prone at all times to pity other women's husbands, criticised Trudi's pale face, and secretly pitied Bill. She lit a cigarette, flung herself into a chair, and became very cheerful. She had never been so amusing. She kept them in a state of uproarious mirth till the small hours. The richest lieutenant, who had found her distinctly a bore during the drive home, went away feeling quite affectionate. When they had all gone, she dropped on to her bed, and cried, and cried.

It was in the papers next morning, and at breakfast Trudi and her family were in every mouth. Bibi came running round, genuinely distressed. She had not been invited to the picnic, but she forgot that in her sympathy. "I wanted to catch you before you start," she said, vigorously embracing her poor friend.

"Where should I start for?" asked Trudi, offering a cold cheek to Bibi's kisses.

"Are you not going to Herr von Lohm?" exclaimed Bibi, open-mouthed.

"What, when he tries to cheat insurance companies?"

"But he never, never set fire to those buildings himself."

"Didn't he, though?" Trudi turned her head, and looked straight into Bibi's eyes. "I know him better than you do," she said slowly.

She had decided that that was the only way—to cast him off altogether; and it must be done at once and thoroughly. Indeed, how was it possible not to hate him? It was the most dreadful thing to happen to her. She would suffer by it in every way. If he were guilty or not guilty, he was anyhow a fool to let himself get into such a position, and how she hated such fools! She registered a solemn vow that she had done with Axel for ever.

At Kleinwalde the effect of the news was to make Frau Dellwig slay a pig and send out invitations for an unusually large Sunday party. She and her husband could hardly veil their beaming satisfaction with a decent appearance of dismay. "What would his poor father, our gracious master's oldest friend, have said!" ejaculated Dellwig at dinner, when the servant was in the room.

"It is truly merciful that he did not live to see it," said his wife, with pious head-shakings.

What Anna was doing at Stralsund, no one knew. She said she was having some bother with her bank. Miss Leech related how they had been to the bank on the Monday. "I must go again," Anna said on the evening of the fruitless Tuesday, when she had been the whole day again with Manske, vainly trying to obtain permission to visit Axel; and she added, her head drooping, her voice faint, that it was a great bore. Certainly she looked profoundly unhappy.

"One cannot be too careful in money matters," remarked Frau von Treumann, alarmed by Anna's white looks, and afraid lest by some foolish neglect on her part supplies should cease. She enthusiastically encouraged these visits to the bank. "Take care of your bank," she said, "and your bank will take care of you. That is what we say in Germany."

But Anna did not hear. There was but one thought in her mind, one cry in her heart—how could she reach, how could she help, Axel?

He was in a cell about five yards long by three wide. There was just room to pass between the camp bedstead and the small deal table standing against the opposite wall. Besides this furniture, there was one chair, an empty wooden box turned up on end, with a tin basin on it—that was his washstand—a little shelf fixed on the wall, and on the little shelf a tin mug, a tin plate, a pot of salt, a small loaf of black bread, and a Bible. The walls were painted brown, and the window, fitted with ground glass, was high up near the ceiling; it was barred on the outside, and could only be opened a few inches at the top. On the door a neat printed card was fastened, giving, besides information for the guidance of the habitually dirty as to the cleansing properties of water, the quantity of oakum the occupant of the cell would be expected to pick every day. The cell was used sometimes for condemned criminals, hence the mention of the oakum; but the card caught Axel's eye whenever he reached that end of the room in his pacings up and down, and without knowing it he learnt its rules by heart.

At first he had been completely dazed, absolutely unable to understand the meaning and extent of the misfortune that had overtaken him; but there was a grim, uncompromising reality about the prison, about the heavy doors he passed through, each one barred and locked behind him, each one cutting him off more utterly from the common free life outside, about the look of the miserable beings he met being taken to or from their work by armed warders, about the warders themselves with their great keys, polished by frequent use—there was about these things an inexorable reality that shook him out of the blind apathy into which he had fallen after his arrest. Some extraordinary mistake had been made; and, knowing that he had done nothing, when first he began to think connectedly he was certain that it could only be a matter of hours before he was released. But the horror of his position was there. Released or not released, who would make good to him what he was suffering and what he would have lost? He had been searched on his arrival—his money, watch, and a ring he wore of his mother's taken from him. The young official who arrested him—he was the Junior Public Prosecutor—presided at these operations with immense zeal. Being young and obscure, he thirsted to make a name for himself, and opportunities were few in that little town. To be put in charge, therefore, of this sensational case, was to behold opening out before him the rosiest prospects for the future. His name, which was Meyer, would flare up in flames of glory from the ashes of Axel's honour. Stralsund, ringing with the ancient name of Lohm, would be forced to ring simultaneously with the less ancient and not in itself interesting name of Meyer. He had arrested Lohm, he had special charge of the case, he could not but be talked about at last. His zeal and satisfaction accordingly were great, carrying him far beyond the limits usual on such occasions. Axel stood amazed at the trick of fortune that had so suddenly flung him into the power of a young man called Meyer.

Soon after he was locked in his cell, a warder came in with a great pot of liquid food, a sort of thick soup made chiefly of beans, with other bodies, unknown to Axel, floating about among them.

"Your plate," said the warder, jerking his head in the direction of the little shelf on which stood Axel's dining facilities; and he raised the pot preparatory to pouring out some of its contents.

"Thank you," said Axel, "I don't want any."

"You'll be hungry then," said the man, going away. "There is no more food to-day."

Axel said nothing, and he went out. The smell of the soup, which was apparently of great potency, filled the little room. Axel tried to open the window wider, but though he was tall and he stood on his table, he could not reach it.

It began to get dark. The lamps in the street below were lit, and the shouts of the children at play came up to him. He guessed that it must be past nine, and wondered how long he was to be left there without a light. As it grew darker, his thoughts grew very dark. He paced up and down more and more restlessly, trying to force them into clearness. In the hurry and dismay he had left his keys at Lohm, he remembered, and all his money and papers were at the mercy of the first-comer. And he was poor; he could not afford to lose any money, or any time. Supposing he were to be kept here more than a few hours, what would become of his farming, just now at its busiest season, his people used to his constant direction and control, his inspector accustomed to do nothing without the master's orders? And what would be the moral effect on them of his arrest? If he had a pencil and paper he would write some hasty messages to keep them all at their posts till his return; but he had no writing materials, he was quite helpless. He had sent urgent word to his lawyer in Stralsund, telegraphing to him through Manske before leaving home, and he had expected to find him waiting for him at the prison. But he had not come. Why did he not come? Why did he leave him helpless at such a moment? Axel was determined to face his misfortune quietly; yet the feeling of absolute impotence, of being as it were bound hand and foot when there was such dire necessity for immediate action, almost broke down his resolution.

But it was only for a few hours, he assured himself, walking faster, thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets, and he could bear anything for a few hours. His brothers would come to him—to-morrow the first thing his lawyer would certainly come. It was all so extremely absurd; yet it was amazing the amount of suffering one such absurd mistake could inflict. "Thank God," he exclaimed aloud, stopping in his walk, struck by a new thought, "thank God that I have neither wife nor children." And he paced up and down again more slowly, his shoulders bent, his head sunk, a dull flush on his face; he was thinking of Anna.

The door was unlocked, and a warder with a bull's-eye lantern came in quickly. "The Public Prosecutor is coming up," he said breathlessly. "When he comes in, you stand at attention and recite your name and the crime of which you are accused."

He had hardly finished when the Public Prosecutor appeared. The warder sprang to attention. Axel slowly and unwillingly did the same.

"Well?" snarled the great man, as Axel did not speak. He was an old man, with a face grown sly and hard during years of association with criminals, of experiences confined solely to the ugly sides of life.

"My name is Lohm," said Axel, feeling the folly of attempting to defy anyone so absolutely powerful in the place where he was; and he proceeded to explain the crime of which he was suspected.

The Public Prosecutor, who knew perfectly well everything about him, having himself arranged every detail of the arrest, said something incomprehensible and was going away.

"May I have a light of some sort?" asked Axel, "and writing materials? I absolutely must be able to——"

"You cannot expect the luxuries of a Schloss here," said the Public Prosecutor with a scowl, turning on his heel and signing to the warder to lock the door again. And he continued his rounds, congratulating himself on having demonstrated that in his independent eye the bearer of the most ancient name and the offscourings of the street, tried or untried, were equal—sinners, that is, all of them—and would receive exactly the same treatment at his hands. Indeed, he was so anxious to impress this laudable impartiality on the members of the little prison-world, which was the only world he knew, that he overshot the mark, refusing Axel small conveniences that he would have unhesitatingly granted a suppliant called Schmidt, Schultz, or Meyer.

It was now quite dark, except for the faint light from the lamps in the street below. Weary to death, Axel flung himself down on the little bed. He had brought a few necessaries, hastily thrown into a bag by his servant, necessaries that had first been carefully handled and inspected with every symptom of distrust by the Junior Public Prosecutor Meyer; but he did not unpack them. Judging from the shortness of the bed, he concluded that criminals must be a stunted race. Sleeping was not made easy by this bed, and he lay awake staring at the shadows cast by the iron bars outside his window on to the ceiling. These shadows affected him oddly. He shut his eyes, but still he saw them; he turned his head to the wall and tried not to think of them, but still he saw them. They expressed the whole misery of his situation.

He had dozed off, worn out, when a bright light on his face woke him. He started up in bed, confused, hardly remembering where he was. A feeling very nearly resembling horror came over him. A bull's-eye lantern was being held close to his face. He could see nothing but the bright light. The man holding it did not speak, and presently backed out again, bolting the door behind him. Axel lay down, reflecting that such surprises, added to anxiety and bad food, must wear out a suspected culprit's nerves with extraordinary rapidity and thoroughness. There could not, he thought, be much left of a man in the way of brains and calmness by the time he was taken before the judge to clear himself. The incident completely banished all tendency to sleep. He remained wide awake after that, tormented by anxious thoughts.

Towards dawn, for which he thanked God when it came, the silence of the prison was broken by screams. He started up again and listened, his blood frozen by the sound of them. They were terrible to hear, echoing through that place. Again a feeling of sheer horror came over him. How long would he be able to endure these things? The screams grew more and more appalling. He sprang up and went to the door, and listened there. He thought he heard steps outside, and knocked. "What is that screaming?" he cried out. But no one answered. The shrieks reached a climax of anguish, and suddenly stopped. Death-like stillness fell again upon the prison. Axel spent what was left of the night pacing up and down.

The prison day did not begin till six. Axel, used to his busy country life that got him out of his bed and on to his horse at four these fine summer mornings, heard sounds of life below in the street—early carts and voices—long before life stirred within the walls. He understood afterwards why the inmates were allowed to lie in bed so long: it was convenient for the warders. The prisoners rose at six, and went to bed again at six, in the full sunshine of those June afternoons. Thus disposed of, the warders could relax their vigilance and enjoy some hours of rest. The effect, moralising or the reverse, on the prisoners, who could by no means get themselves off to sleep at six o'clock, was of the supremest indifference to everyone concerned. Axel, not yet having been tried, and not yet therefore having been placed in the common dormitory, was not forced into bed at any particular time. He might enjoy evenings as long as those of the warders if he chose, and he might get up as early as though his horse were waiting below to take him to his hay-fields if he liked; but this privilege, without the means of employing the extra hours, was valueless. He watched anxiously for the broad daylight that would bring his lawyer and put an end to this first martyrdom of helpless waiting. Towards seven, one of the prisoners, whose good conduct had procured him promotion to cleaning the passages and doing other work of the kind, brought him another loaf of bread and a pot of coffee. From this young man, a white-faced, artful-looking youth, with closely-cropped hair and wearing the coarse, brown prison dress, Axel heard that the ghastly screams in the night came from a prisoner who had delirium tremens; he had been put in the cellar to get over the attack; he could scream as loud as he liked there, and no one would hear him; they always put him in the cellar when the attacks came on. The young man grinned. Evidently he thought the arrangement both good and funny.

"Poor wretch," said Axel, profoundly pitying those other wretched human beings, his fellow-prisoners.

"Oh, he is very happy there. He plays all day long at catching the rats."

"The rats?"

"They say there are no rats—that he only thinks he sees them. But whether the rats are real or not it amuses him trying to catch them. When he is quiet again, he is brought back to us."

A warder appeared and said there was too much talking. The young man slid away swiftly and silently. He was a thief by profession, of superior skill and intelligence.

Axel ate part of the bread, and succeeded in swallowing some of the coffee, and then began his walk again, up and down, up and down, listening intently at the door each time he came to it for sounds of his lawyer's approach. The morning must be halfway through, he thought; why did he not come? How could he let him wait at such a crisis? How could any of them—Gustav, Trudi, Manske—let him wait at such a crisis? He grew terribly anxious. He had expected Gustav by the first train from Berlin; he might have been with him by nine o'clock. The other brother, he knew, would be less easily reached by the telegram—he was attached to the person of a prince whose movements were uncertain; but Gustav? Well, he must be patient; he may not have been at home; the next train arrived in the afternoon; he would come by that.

The door opened, and he turned eagerly; but it was the Public Prosecutor again.

"Name, name, and crime!" frantically whispered the accompanying warder, as Axel stood silent. Axel repeated the formula of the night before. Every time these visits were made he had to go through this performance, his heels together, his body rigid.

"Bed not made," said the Public Prosecutor.

"Bed not made," repeated the warder, glaring at Axel.

"Make it," ordered the chief; and went out.

"Make it," hissed the warder; and followed him.

His lawyer came in simultaneously with his dinner.

"Plate," said the warder with the pot.

"This is a sad sight, Herr von Lohm," said the lawyer.

"It is," agreed Axel, reaching down his plate. He allowed some of the mess to be poured into it; he was not going to starve only because the soup was potent.

"I expected you yesterday," he said to the lawyer.

"Ah—I was engaged yesterday."

The lawyer's manner was so peculiar that Axel stared at him, doubtful if he really were the right man. He was a native of Stralsund, and Axel had employed him ever since he came into his estate, and had found his work satisfactory, and his manners exceedingly polite—so polite, indeed, as to verge on cringing; but then, as Manske would have pointed out, he was a Jew. Now the whole man was changed. The ingratiating smiles, the bows, the rubbed hands, where were they? The lawyer sat at his ease on the one chair, his hands in his pockets, a toothpick in his mouth, and scrutinised Axel while he told him his case, with an insolent look of incredulity.

"He actually believes I set the place on fire," thought Axel, struck by the look.

He did actually believe it. He always believed the worst, for his experience had been that the worst is what comes most often nearest the truth; but then, as Manske would have explained, he was a Jew.

The interview was extremely unsatisfactory. "I have an appointment," said the lawyer, pulling out his watch before they had half discussed the situation.

"You appear to forget that this is a matter of enormous importance to me," said Axel, wrath in his eyes and voice.

"That is what each of my clients invariably says," replied the lawyer, stretching across the table for his gloves.

"How can we arrange anything in a ten minutes' conversation?" inquired Axel indignantly.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot neglect all my other business."

"I do not remember your having been so pressed for time formerly. I shall expect you again this afternoon."

"An impossibility."

"Then to-morrow the first thing. That is, if I am still here."

The lawyer grinned. "It is not so easy to get out of these places as it is to get in," he said, drawing on his gloves. "By the way, my fees in such cases are payable beforehand."

Axel flushed. He could hardly believe the evidence of his senses that this was the obsequious person who had for so long managed his affairs. "My brother Gustav will arrange all that," he said stiffly. "You know I can do nothing here. He is coming this afternoon."

"Oh, is he?" said the lawyer sceptically. "Is he indeed, now? That will be a remarkable instance of brotherly devotion. I am truly glad to hear that. Good-afternoon," he nodded; and went out, leaving Axel in a fury.

The one good result of his visit was that some time later Axel was provided with writing materials. He immediately fell to writing letters and telegrams; urgent letters and telegrams, of a desperate importance to himself. When his coffee was brought he gave them to the warder, and begged him to see that they were despatched at once; then he paced up and down again, relieved at least by feeling that he could now communicate with the outer world.

"They have gone?" he asked anxiously, next time he saw the warder. "Jawohl," was the reply. And gone they had, but only by slow stages to the office of the Examining Judge Schultz, where they lay in a heap waiting till he should have leisure and inclination to read them, and, if he approved of their contents, order them to be posted. There they lay for three days, and most of them were not passed after all, because the Examining Judge disliked the tone of the assurances in them that the writer was innocent. He knew that trick; every prisoner invariably protested the same thing. But these protestations were unusually strong. They were of such strength that they actually produced in his own hardened and experienced mind a passing doubt, absurd of course, and not for one moment to be considered, whether the Stralsund authorities might not have blundered. It was a dangerous notion to put into people's heads, that the Stralsund authorities, of whom he was one, could blunder. Blunders meant a reproof from headquarters and a retarded career; their possibility, therefore, was not to be entertained for a moment. Even should they have been made, it must not get about that they had been made. He accordingly suppressed nearly all the letters.

Gustav must have missed the second train as well, for when the sky grew rosy, and Axel knew that the sun was setting, he was still alone.

The few hours he had thought to stay in that place were lengthening out into days, he reflected. If Gustav did not come soon, what should he do? Someone he must have to look after his affairs, to arrange with the lawyer, to be a link connecting him with outside. And who but his brother and heir? Still, he would certainly come soon, and Trudi too. Poor little Trudi—he was afraid she would be terribly upset.

But the hours passed, and no one came.

That evening he was given a lamp. It burnt badly and smelt atrociously. He asked if the window might be opened a little wider. The request had to be made in writing, said the warder, and submitted through the usual channels to the Public Prosecutor, without whose permission no window might be touched. Axel wrote the request, and the warder took it away. It came back two days later with an intimation scrawled across it that if the prisoner von Lohm were not satisfied with his cell he would be given a worse one.

The night came, and had to be gone through somehow. Axel sat for hours on the side of his bed, his head supported in his hands, struggling with despair. A profound gloom was settling down on him. The knowledge that he had done nothing had ceased to reassure him. The lawyer was right when he said that it was easier to get into such a place than to get out again. Klutz had denounced him, to save himself; of that he had not a doubt. And Dellwig, well known and greatly respected, had supported Klutz. This explained Dellwig's conduct lately completely. Axel's courage was perilously near giving way as he recognised the difficulty he would have in proving that he was innocent. If no one helped him from outside, his case was indeed desperate. He did not remember ever to have turned his back on a friend in distress; how was it, then, that not a friend was to be found to come to him in his extremity? Where were they all, those jovial companions who shot over his estate with him so often, driving any distance for the pleasure of killing his game? What was keeping Gustav back? Why did he not even send a message? How was it that Manske, who professed so much attachment to his house, besides such stores of Christian charity, did not make an effort to reach him? He had never asked or wanted anything of anyone in his life; but this was so terrible, his need was so extreme. What a failure his whole life was. He had been alone, always. During all the years when other men have wives and children he had been working hard, alone. He had had no happy days, as the old Romans would have said. And now total ruin was upon him. Sitting there through the night, he began to understand the despair that impels unhappy beings in a like situation, forsaken of God and men, to make wild efforts to get out of such places, conscious that they avail nothing, but at least bruising and crushing themselves into the blessed indifference of exhaustion.

The hours dragged by, each one a lifetime, each one so packed with opportunities for going mad, he thought, as he counted how many of them separated him already from his free, honourable past life. By the time morning came, added to his other torturing anxieties, was the fear lest he should fall ill in there before any steps had been taken for his release. He sat leaning his head against the wall, indifferent to what went on around him, hardly listening any more for Gustav's footsteps. He had ceased to expect him. He had ceased to expect anyone. He sat motionless, suffering bodily now, a strange feeling in his head, his thoughts dwelling dully on his physical discomforts, on the closeness of the cell, on the horrible nights. He made a great effort to eat some dinner, but could not. What would become of him if he could neither eat nor sleep? On what stores of energy would he be able to draw when the time came for defending himself? He was sitting by the table, leaning his head against the wall, his eyes closed, when the prisoner-attendant came to take away his dinner. "Ill?" inquired the young man cheerfully. Axel did not move or answer. It was too much trouble to speak.

The warder, upon the attendant's remarking that No. 32 seemed unwell, examined him through the peep-hole in the door, but decided that he was not ill yet; not ill enough, that is. In another week he would be ready for the prison doctor, but not yet. These things must take their course. It was always the same course; he had been a warder twenty years, and knew almost to an hour the date on which, after the arrest, the doctor would be required.

Axel was sitting in the same position when, about three o'clock, the door was unlocked again. He did not move or open his eyes.

"Ihr Fraeulein Braut ist hier," said the warder.

The word Braut, betrothed, sent Axel's thoughts back across the years to Hildegard. His betrothed? Had he heard the mocking words, or had he been dreaming? He turned his head and looked vaguely towards the door. All the sunlight was out there in the wide corridor, and in it, on the threshold, stood Anna.

What had she meant to say? She never could remember. It had been something deeply apologetic, ashamed. But her fears and her shame fell from her like a garment when she saw him. "Oh, poor Axel—oh, poor Axel——" she murmured with a quick sob.

He tried to get up to come to her. In an instant she was at his side, and, stumbling, he fell on his knees, holding her by the dress, clinging to her as to his salvation. "It is not pity, Anna?" he asked in a voice sharp with an intolerable fear.

And Anna, half blinded by her tears, deliberately put her arms round his neck, relinquishing by that one action herself and her future entirely to him, hauling down for ever her flag of independent womanhood, and bending down her face to that upturned face of agonised questioning laid her lips on his. "No," she whispered, and she kissed him with a passionate tenderness between the words, "it is only love—only love——"



CHAPTER XXXII

There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of ordinary lovemaking. All that was not simple truth fell away from them both like tawdry ornaments, for which there was no use in that sad place. Soul to soul, unseparated by even the flimsiest veil of conventionality, of custom; soul to soul, clear-visioned, steadfast, as those may be who are quietly watching the approach of death, they looked into each other's eyes and knew that they were alone, he and she, against the world. To cleave to one another, to stand together, he and she, against the whole world,—that was what their betrothal meant. Axel, cut off for ever from his kind if he should not be able to clear himself, Anna, cutting herself off for ever to follow him. Her feet had found the right path at last. Her eyes were open. As two friends on the eve of a battle in which both must fight and whose end may be death, or as two friends starting on a long journey, whose end too, after tortuous ways of suffering, may well be death, they quietly made their plans, talked over what was best to be done, gravely encouraging each other, always with the light of perfect trustfulness in their eyes. How strong they felt together! How able to go fearlessly towards the future to meet any pain, any sorrow, together! The warder standing by, the miserable little room, the wretched details of the situation, no longer existed for either of them. Nothing could harm them, nothing could hurt them any more, if only they might be together. They were safe within a circle drawn round them by love—safe, and warm, and blest. So long as he had her and she him, though they saw how great their misery would be if they came to be less brave, they could not but believe in the benevolence of the future, they could not but have hope. If he were sentenced, she said, what, at the worst, would it mean? Two years', three years', waiting, and then together for the rest of their life. Was not that worth looking forward to? Would not that take away every sting? she asked, her hands on his shoulders, her face beautiful with confidence and courage. When he told her that she ought not now to cast in her lot with his, she only smiled, and laid her cheek against his sleeve. All her childish follies, and incertitudes, and false starts were done with now. Life had grown suddenly simple. It was to be a cleaving to him till death. Yet they both knew that when that golden hour was over, and she must go, the suffering would begin again. She was only to come twice a week; and the days between would be days of torture. And when the moment had come, and they had said good-bye with brave eyes, each telling the other that so short a separation was nothing, that they did not mind it, that it would be over before they had had time to feel it, and the door was shut, and he was left behind, she went out to find misery again, waiting for her there where she had left it, taking entire possession of her, brooding heavily, immovably over her, a desolation of misery that threatened by its dreadful weight to break her heart.

A sense of physical cold crept over her as she drove home with Letty—the bodily expression of the unutterable forlornness within. Away from him, how weak she was, how unable to be brave. Would Letty understand? Would she say some kind word, some little word, something, anything, that might make her feel less terribly alone? With many pauses and falterings she told her the story, looking at her with eyes tortured by the thought of him waiting so patiently there till she should come again. Letty was awestruck, as much by the profound grief of Anna's face as by the revelation. She knew of course that Axel had been arrested—did anyone at Kleinwalde talk of anything else all day long?—but she had not dreamt of this. She could find nothing to say, and put out her hand timidly and laid it on Anna's. "I am so cold," was all Anna said, her head drooping; and she did not speak again.

As they passed between his fields, by his open gate, through the village that belonged, all of it, to him, she shut her eyes. She could not look at the happy summer fields, at the placid faces, knowing him where he was. Not the poorest of his servants, not a ragged child rolling in the dust, not a wretched, half-starved dog sunning itself in a doorway, whose lot was not blessed compared to his. The haymakers were piling up his hay on the waggons. Girls in white sun-bonnets, with bare arms and legs, stood on the top of the loads catching the fragrant stuff as the men tossed it up. Their figures were sharply outlined against the serene sky; their shouts and laughter floated across the fields. Freedom to come and go at will in God's liberal sunlight—just that—how precious it was, how unspeakably precious it was. Of all God's gifts, surely the most precious. And how ordinary, how universal. Only for Axel there was none.

When they reached the house, the hall seemed to be full of people. The supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day, accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful, the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.

"Um Gottes Willen!" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as she knew, an offer of marriage.

Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort, any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.

"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.

"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.

A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.

"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We shall be married—we shall be married—when—when it pleases God."



CONCLUSION

The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a dear friend, plainly is that all females—alle Weiber—are best married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only material in the raw."

"What?" cried his wife.

"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in the raw. And it is never of any practical use till the hand of the master has moulded it into shape."

"Sehr richtig," agreed the friend; with the more heartiness that he was conscious of a wife at home who had successfully withstood moulding during a married life of twenty years.

"That," said Manske, "is the most obvious moral. But there is yet another."

"The story is full of them," said the friend, who had had them all pointed out to him, different ones each time, during those evenings of howling tempests and indoor peace—the perfect peace of pipes, hot stoves, and Gluehwein.

"The other," said Manske, "is, that it is very sinful for little girls to write love-poetry in the name of their aunts."

"To write love-poetry is at no time the function of little girls," said the friend.

"Such conduct cannot be too strongly censured," said Manske. "But to do it in the name of someone else is not only not maedchenhaft, it is sinful."

"These English little girls appear to know no shame," said his wife.

"Truly they might learn much from our own female youth," said the friend.

Letty's poems had undoubtedly been the indirect cause of the fire, of Axel's arrest, and of his marriage with Anna. But if they had brought about Anna's happiness, a happiness more complete and perfect than any of which she had dreamed, they had also brought about Klutz's ruin. For Klutz, shattered in nerves, weak of will, overcome by the state of his conscience and the possible terrors of the next world, with the blood of three generations of pastors in his veins, every drop of which cried out to him day and night to save his soul at least, whatever became of his body, Klutz had confessed. He was only twenty, he knew himself to be really harmless, he had never had any intentions worse than foolish, and here he was, ruined. The act had been an act of temporary madness; and influenced by Dellwig, he had saved his skin afterwards as best he could. Now there was the price to pay, the heavy price, so tremendous when compared to the smallness of the follies that had led him on step by step. His bad genius, Dellwig, went free; and later on lived sufficiently far away from Kleinwalde to be greatly respected to the end of his days. Manske's eyes filled with tears when he came to the action of Providence in this matter—the mysteriousness of it, the utter inscrutableness of it, letting the morally responsible go unpunished, and allowing the poor young vicar, handicapped from his very entrance into the world by his weakness of character, to be overtaken on the threshold of life by so terrific a fate. "Truly the ways of Providence are past finding out," said Manske, sorrowfully shaking his head.

"I never did believe in Klutz," said his wife, thinking of her apple jelly.

"Woman, kick not him who is down," said her husband, turning on her with reproachful sternness.

"Kick!" echoed his wife, tossing her head at this rebuke, administered in the presence of the friend; "I am not, I hope, so unwomanly as to kick."

"It is a figure of speech," mildly explained the friend.

"I like it not," said Frau Manske gloomily.

"Peace," said her husband.



BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Elizabeth and Her German Garden

"What a captivating book it is—how merry and gentle and sunny, how whimsically wise and tender! There is real humor in these pages, and for that reason, if for no other, it deserves to live. The new chapter, describing the author's pious pilgrimage to the garden of her childhood, is inimitable in its way, and should not be missed by any admirer of this most winning Elizabeth."—New York Tribune.

"Elizabeth is pure sunshine and without a shadow, the reflection, as it were, of a quiet existence, and never a commonplace one; for, without knowing it or suspecting it, she is an idealist. Elizabeth never tires, for has she not her husband, her little ones, and her books to talk about? These passages, as found in 'Elizabeth' in the quiet history of a woman's life, act as useful tonics or are the necessary sedatives in our somewhat fevered existence."—New York Times.

The Solitary Summer

"'The Solitary Summer' affords a generous harvest of beautiful and poetic thoughts, together with some keen observations of life, all of which are expressed in a graceful and supple prose.... It is a privilege to have stood for a time upon the veranda steps and to have caught a glimpse of that sane refuge."—Chicago Tribune.

"Full of sunshine and fresh breezes, riotous with the bloom and fragrance of flowers, spicy with the damp cool breath of pines.... The quaint, whimsical fancies of a cultivated, lovable woman create a golden atmosphere through which we see her life, and we dream with her on her bench in her garden, in the fields where the yellow lupins grow, and in the mossy deeps of the pine forest. We feel we have made another friend, one who sees life with gentle, smiling eyes and from a deliciously humorous point of view."—Recreation.

"A garden of absorbing interest to its owner, a library full of books to comfort rainy days, a hamlet of German peasants, three delightful babies, and a 'man of wrath' who by no means merits the title,—these are the simple elements from which a bright woman, too cosmopolitan to be thought wholly German, as she calls herself, has evolved a charming little book."—The Nation.

"She has a depth of feeling, a sense of humor, and an impetuous and ardent manner that make her chronicles thoroughly alive. Beside this lovable book other feminine essays on nature, literature, and life seem only tame and artificial performances."—New York Tribune.

The April Baby's Book of Tunes

WITH THE STORY OF HOW THEY CAME TO BE WRITTEN

Illustrated by KATE GREENAWAY

A running commentary in the quaintly humorous style characteristic of the writer, describes the teaching of a dozen or more popular nursery songs to the author's three little maids, the April, May, and June Baby respectively. The music for each is given, and charming illustrations in color complete an unusually attractive holiday book.

Full of the sayings of three of the most delightfully amusing and original children in the book world—the June Baby who loudly sings "The King of Love My Shepherd is," swinging her kitten around by its tail to emphasize the rhythm,—the loving little May Baby who says, "Directly you comes home, the fun begins," sitting very close to her mother,—and the quaint April Baby, concerning whom there are fears that she may turn out a genius and thus disgrace her parents, Elizabeth and "The Man of Wrath."

Readers of the charming companion volumes whose authorship has been the subject of so much recent discussion will delight in this little sequel, which will make a most appropriate gift during the coming season to many a mother of little ones who has had at some time to meet the problem of how the babies can be saved from corners when there are no lessons, and storms have forbidden exercise for them and their nurses, too. Its pictures of a German nursery and the delicious discussions of these toddlers over the various songs are extremely bright and entertaining, and most aptly supplemented by Kate Greenaway's quaint and daintily colored illustrations, of which there are sixteen, besides decorative designs, chapter headings, etc.

THE END