Only a Girl Part 69

The officer said, coldly but politely, "Your directions shall, if necessary, receive due attention. Rely upon it."

"You have no objections to make?" Leuthold asked Hilsborn.

"Your wish shall be sacred to me," the young man a.s.sured him.

"And now, sir, I beg for one great favour," Leuthold whispered to the officer. "Grant me one half-hour's delay."

"I am sorry, but I have waited too long already."

"Only one-half hour, sir, for the love of Heaven,--a quarter of an hour!" Leuthold pleaded. The poison was beginning to work. His knees trembled, his gray eyes were gla.s.sy in their sockets, his features grew rigid.

"Not a minute longer!" the official replied impatiently, and beckoned to the police-officers.

"Have some pity!" the tortured man gasped out to Hilsborn. "I have taken poison. For humanity's sake, induce him to let me die here with my child."

"Good G.o.d!" exclaimed Hilsborn. "Let instant aid----"

Leuthold clutched his arm, and with a ghastly smile whispered, "It will be of no use, my friend!"

Hilsborn was horror-struck. "Sir," he said, "I unite my entreaties to those of Herr Gleissert. Allow him to remain here only until I have spoken with your chief."

"If the arrest is an unjust one, it will soon be at an end. I have nothing to do with that. I must obey orders."

Hilsborn whispered a few words in his ear, but he shrugged his shoulders. "Any man could say that. We will stop at a physician's as we drive past. That is not contrary to orders. We must go!" The policemen entered.

Hilsborn whispered to Leuthold, "I will bring you an antidote. I hope, for your child's sake, that you will take it. G.o.d have mercy on you!"

Leuthold would have replied, but a spasm prevented him from uttering a word.

Hilsborn saw that the poison had already infected the blood, and that all aid would come too late. Nevertheless, he would do what he could.

In pa.s.sing, he lightly touched Gretchen's shoulder. "Fraulein Gleissert, your father is going. Say one word to him."

Gretchen started, as if from a swoon, looked around her, and saw Leuthold between the officers. "Father!" she shrieked, and rushed towards him. She clasped him in her arms, and pressed kiss after kiss upon his blue lips. Her cries wrung the souls of the by-standers, and Bertha hurried away, that she might not hear them.

"I take back what I said," Gretchen moaned. "How could I say I had no father? Now that I am going to lose you, I feel that I can never forsake you!"

Leuthold writhed in agony in her embrace, but he managed to speak once more. "My child," he gasped thickly, "if there is a G.o.d, may He bless you! and when you hear that your father took his own life, remember that estate, freedom, honour, were gone past recall, but that by his own act he at least avoided a public exposure."

Gretchen gazed at him speechless. She tried to reply, but her lips refused her utterance. She only knew that her father was taken from her, and that stranger hands loosened her frantic clutch of his garments. She heard footsteps retreating, a door closed, and there was silence. For a few moments she lost consciousness. But other noises roused her from the fainting-fit that had brought her repose from grief, and recalled her to herself. Were the footsteps approaching again? Yes, they came on to the door of her room. What a strange murmur mingled with them! She raised her weary head with a mixture of fear and hope.

The door was thrown open as wide as it could go. Four men entered, bearing a well-nigh senseless burden. Her father had returned to her,--but how? They laid him upon the bed. Gretchen would have thrown herself into his arms, but he thrust her from him convulsively, for her clasping arms, her loving kiss, were tortures too great to be borne. He tried to speak, but in vain. Amidst frightful spasms, alternating with utter exhaustion, he breathed his last sigh, and his spirit bore its burden of guilt to new, unknown spheres of existence.

He had avoided all "public exposure."

But the only judge that he had acknowledged upon earth,--his child,--lay crushed at his feet expiating the crimes of the condemned.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORPHAN.

Day was again mirrored brightly in the waters of the Alster, and again the streets swarmed with life. The prattle and laughter of children on their way to school, the monotonous cries of the street-hawkers, the rattle of pa.s.sing vehicles, were all borne aloft into the quiet room where Leuthold had died, and where Gretchen still knelt beside the bed, and, by her constantly recurring bursts of grief, showed that the long night had not sufficed to exhaust the fountains of her tears. Her head lay upon the edge of the bed, and her arms were stretched across the empty mattress,--for the host had insisted upon the immediate removal from his house of the body of the suicide. But Gretchen could not yet be induced to leave the desolate room, the vacant couch. Since she was not allowed to follow her father's corpse, she would at least pillow her head where he had lain. She repulsed all her mother's advances.

When everything had been done that the law requires in such terrible cases, and the officials had vacated the apartment, she shot the bolt of the door behind them, and thanked G.o.d that she was alone with her misery, alone by her father's death-bed.

What human eye can pierce the depths of a young heart lacerated by such anguish? All that goes on in the soul at such moments, when the creature wrestles with its Creator, must remain a profound mystery,--a mystery known to almost every human being, but never to be revealed, no mortal language can declare G.o.d's revelations to us in our direst need.

Experience alone can enlighten us, and those who have lived through such a time can only clasp the hand of a fellow-sufferer, and say, "I know what it is," and henceforth there is a bond between them that is none the less close because it can never be explained.

Thus was it with Gretchen and Hilsborn when the latter's low knock at the door aroused the girl from her grief, and she arose from her knees and admitted him. She put her hand in the one he held out to her, and looked confidingly into his serious blue eyes.

"You never went to bed, dear Fraulein Gleissert," said he. "I can see that."

"How could I rest?" she replied. "They would not even let me watch by his body. All that I could do was to wake and pray for him here where he drew his last breath. How hard it is to have to leave what one has loved so dearly, and not to be allowed to cling to it at least until it is consigned to the earth! Suppose he were not quite dead. If he should stir, no one will be near to fan the spark of life into a flame. If he should open his eyes once more and find himself alone, and then die in helpless despair----Oh, the thought is madness!"

"I can a.s.sure you, Fraulein Gleissert," said Hilsborn quietly, "that your father sleeps peacefully. I did what you were not permitted to do,--I spent the night by his body."

"Could you do this for the man for whom you could have had no regard?"

cried Gretchen.

"I did it for you. I could imagine all you felt, and I knew it would be some comfort to you this morning to know that I had done it."

"Oh, how can I thank you, sir? I am too childish and insignificant to thank you as I ought. My heart is filled with grat.i.tude that will not clothe itself in words! You watched by my father from pure humanity,--compelled by no duty, no obligation,--only that you might soothe the grief of a poor orphan. I cannot express what I feel. You must know----" She could go no further. Tears gushed from her eyes. She took his hand, and, before he knew what she was doing, had imprinted upon it a fervent kiss.

"Fraulein Gleissert!" cried Hilsborn, in great embarra.s.sment. And a deep blush overspread his cheeks.

Gretchen never dreamed that she had committed any impropriety,--how could she, at such a moment? And Hilsborn knew this, and would not shame her by hastily withdrawing his hand. She was still but a child, in spite of her blooming maidenhood, and the kiss was prompted by the purest impulse of her heart.

"You reward me far more richly than I deserve," he said softly.

"Although it is long since I suffered the same sorrow, I know what it is. Grief for the death of my father never deserts me. Sorrow easily unites with sorrow, and you are more to me in your affliction than any of the gay, laughter-loving girls of my acquaintance. Let me do what I can for you,--it will be done with my whole heart,--and, for your own sake, do not give way to grief. Remember,--it is a melancholy consolation, nevertheless it is a consolation,--that it is far better for him to die before his crime brought its dreadful consequences. His home could never again have been among honourable men. What, then, would have become of you? Believe me, it is better as it is!"

"Do you think, then, my father does not deserve these tears? I know how great his offences were, and that every one is justified in condemning him,--every one but his child,--I cannot blame him. Do you think I ought not to grieve for him as I should for an honourable father? Ah, sir, is it less sad to lose a father thus, just as I was reunited to him, to find that he whom I so revered was a criminal, and to have him vanish in his sin before I could even breathe a prayer to G.o.d for mercy upon him? Whatever he may have done, I must mourn for him all the more, for he was and always will be my father. And there never was a kinder father. Let others curse his memory, I can only mourn for him. If the holy words are true, 'With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,' I must give him nothing but love, for he never meted to me anything else. Do not despise me. I do not feel his guilt the less, although I cannot love him less."

Hilsborn looked down at her with admiration. "How can you suppose that I could despise this sacred filial affection? I respect you all the more for it. It reveals in you treasures of womanly tenderness! Most certainly he who had such a daughter, and knew how unworthy he was of her, is doubly to be pitied. I will not try to console you. You have in yourself a richer consolation than any that mortal words can give. What can such a stranger as I say to you or be to you? I can only stand ready to protect and advise you, should you need advice or protection."

"If you will be so kind as to direct my first steps in life, it lies all so untried before me, my poor father will bless you from beyond the grave."

She paused, startled, for the door opened hastily, and Bertha entered.

She regarded her daughter with a satisfaction that equalled the aversion that she excited in her child. Bertha's beauty had been of a kind that endures only for a season and then gradually becomes a caricature of its former self. Her fresh colour had turned to purple.

Her mouth had grown full and sensual, with a drooping under-lip. Her sparkling black eyes had receded behind her fat cheeks, and had an expression of low cunning. An immense double chin and a round, waddling figure added to the coa.r.s.eness of her appearance. This was the woman who stood ready to claim affection from a daughter whose whole education had tended to create disgust at her mother's chief characteristic--coa.r.s.eness. What was this woman to her? She had heard that she was her mother, but she had never felt it. She had not seen her since she was scarcely five years old. She could feel no stirring of affection for. She could hardly connect her with the image in her mind of her father's faithless wife. While she was thus regarding Bertha with aversion, the man entered the room whom she was henceforward to consider in the light of a father,--her mother's second husband.

Involuntarily Gretchen retreated a step nearer to Hilsborn, as if seeking in him a refuge from the pair.

"Well," began Bertha, "if Fraulein Gretel is at home to young gentlemen, surely her father and mother----"

"Forgive me," said Gretchen gently but with decision, "my father is just dead, and I lost my mother when I was very young. I pray you to respect my grief and not mention names so sacred to me."

"Just hear the girl!" exclaimed Bertha. "Instead of thanking G.o.d that she still has parents to take care of her and not feel her a disgrace, she pretends to have no other father than the thief, the----"