The Chief Justice Part 19

"I will not reproach you," said Berger after he had glanced through the few lines. "But now you must act. You must telegraph at once to the Imperial Chancellery and ask for an audience for the day after tomorrow, the nineteenth, and to-morrow you must start for Vienna!"

"I will do so," said Sendlingen softly.

"You _must_ do it!" cried Berger, "and I will see that you do. I will be back in the evening."

When Berger returned at nightfall, Franz said to him in the lobby: "Thank G.o.d, we are going to Vienna after all!" and Sendlingen himself corroborated this. "I have already received an answer; the audience is granted for the nineteenth. I have struggled severely with myself," he then added, and continued half aloud, in an unsteady voice, as if he were talking to himself; "I am a greater coward than I thought. However fixed my resolve was, my courage failed me--and so I must go to Vienna."

Berger asked no further questions, he was content with the promise.

CHAPTER XII.

The 18th February 1853, was a clear, sunny day. At midday the snow melted, the air was mild; there seemed a breath of spring on the country through which the train sped along, bearing the unhappy man to Vienna. But there was night in his heart, night before his eyes; he sat in the corner of his carriage with closed lids, and only when the train stopped, did he start up as from sleep, look out at the name of the station, and deeply sighing, fall back again into his melancholy brooding.

Was the train too slow for him?

There were moments when he wished for the wings of a storm to carry him to his destination, and that the time which separated him from the decisive moment might have the speed of a storm. And in the next breath, he again dreaded this moment, so that every second of the day which separated him from it, seemed like a refres.h.i.+ng gift of grace.

Alas! he hardly knew himself what he should desire, what he should entreat, and one feeling only remained in his change of mood, despair remained and spread her dark shadow over his heart and brain.

The train stopped again, this time at a larger station. There were many people on the platform, something extraordinary must have happened; they were crowding round the station-master who held a paper in his hand and appeared to be talking in the greatest excitement. The crowd only dispersed slowly as the train came in; lingeringly and in eager talk, the travellers approached the carriages.

Sendlingen looked out; the guard went up to the station-master who offered him the paper; it must have been a telegram. The man read it, fell back a step turning pale and cried out: "Impossible!" upon which those standing around shrugged their shoulders.

Sendlingen saw and heard all this; but it did not penetrate his consciousness. "Heldenberg," he said, murmuring the name of the station. "Two hours more."

The train steamed off, up a hilly country and therefore with diminished speed. But to the unhappy man it was again going too swiftly--for each turn of the wheels was dragging him further away from his child, for a sight of whose white face of suffering, he was suddenly seized with a feverish longing, his poor child, that now needed him most of all.

"Frightful!" he groaned aloud. His over-wrought imagination pictured how she had perhaps just received the news that she was to fall into the hangman's hands! It was possible that the sentence had pa.s.sed through the Court of Records and been added to the rolls; some of the lawyers attached to the Courts might have read it, or some of the clerks--if one of them should tell the Governor, or the warders, if Victorine should accidentally hear or it!

"Back!" he hissed, springing up. "I must go back." Fortunately he was alone, otherwise his fellow travellers would have thought him mad. And there was something of madness in his eyes as he seized his portmanteau from the rack, and grasped the handle of the door as if to open it and spring from the train.

The guard was just going along the foot-board of the carriages, the engine whistled, the train slackened, and in the distance the roofs of a station were visible. The guard looked in astonishment at the livid, distorted features of the traveller; this look restored Sendlingen to his senses, and he sank back into his seat. "It is useless," he reflected. "I must go on to Vienna."

The train pulled up, "Reichendorf! One minute's wait!" cried the guard.

It was a small station, no one either got in or out; only an official in his red cap stood before the building. Nevertheless, the wait extended somewhat beyond the allotted time. The guards were engaged in eager conversation with the official.

Sendlingen could at first hear every word. "There is no doubt about it!" said the official. "I arranged my apparatus so that I could hear it being telegraphed to Pfalicz and Bolosch. What a catastrophe."

"And is the wound serious?" asked one of the guards. He was evidently a retired soldier, the old man's voice trembled as he put the question.

"The accounts differ about that," was the answer. "Great Heavens! who would have thought such a thing possible in Austria!"

"Oh! it can only have been an Italian!" cried the old soldier. "I was ten years there and know the treacherous brood!"

Thus much Sendlingen heard, but without rightly understanding, without asking himself what it might mean. More than that, the sound of the voices was painful to him as it disturbed his train of thought; he drew up the window so as to hear no more.

And now another picture presented itself to him as the train sped on, but it was no brighter or more consoling. He was standing before his Prince who had said to him: "It is frightful, I pity you, poor father, but I cannot help you! It is my duty to protect Justice without respect of persons; I confirmed the sentence of death not because I knew nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but because she was guilty, by her own confession and the Judges' verdict.

Shall I pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential man of rank, because she is your daughter? Is her guilt any the less for this, will this bring her child to life again? Can you expect this of me, you, who are yourself a Judge, bound by oath to judge both high and low with the same measure?" Thus had the Emperor spoken, and he had found no word to say against it--alas! no syllable of a word--and had gone home again. And it was a dark night--dark enough to conceal thieving and robbery or the blackest crime ever done by man--and he was creeping across the Court-yard at home; creeping towards the little door that opened into the prison.

"Oh!" he groaned stretching out his hands as if to repel this vision, "not that!--not that!--And I am too cowardly to do it. I know--too cowardly! too cowardly!"

Once more the train stopped, this time at a larger station. Sendlingen did not look out, otherwise he must have noticed that this was some extraordinary news that was flying through the land and filling all who heard it with horror. Pale and excited the crowd was thronging in the greatest confusion; all seemed to look upon what had happened as a common misfortune. Some were shouting, others staring as if paralyzed by fear, others again, the majority, were impatiently asking one another for fresh details.

"It was a shot!" screamed an old gray-headed man in a trembling voice, above the rest, before he got into the train. "So the telegram to the prefect says."

"A shot!" the word pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth and some wept aloud.'

"No!" cried another, "it was a stab from a dagger, the General himself told me so."

Confused and unintelligible, the cries reached Sendlingen's ears till they were drowned by the rush of the wheels, and again nothing was to be heard save the noise of the rolling train.

And again his over-wrought imagination presented another picture. The Emperor had heard his prayer and said: "I grant her her life, I will commute the punishment to imprisonment for life, for twenty years. More than this I dare not do; she would have died had she not been your daughter, but I dare not remit the punishment altogether, nor so far lessen it that she, a murderess, should suffer the same punishment as the daughter of a common man had she committed a serious theft." And to this too he had known of no answer, and had come home and had to tell his poor daughter that he had deceived her by lies. She had broken down under the blow, and had been taken with death in her heart to a criminal prison, and a few months later as he sat in his office and dignity at Pfalicz, the news was brought him that she had died.

"Would this be justice?" cried a voice in his tortured breast. "Can I suffer this? No, no! it would be my most grievous crime, more grievous than any other."

The train had reached the last station before Vienna, a suburb of the capital. Here the throng was so dense, the turmoil so great, that Sendlingen, in spite of his depression, started up and looked out.

"Some great misfortune or other must have happened," he thought, as he saw the pale faces and excited gestures around him. But so great was the constraining force of the spell in which his own misery held his thoughts, that it never penetrated his consciousness so as to ask what had happened. He leant back in his corner, and of the Babel of voices outside only isolated, unintelligible sounds reached his ears.

Here the people were no longer disputing with what weapon that deed had been done which filled them with such deep horror. "It was a stab from a dagger," they all said, "driven with full force into the neck." Their only dispute was as to the nationality of the malefactor.

"It was a Hungarian!" cried some. "A Count. He did it out of revenge because his cousin was hanged."

"That is a lie!" cried a man in Hungarian costume. "A Hungarian wouldn't do it--the Hungarians are brave--the Austrians are cowards--the blackguard was an Austrian, a Viennese!"

"Oho!" cried the excited crowd, and in the same instant twenty fists were clenched at the speaker so that he began to retire. "A Lie! It was no Viennese! on the contrary, a Viennese came to the rescue!"

"Yes, a Vienna citizen!" shouted others, "a butcher!"

"Was not the a.s.sa.s.sin an Italian?" asked the guard of the train, and this was enough for ten others to yell: "It was a Milanese--naturally!--they are the worst of the lot!" while from another corner of the platform there was a general cry: "It was a Pole!

a student! He belonged to a secret society and was chosen by lot!"

Two Poles protested, the Hungarian and an Italian joined them; bad language flew all over the place; fists and sticks were raised; the police in vain tried to keep the peace. Then a smart little shoemaker's apprentice hit upon the magic word that quieted all.

"It was a Bohemian!" he screeched, "a journeyman tailor from Pardubitz!"

In a moment a hundred voices were re-echoing this.

This cry alone penetrated the gloomy reflections in which Sendlingen was enshrouded, but he only thought for an instant: "Probably some particularly atrocious murder," and then continued the dark train of his thoughts.--Now he tried to rouse himself, to cheer himself by new hopes, and he strove hard to think the solution of which Berger had spoken, credible.

He clung to it, he pictured the whole scene--it was the one comfort left to his unhappy mind. He chose the words by which he would move his Prince's heart, and as the unutterable misery of the last few months, the immeasurable torment of his present position once more rose before him, he was seized with pity for himself and his eyes moistened--a.s.suredly! the Emperor, too, could not fail to be touched, he would hear him and grant him the life of his child. Not altogether, he could not possibly do that, but perhaps he would believe living words rather than dead doc.u.mentary evidence and would see that the poor creature was deserving of a milder punishment. And when her term of punishment was over--oh! how gladly he would cast from him all the pomp and dignity of the world and journey with her into a foreign land where her past was not known--how he would sacrifice everything to establish her in a new life, in new happiness.... A consoling picture rose before him: a quiet, country seat, apart from the stream of the world, far, far away, in France or in Holland. Shady trees cl.u.s.tered around a small house and on the veranda there sat a young woman, still pale and with an expression of deep seriousness in her face, but her eyes were brighter already, and there was a look about her mouth as if it could learn to smile again.

"Vienna."

The train stopped; on the platform there was the same swaying, surging crowd as at the suburb, but it was much quieter for the police prevented all shouting and forming into groups. Sendlingen did not notice how very strongly the station was guarded. The consoling picture he had conjured up was still before his mind; like a somnambulist he pushed through the crowd and got into a cab. "To the Savage," he called to the driver; he gave the order mechanically, from force of habit, for he always stayed at this hotel.