CHAPTER III
A CRISIS
Johanna could not carry her resolve into execution. The following morning she was busy until late in replacing by order the disarray produced by the birthday fête, and when her father, who had gone out meanwhile, returned, he hurried past her with so gloomy an expression that she did not venture to follow him to his room.
At dinner she learned the cause of his troubled mood. He had quarrelled with the manager because the latter would persist in giving various of Helena's youthful parts to her rival, Fräulein Kronberg.
"Of course I cannot withdraw my stipulations," Roderich added, "and therefore cannot renew my contract, favourable as its conditions were for me."
"You can get another anywhere else quite as favourable, and even more so," said Helena.
"But not the accessories which I have here," Roderich declared. "Not the intelligent public, nor the charming mise-en-scène which makes each separate performance a work of art."
"That is no affair of yours," said Helena. "Each for himself, and God for us all. And as for the public, I can't see that it is especially intelligent. Wherever else you go you receive more applause than you get here, and so do I."
"Applause!" he repeated, with an impatient shrug. "Dear Helena, there is a kind of applause that makes me blush with mortification; but from your point of view you can hardly understand this."
How gladly would Johanna have assured him that she understood him perfectly! But while she was struggling with her natural shyness, Helena exclaimed, "If you think so meanly of me, pray do not proclaim it before other people; it is more than I can bear."
Roderich changed colour. "To accuse me of unkindness just when I am sacrificing all my plans for your sake is rather hard!" he said. And, rising from table, he left the room suddenly, slamming the door noisily behind him.
Lisbeth, terrified, began to cry, the others were amazed. Never before had he allowed himself to be so carried away by temper.
"He must be ill," said Johanna.
"Nonsense! he is out of temper," said Helena, "and he shall not hear a kind word from me until he begs my pardon."
Johanna was right. In half an hour Friedrich announced that the Herr had one of his attacks of headache, and could see no one.
On such days there seemed to be a spell upon the entire household. Every voice was lowered, every footfall was as light as possible, and Friedrich muffled the bell upon the landing.
This time, Johanna learned from Friedrich, the pain was not so intense as usual, but it did not pass away at the end of twenty-four hours. When, in spite of it, Roderich went to rehearsal the next day, he returned more ill than ever. The third day fever set in, and the physician ordered him to bed.
Helena had not forgiven the scene at table.
"It surely is not very bad, doctor," she said, as she accompanied the physician from the room. "I am just ordering a magnificent costume for Desdemona. Othello comes out next week; you must have him well by that time."
"We will hope for the best," the old man said, as he took his leave. Johanna, who overheard his words, was startled. She knew from Dr. Werner what these words signified in a physician's mouth. Whilst Helena carelessly returned to her costume, Johanna waited with a throbbing heart at her father's door until the servant made his appearance.
"Pray ask papa, Friedrich, whether I may not come in," she said.
The sick man heard her. "Come!" he called. His voice, usually so full and sonorous, sounded muffled, and his face was still more changed: it was colourless, and looked pinched and wan upon the pillow.
Johanna went to his bedside, with difficulty suppressing all signs of emotion. "Papa," she entreated, "let me stay with you. You have Friedrich, it is true, but I know better than he how to nurse an invalid."
For a while he gazed at her as if he scarcely understood her words. "Yes, stay with me," he said; "I think I am really very ill, and you are more careful, quieter, stronger – "
He did not finish the sentence, but she understood what he meant.
"Ah, thank you!" she said, kissing his burning hand.
He drew his daughter closer to him. "My dear, good child!" he said, pressing his feverish lips to her forehead. She did not dream that it was a farewell caress.
The disease progressed rapidly, and was pronounced by the physician the next day to be a nervous fever. He was quite content with Johanna's calm, careful treatment of his patient, but he begged Helena, who could not control her agitation, to spare her own delicate health for the sake of her child, and to be as little as possible in the sick-room. She sighed and submitted.
But, indeed, neither she nor any one else could have disturbed the sick man after a few days had passed; he lay in a state of entire unconsciousness.
The whole city was interested in the artist's condition; the inquiries after his health were countless; the door was besieged by friends and acquaintances. He had always been a kind, ungrudging comrade to his fellow-actors, and now when he could no longer excite their envy, they remembered his own freedom from it, and did all in their power to testify their esteem and friendship for him.
For Helena it was a kind of consolation to receive their visits; her nature was of those for which distraction is possible. After she had with many tears given an account of the sick man's state, she would listen with interest to theatrical gossip, and forget for a while her own sorrow. It overcame her, indeed, with redoubled violence when she was once more alone. Often, when she had been laughing with a visitor at some jest, Johanna would find her in a state of most pitiable distress.
"He is going to die, I know he is; such happiness as ours was too great for this world of misery," she would declare, sobbing as if her heart would break; or she would cry out as if bereft of her senses, "O God, you cannot take him from me! He must be spared for me and for his art."
She was most helpless and hopeless in the sick-room, where she would throw herself on her knees by Roderich's bedside, cover his hand with kisses, and exhaust every passionate term of endearment, nearly fainting when there was no response from her unconscious husband. But if one of the physicians or a friend wished to speak to her, she would arise, and, with a look of anguish as she left the room, involuntarily adjust artistically the soft folds of her white cachemire peignoir.
Johanna was too young and unsophisticated to appreciate her step-mother. She did her injustice when she accused her of heartlessness, and she added to her own burden by a daily increasing dislike for Helena.
But she could not help it. The sleep of exhaustion, which now and then overcame her, was all the rest and forgetfulness that she had. If she forced herself to talk with little Lisbeth, she had to struggle continually with rising tears, and when she heard others speaking of the events of the day, she could hardly comprehend how the affairs of the world could pursue their usual course outside of the sick-room. That was her realm, and her father's death seemed to her the end of all things.
Week after week passed. The physician gave Johanna no hope. She had herself watched from day to day, and from hour to hour, the inexorable approach of the Destroyer, and when the last moment came, she had lived it over in thought a hundred times.
It was the gray dawn of a morning in November. She was sitting alone at her father's bedside. Helena was asleep upon a lounge in the next room, when Roderich once more opened his eyes, in which there was a last ray of consciousness; his lips moved, and when Johanna leaned over him, she heard him whisper, 'Helena.' His features were convulsed for an instant, and when Helena rushed into the room in answer to her low cry, it was too late. Her husband had breathed his last. His heart had ceased to beat.
Johanna closed his eyes and took her usual place beside him. She seemed paralyzed; she could not weep, she could not even think. Helena's noisy grief distressed her, but it seemed to reach her ear from some great distance, and soon died away altogether. Only two images remained in her memory from this terrible time, – the ideal beauty of her beloved dead as he lay in the coffin