CHAPTER I
"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."

At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense satisfaction.

"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from between the curtains of the portière of the door of the adjoining sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.

"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown to the little one's assistance.

"I haven't hurt myself," the child immediately declared, looking up beseechingly at her mother, who, nevertheless, seized her impatiently by the arm and tore off the sash from her shoulders. "All this beautiful ribbon crushed and spoiled!" she said, crossly. "If you can take no better care of Lisbeth, my dear Johanna, the child must stay with Lina. Go, go to the nursery, and don't disturb me again to-day," she added, turning to the little girl; and then, sitting down before the dressing-table, she began to arrange her abundant fair hair.

Lisbeth went to Johanna and seized her hand. "Don't be vexed with Lisbeth, mamma," the young girl entreated. "She is not to blame. I was not attending to her; I was going over my part."

"If you do not know it perfectly by this time you had better give it up," the other said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Make up your mind to do so, and I will give it to Fräulein Dornbach. She can easily learn those few words before to-morrow evening."

"Oh, no! let me try," the young girl exclaimed. "I have just said them without stumbling. And my dress is nearly finished. I wanted to ask you – "

"Well?" the other asked, when Johanna hesitated.

"To let me go to the theatre to-night," she replied, without looking up.

"What! again? You went only a couple of days ago."

"Yes, but I should so like to see papa as Egmont, and – " She hesitated again and blushed. "And you as Clärchen," was what she meant to add, knowing that this addition would have secured her the desired enjoyment; but her innate integrity triumphed; her step-mother's acting was distasteful to her, and she suppressed the end of her sentence.

With a degree of artistic instinct the lady divined her step-daughter's thoughts. "You had better study your part," she said, rising. "And, besides, I want you to trim my lace overdress with fresh ribbons; you will have too much to do to-morrow to attend to it."

"There comes papa!" exclaimed Lisbeth, who had gone to the window and was looking out. "He is just crossing the street." And she was hurrying out of the room, when her mother called her back.

"Stay where you are!" she said. "You must not disturb papa now; we are just going to the theatre. My hat and wrap, Johanna, and my gloves; be quick, be quick!" And beginning to sing 'Joyous and sorrowing,' with a languishing expression she took from her step-daughter the articles brought to her and left the room.

Johanna sat down and went on with her sewing. She heard her father's step in the anteroom, heard his sonorous voice. How many would be delighted, enthralled, inspired by that voice this evening! She alone, his most enthusiastic, rapt admirer, could not enjoy it. Tears rose to her eyes and dropped unheeded upon her busy hands.

"Tell me a story," Lisbeth begged, standing beside her sister at the window. "Oh, you are crying!" she added distressed as she looked round. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing, darling," Johanna replied, hastily wiping her eyes. "What shall I tell you? Cinderella, or Snowdrop and the Dwarfs?"

"No, no! nothing about bad step-mothers," the little girl exclaimed; and then, with her eyes opened to their widest extent, she went on: "Only think, Lina says that mamma is a step-mother, – so stupid of her, – my dear pretty mamma. Friedrich laughed at her, and told her it was not true; but then he is just as stupid himself, for he told her you were not my sister, only an adopted child, and I won't have it; you shall be my sister!"

She stamped her little foot. Johanna took her in her arms. "Hush, darling; I am really your sister," she said, stroking the little curly head.

"Then why were you not always with me?" Lisbeth went on, pettishly. "All the sisters I know are always together."

"I was far away from here, at boarding-school," Johanna replied. "Papa sent me there when my poor dear mother died, and he did not know what to do with me. He travelled about from one town to another; and then he married your mamma, and then you were born, and he has grown very famous. I think he had almost forgotten me – "

Here old Lina, Lisbeth's former nurse, entered.

"Fräulein, a gentleman wishes to see you," she said, handing Johanna a card.

"Dr. Ludwig Werner," the girl read, and started up with a joyous exclamation. "Uncle, dear uncle!" she cried, and hurried into the antechamber, where, however, instead of the old gentleman whom she had expected to see, she was met by a young man.

"Johanna!" he exclaimed, with evident emotion, and he would have clasped her in his arms, but she retreated and only gave him her hand. He laughed, half confusedly, half derisively.

"It is you!" she said, and her voice, too, trembled. "I thought it was your father. Pray come in."

She led the way to the drawing-room. Lina, who was standing holding Lisbeth by the hand at the dressing-room door, looked after her in surprise. How could Fräulein Johanna receive so familiarly a young man who paid visits in a shooting-jacket and shabby crush hat?

He himself became conscious of the contrast that he presented to his surroundings as soon as he entered the drawing-room. As he looked about him in the luxurious apartment, now lit up by the last rays of the September sun, all trace of tenderness vanished from his face, leaving there only the cynical expression which Johanna knew so well.

"And this is now your home," he said. "I begin to understand, – I have not been able to do so hitherto. And you yourself, – are you as changed as your surroundings?"

He had stepped out upon the balcony with her, and as he spoke looked at her fixedly. There was no change in the grave unembarrassed expression of the girl's large gray eyes as she returned his gaze.

"What have you been unable to understand?" she asked.

"How you could leave us and come hither – to this house – "

"To my father's house?" she interrupted him, and her eyes flashed. "Let me tell you how it happened," she went on more gently, "and you will easily comprehend."

They stood leaning against the balustrade of the balcony. The shady little garden beneath them, the golden light of evening streaming from the western sky awakened the same memory in each, but Johanna alone gave it utterance. "Do you remember," she asked, "how we stood at your garden wicket the evening before you left Lindenbad and watched the setting sun? It was not quite two years ago, and yet how much has happened since then! you have made a home both in Paris and in London."

"A home!" he interrupted her; "no, Johanna, not for a moment. I worked hard in London and Paris, I studied day and night, looking neither to the right nor to the left, for I had but one aim, one desire, – to return to my home well skilled in my profession. I may have become a skilful physician, but my home is desolate, – my mother dead, – you here."

"Your dear mother!" Johanna whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. He did not see them.

"If I had been at home you should not have gone," he went on; "but my father has grown to be a weak old man, and my mother was enfeebled by illness before her death, or she would have kept her promise better."

"Do you mean the promise that she made to my dying mother?" Johanna asked. "She kept that perfectly."

"She let you come here to this step-mother!" Ludwig exclaimed, and his lips quivered, as they always did when he controlled his indignation.

"She could not but let me; I wanted to come, and my father wanted me again."

"So suddenly?" Ludwig interposed. "Since your mother's death he had not apparently given you a thought. My father's house was your home, your holidays were spent with us, you came to us when you left boarding-school; you belong to us, and to us only! Your father has his fame, his luxury, his wife, the woman who was your mother's death – "

"Ludwig!" Johanna interrupted him reprovingly.

He coloured. "It is the truth, and you are old enough to know it," he said, sullenly. "You do know it, but would not for worlds acknowledge it! Deceit – falsehood – hypocrisy everywhere. In your case I suppose it would be called filial piety."

He threw himself into the nearest chair and frowned darkly.

"Hard and unjust as ever," Johanna exclaimed, and her voice trembled.

"As ever?" he repeated. "You forget: formerly you trusted to my judgment, you saw with my eyes and followed willingly where I led."

"Possibly," said Johanna; "but since then I have learned to see with my own eyes, and to walk alone. It was high time: I am no longer a child."

She was right; Ludwig reflected that she must be nearly twenty years old, although she looked scarcely sixteen, so immature was her slender figure, so youthful the pale face that looked dreamily into the world from beneath a luxuriance of brown braids.

"Well, let bygones be bygones," he rejoined with bitterness. "I may surely be allowed to ask what snatched you from us so suddenly. You were going to tell me."

Johanna seated herself opposite him. "If I only knew how to tell you, how to convince you that I could not do otherwise," she said. "From the expressions you have let fall you seem to me to think that I was influenced by vanity, love of pleasure, and a desire for luxury. Your sister accused me of the same motives."

"Let that go; what is Mathilde to us? Go on!" Ludwig interposed, impatiently.

Johanna obeyed; the dictatorial tone to which she had submitted for so long exercised its old influence upon her.

"You went away in the autumn," she began; "the winter passed as peacefully as usual, and summer brought the usual throng of guests to the baths. Suddenly we heard that my father was starring in Weimar. One of our friends took me to the first performance. When we arrived it was too late to see my father before the play, and so I sat in the corner of our box in trembling expectation of beholding him after nearly eight years – "

"Eight years! – a tender parent!" Ludwig interrupted; she paid him no heed.

"But it was not my father whom I saw," she went on with increasing agitation: "it was Hamlet. I thought I knew the play, but what heights and depths were disclosed to me by this representation! This was no acting, it was actual life: suffering – doubt – despair. I sat trembling as if from a fever-fit, and after the performance I hastened to him. I do not know what I said to him, but my enthusiasm touched and delighted him. He kept me with him at first only during his stay in Weimar, afterwards for always. He went with me to Lindenbad to demand me of my foster-parents, and they thought it but natural that he should do so."

"Yes, so my mother wrote me," said Ludwig, "in the last letter I had from her before she was taken ill."

"I had no idea how ill she was," the young girl whispered, "or I should not have left her."

He made no rejoinder; his expression, as he gazed moodily upon the ground, grew darker still.

After a pause, Johanna said, "I wrote to you then; why did you not answer me?"

"I could not," he replied. "Amid all your grief at my mother's death there was a tone of relief in your letter."

"There was," said Johanna. "It is not in vain that I am the child of a great artist. The revelations he makes to me of the world of art are like my native air to me. Unconsciously I missed them and longed for them before I ever knew them."

"The intoxication has lasted, then?" Ludwig asked, with his bitterest smile.

"Intoxication!" she repeated. "You may call it so; but it is something better and nobler. I cannot define it, but its effect upon me is the same, only intensified, if possible. Everything within me that is dim and confused becomes clear and distinct when my father interprets for me – "

"Johanna!" Ludwig exclaimed, "you would not – you cannot go upon the stage!"

"If I only could!" she cried, with sparkling eyes; "if I only could!"

"You must not!" he said angrily, and seized her hands. "Bethink yourself; a man can assert himself, isolate himself upon the stage as elsewhere, a woman never; she loses her identity, degrades herself – "

"There is no reason why she should do so," Johanna exclaimed, clasping tightly the hands which she had withdrawn from his grasp. "The inspiration which animates and strengthens a man can exalt a woman also above all petty, low considerations. I have been here more than a year, and have kept my eyes open. I have seen what has been mean and paltry, nay, disgusting, but never in my father, never! He is not only great in his art, he is a man great and complete as only an artist can be."

Ludwig changed colour. "Do you really mean this, Johanna?" he asked. "Is it only in an artist that you can find a 'complete' man? Think what you are saying."

"Yes, yes; I mean it!" she cried passionately, and her cheeks glowed. She seemed transformed.

"Then I have nothing more to say," said Ludwig, as he arose.

Then first Johanna was conscious of what she had done.

"Oh, do not go!" she cried, confronting him. "I cannot let you go so. You did not understand me; I only meant – "

"I not understand you, child?" said Ludwig, controlling himself. "I might deceive myself while I was absent from you; but now that we are together, I see into your heart just as I always did."

"No, no; you do not see clearly. You do not understand me. You are offended – "

"Hush, hush!" Ludwig interrupted her, leading her to her seat again. "Come, sit down, and listen to me. Why should I be offended? We all embody for ourselves an ideal of beauty and dignity. I have done the same. Shall I tell you how?"

She only nodded an assent. There was something in his manner that confused her.

"My ideal," he began, taking a seat opposite her, – "a woman, of course, – was a gay, simple-hearted creature, looking out upon life with clear, truthful eyes; not exacting much, but always ready to do her best, interested in all that was good, beautiful, and great, but with a keen sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, never neglectful of the daily tasks of life, but consecrating, as it were, the meanest among them by her performance of it, and surrounded as by a purer ether, diffusing harmony and content wherever she might be."

"Your mother!" Johanna said, when he paused.

"My mother," he repeated, with a sudden smile that wonderfully transfigured his set, determined face. And the earnest look that he turned upon Johanna was a strange mixture of gentleness, entreaty, and menace.

"My mother," he repeated. "Yes, and one other who was like her; one who I believed for years would exactly resemble her. It was an illusion; it is past."

Johanna looked down with a blush. She could not but perceive that he meant herself. But could this be love? Impossible! One does not so quickly and causelessly resign what one loves. What had she done? Left his father's house to go to her own father's house. And the thoughtless words she had just spoken? If he loved her he would know that they had been uttered too hastily. Anger and obstinacy conquered every gentler emotion, and after a short pause she rejoined coldly, without looking up, "It is not given to every one to achieve content as did your mother."

"Content!" Ludwig exclaimed; "she was a happy woman."

"Do you think so?" said Johanna, raising her eyes to his. "Had she hoped and longed for nothing more in life than the companionship of a good man, but one who wore himself out in the discharge of the duties of his profession? Do you imagine that the letting of lodgings to visitors to the baths was the true vocation for your mother's sensitive, refined nature? And could the society of two silly girls like your sister and myself indemnify her for the tedious solitude of the long winter?"

"And yet this life satisfied her," said Ludwig. "So spiritual a nature is always satisfied with love and a round of duties."

Johanna shook her head. "It is comfortable to suppose so," she said; "but let me recall one expression of your mother's which, child as I was, made a deep impression upon me. My mother was already ill; yours sat beside her bed, while I was busied with a book at the window. Mamma must have been speaking of her past life. I had been paying no attention, when suddenly I heard her say, 'Ah, dear Louise, you pity me!' Your mother dried her tears, and said, in a tone which I never can forget, 'No, Agnes, I envy you! It is sad to be driven forth from Paradise, but infinitely sadder never to have entered it.'"

Ludwig gazed gloomily into space. "There are various Paradises," he said, at last, "and they are found in various ways. My mother, I am convinced, found hers later. But you are right; hers was not for every one. You could hardly find it as she did."

"I should never seek it in that direction," she replied, quite conscious that she was paining him; it grieved her to do so, but she could not help it.

Ludwig arose once more; his face was pale and set. "I must take leave of you," he said; "I have an appointment with a couple of college friends."

"When shall I see you, – to-morrow? When will you come?" asked Johanna. "Of course I shall be at home for you all day long."

"I take the first train to-morrow for the north," he replied.

"Oh, you must not!" she exclaimed. "You must be here to-morrow evening. It is my father's birthday, and you must be present at its celebration."

"Impossible; I cannot postpone my departure," he made answer. "And even if I could, where could I find a place among your friends? I am – you remember how often my father said so – a faithful, cross, ugly dog. In a tête-à-tête the old playfellow is all very well, but he does not belong in the drawing-room."

Johanna took his hand. "I will not let you go," she said, "until you promise to come to-morrow evening. We have a little play, – I make my first histrionic essay. You must be present."

"No, my dear Johanna, I cannot see you act," he said, in a calm voice, but with lips that quivered in spite of himself. "And independently of that, I really must go. I must get to my work. I have just come from a six-weeks' tour through Switzerland and the Tyrol, and my holiday is over."

"But you have told me absolutely nothing of your work, of your plans. I do not know where to picture you in my thoughts!" she exclaimed.

"I will write to you," he said. "Good-by, and try to think kindly of me." He shook hands with her and left her.

"A faithful, cross, ugly dog," Johanna repeated to herself, as the door closed behind him and his step died away in the antechamber. Suddenly a rush of emotion overcame her; she sank into a chair and burst into tears.