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 Fräulein 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.