The Chief Justice: A Novel

Would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers and fruit? The strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future: worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it affected his friend. Alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! And it was just their last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave Berger the greatest uneasiness.

"And it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "Most certainly it will not! Perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another feeling, save that of his misery! And could anything else be expected? That was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! Again he does not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do… And do I know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?"

Had he deserved this fate?

"No!" cried Berger to himself. "No!" he passionately repeated as he paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal. Clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had ordered things as they had come about. It seemed no better than some rude elemental force. "He can no more help it," he muttered, "than the fields can help a flood breaking in upon them."

But he could not long maintain this view, comforting as it was to him, much as he strove to harbour it. "He has done wrong," he thought, "and retribution is only the severer because delayed." Other cases in his experience occurred to him: long concealed wrongs and sins that had afterwards come into the light of day, doubly frightful. "And such offences increase by the interest accruing until they are paid," he was obliged to think. From the moment that he heard his friend's story, all the facts it brought to light seemed to him like the diabolical sport of chance; but now he no longer thought it chance but in everything saw necessity, and he was overcome by the same idea to which he had given voice at the conclusion of his friend's narration, namely that this was no mere sad fate, but a tragic one.

It was a singular idea, compounded of fear and reverence. When Berger reflected how one act dovetailed into another, how link fitted into link in the chain of cause and effect, how all these people could not have acted otherwise than they were obliged to act, how guilt had of necessity supervened, and now retribution, the strong man shuddered from head to foot: he had to bow his head before that pitiless, all-just power for which he knew no name … But was it really all-just? If all these people, if Sendlingen and Victorine had not acted otherwise than their nature and circumstances commanded, why had they to suffer for it so frightfully? And why was there no end to this suffering, a great, a liberating, a redeeming end?

"No!" cried an inward voice of his deeply agitated soul, "there must be such a glorious solution. It cannot be our destiny to be dragged into sin by blind powers which we cannot in any way control, like puppets by the cords in a showman's hands, and then again, when it pleases those powers, into still greater sins, or into an atonement a thousand times greater than the sin itself, and so, on and on, until death snaps the cords. No! that cannot be our destiny, and if it were, then we should be greater than this Fate, greater, juster, more reasonable! There must be in Sendlingen's case also, a solution bringing freedom, there must-and in his case precisely most of all! It would have been an extraordinary fate, no matter whom it had overtaken, but had it befallen a commonplace man, it would never have grown to such a crushing tragedy. A scoundrel would have lied to himself: 'She is not my daughter, her mother was a woman of loose character,' and he would have repeated this so often that he would have come to believe it. And if remorse had eventually supervened, he would have buried it in the confessional or in the bottle.

"Another man, no scoundrel, – on the contrary! a man of honour of the sort whose name is Legion, – would not have hesitated for a moment to preside in Court in order to obtain by his authority as Chief Justice, the mildest possible sentence. Then he would have been assiduous in ameliorating the lot of the prisoner by special privileges, and after she had been set at liberty, he would have bought her, somewhere at a distance, a little millinery business or a husband, and every time he thought of the matter, he would have said with emotion: 'What a good fellow you are!' This has only become a tragic fate because it has struck one of the most upright, most sensitive and noble of men, and because this is so, there must come from that most noble and upright heart a solution, an act of liberation bursting these iron bonds! There must be a means of escape by which he and his poor child and Justice herself will have their due! There must be-simply because he is what he is!"

There was a gleam of light in Berger's usually placid, contented face, the reflection of the thought that filled his soul and raised him above the misery of the moment. Notwithstanding, his looks became serious and gloomy again.

"But what is this solution?" he asked, continuing his over-wrought reflections. "And how shall this broken-down, sick man, weary with his tortures, find it? And I-I know of none, perhaps no one save himself can find it. 'Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry will be of any avail,' I said to him yesterday. But can small expedients be of any use? Will it be a solution if I succeed with my appeal, if the sentence of death is commuted to penal servitude for life or for twenty years? Can this lessen the burden of the fate? – for her, for him?"

"What to do?" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. He wrung his hands and stared before him.

Suddenly there was a curious twitching about his mouth, and his eyes gleamed with an almost weird light. "No, no!" he muttered vehemently, "how can such a thought even occur to me. I feel it, I am myself becoming ill and unstrung!"

He bounded up with a heavy stamp and hastily passed his hand over his forehead, as though the thought which had just passed through his brain stood written there and must be swiftly wiped away. But that thought returned again and again and would not be scared away, that enticing but fearful thought; how she might be forcibly liberated from prison and carried off to new life and happiness in a distant country?

"Madness!" he muttered and added in thought: "He would rather die and let her die, than give his consent to this or set his hand to such a deed! He whose conscience would not allow him to preside at the trial! And if in his perplexity and despair he were to go so far, I should have to bar the way and stop him even if it cost me my life… What was it he said yesterday: 'An offence should not be expiated by an injustice!' and will he attempt it by another offence. 'Cowardly and dishonourable!' yes, that it would be, and not that great deed of which I dream; greater and more just than Fate itself."

He seized the notes which he had made from the papers connected with the trial, and forced himself to read them through deliberately, to weigh them again point by point. This expedient helped him: that horrible thought did not return, but a new thought rose, bringing comfort in its train and took shape: "When a great act cannot be achieved, we should not on that account omit even the smallest thing that can possibly be done. I will set my energies against the sentence of death, because it is the most frightful thing that could happen!"

And now he recovered courage and eagerness for work.

He sat at his writing table hour after hour, marshalling his reasons and objections into a solid phalanx which in the fervour of the moment seemed to him as if they must sweep away every obstacle, even prejudice, even ill-will. He had bolted himself in, nobody was to disturb him, he only interrupted himself for a few minutes to snatch a hasty meal. Then he worked away until the last sentence stood on the paper.

For the first time he now looked at the clock; it was pointing to ten. It was too late to visit the poor prisoner, and he was grieved that he had not kept his promise. If she was perhaps secretly nourishing the hope of being saved, she would now be doubly despairing. But it could not now be helped and he resolved to make good his remissness early the next morning. Sendlingen, however, he would go and see. "Perhaps he is in want of me," he thought. "I should be much surprised if he were not now more helpless than ever."

He made his way through the wet, cold, foggy autumn night; things he had never dreamt of were in store for him.

When he pulled the bell, the door was at once opened: Fräulein Brigitta stood before him. The candlestick in her hand trembled: the plump, well-nourished face of the worthy lady was so full of anguish that Berger started. "What has happened?" he cried.

"Nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all! It is only that I am so silly." But her hand was trembling so much that she had to put down her candle and the tears streamed down her cheeks as she continued with an effort: "He went out-and has not come back-and so I thought-but I am so silly."

"So it seems," Berger roughly exclaimed, trying to encourage both her and himself, but a sudden anguish so choked his utterance that what he next said sounded almost unintelligible. "May he not pay a visit to a friend and stay to supper there? Is he so much under your thumb that he must give you previous notice of his intention? He is at Baron Dernegg's I suppose."

"No," she sobbed. "He is not there, and Franz has already looked for him in vain in all the places where he might be. He was twice at your house, but your servant would not admit him. And now the old man is scouring the streets. He will not find him!" she suddenly screamed, burying her face in her hands.

"Nonsense!" cried Berger almost angrily. He forced the trembling woman into a chair, sat down beside her and took her hand. "Let us talk like reasonable beings," he said, "like men, Fräulein Brigitta. When did he go out?"

"Seven hours ago, just after his dinner, which he hardly touched; it must have been about four o'clock. And how he has been behaving … and especially since mid-day yesterday… Dr. Berger," she cried imploringly, clasping her hands, "what happened yesterday in Chambers? When he came back from Vienna he was still calm and cheerful. It must be here and yesterday that some misfortune struck him. I thought at first that it was illness, but I know better now: it is a misfortune, a great misfortune! Dr. Berger, for Christ's sake, tell me what it is!"

She would have sunk down at his feet, if he had not hastily prevented her. "Be reasonable!" he urged, "It is an illness, Fräulein Brigitta, – the heart, the nerves."

She shook her head vigorously. "I guess what it is." She pointed in the direction of the jail. "Something has happened in the prison over there that is a matter of life and death to him."

He started. "Why do you suppose that?"

"Because he behaved so strangely-just listen to this." But she had first the difficult task of calming herself before she could proceed. "Well, when I went into his room to-day to tell him dinner was ready, he was standing in front of his writing-table rummaging in all the drawers. 'What are you looking for, my Lord?' I asked. 'Nothing,' he muttered and he sent me away, saying he was just coming. Twenty minutes later I ventured to go back again; he was still searching. 'Have you ever,' he now himself asked, 'heard of any keys that my predecessor is said to have handed over?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'the keys of the residence.' 'No, others, and among them the key of the door which-' He checked himself suddenly and turned away as though he had already said too much. 'What door?' I asked in utter astonishment. He muttered something unintelligible and then roughly told me the soup could wait. It cuts me to the heart. Dear Heaven, how wretched he looks, and I am not accustomed to be spoken to by him in that way; but what does that matter? I went and spoke to Franz. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'he means the keys that are in the top drawer of his business table.' So we went and looked and there, sure enough, was a bunch of keys-quite rusty, Dr. Berger."

"Go on, to the point," said Berger impatiently.

"Well, I took them to him; as I said, a whole bunch with a written label on each. He looked through them with trembling hands. Dr. Berger, and at last his face lit up. 'That's the one!' he muttered and took the key off the bunch and put it in his breast pocket. Then he turned round and when he saw me-great Heaven! what eyes he had-wicked, frightened eyes. 'Are you still here?' he said flaring up into a rage. 'What do you want playing the spy here?' Yes, Dr. Berger, he said 'playing the spy'-and he has known me for fifteen years."

"He is ill you see!" said Berger soothingly. "But go on!"

"Then he sat down to dinner and there he behaved very strangely. God forgive me … Usually he only drinks one glass of Rhine-wine-you know the sort-to-day he gulped down three glasses one after another, took a few spoonfuls of soup and then went back to his room. And then I said: Franz, I said-but you won't want to hear that. Dr. Berger. But what follows you must hear; it's very strange-God help us! only too strange."

"Well?"

"After about ten minutes or so, I heard his step in the lobby; the door slammed; well, he had gone out. 'By all that's sacred!' thinks I in great trouble of mind. Then Franz came in quite upset. 'Fräulein!' he whispered, 'he's going up and down in the court outside!' 'Impossible!' said I, 'what does he want there?' We went to the bedroom window that looks down into the court and there, sure enough, is his Lordship! He was going-or rather he was creeping along by the wall that separates our court from the prison yard. It was drizzling at the time and it was no longer quite light, but I could see his face plainly: it was the face of a man who doesn't know what to do-ah me! worse still-the face of a man who doesn't know what he's doing. And he behaved like it, Dr. Berger! He stopped in front of the little door in the wall, looked anxiously up at the windows to see if anyone was watching him-but the clerks and officials had all gone, we were the only people who saw him-he pulled out that key from his breast pocket and tried to unlock the door. For a long time he couldn't succeed, but at last the door opened. However, he only shut it again quickly and locked it. Then he began anxiously to pace up and down again. It was just as if he had only wanted to try whether the key would open the door. What do you think of that?"

"The door through which one can get from here into the prison?" Berger spoke slowly, in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking to himself. Then he continued in the same tone: "Oh, how frightful that would be! This soul in the mire, this splendid soul! – Go on!" he then muttered as he saw that the housekeeper was looking at him in amazement.

"Well, then he went quickly back through the hall into the street and on towards the square. Franz crept after him at a distance. He seemed at first as if he wanted to go to your house, then he came back here, but to the other door, on the prison side. There he stood, close up to it, for a long time, a quarter of an hour Franz says, and then went to the left down Cross Street and then-what do you think, Dr. Berger?"

"Back the same way," said Berger slowly, "and again stood for a long time in front of the prison."

"How can you know that?" asked the old lady in astonishment.

Berger's answer was a strange one. "I can see it!" he said. And indeed, with the eyes of his soul, Berger could see his unhappy friend wandering about in the misty darkness, dragged hither and thither, by whirling, conflicting thoughts. "Perhaps he is at this moment standing there again!" He had not meant to say this, but the thought had involuntarily given itself voice.

"What now!" Fräulein Brigitta crossed herself. "We will go and see at once! Come! Oh, that would be a good thing! I will just go and fetch my shawl. But you see I was right. This trouble is connected with the prison; some injustice has been done, and he feels it nearly because he is such a just judge."

"Because he is such a just judge," repeated Berger, mechanically, without thinking of what he was saying, for while he spoke those words he was saying to himself: "He has gone mad!"

Then, however, he shook off the spell of this horror that threatened to cripple both soul and body. "You stay at home," he said in a tone of command. "I will find him and bring him back, you may rely upon that. One thing more, where did Franz leave him?"

"Ah, he was too simple! When his Lordship came into the square for the third time, Franz went up to him and begged him to come home. Upon that he became very angry and sent Franz off with the strongest language. But he called after him that he was going to Baron Dernegg's, only as I said, he has not been there, and-"

"Keep up your spirits, Fräulein Brigitta! I shall be back soon." He went down the steps, "Keep up your spirits!" he called back to her once more; she was standing at the top of the steps holding the candle at arm's length before her.

Berger stepped into the street and walked swiftly round the building to the prison door. He himself was in need of the exhortation he had given: he felt as if in the next moment he might see something frightful.

But there was nothing to be seen when he at length reached the place and approached the door, nothing save the muddy slippery ground, the trickling, mouldy walls, the iron-work of the door shining in the wet-nothing else, so far as the red, smoky light of the two lanterns above the door could show through the fog and rain. And there was nothing to be heard save the low pattering of the rain-drops on the soft earth or, when a sudden gust of the east-wind blew, the creaking of some loosened rafter and a whirring, long-drawn, complaining sound that came from the bare trees on the ramparts when they writhed and bent beneath its icy breath.

"Victor!"

There was a movement in the sentry box by the door; the poor, frozen Venetian soldier of the Dom Miguel regiment who had sheltered himself inside as well as he could from the rain and cold, poked out his heavy sleepy head so that the shine of his wet leather shako was visible for an instant. He muttered an oath and wrapped himself the closer in his damp overcoat.

Berger sighed deeply. A minute before he was sure he had seen the poor madman standing motionless in the desolate night, his eyes rigidly fixed upon the door that separated him from his daughter, and now that he was spared the sight, he could take no comfort, for a far worse foreboding convulsed his brain.

Hesitatingly he returned to the front part of the building and, increasing his pace, he went down the street towards the market-place, aimlessly, but always swifter, as if he had to go where chance led him, so as to arrive in time to stop some frightful deed.

The streets were deserted, nothing but the wind roamed through the drenching solitude, nothing but the voices of the night greeted his ear; that ceaseless murmur and rustle and stir, which, drowned by the noise of the day, moves in the dark stillness, as though dead and dumb things had now first found a voice to reach the sense of men.

He often had to stop; it seemed to him as if he heard the piteous groaning of a sick man, or the half stifled cry for help of one wounded. But it was nothing; the wind had shaken some rotting roof, or somewhere in the far distance a watch-dog had given a short, sharp bark. The lonely wanderer held his breath in order to hear better, looked also perhaps into some dark corner and then hurried on.

He reached the market place. Here he came upon human beings again, the sentries before the principal guard-house, and as he passed the column commemorative of the cholera in the middle of the square, there was the night-watchman who had pitched upon a dry sleeping place in one of the niches of the irregular monument. Berger stopped irresolutely; should he wake him up and question him?

Another form at this moment emerged from a neighbouring street; a man who with bowed head and halting pace glided along by the houses: was this not Franz? Berger could not yet, by the light of the meagre lamps, accurately distinguish him in the all-pervading fog. But the man came nearer and nearer; he was behaving peculiarly; he was looking into every door-way, and when he came to the "Sign of the Arbour," a very ancient shop full of recesses, he went into each of these recesses, so that a spectator saw him alternately appearing and disappearing. When he at length reappeared just under a lamp Berger recognised him; it was really the old servant. "Like a faithful dog seeking his master," he said to himself as he hurried towards him.

Franz rushed to meet him. "You know nothing of him?"

"Be quiet, man. We will look for him together."

"No, separately!" He seized Berger's arm and grasped it convulsively. "You by the river-side and I up here. There is not a moment to lose."

Berger asked no more questions but hurried down the broad, inclined street that led to the river. Here, in Cross Street, where most of the pleasure-resorts were, there were still signs of life; he had repeatedly to get out of the way of drunken men who passed along bawling; poor forlorn looking girls brushed past him. In one of the quieter streets he noticed a moving light coming nearer and nearer: it was a large lantern in the hand of a servant who was carefully lighting the gentleman who followed him.

Berger recognised the features of the little, wizened creature who, in spite of the awful weather was contentedly tripping along, with satisfaction in every lineament, under the shelter of a mighty umbrella; it was the Deputy Chief-Justice, Herr von Werner. He would have passed by without a word, but Werner recognised him and called to him.

"Eh! eh! it's Dr. Berger!" he snickered. "Out so late! Hee, hee! I seem to be meeting all the important people! First-hee! hee! the Lord Chief Justice and now-"

"Have you seen him?"

"Why yes. You are surprised? So was I! Just as I stepped out of my son-in-law's house, he passed by. I called after him because I wanted to tell him the news. For you may congratulate me, Dr. Berger. Certainly, you annoyed me this morning, you annoyed me very much I but in my joy I will forgive you! My first grandson, a splendid boy, and how he can cry!"

"Where did you see him? When?"

"Eh! goodness me, what is the matter with you? It was scarcely five minutes ago, he was going-only fancy-towards Wurst Street. You seem upset! And he wouldn't listen to me! Why, what is the matter?"

Berger made no reply. Without a word of farewell, he rushed precipitately down the street out of which Werner had come and turned to the right into a narrow, dirty slum which led by a steep incline to the river.

This was Wurst Street, the poorest district of the town, the haunt of porters, boatmen and raftsmen; alongside the narrow quay in which the street ended, lay their craft; the corner building next the river was the public house which they frequented. A light still glimmered behind its small window-panes and, as Berger hurried by, the sound of rough song and laughter greeted his ears.

He did not stop till he came right up to the river's edge. Its waters were swollen by the autumn rains; swift and tumultuous they coursed along its broad bed, perceptible to the ear only, not to the eye, so fearfully dark was the night. Berger could not even distinguish the wooden foot-bridge that here crossed the river, until he was close up to it.

Hesitatingly he stepped upon the shaky structure. The bridge was scarcely two foot broad, its balustrade was rotten and the footway slippery. Over on the other side a solitary light, a lantern, was struggling against wind and fog; its reflection swayed uncertainly on the soaking bridge; when it suddenly flared up in the wind, its flickering, red light revealed for a moment the angry, swollen flood.

Berger stood still irresolutely; the place was so desolate, so uncanny; should he stay any longer? Then suddenly a low cry escaped him and he darted forward a step. The lantern opposite had just flared up and by its reflection he had seen a man approach the bridge and step upon it. It seemed to Berger as if this were Sendlingen, but he did not know for certain, as the lantern was again giving only the faintest glimmer.