He certainly was in no hurry to fulfil her request. The Holy-tide came and went, bringing her no word from him. Johanna took herself to task for continuing to watch and to hope, and for her inability to rid herself of the memories which seeing him again had aroused within her. Wherever she was—in church, in the Rupprecht family circle, at her writing-table—Lindenbad and Dönninghausen were always present to her.
And at last—Johanna could not avoid an impression that some subtile psychological influence had been at work—she received a sign of life from both places. The longed-for envelope from Lindenbad arrived, enclosing a letter to Ludwig from Johann Leopold, to which the former had only added a few lines. Johann Leopold wrote:
"Dönninghausen, December 23, 1876.
"My dear Friend,—Although it has now been for some years my custom to look to you for aid and counsel, I would spare you my present application if I knew of any one to turn to in your stead. Therefore I trust you will forgive me for alluding to painful subjects, which we have hitherto avoided mentioning to each other.
"I have just seen by the paper that the 'equestrian artist,' Carlo Batti, has gone with his circus to St. Petersburg for the winter. My cousin Otto recently procured a position there as an officer in the Guards, and a fear lest a meeting between Johanna and himself might give occasion to fresh scandal, and that Johanna's connection with our family might be used anew as an advertisement for the circus, leads me to write to you. I do not wish to blame Johanna for what she did in the glow of her first indignation; although I confess I thought hers a nobler nature than it proved itself to be. She should not have entirely forgotten all regard for our family, and especially for her grandfather's personal feeling, and she must not do it a second time. Will you represent this to her, my dear doctor? You have more influence with the unfortunate girl than I have. Also pray remind her that Waldemar, Otto's brother, with his young wife, lives in St. Petersburg. I hope that it will need only this reminder to induce Johanna, now that her first anger is past, to spare us. If—which I can scarcely suppose possible—you no longer have any intercourse with Johanna, and do not know her address, it will, I should think, be enough to direct your letter to Batti's circus, St. Petersburg.
"The post is just leaving, wherefore pray accept a hasty farewell for the present from your sincere friend,
"J. L. von Dönninghausen."
With this letter came a few lines from Ludwig, written in evident agitation:
"Dear Johanna,—Little as I am able from the scanty information furnished me by you to understand the contents of the enclosed letter, I gather from it that Herr O. v. D. has explained your separation from him by a tissue of vile falsehoods. You will instantly send me the requisite details, that I may acquaint your relatives with his rascality. Do not imagine that you can prevent me from doing so. I shall find means at any rate to learn the truth. It is bad enough that you, for the sake of a scoundrel, have suppressed it for so long."
This was not the salutation for which Johanna had longed, and yet in these angry lines she found once more the faithful dictatorial friend of her early girlhood, and a sensation of being protected, from which she had long been debarred, took possession of her. He must not, indeed, be allowed to interfere at Dönninghausen; but it did her good to know that he was ready to do battle for her with his old fiery zeal.
Thus cheered, she sat down to reply to his note. She could not, however, find words for just what she wished to say, and when she read over her finished letter it seemed to her cold and insufficient; nevertheless, it had to be sent immediately, lest Ludwig should be left to discover the truth after his own fashion.
She wrote: "I thank you from my heart, my dear Ludwig, for your care for me, and for all that you wish to do and would do in my interest, if you were right in your suppositions. But you have misunderstood my expressions, as well as Johann Leopold's letter. Otto is not to blame for the report that I am become a rider in the circus, but Carlo Batti himself, who hoped thus to force me to a career for which he thought I had a talent. Probably the enclosed notice, which was written by a friend of Batti's, has fallen into Johann Leopold's hands. Pray tell him the real state of the case, and that I am not responsible for the false statements of the newspaper. I pray you to forego all further explanations; not that Otto may be spared, but for my grandfather's sake, that he may be saved from fresh mortification and pain. Aunt Thekla, who knows all about it, not only agrees with me in this view of affairs, but desires that I should be silent to my grandfather as to the true reason for my break with Otto. That I concealed it from you also was the result—pray believe this—not of any regard for Otto, but of a certain sense of shame, and of repugnance to discuss the affair. In my own mind I am so entirely separated from Otto that even my memory of him seems something quite apart from myself. I had hoped that you perceived this at our last interview. Since you did not, I am glad of an opportunity to tell you that it is so, for I long to have you understand me thoroughly as in the dear old days. Were you perhaps led astray by some expression of mine of home-sickness for my grandfather or Dönninghausen? These are separations the pain of which I never shall overcome. But I know that they are irrevocable, and I pray you also to accept them as such. Write me that you do, and then tell me how you all are, and whether you have concluded to remain in Germany. How glad I shall be if you have!"
The letter was sent. Johanna reckoned up the time that must pass before the answer to it could arrive. But days went by in anxious expectation, and again she tried, in vain, to direct her thoughts into another channel.
Waking and dreaming, her mind was occupied with Ludwig. "We must study each other anew," she said to herself.