Drawing a deep breath, the physician stopped short, and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead.
Robert had jumped up, stared for a moment at the flaming orb of the
lamp, as if dazzled by the light, and then rushed towards the old man
as if to tear the paper out of his hands.
"That does indeed stand there?" he stammered.
"Read for yourself!" said the other.
A long silence ensued.
The lamp burnt with its quiet, cheery light as if it were illumining a
deed of brightest gladsomeness, and softly, as if with velvety paws,
the wind touched the windows. Downstairs everything seemed to be
growing quieter. The intervals between the bursts of laughter grew
longer and longer--the babel of voices changed to a steady, dull buzz.
The people were getting tired--they were digesting.
The physician looked round for Robert. He had dropped down once more
upon the ledge of the empty bedstead, had buried his face in his hands,
and was absolutely motionless.
Only his heaving breath, which escaped his breast in short, irregular
gasps, testified to the turmoil that was raging within him.
"Come to yourself, my boy," said the physician, laying his hand on
Robert's shoulder.
"Uncle, of course it goes without saying--she was not in her right mind
when she wrote this?"
"She was never more in her right mind than at that moment!"
"How dare you affirm such a thing? Do not insult the dead!"
"Nothing is further from my thoughts, dear boy. Who shall presume to
cast the first stone at her? But if you have been listening
attentively, you will certainly understand that her whole life was
nothing more than the maturing of this moment. Already in her girlish
dreams the seeds of this criminal wish lay buried; they put forth
sudden shoots on yonder stone in the wood, and came into blossom at the
very hour when she crept into your room to unite you with Martha."
"Why did she do that, if she herself wished to step into Martha's
place?"
"She was not conscious of what she wished. All her efforts to make you
and Martha happy were nothing further than the secret struggle which
her pure honest nature was waging with the wish growing up within her,
since that day of her girlhood when she had seen you again. But she did
not know it. Even her love for you did not become clear to her till she
entered your house. How much less then could she suspect what was
slumbering, as the fruit of this love, within her soul."
"And yet you say she fought against it and tried to exterminate it?"
"Not spiritually, not consciously. Her thought remained pure till that
terrible midnight hour. It was only her instinct which struggled
against the poison. That drew new resources daily from the healthy
depths of her strong nature, by which to secrete the putrid matter or
at least to enclose it so that it became innocuous. For this reason she
condemned herself to exile, for this reason even in face of your house
she contemplated a hasty retreat. How little she was, even later,
conscious of the processes which for years had been developing within
her, you may see by the whole tone of her reminiscences. She absolutely
unconsciously dwells upon many unimportant incidents, which have
nothing to do with the progress of the story and yet are valuable as
showing the gradual development of her wish. She knows not why she does
so: her feeling alone tells her: this has some connection with my
guilt."
"I believe in no guilt!" exclaimed Robert, in greatest excitement. "If
that wish was not a mere hallucination, not the result of a momentarily
morbid, over-strung frame of mind, but had lain for a long while
dormant in her nature, how came it that, only six hours before uttering
it, she expressed herself with such indignation about my mother because
she suspected her of harbouring it?"
"For my part," replied the old man, "nothing is more convincing for my
view of the matter, than this very indignation. To free her own
conscience from the burden which she felt resting upon it, she cast
every stone which she could take hold of, at your mother. It was terror
at her own sin which drove her to it."
"And the noble, self-sacrificing resolve which she formed only a few
days before?"
Over the old man's weather-beaten features there flitted a smile full
of understanding and forgiveness.
Then he said, "The old proverb about the good intentions with which the
path to Hell is paved, may hold good here too; but it only touches the
surface of the matter. This resolve was a last abortive attempt to
unite sisterly love with her longing for you, to make a pact between
her powerful, burning desire for happiness and the impulse to keep
faith towards her sister. It was the most unnatural thing she could hit
upon, for silent resignation was not in her line. It was a particularly
cruel fate which doomed her, with her noble disposition and powerful
will, to be forced into a sin which is the most common and most
cowardly on earth, a sin which I have found lurking on countless faces,
when I stood at the bedside of people seriously ill. This, my boy, is
one of the darkest spots in human nature, a remnant of bestiality which
has managed to find its way into our tamed world; even such sensitive
natures as Olga may fall a prey to it, though of course they perish
through it, while coarser souls simply conceal and suppress what is
struggling to appear from the darkest depths of their beings. Wait, I
will speak more plainly. I once came to the bedside of a rich old man,
a landowner, whose last breath was not far off. At the head of his bed
stood his eldest son, a man of about forty, who for long years had held
the post of inspector on strange estates, and whose intended bride was
beginning to grow old and faded with waiting. The son was a good,
honest fellow who would not have hurt a fly, who loved his father with
all his heart, and would certainly have been ashamed to wish his
deadliest enemy any ill; but in the stealthy, terrified glance with
which he watched me, while I bent down my ear towards the old man's
breast, I distinctly read the wish! 'Oh, that he might die!' Another
time I was called in to a woman who was very happy in second marriage.
Only one cloud troubled her new happiness. Her husband could not
befriend himself with the child of her first marriage. He knitted his
brows at the mere mention of the little creature, and as she loved him
passionately, she feared he might come to hate her on the child's
account, and hid it away from him as much as ever she could. The child
got scarlet fever. I found the mother kneeling at its bedside and
weeping bitterly. She trembled in fear for the feeble little life.
Had she not herself brought it forth! Then her husband entered the
room--she started--and in the restless, wavering glance which she cast
towards the cradle, there stood clearly and legibly written: 'It would
be for my happiness, if you died.' I could give you innumerable
examples where jealousy, covetousness, desire for independence,
restlessness, impulse for liberty, amorous longing, have matured this
terrible, criminal wish, which suddenly rises up dark and gigantic
within the human breast, in which hitherto only love and light have
found a place. Happily nowadays it does not do much harm. In olden,
more barbarous times, when the passions were permitted to rage
unfettered, the deed aided the thought. And if perchance in the family
circle any one happened to be in the other's way, poison and the dagger
simply claimed their victims. History and literature abound with
murders of this kind, and that great student of mankind, Shakspeare,
for example, knows hardly any other tragic motive besides murder of
kin. To-day people have grown calmer, and if a struggle for existence
happens nowadays to creep into the holy family circle, one is content
to wish the obnoxious one, in a dark hour, six feet under the earth.
This wish is the ancient murder restrained by modern civilisation.
There, my boy, now I have given you a long discourse, and if,
meanwhile, your blood has cooled down, my object is fulfilled."
"So you absolutely condemn her?" Robert anxiously stammered forth.
"My dear boy, I condemn no one," replied the old man, with a serious
smile, "least of all such an honest nature as Olga was. The fact alone
that she had the courage to confess to herself and to him whom she
loved most, what she was guilty of, raises her above the others. For
this wish, of which we are speaking, as it is the most hideous
spiritual sin of which the human soul can become guilty, so it is also
the most secret. No friend confides it to a friend, no husband whispers
it in the darkness of the nocturnal couch to his wife, no penitent
dares to confess it to his spiritual adviser, even the prayer that
struggles upwards to heaven out of the depths of contrition, passes it
over in hypocritical silence. God may have knowledge of everything,
only not of this baseness. Let this perish in shame and silence, as it
was brought forth in night and horror. And more than this! This wish is
the only crime for which there is commonly no expiation, no punishment
either before the tribunal of the outer world, or one's own conscience.
This is a case in which even that merciless judge which a man carries
about within him proves amenable to bribery. Thousands of people who
have once been guilty of this baseness go on living happily, put on
flesh in perfect peace of soul, and rejoice in the fulfilment of their
wish, which they themselves forget as speedily as possible, as soon as
ever it is fulfilled. It becomes absorbed into the soul, just as a germ
of disease becomes absorbed as soon as the stimulant of disease has
disappeared. It is lost without any trace, it is absolutely blotted out
by an abundance of social and personal virtues. I on no account say
that I condemn these people. What would become of the world if every
one who on looking into the glass discovered a wart on his face, were
to cut his throat in despair at the fact? The people I have described
to you are the healthy every-day people, whose so-called good
constitution can stand a blow, and who care not a rap if now and again
something objectionable sticks to them. Olga was moulded of finer clay,
her nervous system was sensible to lesser shocks, and what only caused
others a slight irritation, was to her already a lash of the whip. Such
natures are often somewhat morbid, they incline towards melancholy and
hysteria, and their soul-life is governed by imaginations, which, in
the eyes of others, are apt to assume the character of fixed ideas. And
yet everything about them is strictly normal, indeed their organism
works even more accurately than that of the ordinary, average human
being, and if one were to place them, like delicate chemical scales
under a glass case, one might see them work wonders. As a rule a
certain weakness of purpose cleaves to this class of sensitive people,
which makes them shyly retreat into themselves at the slightest
extraneous touch--and this is lucky for them; for thus they are saved
all violent collision with the outer world, to which they would not,
after all, prove equal. But woe to those among them who are driven by
some impetuous desire, some mighty passion, straight among rocks and
thorns! Then it is very possible that an adhering thorn, which others
would hardly have noticed, may become to them a poisoned arrow, and
corrode their body and soul till they perish in consequence. There,
now, I have talked enough. Here lie two or three more sheets. Listen!
Here we shall learn how one may be ruined by a wish."