"Of that which now followed, I have only retained a vague recollection.
I remember that I suddenly uttered a shriek, which made even Martha
start up, that I flung myself down at her bedside, clutched her burning
hands, and continued to cry out, 'Save me! save me! wake up!'
"And then again I find myself in a different room, into which Robert
has taken me. I remember how, there, in the looking-glass, I recognised
my distorted face, bathed in the perspiration of terror, how I burst
into a laugh, and, shuddering at my own laughter, sank all in a heap,
and how all the while, chuckling and hissing with a thousand covetous
voices, there came sounding in my ears the wish: 'Oh, that she might
die!' How shall I describe it all, without being hunted to death by the
spectres of that night?
"The only clear remembrance that I still retain is that suddenly the
doctor's dear old face was bending over me, that I had to drink
something that tasted bitter, and--then I know nothing more.
* * * * *
"When I awoke the pale light of dawn gleamed through the windows. My
head ached, I looked around dazed, and then it seemed as if I saw
written on the whitewashed wall opposite, the words: 'Oh, that she
might die!'
"I shuddered, and then the thought rose within me: 'Now, if she dies,
it will be your wish which has murdered her.'
"I pulled myself together, and walked up to the looking-glass.
"'So this is what a woman looks like who wishes her sister might die!'
said I, while my ashen-pale face stared back at me; and, seized with a
sudden loathing, I hit at the glass with my fist. My knuckles bled, but
it did not break. Fool that I was, not to know that henceforth all the
world would only be there to hold up a mirror to my crime!
"'But perhaps she may not die!' it suddenly darted through my brain.
Such radiance seemed to burst forth from this thought, that I closed my
eyes as if dazzled.
"And then again it cried aloud within me: 'She will die; your wish has
murdered her!' I ground my teeth, and groping along by the walls, I
crept into the sick room.
"When I stood at the door, and no longer heard any sound from within,
the idea took possession of me:
"'You will find her as a corpse.'
"No, she still lived, but death had already set his mark upon her face.
"The bridge of the nose had become more prominent, her lips no longer
closed over her irregular teeth, her eyes seemed to have sunk right
down into their dark sockets.
"At her feet stood Robert and the old doctor. Robert had pressed his
hands to his face. Sobs shook his frame. The old man scrutinised me
with a penetrating glance. Again, for a moment, I felt as if he were
looking me through and through, as if my guilt were openly exposed
before him. But then, as he hastened towards me, who was tottering, and
held me upright in his arms, I recognised that it was only the
physician's glance with which he had examined me.
"'How long will she live yet?' I asked, closing my eyes.
"'She is dying!'
"At that moment something within me grew rigid, turned to stone. At
that moment hope died within me, and with it my faith in myself, in
happiness, in goodness. A great calm came over me. Death, which hovered
over this bed, had spread its dark pinions around my body too. With the
clear vision of a prophetess, I saw what yet remained to me of life,
spread out unveiled before my eyes. Like one dead I should henceforth
have to wander upon earth, like one dead I should have to cling to
life, like one dead see that happiness approach me, which was for ever
lost to me. Robert stepped up to me and embraced me. I calmly suffered
it, I felt nothing more.
"Then I sat down close to my sister's bedside, and looked at her,
waiting for her death.
"Attentively I followed every symptom of her slow expiring. I felt as
if my consciousness had separated itself from me, as if I could see
myself sitting there like a stone figure, staring into the dying
woman's face.
"No feverish illusion, no morbid self-incrimination any longer
disturbed the course of my ideas. It was by this time clear to me that
my wish could not in reality bring death upon her, and yet--for me and
my conscience it remained the wish alone which had killed her.
"Thus I sat, as her murderess, at her bedside, and waited for her death
which was also mine.
"It was a long time coming. The hours of the day passed and she still
lived. Her pulse had long ceased to beat, her heart seemed to stand
still, and yet her breath continued to come and go in short feeble
gasps. While I was lying in a morphia sleep, they had given her as a
last resource an injection of musk to revive her strength once more.
This was what she was existing on now. But the odour of musk, mingling
with the carbolic vapours, filled the room like some heavy, tangible
body, weighed on my brow and seemed to crush my temples. I felt as if
with every breath I were drinking in increasing burdens.
"In the afternoon Robert's parents came. I, who had yesterday shown my
aunt only pride and contempt, to-day kissed her hand in humiliation.
This was the beginning of the penance which I had inflicted upon myself
at Martha's death-bed, and which shall endure as long as I live.
"Evening came on. Marta still continued to breathe. With wide-open
mouth, her dead eyes covered with a film, she stared at me. Her body
seemed to get smaller and smaller, quite shrunk together she lay there.
It almost looked as if in death she did not venture to take up even the
small space which she had occupied during her lifetime.
"Aunt filled the house with her loathsome sobbing, and the others, too,
were weeping; I alone remained without tears.
"When towards eleven o'clock she had drawn her last breath, I fell into
a delirium.
* * * * *
"Just now I have returned from the manor.
"He was good and kind towards me, and in his eyes there gleamed a
half-hidden, bashful tenderness, which my soul drank in eagerly. I feel
as if a new spring-time must be coming, my heart is full of smiles and
laughter, and when I close my eyes golden sunlight rays seem to be
dancing round about me. But now away with this enervating dream of
happiness!
"If he should learn to love me, all the worse for him! I gave him no
occasion--no, indeed not! I should feel I must despise myself like a
very prostitute if I had done so. Since my convalescence I have managed
his household for him truly and faithfully, for more than a year,
without claiming his approval, without wishing to grow indispensable to
him. Even my dear aunt has had to recognise that, who almost forces her
hospitality upon me, in spite of my being personally so hateful to her.
She is much too good a housekeeper herself not to know that, but for
me, the household would have gone to rack and ruin in those days, when
Robert forgot everything in gloomy mourning for his dead--not even
taking any interest in the child, which she had left him as a pledge.
But for me, the poor little thing would be lying under the ground long
ago. I will not enumerate all I did and worked during this time. It is
surely not meet for me to play the Pharisee.
"Nor will I speak of expiation. How pompous the word sounds, and what
miserable self-deception generally hides behind it! How shall I wash
away what defiles me? One may expiate some tragic guilt, one can even
expiate some great crime, but a piece of baseness such as I committed,
cleaves to the soul for ever! Ah, if I did not know what secret desire
lurks in the depths of my heart!
"Why else should I require to stand there absolved before my own
conscience, if not in order that I might one day become his? As if
everlasting fate itself had not reared up a wall between us, reaching
up from the depths of _her_ grave as high as the stars.
"And if some demon should ever whisper into his ear, advising him to
stretch out his hand for me, what else could I do but repulse him, as
if for his audacity? But he will never do such a thing. I have
succeeded in keeping him at a distance. Let him believe that I have a
poor opinion of him, let him believe that I am haughty and unfeeling
through self-love. I shall know how to guard my heart's secret.
"If only one thing were not so!
"Sometimes, especially at night, when I am staring into the darkness, a
wild, mad longing comes over me with such power, that I feel as if I
must succumb to it. It seizes me like a feverish delirium; it dims my
senses, and makes my blood boil in my veins; it is the longing to lie
just for once upon his breast, and there to weep my heart out. For in
those nights my tears were dried up. I have never been able to weep
since the day when I found Martha lying on her sick-bed.
* * * * *
"_A fortnight later_.
"It has come to pass. He loves me. He came to woo me. Now I know that
there is an expiation! These tortures must indeed purify! Jesus,
I have lost my childish faith in Thee, but Thou wast a man. Thou hast
suffered like me. Thee I implore--no, this is madness! Come to your
senses, woman; pull yourself together. Is there not an everlasting
resting-place, whither you may flee by your own free will, if your
strength is no longer equal to the misery of this life? Who is to
prevent you?
"He loves me. I have attained it. But in order that he might love me,
Martha had first to perish, I myself had to sink down into an abyss of
guilt and shame from which no power in heaven or on earth can save me.
"I am dead. Dead shall be my desires and my hopes, and my rebellious
blood, which wells up seething at thought of him. I will soon compel it
to be calm; and if not----.
"Oh, how he stood before me, timidly stammering forth word by word. How
shyly and imploringly his eye sought mine, and yet how he hardly dared
to raise his glance from the ground. How, in his awkwardness, he
twisted the ends of his beard round his fingers, and stamped his foot
when he could not find the right word! Oh, my poor dear, big child, did
you not see how my every limb was trembling with the desire to rush
towards you and hold you tight for all eternity, did you not see how my
lips were twitching with the temptation to press themselves upon yours,
and to hang there till their last breath?
"Did you not see all this?
"Did you really believe the words, which half unconsciously I spoke to
you? My heart knows nothing of them, that I swear to you. I have loved
you ever since I can remember. I know that my last breath will utter
your name.
"And shame on you, if you really had faith in my pretexts! I leave you
for a rich girl! You, for whom I would gladly beg in the streets, for
whom I would work till my eyes grew dim and my fingers sore, if you
needed it!
"Do you remember that night in our parents' house, when you were wooing
Martha? Do you remember it and dare to insult me by putting faith in my
miserable excuses?
"And when at parting I gave you my hand, why did you look into my eyes
so sadly and humbly? Did you not know that now that look will haunt me
day and night like the reproach of some heavy crime I have committed
towards you?
"No, my friend, you are the only one on earth who have nothing to
reproach me with. Towards you I have acted honestly--and most honestly
to-day, even though you were never so unutterably deceived as to-day!
If only I might tell you how much I love you! How gladly would I die in
that self-same hour. Only once to lie upon your breast--only once to
hide my head upon your shoulder and weep, weep--weep blood and tears!
"You must never again look at me like that, my giant, as if I had had a
right to despise you, as if you were too simple and not good enough for
me. I do not know what I might not do in that case! Heaven protect you
from me and my love!
* * * * *
"_A week later_.
"And now I have done it _after all_! I have thrown myself upon his
neck; I have satiated myself with his kisses; I have wept my fill in
his arms!
"I am calm--quite calm. I have tasted whatever of happiness life had
left to offer me, the sinner.
"But what now?
"Since hours I have been face to face with the last great question:
'Shall I flee or die?'
"One or the other I must do this very night; for to-morrow he will come
to lead me to Martha's grave.
"Rather than follow him thither, I will die!
"But I will even assume that I could be enough of a hypocrite not to
drop down beside the grave and confess all to him, I will assume that I
should not be choked with loathing of myself, that I should really have
enough wretched courage to become his wife; what sort of a life should
I lead at his side?
"What is the good of clinging to happiness when one has long since
forfeited it? Should I not slink about like some poor criminal in her
last hours, everlastingly tortured by the fear of betraying myself to
him, and yet filled with the desire to proclaim my guilt to the whole
world? How could I sleep in the bed out of which I wished her into her
grave! How could I wake between the walls on which there still stands
written in flaming letters: 'Oh, that she might die!'
"I will converse quite calmly and sensibly with myself, as is meet for
one who is making up the account of her life. That I cannot become his
wife I know very well.
"Shall I flee?--What should I do among strangers? I know them. I know
these people and despise them. They have wrought evil towards me; they
would torment me again in the future.
"All the faith, all the love, all the hope still remaining to me, have
their foundation in him alone.
"So I must die! The bottles of morphia stand, well preserved, in the
corner of my cupboard. I had some suspicion that I might want them,
when, in defiance of the old doctor, I secretly saved up their
contents. The few hours of sleep which I thereby lost, will now be
amply compensated for.
"Only a letter yet to my uncle the doctor; he shall be my heir and my
confidant. Perhaps he can help me to wipe away all traces of my deed,
so that Robert may suspect nothing. Not a greeting to him. That is the
hardest of all, but it must be so.
* * * * *
"I have run out secretly and posted the letter. The watchman was
signalling midnight. How empty, how dark is the whole world! In the
lime-trees the wind is soughing. Here and there a light is sadly
gleaming as if to illumine hidden sorrows. A drunken fellow came
shouting along the road and made as if to attack me. Darkness, poverty,
and brutality out there--in here guilt and unappeasable longing--that
would be my future. Verily this life has nothing more to offer me.
"People talk and write so much about the terror of death. I feel
nothing of it. I am content, for I have wept my fill. Those suppressed
tears weighed heavily upon me; and weeping makes one weary, they say.
Good-night!"
The End.