While this violent and yet almost ridiculous scene was enacted in the
court, Jansen had been mounting the dark stairs with a heavy foot and a
heavier breath. No sound of a human being was heard in the house; only
the roaring and crackling of the open fire in the kitchen below. Half
way up the stairs he stood still and listened; it seemed to him as if
he heard the voice of his child. But it was only the ringing in his
ears, as the blood seemed to surge and boil in his veins.
"She will be asleep by this time," he said to himself. "So much the
better! She won't hear then what I have to say to her mother."
He trembled all over. And yet he had no fear of this meeting, that was
to be the last. He was afraid of himself, of the dark, violent spirit
that made him clinch his fists and gnash his teeth. "Be quiet!" he said
to himself, "be quiet! She is not worth such fury!"
He hastened up the last few steps and found himself in a long, dark
corridor. At one end a thin ray of light made its way through a
keyhole, and a broader gleam shone through the crack between the door
and the bent and warping threshold.
"It must be there!" he said. He took off his hat, and passed his
hand through his wet hair. "Let us make an end of it!" said he,
unconsciously repeating over and over again the words "an end!--an
end--an end!"
Then he stood before the door and listened. A voice which he did not
recognize was speaking; he stooped down and peeped in through the
keyhole. His eye lighted directly upon the face of an elderly woman who
was talking earnestly, but perfectly quietly. He recognized the old
singer, his wife's mother, whom he had always disliked even at the time
of his maddest infatuation. She sat in a corner of the sofa, and drank
now and then, in the short pauses she made, from a little silver cup
that stood by the side of a traveling-flask. At the same time she broke
up a biscuit and put the pieces in her mouth with an affected movement
of the hand, all the while displaying her false teeth to advantage.
Near her, sunk back in an arm-chair, lay her daughter; she was dressed
entirely in black, which became her white skin and deep blue eyes
charmingly. She was playing with a pair of scissors, making them flash
in the candle-light, and looked as wearied and indifferent to all about
her, as though she had just come home from the theatre where she been
acting in some tiresome piece with only tolerable success.
Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened
noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected
to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to
this obscure hiding-place.
The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not
ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only
her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be
alive.
"Leave the room; I have something to say to my wife!" Jansen said to
her in a low voice and without violence. "Do you hear what I say? Go
away this instant! but through this door, by which I entered."
He wanted to prevent her from taking the child with her, for he took it
for granted that it had been put to bed in the adjoining room.
The women exchanged a quick look. These few moments sufficed to restore
the younger one to self-possession.
"You must not leave me," she said. "In whatever I am to hear--since I
am conscious of my innocence--I need shun no witnesses, least of all my
own mother."
And as she spoke she sank back again into the chair, and passed her
hand across her eyes, as though overcome by painful memories. The old
woman on the sofa did not move. They could only hear how she murmured
softly to herself: "Good God! Good God! What a scene! What a
catastrophe!"
"I repeat my demand!" the sculptor said with emphasis. "Will you wait
for me to take your arm and lead you out?"
"Very good; I will go; I will not let matters be brought to the worst,"
cried the mother, rising with a pathetic gesture. Then she bent down
over Lucie and whispered something in her ear. "No, no," hastily
answered the latter, "not a word to him. That would only make the
matter worse. Go, if it must be so. I am not afraid!"
She spoke the last words aloud and facing toward Jansen, whom she
looked straight in the eyes without a trace of terror. Any stranger
would have been deceived by this air of conscious innocence.
The old singer slammed the door behind her. They heard her, as she
passed down the corridor. But it did not escape Jansen's ears that she
crept back and remained standing outside the door to listen.
"Let her stay, for what I care!" he said to himself, "as long as I
needn't see her face." Then came again the feverish: "We must make an
end--an end--an end!" He took his stand before the stove, in which the
remains of a fire still glowed. With folded arms he stood gazing down
upon the woman who had been the curse of his life. In the midst of his
terrible anguish it flashed across him that not a feature of her face
gave evidence of the seven years that had passed since they had been
separated. She even appeared younger, more girlish and more
unsophisticated than when he had first known her. Nothing could be read
on those soft lips or on that clear forehead but a sort of curiosity,
an innocent wonder as to what was coming. Her soft, quiet hand had
taken up the scissors again, and was playfully opening and shutting
them.
An almost unbearable thought, a crushing sense of shame suddenly rose
within him, as he realized that this mask had once deceived him; had
excited him to mad passion, and had flattered him into reposing in it
an undying faith--this smooth lie, this cold smile, that did not desert
her even now, when he whom she had so bitterly injured had to put forth
all his strength in order to pass through this hour manfully.
"I am here," said he at length, "to--to make an end of this. I hope you
will not make it more difficult for me than is necessary. I will not
ask you the reasons that have led you to act against our agreement, and
to cross my path again. You have a fondness for masquerading, and I
must let you indulge it as much as you like; all the more as I, for my
part, give you up utterly. I merely wish to warn you that if you ever
again feel a desire to approach me in any kind of disguise, take care
not to lose the mask. I could not bear to see your face again, and my
hot blood might play me false."
She bent her eyes upon him with a perfectly unembarrassed look, as if
asking whether he was really serious when he said these words--whether
he really could not bear the sight of this gentle face.
"Have no fear," she answered, softly, in an almost bashful tone. "I am
not coming again. I have seen all that I wanted to see. It was
certainly a pardonable curiosity that made me want to see what kind of
a face one must have to find favor in your eyes; and if I--"
"Silence!" he interrupted, imperiously. "You shall hear me to the
end--to the very end. If, as I hope, you are not unmindful of your own
interests, and will listen to reason, our last interview will end
peacefully, and I will give you my thanks for having brought it about.
I will then take my child away with me, and promise you that I will try
hard to think of you without anger."
"The child?"
"The child that you have just stolen, that you wished to keep with you
in pawn, that you might carry out Heaven knows what miserable scheme."
"You are very much mistaken," she interposed, and a slight blush
mounted to her cheeks. "The child is not here."
"Don't attempt to deceive me!" he cried, with sudden fury. "I know you
have kidnapped the child--it is asleep in the next room--you fled to
this place to conceal your capture from me; to-morrow, early, you
intended to continue the flight."
"You are raving again!" she said calmly, and laid the scissors down on
the table. "Look yourself, and see whether the child is here with me.
There stands the lamp; search the house, if you do not believe me."
He stretched out his hand mechanically, took the light, and opened the
door of the adjoining chamber. The beds that stood there were empty.
With a threatening look he turned upon her.
"Shall I search the house room by room?" he asked, his voice trembling
with anger.
"It would be useless trouble. I swear to you, I did not bring the child
with me."
"Trickster!" he cried, setting the light down on the table with such
force that the flame was almost extinguished. "Only this once the
truth--only this once! Where is the child? What have you done with her?
In whose hands--"
"In the best of hands," she interrupted, "under the very safest
protection, so help me God! I--it is true--I had an irresistible
longing to see my poor child once more, whom you have made motherless
and to whom you wish to give a mother who can have no heart for the
orphan. If it is a crime for the real mother not to wish to see her
child given to the false one, then I have committed such a crime. I
wanted to steal it for myself, to be a thief of that which is my own,
purchased with pain and lost with pain; but it happened differently--I
was not to have it, in punishment for not having defended my rights
more boldly. Oh! and this cruel, pitiless man, who has robbed me of
everything, even of this last short, desperate consolation--"
Her voice appeared to fail her. She covered her face with her white
hands, and was silent. But the time when she might have deceived him
was past.
"Where is the child?" he asked, after a short pause, stepping close up
to her.
She did not remove her hands from before her eyes.
"I sent it back to you. I saw that the innocent creature had been
brought up in hatred toward her mother, and that I could not hope to
win her young heart back to me again. What I felt--but enough! What do
you care for my sorrows? I pressed the child to my breast for the last
time, and then let her go from me forever. When you get home, you will
find her there. This is the truth. And if I had to die this moment I
could not say anything else."
She drew herself up at these words; her eyes glistened with moisture,
her features assumed an expression of anxious emotion, and her gestures
were hasty and ungraceful.
"Well?" she queried. "Are you not yet satisfied? Have I something still
that your hate begrudges me, that you would like to tear from me? Take
it--take all I have--take even my miserable life, that you have spared
me until now, for I see what you are aiming at when you say you want to
put an end to this. Yes, an end to my woes, to my disappointed hopes,
to my happiness and my honor--an end to this wretched creature, that
wanders through the world like a leaf torn from a tree, finding rest
nowhere--nowhere until it sinks into the mud and rots there."
She threw herself on the sofa, and burst into a flood of tears.
He knew these tears. He knew that she possessed the art of moving
herself in order to move others. But still he felt a deep pity for this
unhappy nature, which could not even in its truest grief weep truly.
"Lucie," he said--it was the first time he had addressed her by her
name--"you are quite right, you are unhappy and I am partly to blame
for it. I ought to have been a wiser man, and never to have thought of
making you my wife. We are of different blood; you are in your element
when you are pretending to be something you are not. I--but why talk
about it? We know it all--we ought to have known it then; it would have
spared us much bitterness. And now, Lucie, you see I am not unjust; I
share the blame between us, just as I have borne my good half of the
misfortune. But shall it go on this way and make both of us wretched
all our lives? I have written all this to you. Why didn't you read my
letters better? We should now understand one another, and should be
able to conclude what still remains to be done in a more friendly
spirit."
"Your letters?" she said, suddenly drawing herself up and drying her
tears. "I read them only too well. I know that in and between the lines
there was but one thought: 'I will be free!--free at any price!' I
knew, too, who it was who dictated this thought to you; and now, since
I have made the personal acquaintance of this incomparable woman--no,
without sarcasm, which would be but childish defiance for one in my
situation--I understand perfectly that you would be willing to do
anything in order that you might throw yourself into such chains. But
to suppose that I, with my share of our common misfortune, as you call
it, will voluntarily step back and look on while you find happiness
according to your heart's desire--oh! you are excellent egotists, you
men!--but you should not be so _naive_ as to think it a crime if we,
too, sometimes think a little about ourselves!"
His old aversion arose again as he listened to this well-calculated,
passionate speech. But he forced himself to be quiet.
"I have never tried to conceal from you," said he, "that I am now more
desirous than ever before for an absolute separation, because I wish to
enter into a new marriage. If you thought it was for your interest to
hinder this, if you wished to prevent me from ever again becoming a
happy man, then this would be comprehensible on your part, although it
would betray but little pride. But you ought to know me better. You
ought to know that I am terribly in earnest when I say my submission to
the fate that binds us together is at an end. I can--I _shall_ never
consent to let the malicious defiance of a woman cheat myself and her
whom I love of our happiness in life. I am determined to do _anything_
which can set me free. Do you hear it? To do _anything_. And for that
reason I say to you: name your price! I know very well that your desire
to feel that I am in your power, and the triumph of seeing me drag a
piece of the chain after me is dear to you. But even dearer things have
their price. Name yours; I will buy off your hate and your malice,
though to do it I had to work like a day-laborer from morning until
late into the night."
"I don't imagine that will be necessary. Your sweetheart is rich, I
hear. But you are mistaken. I am not covetous. Give me the child, and I
will never have known the father."
"Woman!" he cried, his whole being lashed into fury by the trick which
he immediately detected--"You are--"
But he controlled himself. He sank down a chair near the sofa, and
said, in a tone as if he were communicating something of the greatest
indifference to her:
"Very good. You remain untouched by words or prayers. But let me tell
you: I am as determined to set myself free as you can possibly be to
keep me forever in a state of wretched bondage. If you will consent to
a legal separation, you shall never have occasion to complain of me. I
will double what I have done for you heretofore; yes--I will guarantee
that you shall not lose this part enjoyment of my income even by any
second marriage you may be disposed to enter into. You smile and
pretend to be incredulous. Let us play an honest game. You are young
and beautiful; though I doubt whether you will ever find a man to whom
your heart will go forth. You may easily find a man who will seduce
your senses, and whose position will attract you, and then our account
would be at an end. If you resist this just compromise--"
She looked at him again with all her childish innocence, with that
smiling curiosity as though they had to do with a scene in a farce.
"Well--and then?" she asked.
"Then I will take every means in my power to ruin your life as you have
ruined mine. I will pursue you with my hate, no matter whither you may
flee, and dog your steps, do what you will to hinder! I know how you
live, and that you have neglected no chance to console yourself for the
loss of a husband. I have cast you out of my heart so entirely that I
did not feel the least shade of sorrow when you threw yourself away
upon whomsoever pleased you. But that shall be otherwise now. I will
put a spy on your track, whose only duty shall be to watch you every
step and movement, and to furnish me what I have hitherto lacked:
_proofs_ that you are trampling my honor as well as my happiness under
foot. Then I will openly step before the world and tear the mask from
your smooth face. Then I will--"
"You would do better to spare yourself the trouble," she interrupted,
coldly. "Since you are so good as to warn me, you will easily
understand that, even admitting I should feel any desire to be
indiscreet, I should take care to guard myself against spies. So you
would only throw away your money without gaining anything by it. For
such weak proof of my guilt toward you as a glove, that very likely the
doctor left lying in my chamber, and that an intelligent dog--_a
propos_! I am really sorry that I was the innocent cause of the loss of
your friend, though that keen judge of human nature did show as
unconquerable an aversion toward me as his master. Some other end would
undoubtedly have been preferred by you. At the same time, little as my
wretched life may be worth to you, and easier as it would be for you to
find a second wife than a second dog--"
"Woman!" he shrieked, driven furious by her impudent irony in this
terrible hour. "Not another word, or--"
"Or?"
She looked at him defiantly, as she rose and folded her arms.
"Or I will bring the matter to another end than you ever dreamed of,
and the carriage that you brought you here, you she-devil, laughing and
mocking at me with your pretty paramour, shall to-morrow--"
He raised his fist as if he were about to let it fall like a hammer on
her head. She returned his gaze without moving an eyelash.
"Murder me, if you have the heart to!" she said, coldly, with her lips
curled in scorn. "The comedy in which a dog has played such a splendid
_role_ would then end most fittingly as a tragedy, which would be
better, at all events, than a wretched reconciliation. As truly as I am
innocent of your madness and fury, so truly do I say that a more
undeserved disgrace was never heaped upon a helpless creature; that
happiness, honor, and future were never more ruthlessly--"
The door was thrown open. Felix, who had pushed back the listening
woman, thinking that the time had come to prevent an act of violence,
burst into the room and suddenly stood before the speaker. But scarcely
had she cast a look upon him than, with a shrill scream that went
through the very marrow of the men, she sank back, her arms as if
paralyzed by a sudden cramp, her features distorted, and in a state
that bore such unmistakable signs of truth that no thought of its being
some new deception was possible. Before Jansen had had time to collect
himself, the mother rushed in from the corridor and threw herself down
before her insensible daughter, who lay on the sofa with staring,
wide-open eyes, a vacant smile upon her lips, and hands hanging rigidly
at her side with the fingers spread wide apart.
"You have killed her!" cried the old woman, trying to lift the body,
which had half fallen to the ground, on to the cushions. "Help--save
her--bring water, vinegar--anything you have--Lucie--my poor
Lucie--don't you hear me? It is I! My God! My God! Must it come to
this!"
"It is a fainting-fit, nothing more!" Jansen's voice now broke in. "She
has had such fits before, especially after great exertion on the stage.
And to-day's scene--" his speech suddenly failed him. He had turned as
he spoke toward Felix, who stood in the middle of the room, his eyes
fixed immovably upon the figure of the insensible woman. It was as if
the lightning-bolt that had struck her had grazed him too. Not a limb
did he move, not a muscle stirred in his face; every drop of blood
seemed to have left his veins.
"Felix! For God's sake what ails you? What is it? do you hear me,
Felix?" cried Jansen, grasping his arm and pressing it tight.
Felix made a vain attempt to master himself again. But he could
not withdraw his gaze from the woman, who lay there as if dead.
He merely nodded a few times, as if to give a sign of life, and
heaved a deep sigh. Then he said, bringing out each word separately:
"So--that--is--your wife!"
"Felix!" cried Jansen, in a tone which betrayed a terrible suspicion.
"Felix--speak--no--say nothing--come out--we--we are in the way here--"
"So that--is--his wife!" repeated the other, as if talking to himself.
Suddenly he shook himself with a gesture of horror, broke loose from
his friend, and rushed out of the room with such terrible haste
as to cut off all chance for Jansen to detain him. They heard him,
immediately afterward, plunge down the stairs and fling the door to
behind him.
Jansen hurried to the window and threw it open. "Felix," he shouted
after him--"one word--just a single word!"
No sound came up from below. Only the wet snow drove in through the
open window, upon the head and breast of this sore-burdened man. He did
not notice it. He leaned against the window-sill to support himself,
and stood for perhaps ten minutes deaf and blind to all that went on
around him.
The old singer was trying, with continual moaning and laments, to bring
her insensible daughter back to life. She had produced a little flask
of some strong essence from her traveling-bag, and was bathing the
young woman's colorless cheeks and temples with it. Jansen had turned
his eyes upon the group, but he did so as if he took no notice of what
was being done for the lifeless figure. Not until she had made a slight
movement with her hand, that immediately dropped back again upon the
cushion, did he seem to recollect himself. He stepped away from the
window without closing it.
"Let the cold air come in," he said, in a low voice. "It is the best
way to bring her to herself again. Put some snow on her forehead; she
will open her eyes in a few moments. Tell her, then, that I have left
the house, and--that I shall leave her in peace. Goodnight!"
Her mother raised herself from her knees and sought to make some reply.
But when she saw his face she was silent, and merely nodded timidly and
servilely to all he said. She saw him go out of the room, and then
hastened again to the aid of her daughter, who was now breathing
heavily. She finally succeeded in raising her into a sitting position,
but the pale head fell back again on the arm of the sofa. Then she ran
to the window and brought a few handfuls of the snow that lay on the
sill outside. At length the insensible woman opened her eyes.
Her first, half-vacant gaze wandered over the room. After a while she
became thoroughly aroused, and moved her lips.
"Where is he?" she murmured.
Just at that moment they heard the hoof-beats of a horse galloping off.
"Do you hear?" whispered the mother. "He is just riding away. He won't
come again--he told me to wish you good-night, and he would leave you
alone. Oh! these men--Oh! these men! Poor, poor Lucie!"
The pale woman appeared even now not quite to understand. Her features
were still distorted in fear. She drew her mother nearer, and
whispered: "And the other--was it really he, or was it--his ghost?"
"What do you mean, child? Are you out of your head? But only keep
quiet--it's to be hoped we shall have a quiet night--oh! my God! What a
scene, what a catastrophe!"
She seized the cup of wine, and drank it out. Lucie paid no attention
to her.
A shudder passed over her. She closed her eyes anew. The convulsion
which had seized upon her now lapsed into a violent sobbing, which her
mother, who had seen her before in such a fit, allowed to take its
course without making any attempt to waste further words in
consolation.