AT THE CHILD'S BEDSIDE.
The stars were already twinkling above the Griess, here and there one
looked as if impaled on a giant flagstaff, as they sparkled just above
the tops of the lofty firs or the sharp pinnacles of the crags.
Countless shooting stars glided hither and thither like loving glances
seeking one another.
The night was breathing in long regular inhalations. Every five minutes
her sleeping breath rustled the tree-tops.
Four horses drawing a small calash whose wheels were covered with
rubber glided across the Griess as noiselessly as a spectral equipage.
The animals knew the way, and their fiery spirit urged them forward
without the aid of shout or lash, though the mountain grew steeper and
steeper till the black walls of the hunting seat at last became visible
in the glimmering star-light.
Josepha was standing at the window of the little sitting-room upstairs:
"I think the countess is coming." At a table, by the lamp, bending over
a book, sat "the _steward_."
He evidently had not heard the words, for he did not look up from the
volume and it seemed as if the gloomy shadow above his eyes grew darker
still.
"Joseph, the countess is coming!" cried Josepha in a louder tone.
"You are deceiving yourself again, as usual," he replied in the
wonderful voice which gave special importance to the simplest words, as
when a large, musical bell is rung for some trivial cause.
"No, this time it really is she," Josepha insisted.
"I don't believe it."
Josepha shook her head. "You must receive her."
"She is not coming on my account, it is only to see the child."
"Then _I_ will go. Oh, Heaven, what a life!" sighed Josepha, going out
upon the green moss-covered steps of the half ruined stone stairs where
the carriage had just stopped.
"Is that you, Josepha?" asked the countess, in a disappointed tone,
"where--where is Freyer?"
"He is within, your Highness, he would not believe that your Highness
was really coming!"
The countess understood the bitter meaning of the words.
"I did not come to endure ill-temper!" she murmured. "Is the boy
asleep?"
"Yes, we have taken him into the sitting-room, he is coughing again and
his head is burning, so I wanted to have him in a warmer room."
"Isn't it warm here?"
"Since the funnel fell out, we cannot heat these rooms; Freyer tried to
fit it in, but it smokes constantly. I wrote to your Highness last
month asking what should be done. Freyer, too, reported a fortnight ago
that the stove ought to be repaired, and the child moved to other
apartments before the cold weather set in if Your Highness approved,
but--we have had no answer. Now the little boy is ill--it is beginning
to be very cold."
Madeleine von Waldenau bit her lips. Yes, it was true, the letters had
been written--and in the whirl of society and visits she had forgotten
them.
Now the child was ill--through her fault. She entered the sitting-room.
Freyer stood waiting for her in a half defiant, half submissive
attitude--half master, half servant.
The bearing was unlovely, like everything that comes from a false
position. It displeased the countess and injured Freyer, though she had
herself placed him in this situation. It made him appear awkward and
clownish.
When, with careless hand, we have damaged a work of art and perceive
that instead of improving we have marred it, we do not blame ourselves,
but the botched object, and the innocent object must suffer because we
have spoiled our own pleasure in it. It is the same with the work of
art of creation--a human being.
There are some natures which can never leave things undisturbed, but
seek to gain a creative share in everything by attempts at shaping and
when convinced that it would have been better had they left the work
untouched, they see in the imperfect essay, not their own want of
skill, but the inflexibility of the material, pronounce it not worth
the labor bestowed--and cast it aside.
The countess had one of these natures, so unconsciously cruel in their
artistic experiments, and her marred object was--Freyer.
Therefore his bearing did not, could not please her, and she allowed a
glance of annoyance to rest upon him, which did not escape his notice.
Passing him, she went to their son's bed.
There lay the "infant Christ," a boy six or seven years old with silken
curls and massive brows, beneath whose shadow the closed eyes were
concealed by dark-lashed lids. A single ray from the hanging lamp fell
upon the forehead of the little Raphael, and showed the soft brows knit
as if with unconscious pain.
The child was not happy--or not well--or both. He breathed heavily in
his sleep, and there was a slight nervous twitching about the
delicately moulded nostrils.
"He has evidently lost flesh since I was last here!" said the countess
anxiously.
Freyer remained silent.
"What do you think?" asked the mother.
"What can I think? You have not seen the boy for so _long_ that you can
judge whether he has altered far better than I."
"Joseph!" The beautiful woman drew herself up, and a look of genuine
sorrow rested upon the pale, irritated countenance of her husband.
"Whenever I come, I find nothing save bitterness and cutting
words--open and secret reproaches. This is too much. Not even to-day,
when I find my child ill, do you spare the mother's anxious heart. This
is more than I can endure, it is ignoble, unchivalrous."
"Pardon me," replied her husband in a low tone, "I could not suppose
that a mother who deserts her child for months could possibly possess
so tender a nature that she would instantly grow anxious over a slight
illness or a change in his appearance. I am a plain man, and cannot
understand such contradictions!"
"Yes, from your standpoint you are right--in your eyes I must seem a
monster of heartlessness. I almost do in my own. Yet, precisely because
the reproach appears merited it cuts me so deeply, that is why it would
be generous and noble to spare me! Oh! Freyer, what has become of the
great divine love which once forgave my every fault?"
"It is where you have banished it, buried in the depths of my heart, as
I am buried among these lonely mountains, silent and forgotten."
The countess, shaking her head, gazed earnestly at him. "Joseph, you
see that I am suffering. You must see that it would be a solace to rest
in your love, and you are ungenerous enough to humble my bowed head
still more."
"I have no wish to humble you. But we can be generous only to those who
need it. I see in the haughty Countess Wildenau a person who can
exercise generosity, but not require it."
"Because you do not look into the depths of my heart, tortured with
agonies of unrest and self-accusation?" As she spoke tears sprang to
her eyes, and she involuntarily thought of the faithful, shrewd friend
at home whose delicate power of perception had that very day spared her
the utterance of a single word, and at one glance perceived all the
helplessness of her situation.
True, the _latter_ was a man of the world whom the tinsel and glitter
which surrounded her no longer had power to dazzle, and who was
therefore aware how poor and wretched one can be in the midst of
external magnificence.
The _former_--a man of humble birth, with the childish idea of the
value of material things current among the common people, could not
imagine that a person might be surrounded by splendor and luxury, play
a brilliant part in society, and yet be unhappy and need consideration.
But, however, she might apologize for him, the very excuses lowered him
still more in her eyes! Each of these conflicts seemed to widen the
gulf between them instead of bridging it.
Such scenes, which always reminded her afresh of his lowly origin, did
him more injury in her eyes than either of them suspected at the
moment. They were not mere ebullitions of anger, which yielded to
equally sudden reactions--they were not phases of passion, but the
result of cool deliberation from the standpoint of the educated woman,
which ended in hopeless disappointment.
The continual refrain: "You do not understand me!" with which the
countess closed such discussions expressed the utter hopelessness of
their mutual relations.
"You wonder that I come so rarely!" she said bitterly. "And yet it is
you alone who are to blame--nay, you have even kept me from the bedside
of my child."
"Indeed?" Freyer with difficulty suppressed his rising wrath. "This,
too!"
"Yes, how can you expect me to come gladly, when I always encounter
scenes like these? How often, when I could at last escape from the
thousand demands of society, and hurried hither with a soul thirsting
for love, have you repulsed me with your perpetual reproaches which you
make only because you have no idea of my relations and the claims of
the fashionable world. So, at last, when I longed to come here to my
husband and my child, dread of the unpleasant scenes which shadow your
image, held me back, and I preferred to conjure before me at home the
Freyer whom I once loved and always should love, if you did not
yourself destroy the noble image. With _that_ Freyer I have sweet
intercourse by my lonely fireside--with _him_ I obtain comfort and
peace, if I avoid _this_ Freyer with his petty sensitiveness, his
constant readiness to take umbrage." A mournful smile illumined her
face as she approached him; "You see that when I think of the Freyer of
whom I have just spoken--the Freyer of my imagination--my heart
overflows and my eyes grow dim! Do you no longer know that Freyer? Can
you not tell me where I shall find him again if I seek him very, _very_
earnestly?"
Freyer opened his arms and pointed to his heart: "Here, here, you can
find him, if you desire--come, my beloved, loved beyond all things
earthly, come to the heart which is only sick and sensitive from
longing for you."
In blissful forgetfulness she threw herself upon his breast, completely
overwhelmed by another wave of the old illusion, losing herself
entirely in his ardent embrace.
"Oh, my dear wife!" he murmured in her ear, "I know that I am irritable
and unjust! But you do not suspect the torment to which you condemn me.
Banished from your presence, far from my home, torn from my native
soil, and not yet rooted in yours. What life is this? My untrained
reason is not capable of creating a philosophy which could solve this
mystery. Why must these things be? I am married, yet not married. I am
your husband, yet you are not my wife. I have committed no crime, yet
am a prisoner, am not a dishonored man--yet am a despised one who must
conceal himself in order not to bring shame upon his wife!
"So the years passed and life flits by!" You come often, but--I might
almost say only to make me taste once more the joys of the heaven from
which I am banished.
"Ah, it is more cruel than all the tortures of bell, for the condemned
souls are not occasionally transferred to Heaven only to be again
thrust forth and suffer a thousandfold. Even the avenging God is not so
pitiless."
The countess, overwhelmed by this heavy charge, let her head sink upon
her husband's breast.
"See, my wife," he continued in a gentle, subdued tone, whose magic
filled her heart with that mournful pleasure with which we listen to a
beautiful dirge even beside the corpse of the object of our dearest
love. "In your circles people probably have sufficient self-control to
suppress a great sorrow. I know that I only weary and annoy you by my
constant complaints, and that you will at last prefer to avoid me
entirely rather than expose yourself to them!
"I know this--yet I cannot do otherwise. I was not trained to
dissimulation--self-control, as you call it--I cannot laugh when my
heart is bleeding or utter sweet words when my soul is full of
bitterness. I do not understand what compulsion could prevent you, a
free, rich woman, from coming to the husband whom you love, and I
cannot believe that you could not come if you longed to do so--that is
why I so often doubt your love.
"What should you love in me? I warned you that I cannot always move
about with the crown of thorns and sceptre of reeds as Ecce Homo, and
you now perceive that you were deceived in me, that I am only a poor,
ordinary man, your inferior in education and intellect! And so long as
I am not a real Ecce Homo--though that perhaps might happen--so long I
am not what you need. But however poor and insignificant I may be--I am
not without honor--and when I think that you only come occasionally,
out of compassion, to bring the beggar the crumbs which your fine
gentlemen have left me--then, I will speak frankly--then my pride
rebels and I would rather starve than accept alms."
"And therefore you thrust back the loving wife when, with an
overflowing heart, she stole away from the glittering circles of
society to hasten to your side, therefore you were cold and stern,
disdaining what the others _sought in vain_!--For, however distant you
may be, there has not been an hour of my life which you might not have
witnessed--however free and independent of you I may stand, there is
not a fibre in my heart which does not cling to you! Ah, if you could
only understand this deep, sacred tie which binds the freest spirit to
the husband, the father of my child. If I had wings to soar over every
land and sea--I should ever be drawn back to you and would return as
surely as 'the bird bound by the silken cord.' No one can part me from
you except _you yourself_. That you are not my equal in education, as
you assert, does not sever us, but inferiority of _character_ would do
so, for nothing but _greatness_ attracts me--to find you base would be
the death-knell of our love! Even the child would no longer be a bond
between us, for to intellectual natures like mine the ties of blood are
mere animal instincts, unless pervaded and transfigured by a loftier
idea. The greatest peril which threatens our love is that your narrow
views prevent your attaining the standpoint from which a woman like
myself must be judged. I have great faults which need great indulgence
and a superiority which is not alarmed by them. Unfortunately, my
friend, you lack both. I have a great love for you--but you measure it
by the contracted scales of your humdrum morality, and before this it
vanishes because its dimensions far transcend it.--Where, where, my
friend, is the grandeur, the freedom of the soul which I need?"
"Alas, your words are but too true," said Freyer, releasing her from
his embrace. "Every word is a death sentence. You ask a grandeur which
I do not possess and shall never obtain. I grew up in commonplace
ideas, I have never seen any other life than that in which the husband
and wife belonged together, the father and mother reared, tended, and
watched their children together, and love in this close, tender
companionship reached its highest goal. This idea of quiet domestic
happiness embodied to me all the earthly bliss allotted by God to
Christian husbands and wives. Of a love which is merely incidental,
something in common with all the other interests of life, and which
when it comes in conflict with them, must move aside and wait till it
is permitted to assert itself again, of such a love I had no
conception--at least, not in marriage! True, we know that in the dawn
of love it is kept secret as something which must be hidden. But this
is a state of restless torture, which we strive to end as soon as
possible by a marriage. That such a condition of affairs would be
possible in marriage would never have entered my mind, and say what you
will, a--marriage like ours is little better than an illegal relation."
The countess started--she had had the same thought that very day.
"And I "--Freyer inexorably continued--"am little more than your lover!
If you choose to be faithful to me, I shall be grateful, but do not ask
the 'grandeur' as you call it, of my believing it. Whoever regards
conjugal duties so lightly--whoever, like you, feels bound by no law
'which was only made for poor, ordinary people' will keep faith
only--so long as it is agreeable to do so."
The countess, gazing into vacancy, vainly strove to find a reply.
"This seems very narrow, very ridiculous from your lofty standpoint.
You see I shall always be rustic. It is a misfortune for you that
you came to me. Why did you not remain in your own aristocratic
circle--gentlemen of noble birth would have understood you far better
than a poor, plain man like me. I tell myself so daily--it is the worm
which gnaws at my life. Now you have the 'greatness' you desire, the
only 'greatness' I can offer--that of the perception of our misery."
Madeleine nodded hopelessly. "Yes, we are in an evil strait. I despair
more and more of restoring peace between us--for it would be possible
only in case I could succeed in making you comprehend the necessity of
the present certainly unnatural form of our marriage. Yet you cannot
and will not see that a woman like me cannot live in poverty, that
wealth, though it does not render me happy, is nevertheless
indispensable, not on account of the money, but because with it honor,
power, and distinction would be lost. You know that this would follow
an acknowledgement of our marriage, and I would die rather than resign
them. I was born to a station too lofty to be content in an humble
sphere. Do you expect the eagle to descend to a linnet's nest and dwell
there? It would die, for it can breathe only in the regions for which
it was created."
"But the eagle should never have stooped to the linnet," said Freyer,
gloomily.
"I believed that I should find in you a consort, aspiring enough to
follow me to my heights, for the wings of your genius rustled with
mighty strokes above me when you hung upon the cross. Oh, can one who,
like you, has reached the height of the cross, sink to the Philistine
narrowness of the ideas of the lower classes and thrust aside the
foaming elixir of love, because it is not proffered in the usual wooden
bowl of the daily performance of commonplace duties? It is incredible,
but true. And lastly you threaten that I shall make you an Ecce Homo!
If you were, it would be no fault of mine but because, even in daily
life, you could not cease to play the Christ."
The countess had spoken with cutting sharpness and bitterness; it
seemed as if the knife she turned against the man she loved must be
piercing her own heart.
Freyer's breath came heavily, but no sound betrayed the anguish of the
wound he had received. But the child, as if feeling, even in its sleep,
that its mother was about to sunder, with a fatal blow, the chord of
life uniting her to the father and itself, quivered in pain and flung
its little hands into the air, as though to protect the mysterious bond
whose filaments ran through its heart also.
"See, the child feels our strife and suffers from it!" said Freyer, and
the unutterable pain in the words swept away all hardness, all
defiance. The mother, with tearful eyes, sank down beside the bed of
the suffering child--languishing under the discord between her and its
father like a tender blossom beneath the warfare of the elements. "My
child!" she said in a choking voice, "how thin your little hands have
grown! What does this mean?"
She pressed the boy's transparent little hands to her lips and when she
looked up again two wonderful dark eyes were gazing at her from the
child's pale face. Yes, those were the eyes of the infant Redeemer of
the World in the picture of the Sistine Madonna, the eyes which mirror
the foreboding of the misery of a world. It was the expression of
Freyer's, but spiritualized, and as single sunbeams dance upon a dark
flood, it seemed as if golden rays from his mother's sparkling orbs had
leaped into his.
What a marvellous child! The mother's delicate beauty, blended with the
deep earnestness of the father, steeped in the loveliness and
transfiguration of Raphael. And she could wound the father of this boy
with cruel words? She could scorn the wonderful soul of Freyer, which
gazed at her in mute reproach from the eyes of the child, because the
woe of the Redeemer had impressed upon it indelible traces; disdain it
beside the bed of this boy, this pledge of a love whose supernatural
power transformed the man into a god, to rest for a moment in a divine
embrace? "Mother!" murmured the boy softly, as if in a waking dream;
but Madeleine von Wildenau felt with rapture that he meant _her_, not
Josepha. Then he closed his eyes again and slept on.
Kneeling at the son's bedside, she held out her hand to the father; it
seemed as if a trembling ray of light entered her soul, reflected from
the moment when he had formerly approached her in all the radiance of
his power and beauty.
"And _we_ should not love each other?" she said, while binning tears
flowed down her cheeks. Freyer drew her from, the child's couch,
clasping her in a close embrace. "My dove!" He could say no more, grief
and love stifled his voice.
She threw her arms around his neck, as she had done when she made her
penitent confession with such irresistible grace that he would have
pardoned every mortal sin. "Forgive me, Joseph," she said softly, in
order not to wake the boy who, even in sleep, turned his little head
toward his parents, as a flower sways toward the sun. "I am a poor,
weak woman; I myself suffer unutterably under the separation from you
and the child; if you knew how I often feel--a rock would pity me! It
is a miserable condition--nothing is mine, neither you, my son, nor my
wealth, unless I sacrifice one for the other, and that I cannot resolve
to do. Ah, have compassion, on my weakness. It is woman's way to bear
the most unendurable condition rather than form an energetic resolve
which might change it. I know that the right course would be for me to
find courage to renounce the world and say: 'I am married, I will
resign, as my husband's will requires, the Wildenau fortune; I will
retire from the stage as a beggar--I will starve and work for my daily
bread.' I often think how beautiful and noble this would be, and that
perhaps we might be happy so--happier than we are now--if it were only
_done_! But when I seriously face the thought, I feel that I cannot do
it."
"Yet you told me in Ammergau," cried Freyer, "that it was only on your
father's account that you could not acknowledge the marriage. Your
father is now a paralytic, half-foolish old man, who cannot live long,
then this reason will be removed."
"Yes, when we married it _was_ he who prevented me from announcing it;
I wished to do so, and it would have been easy. But if I state the fact
now, after having been secretly married eight years, during which I
have illegally retained the property, I shall stamp myself a cheat.
Take me to the summit of the Kofel and bid me leap down its thousand
feet of cliff--I cannot, were it to purchase my eternal salvation. Hurl
me down--I care not--but do not expect me voluntarily to take the
plunge, it is impossible. Unless God sends an angel to bear me over the
chasm on its wings, all pleading will be futile."
She pressed her cheek, burning with the fever of fear, tenderly against
his: "Have pity on my weakness, forgive me! Ah, I know I am always
talking about greatness--yet with me it exists only in the imagination.
I am too base to be capable of what is really noble."
"You see me now, as God Himself beholds me. He will judge me--but it is
the privilege of marital love to forgive. Will you not use this sweet
right? Perhaps God will show me some expedient. Perhaps I shall succeed
in making an agreement with the relatives or gaining the aid of the
king, but for all this I must live in the world--in order to secure
influence and scope for my plans. Will you have patience and
forbearance with me till there is a change?"
"That will never be, any more than during the past eight years.
But I will bear with you, poor wife; in spite of _everything_ I
will trust your love, I will try to repress my discontent when you
come and gratefully accept what you bestow, without remonstrance or
fault-finding. I will bear it as long as I can. Perhaps--it will wear
me out, then we shall both be released. I would have removed myself
from the world long ago--but that would be a sin, and would not have
benefited you. Your heart is too kind not to be wounded and the
suicide's bloody shade would not have permitted you to enjoy your
liberty."
"Oh, Heaven, what are you saying! My poor husband, is that your
condition?" cried the countess, deeply stirred by the tragedy of these
calmly uttered words. She shuddered at this glimpse of the dark depths
of his fathomless soul and what, in her opinion, he might lack in
broadness of view was now supplied by the extent of his suffering; at
this moment he again interested her. Throwing herself on his breast,
she overwhelmed him with caresses. She sought to console him, make him
forget the bitterness of his grief by the magic potion of her love. She
herself did not know that even now--carried away by a genuine emotion
of compassion--she was yielding to the demoniac charm of trying upon
his pain the power of her coquetry, which she had long since tested
sufficiently upon _human beings_. But where she would undoubtedly have
succeeded with men of cultivation, she failed with this child of
nature, who instinctively felt that this sweet display of tenderness
was not meant for him but was called forth by the struggle against a
hostile element which she desired to bribe or conquer. His grief
remained unchanged; it was too deeply rooted to be dispelled by the
love-raptures of a moment. Yet the poor husband, languishing for the
wife so ardently beloved, took the poisoned draught she offered, as the
thirsting traveller in the desert puts his burning lips to the tainted
pool whence he knows he is drinking death.