Evening came, and Hertha roamed about as if she were walking in her
sleep. When the bell sounded for supper, she felt she would rather
creep away and hide somewhere in the wainscot than face him. But in her
perplexed and limp condition she made no resistance when Elly came to
drag her to the table.
He was in his place, and gave her a friendly nod as usual, but to-day
his smile seemed to her expressionless and stony. How different he
looked to her eyes from what he had ever looked before!
If fire had shot out of his mouth, she would have hardly been
surprised. He seemed now to be really the demoniac person that she had
once pictured in her foolish fancies, though what had then filled her
with longing dreams now inspired her with dread and horror. From time
to time she gave him a shy glance.
"How can any one sit there quietly," thought she, "concealing such
awful secrets in his breast?"
He had become very silent lately. Grandmamma gave out that he was
working himself to death. The grim line between his brows seemed to
grow deeper day by day.
Hertha believed now that she knew the cause of that line. She almost
wished it might kill him, for she hated him, and the sin that made him
suffer was abhorrent to her.
She abhorred herself too, for the condition of hate and jealousy into
which she had worked herself up seemed to her undignified and vulgar.
"If only I knew what I ought to do," she thought, "so that I needn't be
ashamed. I must pray," she concluded finally, "and then perhaps I shall
find out the right path to take."
Willingly would she have run out there and then into the dark garden to
be alone with God, but the rain still poured down in torrents.
At bed-time Elly vexed her with absurd questions about what one should
do if a lover came at midnight to run away with one. The childish
chatter of her bosom friend filled her with mistrust of herself.
"Perhaps I am as silly as she is," she mused, and because she didn't
want to think of foolish things, she preferred not to think at all, and
turned on her side and fell asleep.
In the middle of the night she woke up. The rain seemed to have left
off, but a gale had risen, which rattled the shutters, and whistled and
moaned through the keyholes. "Didn't I intend to pray and meditate?"
Hertha asked, as she settled herself snugly amongst the pillows. She
felt joyously excited at having cheated sleep, for even her troubles
could not do more than increase and deepen in her the feeling of
infinite zest in mere existence.
She folded her hands, but could not compose herself to pray, for her
soul was whirled and tossed on the wings of sublime ideas and lofty
resolves. Gradually the chaos cleared, and out of it rose in triumphant
purity one solitary resolution.
She would renounce. Renounce all dreams of happiness, all hopes.
Renounce all the empty little pleasures with which thoughtlessly she
had been wont to deck her youth; renounce all the glittering tinsel of
worldliness. Calm and noble, she would sacrifice herself to her
neighbours' needs, death at her heart and a smile on her lips. Yes, so
it should be. And shedding tears of sweet satisfaction, she floated
into the realms of sleep once more.
In the morning, when she opened her eyes, sunshine greeted them. What
had passed in the night seemed to her now as a God-sent dream, a
miracle worked by Heaven to save her soul from despair.
She kissed Elly with redoubled vigour, and exhausted herself in
performing little services for others, for this harmonised best with
her present angelic mood.
Only during breakfast, as she met Leo's eyes, was she conscious of the
bitterness which she thought she had conquered for ever, waking in her
again.
This recurrence made her anxious and uneasy. "My resolution is too
weak," she thought, "to be able to withstand the temptations of the
world; I must strengthen and sanctify it by a solemn vow, so that it
will be a positive sin if I fail again."
Nevertheless, though she racked her brains, she could devise no method
holy and awful enough to endow her with sufficient power of resistance.
At last, in a flash, what she was seeking came to her. She would row
over to the Isle of Friendship, the home of all gloomy mysteries. There
before the blood-sprinkled sacrificial stone she would kneel in prayer,
and at the same time open a vein of her arm and utter a vow over the
flowing bloody so that her yearning and hate might be silenced for
ever.
The hours went by in sacred expectation. Soon after the vesper coffee,
she slipped out with the key of the bathing-house in her pocket The
wind swept across the wide meadow flats, and above her the sun,
blood-red, was half hidden by a ragged fringe of stormy clouds. The
grassy path had been saturated by the rain, and more than once her feet
stuck fast in the boggy ground, which oozed and gurgled as she set them
free. But, without looking back, she hurried on. Like a phantasmagoria
the rich half-submerged pastures melted behind her. The tall sheaves
bent before the wind; all the flowers which in the past summer days had
made so fair a border to the meadow path, lay on the ground broken and
smirched in a liquid _melee_.
As she came in sight of the shining surface of the stream stretching
into the distance, she started, for to-day it was swollen to twice its
usual breadth, and the current much swifter. The heavy rains of the
last few days were responsible. The boats had been drawn up almost on
to the top of the dyke, and water was hissing from the foot of the
reeds along which one could generally walk with tolerably dry feet. It
was uncanny to hear the dry dark heads of the bulrushes, whipped by
wind and wet, sighing and rattling as they struck against each other.
For a moment she had almost a mind to retire from the foolhardy
enterprise. But the next her old daring defiance took possession of her
anew.
"If I am in earnest about my vow," she said to herself, "no bodily
danger should stand in my way."
She loosened the chain of the boat, which slid down the declivity of
the dyke nearly of its own accord. In the bathing-house she found the
right oars, and put off into the stream.
Now a desperate struggle began, even before she had got clear of the
reeds; the current caught the little craft and drove it into the
thickest part of the sedge, so that the keel was set as fast on
unbroken rushes as on a sandbank. Here it was impossible to strike out
with the oars, and only by pushing herself off with her hands from one
clump of bulrushes to another did she at length get into open water.
The boat was instantly caught by a couple of eddies and spun round in a
circle. Clenching her teeth, Hertha steered herself with the handle of
the oar. Her chest expanded, the blood hammered in her veins, a
feverish vapour swam before her eyes. With every stroke of the oars she
felt a portion of her life's strength flow out. But what did it matter?
The boat was being mastered; it was making progress.
And by degrees the tumult in her blood subsided; the muscles, instead
of slackening, became hard as steel. She dared look round and measure
the distance she had come. The Isle of Friendship greeted her with its
masses of golden-brown foliage, from which whirled swarms of falling
leaves. A cry of hopeful longing escaped her breast; but she must look
out, or another eddy would catch the boat. Ten minutes might have
passed, when two withered leaves fluttered over her head and sank like
tired birds of passage swimming on to the water.
She gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, for she knew that these leaves
were envoys that the Isle of Friendship had sent to meet her. And now
when she looked round she found that she was within the shadow of its
willows.
One more bitter fight with the current, and with a last far-reaching
stroke of the oars she shot into the little bay, whose sandy
landing-place was quite under water, so that the boat was able to drift
right in amongst the alder roots. With a rapid movement she slung the
chain round the strongest of the stumps, fastened it firmly, and swung
herself, by clinging to an overhanging branch, on to the steep slippery
bank.
For a moment she crouched down on the drenched grass to recover breath,
and looked at her blistered palms, which were bleeding. She wiped the
blood away with her tongue, and laughed. Then she threw a frightened
glance into the thicket where ruddy sunlight lay on the yellow leaves.
The brook which ran down to the river tossed dirty grey rainwater over
the slimy stones, between which were heaped stacks of dead damp leaves.
The tongues of fern growing along the edge of the water were nipped and
shrivelled up, and they looked as they stood there like little wrinkled
old women in their blurred brown rags. Not far off were a greasy
company of toadstools spreading their smooth copula-shaped heads,
delicately fluted underneath. They shone as if they had been rolling in
butter.
In disgust at these rotting excrescences of damp weather, Hertha strode
over them and struck into the thick of the thorny shrubs, which sorely
thwarted her progress. Everywhere brambles, hung with raindrops like
chains of pearls, switched her in the face, and her footmarks on the
swampy moss, into which she sank, became glittering pools as she walked
on.
It was a path along which the enchanted princesses of fairy tale might
have wandered; but she was not in the least afraid, and when she saw a
cluster of blue-black sloeberries glistening at her feet, she stooped
and gathered them carefully in the palm of her hand.
At last the clearing lay before her, bathed in the purple rays of the
sinking sun. She paused, filled with reverent awe, and looked round
her.
The evening shadows had gathered over the little temple, and the
wind-tossed branches scattered upon it their burden of fading leaves.
There was a sighing and moaning in the air, as if the whole army of
spirits with whom the legends of the neighbourhood populated the wood
were assembled on this very spot. And there on the edge of the boscage
was the old sacrificial stone, standing like an altar ready for a new
offering of blood.
A cold shiver began to creep over her, but she suppressed it quickly.
Let those who were cowards or who had guilty consciences be afraid. She
stood still in front of the temple of friendship, and gazed up in
astonishment at the sandstone figures.
"Which of the two is meant for Leo?" she wondered, and for the first
time she fully realised the great wrong which was being done the man
called Ulrich. The thought made her uneasy, and the longer she dwelt on
it the blacker were the depths of depravity that it seemed to reach.
She turned her back, for she could no longer bear the sight of the two
friends with their arms twined round each other. "One is a liar," she
murmured to herself; and she felt just then as if all truth and good
faith had vanished from the world--as if even yonder sun was a
monstrous blood-red lie.
"No, no," she thought further; "it is impossible. He must have told
him, and have said, 'I love your wife, but it is of no consequence. I
only want to see her now and then, and listen to her voice--nothing
more.'"
Of course, that was how it was. It couldn't--simply couldn't be
otherwise. And she herself wanted nothing more than to see _him_
sometimes, and to win a friendly word from him. Truly she had wanted
more--once. She had wanted to marry him.... At least, a short time ago
she had. But now, of course, that was all over and done with. She had
renounced him.
Her heart swelled. She ran round the old stone several times, then sat
down on top of it and cried bitterly.
As she folded her hands to pray she saw the blood gushing forth. "How
stupid I was this morning," she thought, "when I thought that I should
have to open one of my veins on this stone, as if I couldn't pour out
my heart's blood for him without doing that."
And tucking her feet beneath her body, she began to pray out loud,
while the tears rolled into her mouth.
"Dear God, it is all over now.... My hopes and my happiness are
wrecked. Therefore I beseech Thee from the bottom of my heart to give
me strength at least to make others happy. And if I renounce, let me do
so without envy, anger, or bitterness. Endow me with that true
Christian humility and gentleness that Elly has in such a high degree,
so that I may curb my dreadfully hot temper, and not say horrid things
to those I love. And above all, I pray Thee for one thing: if he loves
her, spare him the endless suffering that I endure because of him. Let
him be as happy as it is possible for him to be in his unhappy love.
And especially guard him from playing the liar to Ulrich, so that I
need not be ashamed unto death for him. Take Frau Felicitas too under
your protection, and let all men, whether they be good or bad, enjoy
Thy grace so that at last they shall all come to eternal bliss. Amen!"
She repeated the "Amen" three times, and asked herself if there was any
enemy or evil-doer for whom she had forgotten to pray, but none
occurred to her.
Her heart was now so overflowing with love and forgiveness that she
didn't know how she could be thankful enough.
The sun had gone down. A last red glow of light touched the corners of
the temple, and gilded the blue-black autumn clouds that gathered in
threatening masses on the horizon. Hertha climbed down from the stone,
ate the blackberries which she had put down beside her, and thought of
her journey home with some anxiety.
A bird of prey flew across the river with a thundering flap of its
wings, and then soared as straight as a dart towards the clouds. Its
plumage seemed to flash. The wind shook the grasses. All at once it
grew dark.
"Farewell," said Hertha, looking back at the pair of friends. "I'll
come again in the spring."
Suddenly she started in terror. She heard a crackling and snapping of
twigs among the bushes, which drew nearer and nearer.
"A robber," thought Hertha, and laid her hand on her beating heart.
Erect she stood there, turning a courageous face to the approaching
danger.
The figure of a man came in view on the edge of the clearing. Hertha
felt her blood run cold. It was Leo. He hurried towards her with his
firm stride. The veins stood out on his forehead; his eyes flashed
fire.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
She was silent and bit her lips, feeling all her meekness depart at one
blow.
"Have you taken leave of your senses? Didn't I forbid you to row here
alone, and the stream swollen too."
Hertha began to boil inwardly. Was this the reward of her renunciation?
But "have patience, be silent," a voice cried within her.
"It's a marvel that you haven't been carried away," he scolded on, all
his anxiety for her turning into wrath. "When I forbid a thing, I have
my reasons for doing so, but the devil himself seems to drive you into
disobedience, girl. I am not at all inclined to go on a wild-goose
chase after you again, I can tell you!"
Ah! that was hard. He scorned that hour which lived in her memory as
the most sacred she had known. It was more than hard; it was brutal!
At this moment she hated him so that she felt as if she was almost
swooning from the intensity of her emotions. All--all that she had just
sworn was forgotten, and with a smile of icy contempt, hardly knowing
what she said, she answered--
"You can order and forbid as much as you like. But he who is not honest
and does not keep his word himself, can scarcely expect that others
will respect and obey him."
The words were spoken. They could not be recalled. Reeling a step
forwards, he stared at her dully.
"What--what does that mean?" Every drop of blood had forsaken his face.
"You must know perfectly well what it means;" and she turned to go.
He would have liked to shake her, to question her, and force her to
speak. But he had not the courage. It seemed to him that from the lips
of this child he had been condemned.
In silence they walked to the landing-place; in silence he rowed her
over the stream; in silence they parted. Two who, because they belonged
to each other, determined to go through life as enemies.