"Magdalene--Wife--Angel--what shall I call you?" cried Freyer, extending his arms. "Oh, if only we were not in the open fields, that I might press you to my heart and thank you for being so kind--so generous and so kind."
"Does your heart at last yearn for me? Then let us come into the forest, where no one is watching us save holy nature. Take me up one of the mountains. Will you? Can you? Will not your hay spoil?"
"Let it spoil, what does that matter? But first you must allow me to go home to put on garments more suitable for your society."
"No, that will be too late! Remain as you are--you are handsome in any clothes," she whispered, blushing faintly, like a girl, while she lowered her eyes from the kingly figure to the ground. A happy smile flitted over her face. Stooping, she picked up the jacket which he had removed while doing his work.
"And you--are you equipped for mountain climbing?"
"Oh, we will not go far. Not farther than we can go and return in time for dinner."
"Come, then. If matters come to the worst, I will take my dove on my shoulder and carry her when she can walk no farther."
"Oh, happy freedom!" cried the countess, joyously! "To wander through the woods, like two children in a fairy tale, enchanted by some wicked fairy and unable to appear again until after a thousand years! Oh, poetry of childhood--for the first time you smile upon me in all your radiance. Come, let us hasten--it is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it. I shall not, until we are there."
She flew rather than walked by his side. "My dove--suppose that we were enchanted and forced to remain in the forest together a thousand years?"
"Let us try it!" she whispered, fixing her eyes on his till he murmured, panting for breath: "I believe--the spell is beginning to work." And his eyes glowed with a gloomy fire as he murmured, watching her: "Who knows whether I am not harboring the Lorelei herself, who is luring me into her kingdom to destroy me!"
"What do you know of the Lorelei?"
Freyer stopped. "Do you suppose I read nothing? What else should I do during the long evenings, when wearied by my work, I am resting at home?"
"Really?" she asked absently, drawing him forward.
"Do you suppose I could understand a woman like you if I had not educated myself a little? Alas, we cannot accomplish much when the proper foundation is lacking. The untrained memory retains nothing firmly except what passes instantly into flesh and blood, the perception of life as it is reflected to us from the mirror of art. But even this reflection is sometimes distorted and confuses our natural thoughts and feelings. Alas, dear one, a person who has learned nothing correctly, and yet knows the yearning for something higher, without being able to satisfy it--is like a lost soul that never attains the goal for which it longs."
"My poor friend, I do know that feeling--to a certain extent it is the same with us women. We, too, have the yearning for education, and finally attain only a defective amount of knowledge! But, by way of compensation, individuality, directness, intuitiveness are developed all the more fully. You did not need to know anything--your influence is exerted through your personality; as such you are great. All knowledge comes from man, and is attainable by him--the divine gift of individuality can neither be gained, nor bestowed, any more than intuition! What is all the logic of reflecting reason compared with the gift of intuition, which enabled you to assume the part of a God? Is not that a greater marvel than the hard-won result of systematic study at the desk?"
"You are a kind comforter!" said Freyer.
"Thinking makes people old!" she continued. "It has aged the human race, too.--Nature, simplicity, love must restore its youth! In them is direct contact with the deity; in civilization only an indirect one. Fortunately for me, I have put my lips to their spring. Oh, eternal fountain of human nature, I drink from you with eager draughts."
They had entered the forest--the tree-tops rustled high above their heads and at their feet rippled a mountain stream. Madeleine von Wildenau was silent--her heart rested on her friend's broad breast, heaving with the rapid throbbing of his heart, her supple figure had sunk wearily down by his side. "Say no more--not a word is needed here." The deep gloom of the woods surrounded them--a sacred stillness and solitude. "On every height there dwells repose!" echoed in soft melody above her head, the marvellous Rubinstein-Goethe song. There was no human voice, it seemed like a mere breath from the distance of a dream--like the wind sweeping over the chords of the cymbal hung by Lenau's gypsy on a tree, scarcely audible, already dying away again. Her ear had caught the notes of that AEolian harp once before: she knew them again; on the cross--with the words: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." And sweet as the voice which spoke at that time was now the tenor that softly, softly hushed the restless spirit of the worldling to slumber. "Wait; soon, soon--" and then the notes gradually rose till the whole buzzing, singing woodland choir seemed to join in the words: "Thou, too, shalt soon rest."
The mysterious sound came from the depths of the great heart on which she rested, as if the soul had quitted the body a few moments and now, returning, was revealing with sweet lamentation what it had beheld in the invisible world.
"Are you weeping?" he asked tenderly, kissing the curls which clustered round her forehead: "My child."
"Oh, when you utter that word, I have a feeling which I never experienced before. Yes, I am, I wish to be a child in your hands. Only those who have ever tasted the delight of casting the burden of their own egoism upon any altar, whether it be religion or love--yielding themselves up, becoming absorbed in another, higher power--only those can know my emotions when I lean on your breast and you call me your child! Thus released from ourselves, thus free and untrammelled must we feel when we have stripped off in death the fetters of the body and merged all which is personal to us in God."
"Heaven has destined you for itself, and you already feel how it is loosening your fibres and gradually drawing you up out of the soil in which you are rooted. That is why you wept when I sang that song to you here in the quiet woodland solitude. Such tears are like the drops the tree weeps, when a name is cut upon it. At such moments you feel the hand of God tearing open the bark which the world has formed around your heart, and the sap wells from the wounded spot. Is it not so?" He gently passed his hand over her eyes, glittering with unshed tears.
"Ah, noble soul! How you penetrate the depths of my being! What is all the wit and wisdom of the educated mind, compared with the direct inspiration of your poetic nature. Freyer, Spring of the earth--Christ, Spring of humanity! My heart is putting forth its first blossom for you, take it." She threw herself with closed eyes upon his breast, as if blindly. He clasped her in a close embrace, holding her a long time silently in his arms. Then he said softly: "I will accept the beautiful blossom of your heart, my child, but not for myself." He raised his eyes fervently upward: "Oh, God, Thou hast opened Thy hand to the beggar, and made him rich that he may sacrifice to Thee what no king could offer. I thank Thee."
Something laughed above their heads--it was a pair of wild-doves, cooing in the green tent over them.
"Do you know why they are laughing?" asked the countess, in an altered tone. "They are laughing at us!"
"Magdalena!"
"Yes! They are laughing at the self-tormenting doubt of God's goodness. Look around you, see the torrent foaming, and the blue gentians drinking its spray, see the fruit-laden hazel, the sacred tree which sheltered your childhood; see the bilberries at your feet, all the intoxicating growth and movement of nature, and then ask yourself whether the God who created all this warm, sunny life is a God who only takes--not gives. Do you believe He would have prepared for us this Spring of love, that we may let its blossoms wither on the cold altar of duty or of prejudice? No--take what He bestows--and do not question."
"Do not lead me into temptation, Magdalena!" he gently entreated. "I told you this morning that you do not know what you are unloosening."
He stood before her as if transfigured, his eyes glowed with the sombre fire which had flashed in them a moment early that morning, a rustling like eagle's pinions ran through the forest--Jupiter was approaching in human form.
The beautiful woman sat down on a log with her hands clasped in her lap.
"A man like me loves but once, but with his whole being. I demand nothing--but what is given to me is given wholly, or not at all; for if I once have it, I will never give it up save with my life!
"Not long since a stranger came here, who sang the song of the Assras, who die when they love. I believe I am of their race. Woman, do not toy, do not trifle with me! For know--I love you with the fatal love of those 'Assras.'"
Madeleine von Wildenau trembled with delight.
"If I once touch your lips, the barrier between us will have fallen! Will you forgive me if the flood-tide of feeling sweeps me away till I forget who you are and what a gulf divides the Countess Wildenau from the low-born peasant?"
"Oh, that you can remind me of it--in this hour--!" cried the countess, with sorrowful reproach.
He looked almost threateningly into her eyes. The dark locks around his head seemed to stir like the bristling mane of a lion: "Woman, you do not know me! If you deceive me, you will betray the most sacred emotion ever felt by mortal man--and it will be terribly avenged. Then the flame you are kindling will consume either you or me, or both. You see that I am now a different man. Formerly you have beheld me only when curbed by the victorious power of my holy task. You have conjured up the spirits, now they can no longer be held in thrall--will you not be terrified by the might of a passion which is unknown to you people of the world, with your calm self-control?"
"I, terrified by you?" cried the proud woman in a tone of exultant rapture. "Oh, this is power, this is the very breath of the gods. Should I fear amid the element for which I longed--which was revealed to me in my own breast? Does the flame fear the fire? The Titaness dread the Titan? Ah, Zeus, hurl thy thunderbolt, and let the forest blaze as the victorious torch of nature at last released from her long bondage."
He sat down by her side, his fiery breath fanning her cheek. "Then you will try it, will give me the kiss I dared not take to-day?"
"Yes."
"But it will be a betrothal kiss."
"Yes."
He opened his arms, and as a black moth settles upon a fragrant tea-rose, hovering on its velvet wings above the dewy calyx, he bent his head to hers, shadowing her with his dark locks and pressed his first kiss upon Madeleine von Wildenau's quivering lips.
But such moments tempt the gods themselves, and Jupiter hovered over the pair, full of wrath, for he envied the Christian mortal the beautiful woman. He had heard her laughingly challenge him in the midst of the joy she had stolen from the gods, and the heavens darkened, the hurricane saddled the steeds of the storm, awaiting his beck, and down flashed the fire from the sky--a shrill cry rent the air, the highest tree in the forest was cleft asunder and the bridal torch lighted by Jupiter blazed aloft.
"The gods are averse to it," said Freyer, gloomily. "Defy them!" cried the countess, starting up; "they are powerless--we are in the hands of a Higher Ruler."
"Woman, you do not belong to this world, or you have no nerves which can tremble."
"Tremble?" She laughed happily. "Tremble, by your side?" Then, nestling closer still, she murmured: "I am as cowardly as ever woman was, but where I love I have the courage to defy death. Even were I to fall now beneath a thunderbolt, could I have a fairer death than at this moment? You would willingly die for your Christ--and I for mine."
"Well then, come, you noble woman, that I may shield you as well as I can! Now we shall see whether God is with us! I defy the elements!" He proudly clasped the object of his love in his arms and bore her firmly on through the chaos into which the whole forest had fallen. The tempest, howling fiercely, burst its way through the woods. The boughs snapped, the birds were hurled about helplessly. The destroying element seemed to come from both heights and depths at the same time, for it shook the earth and tore the roots of trees from the ground till the lofty trunks fell shattered and, rolling down the mountain, swept everything with them in the sudden ruin. With fiendish thirst for battle the fiery sword flamed from the sky amid the uproar, dealing thrust after thrust and blow after blow--while here and there scarlet tongues of flame shot hissing upward through the dry branches.
A torrent of rain now dashed from the clouds but without quenching the flames, whose smoke was pressed down into the tree-tops, closely interlaced by the tempest. Like a gigantic black serpent, it rolled its coils from every direction, stifling, suffocating with the glowing breath of the forest conflagration, and the undulating cloud body bore with it in glittering, flashing sparks, millions of burning pine needles.
"Well, soul of fire, is the heat fierce enough for you now?" asked Freyer, pressing the beautiful woman closer to his side to shield her with his own body: "Are you content now?"
"Yes," she said, gasping for breath, and the eyes of both met, as if they felt only the fire in their own hearts and had blended this with the external element into a single sea of flame.
Nearer, closer drew the fire in ever narrowing circles around the defiant pair, more and more sultry became the path, brighter grew the hissing blaze through which they were compelled to force their way. Now on the left, now on the right, the red-eyed conflagration confronted them amid the clouds of smoke and flame, half stifled by the descending floods of rain, yet pouring from its open jaws hot, scorching steam--fatal to laboring human chests--and obliged the fugitives to turn back in search of some new opening for escape.
"If the rain ceases, we are lost!" said the countess with the utmost calmness. "Then the fire will be sole ruler."
Freyer made no reply. Steadily, unflinchingly, he struggled on, grasping with the strength of a Titan the falling boughs which threatened the countess' life, shielding with both arms her uncovered head from the flying sparks, and ever and anon, sprinkling her hair and garments from some bubbling spring. The water in the brooks was already warm. Throngs of animals fleeing from the flames surrounded them, and birds with scorched wings fell at their feet. It was no longer possible to go down, the fire was raging below them. They were compelled to climb up the mountain and seek the summit.
"Only have courage--forward!" were Freyer's sole words. And upward they toiled--through the pathless woods, through underbrush and thickets, over roots of trees, rolling stones, and rocks, never pausing, never taking breath, for the flames were close at their heels, threatening them with their fiendish embrace. Where the path was too toilsome, Freyer lifted the woman he loved in his arms and bore her over the rough places.
At last the woods grew thinner, the boundary of the flames was passed, they had reached the top--were saved. The neighing steeds of the wind received them on the barren height and strove to hurl them back into the fiery grave, but Freyer's towering form resisted their assault and, with powerless fury, they tore away the rocks on the right and left and rolled them thundering down into the depths below. The water pouring from the clouds drenched the lovers like a billow from the sea, beating into their eyes, mouths, and ears till, blinded and deafened, they were obliged to grope their way along the cliff. The garments of the beautiful Madeleine von Wildenau hung around her in tatters, heavy as lead, her hair was loosened, dripping and dishevelled, she was trembling from head to foot with cold in the icy wind and rain here on the heights, after the heat and terror below in the smouldering thicket.
"I know where there is a herder's hut, I'll take you to it. Cling closely to me, we must climb still higher."
They silently continued the ascent.
The countess staggered with fatigue. Freyer lifted her again in his arms, and, by almost superhuman exertion, bore her up the last steep ascent to the hut. It was empty. He placed the exhausted woman on the herder's straw pallet, where she sank fainting. When she regained her consciousness she was supported in Freyer's arms, and her face was wet with his tears. She gazed at him as if waking to the reality of some beautiful dream. "Is it really you?" she asked, with such sweet childlike happiness, as she threw her arms around him, that the strong man's brain and heart reeled as if his senses were failing.
"You are alive, you are safe?" He could say no more. He kissed her dripping garments her feet, and tenderly examined her beautiful limbs to assure himself that she had received no injury. "Thank Heaven!" he cried joyously, amid his tears, "you are safe!" Then, half staggering, he rose: "Now, in the presence of the deadly peril we have just escaped, tell me whether you really love me, tell me whether you are mine, wholly mine! Or hurl me down into the blazing forest--it would be more merciful, by Heaven! than to deceive me."
"Joseph!" cried the countess, clinging passionately to him. "Can you ask that--now?"
"Alas! I cannot understand how a poor ignorant man like me can win the love of such a woman. What can you love, save the illusion of the Christ, and when that has vanished--what remains?"
"The divine, the real love!" replied the countess with a lofty expression.
"Oh, I believe that you are sincere. But if you have deceived yourself, if you should ever perceive that you have overestimated me--ah, it would be far better for me to be lying down below amid the flames than to experience that. There is still time--consider well, and say--what shall it be?"
"Consider?" replied the countess, drawing his head down to hers. "Tell the torrent to consider ere it plunges over the cliff, to dissolve into spray in the leap. Tell the flower to consider ere it opens to the sunbeam which will consume it! Will you be more petty than they? What is there to consider, when a mighty impulse powerfully constrains us? Is not this moment worth risking the whole life without asking: 'What is to come of it?' Ah, then--then, I have been mistaken in you and it will be better for us to part while there is yet time."
"Oh--enchantress! You are right, I no longer know myself! Part, now? No, it is too late, I am yours, body and soul. Be it so, then, I will barter my life for this moment, and no longer doubt, for I can do nothing else."
Sinking on his knees before her, he buried his face in her lap. Madeleine von Wildenau embraced him with unspeakable tenderness, yet she felt the burden of a heavy responsibility resting upon her, for she now realized--that she was his destiny. She had what she desired, his soul, his heart, his life--nay, had he possessed immortality, he would have sacrificed that, too, for her sake. But now the "God" had become human--the choice was made. And, with a secret tear she gazed upon the husk of the beautiful illusion which had vanished.
"What is the matter?" he asked suddenly, raising his head and gazing into her eyes with anxious foreboding. "You have grown cold."
"No, only sad."
"And why?"
"Alas! I do not know! Nothing in this world can be quite perfect." She drew him tenderly toward her. "This is one of those moments in which the highest happiness becomes pain. The fury of the elements could not harm us, but it is a silent, stealing sorrow, which will appease the envy of the gods for unprecedented earthly bliss: Mourning for my Christus."
Freyer uttered a cry of anguish and starting up, covered his face with both hands. "Oh, that you are forced to remind me of it!" He rushed out of the hut.
What did this mean. The beautiful mistress of his heart felt as if she had deceived herself when she believed him to be exclusively her own, as if there was something in the man over which she had no power! Filled with vague terror, she followed him. He stood leaning against the hut as if in a dream and did not lift his eyes. The sound of alarm-bells and the rattle of fire-arms echoed from the valley. The rain had ceased, and columns of flame were now rising high into the air, forming a crimson canopy above the trees in the forest. It was a wild scene, this glowing sea of fire into which tree after tree gradually vanished, the air quivering with the crash of the falling boughs, from which rose a shower of sparks, and a crowd of shrieking birds eddying amid the flames. Joseph Freyer did not heed it. The countess approached almost timidly. "Joseph--have I offended you?"
"No, my child, on the contrary! When I reminded you to-day of the obligations of your rank, you were angry with me, but I thank you for having remembered what I forgot for your sake."
"Well. But, spite of the warning, I was not ashamed of you and did not disown you before the Countess Wildenau! But you, Joseph, are ashamed of me in the presence of Christ!"
He gazed keenly, sorrowfully at her. "I ashamed of you, I deny you in the presence of my Redeemer, who is also yours? I deny you, because I am forced to confess to Him that I love you beyond everything else--nay, perhaps more than I do Him? Oh, my dearest, how little you know me! May the day never come which will prove which of us will first deny the other, and may you never be forced to weep the tears which Peter shed when the cock crowed for the third time."
She sank upon his breast. "No, my beloved, that will never be! In the hour when that was possible, you might despise me."
He kissed her forehead tenderly. "I should not do that--any more than Christ despised Peter. You are a child of the world, could treachery to me be charged against you if the strong man, the disciple of Christ, was pardoned for treason to the holiest."
"Oh, my angel! It would be treason to the 'holiest,'" said the countess with deep emotion, "if I could deny you!"
"Why, for Heaven's sake, Herr Freyer," shouted a voice, and the herdsman came bounding down the mountain side: "Can you stand there so quietly--amid this destruction?" The words died away in the distance.
"The man is right," said the countess in a startled tone, "we are forgetting everything around us. Whoever has hands must help. Go--leave me alone here and follow the herdsman."
"There is no hope of extinguishing the fire, the wood is lost!" replied Freyer, indifferently. "It is fortunate that it is an isolated piece of land, so the flames cannot spread."
"But, Good Heavens, at least try to save what can yet be secured--that is only neighborly duty."
"I shall not leave you, happen what may."
"But I am safe, and perhaps some poor man's all, is burning below."
"What does it matter, in this hour?"
"What does it matter?" the countess indignantly exclaimed. "Joseph, I do not understand you! Have you so little feeling for the distress of your fellow men--and yet play the Christ?"
Freyer gazed at the destruction with a strange expression--his noble figure towered proudly aloft against the gloomy, cloud-veiled sky. Smiling calmly, he held out his hand to the woman he loved and drew her tenderly to his breast: "Do not upbraid me, my dove--the wood was mine."
