While the lost son of Ammergau was quietly and sadly permitting the miracle of his home to produce its effect upon him, and rising from one revelation to another along the steep path which again led him to the cross, the countess was languishing in the oppressive atmosphere of the capital and its relations.
Three days had passed since the parting from Freyer, but she scarcely knew it! She lived behind her closed curtains and in the evenings sat in the light of lamps subdued by opalescent shades, as if in a never-changing white night, in which there could be neither dusk nor dawn. And it was the same in her soul. Reason--cold, joyless reason, with its calm, monotonous light, now ruled her, she had exhausted all the forces of grief in those farewell hours. For grief, too, is a force which can be exhausted, and then the soul will rest in indifference. Everything was now the same to her. The sacrifice and the cost of the sacrifice. What did the world contain that was worth trouble and anxiety? Nothing! Everything she had hoped for on earth had proved false--false and treacherous. Life had kept its promise to her in nothing; there was no happiness, only he who had no desires was happy--a happiness no better than death! And she had not even reached that stage! She still wanted so many things: honor, power, beauty, and luxury, which only wealth procures--and therefore this also.
Now she flung herself into the arms of beauty--"seeking in it the divine" and the man who offered her his hand in aid would understand how to obtain for her, with taste and care, the last thing she expected from life--pleasure! Civilization had claimed her again, she was the woman of the century, a product of civilization! She desired nothing more. A marriage of convenience with a clever, aristocratic man, with whom she would become a patron of art and learning; a life of amusement and pleasurable occupation she now regarded as the normal one, and the only one to be desired.
While Freyer, among his own people, was returning to primitiveness and simplicity, she was constantly departing farther from it, repelled and terrified by the phenomena with which Nature, battling for her eternal rights, confronted her. For Nature is a tender mother only to him who deals honestly with her--woe betide him who would trifle with her--she shows him her terrible earnestness.
"Only despise reason and learning, the highest powers of mankind!" How often the Mephistopheles within her soul had jeeringly cried. Yes, he was right--she was punished for having despised and misunderstood the value of the work of civilization at which mankind had toiled for years. She would atone for it. She had turned in a circle, the wheel had almost crushed her, but at least she was glad to have reached the same spot whence she started ten years ago. At least so she believed!
In this mood the duke found her on his return from Prankenberg.
"Good news, the danger is over! The old pastor was prudent enough to die with the secret!" he cried, radiant with joy, as he entered.
"Nothing was to be found! There is nothing in the church record! The Wildenaus have no proof and can do nothing unless Herr Freyer plays us a trick with the marriage certificate--"
"That anxiety is needless!" replied the countess, taking from her writing-table the little package containing Freyer's farewell note, the marriage certificate, and the account-book. "There, read it."
Her face wore a strange expression as she handed it to him, a look as if she were accusing him of having tempted her to murder an innocent person. She was pale and there was something hostile, reproachful, in her attitude.
The duke glanced through the papers. "This is strange," he said very gravely: "Is the man so great--or so small?"
"So great!" she murmured under her breath.
"Hm! I should not have expected it of him. Is this no farce? Has he really gone?"
"Yes! And here is something else." She gave him the burgomaster's letter: "This is the answer I received to-day to my offer to provide for Freyer's future."
"If this is really greatness--then--" the prince drew a long breath as if he could not find the right word: "Then--I don't know whether we have done right."
The countess felt as if a thunderbolt had struck her. "You say that--you?"
The duke rose and paced up and down the room. "I always tell the truth. If this man was capable of such an act--then--I reproach myself, for he deserved better treatment than to be flung overboard in this way, and we have incurred a great responsibility."
"Good Heavens, and you say this now, when it is too late!" groaned the unhappy woman.
"Be calm. The fault is mine--not yours. I will assume the whole responsibility--but it oppresses me the more heavily because, ever since I went to Prankenberg, I have been haunted by the question whether this was really necessary? My object was first of all to save you. In this respect I have nothing for which to reproach myself. But I overestimated your danger and undervalued Freyer. I did not know him--now that I do my motive dissolves into nothing."
He cast another glance at Freyer's farewell note and shook his head: "It is hard to understand! What must it have cost thus at one blow to resign everything that was dear, give up without conditions the papers which at least would have made him a rich man--and all without one complaint, without any boastfulness, simply, naturally! Madeleine, it is overwhelming--it is shameful to us."
The countess covered her face. Both remained silent a long time.
The duke still gazed at the letter. Then, resting his head on his hand and looking fixedly into vacancy, he said: "There is a constraining power about this man, which draws us all into its spell and compels us not to fall behind him in generosity. But--how is this to be done? He cannot be reached by ordinary means. I am beginning now to understand what bound you to him, and unfortunately I must admit that, with the knowledge, my guilt increases. My justification lay only in the misunderstanding of what now forces itself upon me as an undeniable fact--that Freyer was not so unworthy of you, Madeleine, as I believed!" He read the inscription on the little bank book: "To keep the graves of my dear ones!" and was silent for a time as if something choked his utterance: "How he must have suffered--! When I think how I love you, though you have never been mine--and he once called you his--resigned you and went away, with death in his heart! Oh, you women! Madeleine, how could you do this in cold blood? If it had been for love of me--but that illusion vanished long ago."
"Condemned--condemned by you!" moaned the countess in terror.
"I do not condemn you, Madeleine, I only marvel that you could do it, if you knew the man as he is."
"I did not know him in this guise," said the countess proudly. "But--I will not be less honest than you, Duke, I am not sure that I could have done it, had I known him as I do now."
The duke passed his handkerchief across his brow, which was already somewhat bald. "One thing is certain--we owe the man some reparation. Something must be done."
"What shall we do? He will refuse anything we offer--though it were myself. That is evident from the burgomaster's letter." She closed her eyes to keep back the tears. "All is vain--he can never forgive me."
"No, he certainly cannot do that. But the man is worthy of having us fulfill the only wish he has expressed to you--"
"And that is?"
"To defer our marriage until the first anguish of his grief has had time to pass away."
The countess drew a long breath, as if relieved of a heavy burden: "Duke, that is generous and noble!"
"If you had been legally wedded and were obliged to be legally divorced, we could not be united in less than a year. Let us show the poor man the honor of regarding him as your lawfully wedded husband and pay him the same consideration as if he were. That is all we can do for him at present, and I shall make it a point of honor to atone, by this sacrifice, in some degree for the heavy responsibility which is undeniably mine and which, as an honest man, I neither can nor desire to conceal from myself."
He went to her and held out his hand. "I see by your radiant eyes, Countess, that this does not cost you the sacrifice which it does me--I will not pretend to be more unselfish than I am, for I hope by means of it to gain in your esteem what I lose in happiness by this time of delay!"
He kissed her hand with a sorrowful expression which she had never seen in him before. "Permit me to take leave of you for to-day, I have an engagement with Prince Hohenheim. To-morrow we will discuss the matter farther. Bon soir!"
The countess was alone. An engagement with Prince Hohenheim! When had an engagement with any one taken precedence--of her? Duke Emil was using pretexts. She could not deceive herself, he was--not really cold, but chilled. What a terrible reproach to her! What neither time, nor any of her great or trivial errors had accomplished, what had not happened even when she preferred a poor low-born man to the rich noble--occurred now, when she rejected the former--for the latter.
Many a person does not realize the strength of his own moral power, and how it will baffle the most crafty calculation. Every tragical result of a sin is merely the vengeance of these moral forces, which the criminal had undervalued when he planned the deed. This was the case with the duke. He had advised a breach with Freyer--advised it with the unselfish intention of saving her, but when the countess followed his advice and he saw by Freyer's conduct what a heart she had broken, he could not instantly love the woman who had been cruel enough to do an act which he could not pardon himself for having counselled.
Madeleine Wildenau suspected this, though not to its full extent. The duke was far too chivalrous to think for a moment of breaking his plighted troth, or letting her believe that he repented it. But the delay which he proposed as an atonement to the man whom they had injured, said enough. Must all abandon her--every bridge on which she stepped break? Had she lost by her act even the man of whom she was sure--surer than of anything else in the world! How terrible then this deed must have been! Madeleine von Wildenau blushed for herself.
Yet as there are certain traits in feminine nature which are the last a woman gives up, she now hated Freyer, hated him from a spirit of contradiction to the duke, who espoused his cause. And as the feminine nature desires above all things else that which is denied, she now longed to bind the duke again because she felt the danger of losing him. The fugitive must be stopped--the sport might perhaps lend her charmless, wretched life a certain interest. An unsatisfactory one, it is true, for even if she won him again--what then? What would she have in him? Could he be anything more to her than a pleasant companion who would restore her lost power and position? She glanced at her mirror--it showed her a woman of thirty-eight, rouged to seem ten years younger--but beneath this rouge were haggard cheeks. She could not conceal from herself that art would not suffice much longer--she had faded--her life was drawing toward evening, age spared no one! But--when she no longer possessed youth and beauty, when the time came that only the moral value of existence remained, what would she have then? To what could she look back--in what find satisfaction, peace? Society? It was always the same, with its good and evil qualities. To one who entered into an ethical relation with it, it contained besides its apparent superficiality boundless treasures and resources. "The snow is hard enough to bear," people say in the mountains when, in the early Spring, the loose masses have melted into a firm crust. Thus, under the various streams, now cold, now warm, the surface of society melts and forms that smooth icy rind of form over which the light-foot glides carelessly, unconscious that beneath the thin surface are hidden depths in which the philosopher and psychologist find material enough for the study of a whole life. But when everything which could serve the purposes of amusement was exhausted, the countess' interest in society also failed. Once before she had felt a loathing for it, when she was younger than now--how would it be when she was an old woman? The arts? Already their spell had been broken and she had fled to Nature, because she could no longer believe in their beautiful lies.
The sciences? They were least suited to afford pleasure! Had she not grown so weary of her amateur toying with their serious investigations that she fled, longing for a revelation, to the childish miracles of Oberammergau? Aye--she was again, after the lapse of ten years, standing in the selfsame spot, seeking her God as in the days when she fancied she had found His footprints. The trace proved delusive, and must she now begin again where ten years before she ended in weariness and discontent? Must she, who imagined that she had embraced the true essence, return to searching, doubting? No, the flower cannot go back into the closed bud; the feeling which caused the disappointment impelled onward to truth! Love for God had once unfolded, and though the object proved deceptive--the feeling was true, and struggled to find its goal as persistently as the flower seeks the sun after it has long vanished behind clouds. But had she missed her way because she thought she had reached the goal too soon? She had followed the trace no longer, but left it in anger--discouragement, at the first disappointment! What if the path which led her to Ammergau was the right one? And the guide along it had been sent by God? What if she had turned from the path because it was too long and toilsome, rejected the guide because he did not instantly bring God near to her impatient heart, and she must henceforth wander aimlessly without consolation or hope? And when the day of final settlement came, what imperishable goods would she possess? When the hour arrived which no mortal can escape, what could aid her in the last terror, save the consciousness of dwelling in the love of God, of going out of love to love--out of longing to fulfillment? She had rejected love, she had turned back in the path of longing and contented herself with earthly joys--and when she left the world she would have nothing, for the soul which does not seek, will not find! A life which has not fulfilled its moral task is not finished, only broken off, death to it is merely destruction, not completion.
The miserable woman flung herself down before the mirror which showed her the transitoriness of everything earthly and, for the first time in her life, looked the last question in the face and read no answer save--despair.
"Help my weakness, oh God!" she pleaded. "Help me upward to Thee. Show me the way--send me an angel, or write Thy will on the border of the clouds, work a miracle, oh Lord, for a despairing soul!" Thus she awaited the announcement of the divine will in flaming characters and angel tongues--and did not notice that a poor little banished household sprite was standing beside her, gazing beseechingly at her with tearful eyes because it had the word which would aid her, the watchword which she could find nowhere--only a simple phrase: the fulfillment of duty! Yet because it was as simple and unassuming as the genius which brought it, it remained unheeded by the proud, vain woman who, in her arrogance, spite of the humiliations she had endured, imagined that her salvation needed a messenger from Heaven of apocalyptic form and power.
