Amid conflicts such as those just described, the countess lived, passing from one stage of development to another and unconsciously growing older--mentally maturing. Several weeks had now passed since her parting with Freyer, but the apathy with which, from that hour, she had regarded all external things still remained. She left the duke to arrange the affair with the Wildenaus, which, a short time ago, she had considered of sufficient importance to sacrifice Freyer. She admired the duke's tact and cleverness, but it seemed as if he were not acting for her but for some other person.
When he brought the news that the Wildenaus, owing to the obstinacy of the witness Martin, had given up their plan of a legal prosecution on the ground of Josepha's deposition, and were ready for an amicable settlement--she did not rejoice over anything save the old servant's fidelity; everything else she accepted as a just recompense of fate in return for an unwarrantably high price she had paid.
She was not annoyed because obliged to pay those whom she had injured a sum so large as considerably to lessen her income. She did not care for the result; her father was now a dying man and the vast sums he had used were again at her disposal. After all--what did it matter? If she married the duke in a year, she would be obliged to give up the whole property! But--need she marry him, if the Wildenaus could prove nothing against her? She sank into a dull reverie. But when the duke mentioned the cousins' desire for the little hunting-castle, life suddenly woke in her again. "Never, never!" she cried, while a burning blush crimsoned her face: "Rather all my possessions than that!" A flood of tears suddenly dissolved her unnatural torpor.
"But, dearest Madeleine, you will never live there again!" said the duke consolingly.
"No--neither I nor any living mortal will enter it again; but, Duke--must I say it? There sleeps my child; there sleeps the dream of my heart--it is the mausoleum of my love! No, leave me that--no stranger's foot must desecrate it! I will do anything, will give the Wildenaus twice, thrice as much; they may choose any of my estates--only not that one, and even if I marry you, when I must resign everything, I will ask you to buy it from my cousins, and you will not refuse my first request?"
The prince gazed at her long and earnestly; for the first time a ray of the old love shone in his eyes. "Do you know that I have never seen you so beautiful as at this moment? Now your own soul looks out from your eyes! Now I absolve you from everything. Forgive me--I was mistaken in you, but this impulse teaches me that you are still yourself. It does me good!"
"Oh, Duke! There is little merit, when the living was not allowed his rightful place--to secure it to the dead!"
"Well, it is at least an act of atonement. Madeleine, there cannot be more joy in Heaven over the sinner who repents than I felt just now at your words. Yes, my poor friend, you shall keep the scene of your happiness and your grief untouched--I will assure you of it, and will arrange it with the Wildenaus."
"Duke! Oh, you are the best, the noblest of men!" she exclaimed, smiling through her tears: "Do you know that I love you as I never did before? I thought it perfectly natural that you could not love me as you saw me during those days. I felt it, though you did not intend to let me see it."
She had not meant to assume it, but these words expressed the charming artlessness which had formerly rendered her so irresistible, and the longer the duke had missed it, the less he was armed against the spell.
"Madeleine!" he held out his arms--and she--did she know how it happened? Was it gratitude, the wish to make at least one person happy? She threw herself on his breast--for the first time he held her in his embrace. Surely she was his betrothed bride! But she had not thought of what happened now. The duke's lips sought hers--she could not resist like a girl of sixteen, he would have considered it foolish coquetry. So she was forced to submit.
"Honi soit qui mal y pense!" he murmured, kissing her brow, her hair--and her lips. But when she felt his lips press hers, it suddenly seemed as though some one was saying dose beside her: "You!" It was the word Freyer always uttered when he embraced her, as though he knew of nothing better or higher than that one word, in which he expressed the whole strength of his emotion! "You--you!" echoed constantly in her ears with that sweet, wild fervor which seemed to threaten: "the next instant you will be consumed in my ardor." Again he stood before her with his dark flaming eyes and the overwhelming earnestness of a mighty passion, which shadowed his pale brow as the approaching thunder-storm clouded the snow-clad peaks of his mountains. And she compared it with the light, easy tenderness, the "honi soi qui mal y pense" of the trained squire of dames who was pressing his first kiss upon her lips--and she loathed the stranger. She released herself with a sudden movement, approached the window and looked out. As she gazed, she fancied she saw the dark figure of the deserted one, illumined by the crimson glare of the forest conflagration, holding out his hand with a divinely royal gesture to raise and shelter her on his breast. Once more she beheld him gaze calmly down at the charred timber and heard him say smiling: "The wood was mine."
Then--then she beheld in the distant East a sultry room, shaded by gay awnings, surrounded by rustling palm-trees, palm-trees, which drew their sustenance from the soil on which the Redeemer's blood once flowed. He sat beside the bed of the mother of a new-born child, whispering sweet, earnest words--and the mother was she herself, the babe was his.
Then she beheld this same man kneeling by the coffin of a child, the rigid, death-white face buried under his raven locks. It was the child born on the consecrated soil of the burning East, which she had left to pine in the cold breath of the Western winter. She withdrew from it the mother-heart, in which the tender plant of the South might have gained warmth. She had left that father's child to die.
Yet he did not complain; uttered no reproach--he remained silent.
She saw him become more and more solitary and silent. The manly beauty wasted, his strength failed--at last she saw him noiselessly cross the carpeted floor of this very room and close the door behind him never to return! No, no, it could not be--all that had happened was false--nothing was true save that he was the father of her child, her husband, and no one else could ever be that, even though she was separated from him for ever.
"Duke!" she cried, imploringly. "Leave me to myself. I do not understand my own feelings--I feel as if arraigned before the judgment seat of God. Let me take counsel with my own heart--forgive me I am a variable, capricious woman--one mood to-day and another to-morrow; have patience with me, I entreat you."
The duke looked gravely at her, and answered, nodding: "I understand--or rather--I am afraid to understand!"
"Duke, I am not suited to marry. Let the elderly woman go her way alone--I believe I can never again be happy. I long only for rest and solitude."
"You need rest and composure. I will give you time and wait your decision, which can now be absolutely untrammelled, since your business affairs are settled and the peril is over."
"Do not be angry with me, Duke--and do not misunderstand me--oh Heaven--you might think that I had only given my promise in the dread of poverty and disgrace and now that the peril was past, repented."
The duke hesitated a moment. Then he said in a low, firm tone: "Surely you know that I am the man of sober reason, who is surprised by nothing. 'Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.' So act without regard to me, as your own feeling dictates." He held out his hand: "There was a time when I seriously believed that we might be happy together. That is now past--you will destroy no illusion, if you assert the contrary."
"Perhaps not even a sincere desire of the heart?" replied the countess, smiling.
The duke became deeply earnest. "That suggestion is out of place here.--Am I to wound you from gallantry and increase the measure of your self-reproaches by showing you that I suffer? Or tell a falsehood to lessen your responsibility? We will let all that rest. If you want me, send for me. Meanwhile, as your faithful attorney, I will arrange the matter of the hunting castle."
"Duke--how petty I am in your presence--how noble you are!"
"That is saying far too much, Countess! I am content, if you can bear me witness that at least I have not made myself ridiculous." He left the room--cold, courteous, stoical as ever!
Madeleine von Wildenau hurried to the window and flung it open. "Pour in, light and air, mighty consolers--ah, now I breathe, I live again!"
Once more she could freely show her face, had no occasion to conceal herself. The danger of a "scandal" was over, thanks to the lack of proof. She need no longer shun the Wildenaus--old Martin was faithful and her husband, the most dangerous witness, had gone, disappeared. Now she had nothing more to dread; she was free, mistress of her fortune, mistress of her will, she breathed once more as if new-born.
Liberty, yes, this was happiness. She believed that she had found it at last! And she would enjoy it. She need not reproach herself for breaking her troth to the prince, he had told her so--if thereby she could appease the avenging spirits of her deed to Freyer, they must have the sacrifice! True, to be reigning duchess of a country was a lofty position; but--could she purchase it at the cost of being the wife of a man whom she did not love? Why not? Was she a child?--a foolish girl? A crown was at stake--and should she allow sentimental scruples to force her to sacrifice it to the memory of an irrevocably lost happiness?
She shook her head, as if she wanted to shake off a bandage. She was ill from the long days spent in darkness and confinement like a criminal. That was the cause of these whims. Up and out into the open air, where she would again find healthy blood and healthy thoughts.
She rang the bell, a new servant appeared.
"My arrival can now be announced. Tell Martin to bring the carriage round, I will go to drive."
"Very well, Your Highness."
She seemed to have escaped from a ban. She had never known liberty. Until she married the Count von Wildenau she had been under the control of a governess. Then, in her marriage with the self-willed old man she was a slave, and she had scarcely been a widow ere she forged new fetters for herself. Now, for the first time, she could taste liberty. The decision was not pressing. The cool stoic who had waited so long would not lose patience at the last moment--so she could still do what she would.
So the heart, struggling against the unloved husband, deceived the ambitious, calculating reason which aspired to a crown.
The carriage drove up. It was delightful to hear a pair of spirited horses stamping before a handsome equipage, to be assisted to enter by a liveried servant and to be able to say: "This is yours once more!" The only shadow which disturbed her was that on Martin's face, a shadow resting there since she had last visited her castle of the Sleeping Beauty. She well knew for whom the old man was grieving. It was a perpetual reproach and she avoided talking with him, from a certain sense of diffidence. She could justify herself to the keen intelligence of the duke--to the simplicity of this plain man she could not; she felt it.
It was a delightful May evening. A sea of warm air and spring perfumes surrounded her, and crowds thronged the streets, enjoying the evening, after their toilsome work, as if they had just waked from their winter sleep. On the corners groups paused before huge placards which they eagerly studied, one pushing another away. What could it be?
Then old Martin, as if intentionally, drove close to the sidewalk, where the people stood in line out to the street before those posters. There was a little movement in the throng; people turned to look at the splendid equipage, thus leaving the placard exposed. The countess read it--the blood congealed in her veins--there, in large letters, stood the words: "Oberammergau Passion Play." What did it mean? She leaned back in the carriage, feeling as if she must shriek aloud with homesickness, with agonized longing for those vanished days of a great blissful delusion! Again she beheld the marvellous play. Again the divine sufferer appeared to the world--the mere name on that wretched placard was already exerting its spell, for the pedestrians, pausing on their errands, stopped before it by hundreds, as if they had never read the words "Passion Play" before! And the man who helped create this miracle, to which a world was again devoutly pilgrimaging, had been clasped in her arms--had loved her, been loyally devoted to her, to her alone, and she had disdained him! Now he was again bringing the salvation of the divine word and miracle--she alone was shut out, she had forfeited it by her own fault. She was--as in his wonderful gift of divination he had once said--one of the foolish virgins who had burned her oil, and now the heavenly bridegroom was coming, but she stood alone in the darkness while the others were revelling at the banquet.
The rattle of wheels and the trampling of the crowds about her were deafening, and it was fortunate, for, in the confused uproar, the cry which escaped the tortured heart of the proud lady in the coroneted carriage died away unheard. Lilacs and roses--why do you send forth so intoxicating a fragrance, why do you still bloom? Can you have the heart to smile at a world in which there is such anguish? But lilacs, roses, and a beautiful May-sun laughed on, the world was devoutly preparing for the great pilgrimage to Oberammergau. She only was exiled, and returned to her stone palace, alone, hopeless--with infinite desolation in her heart.
A note from the duke awaited her. He took his leave for a few weeks, in order to give her time to understand her own heart clearly. Now she was utterly alone.
