On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau
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_."
CHAPTER XIII.
BANISHED FROM EDEN.
Silence reigned on the height. The winds had died away, the clouds were
scattering swiftly, like an army of ghosts. The embers of the wood
below crackled softly. The trunks had all been gnawed to the roots by
the fiery tooth of the flames. It was like a churchyard full of clumsy
black crosses and grave-stones on which the souls danced to and fro
like will-o'-the-wisps.
The countess rested silently on Freyer's breast. When he said: "The
wood was mine!" she had thrown herself, unable to utter a word, into
his arms--and had since remained clasped in his embrace in silent,
perfect peace.
Now the misty veil, growing lighter and more transparent, at last
drifted entirely away, and the blue sky once more arched above the
earth in a majestic dome. Here and there sunbeams darted through the
melting cloud-rack and suddenly, as though the gates of heaven had
opened, a double rainbow, radiant in seven-hued majesty, spanned the
vault above them in matchless beauty.
Freyer bade the countess look up. And when she perceived the exquisite
miracle of the air, with her lover in the midst--encompassed by it, she
raised her head and extended her arms like the bride awaiting the
heavenly bridegroom. Her eyes rested on him as if dazzled: "Be what you
will, man, seraph, God. Shining one, you must be mine! I will bring you
down from the height of your cross, though you were nailed above with
seven-fold irons. You must be mine. Freyer, hear my vow, hear it, ye
surrounding mountains, hear it, sacred soil below, and thou radiant
many-hued bow which, with the grace of Aphrodite, dost girdle the
universe, risen from chaos. I swear to be your wife, Joseph Freyer,
swear it by the God Who has appeared to me, rising from marvel to
marvel, since my eyes first beheld you."
Freyer, with bowed head, stood trembling before her. He felt as if a
goddess was rolling in her chariot of clouds above him--as if the
glimmering prism above were dissolving and flooding him with a sea of
glittering sparks. "You--my wife?" he faltered, sobbing, then flung
himself face downward before her. "This is too much--too much--"
"You shall be my husband," she murmured, raising him, "let me call you
so now until the priest's hand has united us! When, where, and how this
can be done--I do not yet know! Let the task of deciding be left to
hours devoted to the consideration of earthly things. This is too
sacred, it is our spiritual marriage hour, for in it I have pledged
myself to you in spirit and in truth! Our church is nature, our
witnesses are heaven and earth, our candles the blazing wood
below--your little heritage which you sacrificed for me with a smile!
And so I give you my bridal kiss--my husband!"
But Freyer did not return the caress. The old conflict again awoke--the
conflict with his duty as the representative of Christ.
"Oh, God--is it not the tempter whom Thou didst send to Thy own son on
Mt. Hebron that he might show him all the splendors of the world,
saying: 'All shall be thine?' Dare I be faithless to the character of
Thy chaste son, if Thou dost appoint me to undergo the same trial? Dare
I be happy, dare I enjoy, so long as I wear the sacred mask of His
sufferings and sacrifice. Will it not then be a terrible fraud, and
dare I enter the presence of God with this lie upon my conscience? Will
He not tear the crown of thorns from my head and exclaim: 'Juggler--I
wish to rise by the pure and saintly--not by deceivers who _feign_ my
sufferings and with deceitful art turn the holiest things into a farce.
Woe betide me, poor, weak mortal that I am--the trial is too severe. I
cannot endure it. Take Thy crown--I place it in Thy hands again--and
will personate the Christ no more."
"Joseph!" exclaimed Countess Wildenau, deeply moved. "Must this be? I
feel your anguish and am stirred as if we were parting from our dearest
possession." She raised her tearful eyes heavenward. "Must the Christ
vanish on the very day I plight my troth to him whom I love as Thy
image, even as Eve must have loved Adam _for the sake of his likeness
to God_. And must I, like Eve, no longer behold Thy face because I have
loved the divine in mortal form after the manner of mortals? Unhappy
doctrine of the fall of man, which renders the holiest feeling a crime,
must we too be driven out of Paradise, must you stand between us and
our happy intercourse with the deity? Joseph. Do you believe that the
Saviour Who came to bring redemption to the poor human race banished
from Eden, will be angry with you if you represent with a happy loving
heart the sacrifice by which He saved us?"
"I do not know, my beloved, you may be right. Even the time-honored
precepts of our forefathers permit the representative of the Christ to
be married. Yet I think differently! The highest demands claim the