On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau

fought trampled on him. Yet above them arched the rainbow, the symbol of peace and reconciliation, and under _this_ she had made the oath which she now intended to break. The dead Countess Wildenau, however, saw the gleaming bow again, and was soaring through it to her husband, for she had no further knowledge of earthly things, she knew only the old, long denied, all-conquering love! Suddenly the clock on the writing-table began to strike, the penitent dreamer started. It was striking nine. The clock was still going--he had wound it. It was a gift from her. He had left all her gifts, he wrote. That would be terrible. Surely he had not gone without any means? The key of the writing-table was in the lock. She opened the drawer. There lay all his papers, books, the rest of the housekeeping money, and accounts, all in the most conscientious order, and beside them--oh, that she must see it--a little purse containing his savings and a savings-bank book, which she herself had once jestingly pressed upon him. The little book was wrapped in paper, on which was written: "To keep the graves of my dear ones in Countess Wildenau's chapel." "Oh, you great, noble heart, which I never understood!" sobbed the guilty woman, restoring the little volume to its place. But she could not rest, she must search on and on, she must know whether he had left her as a beggar? Against the wall beside the writing-table, stood a costly old armoire, richly ornamented, which had seen many generations of the Prankenbergs come and pass away. Madeleine von Wildenau turned the lock with an effort--there hung all his clothing, just as he had received it from her or purchased it with his own wages; nothing was missing save the poor little coat, hat and cane, with which he had left Ammergau with the owner of a fortune numbering millions. He had wandered forth again as poor as he had come. Sinking on her knees, she buried her face, overwhelmed with grief and shame, in her clasped hands. "Freyer, Freyer, I did not want this--not this!" Now the long repressed grief which she had inflicted upon herself burst forth unrestrained. Here she could shriek it out; here no one heard her. "Oh, that you should leave me thus--unreconciled, without a farewell, with an aching heart--not even protected from want! And I let you go without one kind word--I did not even return your last glance. Was it possible that I could do it?" The old Prankenberg lion on the coat of arms on the armoire had doubtless seen many mourners scan the garments whose owners rested under the sod--but no one of all the women of that failing race had wept so bitterly over the contents of the armoire--as this last of her name. The candle had burned low in the socket, a star glinting through the torn clouds shone through the uncurtained windows. Beyond the forest the first flashes of spring lightning darted to and fro. Madeleine von Wildenau rose and stood for a while in the middle of the room, pondering. What did she want here? She had nothing more to find in the empty house. The dead Countess Wildenau was once more sleeping in the adjoining room, and the living one no longer belonged to herself. Was it, could it be true, that she had thrust out the peaceful inmate of this house? Thrust him forever from the modest home she had established for him? "Husband, father of my child, where are you?" No answer! He was no longer hers! He had risen from the humiliation she inflicted upon him, he had stripped off the robe of servitude, and gone forth, scorning her and all else--a poor but free man! She must return to the slavery of her own guilt and of prosaic existence, while he went farther and farther away, like a vanishing star. She felt that her strength was failing, she must go, or she would sink dying in this place of woe--alone without aid or care. She folded the marriage certificate and Freyer's letter together, and without another glance around the room--the ghost of her awakened conscience was stirring again, she took the dying candle and hurried down. The steps again creaked behind her, as though some one was following her downstairs. She had ordered the carriage at nine, it must have been waiting a long time. Her foot faltered at the door of the sitting-room, but she passed on--it was impossible for her to enter it again--she called--but the maid-servant had gone to her work in the stables--nothing save her own trembling voice echoed back through the passages. She went out. The carriage was standing at the side of the house. The rain had ceased, the forest was slumbering and all the creatures which animated it by day with it. The countess locked the door. "Now interweave your boughs and shut it in!" she said to the briers and pines which stood closely around it. "Spread out your branches and compass it with an impenetrable hedge that no one may find it. The Sleeping Beauty who slumbers here--nothing must ever rouse!" CHAPTER XXX. THE "WIESHERRLE." High above the rushing Wildbach, where the stream bursts through the crumbling rocks and in its fierce rush sends heavy stones grinding over one another--a man lay on the damp cliff which trembled under the shock of the falling masses of water. The rough precipices, dripping with spray, pressed close about him, shutting him into the cool, moss-grown ravine, through which no patch of blue sky was visible, no sunbeam stole. Here the wanderer, deceived in everything, lay resting on his way home. With his head propped on his hand, he gazed steadfastly down into the swirl of the foaming, misty, ceaseless rush of the falling water! On the rock before him lay a small memorandum book, in which he was slowly writing sorrowful words, just as they welled from his soul--slowly and sluggishly, as the resin oozes from the gashed trees. Wherever a human heart receives a deep, fatal wound, the poetry latent in the blood of the people streams from the hurt. All our sorrowful old folk-songs are such drops of the heart's blood of the people. The son of a race of mountaineers who sung their griefs and joys was composing his own mournful wayfaring ballad for not one of those which he knew and cherished in his memory expressed the unutterable grief he experienced. He did not know how he wrote it--he was ignorant of rhyme and metre. When he finished, that is, when he had said all he felt, it seemed as though the song had flown to him, as the seed of some plant is blown upon a barren cliff, takes root, and grows there. But now, after he had created the form of the verses, he first realized the full extent of his misery! Hiding the little book in his pocket, he rose to follow the toilsome path he was seeking high among the mountains where there were only a few scattered homesteads, and he met no human being. While Countess Wildenau in the deserted hunting-castle was weeping over the cast-off garments with which he had flung aside the form of a servant, the free man was striding over the heights, fanned by the night-breeze, lashed by the rain in his thin coat--free--but also free to be exposed to grief, to the elements--to hunger! Free--but so free that he had not even a roof beneath which to shelter his head within four protecting walls. "Both love and faith have fled for aye, Like chaff by wild winds swept away-- Naught, naught is left me here below Save keen remorse and endless woe. "No home have I on the wide earth-- A ragged beggar fare I forth, In midnight gloom, by tempests met, Broken my staff, my star has set. "With raiment tattered by the sleet, My brain scorched by the sun's fierce heat, My heart torn by a human hand, A shadow--I glide through the land. "Homeward I turn, white is my hair, Of love and faith my life is bare-- Whoe'er beholds me makes the sign Of the cross--God save a fate like mine." So the melancholy melody echoed through the darkness of the night, from peak to peak along the road from the Griess to Ammergau. And wherever it sounded, the birds flew startled from the trees deeper into the forest, the deer fled into the thickets and listened, the child in the cradle started and wept in its sleep. The dogs in the lonely courtyards barked loudly. "That was no human voice, it was a shot deer or an owl"--the peasants said to their trembling wives, listening for a time to the ghostly, wailing notes dying faintly away till all was still once more--and the spectre had passed. But when morning dawned and the time came when the matin bells drove all evil spirits away the song, too, ceased, and only its prophecy came true. Whoever recognized in the emaciated man, with hollow eyes and cheeks, the Christus-Freyer of Ammergau, doubtless made the sign of the cross in terror, exclaiming: "Heaven preserve us!" But the lighter it grew, the farther he plunged into the forest. He was ashamed to be seen! His gait grew more and more feeble, his garments more shabby by his long walk in the rain and wind. He still had a few pennies in his pocket--the exact sum he possessed when he left Ammergau. He was keeping them for a night's lodgings, which he must take once during the twenty-four hours. He could have reached Ammergau easily by noon--but he did not want to enter it in broad day as a ragged beggar. So he rested by day and walked at night. At a venerable old inn, the "Shield," on the road from Steingaden to Ammergau, he asked one of the servants if he might lie a few hours on the straw to rest. The latter hesitated before granting permission--the man looked so doubtful. At last he said: "Well, I won't refuse you, but see that you carry nothing off when you go away from here." Freyer made no reply. The wrath which had made him hurl the lackey from the countess' door, no longer surged within him--now it was his home which was punishing him, speaking to him in her rude accents--let her say what she would, he accepted it as a son receives a reproof from a mother. He hung his drenched coat to dry in the sun, which now shone warmly again, then slipped into the barn and lay down on the hay. A refreshing slumber embraced him, poverty and humility took the sorrowing soul into their maternal arms, as a poor man picks up the withered blossom the rich one has carelessly flung aside, and carrying it home makes it bloom again. Rest, weary soul! You no longer need to stretch and distort the noble proportions of your existence to fit them to relations to which they were not born. You need be nothing more than you are, a child of the people, suckled by the sacred breast of nature and can always return there without being ashamed of it. Poverty and lowliness extend their protecting mantle over you and hide you from the looks of scorn and contempt which rend your heart. A peaceful expression rested upon the sleeper's face, but his breathing was deep and labored as if some powerful feeling was stirring his soul under the quiet repose of slumber and from beneath his closed lids stole a tear. During several hours the exhausted body lay between sleeping and waking, unconscious grief and comfort. Opposite, "on the Wies" fifteen minutes walk from the "Shield," a bell rang in the church where the pilgrims went. There an ancient Christ "our Lord of the Wies," called simply "the Wiesherrle," carved from mouldering, painted wood, was hung from the cross by chains which rattled when the image was laughed at incredulously, and with real hair, which constantly grew again when an impious hand cut it. At times