On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau
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.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MEMORIES.
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