It was the softest, the most cautious call of which a human voice is capable. But Maria answered it just as little as she had answered the shouts of despair with which the man who loved her had wished to re-awaken her to consciousness of herself.
She lay couched upon the steps of the high altar, stretched out in her slenderness, her head in Freder"s arm, her hands in Freder"s hand, and the gentle fire of the lofty church-windows burnt upon her quite white face and upon her quite white hands. Her heart beat, slowly, barely, perceptibly. She did not breathe She lay sunken in the depths of an exhaustion from which no shout, no entreaty, no cry of despair could have dragged her. She was as though dead.
A hand was laid upon Freder"s shoulder.
He turned his head. He looked into the face of his father.
Was that his father? Was that Joh Fredersen, the master over the great Metropolis? Had his father such white hair? And so tormented a brow? And such tortured eyes?
Was there, in this world, after this night of madness, nothing but horror and death and destruction and agony-without end-?
"What do you want here?" asked Freder, Joh Fredersen"s son. "Do you want to take her away from me? Have you made plans to part her and me? Is there some mighty undertaking in danger, to which she and I are to be sacrificed?"
"To whom are you speaking, Freder?" his father asked, very gently.
Freder did not answer. His eyes opened inquiringly, for he had heard a voice never heard before. He was silent.
"If you are speaking of Joh Fredersen," continued the very gentle voice, "then be informed that, this night, Joh Fredersen died a sevenfold death... "
Freder"s eyes, burnt with suffering, were raised to the eyes which were above him. A piteously sobbing sound came from out his lips.
"Oh my G.o.d-Father-! Father... you-!"
Joh Fredersen stooped down above him and above the girl who lay in Freder"s lap.
"She is dying, father... Can"t you see she is dying-?"
Joh Fredersen shook his head.
"No, no!" said his gentle voice. "No, Freder. There was an hour in my life in which I knelt, as you, holding in my arms the woman I loved. But she died, indeed. I have studied the face of the dying to the full. I know it perfectly and shall never again forget it... The girl is but sleeping. Do not awaken her by force."
And, with a gesture of inexpressible tenderness, his hand slipped from Freder"s shoulder to the hair of the sleeping girl.
"Dearest child!" he said. "Dearest child... "
And from out of the depth of her dream the sweetness of a smile responded to him, before which Joh Fredersen bowed himself, as before a revelation, not of this world.
Then he left his son and the girl and pa.s.sed through the cathedral, made glorious and pleasant by the gay-coloured ribbons of sunshine.
Freder watched him go until his gaze grew misty. And all at once, with a sudden, violent, groaning fervour, he raised the girl"s mouth to his mouth and kissed her, as though he wished to die of it. For, from out the marvel of light, spun into ribbons, the knowledge had come upon him that it was day, that the invulnerable transformation of darkness into light was becoming consummate, in its greatness, in its kindliness, over the world.
"Come to yourself, Maria, beloved!" he said, entreating her with his caresses, with his love. "Come to me, beloved! Come to me!"
The soft response of her heart-beat, of her breathing, caused a laugh to well up from his throat and the fervour of his whispered words died on her lips.
Joh Fredersen caught the sound of his son"s laugh. He was already near the door of the cathedral. He stopped and looked at the stack of pillars, in the delicate, canopied niches of which stood the saintly men and women, smiling gently.
"You have suffered," thought his dream-filled brain. "You have been redeemed by suffering. You have attained to bliss... Is it worth while to suffer?-Yes."
And he walked out of the cathedral on feet which were still as though dead, tentatively, he stepped through the mighty door-way, stood dazzled in the light and swayed as though drunken.
For the wine of suffering which he had drunk, was very heavy, and intoxicating, and white-hot.
His soul spoke within him as he reeled along: "I will go home and look for my mother."
Chapter 24.
"FREDER... ?" SAID THE SOFT Madonna-voice. "Yes, you beloved! Speak to me! Speak to me!" "Where are we?" "In the cathedral." "Is it day or night?" "It is day."
"Wasn"t your father here, with us, just now?"
"Yes, you beloved."
"His hand was on my hair?"
"You felt it?"
"Oh Freder, while your father was standing here it seemed to me as though I heard a spring rushing within a rock. A spring, weighted with salt, and red with blood. But I knew too: when the spring is strong enough to break out through the rock, then if will be sweeter than the dew and whiter than the light."
"Bless you for your belief, Maria... "
She smiled. She fell silent.
"Why don"t you open your eyes, you beloved?" asked Freder"s longing mouth.
"I see," she answered. "I see, Freder... I see a city, standing in the light... "
"Shall I build it?"
"No, Freder. Not you. Your father."
"My father?"
"Yes... "
"Maria when you spoke of my father, before, this tone of" love was not in your voice... "
"Since then much has taken place, Freder. Since then, within a rock, a spring has come to life, heavy with salt and red with blood. Since then Joh Fredersen"s hair has turned snow-white with deadly fear for his son. Since then have those whom I called my brothers sinned from excessive suffering. Since then has Joh Fredersen suffered from excessive sin. Will you not allow them both, Freder-your father as well as my brothers-to pay for their sin, to atone, to become reconciled?"
"Yes, Maria."
"Will you help them, you mediator?"
"Yes, Maria."
She opened her eyes and turned the gentle wonder of their blue towards him. Bending low above her, he saw, in pious astonishment, how the gay-coloured heavenly kingdom of saintly legends, which looked down upon her from out the lofty, narrow church-windows, was reflected in her Madonna-eyes.
Involuntarily he raised his eyes to become aware, for the first time, of whither he had borne the girl whom he loved.
"G.o.d is looking at us!" he whispered, gathering her up to his heart, with longing arms. "G.o.d is smiling to us, Maria."
"Amen," said the girl at his heart.
Chapter 25.
JOH FREDERSEN CAME to his mother"s house.
Death had pa.s.sed over Metropolis. Destruction of the world and the Day of Judgment had shouted from out the roars of explosion, the clanging of the bells of the cathedral. But Joh Fredersen found his mother as he always found her: in the wide, soft chair, by the open window, the dark rug over the paralysed knees, the great Bible on the sloping table before her, in the beautiful old hands, the figured lace at which she was sewing.
She turned her eyes towards the door and perceived her son.
The expression of stern severity on her face became sterner and more severe.
She said nothing. But about her closed mouth was something which said: "You are in a bad way, Joh Fredersen... "
And as a judge did she regard him.
Joh Fredersen took his hat from his head. Then she saw the white hair above his brow...
"Child-!" she said quietly, stretching her hands out towards him.
Joh Fredersen fell on his knees by his mother"s side. He threw his arms about her, pressing his head into the lap, which had borne him. He felt her hands on his hair-felt how she touched it, as though fearful of hurting him, as though this white hair was the mark of an unhealed wound, very near the heart, and heard her dear voice saying: "Child... My child... My poor child."
The rustling of the walnut tree before the window filled a long silence with longing and affection. Then Joh Fredersen began to speak. He spoke with the eagerness of one bathing himself in Holy water, with the fervour of a conquered one, confessing, with the redemption of one ready to do any penance, and who was pardoned. His voice was soft and sounded as though coming from far away, from the farther bank of a wide river.
He spoke of Freder; then his voice failed him entirely. He raised himself from his knees and walked through the room. When he turned around there stood in his eyes a smiling loneliness and the realisation of a necessary giving-up-of the tree"s giving up of the ripe fruit.
"It seemed to me," he said, gazing into s.p.a.ce, "as though I saw his face for the first time... when he spoke to me this morning... It is a strange face, mother. It is quite my face-and yet quite his own. It is the face of his beautiful, dead mother and yet it is, at the same time, fashioned after Maria"s features, as though he were born for the second time of that young, virginal creature. But it is, at the same time, the face of the ma.s.ses-confident in her, related to her, as near to her as brothers... "
"How do you come to know the face of the ma.s.ses, Joh?" asked his mother gently.
For a long time Joh Fredersen gave no answer.
"You are quite right to ask, mother," he said then. "From the heights of the New Tower of Babel I could not distinguish it. And in the night of lunacy, in which I perceived it for the first time it was so distorted in its own horror that it no more resembled itself...
"When I came out of the cathedral door in the morning the ma.s.ses were standing as one man, looking towards me. Then the face of the ma.s.ses was turned towards me. Then I saw, it was not old, was not young, was sorrowless and joyless.
"What do you want?" I asked. And one answered: "We are waiting, Mr. Fredersen... ."
"For what?" I asked him.
"We are waiting," continued the spokesman, "for someone to come, who will tell us what way we should go... ."
"And you want to be this one, Joh?"
"Yes, mother."
"And will they trust in you?"
"I do not know, mother. If we had been living a thousand years earlier, I should, perhaps, set out on the high road, with pilgrim"s staff and c.o.c.kle hat, and seek the way to the Holy Land of my belief, not returning home until I had cooled my feet, hot from wandering, in the Jordan, and, in the places of redemption, had prayed to the Redeemer. And, if I were not the man I am, it might come to pa.s.s that I should set out on a journey along the roads of those who walk in the shadow. I should, perhaps, sit with them in the corners of misery and learn to comprehend their groans and their curses into which a life of h.e.l.l has transformed their prayers... For, from comprehension comes love, and I am longing to love mankind, mother... But I believe that acting is better than making pilgrimages, and that a good deed is worth more than the best of words. I believe, too, that I shall find the way to do so, for there are two standing by me, who wish to help me... "
"Three, Joh... "
The eyes of the son sought the gaze of the mother.
"Who is the third?"
"Hel... "
"... Hel-?... "
"Yes, child."
Joh Fredersen remained silent.
She turned over the pages of her Bible, until she found what she sought. It was a letter. She took it and said, still holding it lovingly: "I received this letter from Hel before she died. She asked me to give it you, when, as she said, you had found your way home to me and to yourself... "
Soundlessly moving his; lips, Joh Fredersen stretched out his hand for the letter.
The yellowish envelope contained but a thin sheet of paper. Upon it stood, in the handwriting of a girlish woman: "I am going to G.o.d, and do not know when you will read these lines, Joh. But I know you will read them one day, and, until you come, I shall exhaust the eternal blissfulness in praying G.o.d to forgive me for making use of two Sayings from His Holy Book, in order to give you my heart, Joh."
"One is: I have loved thee with an everlasting love. The other:"
"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!"
"Hel."
It took Joh Fredersen a long time before he succeeded in replacing the thin sheet of note-paper in the envelope. His eyes gazed through the open window by which his mother sat. He saw, drawing across the soft, blue sky, great, white clouds, which were like ships, laden with treasures from a far-off world.
"Of what are you thinking, child?" asked his mother"s voice, with care.
But Joh Fredersen gave her no answer. His heart, utterly redeemed, spoke stilly within him: "Unto the end of the world... Unto the end of the world."