The countess stood alone before the locked door. The evening wind swept through the trees and shook the boughs of the pines. A few broken branches swayed and nodded like crippled arms; they were the ones from which Freyer had taken the evergreen for the child"s coffin. At that time they were stiff with ice, now the sap, softened by the Spring rain, was dripping from them. Did she understand what the boughs were trying to tell her? Were her cheeks wet by the rain or by tears? She did not know. She only felt unutterably deserted. She stood on the moss-grown steps, shut out from her own house, and no voice answered her call.
A cross towered above the tree-tops, it was on the steeple of the old chapel where they both lay--Josepha and the child. A bird of prey soared aloft from it and then vanished in the neighboring grove to shield its plumage from the rain. It had its nest there.
Now all was still again--as if dead, only the cloud rising above the wood poured its contents on the Spring earth. At last footsteps approached. It was the girl bringing the keys.
"I beg the countess" pardon--I did not expect Your Highness so late, I was in the stable unlocking the door," she said. Then she handed her the bunch of keys. "This one with the label is the key of the steward"s room, he made me promise not to give it to anybody except the countess, if she should come again."
"Bring a light--it is growing dark," replied the countess, entering the sitting-room.
"I hope Your Highness will excuse it," said the girl. "Everything is still just as it was left after the funerals of Josepha and the child.
Herr Freyer wouldn"t allow me to clear anything away." She left the room to get a lamp. There lay the dry pine branches, there stood the crucifix with the candles, which had burned low in their sockets.
_This_ for weeks had been his sole companionship. Poor, forsaken one!
cried a voice in the countess" heart, and a shudder ran through her limbs as she saw on the sofa a black pall left from Josepha"s funeral.
It seemed as if it were Josepha herself lying there, as if the black form must rise at her entrance and approach threateningly. Horror seized her, and she hurried out to meet the girl who was coming with a light. The steward"s room was one story higher, adjoining her own apartments. She went up the stairs with an uncertain tread, leaving the girl below. She needed no witness for what she expected to find there.
She thrust the key into the lock with a trembling hand and opened the door. Sorrowful duty! Wherever she turned in this house of mourning, she was under the ban of her own guilt. Wherever she entered one of the empty rooms, it seemed as if whispering, wailing spirits separated and crept into the corners--to watch until the moment came when they could rush forth as an avenging army.
At her entrance the movement was communicated through all the boards of the old floor until it really seemed as if viewless feet were walking by her side. For a moment she stood still, holding her breath--she had never before noticed this effect of her own steps, she had never been here _alone_. Her sleeping-room was beside her husband"s--the door stood open--he must have been in there to bid farewell before going away. She moved hesitatingly a few steps forward and cast a timid glance within. The two beds, standing side by side, looked like two coffins. She felt as if she beheld her own corpse lying there--the corpse of the former Countess Wildenau, Freyer"s wife. The woman standing here now was a different person--and her murderess! Yet she grieved for her and still felt her griefs and her death-struggle. She hastily closed and bolted the door--as if the dead woman within might come out and call her to an account.
Then she turned her dragging steps toward Freyer"s writing-desk, for that is always the tabernacle where a lonely soul conceals its secrets.
And--there lay a large envelope bearing the address: "To the Countess Wildenau. To be opened by her own hands!"
She placed the lamp on the table, and sat down to read. She no longer dreaded the ghosts of her own acts--_he_ was with her and though he had raged yesterday in the madness of his anguish--he would protect her!
She opened the envelope. Two papers fell into her hands. Her marriage certificate and a paper in Freyer"s writing. The lamp burned unsteadily and smoked, or were her eyes dim? Now she no longer saw the mistakes in writing, now she saw between the clumsy characters a n.o.ble, grieving soul which had gazed at her yesterday from a pair of dark eyes--for the last time! Clasping her hands over the sheet, she leaned her head upon them like a penitent Magdalene upon the gospel. It was to her also a gospel--of pain and love. It ran as follows:
"Countess:
"I bid you an affectionate farewell, and enclose the marriage certificate, that you may have no fear of my causing you any annoyance by it--
"Everything else which I owe to your kindness I restore, as I can make no farther use of it. I am sincerely sorry that you were disappointed in me--I told you that I was not He whom I personated, but a poor, plain man, but you would not believe it, and made the experiment with me. It was a great misfortune for both. For you can never be happy, on account of the sin you wish to commit against me. I will pray G.o.d to release you from me--in a way which will spare you from taking this heavy sin upon you--but I have still one act of penance to perform toward my home, to which I have been faithless, that it may still forgive me in this life. I hear that the Pa.s.sion Play cannot be performed in Ammergau next summer, because there is no Christus--that would be terrible for our poor parish! I will try whether I can help them out of the difficulty if they will receive me and not repulse me as befits the renegade." (Here the writing was blurred by tears) "Only wait, for the welfare of your own soul, until the performances are over, and I have done my duty to the community. Then G.o.d will be merciful and open a way for us all.
"Your grateful
"Joseph Freyer.
"Postscript:--If it is possible, forgive me for all I did to offend you yesterday."
There, in brief, untutored words was depicted the martyrdom of a soul, which had pa.s.sed through the school of suffering to the utmost perfection! The most eloquent, polished description of his feelings would have had less power to touch the countess" heart than these simple, trite expressions--she herself could not have explained why it was the helplessness of the uncultured man who had trusted to her generosity, which spoke from these lines with an unconscious reproach, which pierced deeper than any complaint. And she had no answer to this reproach, save the tears which now flowed constantly from her eyes.
Laying her head upon the page, she wept--at last wept.
She remained long in this att.i.tude. A sorrowful peace surrounded her, nothing stirred within or without, the spirits seemed reconciled by what they now beheld. The dead Countess Wildenau in the next room had risen noiselessly, she was no longer there! She was flying far--far beyond the mountains--seeking--seeking the lost husband, the poor, innocent husband, who had resigned for her sake all that const.i.tutes human happiness and human dignity, anxious for one thing only, her deliverance from what, in his childlike view of religion, he could not fail to consider a heavy, unforgivable sin! She was flying through a broad portal in the air--it was the rainbow formed of the tears of love shed by sundered human hearts for thousands of years. Even so looked the rainbow, which had arched above her head when she stood on the peak with the royal son of the mountains, high above the embers of the forest, through which he had borne her, ruling the flames. They had spared him--but _she_ had had no pity--they had crouched at his feet like fiery lions before their tamer, but the woman for whom he had 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, n.o.ble 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sages. 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 compa.s.s it with an impenetrable hedge that no one may find it. The Sleeping Beauty who slumbers here--nothing must ever rouse!"
CHAPTER x.x.x.
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 ma.s.ses 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--G.o.d save a fate like mine."