"Well, soul of fire, is the heat fierce enough for you now?" asked Freyer, pressing the beautiful woman closer to his side to shield her with his own body: "Are you content now?"
"Yes," she said, gasping for breath, and the eyes of both met, as if they felt only the fire in their own hearts and had blended this with the external element into a single sea of flame.
Nearer, closer drew the fire in ever narrowing circles around the defiant pair, more and more sultry became the path, brighter grew the hissing blaze through which they were compelled to force their way.
Now on the left, now on the right, the red-eyed conflagration confronted them amid the clouds of smoke and flame, half stifled by the descending floods of rain, yet pouring from its open jaws hot, scorching steam--fatal to laboring human chests--and obliged the fugitives to turn back in search of some new opening for escape.
"If the rain ceases, we are lost!" said the countess with the utmost calmness. "Then the fire will be sole ruler."
Freyer made no reply. Steadily, unflinchingly, he struggled on, grasping with the strength of a t.i.tan the falling boughs which threatened the countess" life, shielding with both arms her uncovered head from the flying sparks, and ever and anon, sprinkling her hair and garments from some bubbling spring. The water in the brooks was already warm. Throngs of animals fleeing from the flames surrounded them, and birds with scorched wings fell at their feet. It was no longer possible to go down, the fire was raging below them. They were compelled to climb up the mountain and seek the summit.
"Only have courage--forward!" were Freyer"s sole words. And upward they toiled--through the pathless woods, through underbrush and thickets, over roots of trees, rolling stones, and rocks, never pausing, never taking breath, for the flames were close at their heels, threatening them with their fiendish embrace. Where the path was too toilsome, Freyer lifted the woman he loved in his arms and bore her over the rough places.
At last the woods grew thinner, the boundary of the flames was pa.s.sed, they had reached the top--were saved. The neighing steeds of the wind received them on the barren height and strove to hurl them back into the fiery grave, but Freyer"s towering form resisted their a.s.sault and, with powerless fury, they tore away the rocks on the right and left and rolled them thundering down into the depths below. The water pouring from the clouds drenched the lovers like a billow from the sea, beating into their eyes, mouths, and ears till, blinded and deafened, they were obliged to grope their way along the cliff. The garments of the beautiful Madeleine von Wildenau hung around her in tatters, heavy as lead, her hair was loosened, dripping and dishevelled, she was trembling from head to foot with cold in the icy wind and rain here on the heights, after the heat and terror below in the smouldering thicket.
"I know where there is a herder"s hut, I"ll take you to it. Cling closely to me, we must climb still higher."
They silently continued the ascent.
The countess staggered with fatigue. Freyer lifted her again in his arms, and, by almost superhuman exertion, bore her up the last steep ascent to the hut. It was empty. He placed the exhausted woman on the herder"s straw pallet, where she sank fainting. When she regained her consciousness she was supported in Freyer"s arms, and her face was wet with his tears. She gazed at him as if waking to the reality of some 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sionately 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 "G.o.d" 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 G.o.ds 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 c.o.c.k 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 n.o.ble 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--encompa.s.sed 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, G.o.d. 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 G.o.d Who has appeared to me, rising from marvel to marvel, since my eyes first beheld you."