"You speak well, but you do not convince me," said Ernestine sadly.
"I see. I know that the remedy for your disease does not lie in the words or the example of others, but in your own experience. I prophesy, if you are ever overwhelmed by a moment of despair, that you will waken to the need of that G.o.d whom you now ignore. Even were it not to be so, I could only pity you, for a woman who cannot pray is a bird with broken wings. I maintain that there is no woman who does not believe,--for there is none who does not _fear_, and fear looks in reverence to G.o.d, whether as avenging justice or protecting love, to which to flee when all other aid fails. Can you be the sole exception to this rule?"
"I hope so," said Ernestine proudly. "I am not one of those weaklings who dread danger in the dark. I look every phantom of terror boldly in the face, and can recognize its natural origin. I fear nothing, and have no need of a G.o.d."
"You fear nothing?" asked Johannes, and then, struck by a sudden thought, added, "Not even death?"
"Not even death! I know that I am but a part of universal matter, and must return to it again. What is there to fear? The dissolution of a personal existence in the great sum of things,--the transformation of one substance into another? Since I learned to think, I have constantly pondered this great law of nature, and have accustomed myself to consider my insignificant existence only as part and parcel of the wondrous trans.m.u.tation of matter perpetually taking place in the universe. Only when we have attained this conviction can we smilingly renounce our vain claim to individual immortality, and see in death the due tribute that we pay to nature for our life."
"Indeed? And you imagine that this consolation will stand you in stead when the time really comes for you to descend into that dark abyss which is illuminated for you by no ray of faith or hope?"
"I am sure of it."
"And if you were plunged into it before the appointed time?"
"I should not quarrel with the measure of existence that nature accorded me."
"You would not, however, curtail that existence intentionally?"
Ernestine looked at him in surprise. "No, a.s.suredly not."
"Are you not afraid of doing so by going to America?"
"Why should I fear it?--on account of the dangers of the sea, perhaps?
Oh, no. It has borne millions of lives in safety upon its waves,--why not mine also? It will be more merciful than my kind, I think."
"Then you are still determined to go, after all that I have told you of your uncle?"
"With him or without him, I shall go," said Ernestine.
"Well, then, G.o.d is my witness that I have tried my best! Now,--you will think me cruel, but I cannot help it,--one remedy still is left me,--a terrible one, but your proud courage gives me strength to use it. Ernestine, if you persist in your determination to undertake this voyage, I fear the time is close at hand when the genuineness of your philosophical consolation will be tried indeed. You will hardly live to reach New York."
Ernestine grew, if possible, paler than before at these words. "What reason have you to say so?" she faltered.
"I will tell you, for there is no time left for concealment." He looked at the clock. "I cannot understand how, with your understanding and the knowledge that you possess, you should fail to see that you are ill,--not only nervous and prostrated, but seriously ill."
Ernestine looked at him in alarm.
"I am firmly convinced that you are lost if you continue your present mode of life, as you will and must in America. Notwithstanding all your uncle may have told you, I know that, once in New York, you will have no chance of recovering from him one thaler of your fortune, even supposing that, in accordance with your wishes, I allow him to leave this country. You will be forced to earn your daily support, and, I tell you truly, your life, under such conditions, will not last one year. You will die in your bloom in an American hospital, and be buried in a nameless grave!"
Ernestine turned away.
"Are you still determined to go?" Johannes asked after a pause.
Ernestine pondered for one moment of bitter agony. She knew only too well that he was right. But what should she do? He had no idea that her fortune was actually lost,--that she would be forced to earn her bread if she stayed as surely as if she went,--that she must labour incessantly, if she would not be a dependent beggar. Think and reflect as she might, she saw nothing before her but death in a hospital! And she would far rather perish in a foreign land than here, where all knew her, and where all would triumph over her downfall, that they had prophesied so often. No! she must fly! Like the dying bird in winter, hiding himself in his death-agony from every eye, she would conceal, in a distant quarter of the globe, her poverty, her degradation and disgrace, from the arrogant man of whom she had been so haughtily independent in the day of her prosperity.
At last she raised her head, and, with a great effort, said, "There is no choice left me. I must fulfil my contract,--I _must_ go to America!"
Johannes had awaited her decision with breathless eagerness. He lost almost entirely his hardly-won self-control. "Ernestine," he exclaimed, seizing both her hands, "Ernestine, I plead for life and death. Do you not hear?--I tell you there is no hope for you but in absolute repose.
Will you voluntarily hurry into the grave yawning at your feet? I have watched you with the eyes of a physician and a lover, and I swear to you, by my honour, that I have been continually discovering fresh cause for anxiety. You look as if you were in a decline at this moment. You have the feeble, capricious pulse and the cold hands of a victim of disease of the heart. Yesterday I heard from Frau Willmers of symptoms that filled me with alarm for you,--I grasp at the hope that they may be only the effects of your unnaturally forced manner of life. But these effects may become causes, in your present exhausted condition, causes of mortal disease, if you do not spare yourself I cannot, in duty or conscience, let you go without, hard as it is, enlightening you with regard to your physical condition. I would have spared you the cruel truth, but your determined obstinacy extorts it from me. Have some compa.s.sion upon me, and do not go before you have seen Heim. He is a man of experience, let him judge whether I am right or not. I entreat you to see him. Do, Ernestine, do, for my sake, if you would not leave me plunged in the depths of despair."
Still he held her hands firmly clasped in his. His chest heaved, his cheeks were flushed with emotion. All the strength of his pa.s.sionate affection for her seethed and glowed in his imperious and imploring entreaties.
Ernestine stood pale and calm before him. No human eye could divine her thoughts.
Whilst they stood thus silently gazing into each other"s eyes, there was a sound as of a carriage driving from the door below. Johannes, in his agitation, never heard it. Ernestine thought it was possibly her uncle, but she did not care. She had suddenly grown strangely indifferent to everything in the world.
"Ernestine, have you no answer for me?" asked Johannes.
"I will--reflect--until to-morrow."
"Thank G.o.d!" burst from the depths of Johannes" heart. As he dropped Ernestine"s hands, he fairly staggered with exhaustion.
Again a few moments pa.s.sed in gloomy silence.
"Ernestine," he then said, "you have in this last hour punished an innocent man for all the sins of his s.e.x. Let it suffice you--indeed you are avenged."
Ernestine did not speak.
Johannes continued. "I will intrude no longer. May I come with Heim to-morrow?"
"You shall learn my decision to-morrow."
"Your hand upon it. No? Then farewell!"
Ernestine was alone. She stood motionless for awhile, never thinking of Johannes, nor of her uncle, who, strangely enough, did not appear, but with one sentence ringing in her ears,--"Your pulse is that of a victim to disease of the heart." Those words had stung like a scorpion. There was no doubt, then, that Johannes considered her past all hope of recovering,--he had plainly intimated as much, although he had refrained from bluntly telling her so. But was Dr. Mollner capable of forming a correct judgment in her case? Yes, certainly, both as physiologist and physician, he was thoroughly able to form a just diagnosis. She did not understand how she could so long have ignored the signs in herself of physical decline. He was right,--her uncle was her murderer. She shuddered at the thought. How near death seemed to her now! She thought, and thought called to mind every peculiar sensation that she had lately been conscious of, weighed the evidence, and drew conclusions.
It was remarkable how everything betokened trouble with her heart.
Johannes wished to consult Heim. He would not have done that, had he not thought her dangerously ill. What could he or Heim tell her that she did not know herself? Had he any means of obtaining knowledge that were not hers also? Had she not a pathological library, filled with all that a physician needed,--the same that she had destined for Walter, but had not yet sent to him? She would consult it and know the truth that very day.
Night had fallen--the rain was dripping outside--the room lay in dreary shadow. She rang for lights. Frau Willmers brought a study-lamp with a green shade, and left her alone again.
Ernestine placed a small library-ladder against one of the tall, heavily-carved bookcases, and mounted it, with the lamp in her hand.
She took out one book after another, without finding the one for which she was searching. Impatiently she rummaged among the dusty folios, that had not been touched for months. At last, by the dim light of her lamp, she saw the t.i.tle that she was looking for, but it was beneath a pile of books hastily heaped above it. She dragged it out with feverish impatience. The volumes tumbled about, some hard, heavy object, lying among them, fell upon her head, almost stunning her, and then shattered the lamp in her hand, falling afterwards upon the floor with a dull noise amidst the broken gla.s.s that accompanied it. Ernestine, her book under her arm, got down from the ladder with trembling knees, to see, by the expiring flame of the wick of the lamp, what it was that had caused the mischief. As she stooped to pick it up, a fleshless, grinning face stared into her own. She started back with a cry. It was one of the skulls that she had put away in the library and long forgotten. The dim light of the lamp died out, but through the darkness the white jaws still grinned horribly. Almost insane with horror, she called again for lights. To her overwrought nerves, the trifling accident was in strange harmony with the thoughts that were tormenting her. It was as if nature thus gave her ominous warning of her fate.
When lights were brought, she forced herself to look the hateful thing in the face again. She picked up the head by its empty eye-sockets.
"Thus shall I shortly look,--no fairer than this horror!" And she went up to a mirror, and, in a kind of bravado, compared her own head with the fleshless thing. "You must learn to recognize the family likeness,"
she said to her own reflection, and in feverish fancy she began to a.n.a.lyze her own fair, n.o.ble features and imagine all the changes that they must pa.s.s through before their resemblance to their mute, bleached companion should be complete. Disgust and dread mastered her again, and she feared her own reflection in the mirror as much as the skull. She threw it from her, and then started at the noise it made as it fell into the corner of the room. The blood rushed to her head, and she was deafened by the whirr and singing in her ears, although, through it all, she seemed to hear something, she knew not what, that she could not comprehend, and that increased her terror. The death"s-head in the corner would not--so it seemed to her--keep quiet; it was rolling about there. She could not stay in the room,--there was something evil in the air. She took the book that she had found, and the candle, and fled like a hunted deer to her own apartment, never looking around her in the desolate rooms, in fear lest the formless thing that so filled her with dread should take visible shape and stare at her from some dim recess. But it followed at her heels, d.o.g.g.i.ng her footsteps, surrounding her like an atmosphere, and with its hundred arms so oppressing her chest and throat, even in the quiet of her own room, that it scarcely left s.p.a.ce for her heart to beat. How strangely it did beat,--so irregularly! now faint, now strong, as only a diseased heart can beat! And she opened the book and read her doom,--read the pages devoted to diseases of the heart, hastily, feverishly, with little comprehension of their meaning, for by this time thought was merged in fear, and of course she gave the words a meaning they did not possess, in dread of finding what she wanted to know and yet greedily searching for it. Yes, it was just as she feared. Not a symptom here described that she had not felt. Now it was beyond all doubt, she was lost,--no cure was possible,--only delay, and even that, in her present state of weakness, was hardly to be hoped. She tossed the book aside, and went to the window for air. Damp with rain and close as it was, still it was air,--freer and purer than any that she would have in her coffin. Then, to be sure, she would need it no more, but it was still delightful to breathe, and the thought of lying beneath that close coffin-lid was suffocation!
And she was to die soon! Johannes had not been mistaken. It was true.
And her strength had been failing for a long time. What was she afraid of? What was there to fear? The pain that she might suffer? Thousands had suffered the same agony, and the hour of her release was perhaps closer at hand than she thought. Then she would be strong,--this hope should sustain her. She would not falsify, even to herself, the declaration that she had made to Johannes scarcely an hour before.
Fear? What? Annihilation,--to cease to be,--it was not cheering, and certainly not sad,--it was simply nothing! It was not annihilation that she feared, but a continuation of existence that might be worse than death,--the uncertainty whether the soul perished with the body.
"True," she said to herself, "if our eyes are blinded they are not conscious of light, our closed ears cannot hear. Let this physical mechanism, that is our means of communication with the exterior world, pause in its working, and communication ceases. But suppose thought should be independent of this mechanism? Oh! horrible, horrible! why is there no proof that it cannot be so? What if memory lives on and there are no eyes for seeing, and of course no light,--no ears for hearing, and no sound, no body sensitive to touch, no time or s.p.a.ce,--nothing but eternal night, eternal silence, only informed by the memory of what we have seen and heard, and the longing for light, sound, and feeling?"
This was the worst of all,--more dreadful than personal annihilation; this was what she feared. Eternal night, eternal silence, and eternal solitude! Whose blood would not curdle at the thought, except theirs, perhaps, who were weary and worn with existence, or who, looking back upon life"s long labour well performed, needed not shun an eternity of remembrance? But she? She was not weary of the world, she had not yet began to enjoy it,--she was not old, she was just beginning to live.
She had done nothing towards fulfilling her high purposes, nothing that she could look back upon with satisfaction. It was too soon,--if she must go now, she had nothing to look forward to but an eternity of remorse! And how long must she endure this dread before the horrible certainty came upon her? "Oh, cruel death!" she moaned, "to a.s.sail me thus insidiously in his most horrid shape,--of slow, languishing disease! If he would only attack me like an a.s.sa.s.sin, that I might do battle with him,--meet me in the shape of some falling fragment of rock that I might try to avoid, or in engulfing waves that I could breast and strive against,--it would be kinder than to steal upon me thus, invisible, impalpable, inevitable! Let me flee across the ocean to the farthest ends of the earth, I cannot escape him, I take him with me!
Let me mount the swiftest steed and be borne wildly over hill and valley, I cannot escape him, he will ride with me! Let me climb the loftiest Alps,--in vain! in vain! He nestles within me." She fell upon her knees. "Oh, omnipotent nature, cruel mother who refusest me your bounteous nourishment, have compa.s.sion upon me, and save your child,--do not give my thought, my life, to annihilation, and its garment to decay! Millions breathe and prosper who are not worthy of your blessings,--will you thrust out me, your priestess, from your grace?" And she lay prostrate, wringing her hands, as if awaiting an answer to her entreaty. All around her was silent. There was no pity for her. She bethought herself, "Oh, nature is implacable, why should I pray to her? she does not hear, she does not think or feel, but sweeps me from her path in the blind despotism of her eternal mechanism. Is there no hand to aid? no judge of the worth of an existence, to say, "Thou art worthy to live, therefore live?" There is, there is! By the agony of this hour, I know there must be a higher justice, a Divinity other than nature. The spirit that now in dread of death wrestles with nature must have another refuge, a loftier destiny than the life of this world!" She clasped her hands upon her breast. "Oh, Faith! Faith!
and if it be so,--if there be a G.o.d, what claim can I have upon His pity? Could my vain pride sustain me before such a judge? What have I done to make me worthy of His compa.s.sion? Have I been of any use in the world,--conferred happiness upon a single human being, formed one tie pleasant to contemplate? Have I not all my life long denied His existence, and now, like a coward, do I fly to Him for succour? Can I expect aid, and dare to raise my eyes to heaven and seek there what the earth denies me? No! I will not deceive myself; there is no pity for me,--none in nature, none in mankind, none in G.o.d!"