Siegmund, predestined to be ever at strife with his fellow-man, in circ.u.mstances of peculiar distress seeks the shelter of Hunding"s roof. We see him burst into the empty hall, staggering and panting.
His spear and shield have splintered beneath the enemies" strokes; deprived of arms, he has been forced to flee; he has been so hotly pursued, so beaten by the storm, that upon reaching this refuge he can no more than drop beside the hearth and lie there, exhausted.
It is his sister"s house to which fate has led him, where, ill-starred and unhappy like himself, this other child of Walse"s lives, in subjection to Hunding, her lord, who has come by her through some obscure commerce, and to whom she is no more than part of the household baggage.
Hearing the rustle of Siegmund"s entrance, Sieglinde hurries in, and, beholding a stranger outstretched upon the ground, stops short to observe him. The strength of the prostrate body cannot fail to strike her. At his gasped call for water, she hurries to fetch it from the spring out of doors. His perishing need is shown in the devotion with which he drains the horn she hands him. His eyes, as he returns it, are arrested by her face, and dwell upon it with fearless lingering scrutiny--while the strain for the first time trembles upon the air which, singing the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, is to caress our hearing so many times more. His fatigue has magically vanished. He asks to whom he owes the refreshment afforded him.
When, at her reply and request that he shall await Hunding"s return, he refers to himself as an unarmed and wounded guest, she eagerly inquires of his wounds. But he jumps up, shaking off all thought of wounds or weariness. His succinct narrative of the circ.u.mstances which have brought him to her hearth, he brings to a close: "But faster than I vanished from the mob of my pursuers, my weariness has vanished from me. Night lay across my eyelids,--the sun now smiles upon me anew!" She offers the guest mead to drink, at his prayer tasting it before him. As he returns the emptied horn, again his eyes dwell upon her face, with an emotion ever increasing.
Both gaze in simple undisguised intensity of interest. There is a long moment"s silence between them. Then, at the love he feels surging in his bosom, remembrance comes to Siegmund of what he is,--a man so ill-fated that it may well be feared his ill-fortune shall infect those with whom he comes into contact. "You have relieved an ill-fated man," he warns her, his voice unsteady with the pang of this recognition, "may his wish turn ill-fortune from you! Sweetly have I rested.... I will now fare further on my way!" As he turns to the door she detains him with the quick cry: "What pursues you, that you should thus flee?" He answers, slowly and sadly: "Misfortune pursues me wherever I flee. Misfortune meets me wherever I go. From you, woman, may it remain afar! I turn from you my footsteps and my glance." His hand is on the latch, when her sharp involuntary exclamation stops him: "Stay, then! You cannot bring sorrow into a house where sorrow is already at home!" Deeply shaken by her words, he fixes his eyes questioningly upon her. She meets them for a moment, then drops her own, sad and half-ashamed. The motif of the Walsungen well expresses the n.o.bility in misfortune of these poor children of Walse. Siegmund returns quietly to the hearth: "Wehwalt is my name for myself. I will await Hunding." (_Weh_: woe, sorrow, calamity, pain; _wallen_: to govern. _Wehwalt_: lord of sorrows.) There is no further exchange of words while they wait, but in complete unashamed absorption they gaze at each other, and the music tells beautifully how it is within their hearts. Hunding"s horn is heard. (_Hund:_ hound. It was, as we learn later, this amiable personage"s custom to hunt his enemies with a pack of dogs.) Startled from her trance, Sieglinde listens, and hastens to open.
Hunding appears in the doorway, a dark figure, in helmet, shield and spear. At sight of the stranger, he questions his wife with a look. "I found the man on the hearth, spent with weariness. Necessity brings him to our house," she explains. There is some sternness apparently in Hunding"s tone as he inquires: "Have you offered him refreshment?" for Siegmund, rash and instantaneous in the woman"s defence, speaks, hard on the heels of her answer: "I have to thank her for shelter and drink. Will you therefor chide your wife?"
But Hunding, at his best in this moment, without retort welcomes the guest: "Sacred is my hearth, sacred to you be my house!" and orders his wife to set forth food for them. Catching Sieglinde"s eyes unconsciously fixed upon Siegmund, he glances quickly from one to the other, and is struck by the resemblance between them; but the luminous look they have in common he defines, with the const.i.tutional dislike of his kind to that freer, more generous type: "The selfsame glittering serpent shines out of his eyes!" He inquires of the circ.u.mstances which have brought this stranger to his house, and finding that Siegmund has no idea whither his wild flight has led him, introduces himself with a dignity which commends to us, while he is doing it, the narrow-natured, unimaginative man: "He whose roof covers you and whose house shelters you,--Hunding your host is called. If you should from here turn your footsteps eastward, there, in rich courts, dwell kinsmen, protectors of Hunding"s honour!" They seat themselves at table; the host asks for this guest"s name, and as Siegmund, plunged in thought, does not at once reply, Hunding, remarking the interest with which his wife waits for the stranger"s words, sardonically encourages him: "If you are in doubt about trusting me, yet give the information to the lady here. See how eagerly she questions you!" And Sieglinde, too deeply interested, verily, to mind the thrust, proceeds further to give it point: "Guest, I should be glad to know who you are!"
Whereupon Siegmund, as little constrained by the husband"s presence as the wife herself, with his eyes upon hers, addressing her directly, tells his story: of Wolf, his father, of the twin sister lost to him in infancy, the enmity of the Neidingen clan, who in the absence of the men burned down their house, slew the mother, abducted the sister; of his life in the forest with Wolf, their numberless foes and perpetual warfare. Hunding recalls vaguely wild dark tales he has heard of the mighty pair, the Wolfingen. The disappearance of his father, Siegmund further relates, from whom he had been separated in a fight, and whom he could never, long though he sought, find again, nor any trace of him save an empty wolf-skin. "Then,--"
follow the strange cruel fortunes this father had arranged for him, "then I was impelled to forsake the woods, I was impelled to seek men and women. As many as I found, and wherever I found them,--whether I sought for friend, or wooed for woman, always I met with denial, ill-fortune lay upon me!" With ingenuous wonder he describes the natural fruits of the education bestowed on him by Wotan: "What I thought right, others held to be wrong; what had ever seemed to me abominable, others considered with favour.
I fell into feud wherever I was, anger fell upon me wherever I went. If I reached out toward happiness, I never failed to bring about calamity! For that reason it is I named myself Wehwalt, I command calamity alone!"
Hunding has listened attentively. His small superst.i.tious heart has taken alarm. "Fortune was not fond of you, who appointed for you so miserable a lot. The man can hardly welcome you with gladness, whom, a stranger to him, you approach as a guest." With a vivacity which cannot have been the common habit of her intercourse with her husband, Sieglinde p.r.o.nounces judgment aloud and at once upon this ungenerous speech and speaker, whose prudence must certainly, in contrast with the Walsung"s frank magnificence of courage, seem to her unspeakably bourgeois: "Only cowards fear one going his way unarmed and alone!" And turning again eagerly to the guest: "Tell further, guest, how you lately lost your arms in battle!" Siegmund as eagerly satisfies her. The circ.u.mstances which he describes further exemplify the disposition fostered in him by his father, his non-recognition or acceptance of established law and custom, however sacred, his pursuit of an ideal unattached to any convention: He had lost his arms in the attempt to defend a damsel against her own immediate family, bent upon marrying her against her inclination. He had slain her brothers, whereupon the maiden, as another perhaps would have foreseen, had cast herself upon their bodies, sorrow annulling her resentment. He had stood over her, shielding her from the vengeance of her kindred pressing around. His armour had been shattered; the girl lay dead on her dead brothers.
Wounded and weaponless, he had been chased by the infuriate horde.
"Now you know, inquiring woman," he closes his narrative, "why I do not bear the name of Friedmund!" (_Frieden:_ peace.) With this simple sally, whose bitterness is not enough to crumple the serene forehead, he rises and walks to the hearth, striding to the n.o.ble march-measure we know as the motif of the heroism of the Walsungen,--proud in its first bars, with Siegmund"s pride, tender in the last, with Sieglinde"s tenderness, loftily mournful throughout.
"I know a wild race of men," now speaks Hunding, "to whom nothing is holy of all that is revered by others; hated are they of all men--and of me!" He then reveals how he himself had that day been called out for vengeance with his clan against this officious champion of damsels. He had arrived too late for action, and returning home, behold, discovers the fugitive miscreant in his own house! As he granted the stranger hospitality for the night, his house shall shelter him for that length of time; but "with strong weapons arm yourself to-morrow," he grimly warns him; "it is the day I choose for combat; you shall pay me a price for the dead!" When Sieglinde in alarm places herself between the two men, Hunding orders her roughly: "Out of the room! Loiter not here! Prepare my night-drink and wait for me to go to rest!" Siegmund, smothering his anger, stands in contemptuous composure beside the hearth; his eyes frankly follow every movement of the woman as she prepares Hunding"s drink.
On her way out of the room, she pauses at the threshold of the inner chamber, and seeking Siegmund"s eyes with her own, tries by a long significant glance to direct his glance to a spot in the ash-tree. The sword-motif, distinct and sharp, accompanies her look. Hunding, becoming aware of her lingering, with a peremptory gesture orders her again to be gone; and gathering up his own armour, with a warning to the Wolfing that on the morrow he will strike home,--let him have a care!--withdraws, audibly bolting the door behind him.
Left alone, Siegmund lies down beside the dying fire. To remove himself during the night as far as possible from Hunding"s reach is not the solution suggesting itself naturally to him. Yet there he stands, pledged to meet an enemy, and not a weapon to his hand of offence or defence. The difficulty of his position is certainly as great as could be, and, reaching the full consciousness of it, he recalls to mind that his father had promised him a sword, which he should find in the hour of his greatest need. "Unarmed I am fallen in the house of the enemy; here I rest, devoted to his vengeance.
A woman I have seen, gloriously fair.... She to whom my longing draws me, who with a rapturous charm constrains me, is held in thraldom by the man who mocks my unarmed condition...." Could need, indeed, be greater? With the whole strength of that need, in a cry, long, urgent, fit to pierce the walls of Walhalla, he calls upon his father for the promised sword: "Walse! Walse! Where is your sword?..."
A flame leaps from the embers and illuminates the ash-tree, bringing into view, at the spot Sieglinde had indicated to him with her eyes, a sword-hilt. But though his eyes are caught by the glitter, he does not recognise it for what it is; he watches it, without moving, as it shines in the firelight, and, lover-like, soon lapsing into undivided dreaming of the "flower-fair woman," plays tenderly with the conceit of the gleam on the ash-tree being the trace of her last bright glance. Forgetting his swordlessness and altogether unpromising plight, he goes on weaving poetry about her until the fire is quite out and he so nearly dozes that when a white form comes gliding through the door bolted by Hunding, he does not stir until addressed: "Guest, are you asleep?"
Sieglinde has mixed narcotic herbs in her husband"s drink, and bids the stranger make use of the night to provide for his safety.
"Let me advise you of a weapon.... Oh, might you obtain it! The most splendid of heroes I must call you, for it is destined to the strongest alone." And she relates how at the marriage-feast of Hunding, while the men drank, and the woman who "unconsulted had been offered him for wife by ign.o.ble traffickers" sat sadly apart, a stranger appeared, an elderly man in grey garb, whose hat-brim concealed one of his eyes. But the brilliant beam of the other eye created terror in the bystanders,--all save herself, in whom it aroused an aching longing, sorrow and comfort in equal measure. The sword in his hand he swung, and drove into the ash-tree up to the hilt, leaving it there, a prize to whomsoever should be able to draw it out. The men present had all made the essay in vain; guests coming and going since then had tried, equally without success. "There in silence waits the sword." There in the ash-tree. "Then I knew," Sieglinde concludes, "who it was had come to me in my sorrow. I know, too, who it is alone can conquer the sword. Oh, might I find him here and now, that friend; might he, from the unknown, come to me, most wretched of women! All I have ever suffered of cruel woe, all the shame and indignity under which I have bowed,--sweetest amends would be made for it all! All I ever lost, all I ever mourned, I should have recovered it all,--if I might find that supreme friend, if my arm might clasp that hero!"
Siegmund, to whom it could not occur for the fraction of a second to doubt his strength to draw any sword from any tree, at these words catches her impetuously to his breast: "The friend now clasps you, fairest of women, for whom weapon and woman were meant! Hot in my breast burns the oath which, n.o.ble one, weds me to you!"
and, in her very strain: "All I ever yearned for, I met in you!
In you I found all I ever lacked. If you suffered ignominy and I endured pain, if I was outlawed and you were dishonoured, a joyful revenge now calls to us happy ones! I laugh aloud in a holy elation, as I hold you, radiant one, embraced, as I feel the throbbing of your heart!"
The great door of the hall, silently, without apparent reason, swings wide open, like a great curious eye unclosing to watch this beautiful marvel of their love, expanded so suddenly, like a huge aloe-flower. It lets in a flood of moonlight, and the glimmering vision of the vapourous green-lit nocturnal Spring-world. "Who went out?... Who came in?" cries Sieglinde, starting in alarm.
"No one went," Siegmund rea.s.sures her, "but some one came: See, the Spring laughing in the room!" And he pours forth poetry of adorable inspiration, in explanation of the singular action of the door: Spring was outside, and Love, his sister, inside; Spring burst open the severing door, and now, brother and sister, Love and the Spring, are met!
It is touching, the capacity for happiness the two have acc.u.mulated in the long, thwarted years. An ecstatic joy marks this hour of forgetting all the world outside themselves; the love-music is all of a fine free sustained rapture. One poignant and subtle and profound thing she says to him: "Foreign and unrelated to me seemed until now everything I saw, hostile everything which approached me. As if I had never known them were always the things that came to me.... But you I knew at once, clearly and distinctly; my eye no sooner beheld you, than you belonged to me; and all that lay concealed within my breast, the thing which I verily am, bright as the day it rose to the surface; like a ringing sound it smote my ear, when in the cold lonesome strange world for the first time I beheld my Friend!"
Seated in the light of the full moon, they have freedom at last each to pore over the other"s winning beauty. She is struck, fondly peering into his features, with the sense of having seen him before; and trying to think when and where reaches the a.s.surance that it was on the surface of the pool which reflected her own image. Again, when he speaks, she is struck by the a.s.surance that she has heard his voice before. She thinks, for a moment, that it was in childhood,...
but corrects the impression by a second: she has heard it recently, when the echo in the woods gave back her own voice. His luminous eyes she has seen before: thus shone the glance of the grey guest at the wedding-feast, whom his daughter recognised by that token.
Earnestly she asks this other guest: "Is your name in very truth Wehwalt?" "That is no longer my name since you love me!" he replies exuberantly, "I command now the sublimest joys!... Do you call me as you wish me to be called: I will take my name from you!" "And was your father indeed Wolf?" "A Wolf he was to cowardly foxes.
But he whose eye shone with as proud an effulgence as, Glorious One, does yours, Walse was his name!" Beside herself with joy, Sieglinde springs up: "If Walse was your father--if you are a Walsung, for you it was he drove his sword into the tree-trunk. Let me give you the name by which I love you: Siegmund shall you be called!"
Siegmund leaps to seize the sword-handle: "Siegmund is my name, and Siegmund am I! (_Sieg_: victory.) Let this sword bear witness, which fearlessly I seize! Walse promised me that I should find it in my greatest need. I grasp it now...." Very characteristically, this greatest need, as he feels it, is not the need of a weapon with which to defend his life against Hunding; it is, in his soaring words: "Highest need of a holiest love, devouring need of a love full of longing, burns bright in my breast, drives me onward to deeds and to death.... Nothung! Nothung! So do I name you, sword!
(_Noth_: need. _Nothung_: sword-in-need.) Nothung! Nothung! Out of the scabbard, to me!" With a mighty tug he draws it forth and holds it before the marvelling eyes of Sieglinde: "Siegmund the Walsung stands before you, woman! As a wedding-gift he brings you this sword. Thus he wooes the fairest of women; from the enemy"s house thus he leads you forth. Far from here follow him now, out in the laughing house of the Spring. There Nothung, the sword, shall protect you, when Siegmund lies overthrown, in the power of love!" "If your are Siegmund," cries the woman, "I am Sieglinde, who have so longed for you! Your own sister you have won at the same time as the sword!" Siegmund is given no pause by this revelation.
At the realisation of this double dearness, the joy flares all the higher of the lawless pupil of Wotan. "Bride and sister are you to your brother. Let the blood of the Walsungen flourish!"
And with arms entertwined, forth they take their madly exulting hearts out into the "laughing house of the Spring."
II
The rising of the curtain for the second act reveals a wild mountain-pa.s.s where Wotan, in a vast good-humour, is giving instructions to Brunnhilde with regard to the impending meeting between the injured husband and the abductor of his wife. Victory is allotted to Siegmund; Hunding, "let them choose him to whom he belongs; he is not wanted in Walhalla!" In Wotan"s complacency the satisfaction speaks of this thought: At last, at last, a change of fortune,--victory to the Walsung, after a trial of his mettle so severe and prolonged it must have broken a spirit less admirably tempered. The Valkyrie, in delight over the charge to her, breaks into her jubilant war-cry, checking herself as she perceives Fricka approaching in the chariot drawn by rams, and judges from the G.o.ddess"s merciless urging of the panting beasts that she comes for a _Zank_, a "scold," with her husband. "The old storm!" murmurs Wotan, at sight of his liege lady dismounting and coming toward him with ultramajestic gait, "the old trouble! But I must stand and face her!" The scene following has a touch of comical in its resemblance to domestic scenes among less high-born characters, as, for instance, when Fricka says, "Look me in the eye! Do not think to deceive me!" or "Do you imagine that you can deceive me, who night and day have been hard upon your heels?" Fricka, the guardian of marriage, has come to demand justice for Hunding, vengeance upon the "insolently criminal couple." "What,"
asks Wotan, an unguarded and tender indulgence in his tone, "what have they done that is so evil, the couple brought into loving union by the Spring?..." "Do you feign not to understand me?" is in effect Fricka"s return; "for the holy vow of marriage, the deeply insulted, I raise my voice in complaint...." "I regard that vow as unholy," says Wotan,--and the source is flagrant from which Siegmund has drawn his unpopular rules of conduct,--"which binds together those who do not love each other." But the case in question, Fricka protests, is not one simply of broken marriage-vow, "When--when was it ever known that brother and sister might stand toward each other in the nuptial relation?" "This day you have known it!" the worthy teacher of Siegmund meets her; and, all his paternal affection finding its imprudent way into his accents: "That those two love each other is clear to you. Wherefore, take honest advice: if blessed comfort is to reward your blessing, do you bless, laughing with love, the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde!" Upon this, as is hardly unnatural, the furious storm breaks over the indiscreet G.o.d; a storm of reproach, in part for personal wrongs, which the outraged G.o.ddess details, in part for his failure as ruler of the earth to maintain law and right, to observe the boundaries established by himself. At the end of it, rather feebly, he tells her, in defence of his position, the thing which he had not confided to her before, plain enough indication that the G.o.ddess, to win whom he had given an eye, is not of his bosom"s counsel any more. "This know! There is need of a hero who without aid from the G.o.ds should cast off the law of the G.o.ds. Such a one alone can compa.s.s the act which, however much the G.o.ds may need it done, no G.o.d can himself do."
"And what may the great thing be," the dull august shrew inquires, "that a hero can do which the G.o.ds cannot, through whose grace alone a hero acts?... What makes men brave? Through your inspiration alone they are strong. With new falsehoods you are trying to elude me, but this Walsung you shall not be able to save. Through him I strike at you, for it is through you alone he defies me!" "In wild sorrows," Wotan ventures, with deep emotion, "he grew up, by himself. My protection never helped him!" "Then do not protect him to-day!" she pursues, hatefully righteous, "take away from him the sword you gave him." "The sword?..." Her suggestion is a very sword for Wotan"s heart. "Yes, the sword, strong with a charm, which you bestowed on your son." "Siegmund conquered it for himself in his need." The deep strain here shudders out its pa.s.sion of repressed resentment and grief, which after this darkly underlines Wotan"s misery. "You created the need, as you created the sword," she follows him up with clear-sighted accusation, almost voluble. "For him you drove it into the tree-trunk. You promised him the goodly weapon. Will you deny that it was your own stratagem which guided him to the spot where he should find it?" The effect of her words upon Wotan--to whom this mirror held up to him reveals the weakness of his scheme to create a hero who should act for himself, unprompted, against the G.o.ds, yet in the very manner the case of the G.o.ds demanded--still increases his wife"s a.s.surance.
"What do you require?" asks Wotan at last, in gloom, heart-struck.
"That you should sever from the Walsung!" "Let him go his way!" Wotan acquiesces, smothered by this horrible, yet so clear, necessity.
"But you, protect him not, when the avenger calls him out to fight!"
"I--protect him not!" "Turn from him the Valkyrie!" "Let the Valkyrie determine as she will!" "Nay, she solely carries out your wishes....
Forbid her the victory of Siegmund!" "I cannot deal him defeat!"
protests Wotan, in anguish, "he found my sword!" "Withdraw the charm from the sword. Let it snap in the knave"s hand. Let the adversary behold him without defence!... Here comes your warlike maid.... This day must her shield protect the sacred honour of your wife. My honour demands the fall of the Walsung. Have I Wotan"s oath?" The unhappy G.o.d casts himself upon a rocky seat, in helpless loathing, and the terrible consent falls forced from his lips: "Take the oath!" Fricka, with proud tread turning from him to remount her chariot, stops to address Brunnhilde: "The Father of Armies is waiting for you. Let him tell you how he has appointed the fortune of battle."
Wotan sits with his head in his hands, like any humblest mortal hard put to it. It has been brought home to him sharply enough that the thing is not to be done, on the accomplishment of which he had so fondly built. It is not that an angry wife has interfered; it is that her argument has been sound, and that for the sake of his world a G.o.d cannot trespa.s.s against the laws he has himself made for it. It is, in fact, that kings less than others can do as they choose; that if in this he should follow his desire, it would, as Fricka has pointed out, "be all over with the everlasting G.o.ds!" But, to sacrifice the Walsung, "brought up in wild sorrows"
for this very purpose which is to be relinquished; the Walsung who in his young life has had but one draught at the cup of joy!...
It is no wonder that Wotan utters his lamentation: "Oh, divine ignominy! Oh, woful disgrace! Distress of the G.o.ds! Distress of the G.o.ds! Immeasurable wrath! Eternal regret! The saddest am I among all!"
The darling of his heart, Brunnhilde, torn by his cry, casts from her all her Valkyrie accoutrements, and, woman merely and daughter, kneels at his feet, presses her cheek against him, begging to be trusted: "Confide in me! I am true to you. See, Brunnhilde pleads!"
He hesitates, while sorely yearning for the comfort. "If I utter it aloud, shall I not be loosing the grasp of my will?" "To Wotan"s will you speak in speaking to me. Who am I, if not your will?"
With the a.s.surance to himself: "With myself solely I take counsel, in talking to you,..." he relates to Brunnhilde all the events which have brought about this intolerable position, a long story: the first mistake in trusting Loge; the mistake in possessing himself of the Ring; what he has since done to obviate the effect of his mistakes, and done, as is now shown, in vain. "How did I cunningly seek to deceive myself! So easily Fricka exposed my fallacies! To my deepest shame she looked through me. I must yield to her will."
"You will take away then the victory from Siegmund?" "I touched Alberich"s Ring," Wotan replies, "covetously I held the gold. The curse which I fled from, flees not from me! What I love I must desert, murder what from all time I have held dear, treacherously betray him who trusts me!..." Again, it is no wonder his tormented soul breaks forth in lamentation. The mighty groan of Wotan has, if ever groan had, adequate cause, and his longing for "the end!
the end!" With grim comfort he recalls at this moment that the end cannot be far,--not if there be truth in the prophecy of Erda: "When the dark enemy of love shall in wrath beget a son, the end of the Immortals will not be long delayed." For the loveless Alberich, as Wotan knows, has by means of gold won the favour of a woman, and the "fruit of hatred" is on its way toward the light. "Take my blessing, son of the Nibelung!" cries Wotan in his dark mood; "the thing which sickens me with loathing, I bestow it upon you for an inheritance: the empty splendour of the G.o.ds!"
"Oh, tell me, what shall your child do?" entreats the daughter, shaken by the sight of her father"s pa.s.sion. "Fight straightforwardly for Fricka," he orders her, in the excess of bitterness; "what she has chosen I choose likewise; of what good to me is a will of my own?" "Oh, retract that word!" she beseeches, "you love Siegmund.... Never shall your discordant dual directions enlist me against him. For your own sake, I know it, I will protect the Walsung!" At this first intimation of rebellion in his child,--this incipient treachery of his own will,--Wotan becomes stern, lays down his command irrevocably, with threats of crushing retribution if this child of his shall dare to palter with his expressed will.
"Keep a watch over yourself! Hold yourself in strong constraint!
Put forth all your valour in the fight!... Have well in mind what I command: Siegmund is to fall! This be the Valkyrie"s task!"
Brunnhilde gazes after him in wonder and fear as he storms up over the rocky ascent out of sight: "I never saw Sieg-vater like that!"
Sadly she resumes her armour, woe-begone at the thought of the Walsung, given over to death. Becoming aware of the approach of Siegmund and Sieglinde, she hastens from sight.
Sieglinde enters, fleeing in distraction from Siegmund, anxious in pursuit. The presumption of those seeing her action without understanding her words, is commonly, I suppose, that remorse has overtaken her for her breach of the moral law. Remorse, indeed, has a.s.sailed her, but not for having followed the "luminous brother."
It is for having ever belonged to Hunding, whom she neither loved nor was loved by. The new sentiment of love so completely possessing her places her former union in the light of unspeakable pollution, and she adjures the "n.o.ble one" to depart from the accursed who brings him such a dowry of shame. Siegmund with st.u.r.dy tenderness a.s.sures her that whatever shame there is shall be washed away in the blood of him who is responsible for it, whose heart Nothung shall cleave. An insanity of terror seizes Sieglinde at the thought of the meeting between the two men, the vision besetting her of Siegmund torn by Hunding"s dogs, against the mult.i.tude of which his sword is of no use. At the picture painted by her delirium of Siegmund"s fall, shocked as if at the actual sight of it, she sinks unconscious in his arms.
Having ascertained that she has not ceased to breathe, almost glad perhaps for her of this respite from self-torment, he lets her gently down on to the ground, and seats himself so as to make an easy resting-place for her head.
Thus the Valkyrie finds them. At her approach, three solemn notes are heard which intimate as if something awful and not to be escaped--whose solemn awfulness consists in great part of the fact that it cannot be escaped,--like Fate. "Siegmund!" she calls him, with firm voice, "look upon me! I am that one whom in short s.p.a.ce you must follow!" Siegmund lifts his eyes from the sleeping face upon which they have been fondly brooding, and beholds the shining apparition. "Who are you, tell me, appearing to me, so beautiful and grave?" "Only those about to die can see my face. He who beholds me must depart from the light of life. On the field of battle I appear to the n.o.ble alone. He who becomes aware of me, has been singled out for my capture!" Siegmund gazes quietly and long and inquiringly into her eyes, and: "The hero who must follow you, whither do you take him?" "To the Father of Battles who has elected you, I shall lead you. To Walhalla you shall follow me." "In the hall of Walhalla shall I find none but the Father of Battles?"
"The glorious a.s.semblage of departed heroes shall gather around you companionably, with high and holy salutation." "Shall I in Walhalla find Walse, my own father?" "The Walsung shall find his father there." "Shall I in Walhalla be greeted gladsomely by a woman?"
"Divine wish-maidens there hold sway; the daughter of Wotan shall trustily proffer you drink." "Unearthly fair are you; I recognise the holy child of Wotan; but one thing tell me, you Immortal! Shall the bride and sister accompany the brother? Shall Siegmund clasp Sieglinde there?" "The air of earth she still must breathe. Siegmund shall not find Sieglinde there!" The hero bends over the unconscious woman, kisses her softly on the brow, and turns quietly again to Brunnhilde: "Then bear my greeting to Walhalla! Greet for me Wotan, greet for me Walse and all the heroes; greet for me likewise the benign wish-maidens: I will not follow you to them!"
In this strangely impressive and moving dialogue, the Brunnhilde-part is upborne on the stately, high and cold Walhalla theme; the Siegmund-part gives over and over one urgent heartful questioning phrase, filled with human yearning and sorrow: the motif of love and death. "Where Sieglinde lives in joy or sorrow, there will Siegmund likewise abide,..." he p.r.o.nounces. When he is informed that he has no choice but to follow, that he is to fall through Hunding, that its virtue has been withdrawn from his sword, justly incensed, he declares that if this be true,--if he, shame to him!
who forged for him the sword, allotted him ignominy in place of victory, he will not go to Walhalla, h.e.l.la shall hold him fast!
"So little do you care for eternal joy?" the Valkyrie asks wistfully; "all in all to you is the poor woman who, tired and full of trouble, lies strengthless in your lap? Nothing beside do you deem of high value?" Inexpressibly moved at the manifestation before her of the warmth and depth of this human affection, she begs him to place his wife under her protection. He replies pa.s.sionately that no one while he lives shall touch the Stainless One, that if he must indeed die, he will first slay her in her sleep. Brunnhilde, in great emotion, begs still more urgently, "Entrust her to me, for the sake of the pledge of love which she took from you in joy!"
But Siegmund, all the more firmly fixed in his resolve, lifts his sword, and grimly offering Nothung two lives at one blow, swings it above the sleeping woman. The Valkyrie at this can no longer keep in bounds the surging flood of her compa.s.sion: "Hold, Walsung!" she restrains his arm, "Sieglinde shall live, and with her Siegmund!...
I change about the doom of battle. To you, Siegmund, I apportion blessed victory...." With injunctions to place his trust in the sword and the Valkyrie, bidding him farewell till they shall meet on the field, she disappears. Siegmund, with heart restored to gladness, bends over Sieglinde again; listens to her breathing and studies her face, now smiling, as he sees, in quiet sleep.
"Sleep on!" he speaks to her, "till the battle has been fought and peace shall rejoice you!"
Hunding"s horn has already been heard, calling out the adversary.
Siegmund lays Sieglinde gently down, and, Nothung in hand, rushes to the encounter. A storm has been gathering, a cloud has settled over the mountain-tops. Sieglinde, left alone, murmurs in her sleep.
Her broken sentences reveal her dream: She is a child again and the scene is reenacted to her of the conflagration which ended her life in the forest with father and mother and twin. She starts awake in affright, calling Siegmund, and finds herself alone. She hears her husband"s horn and his call to Wehwalt to stand and meet him. She hears Siegmund"s arrogant reply. She cannot see them for the black storm-scud, but calls on them to stop, to kill her first.
A flash of lightning shows Hunding and Siegmund fighting on a high point of the rocky pa.s.s. Sieglinde is rushing toward them, when a sudden glare blinds her. In the light, Brunnhilde is seen hard at Siegmund"s side, defending him with her shield. "Strike home, Siegmund! Trust to the victorious sword!" Siegmund raises his sword for a deathblow to Hunding, when a fiery beam drops through the storm-cloud; in the red glow of it is distinguished the form of Wotan at Hunding"s side, holding his spear between the combatants.
His voice is heard, terrible: "Back from the spear! To pieces, the sword!" Nothung snaps against the spear, and, run through the body by his adversary, Siegmund falls. Sieglinde hears his dying sigh--the strong heart stops on a brief s.n.a.t.c.h, pathetic, of the motif of the heroism of the Walsungen--She drops to earth, stunned.
In the gloom, Brunnhilde, who has retreated before the angry father"s spear, is seen lifting Sieglinde and hurrying off: "To horse! that I may save you!"