"I pulled myself together, and walked up to the looking-gla.s.s.
""So this is what a woman looks like who wishes her sister might die!"
said I, while my ashen-pale face stared back at me; and, seized with a sudden loathing, I hit at the gla.s.s with my fist. My knuckles bled, but it did not break. Fool that I was, not to know that henceforth all the world would only be there to hold up a mirror to my crime!
""But perhaps she may not die!" it suddenly darted through my brain.
Such radiance seemed to burst forth from this thought, that I closed my eyes as if dazzled.
"And then again it cried aloud within me: "She will die; your wish has murdered her!" I ground my teeth, and groping along by the walls, I crept into the sick room.
"When I stood at the door, and no longer heard any sound from within, the idea took possession of me:
""You will find her as a corpse."
"No, she still lived, but death had already set his mark upon her face.
"The bridge of the nose had become more prominent, her lips no longer closed over her irregular teeth, her eyes seemed to have sunk right down into their dark sockets.
"At her feet stood Robert and the old doctor. Robert had pressed his hands to his face. Sobs shook his frame. The old man scrutinised me with a penetrating glance. Again, for a moment, I felt as if he were looking me through and through, as if my guilt were openly exposed before him. But then, as he hastened towards me, who was tottering, and held me upright in his arms, I recognised that it was only the physician"s glance with which he had examined me.
""How long will she live yet?" I asked, closing my eyes.
""She is dying!"
"At that moment something within me grew rigid, turned to stone. At that moment hope died within me, and with it my faith in myself, in happiness, in goodness. A great calm came over me. Death, which hovered over this bed, had spread its dark pinions around my body too. With the clear vision of a prophetess, I saw what yet remained to me of life, spread out unveiled before my eyes. Like one dead I should henceforth have to wander upon earth, like one dead I should have to cling to life, like one dead see that happiness approach me, which was for ever lost to me. Robert stepped up to me and embraced me. I calmly suffered it, I felt nothing more.
"Then I sat down close to my sister"s bedside, and looked at her, waiting for her death.
"Attentively I followed every symptom of her slow expiring. I felt as if my consciousness had separated itself from me, as if I could see myself sitting there like a stone figure, staring into the dying woman"s face.
"No feverish illusion, no morbid self-incrimination any longer disturbed the course of my ideas. It was by this time clear to me that my wish could not in reality bring death upon her, and yet--for me and my conscience it remained the wish alone which had killed her.
"Thus I sat, as her murderess, at her bedside, and waited for her death which was also mine.
"It was a long time coming. The hours of the day pa.s.sed and she still lived. Her pulse had long ceased to beat, her heart seemed to stand still, and yet her breath continued to come and go in short feeble gasps. While I was lying in a morphia sleep, they had given her as a last resource an injection of musk to revive her strength once more.
This was what she was existing on now. But the odour of musk, mingling with the carbolic vapours, filled the room like some heavy, tangible body, weighed on my brow and seemed to crush my temples. I felt as if with every breath I were drinking in increasing burdens.
"In the afternoon Robert"s parents came. I, who had yesterday shown my aunt only pride and contempt, to-day kissed her hand in humiliation.
This was the beginning of the penance which I had inflicted upon myself at Martha"s death-bed, and which shall endure as long as I live.
"Evening came on. Marta still continued to breathe. With wide-open mouth, her dead eyes covered with a film, she stared at me. Her body seemed to get smaller and smaller, quite shrunk together she lay there.
It almost looked as if in death she did not venture to take up even the small s.p.a.ce which she had occupied during her lifetime.
"Aunt filled the house with her loathsome sobbing, and the others, too, were weeping; I alone remained without tears.
"When towards eleven o"clock she had drawn her last breath, I fell into a delirium.
"Just now I have returned from the manor.
"He was good and kind towards me, and in his eyes there gleamed a half-hidden, bashful tenderness, which my soul drank in eagerly. I feel as if a new spring-time must be coming, my heart is full of smiles and laughter, and when I close my eyes golden sunlight rays seem to be dancing round about me. But now away with this enervating dream of happiness!
"If he should learn to love me, all the worse for him! I gave him no occasion--no, indeed not! I should feel I must despise myself like a very prost.i.tute if I had done so. Since my convalescence I have managed his household for him truly and faithfully, for more than a year, without claiming his approval, without wishing to grow indispensable to him. Even my dear aunt has had to recognise that, who almost forces her hospitality upon me, in spite of my being personally so hateful to her.
She is much too good a housekeeper herself not to know that, but for me, the household would have gone to rack and ruin in those days, when Robert forgot everything in gloomy mourning for his dead--not even taking any interest in the child, which she had left him as a pledge.
But for me, the poor little thing would be lying under the ground long ago. I will not enumerate all I did and worked during this time. It is surely not meet for me to play the Pharisee.
"Nor will I speak of expiation. How pompous the word sounds, and what miserable self-deception generally hides behind it! How shall I wash away what defiles me? One may expiate some tragic guilt, one can even expiate some great crime, but a piece of baseness such as I committed, cleaves to the soul for ever! Ah, if I did not know what secret desire lurks in the depths of my heart!
"Why else should I require to stand there absolved before my own conscience, if not in order that I might one day become his? As if everlasting fate itself had not reared up a wall between us, reaching up from the depths of _her_ grave as high as the stars.
"And if some demon should ever whisper into his ear, advising him to stretch out his hand for me, what else could I do but repulse him, as if for his audacity? But he will never do such a thing. I have succeeded in keeping him at a distance. Let him believe that I have a poor opinion of him, let him believe that I am haughty and unfeeling through self-love. I shall know how to guard my heart"s secret.
"If only one thing were not so!
"Sometimes, especially at night, when I am staring into the darkness, a wild, mad longing comes over me with such power, that I feel as if I must succ.u.mb to it. It seizes me like a feverish delirium; it dims my senses, and makes my blood boil in my veins; it is the longing to lie just for once upon his breast, and there to weep my heart out. For in those nights my tears were dried up. I have never been able to weep since the day when I found Martha lying on her sick-bed.
"_A fortnight later_.
"It has come to pa.s.s. He loves me. He came to woo me. Now I know that there is an expiation! These tortures must indeed purify! Jesus, I have lost my childish faith in Thee, but Thou wast a man. Thou hast suffered like me. Thee I implore--no, this is madness! Come to your senses, woman; pull yourself together. Is there not an everlasting resting-place, whither you may flee by your own free will, if your strength is no longer equal to the misery of this life? Who is to prevent you?
"He loves me. I have attained it. But in order that he might love me, Martha had first to perish, I myself had to sink down into an abyss of guilt and shame from which no power in heaven or on earth can save me.
"I am dead. Dead shall be my desires and my hopes, and my rebellious blood, which wells up seething at thought of him. I will soon compel it to be calm; and if not----.
"Oh, how he stood before me, timidly stammering forth word by word. How shyly and imploringly his eye sought mine, and yet how he hardly dared to raise his glance from the ground. How, in his awkwardness, he twisted the ends of his beard round his fingers, and stamped his foot when he could not find the right word! Oh, my poor dear, big child, did you not see how my every limb was trembling with the desire to rush towards you and hold you tight for all eternity, did you not see how my lips were twitching with the temptation to press themselves upon yours, and to hang there till their last breath?
"Did you not see all this?
"Did you really believe the words, which half unconsciously I spoke to you? My heart knows nothing of them, that I swear to you. I have loved you ever since I can remember. I know that my last breath will utter your name.
"And shame on you, if you really had faith in my pretexts! I leave you for a rich girl! You, for whom I would gladly beg in the streets, for whom I would work till my eyes grew dim and my fingers sore, if you needed it!
"Do you remember that night in our parents" house, when you were wooing Martha? Do you remember it and dare to insult me by putting faith in my miserable excuses?
"And when at parting I gave you my hand, why did you look into my eyes so sadly and humbly? Did you not know that now that look will haunt me day and night like the reproach of some heavy crime I have committed towards you?
"No, my friend, you are the only one on earth who have nothing to reproach me with. Towards you I have acted honestly--and most honestly to-day, even though you were never so unutterably deceived as to-day!
If only I might tell you how much I love you! How gladly would I die in that self-same hour. Only once to lie upon your breast--only once to hide my head upon your shoulder and weep, weep--weep blood and tears!
"You must never again look at me like that, my giant, as if I had had a right to despise you, as if you were too simple and not good enough for me. I do not know what I might not do in that case! Heaven protect you from me and my love!