Part 25 (1/2)
”You interrupt my prayer--you who first taught me to pray?” she asked, holding out her hand that he might help her rise. ”Tell me, how did you come here?”
”I could not sleep--some yearning urged me to your presence--to your garden.”
He gently raised her, while she gazed into his eyes as if enraptured.
”Master!” she repeated. ”Oh, my friend, I was like Mary Magdalene, my Lord had been taken away and I knew not where they had laid Him. Now I know. He was buried in my own heart and the world had rolled the stone before it, but yesterday--yesterday He rose and the stone was cast aside. So some impulse urged me into the garden early this morning to seek Him and lo--He stands before me as He promised.”
”Do not speak so!--I am well aware that the words are not meant for me, but if you a.s.sociate Christ so closely with my personality, I fear that you will confound Him with me, and that His image will be dimmed, if anything should ever shadow mine! I beseech you, Countess, by all that is sacred--learn to separate Him from me--or you have not grasped the true nature of Christ, and my work will be evil!” He stood before her with hand uplifted in prophecy, the outlines of his powerful form were sharply relieved against the dewy, s.h.i.+ning morning air. Purity, chast.i.ty, the loftiest, most inspired earnestness were expressed in his whole bearing, all the dignity of the soul and of primeval, divinely created human nature.
Must not she have that feeling of adoration which always seizes upon us whenever, no matter where it may be, the deity is revealed in His creations? No, she did not understand what he meant, she only understood that there was something divine in him, and that the perception of this nearness to G.o.d filled her with a happiness never known before. Joseph Freyer was the guarantee of the existence of a G.o.d in whom she had lost faith--why should she imagine Him in any other form than the one which she had found Him again? ”Thou shalt make thyself no graven image!” Must this Puritanically misunderstood literal statement destroy man's dearest possession, the _symbol of the reality_? Then the works of Raphael, t.i.tian, and Rubens must be effaced, and the unions of miracles of faith, wrought in the souls of the human race by the representations of the divine nature.
”Oh blessed image-wors.h.i.+p, now I understand your meaning!” she joyously exclaimed. ”Whoever reviles you has never felt the ardent desire of the weak human heart, the captive of the senses, for contact with the unapproachable, the sight of the face of the ever concealed yet ever felt divinity. Here, here stands the most perfect image Heaven and earth ever created, and must I not kneel before it, clasp it with all the tendrils of my aspiring soul? No! No one ought, no one can prevent me.”
Half defiantly, half imploringly, the words poured from her inmost soul like molten lava. ”Let all misunderstand me--save _you_, Freyer! You, by whom G.o.d wrought the miracle, ought not to be narrow-minded! _You_ ought not to destroy it for me, you least of all!” Then she pleaded, appealed to him: ”Let saints, let glorified spirits grasp _only_ the essence and dispense with the earthly pledge--I cannot! I am a type of the millions who live snared by the weaknesses, the ideas, the pleasures of the world of sense; do you suddenly require of me the abstract purity and spiritualization of religious thought, to which only the highest innate or required perfection leads? Be forbearing to me--G.o.d has various ways of drawing the rebellious to Him! To the soul which is capable of material ideas only. He gives revelations by the senses until, through pain and sorrow, it has worked its way upward to intellectual ones. And until I can behold the _real_ G.o.d in His shadowy sphere, I shall cling lovingly and devoutly to His _image_.”
She sank on her knees before him in pa.s.sionate entreaty. ”Do not destroy it for me, rather aid the pious delusion which is to save me!
Bear patiently with the woe of a soul seeking its salvation, and leave the rest to G.o.d!” She leaned her brow against the hand which hung by his side and was silent from excess of emotion.
The tall, stalwart man stood trembling as Abraham may have stood before the thicket when G.o.d stayed his uplifted arm and cried in tender love: ”I will not accept thy sacrifice.”
He had a presentiment that the victim would be s.n.a.t.c.hed from him also, if he was too stern, and all the floods of his heart burst forth, all the flood gates of love and pity opened. Bending down, he held her head in a close, warm clasp between both hands, and touched her forehead with quivering lips.
A low cry of unutterable bliss, and she sank upon his breast; the next instant she lifted her warm rosy lips to his.
But he drew back a step in agonizing conflict; ”No, Countess, for Heavens's sake no, it must not be.”
”Why not?” she asked, her face blanching.
”Let me remain worthy of the miracle G.o.d has wrought upon you through me. If I am to represent Christ to you, I must at least feel and think as He did, so far as my human weakness will permit, or everything will be a deception.”
The countess covered her face with her hands. ”Ah, no one can utter such words who knows aught of love and longing!” she moaned between her set teeth in bitter scorn.
”Do you think so?” exclaimed Freyer, and the tone in which he spoke pierced her heart like a cry of pain. Drawing her hands from her face, he forced her to meet his glowing eyes: ”Look at me and see whether the tears which now course down my cheeks express no love and longing. Look at yourself, your sweet, pouting lips, your sparkling eyes, all your radiant charms, and ask yourself whether a man into whose arms such a woman falls _can_ remain unmoved? When you have answered these questions, say to yourself: 'How that man must love his Saviour, if he buys with such sacrifices the right to wear His crown of thorns!'
Perhaps you will then better understand what I said just now of the spirit and nature of Christ.”
Countess Madeleine made no reply, but wringing her hands, bent her eyes on the ground.
”Have I wounded you, Countess?”
”Yes, unto death. But it is best so. I understand you. If I am to love you as Christ, you must _be_ Christ. And the more severe you are, the higher you raise me! Alas--the pain is keen!” She pressed her hand upon her heart as though to close a wound, a pathetic expression of resignation rested on her pallid face.
”Oh, Countess, do not make my task too hard for me. I am but mortal!
Oh, how can I see you suffer? _I_ can renounce everything, but to hurt _you_ in doing so--is beyond my power.”
”Do not say _you_ in this solemn hour! Call me by my name, I would fain hear it once from your lips!”
”And what _is_ your name?”
”Maria Magdalena.”
”No. You call yourself so under the impression of the Pa.s.sion Play.”