Part 68 (2/2)
”Condemned--condemned by you!” moaned the countess in terror.
”I do not condemn you, Madeleine, I only marvel that you could do it, if you knew the man as he is.”
”I did not know him in this guise,” said the countess proudly. ”But--I will not be less honest than you, Duke, I am not sure that I could have done it, had I known him as I do _now_.”
The duke pa.s.sed his handkerchief across his brow, which was already somewhat bald. ”One thing is certain--we owe the man some reparation.
Something must be done.”
”What shall we do? He will refuse anything we offer--though it were myself. That is evident from the burgomaster's letter.” She closed her eyes to keep back the tears. ”All is vain--he can never forgive me.”
”No, he certainly cannot do that. But the man is worthy of having us fulfill the only wish he has expressed to you--”
”And that is?”
”To defer our marriage until the first anguish of his grief has had time to pa.s.s away.”
The countess drew a long breath, as if relieved of a heavy burden: ”Duke, that is generous and n.o.ble!”
”If you had been legally wedded and were obliged to be legally divorced, we could not be united in less than a year. Let us show the poor man the honor of regarding him as your lawfully wedded husband and pay him the same consideration as if he were. That is all we can do for him at present, and I shall make it a point of honor to atone, by this sacrifice, in some degree for the heavy responsibility which is undeniably mine and which, as an honest man, I neither can nor desire to conceal from myself.”
He went to her and held out his hand. ”I see by your radiant eyes, Countess, that this does not cost you the sacrifice which it does me--I will not pretend to be more unselfish than I am, for I hope by means of it to gain in your esteem what I lose in happiness by this time of delay!”
He kissed her hand with a sorrowful expression which she had never seen in him before. ”Permit me to take leave of you for to-day, I have an engagement with Prince Hohenheim. To-morrow we will discuss the matter farther. _Bon soir_!”
The countess was alone. An engagement with Prince Hohenheim! When had an engagement with any one taken precedence--of her? Duke Emil was using pretexts. She could not deceive herself, he was--not really cold, but chilled. What a terrible reproach to her! What neither time, nor any of her great or trivial errors had accomplished, what had not happened even when she preferred a poor low-born man to the rich n.o.ble--occurred now, when she rejected the former--for the latter.
Many a person does not realize the strength of his own moral power, and how it will baffle the most crafty calculation. Every tragical result of a sin is merely the vengeance of these moral forces, which the criminal had undervalued when he planned the deed. This was the case with the duke. He had advised a breach with Freyer--advised it with the unselfish intention of saving her, but when the countess followed his advice and he saw by Freyer's conduct _what_ a heart she had broken, he could not instantly love the woman who had been cruel enough to do an act which he could not pardon himself for having counselled.
Madeleine Wildenau suspected this, though not to its full extent. The duke was far too chivalrous to think for a moment of breaking his plighted troth, or letting her believe that he repented it. But the delay which he proposed as an atonement to the man whom they had injured, said enough. Must _all_ abandon her--every bridge on which she stepped break? Had she lost by her act even the man of whom she was sure--surer than of anything else in the world! How terrible then this deed must have been! Madeleine von Wildenau blushed for herself.
Yet as there are certain traits in feminine nature which are the last a woman gives up, she now hated Freyer, hated him from a spirit of contradiction to the duke, who espoused his cause. And as the feminine nature desires above all things else that which is denied, she now longed to bind the duke again because she felt the danger of losing him. The fugitive must be stopped--the sport might perhaps lend her charmless, wretched life a certain interest. An unsatisfactory one, it is true, for even if she won him again--what then? What would she have in him? Could he be anything more to her than a pleasant companion who would restore her lost power and position? She glanced at her mirror--it showed her a woman of thirty-eight, rouged to seem ten years younger--but beneath this rouge were haggard cheeks. She could not conceal from herself that art would not suffice much longer--she had faded--her life was drawing toward evening, age spared no one!
But--when she no longer possessed youth and beauty, when the time came that only the moral value of existence remained, what would she have then? To what could she look back--in what find satisfaction, peace?
Society? It was always the same, with its good and evil qualities. To one who entered into an ethical relation with it, it contained besides its apparent superficiality boundless treasures and resources. ”The snow is hard enough to bear,” people say in the mountains when, in the early Spring, the loose ma.s.ses have melted into a firm crust. Thus, under the various streams, now cold, now warm, the surface of society melts and forms that smooth icy rind of form over which the light-foot glides carelessly, unconscious that beneath the thin surface are hidden depths in which the philosopher and psychologist find material enough for the study of a whole life. But when everything which could serve the purposes of amus.e.m.e.nt was exhausted, the countess' interest in society also failed. Once before she had felt a loathing for it, when she was younger than now--how would it be when she was an old woman?
The arts? Already their spell had been broken and she had fled to Nature, because she could no longer believe in their beautiful lies.
The sciences? They were least suited to afford pleasure! Had she not grown so weary of her amateur toying with their serious investigations that she fled, longing for a revelation, to the childish miracles of Oberammergau? Aye--she was again, after the lapse of ten years, standing in the selfsame spot, seeking her G.o.d as in the days when she fancied she had found His footprints. The trace proved delusive, and must she now begin again where ten years before she ended in weariness and discontent? Must she, who imagined that she had embraced the true essence, return to searching, doubting? No, the flower cannot go back into the closed bud; the feeling which caused the disappointment impelled onward to truth! Love for G.o.d had once unfolded, and though the object proved deceptive--the _feeling_ was true, and struggled to find its goal as persistently as the flower seeks the sun after it has long vanished behind clouds. But had she missed her way because she thought she had reached the _goal_ too _soon_? She had followed the trace no longer, but left it in anger--discouragement, at the first disappointment! What if the path which led her to Ammergau was the _right_ one? And the guide along it _had_ been sent by G.o.d? What if she had turned from the path because it was too long and toilsome, rejected the guide because he did not instantly bring G.o.d near to her impatient heart, and she must henceforth wander aimlessly without consolation or hope? And when the day of final settlement came, what imperishable goods would she possess? When the hour arrived which no mortal can escape, what could aid her in the last terror, save the consciousness of dwelling in the love of G.o.d, of going out of love to love--out of longing to fulfillment? She had rejected love, she had turned back in the path of longing and contented herself with earthly joys--and when she left the world she would have nothing, for the soul which does not seek, will not find! A life which has not fulfilled its moral task is not _finished_, only _broken off_, death to it is merely _destruction_, not _completion_.
The miserable woman flung herself down before the mirror which showed her the transitoriness of everything earthly and, for the first time in her life, looked the last question in the face and read no answer save--despair.
”Help my weakness, oh G.o.d!” she pleaded. ”Help me upward to Thee. Show me the way--send me an angel, or write Thy will on the border of the clouds, work a miracle, oh Lord, for a despairing soul!” Thus she awaited the announcement of the divine will in flaming characters and angel tongues--and did not notice that a poor little banished household sprite was standing beside her, gazing beseechingly at her with tearful eyes because it had the word which would aid her, the watchword which she could find nowhere--only a simple phrase: _the fulfillment of duty!_ Yet because it was as simple and una.s.suming as the genius which brought it, it remained unheeded by the proud, vain woman who, in her arrogance, spite of the humiliations she had endured, imagined that her salvation needed a messenger from Heaven of apocalyptic form and power.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
MEMORIES.
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