XXIV
Evening came, and Hertha roamed about as if she were walking in her sleep. When the bell sounded for supper, she felt she would rather creep away and hide somewhere in the wainscot than face him. But in her perplexed and limp condition she made no resistance when Elly came to drag her to the table.
He was in his place, and gave her a friendly nod as usual, but to-day his smile seemed to her expressionless and stony. How different he looked to her eyes from what he had ever looked before!
If fire had shot out of his mouth, she would have hardly been surprised. He seemed now to be really the demoniac person that she had once pictured in her foolish fancies, though what had then filled her with longing dreams now inspired her with dread and horror. From time to time she gave him a shy glance.
"How can any one sit there quietly," thought she, "concealing such awful secrets in his breast?"
He had become very silent lately. Grandmamma gave out that he was working himself to death. The grim line between his brows seemed to grow deeper day by day.
Hertha believed now that she knew the cause of that line. She almost wished it might kill him, for she hated him, and the sin that made him suffer was abhorrent to her.
She abhorred herself too, for the condition of hate and jealousy into which she had worked herself up seemed to her undignified and vulgar.
"If only I knew what I ought to do," she thought, "so that I needn't be ashamed. I must pray," she concluded finally, "and then perhaps I shall find out the right path to take."
Willingly would she have run out there and then into the dark garden to be alone with God, but the rain still poured down in torrents.
At bed-time Elly vexed her with absurd questions about what one should do if a lover came at midnight to run away with one. The childish chatter of her bosom friend filled her with mistrust of herself. "Perhaps I am as silly as she is," she mused, and because she didn't want to think of foolish things, she preferred not to think at all, and turned on her side and fell asleep.
In the middle of the night she woke up. The rain seemed to have left off, but a gale had risen, which rattled the shutters, and whistled and moaned through the keyholes. "Didn't I intend to pray and meditate?" Hertha asked, as she settled herself snugly amongst the pillows. She felt joyously excited at having cheated sleep, for even her troubles could not do more than increase and deepen in her the feeling of infinite zest in mere existence.
She folded her hands, but could not compose herself to pray, for her soul was whirled and tossed on the wings of sublime ideas and lofty resolves. Gradually the chaos cleared, and out of it rose in triumphant purity one solitary resolution.
She would renounce. Renounce all dreams of happiness, all hopes. Renounce all the empty little pleasures with which thoughtlessly she had been wont to deck her youth; renounce all the glittering tinsel of worldliness. Calm and noble, she would sacrifice herself to her neighbours' needs, death at her heart and a smile on her lips. Yes, so it should be. And shedding tears of sweet satisfaction, she floated into the realms of sleep once more.
In the morning, when she opened her eyes, sunshine greeted them. What had passed in the night seemed to her now as a God-sent dream, a miracle worked by Heaven to save her soul from despair.
She kissed Elly with redoubled vigour, and exhausted herself in performing little services for others, for this harmonised best with her present angelic mood.
Only during breakfast, as she met Leo's eyes, was she conscious of the bitterness which she thought she had conquered for ever, waking in her again.
This recurrence made her anxious and uneasy. "My resolution is too weak," she thought, "to be able to withstand the temptations of the world; I must strengthen and sanctify it by a solemn vow, so that it will be a positive sin if I fail again."
Nevertheless, though she racked her brains, she could devise no method holy and awful enough to endow her with sufficient power of resistance.
At last, in a flash, what she was seeking came to her. She would row over to the Isle of Friendship, the home of all gloomy mysteries. There before the blood-sprinkled sacrificial stone she would kneel in prayer, and at the same time open a vein of her arm and utter a vow over the flowing bloody so that her yearning and hate might be silenced for ever.
The hours went by in sacred expectation. Soon after the vesper coffee, she slipped out with the key of the bathing-house in her pocket The wind swept across the wide meadow flats, and above her the sun, blood-red, was half hidden by a ragged fringe of stormy clouds. The grassy path had been saturated by the rain, and more than once her feet stuck fast in the boggy ground, which oozed and gurgled as she set them free. But, without looking back, she hurried on. Like a phantasmagoria the rich half-submerged pastures melted behind her. The tall sheaves bent before the wind; all the flowers which in the past summer days had made so fair a border to the meadow path, lay on the ground broken and smirched in a liquid mêlée.
As she came in sight of the shining surface of the stream stretching into the distance, she started, for to-day it was swollen to twice its usual breadth, and the current much swifter. The heavy rains of the last few days were responsible. The boats had been drawn up almost on to the top of the dyke, and water was hissing from the foot of the reeds along which one could generally walk with tolerably dry feet. It was uncanny to hear the dry dark heads of the bulrushes, whipped by wind and wet, sighing and rattling as they struck against each other. For a moment she had almost a mind to retire from the foolhardy enterprise. But the next her old daring defiance took possession of her anew.
"If I am in earnest about my vow," she said to herself, "no bodily danger should stand in my way."
She loosened the chain of the boat, which slid down the declivity of the dyke nearly of its own accord. In the bathing-house she found the right oars, and put off into the stream.
Now a desperate struggle began, even before she had got clear of the reeds; the current caught the little craft and drove it into the thickest part of the sedge, so that the keel was set as fast on unbroken rushes as on a sandbank. Here it was impossible to strike out with the oars, and only by pushing herself off with her hands from one clump of bulrushes to another did she at length get into open water. The boat was instantly caught by a couple of eddies and spun round in a circle. Clenching her teeth, Hertha steered herself with the handle of the oar. Her chest expanded, the blood hammered in her veins, a feverish vapour swam before her eyes. With every stroke of the oars she felt a portion of her life's strength flow out. But what did it matter? The boat was being mastered; it was making progress.
And by degrees the tumult in her blood subsided; the muscles, instead of slackening, became hard as steel. She dared look round and measure the distance she had come. The Isle of Friendship greeted her with its masses of golden-brown foliage, from which whirled swarms of falling leaves. A cry of hopeful longing escaped her breast; but she must look out, or another eddy would catch the boat. Ten minutes might have passed, when two withered leaves fluttered over her head and sank like tired birds of passage swimming on to the water.
She gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, for she knew that these leaves were envoys that the Isle of Friendship had sent to meet her. And now when she looked round she found that she was within the shadow of its willows.
One more bitter fight with the current, and with a last far-reaching stroke of the oars she shot into the little bay, whose sandy landing-place was quite under water, so that the boat was able to drift right in amongst the alder roots. With a rapid movement she slung the chain round the strongest of the stumps, fastened it firmly, and swung herself, by clinging to an overhanging branch, on to the steep slippery bank.
For a moment she crouched down on the drenched grass to recover breath, and looked at her blistered palms, which were bleeding. She wiped the blood away with her tongue, and laughed. Then she threw a frightened glance into the thicket where ruddy sunlight lay on the yellow leaves.
The brook which ran down to the river tossed dirty grey rainwater over the slimy stones, between which were heaped stacks of dead damp leaves. The tongues of fern growing along the edge of the water were nipped and shrivelled up, and they looked as they stood there like little wrinkled old women in their blurred brown rags. Not far off were a greasy company of toadstools spreading their smooth copula-shaped heads, delicately fluted underneath. They shone as if they had been rolling in butter.
In disgust at these rotting excrescences of damp weather, Hertha strode over them and struck into the thick of the thorny shrubs, which sorely thwarted her progress. Everywhere brambles, hung with raindrops like chains of pearls, switched her in the face, and her footmarks on the swampy moss, into which she sank, became glittering pools as she walked on.
It was a path along which the enchanted princesses of fairy tale might have wandered; but she was not in the least afraid, and when she saw a cluster of blue-black sloeberries glistening at her feet, she stooped and gathered them carefully in the palm of her hand.
At last the clearing lay before her, bathed in the purple rays of the sinking sun. She paused, filled with reverent awe, and looked round her.
The evening shadows had gathered over the little temple, and the wind-tossed branches scattered upon it their burden of fading leaves. There was a sighing and moaning in the air, as if the whole army of spirits with whom the legends of the neighbourhood populated the wood were assembled on this very spot. And there on the edge of the boscage was the old sacrificial stone, standing like an altar ready for a new offering of blood.
A cold shiver began to creep over her, but she suppressed it quickly. Let those who were cowards or who had guilty consciences be afraid. She stood still in front of the temple of friendship, and gazed up in astonishment at the sandstone figures.
"Which of the two is meant for Leo?" she wondered, and for the first time she fully realised the great wrong which was being done the man called Ulrich. The thought made her uneasy, and the longer she dwelt on it the blacker were the depths of depravity that it seemed to reach.
She turned her back, for she could no longer bear the sight of the two friends with their arms twined round each other. "One is a liar," she murmured to herself; and she felt just then as if all truth and good faith had vanished from the world--as if even yonder sun was a monstrous blood-red lie.
"No, no," she thought further; "it is impossible. He must have told him, and have said, 'I love your wife, but it is of no consequence. I only want to see her now and then, and listen to her voice--nothing more.'"
Of course, that was how it was. It couldn't--simply couldn't be otherwise. And she herself wanted nothing more than to see him sometimes, and to win a friendly word from him. Truly she had wanted more--once. She had wanted to marry him.... At least, a short time ago she had. But now, of course, that was all over and done with. She had renounced him.
Her heart swelled. She ran round the old stone several times, then sat down on top of it and cried bitterly.
As she folded her hands to pray she saw the blood gushing forth. "How stupid I was this morning," she thought, "when I thought that I should have to open one of my veins on this stone, as if I couldn't pour out my heart's blood for him without doing that."
And tucking her feet beneath her body, she began to pray out loud, while the tears rolled into her mouth.
"Dear God, it is all over now.... My hopes and my happiness are wrecked. Therefore I beseech Thee from the bottom of my heart to give me strength at least to make others happy. And if I renounce, let me do so without envy, anger, or bitterness. Endow me with that true Christian humility and gentleness that Elly has in such a high degree, so that I may curb my dreadfully hot temper, and not say horrid things to those I love. And above all, I pray Thee for one thing: if he loves her, spare him the endless suffering that I endure because of him. Let him be as happy as it is possible for him to be in his unhappy love. And especially guard him from playing the liar to Ulrich, so that I need not be ashamed unto death for him. Take Frau Felicitas too under your protection, and let all men, whether they be good or bad, enjoy Thy grace so that at last they shall all come to eternal bliss. Amen!"
She repeated the "Amen" three times, and asked herself if there was any enemy or evil-doer for whom she had forgotten to pray, but none occurred to her.
Her heart was now so overflowing with love and forgiveness that she didn't know how she could be thankful enough.
The sun had gone down. A last red glow of light touched the corners of the temple, and gilded the blue-black autumn clouds that gathered in threatening masses on the horizon. Hertha climbed down from the stone, ate the blackberries which she had put down beside her, and thought of her journey home with some anxiety.
A bird of prey flew across the river with a thundering flap of its wings, and then soared as straight as a dart towards the clouds. Its plumage seemed to flash. The wind shook the grasses. All at once it grew dark.
"Farewell," said Hertha, looking back at the pair of friends. "I'll come again in the spring."
Suddenly she started in terror. She heard a crackling and snapping of twigs among the bushes, which drew nearer and nearer.
"A robber," thought Hertha, and laid her hand on her beating heart.
Erect she stood there, turning a courageous face to the approaching danger.
The figure of a man came in view on the edge of the clearing. Hertha felt her blood run cold. It was Leo. He hurried towards her with his firm stride. The veins stood out on his forehead; his eyes flashed fire.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
She was silent and bit her lips, feeling all her meekness depart at one blow.
"Have you taken leave of your senses? Didn't I forbid you to row here alone, and the stream swollen too."
Hertha began to boil inwardly. Was this the reward of her renunciation? But "have patience, be silent," a voice cried within her.
"It's a marvel that you haven't been carried away," he scolded on, all his anxiety for her turning into wrath. "When I forbid a thing, I have my reasons for doing so, but the devil himself seems to drive you into disobedience, girl. I am not at all inclined to go on a wild-goose chase after you again, I can tell you!"
Ah! that was hard. He scorned that hour which lived in her memory as the most sacred she had known. It was more than hard; it was brutal!
At this moment she hated him so that she felt as if she was almost swooning from the intensity of her emotions. All--all that she had just sworn was forgotten, and with a smile of icy contempt, hardly knowing what she said, she answered--
"You can order and forbid as much as you like. But he who is not honest and does not keep his word himself, can scarcely expect that others will respect and obey him."
The words were spoken. They could not be recalled. Reeling a step forwards, he stared at her dully.
"What--what does that mean?" Every drop of blood had forsaken his face.
"You must know perfectly well what it means;" and she turned to go.
He would have liked to shake her, to question her, and force her to speak. But he had not the courage. It seemed to him that from the lips of this child he had been condemned.
In silence they walked to the landing-place; in silence he rowed her over the stream; in silence they parted. Two who, because they belonged to each other, determined to go through life as enemies.