CHAPTER X.
While this violent and yet almost ridiculous scene was enacted in the court, Jansen had been mounting the dark stairs with a heavy foot and a heavier breath. No sound of a human being was heard in the house; only the roaring and crackling of the open fire in the kitchen below. Half way up the stairs he stood still and listened; it seemed to him as if he heard the voice of his child. But it was only the ringing in his ears, as the blood seemed to surge and boil in his veins.
"She will be asleep by this time," he said to himself. "So much the better! She won't hear then what I have to say to her mother."
He trembled all over. And yet he had no fear of this meeting, that was to be the last. He was afraid of himself, of the dark, violent spirit that made him clinch his fists and gnash his teeth. "Be quiet!" he said to himself, "be quiet! She is not worth such fury!"
He hastened up the last few steps and found himself in a long, dark corridor. At one end a thin ray of light made its way through a keyhole, and a broader gleam shone through the crack between the door and the bent and warping threshold.
"It must be there!" he said. He took off his hat, and passed his hand through his wet hair. "Let us make an end of it!" said he, unconsciously repeating over and over again the words "an end!--an end--an end!"
Then he stood before the door and listened. A voice which he did not recognize was speaking; he stooped down and peeped in through the keyhole. His eye lighted directly upon the face of an elderly woman who was talking earnestly, but perfectly quietly. He recognized the old singer, his wife's mother, whom he had always disliked even at the time of his maddest infatuation. She sat in a corner of the sofa, and drank now and then, in the short pauses she made, from a little silver cup that stood by the side of a traveling-flask. At the same time she broke up a biscuit and put the pieces in her mouth with an affected movement of the hand, all the while displaying her false teeth to advantage. Near her, sunk back in an arm-chair, lay her daughter; she was dressed entirely in black, which became her white skin and deep blue eyes charmingly. She was playing with a pair of scissors, making them flash in the candle-light, and looked as wearied and indifferent to all about her, as though she had just come home from the theatre where she been acting in some tiresome piece with only tolerable success.
Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to this obscure hiding-place.
The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be alive.
"Leave the room; I have something to say to my wife!" Jansen said to her in a low voice and without violence. "Do you hear what I say? Go away this instant! but through this door, by which I entered."
He wanted to prevent her from taking the child with her, for he took it for granted that it had been put to bed in the adjoining room.
The women exchanged a quick look. These few moments sufficed to restore the younger one to self-possession.
"You must not leave me," she said. "In whatever I am to hear--since I am conscious of my innocence--I need shun no witnesses, least of all my own mother."
And as she spoke she sank back again into the chair, and passed her hand across her eyes, as though overcome by painful memories. The old woman on the sofa did not move. They could only hear how she murmured softly to herself: "Good God! Good God! What a scene! What a catastrophe!"
"I repeat my demand!" the sculptor said with emphasis. "Will you wait for me to take your arm and lead you out?"
"Very good; I will go; I will not let matters be brought to the worst," cried the mother, rising with a pathetic gesture. Then she bent down over Lucie and whispered something in her ear. "No, no," hastily answered the latter, "not a word to him. That would only make the matter worse. Go, if it must be so. I am not afraid!"
She spoke the last words aloud and facing toward Jansen, whom she looked straight in the eyes without a trace of terror. Any stranger would have been deceived by this air of conscious innocence.
The old singer slammed the door behind her. They heard her, as she passed down the corridor. But it did not escape Jansen's ears that she crept back and remained standing outside the door to listen.
"Let her stay, for what I care!" he said to himself, "as long as I needn't see her face." Then came again the feverish: "We must make an end--an end--an end!" He took his stand before the stove, in which the remains of a fire still glowed. With folded arms he stood gazing down upon the woman who had been the curse of his life. In the midst of his terrible anguish it flashed across him that not a feature of her face gave evidence of the seven years that had passed since they had been separated. She even appeared younger, more girlish and more unsophisticated than when he had first known her. Nothing could be read on those soft lips or on that clear forehead but a sort of curiosity, an innocent wonder as to what was coming. Her soft, quiet hand had taken up the scissors again, and was playfully opening and shutting them.
An almost unbearable thought, a crushing sense of shame suddenly rose within him, as he realized that this mask had once deceived him; had excited him to mad passion, and had flattered him into reposing in it an undying faith--this smooth lie, this cold smile, that did not desert her even now, when he whom she had so bitterly injured had to put forth all his strength in order to pass through this hour manfully.
"I am here," said he at length, "to--to make an end of this. I hope you will not make it more difficult for me than is necessary. I will not ask you the reasons that have led you to act against our agreement, and to cross my path again. You have a fondness for masquerading, and I must let you indulge it as much as you like; all the more as I, for my part, give you up utterly. I merely wish to warn you that if you ever again feel a desire to approach me in any kind of disguise, take care not to lose the mask. I could not bear to see your face again, and my hot blood might play me false."
She bent her eyes upon him with a perfectly unembarrassed look, as if asking whether he was really serious when he said these words--whether he really could not bear the sight of this gentle face.
"Have no fear," she answered, softly, in an almost bashful tone. "I am not coming again. I have seen all that I wanted to see. It was certainly a pardonable curiosity that made me want to see what kind of a face one must have to find favor in your eyes; and if I--"
"Silence!" he interrupted, imperiously. "You shall hear me to the end--to the very end. If, as I hope, you are not unmindful of your own interests, and will listen to reason, our last interview will end peacefully, and I will give you my thanks for having brought it about. I will then take my child away with me, and promise you that I will try hard to think of you without anger."
"The child?"
"The child that you have just stolen, that you wished to keep with you in pawn, that you might carry out Heaven knows what miserable scheme."
"You are very much mistaken," she interposed, and a slight blush mounted to her cheeks. "The child is not here."
"Don't attempt to deceive me!" he cried, with sudden fury. "I know you have kidnapped the child--it is asleep in the next room--you fled to this place to conceal your capture from me; to-morrow, early, you intended to continue the flight."
"You are raving again!" she said calmly, and laid the scissors down on the table. "Look yourself, and see whether the child is here with me. There stands the lamp; search the house, if you do not believe me."
He stretched out his hand mechanically, took the light, and opened the door of the adjoining chamber. The beds that stood there were empty.
With a threatening look he turned upon her.
"Shall I search the house room by room?" he asked, his voice trembling with anger.
"It would be useless trouble. I swear to you, I did not bring the child with me."
"Trickster!" he cried, setting the light down on the table with such force that the flame was almost extinguished. "Only this once the truth--only this once! Where is the child? What have you done with her? In whose hands--"
"In the best of hands," she interrupted, "under the very safest protection, so help me God! I--it is true--I had an irresistible longing to see my poor child once more, whom you have made motherless and to whom you wish to give a mother who can have no heart for the orphan. If it is a crime for the real mother not to wish to see her child given to the false one, then I have committed such a crime. I wanted to steal it for myself, to be a thief of that which is my own, purchased with pain and lost with pain; but it happened differently--I was not to have it, in punishment for not having defended my rights more boldly. Oh! and this cruel, pitiless man, who has robbed me of everything, even of this last short, desperate consolation--"
Her voice appeared to fail her. She covered her face with her white hands, and was silent. But the time when she might have deceived him was past.
"Where is the child?" he asked, after a short pause, stepping close up to her.
She did not remove her hands from before her eyes.
"I sent it back to you. I saw that the innocent creature had been brought up in hatred toward her mother, and that I could not hope to win her young heart back to me again. What I felt--but enough! What do you care for my sorrows? I pressed the child to my breast for the last time, and then let her go from me forever. When you get home, you will find her there. This is the truth. And if I had to die this moment I could not say anything else."
She drew herself up at these words; her eyes glistened with moisture, her features assumed an expression of anxious emotion, and her gestures were hasty and ungraceful.
"Well?" she queried. "Are you not yet satisfied? Have I something still that your hate begrudges me, that you would like to tear from me? Take it--take all I have--take even my miserable life, that you have spared me until now, for I see what you are aiming at when you say you want to put an end to this. Yes, an end to my woes, to my disappointed hopes, to my happiness and my honor--an end to this wretched creature, that wanders through the world like a leaf torn from a tree, finding rest nowhere--nowhere until it sinks into the mud and rots there."
She threw herself on the sofa, and burst into a flood of tears.
He knew these tears. He knew that she possessed the art of moving herself in order to move others. But still he felt a deep pity for this unhappy nature, which could not even in its truest grief weep truly.
"Lucie," he said--it was the first time he had addressed her by her name--"you are quite right, you are unhappy and I am partly to blame for it. I ought to have been a wiser man, and never to have thought of making you my wife. We are of different blood; you are in your element when you are pretending to be something you are not. I--but why talk about it? We know it all--we ought to have known it then; it would have spared us much bitterness. And now, Lucie, you see I am not unjust; I share the blame between us, just as I have borne my good half of the misfortune. But shall it go on this way and make both of us wretched all our lives? I have written all this to you. Why didn't you read my letters better? We should now understand one another, and should be able to conclude what still remains to be done in a more friendly spirit."
"Your letters?" she said, suddenly drawing herself up and drying her tears. "I read them only too well. I know that in and between the lines there was but one thought: 'I will be free!--free at any price!' I knew, too, who it was who dictated this thought to you; and now, since I have made the personal acquaintance of this incomparable woman--no, without sarcasm, which would be but childish defiance for one in my situation--I understand perfectly that you would be willing to do anything in order that you might throw yourself into such chains. But to suppose that I, with my share of our common misfortune, as you call it, will voluntarily step back and look on while you find happiness according to your heart's desire--oh! you are excellent egotists, you men!--but you should not be so naïve as to think it a crime if we, too, sometimes think a little about ourselves!"
His old aversion arose again as he listened to this well-calculated, passionate speech. But he forced himself to be quiet.
"I have never tried to conceal from you," said he, "that I am now more desirous than ever before for an absolute separation, because I wish to enter into a new marriage. If you thought it was for your interest to hinder this, if you wished to prevent me from ever again becoming a happy man, then this would be comprehensible on your part, although it would betray but little pride. But you ought to know me better. You ought to know that I am terribly in earnest when I say my submission to the fate that binds us together is at an end. I can--I shall never consent to let the malicious defiance of a woman cheat myself and her whom I love of our happiness in life. I am determined to do anything which can set me free. Do you hear it? To do anything. And for that reason I say to you: name your price! I know very well that your desire to feel that I am in your power, and the triumph of seeing me drag a piece of the chain after me is dear to you. But even dearer things have their price. Name yours; I will buy off your hate and your malice, though to do it I had to work like a day-laborer from morning until late into the night."
"I don't imagine that will be necessary. Your sweetheart is rich, I hear. But you are mistaken. I am not covetous. Give me the child, and I will never have known the father."
"Woman!" he cried, his whole being lashed into fury by the trick which he immediately detected--"You are--"
But he controlled himself. He sank down a chair near the sofa, and said, in a tone as if he were communicating something of the greatest indifference to her:
"Very good. You remain untouched by words or prayers. But let me tell you: I am as determined to set myself free as you can possibly be to keep me forever in a state of wretched bondage. If you will consent to a legal separation, you shall never have occasion to complain of me. I will double what I have done for you heretofore; yes--I will guarantee that you shall not lose this part enjoyment of my income even by any second marriage you may be disposed to enter into. You smile and pretend to be incredulous. Let us play an honest game. You are young and beautiful; though I doubt whether you will ever find a man to whom your heart will go forth. You may easily find a man who will seduce your senses, and whose position will attract you, and then our account would be at an end. If you resist this just compromise--"
She looked at him again with all her childish innocence, with that smiling curiosity as though they had to do with a scene in a farce.
"Well--and then?" she asked.
"Then I will take every means in my power to ruin your life as you have ruined mine. I will pursue you with my hate, no matter whither you may flee, and dog your steps, do what you will to hinder! I know how you live, and that you have neglected no chance to console yourself for the loss of a husband. I have cast you out of my heart so entirely that I did not feel the least shade of sorrow when you threw yourself away upon whomsoever pleased you. But that shall be otherwise now. I will put a spy on your track, whose only duty shall be to watch you every step and movement, and to furnish me what I have hitherto lacked: proofs that you are trampling my honor as well as my happiness under foot. Then I will openly step before the world and tear the mask from your smooth face. Then I will--"
"You would do better to spare yourself the trouble," she interrupted, coldly. "Since you are so good as to warn me, you will easily understand that, even admitting I should feel any desire to be indiscreet, I should take care to guard myself against spies. So you would only throw away your money without gaining anything by it. For such weak proof of my guilt toward you as a glove, that very likely the doctor left lying in my chamber, and that an intelligent dog--à propos! I am really sorry that I was the innocent cause of the loss of your friend, though that keen judge of human nature did show as unconquerable an aversion toward me as his master. Some other end would undoubtedly have been preferred by you. At the same time, little as my wretched life may be worth to you, and easier as it would be for you to find a second wife than a second dog--"
"Woman!" he shrieked, driven furious by her impudent irony in this terrible hour. "Not another word, or--"
"Or?"
She looked at him defiantly, as she rose and folded her arms.
"Or I will bring the matter to another end than you ever dreamed of, and the carriage that you brought you here, you she-devil, laughing and mocking at me with your pretty paramour, shall to-morrow--"
He raised his fist as if he were about to let it fall like a hammer on her head. She returned his gaze without moving an eyelash.
"Murder me, if you have the heart to!" she said, coldly, with her lips curled in scorn. "The comedy in which a dog has played such a splendid rôle would then end most fittingly as a tragedy, which would be better, at all events, than a wretched reconciliation. As truly as I am innocent of your madness and fury, so truly do I say that a more undeserved disgrace was never heaped upon a helpless creature; that happiness, honor, and future were never more ruthlessly--"
The door was thrown open. Felix, who had pushed back the listening woman, thinking that the time had come to prevent an act of violence, burst into the room and suddenly stood before the speaker. But scarcely had she cast a look upon him than, with a shrill scream that went through the very marrow of the men, she sank back, her arms as if paralyzed by a sudden cramp, her features distorted, and in a state that bore such unmistakable signs of truth that no thought of its being some new deception was possible. Before Jansen had had time to collect himself, the mother rushed in from the corridor and threw herself down before her insensible daughter, who lay on the sofa with staring, wide-open eyes, a vacant smile upon her lips, and hands hanging rigidly at her side with the fingers spread wide apart.
"You have killed her!" cried the old woman, trying to lift the body, which had half fallen to the ground, on to the cushions. "Help--save her--bring water, vinegar--anything you have--Lucie--my poor Lucie--don't you hear me? It is I! My God! My God! Must it come to this!"
"It is a fainting-fit, nothing more!" Jansen's voice now broke in. "She has had such fits before, especially after great exertion on the stage. And to-day's scene--" his speech suddenly failed him. He had turned as he spoke toward Felix, who stood in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed immovably upon the figure of the insensible woman. It was as if the lightning-bolt that had struck her had grazed him too. Not a limb did he move, not a muscle stirred in his face; every drop of blood seemed to have left his veins.
"Felix! For God's sake what ails you? What is it? do you hear me, Felix?" cried Jansen, grasping his arm and pressing it tight.
Felix made a vain attempt to master himself again. But he could not withdraw his gaze from the woman, who lay there as if dead. He merely nodded a few times, as if to give a sign of life, and heaved a deep sigh. Then he said, bringing out each word separately: "So--that--is--your wife!"
"Felix!" cried Jansen, in a tone which betrayed a terrible suspicion. "Felix--speak--no--say nothing--come out--we--we are in the way here--"
"So that--is--his wife!" repeated the other, as if talking to himself. Suddenly he shook himself with a gesture of horror, broke loose from his friend, and rushed out of the room with such terrible haste as to cut off all chance for Jansen to detain him. They heard him, immediately afterward, plunge down the stairs and fling the door to behind him.
Jansen hurried to the window and threw it open. "Felix," he shouted after him--"one word--just a single word!"
No sound came up from below. Only the wet snow drove in through the open window, upon the head and breast of this sore-burdened man. He did not notice it. He leaned against the window-sill to support himself, and stood for perhaps ten minutes deaf and blind to all that went on around him.
The old singer was trying, with continual moaning and laments, to bring her insensible daughter back to life. She had produced a little flask of some strong essence from her traveling-bag, and was bathing the young woman's colorless cheeks and temples with it. Jansen had turned his eyes upon the group, but he did so as if he took no notice of what was being done for the lifeless figure. Not until she had made a slight movement with her hand, that immediately dropped back again upon the cushion, did he seem to recollect himself. He stepped away from the window without closing it.
"Let the cold air come in," he said, in a low voice. "It is the best way to bring her to herself again. Put some snow on her forehead; she will open her eyes in a few moments. Tell her, then, that I have left the house, and--that I shall leave her in peace. Goodnight!"
Her mother raised herself from her knees and sought to make some reply. But when she saw his face she was silent, and merely nodded timidly and servilely to all he said. She saw him go out of the room, and then hastened again to the aid of her daughter, who was now breathing heavily. She finally succeeded in raising her into a sitting position, but the pale head fell back again on the arm of the sofa. Then she ran to the window and brought a few handfuls of the snow that lay on the sill outside. At length the insensible woman opened her eyes.
Her first, half-vacant gaze wandered over the room. After a while she became thoroughly aroused, and moved her lips.
"Where is he?" she murmured.
Just at that moment they heard the hoof-beats of a horse galloping off.
"Do you hear?" whispered the mother. "He is just riding away. He won't come again--he told me to wish you good-night, and he would leave you alone. Oh! these men--Oh! these men! Poor, poor Lucie!"
The pale woman appeared even now not quite to understand. Her features were still distorted in fear. She drew her mother nearer, and whispered: "And the other--was it really he, or was it--his ghost?"
"What do you mean, child? Are you out of your head? But only keep quiet--it's to be hoped we shall have a quiet night--oh! my God! What a scene, what a catastrophe!"
She seized the cup of wine, and drank it out. Lucie paid no attention to her.
A shudder passed over her. She closed her eyes anew. The convulsion which had seized upon her now lapsed into a violent sobbing, which her mother, who had seen her before in such a fit, allowed to take its course without making any attempt to waste further words in consolation.