PIETA
Twilight was gathering when the pair reached the valley.
The Passion Theatre loomed like a vast shadow by the roadside, and both, as if moved by the same impulse, turned toward it.
Freyer, drawing a key from his pocket, opened the door leading to the stage. "Shall we take leave of it?" he said.
"Take leave!"
The countess said no more. She knew that the success of the rest of the performances depended solely upon him--and it burdened her soul like a heavy reproach. Yet she did not tell him so, for hers he must be--at any cost.
The strength of her passion swept her on to her robbery of the cross, as the wind bears away the leaf it has stripped from the tree.
They entered the property room. There stood the stake, there lay the scourges which lacerated the sacred body. The spear that pierced his heart was leaning in a corner.
Madeleine von Wildenau gazed around her with a feeling of dread. Freyer had lighted a lamp. Something close beside it flashed, sending its rays far through the dim space. It was the cup, the communion cup! Freyer touched it with a trembling hand: "Farewell! I shall never offer you to any one again! May all blessings flow from you! Happy the hand which scatters them over the world and my beloved Ammergau."
He kissed the brim of the goblet, and a tear fell into it, but it glittered with the same unshadowed radiance. Freyer turned away, and his eyes wandered over the other beloved trophies.
There lay the reed sceptre broken on the floor.
The countess shuddered at the sight. A strange melancholy stole over her, and tears filled her eyes.
"My sceptre of reeds--broken--in the dust!" said Freyer, his voice tremulous with an emotion which forced an answering echo in Madeleine von Wildenau's soul. He raised the fragments, gazing at them long and mournfully. "Aye, the sad symbol speaks the truth--my strength is broken, my sovereignty vanished."
A terrible dread overpowered the countess and she fondly clasped the man she loved, as a princess might press to her heart her dethroned husband, grieving amid the ruins of his power. "You will still remain king in my heart!" she said, consolingly, amid her tears.
"You must now be everything to me, my loved one. In you is my Heaven, my justification in the presence of God. Hold me closely, firmly, for you must lift me in your arms out of this constant torture by the redeeming power of love." He rested his head wearily on hers, and she gladly supported the precious burden. She felt at that moment that she had the power to lift him from Hades, that the love in her heart was strong enough to win Heaven for him and herself.
"Womanly nature is drawing us together!" She clung to him, so absorbed in blissful melancholy that his soul thrilled with an emotion never experienced before. Their lips now met in a kiss as pure as if all earthly things were at an end and their rising souls were greeting each other in a loftier sphere.
"That was an angel's kiss!" said Freyer with a sigh, while the air around the stake seemed to quiver with the rustling of angels' wings, the chains which bound him to it for the scourging to clank as though some invisible hand had flung one end around the feet of the fugitives, to bind them forever to the place of the cross.
"Come, I have one more thing to do." He took the lamp from the table and went into the dressing-room.
There hung the raiment in which a God revealed Himself to mortal eyes--the ample garments stirred mysteriously in the draught from the open door. A glimmering white figure seemed to be soaring upward in one corner--it was the Resurrection robe. Inflated by the wind, it floated with a ghost-like movement, while the man divested of his divinity stood with clasped hands and drooping head--to say farewell.
When a mortal strips off his earthly husk he knows that he will exchange it for a brighter one! Here a mortal was stripping off his robe of light and returning to the oppressive form of human imperfection. This, too, was a death agony.
The countess clung to him tenderly. "Have you forgotten me?"
He threw his arm around her. "Why, sweet one?"
"I mean," she said, with childlike grace, "that if you thought of me, you could not be so sad."
"My child, I forget you at the moment I am resigning Heaven for your sake. You do not ask that seriously. As for the pain, let me endure it--for if I could do this with a light heart, would the sacrifice be worthy of you? By the anguish it costs me you must measure the greatness of my love, if you can."
"I can, for even while I rest upon your heart, while my lips eagerly inhale your breath, I pine with longing for your lost divinity."
"And no longer love me as you did when I was the Christ. Be frank--it will come!"
He pressed his hands upon his breast, while his eyes rested mournfully on the shining robe which seemed to beckon to him from the gloom.
"Oh, what are you saying! You sacrifice for me the greatest possession which man ever resigned for woman; the illusion of deity--and I am to punish you for the renunciation by loving you less? Joseph, what you give me, no king can bestow. Crowns have been sacrificed for a woman's sake, crowns of gold--but never one like this!"
"My wife!" he murmured in sweet, mournful tones, while his dark eyes searched hers till her very soul swooned under the power of the look.
She clasped her hands upon his breast. "Will you grant me one favor?"
"If I can."
"Ah, then, appear to me once more as the Christ. I will go out upon the stage. Throw the sacred robe over you--let me see Him once more, clasp His knees--let me take farewell, an eternal farewell of the departing One."
"My child, that would be a sin! Are you again forgetting what you yourself perceived this morning with prescient grief--that I am a man? Dare I continue the sacred character outside of the play? That would be working wrong under the mask of my Saviour."
"No, it would be no wrong to satisfy the longing for His face. I will not touch you, only once more, for the last time show my wondering eyes the sublime figure and let the soul pour forth all the anguish of parting to the vanishing God."
"My wife, where is your error carrying you! Did the God-Man I personated vanish because I stripped off His mask? Poor wife, the anguish which now masters you is remorse for having in your sweet womanly weakness destroyed the pious illusion and never rested until you made the imaginary God a man. Oh, Magdalena, how far you still are from the goal gained by your predecessor. Come, I will satisfy your longing; I will lead you where you will perceive that He is everywhere, if we really seek Him, that the form alone is perishable. He is imperishable." Then gently raising her, he tenderly repeated: "Come. Trust me and follow me." Casting one more sorrowful glance around him, he took from the table the crown of thorns, extinguished the lamp, and with a steady arm guided the weeping woman through the darkness. Outside of the building the stars were shining brightly, the road was distinctly visible. The countess unresistingly accompanied him. He turned toward the village and they walked swiftly through the silent streets. At last the church rose, dark and solemn, before them. He led her in. A holy-water font stood at the entrance, and, pausing, he sprinkled her with the water. Then they entered. The church was dark. No light illumined it save the trembling rays of the ever-burning lamp and two candles flickering low in their sockets before an image of the Madonna in a remote corner. They were obliged to grope their way forward slowly amid the wavering shadows. At the left of the entrance stood a "Pieta." It was a group almost life-size, carved from wood. The crucified Saviour in the Madonna's lap. Mary Magdalene was supporting his left hand, raising it slightly, while John stood at the Saviour's feet. The whole had been created by an artist's hand with touching realism. The expression of anguish in the Saviour's face was very affecting. Before the group stood a priedieu on which lay several withered wreaths.
The countess' heart quivered; he was leading her there! So this was to be the compensation for the living image? Mere dead wood?
Freyer drew her gently down upon the priedieu. "Here, my child, learn to seek him here, and when you have once found Him, you will never lose Him more. Lay your hands devoutly on the apparently lifeless breast and you will feel the heart within throbbing, as in mine--only try."
"Alas, I cannot, it will be a falsehood if I do."
"What, that a falsehood, and I--was I the Christ?"
"I could imagine it!"
"Because I breathed? Ah, the breath of the deity can swell more than a human breast, sister, and you will hear it! Collect your thoughts--and pray!"
His whisper grew fainter, the silence about her more solemn. "I cannot pray; I never have prayed," she lamented, "and surely not to lifeless wood."
"Only try--for my sake," he urged gently, as if addressing a restless child, which ought to go to sleep and will not.
"Yes; but stay with me," she pleaded like a child, clinging to his arm.
"I will stay," he said, kneeling by her side.
"Teach me to pray as you do," she entreated, raising her delicate hands to him. He clasped them in his, and she felt as if the world could do her no further harm, that her soul, her life, lay in his firm hands.
The warmth emanating from him became in her a devout fervor. The pulses of ardent piety throbbing in his finger-tips seemed to communicate a wave-like motion to the surrounding air, which imparted to everything which hitherto had been dead and rigid, an undulating movement that lent it a faint, vibrating life.
Something stirred, breathed, murmured before and above her. There was a rustling among the withered leaves of the garlands at the foot of the Pieta, invisible feet glided through the church and ascended the steps of the high altar; high up the vaulted dome rose a murmur which wandered to the folds of the funeral banner, hanging above, passing from pillar to pillar, from arch to arch, in ghostly echoes which the listening ear heard with secret terror, the language of the silence. And the burning eyes beheld the motionless forms begin to stir. The contours of the figures slowly changed in the uncertain, flickering light, the shadows glided and swung to and fro. The Saviour's lips opened, then slowly closed, the kneeling woman touched the rigid limbs and laid her fevered fingers on the wounded breast. The other hand rested in Freyer's. A chain was thus formed between the three, which thrilled and warmed the wood with the circulating stream of the hot blood. It was no longer a foreign substance--it was the heart, the poor pierced heart of their beloved, divine friend. It throbbed, suffered, bled. More and more distinctly the chest rose and fell with the regular breathing. It was the creative breath of the deity, which works in the conscious and unconscious object, animating even soulless matter. The arm supported by Mary Magdalene swayed to and fro, the fingers of the hand moved gently. The poor pierced hand--it seemed as if it were trying to move toward the countess, as if it were pleading, "Cool my pain."
Urged by an inexplicable impulse, the countess warmed the stiff, slender fingers in her own. She fancied that it was giving relief. Higher and higher swelled the tide of feeling in her heart until it overflowed--and--she knew not how, she had risen and pressed a kiss upon the wounds in the poor little hand, a kiss of the sweetest, most sacred piety. She felt as if she were standing by a beloved corpse whose mute lips we seek, though they no longer feel.
She could not help it, and bending down again the rosy lips of the young widow rested on the pale half-parted ones of the statue. But the lips breathed, a cool, pure breath issued from them, and the rigid form grew more pliant beneath the sorrowful caress, as though it felt the reconciling pain of the penitent human soul. But the divine fire which was to purify this soul, blazed far beyond its boundaries in this first ardor. Overpowered by a wild fervor, she flung herself on her knees and adjured the God whose breath she had drunk in that kiss, to hear her. The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced. From the heights and from the depths it came with rustling pinions, bearing the soul away on the flood-tide of mercy. The miracle was approaching--in unimagined majesty.
Thousands of years vanished, eternity dawned in that one moment. All that was and is, was not and is not--past, present, and future, were blended and melted into a single breath beyond the boundaries of the natural life.
"If it is Thou, if Thou dost live, look at me," she had cried with ardent aspiration, and, lo!--was it shadow or imagination?--the eyes opened and two large dark pupils were fixed upon her, then the lids closed for an instant to open again The countess gazed more and more earnestly; it was distinct, unmistakable. A shudder ran through her veins as, in a burning fever, the limbs tremble with a sudden chill. She tried to meet the look, but spite of the tension in every nerve, the effort was futile. It was too overpowering; it was the gaze of a God. Dread and rapture were contending for the mastery. Doubtless she said to herself, "It is not outside of you, but within you." Once more she ventured to glance at the mysterious apparition, but the eyes were fixed steadily upon her. Terror overpowered her. The chord of the possible snapped and she sank half senseless on the steps of the altar, while the miracle closed its golden wings above her.