He sat down by his son and began to talk in a low voice and without looking at him.
The bells rang and then suddenly stopped and increased the silence a hundredfold.
“There was a night at Landeck when the bells caught her, a night following upon a day of sunshine and merriment and many people. She was the gayest of us all and, in the evening, all at once, she became silent and tired, as so often happened, without any cause that I knew of.... You were with us. You were ten years old then; you lay and slept. We had been standing together by your bed and looking at you and she began to cry and I could do nothing but hold her hand in mine and stop speaking.”
Finn listened, as he had just listened to the bells, without making out what the words had to tell him. He only knew that his mother was without blame and that his father had been able to tell it him all on that day and to leave it to him to pronounce judgment between himself and her. His joy at this sang within him and made all the rest easy and light and indifferent.
And Cordt continued:
“Then I went out on the verandah with my cigar and she stood in the doorway and listened to the bell of a little chapel up in the mountains, where we had been during the day. We had heard the story when we were there. Once, in the old days, a pious man had built the chapel in expiation of a sin and, since then, the bell had rung two hours after midnight every day.... She asked whether it would go on ringing till the end of the world and we came to talk of all the bells that ring over the earth, by day and by night, sun up and sun down, and comfort weary mortals.... Sometimes she was silent. But the bell rang up there constantly. And she constantly began to talk again and constantly about the same thing. About the bells that sounded so eternally and so identically over the whole world ... about those who heard them for the first time, one day when they were running like wild heathens in the endless wood ... about those whose will suddenly broke in the midst of the modern crowd, so that they fell on their knees and crept away where the bells summoned them.”
Finn looked up. The words now caught his mind and he woke from his dreams.
“I see her before me still, as she stood on the night when she carried her soul to God. Her strange eyes lifted to the stars ... her white face ... her hands ... and her words, which came so quickly, as though her life depended upon their coming, and so heavily, as though every one of them caused her pain. She never gave it a thought that I was there: she spoke as though she were doing public penance in the church-porch.... And then she declared that it was over.... It had become empty around her and cold and dark to anguish and despair, there where her glad eyes had beamed upon the lights and the crowd of the feast. Despair had come long since and slowly and she had closed her eyes to it and denied it. It had grown and come nearer to her and she had run away from it, as though she were running for her life. Now it was there and reached from earth to heaven, in her, around her, far and wide. And, if the bells could not conquer it, then she must die.”
Cordt spoke so softly that Finn could hardly catch his words.
“Then the bell up there ceased. Soon after, the day dawned and the sun shone on her white, moist cheeks. She was still now and silent, but her thoughts were the same. When things began to stir around us, in the town and at the hotel, she went out, I did not know where, but I daresay she was at the chapel. Towards evening, she returned and, at midnight, we sat on the verandah again and listened to the church-bell.... A week passed thus. I often feared for her reason. She always talked of the same thing and it was almost worse when she was silent. I sent old Hans home with you and, the next day, we left. But it was long before we reached home. She wanted to travel by the same road which we had taken on the journey out. She said she wanted to pray in every church which she had passed on her hunt for happiness through the world.”