"The old father must be ill," said he to himself; but as he said it a feeling of dread and anxiety, a presentiment of evil, came over him, and he stood for a few moments unable to proceed. The door at the top of the stairs was now opened, and shut with evident care to avoid noise. "The old man must be very ill," said Bernard, as if trying to persuade himself of it. He reached the door, and his hand shook as he laid it upon the latch. At length he lifted it, and entered the room. It was empty; but, just then, the door of Elizabeth's chamber opened, and old Kranhelm stepped out. On beholding Bernard, he started back as though he had seen a ghost. He said a word or two in a low voice to somebody in the inner room, and then shutting the door, bolted it, and placed his back against it, as if to prevent Bernard from going in.
"Begone!" cried he in a tremulous voice; "in the name of God, begone! thou evil spirit of my house;" and he stretched out his arms towards Bernard as though to prohibit his approach. No longer master of himself, the young man sprang towards him, and, grasping his arm, thundered in his ear the question—
"Where is my Elizabeth?"
The words rang through the old tower, and the confused murmuring of voices in the inner room was heard. Bernard listened, and thought he distinguished the voice of Elizabeth repeating, in tones of agony, the fatal number.
One of the physicians knocked, and begged to be let out. The old tower-keeper opened the door cautiously, and, when the doctor had passed through, carefully shut and barred it. But during the moment that it had remained open, Bernard heard too plainly what his ears had at first been unwilling to believe.
"Is that the man?" demanded the physician hastily. "In God's name, be silent. You will kill the patient. She recognized your voice, and fell immediately into the most fearful paroxysm. She has got back again to the infernal number with which her delirium began, and she shrieks it out perpetually. It is a frightful relapse. Begone! young man; yet stay—I will go with you. You can, doubtless, give us a key to this mystery."
The old physician took Bernard's arm to lead him away; but at that very moment there was a shrill scream from the next room, and Elizabeth's voice was heard calling upon Bernard by name. The unfortunate young man could not restrain himself. Shaking off the grasp of the physician, he pushed old Kranhelm aside, tore back the bolts, and flung open the door. There lay Elizabeth on her deathbed, her arms stretched out towards him, her mild countenance ashy pale and frightfully distorted, her soft blue eyes straining from their orbits. She made a violent effort to speak, but death was too near at hand; the sound died away upon her lips, and her uplifted arms dropped powerless upon the bed; her head fell back—a convulsive shudder came over her: she was dead. Her unhappy lover fell senseless to the ground.
When Bernard awoke out of a long and deathlike swoon, it was night, and all around him was still and dark. He was lying on the stone floor outside Kranhelm's dwelling. The physicians had removed him thither; and, being occupied with the old tower-keeper and his daughter, they had thought no more about him. On first recovering sensation, he had but an indistinct idea of where he was, or what had happened. By degrees his senses returned to a certain extent—he knew that something horrible had occurred, but without remembering exactly what it was.
He felt about him, and touched a railing. It was the balustrade round the open turret where hung the great bell. He was lying under the bell itself, and, as he gazed up into its brazen throat, the recollection of the frightful dream which had persecuted him the night before his flight from Stralsund came vividly to his mind; he appeared to himself to be still dreaming, and yet his visions were mixed up with the realities of his everyday occupations.
He had just stepped out, he thought, to strike the hour on the bell, and rising with some difficulty from the hard couch which had stiffened his limbs, he sought about for the hammer. He made no effort to shake off the sort of dreaming semi-consciousness which seemed to prevent him from feeling the horror and anguish of reality.