Freyer, with bowed head, stood trembling before her. He felt as if a G.o.ddess was rolling in her chariot of clouds above him--as if the glimmering prism above were dissolving and flooding him with a sea of glittering sparks. "You--my wife?" he faltered, sobbing, then flung himself face downward before her. "This is too much--too much--"

"You shall be my husband," she murmured, raising him, "let me call you so now until the priest's hand has united us! When, where, and how this can be done--I do not yet know! Let the task of deciding be left to hours devoted to the consideration of earthly things. This is too sacred, it is our spiritual marriage hour, for in it I have pledged myself to you in spirit and in truth! Our church is nature, our witnesses are heaven and earth, our candles the blazing wood below--your little heritage which you sacrificed for me with a smile!

And so I give you my bridal kiss--my husband!"

But Freyer did not return the caress. The old conflict again awoke--the conflict with his duty as the representative of Christ.

"Oh, G.o.d--is it not the tempter whom Thou didst send to Thy own son on Mt. Hebron that he might show him all the splendors of the world, saying: 'All shall be thine?' Dare I be faithless to the character of Thy chaste son, if Thou dost appoint me to undergo the same trial? Dare I be happy, dare I enjoy, so long as I wear the sacred mask of His sufferings and sacrifice. Will it not then be a terrible fraud, and dare I enter the presence of G.o.d with this lie upon my conscience? Will He not tear the crown of thorns from my head and exclaim: 'Juggler--I wish to rise by the pure and saintly--not by deceivers who _feign_ my sufferings and with deceitful art turn the holiest things into a farce.

Woe betide me, poor, weak mortal that I am--the trial is too severe. I cannot endure it. Take Thy crown--I place it in Thy hands again--and will personate the Christ no more."

"Joseph!" exclaimed Countess Wildenau, deeply moved. "Must this be? I feel your anguish and am stirred as if we were parting from our dearest possession." She raised her tearful eyes heavenward. "Must the Christ vanish on the very day I plight my troth to him whom I love as Thy image, even as Eve must have loved Adam _for the sake of his likeness to G.o.d_. And must I, like Eve, no longer behold Thy face because I have loved the divine in mortal form after the manner of mortals? Unhappy doctrine of the fall of man, which renders the holiest feeling a crime, must we too be driven out of Paradise, must you stand between us and our happy intercourse with the deity? Joseph. Do you believe that the Saviour Who came to bring redemption to the poor human race banished from Eden, will be angry with you if you represent with a happy loving heart the sacrifice by which He saved us?"

"I do not know, my beloved, you may be right. Even the time-honored precepts of our forefathers permit the representative of the Christ to be married. Yet I think differently! The highest demands claim the loftiest service! Whoever is permitted to personate the Saviour should have at that time no other feelings than moved Christ Himself, for _truth_ may not be born of _falsehood_."

He drew the weeping woman to his heart. "You know, sweet wife--to love _you_ and call you _mine_ is a very different thing from the monotonous commonplace matrimonial happiness which our plain village women can bestow. You demand the _whole_ being and every power of the soul is consumed in you."

He clasped her in an embrace so fervent that her breath almost failed, his eyes blazed with the pa.s.sionate ardor with which the unchained elements seize their prey. "Say what you will, it is on your conscience! I can feel nothing, think of nothing save you! Nay, if they should drive the nails through my own flesh, I should not heed it, in my ardent yearning for you. I have struggled long enough, but you have bewitched me with the sweet promise of becoming my wife--and I am spoiled for personating the Christ. I am yours, take me! Only fly with me to the farthest corner of the world, away from the place where I was permitted to feel myself a part of G.o.d, and resigned it for an earthly happiness."

"Come then, my beloved, let us go forth like the pair banished from Eden, and like them take upon us, for love's sake, our heavy human destiny! Let us bear it together, and even in exile love and worship, like faithful cast-off children, the Father who was once so near us!"

"Amen!" said Freyer, clasping the beautiful woman who thus devoted her life to him in a long, silent embrace. The rainbow above their heads gradually paled. The radiant splendor faded. The sun was again concealed by clouds, and the warm azure of the sky was transformed into a chill grey by the rising mists. The mountain peak lay bare and cheerless, the earth was rent and ravaged, nothing was visible save rough rubble and colorless heather. An icy fog rose slowly, gathering more and more densely around them. Nothing could be seen save the sterile soil of the naked ridge on which stood the two lonely outcasts from Eden. The gates of their dream paradise had closed behind them, the spell was broken, and in silent submission they moved down the hard, stony path to reality, the cruel uncertainty of human destiny.

CHAPTER XIV.

PIETA.

Twilight was gathering when the pair reached the valley.

The Pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d."

"My wife, where is your error carrying you! Did the G.o.d-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 G.o.d 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.