One bud after another opened on the rose-tree. Timar did nothing but watch the development and blossoming of these rosebuds. When one of them opened he broke it off, put it in his pocket-book, and dried it there on his breast. This was a melancholy task. All the tenderness lavished on him by Noemi could not cure his sadness. The woman's sweet caresses were burdensome to him. And yet Noemi could have comforted him at the cost of a single word; but modest reserve kept back that word, and it never occurred to Michael to question her.

It is characteristic of those whose mind is diseased to occupy themselves only with the past.

At last Noemi said to Timar, "Michael, it would be good for you to go away from here--out into the world. Everything here arouses mournful memories in you; you must go away to get well. I have done your packing, and the fruit-dealers will fetch you away to-morrow."

Michael did not answer, but expressed his a.s.sent by a nod. The dangerous illness he had pa.s.sed through had affected his nerves; and the situation he had brought upon himself, the blow which had struck him, had worked on those nerves so painfully, that he was forced to acknowledge that a longer stay would lead to madness or suicide.

Suicide? There is no easier road out of a difficult position: failure, despair, mental conflict, blasted hopes, heart-pangs, fantastic bugbears, the memory of losses, phantoms of the beloved dead--all these are parts of a bad dream. One touch on the trigger of the pistol, and one awakes. Those who remain behind can go on with the dream.

On the last evening, Michael, Noemi, and Therese sat all three after supper on the little bench outside, and Michael remembered that they had once been four together there.

"What can that moon really be?" asked Noemi.

Michael's hand, which Noemi held in hers, was clinched with sudden violence.

"My evil star," he thought to himself. "Oh, if I had never seen it, that red crescent!"

Therese answered her daughter's question: "It is a burned-out and chilled world, on which neither trees, flowers, nor animals, no air or water, no sounds or colors exist. When I was a girl at school, we used often to look through a telescope at the moon; it is full of mountains, and we were told they were the craters of extinct volcanoes. No telescope is powerful enough to show people on it, but learned men know with certainty that neither air nor water exists there. Without air and water nothing can live that has a human body, so no mortal can possibly be there."

"But what if something did really live in it?"

"What could do so?"

"I will tell you what I think. Often in the old times, when I was still alone, I could not rid myself of one engrossing thought--especially when I sat by myself on the beach, and looked into the water. I felt as if something were drawing me into it, and calling to me that it was good to be down below there, and that there all was peace. Then I said to myself--Good! the body would rest at the bottom of the Danube; but where would the soul go?--it must find a dwelling somewhere. Then the thought arose that the soul which wrenched itself so forcibly and by its own will from its mortal sh.e.l.l could only soar to the moon. I believe that now even more firmly. If neither trees nor flowers, neither water nor air, neither colors nor sounds, can there exist--well, it is all the better fitted for those who did not wish to be enc.u.mbered with a body: there they will find a world where there is nothing to trouble them, nor anything to give them pleasure."

Therese and Michael both rose with a start from beside Noemi, who could not understand what had moved them. She did not know that her own father was a suicide, and that he whose hand she held was ready to become one.

Michael said the night was cool, they had better go in. One more haunting thought was now linked with the sight of the moon. The first he inherited from Timea, the other from Noemi. What a fearful penalty--that the man should continually see before him in the heavens that shining witness, eternally recalling him to his first sin, the first fateful error of his ruined life!

The next day Michael left the island: he pa.s.sed by the unfinished walnut-wood house without even glancing at it.

"You will return with the spring flowers," whispered Noemi tenderly in his ear. The poor thing thought it quite natural that for half of the year Michael should not belong to her. "But to whom does he then belong?" That question never occurred to her.

When Michael arrived at Komorn, the long journey had still more exhausted him. Timea was frightened when she saw him, and could hardly recognize him; even Athalie was alarmed, and with good reason.

"You have been ill?" said Timea, leaning on her husband's breast.

"Very ill, for many weeks."

"On your journey?"

"Yes," answered Timar, to whom this seemed like a cross-examination. He must be on his guard at every question.

"Good G.o.d! and had you anyone to nurse you there among those strangers?"

The words had almost escaped him, "Oh, yes, an angel!" but he caught himself up and answered, "You can get anything for money." Timea did not know how to show her sympathy, and so Michael could detect no change in the always apathetic face. She was always the same, and the frigid kiss of welcome drew them no closer together.

Athalie whispered in his ear, "For G.o.d's sake, sir, take care of your life!"

Timar felt the poisoned sting hidden beneath this tender consideration.

He must live that Timea might suffer; for if she became a widow, nothing would stand in the way of her happiness. And that would be a h.e.l.l to Athalie.

It seemed to Timar as if the demon who hated both him and his wife was now praying for the prolongation of his detested life, so that their mutual suffering might last the longer. Every one remarked the great change which had taken place in him. In the spring he was a strong man in the prime of life; now he was like a feeble, voiceless shadow.

He withdrew to his office as soon as he arrived, and spent the whole day there. His secretary found the ledger lying on the desk just as he had opened it; he had not even looked at it. His agents were informed of his return, and hastened to present yards of reports. He said to them all, "Very good," and signed what they required, sometimes in the wrong place, sometimes twice over. At last he shut himself up from every one in his room, under pretense of requiring sleep. But his servants heard him walking up and down for hours together.

When he went to the ladies to dine in their company, he looked so gloomy and stern that no one had the courage to address him. He hardly touched food, and never tasted wine. But an hour after dinner he rang for the servant, and asked angrily whether they were ever going to get the meal ready--he had forgotten that it was over. In the evening he could not sit up, so tired was he; when he sat down he dozed off at once; as soon, however, as he was undressed and in bed, slumber fled suddenly from his eyes. "Oh, how cold this bed is--everything in the house is cold!" Every piece of furniture, the pictures on the walls, even the old frescoes on the ceiling, seemed to cry to him, "What have you come here for? This is not your home! You are a stranger here!" How cold is this bed!

The man who came to call him to supper found him already in bed. On hearing this, Timea came to him and asked whether he would have something.

"Nothing--no, nothing at all," answered Timar. "I am only overtired by the journey."

"Shall I send for the doctor?"

"Pray don't. I am not ill."

Timea wished him good-night, and went away after again feeling his forehead with her hand. But Timar was not in a condition to sleep. He heard every noise in the house; he heard them whispering and creeping on tiptoe past his door, so as not to disturb him. He was thinking where a man could best flee from himself. Into the realm of dreams? That would be good, indeed, if only one could find the way there as easily as into the kingdom of death. But one can not force one's self to dream. Opium?

That is one way--the suicide of sleep. Gradually he noticed that it was growing darker in the room: the shades of night veiled closely every object, the light grew dim. At last he was surrounded by a darkness like that of a thick, motionless mist, like subterranean gloom, or the night of the blind: such an obscurity one "sees" even in sleep. Michael knew he was asleep, and the blindness lying over his eyes was that of slumber. Yes, he now had full consciousness of his position. He was lying in his own bed in his Komorn house--a table beside him with an antique bronze lamp-stand, and a painted lamp-shade with Chinese figures on it; over his head hung a large clock with a chime; the silken curtains were let down. The curious old bed had a sort of drawer below it, which could be drawn out and used as a second bed. It was beautifully made--one of those beds only found in fine old houses, in which a whole family might find room to sleep. Timar knew that he had not bolted his door; any one could come in who chose. How if some one came to murder him? And what difference would there be between sleep and death? This puzzled him in his dreams.

Once he dreamed that the door opened softly and some one entered: a woman's steps. The curtain rustled, and something leaned over him: a woman's face. "Is it you, Noemi?" Michael thought in his dream, and started. "How came you here? If some one saw you?" It was dark, he could see nothing; but he heard the person sit down by his bed and listen to his breathing. Thus had Noemi done many a night in the little hut. "Oh, Noemi, will you watch again all through the night? When will you sleep?"

The female figure, as if in answer, knelt down and drew out the shelf below the bed. Michael felt a mixture of fear and rapture in his breast.

"You will lie down beside me; oh, how I love you, but I tremble for you!" and then the figure prepared a bed on the shelf and lay down. The dreamer in the bed longed to bend over her, to embrace and kiss her, and would have called again to her, "Go, hasten away from here, you will be seen;" but he could move neither limbs nor tongue, they were heavy as lead; and then the woman slept too. Michael sunk deeper into dreamland.

His fancy flew through past and future, soared into the region of the impossible, and returned to the sleeping woman. He dreamed that he was awake, and yet the phantom was beside him.

At last it began to dawn, and the sun shone through the window with more wonderful radiance than ever before. "Awake, awake!" whispered Michael in his dream. "Go home--the daylight must not find you here. Leave me now!" He struggled with the dream. "But you are not really here--it is only a delusion!"

He forced himself to sever the bonds in which sleep held him, and awoke completely. It was really morning, the sunlight streamed through the curtains, and on the shelf below the bed lay a sleeping woman with her head on her arm.

"Noemi!" cried Michael. The slumbering form awoke at the call and looked up. It was Timea--

"Do you want anything?" asked the woman, rising hastily from her couch.

She had heard the tone but not the name. Her husband was still under the influence of his dream. "Timea!" he stammered sleepily, astonished at the metamorphosis of Noemi into Timea.

"Here I am," said she, laying her hand on the bed.

"How is it possible?" cried he, drawing up the quilt to his chin as if afraid of the face leaning over him.

"I was anxious about you, I was afraid you might have some attack in the night, and I wanted to be near you." In the tone of her voice, in her look, lay such sincere and natural tenderness as could not be a.s.sumed: a woman's instinct is fidelity.

Michael collected himself. His first feeling was alarm, his second self-reproach. This poor woman lying by his bed was the widow of a living man. She had never known a joy in common with her husband; now when he was in pain, she came to share it with him; and then followed the eternal falsehood--he must not accept this tenderness, he must repulse it.

Michael said with forced composure, "Timea, I beg you not to do this again; do not come into my room. I have been suffering from an infectious illness; I caught the plague on my journey, and I tremble for your life if you approach me. Keep far from me, I adjure you; I wish to be alone, both by day and night. There is nothing the matter with me now, but I feel that I must, for prudence' sake, avoid all those belonging to me; so I beg you earnestly not to do this again, never again." Timea sighed deeply, cast down her eyes, and left the room. She had not even undressed, but had only lain down in her clothes at her husband's feet.

When she was gone, Michael got up and dressed; his mind was much disturbed. The longer he continued this dual life, the more he felt the conflict of the double duties he had taken on himself. He was responsible for the fate of two n.o.ble, self-sacrificing souls. He had made both miserable, and himself more unhappy than either.

What outlet could he find? If only one or other were an every-day creature, so that he could hate and despise her or buy her off! But both were equally n.o.bly gifted: the fate of both was so heavy a charge against the author of it, that no excuse existed. How could he tell Timea who Noemi was, or Noemi about Timea? Suppose he were to divide all his wealth between the two, or if he gave his money to one and his heart to the other? But either was alike impossible, for neither was faithless or gave him a right to reject them.