Chapter 15

Hearing a stir, she again listens intently for Siegfried's horn. Not that, but Hagen's lugubrious Hoiho! comes to her ear: "Hoiho! Awake! Lights! Bright torches! We bring home spoils of the chase!" He appears in advance of the party thus announced. "Up, Gutrune! Welcome Siegfried, the strong hero returning home!" She is frightened--the fact is to her so significant of not having heard his horn. As the confused train accompanying the slain hero pours into the hall, Hagen's exultation can no longer contain itself, and, negligent of all suitable appearance of concern for Gutrune's sorrow, he announces the death of her beloved with all the gloating glee he feels: "The pallid hero, no more shall he blow the horn, no more storm forth either to chase or to battle, nor sue ever more for fair women!" They bring in the body, they set down the bier. "The victim of a wild boar, Siegfried, your dead lord!" With a shriek Gutrune falls fainting upon the inanimate form. Gunther tries to comfort her, clearing himself, accusing Hagen: "He is the accursed boar who slew the noble one!" "Yes, I killed him!" boldly boasts Hagen, so near the attainment of his object that he is careless of all else; "I, Hagen, struck him dead! He was reserved for my spear, by which he swore his false oath. I have earned the sacred right to his spoils, wherefore--I demand that Ring!" "Back!" shouts Gunther, as Hagen approaches to take it. "What belongs to me, you shall never touch! Dare you lay hands on Gutrune's inheritance?" But Hagen, in his new mood, is quick of his hands as earlier of his wits. He draws his sword and without further parley attacks Gunther. The fight is short, Gunther falls. He had been the claimant of the Ring but a few hours. Hagen hurries to the bier to snatch his prey from Siegfried's finger. The dead hand is slowly raised... and threateningly warns off the robber. Hagen drops back.

In the stillness of horror which succeeds the loud outcry of the women at the portent, a solemn figure parts the crowd and strides slowly forward--Bruennhilde, to whom the passing hours have restored calm, and to whom meditation has brought light.

She knows now what she should think, and what there remains to do.

Gutrune, hearing her voice, raises her own to accuse her of all this woe overtaking them: "You--you incited the men against him--woe that you should ever have entered this house!" "Hush! pitiable girl!" Bruennhilde checks her, without anger. "You never were his wedded wife; as his paramour you ensnared his affections. The mate of his manhood am I, to whom he vowed eternal vows, before ever he saw you!" Gutrune upon this, apprehending all, curses Hagen who had given her the evil drink through which Siegfried had been made to forget his former love.

A long space Bruennhilde stands in contemplation of Siegfried's face, gazing with changing emotions, from passionate sorrow to solemn exultation. She turns at length to the vassals and commands them to build a great funeral pile. High and bright let the flames leap which shall devour the noble body. Let them bring Grane, that he with herself may follow the hero, whose honours her own body yearns to share. While they are fulfilling her wish, she falls once more into rapt study of the dead face, her own face becoming gentler and gentler, as clearer and clearer understanding comes to her of him and all that had happened. Her features appear softly glorified at last with the light of forgiveness and reconcilement--and she speaks his praise and justification: "Clear as the sun his light shines upon me. He was the truest of all, this one who betrayed me!" As an instance of his truth she quotes the incident of the sword, placed, in loyalty to his friend, between himself and his own beloved, "alone dear to him." "Vows more true than his were never vowed by any; no one more faithfully than he observed a covenant; no other ever loved with a love so unalloyed; and yet all vows, all covenants, all obligations of love, were betrayed by him as never by man before! Do you know how this came to be?..." The dealing with her of Wotan she recognises in these extreme calamities falling upon her; she must suffer all this to be brought, blind one, to a comprehension of that which was demanded of her, which she had so haughtily refused to consider when Waltraute pleaded for the gods. She bows now under his heavy hand, but not without reproach and arraignment: "Oh you, holy guardians of vows! Turn your eyes upon my broad-blown woe: behold your eternal guilt! Hear my accusation, most high god! Through his bravest action, desired by you and of use to you, you devoted him who performed it to dark powers of destruction...." (The old story of the Ring!) "By the truest of all men born must I be betrayed, that a woman might grow wise!... And have I understood at last what it is you want of me?... Aye, of everything, of everything, everything, I have understanding! All has in this hour become clear to me.... I hear the rustling, too, of your ravens: with the message so fearfully yearned for I send them both home.... Be at rest, be at rest, you god!" The tone of these last words is that of the old Bruennhilde once more, the tender daughter pitying her father's sorrows. Yes, let him be at rest, for the Ring shall go back to the Rhine, to obtain which result her dearest happiness has been sacrificed. She takes it from Siegfried's finger, and places it--Siegfried's love-token, not to be yielded up while she lives--upon her own. The Rhine-daughters, when the funeral pile has burned to the ground, shall take it from her ashes. She has had conversation in the night with the wise sisters of the deep; no fear but that they will be at hand.

And is that what will be Bruennhilde's prophesied world-delivering act? Restoring the Ring to the Rhine, thus saving the world definitely from Alberich and the army of the night? Or can we suppose it to be the act which she accomplishes in the same stroke,--the act of plunging into their twilight the whole tribe of the tired unjust gods, so long now tremulously awaiting their end? Or, is the latter act Bruennhilde's supreme vengeance? Or,--this seems more likely,--an act of supreme benevolence, the result of at last understanding "everything, everything, everything!"?

The funeral pile decked with precious covers and flowers stands ready, Siegfried's body upon it. Bruennhilde seizes a torch from one of the attendants: "Fly home, you ravens, report to your master what you have heard here by the shore of the Rhine! Pass, on your way, near to Bruennhilde's rock: direct Loge, who is still smouldering there, to Walhalla. For the dawn is now breaking of the end of the gods! Thus do I hurl a burning brand into Walhalla's flaunting citadel!" She sets fire with these words to the pyre, which rapidly blazes up. Wotan's ravens are seen slowly flapping off toward the horizon. Bruennhilde takes Grane from the young men holding him, and, with all the joy now again in her voice, face, and words, which illuminated the moment of her first union, long ago, with the then so youthful and ingenuous Awakener, she rushes to be reunited to him in death, springing with her jubilant Valkyrie-cry upon Grane and with him plunging into the flames.

The fire flares doubly brilliant and high; the red glare of it fills the whole scene. It becomes evident suddenly that the Hall of the Gibichungen is burning. The people huddle together in terror. When the funeral pile sinks to a heap, the Rhine is seen flooding in upon the embers. Hagen, eagerly on the watch for his last chance, beholds with the insanity of despair the Rhine-daughters rise from the waves close beside the site of the pyre. Hurling from him shield and spear, he dashes into the water to thrust them back. "Away from the Ring!" Two of the jocose sisters for all reply entwine their arms around his neck and draw him away and away with them into the deep water. The third triumphantly holds up before his eyes the recovered Ring.

As the fire dies among the blackened ruins of the Hall, and the Rhine recedes into its boundaries, a red light breaks in the sky. More and more brightly it glows, till Walhalla is discerned in its central illumination, with its enthroned gods and heroes. Flames are seen invading the stately hall. When the company of the Blessed are completely wrapped in fire, the curtain falls.

The last word of the music is the exultant phrase by which Sieglinde greeted the prophecy of Siegfried's birth. It has been woven all through Bruennhilde's last ardently happy salutation to him, as if in recognition of some mystical quality--in death--of birth.

So Wotan finds his rest, and the ill consequences at last end of his unjust act--end with the reparation of the injustice, the return of the gold to the Rhine. But has not the evil act been like the Djinn of old, let out of the insignificant-looking urn, waxing great, looming dark, and dictating hard terms! When Wotan in pride of being committed it, against two simpletons, how could he have divined that by this pin-point he set inexorable machinery moving which should bring about his confusion, forcing him in its progress to so many injustices more, injustices which his soul would loathe, which would blight his best beloved, which would by far be his greatest punishment!... The Trilogy is moral as a tract.

THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG

THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG

I

The "argument of The Master-singers" is effectually given in the Overture: Art and Love. The Masters are first--a little pompously, as befits their pretensions,--presented to us. Then Young Love sweeps across the scene, delicate musical gale. The themes of the two then mingle, foreshadowing how the affairs of Walther shall become entangled with those of the Guild.

This Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian noble, last of his line, had for reasons which are not given forsaken the ancestral castle and come to Nuremberg in the intention of becoming a citizen there. He had brought letters to a prominent burgher of the town, Veit Pogner, the rich goldsmith, long acquainted with his family, and known to it, by reputation. Pogner had offered him every courtesy, hospitality, and assistance in the business of selling his Franconian lands.

Walther had found twenty-four hours in Nuremberg and Pogner's house ample time to fall deeply, transcendingly, rapturously, in love with the goldsmith's daughter. She is very young, very feminine, even in the respect of being little rather than large, so that she is always called, fondly, Evchen, little Eva. Her name is perhaps meant to indicate her quality of inveterate femineity. The whole story goes to show that she was pretty enough to turn heads young and old. She had been an obedient, an exemplary daughter, up to the hour of meeting Walther, allowing her father to think for her, accepting demurely his views for her. How should she not feel it best, so long as her immature heart had never spoken a word, to let a most kind and indulgent parent, whose wisdom it was not for her to question, dispose of her hand in the manner he thought most fitting? When she had seen Walther, however, a new light illumined her position.

On the second day of his acquaintance with her, it seemed to the young lord that he could not live through another night but he made sure of one point. He followed his lady to vespers, in the hope of an opportunity to exchange one private word, ask one question. It was the eve of Saint John's day. The congregation when the curtain rises is concluding an anthem to the "noble Baptist." Eva and Magdalene, her nurse, are in one of the pews that fill the nave of the church. Walther stands in the aisle, leaning against a pillar, from which position he can watch the fair one. He tries whenever her eyes stray his way, as, irresistibly attracted, they frequently do, to convey to her by glance and gesture his prayer for a moment's interview. Magdalene feels herself repeatedly obliged to recall her young lady's attention to the church-service. The congregation rises at last and flocks to the church-door. Walther steps before the two women as they are passing forth with the rest, with the hurried demand to Eva for a word, a single word. Magdalene, who is a step behind, has not caught his request. Eva with quick resource sends her back to the pew for her forgotten kerchief. But Walther has become alarmed at his own boldness, and instead of utilising his opportunity to utter or obtain that "single word," falls to pouring forth many disconnected words by way of leading up to the all-important question. He has not contrived to get it out before Magdalene returns. But Eva then discovers that her brooch too has been left in the pew. Walther, because he really dreads to hear an answer which may dash his dearest hopes, makes no better use of this second chance than of the first; he is still leading up to his famous question when Magdalene brings the brooch. But upon this fortune favours him, Magdalene must run back to the pew for her forgotten prayer-book; and in the brief interval of her search Walther asks breathlessly of Eva: if she be already betrothed! She does not reply by the instantaneous negative he had hoped for, and the passionate wish breaks from his lips that he had never crossed the threshold of her father's house! Magdalene, who has rejoined them, bridles indignantly at such an expression from him. "How now, my lord, what is this you say? Scarce arrived in Nuremberg, were you not hospitably received? Is not the best afforded by kitchen and cellar, cupboard and store-room, deserving of any gratitude whatever?" Eva tries to silence her: "That is not what he meant, good Lene. But... this information he desires of me--How am I to say it? I hardly myself understand! I feel as if I were dreaming--He wishes to know whether I am already betrothed?" Lene at this recognises, of course, that here is that reprobate thing, a lover, and remembers her first duty as a duenna, to keep off all such from her young charge. She is for hurrying home at once. Walther resolutely detains her. "Not till I know all!"--"The church is empty, every one is gone!" Eva gives as a reason for not being so punctilious. Lene sees in the very loneliness of the place a reason the more for departing with all speed,--but Fate again helps Walther. David, a youthful shoe-maker's apprentice, enters the church from the vestry, and falls to making mysterious preparations, drawing curtains which shut off the nave of the church, measuring distances on the pavement with a yard-rule. No sooner has Magdalene caught sight of him than she becomes absent-minded, and when Eva urges, "What am I to tell him? Do you tell me what I am to say!" more good-humoured than before, she vouchsafes: "Your lordship, the question you ask of the damsel is not so easy to answer. As a matter of truth, Evchen Pogner is betrothed----" "But no one," quickly adds the girl, "has as yet see the bridegroom!" He gathers from the two that the bridegroom shall be the victor on the following day in a song-contest, the master-singer to whom the other master-singers award the prize, and whom the bride herself crowns. It all falls strangely on the ears of one not a Nuremberger. "The master-singer?..." he falters. "Are you not one?" Eva asks incredulously, wistfully. And when in his effort to grasp the situation exactly he continues asking questions, she answers his interrogative: "The bride then chooses?..." with complete forgetfulness of every maidenly convention, by an ardent, honest "You, or no one!"--"Are you gone mad?" Magdalene grasps her arm, shocked and flustered. She has, and feels no shame. "Good Lene, help me to win him!"--"But you saw him yesterday for the first time!" No, she became a victim so readily to love's torment, Eva tells Lene, because she had long known him in a picture, Albrecht Duerer's painting of David, after the slaying of Goliath, his sword at his belt, his sling in his hand, his head brightly encircled with fair curls.

Joyful agitation has seized the Knight at Eva's sweet impulsive word, and, with it, bewilderment as to what must be his course in circumstances so unprecedented. He restlessly paces the pavement, trying to determine how he shall deal with the strange conditions raising their barrier between him and the object of his desire. Magdalene calls to her the object of hers. The middle-aged spinster has a weak spot in her heart for David. The boyish shoe-maker's apprentice on his side adores her--and the pleasant bits she maternally smuggles to him from Pogner's kitchen. Questioned, he informs her that he is making the place ready for the master-singers. There is to be directly a song-trial: such song-apprentices as commit no offence against the table of rules are to be promoted to mastership. Here would be the Knight's chance, reflects Lene,--his one chance to be made master before the fateful morrow. When, as they are leaving, Walther offers the ladies his company to Master Pognet's, she bids him wait rather for Pogner where he stands: if he wishes to enter the contest for Evchen's hand, Fortune has favoured him with respect to time and place. "What am I to do?" asks the lover eagerly. David shall instruct him, and Magdalene herself instructs David to make himself useful to the Knight. "Something choice from the kitchen I will save for you. And if the young lord here shall to-day be made a master, you may to-morrow proffer your requests full boldly!"

"Shall I see you again?" Eva shyly asks of Walther, as Magdalene is hurrying her off. His answer gives the keynote of him, characteristic outburst that it is of his vital, vigourous, enthusiastic youth, to which all things seem possible--beautiful youth, which has the splendour and force of fire, with the freshness of flowers; which flashes like a sword and trembles like a lute-string. "Shall I see you again?" It is after vespers. "This evening, surely!" he replies: "How shall I tell you what I would be willing to undertake for your sake? New is my heart, new is my mind, new to me is all this which I am entering upon. One thing only I know, one thing only I grasp, that I will devote soul and senses to winning you! If it may not be with the sword, I must achieve it with song, and as a master sing you mine! For you, my blood and my possessions, for you, the sacred aspiration of a poet!" Strains from this sweet and proud profession are scattered all through the story, they are the Walther-motifs, heard in his first sigh as he watches her from the shadow of the church-pillar, and woven finally into his prize-song. And the effect of youth that goes magically with them! The fragrance that belongs to them, with the fire! As of green things in early May, wet with the dew of dawn,--the beams of the rising sun kindling all to a softly-dazzling glory. The hearer feels himself young too with an immortal youth.... But words are never so ineffectual as when they would translate music.

When Walther and Eva part, they are candidly lovers, for she has joined her voice to his at the closing words of his profession, and herself warmly professed: "My heart with its blessed ardour,--for you, its love-consecrated kindness!" In a moment the women are gone. Walther casts himself in a great high-backed carved seat which apprentices have a moment before placed in the conspicuous position it occupies, and is absorbed in the attempt to collect himself, deal with his swarming emotions, order his wild thoughts, scheme what to do. The excited blood in his veins sings the song of his youth.