Part 13

"A cold shudder ran through my very marrow. But at the same time I felt as if the walls were giving way and an unbounded, shining vista opening out before me.

"'Were you not going to be a priestess in this house?' a warning voice within me remonstrated, but its sounds were deadened by the surging of my blood.

"'What is the use of struggling against fate?' he continued; 'I have long since learnt to submit quietly when blow after blow falls down upon me from above. I have become a miserable, weak-minded fellow. I have allowed fate to bind me hand and foot, and now, even if I struggle till the blood spurts from my joints, it is no good! I am powerless and shall remain so, and there's an end of it! But I do not care to talk myself into a passion. Such helpless rage is more contemptible than hypocritical submission.'

"A desire darted through me to throw myself down in front of him, and to cry out to him, 'Do with me what you will: sacrifice me, tread me under-foot, let me die for you; but be brave and have new faith in your happiness----' then suddenly a moan from Martha's lips struck upon my ears, so plaintive, so pitiable that I started as if struck by the lash of a whip.

"I felt ready to scream, but fear of him choked my utterance--only a groan escaped my breast, which I forcibly suppressed, when I noticed how anxiously he was looking into my eyes.

"'Take no heed of me!' I said, forcing myself to smile; 'the chief thing is for her to get better.'

"He crossed his arms over his knee and nodded a few times bitterly to himself. And then again the moaning ceased.

"She had bowed her head upon her breast, and half closed her eyes. One might almost have thought her asleep; but the muttering and chattering continued. There was utter silence in the half-darkened room. Only the wind sped past the window with low soughing, and between the planks of the ceiling the mice scampered about.

"Robert had buried his head in his hands, and was listening to Martha's weird talking. Gradually he seemed to grow quieter, his breath came more regularly and slowly, now and again his head dropped to one side, and next moment jerked up again.

"His sleepiness had overpowered him. I wanted to urge him to go to rest; but I was afraid of the sound of my own voice, and therefore was silent.

"More and more often did the upper part of his body sway to one side, now and again his hair touched my cheek--and he groped about seeking to find some support.

"And then, suddenly, his head fell upon my shoulder, where it remained lying. My whole body trembled as if I had experienced some great happiness.

"'An invincible desire possessed me to stroke the bushy hair that fell across my face. Close to my eyes I saw a few silver threads gleaming.

"'It is already beginning to get grey,' I thought to myself, 'it is high time that he should taste what happiness is like.' And then I really stroked him.

"He sighed in his sleep and sought to nestle closer with his head.

"'He is lying uncomfortably.' I said to myself; 'you must move up nearer to him.'

"I did so. His shoulder leant against mine, and his head fell upon my breast.

"'You must put your arm round him,' a voice within me cried, 'otherwise he will still not find rest.'

"Twice or three times I attempted, and as often I drew back.

"What if Martha should suddenly wake! But even then her eyes saw nothing--her ears heard nothing.

"And I did it.

"Then a wild joy seized me: secretly I pressed him to me--and within me there arose the jubilant thought: 'Ah, how I would care for you and watch over you; how I would kiss those wicked furrows away from your brow, and the troubles from your soul! How I would fight for you with my virgin strength and never rest till your eyes were once more glad, and your heart once more full of sunshine! But for that----I looked across at Martha. Yes, she lived, she still lived. Her bosom rose and fell in short, rapid gasps. She seemed more alive than ever.

"And suddenly it flamed up before me, and the words seemed as if I saw them distinctly written over there on the wall--

"'_Oh, that she might die!_'

"Yes, that was it, that was it.

"Oh, that she might die! Oh, that she might die!"

VII.

Drawing a deep breath, the physician stopped short, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

Robert had jumped up, stared for a moment at the flaming orb of the lamp, as if dazzled by the light, and then rushed towards the old man as if to tear the paper out of his hands.

"That does indeed stand there?" he stammered.

"Read for yourself!" said the other.

A long silence ensued.

The lamp burnt with its quiet, cheery light as if it were illumining a deed of brightest gladsomeness, and softly, as if with velvety paws, the wind touched the windows. Downstairs everything seemed to be growing quieter. The intervals between the bursts of laughter grew longer and longer--the babel of voices changed to a steady, dull buzz. The people were getting tired--they were digesting.

The physician looked round for Robert. He had dropped down once more upon the ledge of the empty bedstead, had buried his face in his hands, and was absolutely motionless.

Only his heaving breath, which escaped his breast in short, irregular gasps, testified to the turmoil that was raging within him.

"Come to yourself, my boy," said the physician, laying his hand on Robert's shoulder.

"Uncle, of course it goes without saying--she was not in her right mind when she wrote this?"

"She was never more in her right mind than at that moment!"

"How dare you affirm such a thing? Do not insult the dead!"

"Nothing is further from my thoughts, dear boy. Who shall presume to cast the first stone at her? But if you have been listening attentively, you will certainly understand that her whole life was nothing more than the maturing of this moment. Already in her girlish dreams the seeds of this criminal wish lay buried; they put forth sudden shoots on yonder stone in the wood, and came into blossom at the very hour when she crept into your room to unite you with Martha."

"Why did she do that, if she herself wished to step into Martha's place?"

"She was not conscious of what she wished. All her efforts to make you and Martha happy were nothing further than the secret struggle which her pure honest nature was waging with the wish growing up within her, since that day of her girlhood when she had seen you again. But she did not know it. Even her love for you did not become clear to her till she entered your house. How much less then could she suspect what was slumbering, as the fruit of this love, within her soul."

"And yet you say she fought against it and tried to exterminate it?"

"Not spiritually, not consciously. Her thought remained pure till that terrible midnight hour. It was only her instinct which struggled against the poison. That drew new resources daily from the healthy depths of her strong nature, by which to secrete the putrid matter or at least to enclose it so that it became innocuous. For this reason she condemned herself to exile, for this reason even in face of your house she contemplated a hasty retreat. How little she was, even later, conscious of the processes which for years had been developing within her, you may see by the whole tone of her reminiscences. She absolutely unconsciously dwells upon many unimportant incidents, which have nothing to do with the progress of the story and yet are valuable as showing the gradual development of her wish. She knows not why she does so: her feeling alone tells her: this has some connection with my guilt."

"I believe in no guilt!" exclaimed Robert, in greatest excitement. "If that wish was not a mere hallucination, not the result of a momentarily morbid, over-strung frame of mind, but had lain for a long while dormant in her nature, how came it that, only six hours before uttering it, she expressed herself with such indignation about my mother because she suspected her of harbouring it?"

"For my part," replied the old man, "nothing is more convincing for my view of the matter, than this very indignation. To free her own conscience from the burden which she felt resting upon it, she cast every stone which she could take hold of, at your mother. It was terror at her own sin which drove her to it."

"And the noble, self-sacrificing resolve which she formed only a few days before?"

Over the old man's weather-beaten features there flitted a smile full of understanding and forgiveness.

Then he said, "The old proverb about the good intentions with which the path to Hell is paved, may hold good here too; but it only touches the surface of the matter. This resolve was a last abortive attempt to unite sisterly love with her longing for you, to make a pact between her powerful, burning desire for happiness and the impulse to keep faith towards her sister. It was the most unnatural thing she could hit upon, for silent resignation was not in her line. It was a particularly cruel fate which doomed her, with her noble disposition and powerful will, to be forced into a sin which is the most common and most cowardly on earth, a sin which I have found lurking on countless faces, when I stood at the bedside of people seriously ill. This, my boy, is one of the darkest spots in human nature, a remnant of bestiality which has managed to find its way into our tamed world; even such sensitive natures as Olga may fall a prey to it, though of course they perish through it, while coarser souls simply conceal and suppress what is struggling to appear from the darkest depths of their beings. Wait, I will speak more plainly. I once came to the bedside of a rich old man, a landowner, whose last breath was not far off. At the head of his bed stood his eldest son, a man of about forty, who for long years had held the post of inspector on strange estates, and whose intended bride was beginning to grow old and faded with waiting. The son was a good, honest fellow who would not have hurt a fly, who loved his father with all his heart, and would certainly have been ashamed to wish his deadliest enemy any ill; but in the stealthy, terrified glance with which he watched me, while I bent down my ear towards the old man's breast, I distinctly read the wish! 'Oh, that he might die!' Another time I was called in to a woman who was very happy in second marriage. Only one cloud troubled her new happiness. Her husband could not befriend himself with the child of her first marriage. He knitted his brows at the mere mention of the little creature, and as she loved him passionately, she feared he might come to hate her on the child's account, and hid it away from him as much as ever she could. The child got scarlet fever. I found the mother kneeling at its bedside and weeping bitterly. She trembled in fear for the feeble little life. Had she not herself brought it forth! Then her husband entered the room--she started--and in the restless, wavering glance which she cast towards the cradle, there stood clearly and legibly written: 'It would be for my happiness, if you died.' I could give you innumerable examples where jealousy, covetousness, desire for independence, restlessness, impulse for liberty, amorous longing, have matured this terrible, criminal wish, which suddenly rises up dark and gigantic within the human breast, in which hitherto only love and light have found a place. Happily nowadays it does not do much harm. In olden, more barbarous times, when the passions were permitted to rage unfettered, the deed aided the thought. And if perchance in the family circle any one happened to be in the other's way, poison and the dagger simply claimed their victims. History and literature abound with murders of this kind, and that great student of mankind, Shakspeare, for example, knows hardly any other tragic motive besides murder of kin. To-day people have grown calmer, and if a struggle for existence happens nowadays to creep into the holy family circle, one is content to wish the obnoxious one, in a dark hour, six feet under the earth. This wish is the ancient murder restrained by modern civilisation. There, my boy, now I have given you a long discourse, and if, meanwhile, your blood has cooled down, my object is fulfilled."

"So you absolutely condemn her?" Robert anxiously stammered forth.

"My dear boy, I condemn no one," replied the old man, with a serious smile, "least of all such an honest nature as Olga was. The fact alone that she had the courage to confess to herself and to him whom she loved most, what she was guilty of, raises her above the others. For this wish, of which we are speaking, as it is the most hideous spiritual sin of which the human soul can become guilty, so it is also the most secret. No friend confides it to a friend, no husband whispers it in the darkness of the nocturnal couch to his wife, no penitent dares to confess it to his spiritual adviser, even the prayer that struggles upwards to heaven out of the depths of contrition, passes it over in hypocritical silence. God may have knowledge of everything, only not of this baseness. Let this perish in shame and silence, as it was brought forth in night and horror. And more than this! This wish is the only crime for which there is commonly no expiation, no punishment either before the tribunal of the outer world, or one's own conscience. This is a case in which even that merciless judge which a man carries about within him proves amenable to bribery. Thousands of people who have once been guilty of this baseness go on living happily, put on flesh in perfect peace of soul, and rejoice in the fulfilment of their wish, which they themselves forget as speedily as possible, as soon as ever it is fulfilled. It becomes absorbed into the soul, just as a germ of disease becomes absorbed as soon as the stimulant of disease has disappeared. It is lost without any trace, it is absolutely blotted out by an abundance of social and personal virtues. I on no account say that I condemn these people. What would become of the world if every one who on looking into the glass discovered a wart on his face, were to cut his throat in despair at the fact? The people I have described to you are the healthy every-day people, whose so-called good constitution can stand a blow, and who care not a rap if now and again something objectionable sticks to them. Olga was moulded of finer clay, her nervous system was sensible to lesser shocks, and what only caused others a slight irritation, was to her already a lash of the whip. Such natures are often somewhat morbid, they incline towards melancholy and hysteria, and their soul-life is governed by imaginations, which, in the eyes of others, are apt to assume the character of fixed ideas. And yet everything about them is strictly normal, indeed their organism works even more accurately than that of the ordinary, average human being, and if one were to place them, like delicate chemical scales under a glass case, one might see them work wonders. As a rule a certain weakness of purpose cleaves to this class of sensitive people, which makes them shyly retreat into themselves at the slightest extraneous touch--and this is lucky for them; for thus they are saved all violent collision with the outer world, to which they would not, after all, prove equal. But woe to those among them who are driven by some impetuous desire, some mighty passion, straight among rocks and thorns! Then it is very possible that an adhering thorn, which others would hardly have noticed, may become to them a poisoned arrow, and corrode their body and soul till they perish in consequence. There, now, I have talked enough. Here lie two or three more sheets. Listen! Here we shall learn how one may be ruined by a wish."

VIII.

"Of that which now followed, I have only retained a vague recollection. I remember that I suddenly uttered a shriek, which made even Martha start up, that I flung myself down at her bedside, clutched her burning hands, and continued to cry out, 'Save me! save me! wake up!'

"And then again I find myself in a different room, into which Robert has taken me. I remember how, there, in the looking-glass, I recognised my distorted face, bathed in the perspiration of terror, how I burst into a laugh, and, shuddering at my own laughter, sank all in a heap, and how all the while, chuckling and hissing with a thousand covetous voices, there came sounding in my ears the wish: 'Oh, that she might die!' How shall I describe it all, without being hunted to death by the spectres of that night?

"The only clear remembrance that I still retain is that suddenly the doctor's dear old face was bending over me, that I had to drink something that tasted bitter, and--then I know nothing more.

* * * * *

"When I awoke the pale light of dawn gleamed through the windows. My head ached, I looked around dazed, and then it seemed as if I saw written on the whitewashed wall opposite, the words: 'Oh, that she might die!'

"I shuddered, and then the thought rose within me: 'Now, if she dies, it will be your wish which has murdered her.'

"I pulled myself together, and walked up to the looking-glass.

"'So this is what a woman looks like who wishes her sister might die!' said I, while my ashen-pale face stared back at me; and, seized with a sudden loathing, I hit at the glass with my fist. My knuckles bled, but it did not break. Fool that I was, not to know that henceforth all the world would only be there to hold up a mirror to my crime!

"'But perhaps she may not die!' it suddenly darted through my brain. Such radiance seemed to burst forth from this thought, that I closed my eyes as if dazzled.

"And then again it cried aloud within me: 'She will die; your wish has murdered her!' I ground my teeth, and groping along by the walls, I crept into the sick room.

"When I stood at the door, and no longer heard any sound from within, the idea took possession of me:

"'You will find her as a corpse.'

"No, she still lived, but death had already set his mark upon her face.

"The bridge of the nose had become more prominent, her lips no longer closed over her irregular teeth, her eyes seemed to have sunk right down into their dark sockets.

"At her feet stood Robert and the old doctor. Robert had pressed his hands to his face. Sobs shook his frame. The old man scrutinised me with a penetrating glance. Again, for a moment, I felt as if he were looking me through and through, as if my guilt were openly exposed before him. But then, as he hastened towards me, who was tottering, and held me upright in his arms, I recognised that it was only the physician's glance with which he had examined me.

"'How long will she live yet?' I asked, closing my eyes.

"'She is dying!'

"At that moment something within me grew rigid, turned to stone. At that moment hope died within me, and with it my faith in myself, in happiness, in goodness. A great calm came over me. Death, which hovered over this bed, had spread its dark pinions around my body too. With the clear vision of a prophetess, I saw what yet remained to me of life, spread out unveiled before my eyes. Like one dead I should henceforth have to wander upon earth, like one dead I should have to cling to life, like one dead see that happiness approach me, which was for ever lost to me. Robert stepped up to me and embraced me. I calmly suffered it, I felt nothing more.

"Then I sat down close to my sister's bedside, and looked at her, waiting for her death.

"Attentively I followed every symptom of her slow expiring. I felt as if my consciousness had separated itself from me, as if I could see myself sitting there like a stone figure, staring into the dying woman's face.

"No feverish illusion, no morbid self-incrimination any longer disturbed the course of my ideas. It was by this time clear to me that my wish could not in reality bring death upon her, and yet--for me and my conscience it remained the wish alone which had killed her.

"Thus I sat, as her murderess, at her bedside, and waited for her death which was also mine.

"It was a long time coming. The hours of the day passed and she still lived. Her pulse had long ceased to beat, her heart seemed to stand still, and yet her breath continued to come and go in short feeble gasps. While I was lying in a morphia sleep, they had given her as a last resource an injection of musk to revive her strength once more. This was what she was existing on now. But the odour of musk, mingling with the carbolic vapours, filled the room like some heavy, tangible body, weighed on my brow and seemed to crush my temples. I felt as if with every breath I were drinking in increasing burdens.

"In the afternoon Robert's parents came. I, who had yesterday shown my aunt only pride and contempt, to-day kissed her hand in humiliation. This was the beginning of the penance which I had inflicted upon myself at Martha's death-bed, and which shall endure as long as I live.

"Evening came on. Marta still continued to breathe. With wide-open mouth, her dead eyes covered with a film, she stared at me. Her body seemed to get smaller and smaller, quite shrunk together she lay there. It almost looked as if in death she did not venture to take up even the small space which she had occupied during her lifetime.

"Aunt filled the house with her loathsome sobbing, and the others, too, were weeping; I alone remained without tears.

"When towards eleven o'clock she had drawn her last breath, I fell into a delirium.

* * * * *

"Just now I have returned from the manor.

"He was good and kind towards me, and in his eyes there gleamed a half-hidden, bashful tenderness, which my soul drank in eagerly. I feel as if a new spring-time must be coming, my heart is full of smiles and laughter, and when I close my eyes golden sunlight rays seem to be dancing round about me. But now away with this enervating dream of happiness!

"If he should learn to love me, all the worse for him! I gave him no occasion--no, indeed not! I should feel I must despise myself like a very prostitute if I had done so. Since my convalescence I have managed his household for him truly and faithfully, for more than a year, without claiming his approval, without wishing to grow indispensable to him. Even my dear aunt has had to recognise that, who almost forces her hospitality upon me, in spite of my being personally so hateful to her. She is much too good a housekeeper herself not to know that, but for me, the household would have gone to rack and ruin in those days, when Robert forgot everything in gloomy mourning for his dead--not even taking any interest in the child, which she had left him as a pledge. But for me, the poor little thing would be lying under the ground long ago. I will not enumerate all I did and worked during this time. It is surely not meet for me to play the Pharisee.

"Nor will I speak of expiation. How pompous the word sounds, and what miserable self-deception generally hides behind it! How shall I wash away what defiles me? One may expiate some tragic guilt, one can even expiate some great crime, but a piece of baseness such as I committed, cleaves to the soul for ever! Ah, if I did not know what secret desire lurks in the depths of my heart!

"Why else should I require to stand there absolved before my own conscience, if not in order that I might one day become his? As if everlasting fate itself had not reared up a wall between us, reaching up from the depths of _her_ grave as high as the stars.

"And if some demon should ever whisper into his ear, advising him to stretch out his hand for me, what else could I do but repulse him, as if for his audacity? But he will never do such a thing. I have succeeded in keeping him at a distance. Let him believe that I have a poor opinion of him, let him believe that I am haughty and unfeeling through self-love. I shall know how to guard my heart's secret.

"If only one thing were not so!