“To whom are you speaking, Freder?” his father asked, very gently.
Freder did not answer. His eyes opened inquiringly, for he had heard a voice never heard before. He was silent.
“If you are speaking of Joh Fredersen,” continued the very gentle voice, “then be informed that, this night, Joh Fredersen died a sevenfold death …”
Freder’s eyes, burnt with suffering, were raised to the eyes which were above him. A piteously sobbing sound came from out his lips.
“Oh my God—Father—! Father … you—!”
Joh Fredersen stooped down above him and above the girl who lay in Freder’s lap.
“She is dying, father … Can’t you see she is dying—?”
Joh Fredersen shook his head.
“No, no!” said his gentle voice. “No, Freder. There was an hour in my life in which I knelt, as you, holding in my arms the woman I loved. But she died, indeed. I have studied the face of the dying to the full. I know it perfectly and shall never again forget it … The girl is but sleeping. Do not awaken her by force.”
And, with a gesture of inexpressible tenderness, his hand slipped from Freder’s shoulder to the hair of the sleeping girl.
“Dearest child!” he said. “Dearest child …”
And from out of the depth of her dream the sweetness of a smile responded to him, before which Joh Fredersen bowed himself, as before a revelation, not of this world.
Then he left his son and the girl and passed through the cathedral, made glorious and pleasant by the gay-coloured ribbons of sunshine.
Freder watched him go until his gaze grew misty. And all at once, with a sudden, violent, groaning fervour, he raised the girl’s mouth to his mouth and kissed her, as though he wished to die of it. For, from out the marvel of light, spun into ribbons, the knowledge had come upon him that it was day, that the invulnerable transformation of darkness into light was becoming consummate, in its greatness, in its kindliness, over the world.
“Come to yourself, Maria, beloved!” he said, entreating her with his caresses, with his love. “Come to me, beloved! Come to me!”
The soft response of her heartbeat, of her breathing, caused a laugh to well up from his throat and the fervour of his whispered words died on her lips.
Joh Fredersen caught the sound of his son’s laugh. He was already near the door of the cathedral. He stopped and looked at the stack of pillars, in the delicate, canopied niches of which stood the saintly men and women, smiling gently.
“You have suffered,” thought his dream-filled brain. “You have been redeemed by suffering. You have attained to bliss … Is it worth while to suffer?—Yes.”
And he walked out of the cathedral on feet which were still as though dead, tentatively, he stepped through the mighty doorway, stood dazzled in the light and swayed as though drunken.
For the wine of suffering which he had drunk, was very heavy, and intoxicating, and white-hot.
His soul spoke within him as he reeled along:
“I will go home and look for my mother.”
XXIV
“Freder … ?” said the soft Madonna-voice.
“Yes, you beloved! Speak to me! Speak to me!”
“Where are we?”
“In the cathedral.”
“Is it day or night?”
“It is day.”
“Wasn’t your father here, with us, just now?”
“Yes, you beloved.”
“His hand was on my hair?”
“You felt it?”
“Oh Freder, while your father was standing here it seemed to me as though I heard a spring rushing within a rock. A spring, weighted with salt, and red with blood. But I knew too: when the spring is strong enough to break out through the rock, then it will be sweeter than the dew and whiter than the light.”
“Bless you for your belief, Maria …”
She smiled. She fell silent.
“Why don’t you open your eyes, you beloved?” asked Freder’s longing mouth.
“I see,” she answered. “I see, Freder … I see a city, standing in the light …”
“Shall I build it?”
“No, Freder. Not you. Your father.”
“My father?”
“Yes …”
“Maria when you spoke of my father, before, this tone of love was not in your voice …”
“Since then much has taken place, Freder. Since then, within a rock, a spring has come to life, heavy with salt and red with blood. Since then Joh Fredersen’s hair has turned snow-white with deadly fear for his son. Since then have those whom I called my brothers sinned from excessive suffering. Since then has Joh Fredersen suffered from excessive sin. Will you not allow them both, Freder—your father as well as my brothers—to pay for their sin, to atone, to become reconciled?”
“Yes, Maria.”
“Will you help them, you mediator?”
“Yes, Maria.”
She opened her eyes and turned the gentle wonder of their blue towards him. Bending low above her, he saw, in pious astonishment, how the gay-coloured heavenly kingdom of saintly legends, which looked down upon her from out the lofty, narrow church-windows, was reflected in her Madonna-eyes.
Involuntarily he raised his eyes to become aware, for the first time, of whither he had borne the girl whom he loved.
“God is looking at us!” he whispered, gathering her up to his heart, with longing arms. “God is smiling to us, Maria.”
“Amen,” said the girl at his heart.
XXV
Joh Fredersen came to his mother’s house.
Death had passed over Metropolis. Destruction of the world and the Day of Judgment had shouted from out the roars of explosion, the clanging of the bells of the cathedral. But Joh Fredersen found his mother as he always found her: in the wide, soft chair, by the open window, the dark rug over the paralysed knees, the great Bible on the sloping table before her, in the beautiful old hands, the figured lace at which she was sewing.
She turned her eyes towards the door and perceived her son.
The expression of stern severity on her face became sterner and more severe.
She said nothing. But about her closed mouth was
