"Child… My child… My poor child."
The rustling of the walnut tree before the window filled a long silence with longing and affection. Then Joh Fredersen began to speak. He spoke with the eagerness of one bathing himself in Holy water, with the fervour of a conquered one, confessing, with the redemption of one ready to do any penance, and who was pardoned. His voice was soft and sounded as though coming from far away, from the farther bank of a wide river.
He spoke of Freder; then his voice failed him entirely. He raised himself from his knees and walked through the room. When he turned around there stood in his eyes a smiling loneliness and the realisation of a necessary giving-up—of the tree's giving up of the ripe fruit.
"It seemed to me," he said, gazing into space, "as though I saw his face for the first time… when he spoke to me this morning… It is a strange face, mother. It is quite my face—and yet quite his own. It is the face of his beautiful, dead mother and yet it is, at the same time, fashioned after Maria's features, as though he were born for the second time of that young, virginal creature. But it is, at the same time, the face of the masses—confident in her, related to her, as near to her as brothers… "
"How do you come to know the face of the masses, Joh?" asked his mother gently.
For a long time Joh Fredersen gave no answer.
"You are quite right to ask, mother," he said then. "From the heights of the New Tower of Babel I could not distinguish it. And in the night of lunacy, in which I perceived it for the first time it was so distorted in its own horror that it no more resembled itself…
"When I came out of the cathedral door in the morning the masses were standing as one man, looking towards me. Then the face of the masses was turned towards me. Then I saw, it was not old, was not young, was sorrowless and joyless.
"What do you want?" I asked. And one answered:
"We are waiting, Mr. Fredersen… ."
"For what?" I asked him.
"We are waiting," continued the spokesman, "for someone to come, who will tell us what way we should go… ."
"And you want to be this one, Joh?"
"Yes, mother."
"And will they trust in you?"
"I do not know, mother. If we had been living a thousand years earlier, I should, perhaps, set out on the high road, with pilgrim's staff and cockle hat, and seek the way to the Holy Land of my belief, not returning home until I had cooled my feet, hot from wandering, in the Jordan, and, in the places of redemption, had prayed to the Redeemer. And, if I were not the man I am, it might come to pass that I should set out on a journey along the roads of those who walk in the shadow. I should, perhaps, sit with them in the corners of misery and learn to comprehend their groans and their curses into which a life of hell has transformed their prayers… For, from comprehension comes love, and I am longing to love mankind, mother… But I believe that acting is better than making pilgrimages, and that a good deed is worth more than the best of words. I believe, too, that I shall find the way to do so, for there are two standing by me, who wish to help me… "
"Three, Joh… "
The eyes of the son sought the gaze of the mother.
"Who is the third?"
"Hel… "
"… Hel—?… "
"Yes, child."
Joh Fredersen remained silent.
She turned over the pages of her Bible, until she found what she sought. It was a letter. She took it and said, still holding it lovingly:
"I received this letter from Hel before she died. She asked me to give it you, when, as she said, you had found your way home to me and to yourself… "
Soundlessly moving his; lips, Joh Fredersen stretched out his hand for the letter.
The yellowish envelope contained but a thin sheet of paper. Upon it stood, in the handwriting of a girlish woman:
"I am going to God, and do not know when you will read these lines, Joh. But I know you will read them one day, and, until you come, I shall exhaust the eternal blissfulness in praying God to forgive me for making use of two Sayings from His Holy Book, in order to give you my heart, Joh."
"One is: I have loved thee with an everlasting love. The other:"
"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!"
"Hel."
It took Joh Fredersen a long time before he succeeded in replacing the thin sheet of note-paper in the envelope. His eyes gazed through the open window by which his mother sat. He saw, drawing across the soft, blue sky, great, white clouds, which were like ships, laden with treasures from a far-off world.
"Of what are you thinking, child?" asked his mother's voice, with care.
But Joh Fredersen gave her no answer. His heart, utterly redeemed, spoke stilly within him:
"Unto the end of the world… Unto the end of the world."
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Metropolis Page 23
