The next day at about noon Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick helped Mrs. Liebling on deck. Her appearance there made a gruesome impression upon those who had not seen her since she had been dragged, a lifeless corpse, from the boat to the Hamburt. The sailors, though most solicitous to read Ingigerd Hahlström's wishes from her eyes, even before they were conceived, kept at a distance from Mrs. Liebling and cast shy glances at her, as if still in doubt whether she was a real human being. If the sea gives up its dead, why should not little Siegfried emerge from his death chamber?
Mrs. Liebling, wrapped in blankets and a coat belonging to the captain, was placed in a comfortable position on the other side of the deck from Ingigerd, because she wished to be alone. For a long while she looked across the expanse of the quiet sea. Then she said to Frederick, whose company she had requested:
"It's strange that I feel merely as if I had had a dreadful dream—just a dream—that is the strange thing. No matter how hard I try, I cannot fully convince myself, except when I think of Siegfried, that my dream reflects an actuality which I experienced."
"We mustn't indulge in vain broodings," said Frederick.
"I know," she continued without looking at him, "I know I didn't always do what is right, but if I deserved to be punished, Siegfried did not. Why did I escape?" After an interval of silence, she began to speak of her past, of conflicts with her husband, who had deceived her. Hers had been one of those loveless matches which are contracted in the customary business fashion. She told Frederick that she was an artist by nature, Rubinstein, for whom she had played when she was eleven years old, having prophesied a great future for her. "I don't know anything about cooking or children. I was always terribly nervous. Still, I love my children. If I didn't, would I have been so obstinate in trying to win them from my husband? I pledge you my word, Doctor, if I could change places with Siegfried, you would find me ready at any moment."
Frederick made all sorts of consolatory remarks, some of which were not wholly superficial; for instance, what he said of death and resurrection and the great atonement that every form of death, even mere sleep, involves.
"If you were a man, I should recommend Goethe. I should say to you, 'Read over and over the beginning of the second part of Faust:'
'Then the craft of elves propitiousHastes to help where help it can.'
or the passage beginning:
'The fierce convulsions of his heart compose;Remove the burning barbs of his remorses,
And cleanse his being from the suffered woes!'
Doesn't what we went through give you a sense of expiation and purification?"
"I feel," said the woman who had arisen from the dead, "as if my former life were far, far away, as if, since the sinking of the Roland, an impassable mountain were lying between me and my past. But leave me now, Doctor. You are bored. Don't waste the precious time you owe your pretty friend on me."
As a matter of fact, Frederick preferred to talk to Mrs. Liebling rather than to Ingigerd. If he was bored, it was with Ingigerd, not with Mrs. Liebling.
"Oh," he said, "never mind. Ingigerd Hahlström always has company. She doesn't need me."
"My mother urged me," said Mrs. Liebling, "not to take the children, but to leave them with her. Had I obeyed, Siegfried would still have been alive. She has a perfect right to reproach me severely. And how can I face Siegfried's father? He did what he could to keep the children back. He wrote to me and sent friends and his attorneys."
"With 'if' and 'hadn't I,' you can't undo what has been done. The event is too general, too titanic, to be thought of in such a way. It is too fearful to be considered with reference to a single individual and his puny fate. What happened had to happen, whether or not we believe in predestination. We human beings must not have feelings so petty as to allow mere chance to play a rôle in this event."
Frederick could not make up his mind to speak of his dream, in which Rosa figured as jumping from the boat with Siegfried in her arms and escaping to the white marble quay of the wonderful Columbus port, where he had been received by Peter Schmidt and where the Santa Maria was slowly crumbling away. Since there were things in his dream that gave support to a belief in predestination relieving the mind of self-blame, his telling it might have soothed Mrs. Liebling's troubled conscience; but Rosa had remained alive, Siegfried alone was dead. Besides, though Frederick was constantly revolving the dream in his soul and kept recalling Hamlet's words, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he did not want to strengthen Mrs. Liebling's superstition, which showed itself in a predisposition for table-tipping and patience-playing.
On walking to the other side of the deck, after a rather prolonged absence, he was greeted with a shout.
"Hullo, father confessor!" they cried.
"Come be seated, my saviour," said Ingigerd, looking considerably better and brighter than the day before.
Frederick turned slightly pale, but did as he was bidden and said in a tone that did not harmonise with the good humour of the group:
"Mrs. Liebling was Rubinstein's pupil. I haven't met another woman on this trip to whom it is so well worth the while to talk."
"All due respect to you, a matter of taste," said Doctor Wilhelm.
"Let him alone. My saviour is displeased," said Ingigerd.
It was evident that occasionally she stood in awe of Frederick.