In the course of which the stern father, in the
hardness of his heart, chastizes his lost son, but
finally grants forgiveness to the repentant
prodigal.
When Christian Catsrider felt the kiss of the young bride on his
hand, he hissed three times like one who has been seared with a
red-hot iron.
But when Henry also would have approached him, the old man stretched
out his long arm, and laying his hand on his son's shoulder forced
him back into his seat with as much force as if he had used a heavy
iron lever for the purpose.
It was only to Michal that the old man spoke.
"So this tender creature has not come hither to see the horrors of
an execution after all? I am glad of it. On such occasions there are
generally more women present than men, ay, and young women too!
What's her name? Michal--and this fellow--Henry! Ah!"
With that he rose from the table.
But Michal still held his iron hand in her hands, and clasping it
tightly with her fingers softly whispered grace, the old man turning
his head aside all the time. Then he drew his hand out of Michal's
hands, but as she still kept kneeling at his feet as if expecting
something more, the old man let his long sleeve fall right over his
hands till the very tips of his fingers were covered, and then he
laid them gently on Michal's head so that that innocent head might
not be polluted by the touch of his bare hand.
Then Michal arose from her knees.
But the master did not extend his hand to his son. On the contrary,
when the housekeeper entered to clear the table, he told her to
leave it alone for the present, and first of all conduct the gentle
lady to her room, make her a comfortable bed, lay her down in it and
lull her gently to sleep. "The reverend gentleman," he added, "will
remain behind with me, for I've a couple of words to say to him."
Michal thanked him for his courtesy, and holding out her hand to her
husband, asked him shyly:
"I suppose you will come soon?"
"As soon as I have received my father's blessing," replied Henry,
unctuously, from which Barbara Pirka gathered that the clergyman was
the master's son.
The heavy doors had no sooner closed behind the two women than
Christian Catsrider said to his son:
"Follow me!"
With that he took out of his side pocket a key with a double ward,
and unlocked therewith a secret door, discovering a spiral staircase
which led up to a tower.
Henry knew from experience that the old man kept his treasures in
this tower. That his father should lead him thither seemed therefore
an omen of good.
"Take the lamp and go on before."
Henry took the lamp and led the way up the staircase whilst the old
man closed the iron door behind them.
After ascending twelve steps, they came to a large round room.
Heaped up all round lay, not the treasures of the master, but all
the instruments of his trade which were employed in the torturings
and executions of those times, with a description of which we will
not harrow the readers of this sufficiently sad story. Nowadays
these instruments are only to be found in museums; men have
discovered other ways of ameliorating their fellow-creatures.
Henry looked around him with horror at this frightful arsenal. He
could not imagine what the old man had to say to him in such a
place.
The master did not leave him very long in doubt. On the wall hung an
enormous two-edged sword in a sheath of black leather. This sword
the old man took down, and drew from its red velvet-lined sheath the
broad blade, which was concave at both edges from much grinding, and
of a mirror-like brightness; then, seizing the weapon with both
hands, he said to his son in a cold, calm voice:
"Kneel down, my lad. You must die!"
"Oh! my father!" cried Henry.
"No, not your father. Your judge and executioner."
"Why do you want to kill me?"
"I have been headsman of Zeb for forty years. During that time I
have dispatched many malefactors to the other world; but such a
precious scoundrel as you are it has never yet been my misfortune to
meet."
"What offense have I committed?" asked the horror-stricken Henry.
"You have run through a whole catalogue of crimes, each one of which
is sufficient to bring a man to the scaffold. You are a thief! You
have robbed the benefactor who received you into his house. You are
a liar! You have denied your own father. You are a blasphemer! You
have stretched out your hand toward the sacrament of the altar,
knowing all the time that you were profaning that holy rite. You are
a murderer--a parricide! For never was a man's affection so cruelly
murdered as mine has been by you, to say nothing of the honor of
this innocent woman and her father. Enough; you must die!"
"But if I have committed such crimes, why not bring me before the
judges? I ought to be judged according to law and equity."
"Hold your tongue. You are beyond the pale of the law. There is a
statute in force against abductors. That statute says that whosoever
is caught in the act of abducting a youth or a maiden need not be
brought before the tribunals, but may be sent direct to the headsman
who is to judge and sentence him forthwith. Now you are such a
robber. You have abducted a girl. You are caught in the act. And I
will be a merciful judge to you, for I'll condemn you simply to be
beheaded. Undress and kneel down!"
Henry rallied all his courage. He began to smile. Perhaps the old
man was jesting with him. Perhaps he wanted to try his courage.
"'Tis well, my father. You've scared me enough now. A truce to
jesting. I've neither murdered nor robbed. I am certainly anything
but a parricide. If I did not honor my father, I should not be here
now. Pray give me your blessing, therefore, and let me go to my
wife. Michal followed me of her own free will, and she is waiting
for me now."
"The virgin you have brought with you is not your wife, and she
awaits you in vain. At dawn I will send her back to her father under
a strong escort together with the news of your death."
At these words the son was seized with a paroxysm of rage. Trusting
in the great strength by which he had so often distinguished himself
among his fellow-scholars, he fell fiercely upon his father. He
fancied he would be able to wrest the sword from him, break loose
from this ambuscade, and venture another leap through the dormer
window and over the palisades, as he had done ten years before. But
he reckoned without his host. The old man had only to stretch out
his left hand, seize him by the chest and hurl him like a young
kitten to the other side of the room, where he bounded head foremost
against the wall, and fell all of a heap.
"It only needed that," murmured the old man. "Now that you have
raised your hand against your master and judge, against your own
father, you've not another crime to commit. This is the first case
among the thousands of which I have had experience in which the
condemned has presumed to wrestle with the headsman. Curer of souls
indeed! In what Bible did you learn that, I should like to know."
The humiliated wretch, after this overthrow, lost his strength of
mind altogether. The hero who had thus found his master in a
physical encounter no longer felt equal to an intellectual contest;
he writhed to his father on his knees, and cried, sobbing loudly all
the time:
"Mercy, my father! I am your only son!"
"A precious only son, truly, who has outraged his own father. You
fled from me. You said to yourself: 'My father pursues a
dishonorable trade. I will not share his fate!' Alas! that it should
be so. I cleanse the human race of its filth. My hand cannot be as
white as a lily. They send for me to wipe away all their dirt, all
that is vile and disgusting. A terrible fate! But someone, if it be
only one in a hundred thousand, must submit to it. Evil-doers thrive
like a brood of serpents. You have seen them yourself. You have been
surrounded by them. You have felt how powerful they are even where
the sword has been whetted to destroy them. I have already peopled
many a room in hell with these damned spirits, and yet they spring
up again like so many poisonous funguses. But for the gallows the
dominion of Satan in these parts would gain the upper hand. I too
live in a state of horror night and day. When I am alone I loathe
myself. When I lay me down to sleep, someone must stand by my
bedside to wake me when I dream, for the dreams I dream are ghastly.
Once I even resigned my office. The King's grace releases the
headsman after a thirty years' service, and a Royal decree ennobles
him after a thirty years' obloquy. But I had not laid the sword
aside for more than six months when traveling in the district became
impossible. In the town, women were robbed in the broad daylight,
and malefactors danced in the churches, which they had broken open
and plundered. I again began to work in blood. A ghastly work! Men
hide themselves, dogs howl, grazing flocks disperse when they scent
me from afar. There is no seat for me in the church, and every door
in the town is closed against me. The good abhor me even more than
the evil. But for all that I care nothing. What does grieve me is
that my son should loathe me. The thousands of terrifying shapes
which are waiting for me in the next world to stone me with their
decapitated heads do not frighten me. My own son, who smites me in
the face, he it is who really hurls me into hell."
"No, my father," interrupted Henry, "I adjure you by the living God
not to say so. I do not abhor you. You, too, serve humanity. I
condemn you not. But Heaven has not given me so strong a heart as
yours. I have chosen the mission of reconciliation, of amelioration.
I, too, would destroy the evil which you destroy, if not with the
sword at least by the Word of God."
"Then you think it belongs to the eternal fitness of things that
your father should be a headsman, while you are a curer of souls;
that when you are dispensing the Lord's Supper, all the people
should look with fear and loathing at your hand to see whether you
have not inherited some blood-mark from your father; that the
children in your parish should come into the world with red blotches
instead of moles; that the rabble, when we sit side by side in the
felons' car, should cry out: 'There go the headsman and his son, the
parson; the old 'un flays the sinners, and the youngster patches 'em
up again!' Perhaps, however, you think nothing of the sort. Perhaps
you will prefer to go on denying your father. Perhaps you will
prefer to live a lie six days in the week, and then ascend the
pulpit to preach eternal truth on the seventh day. But then would
not the words 'Our Father' stick in your throat? Would you not hear
the devil whispering in your ear every time you repeated the fifth
commandment? But enough of this. Keep steady! Stretch out your head,
and let us make an end of it!"
The young man was almost in a state of collapse. He tried to raise
himself from the floor with one hand, and, as if even the cold
stones had pity upon him, there suddenly resounded from the room
below a soft chant, a lowly prayer sung by a woman's gentle voice:
Glory be to God the Lord,
My refuge and my great reward.
To Him my prayer shall ever be
Who holp me in extremity.
The young man began to sob. The father leaned with both hands upon
his sword. For a long time he was silent. He would not speak so long
as that evening prayer lasted.
His son threw himself sobbing on the ground, and moistened the
flagstones with his tears.
"Do you wish to live?" asked the father in a low voice.
Henry rose from the ground with overflowing joy. He was certain from
this sudden softness of tone that the mortal rage of his father had
given way to a milder frame of mind.
"Are you not sorry for that poor creature?" inquired his father.
"I love her as I love my own soul."
"I didn't ask you that, I asked you whether you feel compassion for
her; you need say no more."
"Yes, I do."
"Do you feel compassion for your father?"
"I love and honor you."
"Don't talk so much, but answer my question!"
"God knows that I feel compassion for you."
"You take the name of the Lord into your mouth much too often. If
you want to live, if you have any pity for me and for that poor
creature, rise up! Don't blubber! It's not pretty and does not
become you. You are a man, remember! Take off that garment! Here's
another! Put it on and follow me!"
Henry took off his black cassock and put on the linen jacket which
the old man had taken out of a cupboard for him. It was a plain
jacket, without either buttons or buckles, and fastened round the
waist by a leather girdle. It did not escape Henry that the old man
carefully counted out two hundred gold pieces, which he took from
the same cupboard and put into the girdle. "'Tis yours," said he, as
he buckled the girdle round his son's body. Then he beckoned to him
to take the lamp and again go on in front, only this time they
descended the staircase. The old man took the sword with him.
Henry was thinking to himself that if he could only escape from his
father with a whole skin he would never venture within those walls
again so long as the old man was alive.
But the old man also knew very well what his son's thoughts were,
and he himself was thinking of how he could best prevent him from
doing anything of the sort again.