“ICH HABE GELEBT, AND GELIEBET.”
The wintry sun’s last rays fall lingeringly athwart the little
graveyard of Saint Thomas, illumining to transparent golden its scant
russet garb of autumn leaves, streaked to-day for the first time
with folds of glistening snow; for Yule-tide month is at hand again,
bringing with it many memories to the Professor Conrad Dasipodius, as
he wends his way along the narrow by-path leading to the fair marble
cross marking the grave of Chretei Herlin.
A year ago to-day it is that they laid the old man to his rest; and it
has been a frequent custom of the mathematician’s to make this little
pilgrimage to his old master’s grave, and one which in these brighter
days of his he has in no wise forsworn, only that oftener now than
not he does not perform it alone. And a mighty strange spot too, say
the gossips, watching from afar the gracious figures of the blind
mathematician, and his betrothed, with his hand linking down trustfully
into her helpful arm, a marvellous strange spot for a lover to go
taking his sweetheart to, poor thing!
But Sabina by no means holds herself an object for commiseration; and
that is not the first time by scores that the world, in attempting
to dive between the wills and ways of lovers, has come with its head
against a post. Wondrous wise, of course, it is in this case, and has
at fingers’ ends a dozen garbled versions of the eventful loves of
these two; but it will never know, as Sabina has come to know now, how
the courses of Conrad’s life and of her own swirled into such fateful
channels here, to-day a year ago. Neither can it grasp, what even she
must be content to apprehend only in part, aught of the attraction
which draws him to the solemn spot; and how here, as nowhere besides
so entirely, the intellect, still “chained to time,” communes with the
disembodied spirit hovering there.
For Dasipodius, the old man’s grave is a shrine of consolation, a
cheering refuge from the world’s turmoil; and what it is for him,
that and no other can it be for his promised wife. To-day, however,
he is alone, perhaps because some inference of her unselfish devotion
has prompted the fancy that solitude and silence will be more prized
by him, just for a while, than even her presence; or possibly for no
more occult reason than that the wreath of flowers, sweet and fair as
herself, which she is weaving for the old monk’s grave, lacks a few
finishing touches.
For an instant Dasipodius, unconscious of the task she was so absorbed
in, had stood hesitating and disturbed by her refusal to come with him,
lest one of those attacks of weakness and pain, still lingering on the
track of the ordeal she had passed through, had seized her now; but
she had earnestly assured him that she was “only busy—very busy”. “And
with that you’ll have to be content, Professor,” Burgomaster Niklaus
had said laughingly, “and go your ways, asking no questions. The sooner
you clearly understand that Mistress Sabina von Steinbach is the most
unbending despot on the face of this earth, the better for your peace
and quietness.”
“Till we meet again then, dear heart,” smiled Dasipodius. And so he had
come up alone.
Probably this enhances the vividness of his associations with that day
whose anniversary this is. Alone! now as then, a then which seems but
yesterday, and yet an age ago. Only one short year, yet so long!
Nature, who is no precisian, and assumes to herself in such matters
a certain law of liberty, had last year donned her full suit of snow
two weeks earlier; and that scene of utter, unrelieved whiteness, upon
which the black curtain of his affliction had fallen, and made the fair
world a blank for evermore, rose a strange, contrasting picture in his
memory, as he paused for an instant before turning along the little
winding pathway, leading to Herlin’s grave, passing on, with a step so
firm and sure, as utterly to falsify that little fiction of Sabina’s,
he so unblushingly lent himself to, that her eyes were absolutely
necessary for his goings to and fro upon the earth.
The clocks have already chimed four; and as the mathematician stands
leaning on his stick, beside the smooth grass-grown mound, the last
faint sunrays fade, and leave him in the twilight greyness, and the
silence, broken only by the low soft twittering of a redbreast among
the cypresses. Hush! Not all silent; and the little bird, with quicker
sense even than the blind man’s, has caught that strain of sweet music,
and lifts his voice in gentle response to the prayer of the brethren,
where, in the dimly-lighted chapel yonder, they are gathered to chant
the memorial requiem for the soul of the beloved brother departed.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et Lux perpetua dona eis.”
A strange thrill seizes Dasipodius, as those slow, solemn cadences fall
upon his ear. It wanted but their well-remembered sounds to complete
the illusion, and transport him a year back along the troubled stream
of time, to that gloomiest moment, save one, of all his darkened
existence. To that moment when, in his great agony, his voice had gone
up against the high God’s ruling, and he had begged for death. “Is
there no mercy—no pity left in Heaven? Let me die now—Father Chretei!
Father Chretei! My God! to think that it must come!”
And now in humble recognition of the infinite Power which had let this
supplication fall unheeded, Dasipodius bowed his head; but if something
of humiliation at his own finite conception of the supreme goodness
troubled him then, it all faded in the abiding sense of thankfulness
and trustful content, which death nor life could ever steal from him;
and out of his soul’s deepest depths, he murmured: “Peace—peace. Amen.”
Very hard it may be for the wretched to realise that there is joy still
left in the world; but almost harder still it is for men whose failing
cup of happiness has been suddenly and richly replenished to conceive
that things have not grown universally cheerier. The mathematician’s
gentle soul would have had the whole world of quick—ay, and of dead
too—share in the blessedness which had come to shine upon him. Truly
it seemed to him that fuller than ever it had been before, that coming
Yule-tide would be of “Peace and goodwill towards men”.
“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“Conrad Dasipodius!”
That voice! Dasipodius started from his reverie with some strange pang
of self-accusing; for the accents told him, as no sound besides, human
or superhuman, that there were flaws in his cup of charity. Only not
her! The deepest-dyed criminal who had ever sued for mercy would have
found it this calm, sweet twilight of a waning year, had Dasipodius
been his judge. Had he not pleaded for Tobias Hackernagel?—but that
voice he shrank from, with a horror so unspeakable that it deadened his
sense, and for the moment struck him speechless. If the associations
of the spot had been already so powerful, what were they now? Those
self-same tones! Oh, Heaven! was all indeed a dream then? and was he
wakening to the bitter reality once more? Those self-same tones! And
yet how changed! There was music in them yet, but how hollow and low,
broken, and catching so painfully for breath, though only his name had
passed the parched and trembling lips.
“Mistress von Steinbach,” he said at last.
“Ay,” she hoarsely whispered. “Yes—we meet again, at—the old
trysting-place, Conrad.”
He recoiled, for she had neared him by another pace.
“Nay,” continued she, with a low hollow laugh, and laying on his
chilled hands fingers that burned into them like fire, “but it is for
the last time.”
“When last we met,” he replied in hard, metallic tones, as he shook
himself free, “would have been our fittest leave-taking.”
The light force he used sent her staggering against the cross; and
stretching out her shadowy arms, all shrunken from their once perfect
contours, she clung to it, a veritable Magdalene, with her dishevelled
hair hanging about her shoulders, and a wild unearthly brilliancy
burning in her dark eyes, fixed passionately as of old on him. “Say you
so?” she gasped.
“Ay, that do I, by my faith,” he answered.
“By your faith,” she echoed, a mocking smile quivering to her
lips—“that tells no sinner may die unshriven. And, Conrad Dasipodius, I
am here to seek my dying shrift of you.”
“Am I your priest confessor?” he demanded. “God be thanked, mistress,
no; for I must have perished by a thousand tortures, before I could
have given shrift to you.” And again he strove to pass on; but she,
leaving her hold upon the cross, glided to her knees at his feet.
“Trample on me,” she said, “if you will. My poor breath would soon be
spent, and death from you would be sweet; but go you shall not, till——”
“What will you have of me?”
“Pardon.”
“Ask your priest, I say, for that, in God’s name; but do not ask it of
me. Leave hold, mistress—your very touch is loathsome to me. Let me
pass on.”
But her clutch upon him grew tighter. “Pardon, ere I die. Pardon.”
He shook his head; a marble face would have looked softer than his.
“Ere I die, did I say?” she went on. “It is that I may die. I cannot,
till you— Oh, many and many a time, they have thought me dead, for the
rigidness of death that has seized my limbs; but that was because all
hell’s fiends clawed me so fast down, gibbering and howling in my ears
that your heart could know—no—pardon for me.” For an instant her voice
failed her, then rallied again with the strength of despair. “Give them
the lie to that—give—them the lie to it, by that mercy you will one
day need. Ah, Heaven! your face grows human—at last. Your sweet, sweet
face, I bartered my soul’s health for, and would again, would—again——”
“Hush, mistress. This is the delirium of sickness. You should be in
your bed. How came you here?”
“Do I know?” she said, dropping her voice and glancing round with a
strange cunning defiance in her eyes. “They—who were watching beside
me, left me—for a little—thinking I slept. Ha! ha!—slept! How long is
it, I wonder, since the blessed sleep, and—and I parted company? Then I
stole out—before—she could fall upon me—that woman—with her murderous
fingers, to claw me down—down with her. Oh, yes, she was there, I
tell you. She was there, frightfullest among them all, with her cruel
beautiful face, though these hands tore it shred by shred, that—that
night when— Oh, yes, did I not hear her? She wolf—screeching in my ears
as I fled: ‘Come! come! for thou too hast marred two loves—two lives—as
I did. Come!’ But”—and a piercing discordant shriek of laughter broke
from her—“but, Conrad Dasipodius, I—I turned on her, and— ‘No, no—there
is time—time yet,’ I cried, ‘and he is angel good, and pitiful. He will
forgive—forgive.’ Ah, God! you shake your head!”
“Go home, mistress,” was all he said. “Death lurks for you here in this
cold.”
“Ay; cold, cold,” she shivered, cowering to the ground, and gathering
her scanty covering closer about her. “And yet I burn. Mercy!—hark!
Do you hear how they sing yonder? Rest—rest—eternal rest, for that
good brother, him thy soul loved so well, Conrad. I knew”—and a tender
wistfulness moistened the arid glitter of her eyes—“I was sure you
would be here to-night. Ah!” And as the requiem hymn broke again upon
her ears, she clasped her hands over them as if she would have shut
out the sounds. “Rest! rest! What prayers can ever avail for me,” she
moaned, “if you rise up and bid them hush?”
“God forbid I should do that, woman,” he said.
“What can they do for me, if you deny,” persisted she, “Conrad
Dasipodius, as here I hang upon you now, so my tortured soul shall one
day stay your feet at—Heaven’s Golden Gate, till it wrings from you my
pardon—pardon. Ah! is your heart turned steel that you can look like
that? Conrad, by all my life’s unloved loneliness——”
“Unloved!”
“Ay,” she said, with a terrible echo of her old disdainful laugh,
“unloved. By my forgotten grave, which dank and rotting weeds shall
hide—for who will remember Radegund von Steinbach? A beggar or two—a
dog, mayhap—Bruno for a little month even—Bruno Wolkenberg, until some
gentle maiden, out of his dream-stories, comforts him. Oh, Conrad,
mercy, pity—by all your love for—her.”
“By that it is,” he said solemnly, “I look into my soul, and find there
no pity for you. Did you spare her——”
“He that is without sin among you,” said a voice that was not
Radegund’s, “let him first cast a stone.”
“I cast it not, my lord,” answered Dasipodius, turning to face the
Bishop. “As there is a Heaven above us, Mistress,” he continued, “I
swear I think I have never nursed anger against you, for myself’s sake.
But she—when her life’s blood— Oh, God! I feel it now, upon these
hands, through—through to my heart. This cold, miserable, miserable
heart that had dared to doubt her. And you, will you have me lie,
mistress? I do not pardon you. Go home.”
Alas! for the eyes that could not see the agony of the fast-glazing
ones upturned to his! nor the despair of the grey face damp with mortal
dews. Did he know that death’s agonies wrung the hands clasped about
his feet? Could he see, as others saw, that already her sense was dead
to the presence of those who had sorrowingly sought her, and found her
thus? That she knew not how he who had thrown himself beside her now,
and with hands trembling in his soul’s supreme anguish, yet strong for
his great passionate love’s sake, was he who felt her shame to be his,
and her death the severing of all that made life worth living for him,
Bruno Wolkenberg?
“There is joy in Heaven,” pleaded Bishop John once again, “over one
sinner that repenteth——”
“In Heaven, surely, my lord,” returned Dasipodius with cold reverence.
“Let her seek there for what I have not to give.”
“She is dying—here at your feet,” brokenly said the Bishop.
“Even so, my lord,” said Dasipodius, paling to ashen whiteness.
Can this rigid, pitiless face indeed be the face of him whom men
and—God help them!—women so love for its infinite tenderness?
“The throes of death convulse her now—while I speak,” implored the
Bishop, in a voice broken with sobs of grief and indignation. “They
rend her——”
“Can they be as cruel as those my darling suffered, when that villain’s
knife——”
“Conrad!” burst forth Bruno, “are you human still?”
The dying woman’s lips moved, and she turned on her lover a look that
to his life’s own last breath he cherished with a joy no earthly thing
ever gave him more.
“Ay, Bruno,” sighed Dasipodius, starting slightly at the sound of his
voice, “human indeed. And not even for your sake can I do this.”
The burden in Bruno’s arms is growing heavy with death. Each gasp as
it struggles to her lips, bears with it another wave of the ebbing
life; and the awful intensity gleaming through the fast-gathering film
in the cavernous eyes fixed on Dasipodius, alone tells that life and
consciousness linger.
The sun has set, shadows are stealing swiftly over the graves. Yonder
in the Monastery chapel the music is hushed. Not the faintest breeze
stirs the sombre branches, only the fearsome struggling for breath
of the dying artist breaks the utter silence, and the low rustle of
withered leaves under Dasipodius’ foot, as he turns to leave the spot;
but a hand stays him, with a touch. Heavens and earth! how firm and
gentle and persistent! “You here, Sabina?” he demands in stern surprise.
“Ay, Conrad.” And she leads him, before he is well aware, back to
Chretei’s grave. “Bid her die in peace.”
“Child, I cannot.”
“Oh, love, love! Think of her misery. Think—what is all the rest
now?—of Bruno, for his sake, Conrad.” And her tears rain fast upon his
two hands she has gathered up in hers. Yet no sign of relenting softens
his face, scarcely more lifelike than the dying woman’s. “Conrad!”
wails the distracted girl, “if your eyes could see what mine do now.
Must my heart break too? Conrad, by all her love for you——”
“My God, no!” he cries shiveringly. “Come away, child; here is no place
for you.” And he strives to lead her from the spot, but she clings
heavily to him.
“Speak to her—speak—for Christ’s sake! Mercy! mercy! before it is too
late! For my sake—oh, love!—love——”
Some emotion he vainly struggles to stifle down flushes all his face,
glorifying it back to life, as she, lifting the hands hers hold, lays
them against her bosom. “Love,” she murmurs, “by that pain I bore for
you.”
And slowly he turned to the woman at his feet. “Die in peace,” he said,
“if my pardon can win it you. Radegund, with all my heart, which is
hers, as I hope to be forgiven, I forgive you now.”
“Conrad——”
So the artist’s soul went forth; and over the passion-wrung face, like
some pure veil, spread the infinite calm of death; and in her eyes,
fixed on him, lingered like the summer afterglow upon still waters,
the sudden radiance which lit them, as he spoke the words her weary
remorseful spirit thirsted for. With his name upon her lips she had
gone hence. And he in whose arms she had died, Bruno, unremembered
in that supreme moment, laid her down with the tender reverential
gentleness of a mother laying her sleeping babe to rest; and carefully,
so carefully, as though presently she would waken again, he pillowed
the beautiful head upon the soft low snow-covered hillock of the monk’s
grave, and—for does it not grow cold and chill, and in the light of
the moon rising clear and round over the chapel belfry, snowflakes are
sparkling down a crown of diamonds and pearls upon her dark hair—he
draws the mantle protectingly about her wasted form.
And so, silent, tearless, unconscious seemingly of human presence
there, Bruno Wolkenberg tended his dead love. Only when Sabina,
stepping to her side, knelt, and softly kissing the marble cheek,
reverently laid on her bosom the wreath of snow-white flowers she had
brought for Father Chretei, some dim wistful memory of his old sweet
smile flitted across his agony-stricken face.
Noiseless but swiftly now the snow is falling; darker and darker the
shadows creep on apace; the bird’s lullaby song in the cypress is
hushed, and silence falls, the veritable silence of the grave. Yet
hark!—where from the storied panes the tapers’ golden light gleams
forth to mingle with the silver moonrays’ radiance—still goes up the
prayer for the repose of the dead.
“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”
And so they go down to the great city again, and leave Bruno alone with
his love.