SWEET SISTER DEATH[29]
The reader may feel quite sure that such a nature as Evroult's was not
easily conquered by the gentle influences of Christianity; indeed,
humanly speaking, it might never have yielded had not the weapon used
against it been _Love_.
One day, as he sat rapt in thought on the sunny bank outside the
hermitage, the hermit and Richard talking quietly at a short distance,
he seemed to receive a sudden inspiration,--he walked up to Meinhold.
"Father, tell me, do you think you can recover of the leprosy you have
caught from us?"
"I do not expect to do so."
"And do you not wish we had never come here?"
"By no means; God sent you."
"And you give your life perhaps for us?"
"The Good Shepherd gave His life for me."
"Father, I have tried not to listen to you, but I can fight against it
no longer. You are right in all you say, and always have been,
only--only----"
A pause. The hermit waited in silent joy.
"Only it was so hard to flesh and blood."
"And can you yield yourself to His Will now?"
"I am trying--very hard; I do not even yet know whether I quite can."
"He will help you, dear boy; He knows how hard it is for us weak mortals
to overcome self."
"I knew if I had kept well I should have grown up violent, wicked, and
cruel, and no doubt have lost my soul. Do you not think so, father?"
"Very likely, indeed."
"And yet I have repined and murmured against Him Who brought me here to
save me."
"But He will forgive all that, now you truly turn to Him and submit to
His Will."
"I try to give myself to Him to do as He pleases."
"And you believe He has done all things well?"
"Yes."
"Even the leprosy?"
"Yes, even that."
"You are right, my dear son; we must all be purified through suffering,
for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not? and if we are not
partakers thereof, then are we bastards and not sons. All true children
of God have their Purgatory here or hereafter--far better here. He
suffered more for us."
----
A few days passed away after this conversation, and a rapid change for
the worse took place in poor Evroult's physical condition. The fell
disease, which had already disfigured him beyond recognition, attacked
the brain. His brother and the hermit could not desire his life to be
prolonged in such affliction, and they silently prayed for his release,
grievous although the pang of separation would be to them both--one out
of their little number of three.
One day he had been delirious since the morning, and at eventide they
stood still watching him. It had been a dark cloudy day, but now at
sunset a broad vivid glory appeared in the west, which was lighted up
with glorious crimson, azure, and gold, beneath the edge of the curtain
of cloud.
"'At eventide it shall be light,'" quoted Meinhold.
"See, he revives," said Richard.
He looked on their faces.
"Oh brother, oh dear father, I have seen Him; I have heard with the
hearing of the ear, but now mine eye hath seen Him."
They thought he spake of a vision, but it may have been, probably _was_,
but a revelation to the inward soul.
"And now, dear father, give me the Viaticum; I am going, and want my
provision for the way."
He spoke of the Holy Communion, to which this name was given when
administered to the dying.
Then followed the Last Anointing, and ere it was over they saw the great
change pass upon him. They saw Death, sometimes called the grim King of
Terrors, all despoiled of his sting; they saw the feeble hand strive to
make the Holy Sign, then fall back; while over his face a mysterious
light played as if the door of Paradise had been left ajar when the
redeemed soul passed in.
"_Beati qui in Domino morinutur_," said Meinhold; "his Purgatory was
here. Do not cry, Richard; the happy day will soon come when we shall
rejoin him."
They laid him out before the altar in their rude chapel, and prepared
for the last funeral rite.
----
Meanwhile disfigured forms were stealing through the woods, and finding
a shelter in various dens and caves, or sleeping round fires kindled in
the open or in woodcutters' huts, deserted through fear of them; as yet
they had not found the hermit's cave or entered the Happy Valley.
On the morrow Meinhold celebrated the Holy Eucharist, and afterwards
performed the burial service with simplest rites; they then committed
the body to the earth, and afterwards wandered together, discoursing
sweetly on the better life, into the forest, where the twilight was
"Like the Truce of God
With earthly pain and woe."
Never were they happier--never so full of joy and resignation--these
two unfortunates, as the world deemed them; bearing about the visible
sentence of death on themselves, but they had found the secret of a life
Death could not touch.
And in their walk they came suddenly upon a man, who reposed under the
shadow of a tree; he seemed asleep, but talked and moaned as if in a
feverish dream.
"Father, he is a leper like us, look."
"God has sent him, perhaps, in the place of Evroult."
They woke him.
"Where am I?"
"With friends. Canst walk to our home; it is not far?"
"Angels from Heaven. Yes, I can walk--see."
But without their assistance he could never have reached the cave.
They gave him food; he took little, but drank eagerly.
"How did you come here?"
He told them of the plague at Byfield, and of the death of the Chaplain.
"Happy man!" said Meinhold; "he laid down his life for the sheep the
Good Shepherd had committed to his care." And so may we, he thought.
That night the poor man grew worse; the dark livid hue overspread him.
Our readers know the rest.
Voices might have been heard in the cave the next day--sweet sounds
sometimes as if of hymns of praise.
The birds and beasts came to the hermit's cave, and marvelled that none
came out to feed them--that no crumbs were thrown to them, no food
brought forth. A bold robin even ventured in, but came out as if
affrighted, and flew right away.
They sang their sweet songs to each other. No human ear heard them; but
the valley was lovely still.
Who shall go into that cave and wake the sleepers? Who?
Then came discordant noises, spoiling nature's sweet harmony--the
baying of hounds, the cries of men sometimes loud and discordant,
sometimes of those who struggled, sometimes of those in pain.
Louder and louder--the hunt is up--the horse and hound invade the glen.
A troop of affrighted-looking men hasten down the valley.
Look, they are lepers.
They have cause to fear; the deep baying of the mastiffs is deepening,
drawing near.
They espy the cave--they rush towards it up the slope--in they dash.
Out again.
Another group of fugitives follow.
"The cave! the cave! we may defend the mouth."
"There are three there already," said the first.
"_Three?_"
"_Dead of the Plague._"
And they would have run away had not the hunters and dogs come upon
them, both ways, up and down the glen.
They are driven in--some two score in all.
The leaders of the pursuing party pause.
"I think," says a dark baron, "I see a way out of our difficulty without
touching a leper."
"Send the dogs in."
"In vain; they will not go; they scent something amiss."
"This cave has but one opening."
"I have heard that a hermit lived here with two young lepers."
"Call him."
"Meinhold! Meinhold!"
No reply.
"He is dead long ago, I daresay."
"If he does not come out it is his own fault."
"There were two young lepers who dwelt with him."
"What business had he with lepers?"
"All the world knew it, and he had caught it himself."
"Then we will delay no longer. God will know His own." And then he gave
the fatal order.
"Gather brushwood, sticks, reeds, all that will burn, and pile it in the
mouth of the cave."
They did so.
"Fire it."
The dense clouds of smoke arose, and as they hoped in their cruelty,
were sucked inward.
"There must be a through draught."
"Can they get out?"
"No, lord baron."
"Watch carefully lest there be other outlets. We must stamp this foul
plague out of the land."
Then they stood and watched.
The flames crackled and roared; dense volumes of smoke arose, now
arising above the trees, now entering the cave; the birds screamed
overhead; the fierce men looked on with cruel curiosity; but no sound
was heard from within.
At this moment the galloping of horsemen was heard. "Our brother of
Kenilworth, doubtless."
But it was not. A rider in dark armour appeared at the head of a hundred
horsemen.
"What are you doing?" cried a stern voice.
"Smoking lepers out."
"Charge them! cut them down! slay all!"
And the Wallingford men charged the incendiaries as one man. Like a
thunderbolt, slaying, hewing, hacking, chopping, cleaving heads and
limbs from trunks, with all the more deadly facility as their more
numerous antagonists lacked armour, having only come out to slay lepers.
The Baron of Hanwell Castle was a corpse; so was the knight of Cropredy
Towers; so was the young lord of Southam; others were writhing in mortal
agony, but within a quarter of an hour more, only the dead and dying
disputed the field with the Wallingford men. The rest had fled, finding
the truth of the proverb, "There be many that come out to shear and go
back shorn."
"Drag the branches away! pull out the faggots! extinguish the fire!
scatter it! fight fire as ye have fought men!"
That was done too. They dispersed the fuel, they scattered the embers;
and hardly was this done than Brian rushed in the cave, through the hot
ashes. But scarce could he stay in a moment, the smoke blinded--choked
him.
Out again, almost beside himself with rage, fear for his boys, and
vexation.
In again. Out again.
So three or four abortive attempts.
At last the smoke partially dispersed, and he could enter.
The outer cave was empty.
But in the next subterranean chamber lay a black corpse--a full-grown
man. Brian knew him not. He crossed this cave and entered the next one,
and by the altar knew it was their rude chapel.
Before the altar lay two figures; their hands clasped in the attitude of
prayer; bent to the earth; still--motionless.
Their faces, too, were of the same dark hue.
The one wore the dress of a hermit, the other was a boy of some sixteen
years.
Brian recognised his younger son in the latter, rather by instinct and
by knowledge of the circumstances than otherwise.
"It is my Richard. But where is Evroult?"
"Here," said a voice,--"read."
Upon the wall was a rude inscription, scratched thereon by Meinhold, his
last labour of love--
EVROULT IN PACE.
Little as he possessed the power of reading, Brian recognised his son's
name, and understood all. The strong man fell before that altar, and
for the first time in many years recognised the Hand which had stricken
him.
They dragged him away, as they felt that the atmosphere was dangerous to
them all--as indeed it was.
"Leave them where they are--better tomb could they not have; only wall
up the entrance."
And they set to work, and built huge stones into the mouth of the cave--
"Leaving them to rest in hope--
Till the Resurrection Day."
And what had become of the other lepers?
Driven by the smoke, they had wandered into the farthest recesses of the
cave--once forbidden to Evroult by the hermit.
Whether they perished in the recesses, or whether they found some other
outlet, and emerged to the upper day, we know not. No further
intelligence of the poor unfortunates reached the living, or has been
handed down to posterity.
----
And now, do my readers say this is a very melancholy chapter? Do they
pity, above all, the hermit and Richard, struck down by the pestilence
in an act of which Christ would have said, "Inasmuch as ye did it to the
least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me"?
The pestilence saved them from the lingering death of leprosy, and even
had they lived to grow old, they had been dust and ashes seven centuries
ago. What does it matter now whether they lived sixteen or sixty years?
The only point is, did they, through God's grace, merit to hear the
blessed words, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy
of your Lord"?
And we think they did.
FOOTNOTE:
[29] So called by St. Francis of Assisi.