Nine times had the sun risen and set without the sick man's darkened
spirit being conscious of it. It is true that his blinded eyes would
not have told him even if he had been conscious, but the measure of
time of which men have an instinctive idea would have served him even
in his darkness, and have driven the tortured man home to his
imperilled brethren. From time to time indeed he had roused a little,
and had asked the time, but the girl--God will forgive her--had
deceived him; had taken advantage of his blindness, and had made him
believe he had slept but an hour, while a whole day or a whole night
had gone by. She meant it well, that he might be content to rest, and
not get so ill as to die. So each time he had laid his head down again,
and let himself be persuaded--"till it was day"--to go no farther. And
thus it had nine times been day, and nine times night. To-day for the
first time the rage of his fever was subdued, and his reawakened
consciousness began to light up his pale face.
"Beata, are you there?" he asked.
"Yes, master."
"I believe you have not slept the whole night through--whenever I have
called you you have been awake. Is it not yet day?"
"Yes, dear master, very soon; but rest a little longer."
Donatus felt around him; he was surprised to find a soft straw-bed
under him, and by his side a wall.
"Where am I?"
"In the smelter's hut; we carried you in that you might be sheltered
from wind and weather."
"Then we are among men?"
"Yes, they are poor folks, but compassionate and helpful."
"How many are they?"
"A man and his son."
"Do you think the boy could conduct me to Marienberg?"
"To Marienberg?" said Beata, turning pale.
He did not answer for some time, then he said,
"It is so sultry and heavy in here; if you would do me a last service,
help me up and lead me out into God's open air that I may collect my
senses."
"You are still too weak to stand; have a little patience," she begged.
"Not a minute longer must I delay; I must go home to my brethren to
share the danger which I could not avert." He rose from the bed, and
the girl led him silent and tottering out into the air. The sky bent in
ethereal blue over the mighty glaciers, an icy morning-wind blew down
from them and waved the sick man's hair across his face, for it had
grown long. He inhaled the pure air of the heights in long deep breaths
like a man risen from the grave. Heaven sent him a greeting from the
cloud-capped peaks, it invited him up there; he felt it, the flames of
hell thirsted for him in vain; the child seated him on a stone bench by
the door of the hut.
"Beata," he said in a hollow voice, "we must part." The child uttered a
cry of pain that pierced him to the very heart. He went on, "Beata, I
have erred and gone astray. I believed that I might escape love if I
blinded myself, and I lulled my soul in that security, till temptation
was upon me before I suspected it. It was so fair a dream, Beata, when
we wandered on together in innocence, as in Paradise, but original sin
has driven us out of it! From the first hour when your sweet charm
stirred my soul with earthly longings, from that hour our Paradise was
lost. Beata, hell would fain have power over the immortal part of us,
let us snatch it from its power. It is yet time; I have as yet
withstood that hellish temptation, but now let us part lest the darker
deed should follow hard on the dark thought. I gave up my eyes that I
might keep myself pure, now I will give you up too. Be strong, Beata,
prove yourself worthy of the suffering I endure for your sake, and obey
in silence."
"No, no! Require what you will of me but not that," shrieked the child.
"Plant a knife in my heart and I will not shrink, but do not require me
to part from you without crying out like some wild creature that is
only half killed, and can neither live nor die."
Donatus clasped his hands, and a cold sweat stood on his brow; Beata
flung herself before him.
"My lord and master, do not drive me away; you cannot be so cruel, you
only fancy that you can, and you will rue it when you are gone a few
hundred yards, and you will call your child to come back to you; but it
will be too late. I have been with you in the hour of anguish, my eyes
are dim with watching by your bed, my bleeding feet have stained the
stones on the paths along which I have led you, and you will drive me
away? Oh, dear good master! you would not drive away a lost dog that
humbly licked your hand, and have you no pity on my suffering and my
tears?" And she laid her tear-bathed face on his hands and tremblingly
clasped his knees.
The tortured man cried out from the depths of his soul, "Oh God, my
God! is it not enough? Beata, have pity, have pity, no devil could
torture me as you are doing. Beata, if you are not indeed of the powers
of hell, if you are not an emissary of the devil sent to torment me, go
from me. Oh holy Spirit! enlighten her, purify her, deliver her, as
Thou hast delivered me."
He rose and solemnly lifted his hand, "Beata would you win everlasting
bliss?"
"I ask for no bliss without you," said the girl.
"Beata, do you wish me to lose it too?"
The child shuddered but did not speak.
"Beata if you renounce me I may yet be saved. But if you will not quit
me, if you make me faithless to my vows, I must be eternally damned.
Now choose, which is it to be?"
The girl answered in a tremulous and hardly audible voice, "I
will--go."
All was silent, as when the last life struggle is past, and the
bystanders whisper, "All is over!"
For a few minutes longer the wretched man listened, his face bathed in
a sweat of anguish; then he threw up his arms to heaven as if to ask,
"What can be left to me to suffer more?" then he felt his way back into
the hut.
"Spare me your boy," he said to the smelter, "that he may guide me to
Marienberg."
"Do you want to go on again?" asked the man. "Where is the girl that
was leading you?"
"She--she must stay here, take care of her; you are a good man. Take
care of the child as the apple of your eye; oh! Angels of Heaven will
guard your hut so long as she is in it." He hid his face in his hands
and burst into loud sobs.
"If it troubles you so why do you leave her?" asked the man.
"Do not ask, do not talk, give me your son and let me go. When I have
got back to the Abbey, I will send you a rich reward by your son." The
boy sprang forward when he heard of a reward; Donatus took his rough
hand, his heart tightened as he took it; it was not Beata's soft and
loving touch.
"Farewell!" he called out to the man, and the rocks dismally echoed,
"Farewell."
His foot had crossed the threshold, and he set forth without delay
towards Marienberg.
For the ninth time since he first had set out the sun was setting
behind the cliffs of Mals and Burgeis when the weary wanderer returned
from his dreary and fruitless pilgrimage. Poor and wretched as if the
wind and waves had tossed him on shore after a shipwreck; scorched and
desolate in spirit as if in some pilgrimage in the Holy Land the
burning sun of the Desert had consumed him heart and brain, and he had
fled without earning his title to Salvation.
He laboriously climbed the mountain, led by his clumsy guide;
the boy had heedlessly brought him by the lonely and little used
'Goats'-steps,' so called because only goats and goat-herds could climb
it without turning giddy; at every step the blind man was in danger of
falling into the yawning depth below.
The dank mists of evening fell thickly on the mountain, the vesper bell
must presently ring, Donatus had been listening for it all the way.
"Boy, do you see no lights in the convent."
"No," said the lad, "all is dark."
"And yet it must be late," said Donatus, panting but hurrying still
more up the steep ascent.
"Aye, it is late," said the boy.
At this moment the vesper bell rang out and up from Burgeis; now they
will ring here too--
He listened, his heart throbbed once, twice, thrice, all was still.
What had happened? A shudder ran through him, the cold night wind blew
down from the peaks and chilled his very marrow. The vesper bells rang
out, each in a separate note, from the valleys far and near; only up
here was it dumb.
"Can you see the convent yet?" asked the blind man.
"Yes, there it is," said the lad indifferently.
"Take me to the door."
The boy obeyed; Donatus put out his hand for the knocker, his hand
grasped the air.
"The door is open," said the lad.
"Wait out here," said Donatus, and he went in. He easily found his way
across the familiar court-yard; it was incomprehensible that the door
should be open and no one in the way. He felt his way by the wall to
the inner entrance--this too was open. He felt to right and left of
him--the door-posts were there, but no door! Perhaps he had mistaken
his way in the open space, and was in a quite different direction to
what he believed. But how could there be a gap in the walled quadrangle
that formed the court-yard if it were not the doorway? He will call
out--does no one hear him? he listens--no answer! There is something
gruesome in this silence; an unaccountable alarm takes possession of
him. He can feel the stone of the threshold quite plainly with his
foot--he is standing in the very doorway; then if he feels to the right
the wall must be there, and the holy-water vessel of stone--yes, there
it is, and the vessel too, so he has come the right way, he dips his
hand in the piscina to take the holy-water--it is empty. It is strange,
who can have emptied it?
He comes to the door of the refectory--there at last the brethren must
certainly be. Here are the carved and iron-bound door-posts, he feels
for the massive handle--again he grasps the empty air, and his foot is
on the vacant threshold.
Is he delirious? or does his blindness cheat him with false ideas of
space? His sense of touch perhaps betrays him--or some demon is
tricking him, and juggling with his senses to torment him? Perhaps he
is still out in the sheds, and only fancies he has made his way to the
refectory?
A searching draught blew in his face through the open halls and
corridors; a sickening wind bringing a horrible reek of smoke as if it
blew across the dead embers of a burnt city, and a cloud of dusty ashes
was wafted into his face.
"Is no one there?" He called aloud--all was still.
Then he walked on again--aimlessly, taking no particular direction in
the darkness; suddenly his foot struck some unwonted object. He
stooped--the refectory table lay in pieces at his feet--again he
perceived the same strange smell of burning, and his hand fell on some
charred fragments--the table was half burnt. Donatus walked all round
it; wherever he trod there were ruins; he started back, finding himself
suddenly at the opposite wall. Then he felt for a window--his feet
trampled on crashing splinters of glass--the opening was empty, the
wood work all charred.
Invasion had been here, and the fearful traces that it leaves wherever
it enters--terror and desolation--depicted themselves vividly on the
blind man's fancy.
"My brethren--my Abbot--where are you?" he shouted in despair to the
darkness and chaos.
"My father--my brothers!" he cried out--but the words rang in the
deserted rooms--and he wandered on without aim or purpose among the
ruins and timbers--now straight forward, now round and round, without
knowing why or whither.
"To the chapel--to the sacristy!" an inward voice suddenly suggested.
"Perhaps they are there, praying--" and with infinite trouble he felt
his way on through the chaos of destruction. He could no longer find
his way, for everything he was familiar with, and that could serve him
as a starting point had been torn from its place or destroyed, and he
toiled in vain through the darkness to reach the spot which he always
missed though so close to it.
"Help--light!" he shrieked as if demented--as though he could see the
light even if there were one. He forgot his blindness--he forgot
everything, he was half crazed with terror.
Then again he stood still and listened--nothing was stirring but the
storm which sang unceasingly its wild lament through the ruined
windows.
He wandered on again towards the chapel. At last the smell of burning
was mingled with the odour of stale incense, and a wild confusion of
broken choir-seats, images, and candelabra impeded his steps.
"Are you here, my brethren? Is no one here?" He shouted again and
listened. He heard something--this time it was not the wind, it was a
low groan from some human being.
"Who is there? answer me!" he cried, trembling.
"Who are you?" A well-known but broken voice fell upon his ear.
"Correntian!" cried Donatus, between fear and joy.
"Donatus!" answered the voice, and a strange shudder ran through
him--as if he were called to the last judgment, and a voice from the
clouds had read his name on the list of the damned.
"Donatus," repeated Correntian, "miserable son, why are you come so
late? You have been our ruin."
"Correntian, my brother, I will tell you all; give me your hand and
help me over these ruins."
"I am lying with crushed limbs under the overturned altar, I cannot
help you," groaned Correntian.
"All-merciful God! How has this happened?"
"I wanted to rescue the charter of the convent from the enemy, and to
hide it under the altar, but they surprised me, and in the struggle the
altar was overturned upon me," groaned Correntian.
"And the brethren, where are they?"
"They have fled, driven away stripped and bare, the whole party. Our
herds are driven off, the convent destroyed and plundered. Your father,
who had leagued himself with your mother's kindred, committed the
crime."
Trembling as he went, and with infinite effort, the youth had made his
way through the medley of fragments and ruins towards the spot whence
the voice proceeded; a hand now arrested his lifted foot.
"Stop, you will tread upon me." He stooped down, there lay Correntian
on the bare stone half buried under the enormous mass of the stone
altar.
"Oh! misery and horror!" screamed the blind man. "Crushed like a worm,
a great, strong man! and no one to help you, no one!"
"The brethren could scarcely save their own lives, the people of the
neighbourhood fled from the fearful scene; for three days I have lain
here, abandoned, and not a hand to give me a draught of water."
"I will fetch you some water, I will find the spring," cried Donatus,
but Correntian held him back.
"No, never mind, the well is choked, and it would not serve me now. My
torture is near its end, I feel--"
"Oh poor soul, and must you end so miserably?" lamented the younger
man. "Crushed by the altar you so faithfully served!"
"Do not grieve for me, I die as I have lived--for the Church. It is the
highest mercy that God should grant me to die such a death. There is
one who is yet more to be pitied than I." Donatus staggered.
"God help me, not the Abbot?"
"Yes, unhappy boy, the Abbot, who loved you with a love which was a sin
against the rules of our holy Order--he expiated his sin fearfully."
"Speak, for pity's sake, torture me no longer," implored Donatus. "What
happened to him?"
"Count Reichenberg demanded that he should give you up, for he thought
you were hidden in the convent, and when he refused--was obliged to
refuse--he had him bound and dragged into the court-yard and then--"
Correntian paused for breath.
"And then, what then?"
"Then they made him give his eyes for yours, as the Count had sworn."
A scream rang through the chapel, and its quivering echoes shook the
broken panes; then there was a silence as if the youth's heart had
cracked in that one cry, and he had fallen lifeless.
Correntian breathed slowly and painfully; angels of death spread their
dark wings and hovered round that ruined altar. Presently the stupor
that had followed the first blow was broken.
"Oh! eternal Justice, where art Thou that this should happen?" sobbed
Donatus. "God of grace, God of mercy! where wert Thou that such things
could be done? That pure, innocent and saintly man, punished for my
guilt--God of pity, how could'st Thou allow this?" And he sank down by
the broken altar, and wept as though he could shed all at once all the
tears that flood the world.
"Those eyes, those kind eyes, that so often looked at me with
affection, that watched over me so faithfully. Oh God! give me mine
again that I may weep for those far dearer ones!" But his lamentations
grew less loud and violent as though he were kneeling at the Abbot's
feet, and were listening tenderly to his soothing words as of yore.
"Oh! Lamb of God, patient and long suffering victim. You, in your
gentle soul, forgave me, for you were too lofty a spirit to remember
evil, but I, I can not forgive myself; my father, give me once--only
once, your beloved hand, that I may press a kiss of remorse upon
it--only once, only once, and then will I sink into damnation and
expiate for ever that which I can never make amends for." And then
again he was silent, all his strength of soul, which is needed even for
suffering, was spent; he was forced to pause and draw breath for a
fresh outburst.
"And the brethren," he groaned at length, "could they not protect him?"
"They were out numbered, there was a whole host of marauders," said
Correntian. Donatus stood up, "Oh if I had been there I would have
protected him. I would have covered him with my own body against a
whole world of them."
"Aye, if you had come at the right time, then it would all have been
different. Why did you not come, where were you waiting so long?"
"I followed the Duchess in vain for two whole days."
"And then?"
"And then I hastened home."
"And did that take nine days and nights!" cried Correntian.
"Brother! what are you saying? I left you only three days since."
"Woe upon you, son of the evil one!" screamed Correntian. "Where were
you? What cheated your senses as to the time? Did you linger in the
nether world that the days hastened by uncounted? Were you bewitched
that you did not observe that since you left more than a week is past?"
"Merciful Heaven! a week?" said Donatus, "and she told me that I had
slept but a night. Oh Beata! Beata! could you so deceive me?"
"Beata!" repeated Correntian. "Then it was a woman who stole all
consciousness of time from you! And you ruined all for a woman's sake.
This is how you kept your word to us, this is what came of your vows?
Woe, woe, all is come to pass that I foretold at your birth; you were
the changeling laid by the devil in our peaceful home to work our ruin,
and yet you deceived even me into recalling my own prediction and
trusting you. Nay more, Hear, oh Lord! and punish me for my sin. You
were the first human being I ever loved. And at the very moment when I
thought to set the crown of martyrdom on your head you relapse into the
base element whence you rose and drag us all down with you in your
fall!"
"Correntian, hear me. Yes, it is true, I have sinned; yes I have led
you all into ruin for a girl's sake, and I will expiate it through all
eternity. Not even my blindness could save me, Eusebius was right, the
devil is more cunning than man, and yet I am innocent and pure!"
"Pure," shouted Correntian. "How dare you call yourself so, criminal,"
and with all the added horror of his suffering he raised the upper part
of his body and stretched out his arm towards Donatus. "The curse that
was upon you even in your mother's womb, I take it up and pour it, a
double curse upon your head. Only your father's curse has weighed upon
you hitherto, I add to it your mother's curse; for your mother is the
Church you have brought to shame. An outcast shall you be, perjured
wretch, an outcast from the Church, an outcast from humanity--an
outcast from the flock of penitents who yet may hope. The grass shall
wither under your feet; the hand be palsied that offers you the sacred
Host; death and pestilence shall visit him who takes pity on your
hunger. Your bones shall fall to dust, and that their pestilential reek
may not poison the earth that yields food for other mortals, I bid you
flee away to the ends of the earth, up to the realm of death, to the
ice of the glaciers, as far as your feet can bear you, where not a
blade can grow that can imbibe the poison of your corpse. All that is
mortal of you shall be blotted out from creation to the very last jot,
and what is immortal shall suffer to all eternity such torment as has
racked my very marrow for these three days--" His voice failed, the
rigor of death had fallen upon him, he fell back on the stone floor.
Once more he raised himself, his clenched fists clutched at the
fissures in the ground in his last agony.
"Oh, Lord God! have mercy on my sins!" he groaned, seized with sudden
horror at the thought that he must depart without the last sacraments
and with a curse on his lips. He felt that death had laid its icy hand
on his heart; it was too late, his lips tried to stammer some words,
but his jaws were clenched in a convulsion. Thus he gave up his cold
and stubborn spirit, without consolation, without atonement, hoping for
no mercy, for he had shown none; yet he had been true to himself and
the Church, true even unto death.
But Donatus, crushed and banned, knelt by the corpse and prayed for
mercy on the hapless erring soul. Would God hearken still to the prayer
of the accursed? Could it reach the Throne of God? He bowed his
forehead to the dust, and gave the cold stones a farewell kiss. Then he
rose, and made his way back to the door where the boy was to wait.
"Boy, where are you?" he called out. No answer, the boy was gone. He
had heard Correntian's curse, and had fled; the blind man was abandoned
wholly.
Where should he go? The Church had disowned him, the earth cast him
out. "Lord, hast Thou not a drop of mercy left for me out of Thine
inexhaustible fount of grace? Did I not obey Thy will in so far as I
understood it? I gave the light of my eyes to escape love; the staff
that was the prop of my darkened life I broke and cast from me, and all
my sacrifices have turned to curses and my obedience to fatal ends. I
may well say with Job, 'My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids
is the shadow of death. Not for any injustice in mine hands, also my
prayer is pure.' Oh, Lord my God! if Thou didst see me in the hour when
I drove away the girl, that pure and faithful child, Thou must know
whether I then did not expiate my sins, and deserve Thy mercy or not.
Yea, I will flee from all the ties of life, I will die alone like the
chamois that hides itself in the glacier when its end is nigh; I will
efface the trace of my steps on earth that fatality may no longer
pursue me. Oh, God, my God! will the measure of my sorrows never be
full?"
So he stood, his arms uplifted, a dumb image of suffering--like a tree
stricken by a storm.
A few stars peeped out from time to time between the driving clouds;
the abyss lay in slumberous silence at his feet, and the night-breeze
snatched pitilessly at the ragged garments that scarcely sufficed to
cover him. The empty windows of the ruined stronghold of faith stared
at him like hollow eye-sockets, in dumb reproach. No cry from Heaven
above or the earth beneath responded to his lament, no pitying hand
clasped his to lead him to his last bourne; he sank down on a stone,
and hid his head in his hands. "O! God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken
me?"