THE JUDGMENT OF THE SAINTS.
Early the next morning Father Hieronymus entered the room that was
occupied by Lady Regina von Emmeritz and old Dorthe. Pale from
watching and suffering, the beautiful young girl sat by the bedside of
her faithful servant. When the Jesuit entered, Regina rose quickly.
"Save Dorthe, my father!" she impetuously exclaimed ... "I have looked
for you everywhere, and you have abandoned me!"
"Hush!" said the Jesuit whispering. "Speak low, the walls have ears.
So ... actually? ... Dorthe is sick? Poor old woman, it is too bad,
but I cannot help her. They have penetrated our disguise. They
suspect us. We must fly this day--this moment."
"Not before you have made Dorthe well again. I beseech you, my father;
you are wise, you know all the remedies; give her an immediate
restorative, and we will follow you wherever you choose.
"Impossible, we have not a moment to lose. Come!"
"Not without Dorthe, my father! Holy Virgin, how could I abandon her,
my nurse, my motherly friend?"
The Jesuit went to the bed, took the old woman's hand, touched her
forehead, and pointed to it in silence, with an air which Regina
understood but too well.
"She is dead!" cried the young girl with dismay.
"Yes, what then?" replied the Jesuit, a marked sinister smile on his
lips fighting with the air of regret he tried to assume.
"You see, my child," he added, "that the saints have wished to spare
our faithful old friend a toilsome journey, and have taken her instead
to heavenly glory. There is nothing more to be done here. Come!"
But Regina had perceived the malignant smile through her tears, and it
struck her with an indescribable horror. She seemed to detect a dark
secret.
"Come!" he repeated hastily. "I will give Messenius' wife, who is a
Catholic, the charge of burying our friend."
Regina's dark eyes looked on the monk with fear and aversion.
"At seven o'clock yesterday evening," she said, "Dorthe was in good
health. Then she drank the beverage of strengthening herbs which you
have prepared for her every evening. At eight o'clock she was taken
ill ... ten hours afterwards she has ceased to live."
"The fatigue of the long journey ... a cold, an _inflammation_ ...
nothing more is wanted. Come!" said the monk uneasily.
But Regina did not move.
"Monk," she said in a voice trembling with disgust and horror, "you
have poisoned her."
"My child, my daughter, what are you saying? Grief has clouded your
reason; come, I forgive you."
"She was a burden to you ... I saw your impatience on our journey here.
And now you wish me to place myself in your power without protection.
Holy Virgin, save me! I will not go with you!"
The Jesuit's mobile features instantly changed their expression, and
assumed that commanding air which had made Messenius yield.
"Child," he said, "do not draw upon yourself the anger of the saints by
listening to the voice of the tempter. Remember _where_ you are,
unfortunate, and _who_ you are. A moment's delay, and I leave you here
a prey to want, captivity, and death; a target for the heretic's scorn,
a lost sheep abandoned by the Holy Virgin. Here perdition and misery
... there in your Fatherland the favour of the saints. Choose quickly,
for the sleigh stands waiting; the morning dawns, and day must not find
us in this nest of heretics."
Regina hesitated.
"Swear," she said, "that you are innocent of Dorthe's death!"
"I swear it!" exclaimed the Jesuit, "by the cross and by the holy
Loyola's bones. May the firm ground open under my feet, and the abyss
swallow me alive, if I have ever given this woman any drink but what
was healthful and medicinal."
"Well, then," said Regina, "the saints have heard your oath, and
written it down in the book of judgment. Farewell, my mother, my
friend! Come, let us go!"
Both hurried out.
It was still dark. A pale ray of light appeared over the dark firs on
the edge of Koivukoski fall. The horses stood harnessed. The sleepy
guard at the castle gate gave a free passage to the physician, who was
well known to all.
The Jesuit already thought himself in safety, when a sleigh from the
mainland met the fugitives on the narrow bridge, and drove close up to
them in the darkness. The monk's sleigh turned on the edge, and was
only hindered by the half-rotten railing from upsetting into the depths.
Regina gave a cry of terror.
At the sound of this cry a man sprang from the other sleigh and
approached the fugitives.
"Regina!" cried a well-known voice, which trembled from surprise.
"You are mistaken, my friend," the Jesuit hastened to say in a
disguised voice. "Give way to Doctor Albertus Simonis, army physician
in the service of his Royal Majesty."
"Ha! it is you, accursed Jesuit!" cried the stranger. "Guard, to arms!
To arms! and seize the greatest villain on earth." And so saying, he
grasped the monk by his fur cloak.
For an instant Hieronymus tried to disengage the sleigh and escape
through the speed of the horses. But when he found that this was
impossible, he left his fur cloak behind him, wriggled from his enemy's
grasp, and, throwing himself quickly over the railing of the bridge,
jumped down on the ice, which, in the terrible cold, had formed between
the castle island and the mainland. He soon vanished in the dim
morning light.
Alarmed by the cry, the castle gate guard discharged his musket after
the fugitive, but without effect. Some of the soldiers seemed inclined
to pursue him on the ice.
"Do not do that, boys!" cried a bearded sergeant, "it has thawed during
the night, and the stream has cut the ice underneath; I think it will
break up to-day."
"But the fellow jumped down there!" cried some.
"The devil will get him," replied the sergeant, calmly lighting his
morning pipe. "I guess by this time he is not far from Ämmä."
"What did you say?" cried the driver of the sleigh in alarm.
"I say that the old woman* has got her breakfast to-day," answered the
sergeant with perfect composure. "Just listen, she barks like a
chained dog; now she is satisfied."
* The Finnish word ämmä means old woman.
All listened, appalled, to the din of the waters. It seemed to them as
if the mighty fall roared more wildly, more terribly than before, in
the dreary winter dawn. The sergeant was right, it was like the howl
of an angry dog, when they have thrown him his prey.