and disliked, and a cruel tongue and a bad name on the hillside, but
she had been his mother, and when she had lain dying she had been
sorrowful to think that she would leave him alone.
She had been his mother, and he came to rifle her grave.
What a crime! What a foul, black crime, such as men and women would
scarce speak of with bated breath by their hearths in the full blaze of
day! What a crime! He abhorred himself for doing it, as he would have
abhorred a poisoner or a parricide seeing them pass to the gallows.
'Oh, mother, mother, forgive me! She will have it so!' he sobbed with a
piteous prayer.
He thought that, being dead, his mother would understand and forgive,
as she would never have understood or forgiven when living.
Then he struck his spade down into the heavy clay on which no
bird-sown seed of blade or blossom had yet had any time to spring.
He dug and dug and dug, till the sweat rolled off his limbs and his
shoulders ached and his arms quivered.
He threw spadefuls of clay one after another out on the ground around,
his eyes growing used to the darkness, and his hands gripping the spade
handle harder and harder in desperation. The very horror of his action
nerved him to feverish force.
'Oh, Santina, Santina, you give my soul to hell fires everlasting!' he
cried aloud once, as he jammed the iron spade down deeper and deeper
into the ground, tearing the stiff soil asunder and crushing the stones.
The moon came forth from the clouds, and the burial-ground grew white
with her light where the shadows of the wall did not fall. He looked
up once; then he saw black crosses, black skulls and cross-bones, rank
grass, crumbling headstones, nameless mounds all round him, and beyond
them the tower of the church.
But his mother's coffin he did not find. In vain he dug, and searched,
and frantically tossed aside the earth in such haste to have ended and
finished with his horrible task.
His mother's coffin he could not find.
Under the rays of the moon the desecrated ground lay, all broken up
and heaped and tossed together, as though an earthquake had riven the
soil. But the deal shell which he had made with his own hands and borne
thither on his own shoulders, he could not find.
'She will never believe! she will never believe!' he thought.
Santina would never believe that he had come there if he met her at
dawn with empty hands. He could hear in fancy her shrill, cruel,
hissing shriek of mockery and derision; and he felt that if he did so
hear it in reality it would drive him mad.
He dug, and dug, and dug, more furiously, more blindly, going
unconsciously farther and farther away from where the two crossed
chestnut sticks had been; they had been uprooted and buried long before
under the first heap of clay which he had thrown out from the grave.
He had forgotten that they alone were his landmarks and guides; in the
darkness which had been followed by the uncertain, misleading light of
the moon, he had gone far from them.
His work had become almost a frenzy with him; his nerves were strung to
an uncontrollable pitch of excitation, fear, and horror, and obstinacy,
and a furious resolve to obtain what he sought, with a terrible dread
of what he should see when he should reach it, had together, in their
conflict of opposing passions, driven him beside himself.
He dug on and on, without any consciousness of how far he had gone from
his goal, and no sense left but the fury of determination to possess
himself of what he knew was there in the earth beneath him.
He stood up to his knees in the yawning clay, with the heavy clods of
it flung up on either side of him, and the moon hanging up on high in
the central heavens, her light often obscured by drifting cloud wrack,
and at other times shining cold and white into his face, as though by
its searching rays to read his soul.
How long he had been there he knew not; time was a blank to him; his
supernatural terrors were lost in the anguish of dread lest he should
be unable to do Santina's will.
He felt as though he strove with the fiend himself.
Who but some hideous power of evil could have moved the corpse and
baffled and beaten him thus? Perhaps truly the charms had been things
born of the devil, and the devil had taken them both to himself,
and the body of his mother with them. He dug on and on frantically,
deriving relief from the fever within him through that violent exertion
which strained every vein and muscle in his body, till he felt as
though beaten with iron rods.
He did not see, in the confusion of his mind and the gloom of the
night, that he had come close under the graveyard wall, and was digging
almost at its base. He believed himself still to be on the spot where
he had buried his mother; and he had deepened the pit about him until
he was sunk up to his loins. He never remembered the danger of the
priest or the sacristan waking and rising and seeing him at his occult
labour.
He never remembered that the bell would toll for matins whilst the
stars would be still in their places, and the hills and the valleys
still dark. All sense had left him except one set, insane resolve to
obtain that by which the beauty of a woman was alone to be won.
Of crime he had grown reckless, of emotion he had none left; he was
only frantically, furiously determined to find that which he had come
to seek. Standing in the damp, clogging soil, with the sense of moving
creatures about him which his labours had disturbed in the bowels of
the earth, he dug and dug and dug until his actions had no purpose or
direction in them, only hurling clod upon clod in breathless, aimless,
senseless monotony and haste.
At last his spade struck on some substance other than the heavy soil
and the slimy worms; he thrilled through all his frame with triumph and
with terror.
At last! At last! He never doubted that it was the coffin he sought; he
did not know that his mother's grave lay actually yards away from him.
Oh, were there only light, he thought; it was so dark, for the moon had
now passed down behind the wall of the graveyard, and there would be
only henceforth growing ever darker and darker that dense gloom which
precedes the dawn. He dared not go on digging; he was afraid that the
iron of his spade should stave in the soft wood of the coffin, and cut
and maim the body within it. He stooped and pushed the clay aside with
his hands, trying to feel what the tool had struck.
What met his touch was not wood, but metal--rounded, smooth, polished;
though clogged and crusted with the clay-bed in which it lay. He pushed
the earth farther and farther away, and the object he had reached
seemed to lie far down, under the soil, and to be held down by it.
He was himself hemmed in by the broken clods, and stood in the hole
he had dug, half imprisoned by it. But he could move enough to strike
a few remaining matches on the iron of the spade, and let their light
fall on what he had unearthed.
Then it seemed to him that a miracle had been wrought.
Before him lay a silver image of the Child Christ. His knees shook,
his whole frame trembled, his lips gasped for breath; the flame of the
matches died out; he was left in the dark with the image.
'It is the Gesu! It is the Gesu!' he muttered, sure that his dead
mother, or the saints, or both, had wrought this miracle to show him
the evil of his ways.
In truth, the statue had lain there many centuries, buried against the
wall by pious hands in times when the torch of war had been carried
flaming over all the wasted villages and ravaged fields in the plain
below.
But no such explanation dawned on the mind of Caris.
To him it was a miracle wrought by the saints or by the dead. In the
dark he could feel its round shoulders, its small hands folded as in
prayer, its smooth cheek and brow, its little breast; and he touched
them reverently, trembling in every nerve.
He had heard of holy images shown thus to reward belief or to confound
disbelief.
His faith was vague, dull, foolish, but it was deep-rooted in him. He
was a miserable sinner; and the dead and the saints turned him thus
backward on his road to hell; so he thought, standing waist-deep in the
rugged clay and clutching his spade to keep himself from falling in a
swoon.
V
To Caris miracles were as possible as daily bread.
He knew little of them, but he believed in them with his whole soul. It
seemed wonderful that the heavenly powers should create one for such
a poor and humble creature as himself; but it did not seem in any way
wonderful that such a thing should be.
The Divine Child was there in the earth, keeping away all evil things
by its presence, and he could not doubt that the saints who were with
Mary, or perchance his own mother's purified spirit, had called the
image there to save him from the fiend.
He sank on his knees on the clay, and said over breathlessly all the
Aves he could think of in his awe. They were few, but he repeated them
over and over again, hoping thus to find grace and mercy for his sin
for having broken into these sacred precincts and disturbed the dead in
their rest.
But what of Santina? Would she believe him when he told her of this
wondrous thing?
If he went to her with his hands empty, would she ever credit that he
had courage to come upon this quest? He could hear, as it were, at his
ear, her mocking, cruel, incredulous laughter.
She had said, 'Bring me the magic toys.' What would the tale of
a miracle matter to her? She wanted treasure and knowledge. She
would care nothing for the souls of the dead or the works of the
saints--nothing.
He knew that her heart was set on getting things which she knew were
evil, but believed were powerful for good and ill, for fate and future.
Suddenly a thought which froze his veins with its terror arose in him,
and fascinated him with its wickedness and his daring. What if he took
the holy image to her in proof that he had tried to do her will, and
had been turned from his errand by powers more than mortal?
Since she had believed in the occult powers of his mother's divining
tools, surely she would still more readily believe in the direct and
visible interposition of the dead?
If he bore the Gesu to her in his arms, she could not then doubt that
he had passed the hours of this night in the graveyard of St. Fulvo.
She could not, before its sacred testimony, be angry, or scornful, or
incredulous, or unkind.
But could he dare to touch the holy thing? Would the image consent to
be so taken? Would not its limbs rebel, its lips open, its body blister
and blast the mortal hands which would thus dare to desecrate it?
A new fear, worse, more unspeakable than any which had moved him
before, now took possession of him as he knelt there on the bottom of
the pit which he had dug, gazing through the blackness of the darkness
to the spot where he knew the silver body of the Christ Child lay.
The thing was holy in his eyes, and he meant to use it for unholy
purposes. He felt that his hands would wither at the wrist if they took
up that silver Gesu from its bed of earth.
His heart beat loudly against his ribs, his head swam.
It was still dark, though dawn in the east had risen.
He crawled out of the pit of clay with difficulty, holding the silver
image to his bosom with one arm, and stood erect, and gazed around him.
If saints or friends were there beside him, they made no sign; they
neither prevented nor avenged the sacrilege.
The sweet, sharp smell of the wet blowing grasses was in his nostrils,
and the damp clinging sods were about his feet, dragging at the soles
of his boots, that was all.
He began to think of the way in which he could, thus burdened, climb
the wall.
The silver Christ was heavy in his hold, and he needed to have both
hands free to ascend the height above him.
He knew it was an image and not a living god; yet none the less was
it in his sight holy, heaven-sent, miraculous, potent for the service
of the saints, and to take it up and bear it away seemed to him like
stealing the very Hostia itself.
True, he would bring it back and give it to the vicar, and let it,
according to the reverend man's choice, be returned to its grave or
laid on the altar of the church for the worship of the people, and the
continued working of miracles.
Yes, he said to himself, assuredly he would bring it back. He would
only bear it in his arms most reverently to Santina, that she might see
and believe, and become his; and then he would return hither with it
and tell the priest the wondrous story.
Yet he shook as with palsy at the thought of carrying the blessed image
as though it were a mere living human babe.
It seemed to him as if no man could do such a deed and live. The
anointed hands of a priest might touch it, but not his--his so hard and
rough and scarred with work, never having held aught better than his
pipe of clay and his tool of wood or of iron, and the horn haft of his
pocket-knife.
Nor was even his motive for taking it pure. He wanted through it to
justify himself in the sight of a woman, and to find favour with her,
and to gratify a strong and furious passion. His reasons were earthly,
gross, selfish; they could not redeem, or consecrate, or excuse his
act. That he knew.
All was still, dusky, solitary; the church was wrapt in gloom, the
daybreak did not reach it; only above the inland hills the white light
spread where he could not see; behind the high wall of the graveyard,
beyond the ranges of the inland hills, the gray soft light of daybreak
had arisen.
He thought he heard voices all around him, and amongst them that of
his mother warning him to leave untouched the sacred Child, and get up
on his feet and flee. But above these he heard the laughter of Santina
mocking him as an empty-handed, white-livered fool, who came with
foolish tales of visions to hide his quaking soul.
Better that his arms should shrivel, that his sight should be blinded,
that his body should be shrunken and stricken with the judgment of
heaven, than that he should live to hear her red lips laugh and call
him a feckless coward.
With all the life which was in him shrinking and sickening in deadly
fear, he stooped down, groped in the dark until he found the image,
grasped its metal breast and limbs, and dragged it upward from the
encircling earth.
It was of the size of a human child of a year old.
He plucked it roughly upward, for his terror made him rude and fierce,
and held it in his arms, whilst he wondered in his great awe and horror
that no judgment of affronted heaven followed on his desperate act.
All was still well with him; he saw, he heard, he breathed, he lived;
the cool night air was blowing about him, the clouds were letting fall
a faint fine mist-like rain.
He undid the belt about his loins--a mere piece of webbing with a
buckle--strapped it around the body of the Gesu, and taking the ends
thereof between his firm, strong teeth, sought in the dark for the
place whence he had descended, and found it.
He climbed the wall with slow, laborious, and painful effort, the dead
weight of the silver figure encumbering him as he mounted with cat-like
skill, cutting his hands and bruising his skin against the rough,
undressed stones.
He dropped carefully down on the earth beneath, and began the descent
of the hill.
'When I can bring the little Christ back, I can get the tools,' he
thought. It seemed a small matter.
He was forced to leave behind him his spade and pickaxe.
VI
When at last he reached the top of the coping, he saw that it was dawn.
His heart leaped in his breast. Down in the chestnut coppice Santina
would be awaiting him; and she would believe--surely, certainly she
would believe--when she should see this holy Gesu brought out from the
tomb.
He was in good time. It was barely day. He unslung the little Christ
and took it again in his arms, as carefully as a woman would take a
new-born child. The polished limbs grew warm in his hands; its small
face leaned against his breast; he lost his awe of it; he ceased to
fear what it might do to him; he felt a kind of love for it.
'Oh, Gesu, dear Gesu, smile on us!' he said to it; and although it was
still too dark to see more than its outline faintly, he thought he saw
the mouth move in answer.
Holding it to him, he started homeward down the stony slope. He was
thankful to be out of that ghostly place of tombs; he was thankful to
have escaped from that scene of terror whole in limb, and uncursed if
unpardoned; the tension of his nerves in the past hours had given place
to an unreasoning and overstrung gladness. But for his reverence for
the burden he carried, he could have laughed aloud.
Only once now and then, as he went, his conscience smote him. His poor
mother!--he had forgotten her; he had displaced the mark set above her
grave; no one would ever now be sure where she was buried. Did it hurt
her, what he had done? Would she be jealous in her grave of the woman
for whom he did it? Was it cruel to have come away without smoothing
the rugged earth above her bed and saying an Ave for her?
But these thoughts, this remorse, were fleeting; his whole mind was
filled with the heat of passion and its expectation. Fatigued and
overworked and sleepless as he was, he almost ran down the paths of the
hills in his haste, and tore his skin and his clothes as he pushed his
way through the brushwood and furze, guarding only the Gesu from hurt
as he went.
The day had now fully dawned, and the sun had risen; its rosy flush
was warm over all the land and sky; the woodlarks and the linnets were
singing under the bushes; the wild doves were dabbling in the rivulets
of water; the hawks were circling high in the light.
On the wooded hillside all was peaceful with the loveliness of the
unworn day; the air was full of the smell of heather and wet mosses and
resinous pine-cones; rain was falling above where the church was, but
in these lower woods there was a burst of sunrise warmth and light.
None of these things, however, did he note. He went on and on, downward
and downward, holding the silver image close against his breast,
scarcely feeling the boughs which grazed his cheeks or the flints which
wounded his naked feet.
When he came within sight of the place where he had left Santina the
night before, he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of her through
the tangle of leaves and twigs and fronds. And true enough to her
tryst she was there, waiting impatiently, fretting, wishing the time
away, blaming her own folly in setting all her hopes of freedom and
the future on a foolish, cowardly churl--for so she called him in her
angry thought, as she crouched down under the chestnut scrub and saw
the daylight widen and brighten.
She ran a great risk in hiding there; if any of her people or their
carters saw her, their suspicions would be aroused and their questions
endless. She would say that she came for mushrooms; but they would not
believe her. She was too well known for a late riser and a lazy wench.
Still, she had imperilled everything to keep her word with him, and she
waited for him seated on the moss, half covered with leaves, except at
such times as her impatient temper made her cast prudence to the winds
and rise and look out of the thicket upward to the hills.
She had made herself look her best; a yellow kerchief was tied over her
head, her hair shone like a blackbird's wing, her whole face and form
were full of vivid, rich, and eager animal beauty. To get away--oh,
only to get away! She looked up at the wild doves sailing over the tops
of the tall pines and envied them their flight.
Caris saw that eager, longing look upon her countenance before he
reached her, and he thought it was caused by love for him.
He held the Gesu to his bosom with both hands and coursed like
lightning down the steep slope which still divided him from her; he
was unconscious of how jaded, soiled, and uncomely he looked after his
long night's work and all his ghostly fears; his feet were scratched
and bleeding, his shirt soaked in sweat, his flesh bespattered with the
clay, his hair wet and matted with moisture; he had no remembrance of
that, he had no suspicion that even in that moment of agitation, when
she believed her errand done, her will accomplished, she was saying in
her heart as she watched him draw nigh: 'He has got them, he has got
them; but, Holy Mary! what a clown!--he has all the mud of fifty graves
upon him!'
He rushed downward to her, and held the silver image out at
arm's-length, and sobbed and laughed and cried aloud, indifferent who
might hear, his voice trembling with awe and ecstasy.
'It is the Gesu Himself, the Gesu--and I have brought Him to you
because now you will believe--and my mother must be well with them
in heaven or they never had wrought such a miracle for me--and such
a night as I have passed, dear God! such things as I have seen and
heard--but the Child smiles--the Child is pleased--and now you will
believe in me, though I could not find the magic things--and I said
to myself when she sees the Gesu she will believe--and she will be
mine--mine--mine! The Lord forgive me, that has been all my thought,
though heaven wrought such a miracle for me!'
The words poured out of his mouth one over another like the rush of
water let loose through a narrow channel. He was blind with his own
excess of emotion, his own breathless desire; he did not see the
changes which swept over the face of Santina in a tumult of wrath,
wonder, fury, eagerness, suspicion, cupidity, as one after another each
emotion went coursing through her soul and shining in her eyes, making
her beauty distorted and terrible.
Her first impulse was fury at his failure to bring her what she wanted;
the second was to comprehend in a flash of instantaneous insight the
money value of that to which he only attached a spiritual merit.
She snatched the image from him, and in the morning light she saw the
silver of it glisten through the earth which still in parts clung to
it. It might be better, surer, more quick aid to her than the uncertain
divining tools whereof she was ignorant of the full employ. Her rapid
mind swept over in a second all the uses to which it might be put,
and comprehended the superstitious adoration of it which moved Caris
and made him control his passion for herself, as he stood gazing at
it in her arms, his own hands clasped in prayer, and his whole frame
trembling with the portentous sense of the mercy of heaven which had
been made manifest to him.
She in a second divined that it had been part of some buried treasure
which he had by accident disinterred, but she was too keen and wise to
let him see that she did so; it was her part to humour and to confirm
him in his self-deception.
She calmed the angry, gibing words which rose to her lips, she held
back the exultant covetousness which flashed in her eyes and betrayed
itself in the clutching grasp of her fingers; she gazed on the Gesu
with a worship half real, half affected, for it was also a holy image
to her, if its sanctity were to her outweighed and outshone by its
monetary worth in precious metal.
'Tell me how you found this?' she asked, under her breath, as one
almost speechless with awe before such a manifestation from on high.
She was really in genuine fear. He had been into precincts which none
could enter without offending immortal and unseen powers. He had done
it at her bidding. Who could be sure that the offending spirits would
not avenge his sacrilege on her?
But through her fears she kept her hold upon the image, whilst she
asked the question.
Tremblingly he told her how he had passed the awful hours of the night
and failed to find his mother's tomb, but in its stead found this.
'And I brought it that you should know that I had been there,' he said
in conclusion, 'that you might know I had been where you willed, and am
no coward; and we will take it back together and give it to the holy
man up yonder--and now--and now--and now----'
His hands touched her, his breath was upon her, his timid yet violent
passion blazed in his eyes and quivered all over his frame: he had
dared all things for his reward, and he claimed it. But, quick as
lightning, and merciless as dishonest, she put the holy image between
her and him. The sacred silver froze his burning lips.
His arms fell to his side as though they were paralyzed.
'Not while the Gesu is with us,' she murmured in rebuke. 'Let us not be
unworthy--you say yourself a miracle was wrought.'
'But----'
He stood before her, checked, daunted, breathing heavily, like a horse
thrown back on its haunches in full flight.