"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 h.e.l.l 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, h.e.l.l would fain have power over the immortal part of us, let us s.n.a.t.c.h it from its power. It is yet time; I have as yet withstood that h.e.l.lish 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 G.o.d, my G.o.d! 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 h.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.ned.
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 sh.o.r.e 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 t.i.tle 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ce? 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 gla.s.s--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.