Almost seven months had pa.s.sed since the child was received into the monastery; a long time for the young and ardent wife who, as if it were a sin, could only slip away from time to time and by stealth to meet her husband behind the door where for months together the bitter wind blew the kisses away from their lips.
The cloistered nurse was sitting with her nursling at the dim little window in the east turret-room. It was a mild spring evening and death-like stillness reigned all round. Deep shadows fell on the bed of Lady Uta; one star threw its pale rays into the lonely room and they fell and were lost on the silk hangings, which Lord Ulrich had brought from the gorgeous East on his return from a pilgrimage. High up by the window something whisked by; it was a swallow flying home to the nest she had built at a giddy height on the ridge of the roof. The swallow was no better off indeed up there than Berntrudis herself--but she was free. So Berntrudis thought, and a deep sigh broke from her breast on which the children lay slumbering. In the corner, in Lady Uta"s chest, she could hear the soft and regular sound of the death-tick, and the white linen hanging in the room--the linen woven by the chaste hands of the penitent Berntrudis of old--was stirred by the draught through the room to a ghostly flutter. But the warm living soul that sat by the window, looking longingly out to the distance--where human hearts might beat and not count it a sin--she was thinking neither of death nor of penance, but her pulses throbbed while she wondered how late it was and whether her husband would tap for her to-night at the convent gate? She closed her eyes and threw back her head while her full lips breathed a kiss upon the air--a message of love sent out to meet her looked-for husband. But he came seldom, he had quite run wild during this long separation; he was wandering about unsettled and discontented, she knew it well; and bitter anxiety gnawed at her heart.
Thus she waits evening after evening till her head-aches, and she throws herself wearily into bed. Then the soul of the heart-sick woman is nailed as with iron clamps to two opposite points--the present and the expected moment, and the farther these two points recede from each other the more the poor heart is torn--an invisible rack of which the tension almost cracks her heart-strings.
Out on the other side in the western wing brother Correntian was leaning his hot brow against his window panes and gazing out on the falling night. He had closed the window, for the evening breath of spring wafted up the sweet perfume of half-opened flowers, which soothed his senses--so he flung the window to. He who cannot resist the temptations of Satan in small things will never conquer him in great ones! So there he stood in the soft spring evening shut in by walls damp with the chills of winter, and he cast a reproving glance across to the eastern tower where the wet-nurse was housed. He hated this woman, he himself knew not why, but he hated her with a deadly hatred; as often as he met her--when occasionally she went down into the court-yard to fetch water or walked in the little garden with the child--he turned his eyes earthwards with horror and aversion, as if in the poor, sweet, blooming woman he beheld the snake that destroyed Paradise. He would have poisoned her with a glance, have torn her up like a root of sin if he could; he had to endure her presence, that he understood; but he could not leave her in peace in his thoughts, his hatred must needs pursue her even into her quiet turret-chamber--it dragged him nightly from his bed and forced him to go to his window, and watch and spy the strong walls that sheltered her, as the foe spies out in his antagonist"s harness the joints through which he hopes to give him his death-blow. And he could see through those walls as though the stones were gla.s.s--he could always see her and loathe himself for doing so; see her wake in the morning and hold the children to her young and innocent breast--comb her long and waving hair--all--everything--he saw it all, whether he would or not. At this very moment he could see her, as she flung herself on her bed--and the kiss that her unguarded lips breathed into s.p.a.ce.
But stay! what was that? was it a trick of his senses--the very spirit of his hatred that had taken bodily form and glided across the star-lighted court-yard to the eastern tower? He held his breath--he checked the beating of his heart.
A second figure stole along by its side and cautiously knocked at the little turret-door. The first, a st.u.r.dy, manly figure in a short tunic such as was worn by serfs, disappeared into the tower; the other--quite unmistakably the gatekeeper--glided back again and returned to the gate-house. It is the fisherman--the nurse"s husband. He has bribed the gatekeeper and has stolen in to see his wife. Now--now he is up stairs, they are clasped in each other"s arms.--Oh! shame and disgrace--that this should happen within the sacred precincts of the convent!
The monk was shivering as in an ague fit, all the suppressed fire in his blood broke out. Loathing, aversion--he knew not what--all the furies of h.e.l.l were lashing him. He rushed raving down the rows of sleeping brethren.
"Up--get up--the cloister is defiled, do not suffer such disgrace. Up!
holy Abbot--the nurse up there is receiving stolen visits by night from her husband. Is this house to be the abode of love making and shameful doings?"
The brethren flung on their cowls in hot haste; the Abbot came out in high wrath. "She promised me that she would obey the convent-rules and she is doubly guilty, if she has let in her husband and broken in on the peace of the cloister."
"We will soon have him out!" snorted Conrad Stiero, delighted that for once he should have a chance of fighting again.
"Are you possessed by the Evil One that you come screaming us out of our sleep like this?" said brother Wyso, bustling breathlessly up and treading on his untied shoe-strings as he went.
"Shame on you, brother Correntian," whispered he in his ear, "to spoil the poor woman"s sport so--that is envy." Correntian started as if stabbed by a dagger--he threw a glance of flaming rage at Wyso and raised his hand threateningly. But he as quickly let it fall again, his face turned as pale as death, and his old stony calm suddenly overspread his wildly agitated features.
"That," said he, "is so base as to be unworthy of reply."
"A hypocrite even to yourself!" muttered Wyso between his teeth while the Abbot signed to the brethren to follow him. Then Conrad of Ramuss came modestly forward. "Most reverend abbot, permit that we--I and the younger brethren--remain behind. It seems to me that it is no scene for our eyes."
"True, you are right, brother Conrad," said the Abbot. "Accompany me alone, you elder brethren! but come softly, that we may not warn the evil-doers before we visit them with the penalty of sin."
So the stern judges went noiselessly across to the eastern tower with a lantern.
Up in the turret-room, there is whispering, soft laughter and crying, and silent happiness; the wife, taken quite by surprise, is folded in the arms of her husband intoxicated with delight. He has not told her why or how he has come, but the storm of joy in the poor soul that has thirsted so for love is so wild that she can only caress him and kiss him and will neither hear nor know anything, but that he is there--a lovely fulfilment of a spring night"s dream.
But--voices on the stairs! coming up! A beam of light falls with fearful brightness through the crack of the door. Husband and wife start from their blissful dream; there is a loud and threatening knock, "Open the door to his reverence the Abbot," cried Conrad Stiero. There could be no delay.
"Be easy," said the man to his trembling wife, "am I not your plighted husband? What have you to fear?" and he went forward with a determined manner and let in the brethren.
"G.o.d and the Saints preserve us," said the Abbot as he went in.
"Berntrudis--unworthy daughter of your pious ancestress, how dare you carry on such unseemly doings?"
"And what is the harm, reverend father," said the fisherman boldly. "If a wife makes love to her husband? I never heard any one call such doings unseemly!"
Correntian, who was carrying the lamp, lifted it up and let its full light fall on the undaunted speaker"s face. It was a handsome, bold, manly countenance, not free from the traces of a wild life. The deep lines on the forehead showed that it was long since a woman"s loving hand had smoothed it, his neglected doublet of frieze plainly told of wild wanderings in wind and weather. Correntian took it all in at a glance, he understood in that instant as if by inspiration all that the man had suffered, and, instead of pitying him, he longed to thrust a dagger into that broad breast where just now the woman had lain--the eager, loving woman that he scorned and hated. And as if some suspicion, some comprehension of this hostile glance had dawned upon the man"s mind he answered with a wrathful flash from his large eyes, and for all at once the humble serf was turned into a raging fiend checked by no sense of bashfulness.
"Ay, you may look at me, monk," he exclaimed threateningly in his broad Rhaetian accent, "I am what you have made me. Am I not smooth and fine enough for you great lords? You take away the dearest thing a man has--take it away as you did from me, so that he wanders alone about the fields and woods, and then do you think he will care to smarten himself up and streak himself down?"
"Woe upon you! what are you saying!" cried the Abbot. "You break in like a thief on the peace of the convent, you bribe the gatekeeper, you are guilty of such dreadful sin, and then you dare to speak like that?"
"I speak like one whose measure is full, and overfull. I have nothing but this woman and you take her away from me--take away a man"s married wife and his heart out of his body, to suckle a strange child. What is the child to me that I am to sacrifice all that is dearest to me to him? Seven months have I borne it patiently and that is enough. The brat there can do without a wet-nurse now. My own child has shared its food with him long enough--look here what a stunted plant it has grown, while the strange brat has thriven and got strong; my heart ached in my body when I saw the poor little thing again!--I tell you plainly, for I am not clever at lying, I came to steal my wife away, my sacred property. But now I ask you--as you have found me out--give me back my wife and my child. I desire neither reward nor thanks, but I will have back what is my own."
"Spare your words, we have shown you too much favour in listening to you so long. What if we did take an impure and sinful woman within our sacred cloister walls against all law and usage, do you think we did so without any necessity and simply for our pleasure? The sacred vow of a dead woman which we were bound to honour was the solemn duty which compelled us to such an abominable proceeding. And when we received your wife we hoped that the sanct.i.ty of the place and the sacredness of her office would purify her vain heart so that she would not succ.u.mb to the temptations of sensual pleasures and base impulses and would cause no scandal to our chaste brethren. This indeed she solemnly vowed, and oh! Berntrudis, how badly you have kept your word! Alas! that the pure child of the Church should be compelled to drink from so impure a vessel. Willingly would I spare him this, of that you may both be very sure. Still, so it must be, we cannot yet dispense with your services, and if you had remained true to your duty, at the end of your probation we would have rewarded you and raised you up in the sight of G.o.d and man. As it is we must force you to do that which you do not do willingly. And you," he continued to the husband, "you who have broken into our house like a weasel into a dove-cot, in contempt of our prohibition under the severest penalties--you may thank us for the mild punishment we impose--you are under a ban not to come within a mile round the convent so long as we need the offices of your wife. You must go up to the moorland lake and catch fish for us there till the winter-storms next sweep down on the heath."
A cry of horror from the husband and wife answered this frightful sentence, the gentle Abbot had no conception of its cruelty. What could he know--a calm old man whose blood ran so sluggishly in his veins--of the pa.s.sion and longing and torment of two hearts that have grown into one, when they are torn asunder?
Only one there present understood it; he who stood silent, his nails dug into his crossed arms--and yet of pity he knew nothing, that unsparing zealot who had no mercy on others because he knew of no mercy on himself. "I am suffering--you may suffer too" was the frightful thought by which, in his self-torment, he released himself from the duty of loving his neighbour. There he stood, the stony man, with an unmoved stare--the chaste and stern Correntian.
But Wyso shook his head and said to the Abbot in Latin, "Go no farther."
Berntrudis had fallen crying into her husband"s arms and hid her face on his broad and labouring breast; but Correntian stepped forward with a hasty gesture, "Stand apart!" he said with pale lips. "Do not offend our eyes by such a sight."
The man lifted his st.u.r.dy head and the words he had kept between his teeth with so much difficulty broke out, "This is too much! Who is to forbid me kissing my wife--who can force me to believe that it is a sin when husband and wife make love to each other? You--you make a sin of it by forbidding it. By what right do you forbid a man and his wife to see each other--by what right do you put asunder those whom G.o.d and the Church have joined together?"
"The Church can bind and it can loose," said the Abbot wrathfully. "Do not call us to account."
"Why waste so many words?" muttered Correntian between his teeth. "He is the convent"s bondsman--he and his wife; you can do what you like with him."
"You--with your gloomy corpse-face--" cried the infuriated man. "You are my enemy--even if you said nothing I could see it in your face.
What have I done to you that you pour gall into the poor serf"s little drop of happiness?"
"Now--come away, we are tired. Do you think we are going to spend the whole night arguing with you as to whether or no you will do the Abbot"s bidding?" Conrad Stiero now threw in.
The veins in the fisherman"s forehead were swollen with rage and he raised his fist threateningly.
"I am going," he said, "but not without my wife and child," and he put his arm round Berntrudis. "Let me pa.s.s or mischief will come of it!"
The Abbot drew back terrified, even brother Wyso started back, only Correntian remained immoveable. Stiero set his broad back against the door, but with a heavy lurch of his shoulder the fisherman pushed him almost off his balance, as if lifting a door off its posts.
"Oho! is that what you mean?" cried the monk, eager to fight, "then you do not know Conrad Stiero!" And with a mighty blow of his fist on his opponent"s forehead he sent the strong man staggering back with a heavy fall on to the floor. "I will teach you to behave yourself, you clown!"
said Stiero, kneeling on the vanquished man, and he bound his hands with the cord which he took from round his own waist. The woman had sunk on the ground by the side of her husband, and Correntian made a movement--only one--as though he would raise and support her; but he started back in horror of himself and left her lying there.
Stiero desired the man to rise. "You have found out now that we are no women under our cowls, to be frightened by violence. Now kneel down, poor wretch, and crave for mercy, for your life is no safer than that of a mad dog."
The man, with his hands tied across each other, stood silent in a stupor of despair; he knelt down as Stiero bid him, but he did not utter a word, he fixed his sullen gaze on no one, he knew his fate and had lost all hope.
"What do you think, my brethren," said the Abbot turning to the others, "shall we give him up to the provost to be judged?"
"Yes!" replied Correntian.
"Then his sentence is p.r.o.nounced; he has lifted his hand against a priest, his life is forfeited," said the Abbot.
The woman gave a piercing shriek of anguish and fell at Correntian"s feet.
"Pity--mercy!" she sobbed out almost mad with terror, and she clasped his knees with all the strength of despair, for she too felt that her ruin was lowering in those sinister eyes. A scarlet flush lighted up the monk"s pale face--as the northern lights flash across a winter midnight-sky--he flung her from him and clung to the bed-post for support.
"If you do not have some regard for the nurse you will kill the boy,"
said a voice suddenly in Latin, and father Eusebius was seen standing by the unhappy woman as if he had sprung out of the ground.
"G.o.d be thanked!" muttered brother Wyso. "Here at length is a reasonable man."