Eusebius had looked on at the proceedings, silent and un.o.bserved till it was necessary to speak; he raised the trembling woman from the floor, and kindly comforting her he led her to the bed on which she sank down powerless. Correntian let go the bed-post he was clasping, as if it had suddenly turned to hot iron.
Eusebius" gaze, which he could not evade, fell upon him with a strange smile; Correntian hated that gaze, and from that moment he remained silent as if spell-bound by the gentle power of those clear eyes.
"What do you mean, worthy brother Eusebius?" asked the Abbot, unskilled in such matters.
"He means," interpreted Wyso in Latin with an impatient yawn, "that the woman"s milk will fly to her brain or turn to poison, if you torment her so. Brother Correntian may fatten the brat with an extract of his doctrines of asceticism, but he will then probably not become a man but an angel at once," he added spitefully.
Correntian trembled with rage, but the eye he feared still rested upon him and kept him within bounds.
Meanwhile the Abbot had turned to the fisherman.
"We will let justice give place to mercy--for the sake of your wife, our child"s foster-mother. We stand by our first decision; till we release your wife you are banished as well as the gatekeeper who let you in. Henceforth no lay-brother shall guard the convent gate, but our brethren shall have the charge of the little gate-house in turn. Hope for nothing more and do not attempt again to penetrate our sanctuary--a second time will be your ruin."
He turned to the Superior who stood in confusion in the background, for though he was innocent of this intrusion he had good-naturedly permitted meetings outside the convent walls, and so had made the gatekeeper too lax in the performance of his duty.
"Lead the prisoner up to the moor; there hand him over to the shepherd and our lay-brethren at St. Valentine"s--they can release him from his bonds. The shepherd will provide him with nourishment and other necessaries and will be answerable to me for his not quitting the moor.--Come now, brethren, we will not waste another hour of our deferred night"s rest."
The brethren followed him in silence.
"I am sorry for the poor creatures," said Stiero to Wyso in an undertone. "It was Correntian who stirred up all the mischief. Why in the world can he never sleep?"
"That he and G.o.d alone can tell!" said Wyso, shrugging his shoulders.
"Take leave of your wife," said the Prior as the monks disappeared. "I dare not give you any farther respite, for the stern father Correntian will a.s.suredly watch us from his window up there."
The husband and wife fell into each other"s arms in bitter grief, but they suddenly started apart again, for a monk still remained behind--are they not to be allowed to press heart to heart before parting?
But the monk who has stayed behind is brother Eusebius; his face is radiant with mild dignity and sweet compa.s.sion. He signs to them with his slender withered hand that they need have no fear of him, for he has stayed to be a comfort to the miserable wife and not as a spy.
"Do as your heart bids you," he says. "Nature is sacred--woe to those who violate her rights!"
All was as still in the room as in a church, and he who had spoken these words stood there in calm grandeur, in divine unselfish peace, and looked on pityingly while the couple held each other in a close embrace and could not bear to tear themselves asunder, till the Prior separated them almost by force. A stifled scream from the woman--and the door closed, shutting her husband out for ever. The cloistered nurse was alone with the old monk, the gnome, who lived only between the grave and Heaven. She threw herself sobbing at his feet and he whispered words mighty to comfort in her ear, in a tongue as it were from another world that she but half comprehended; but they quelled the wild outbreak of her sorrow and lulled her soul, as if it were rocked by spirit-hands, filling her with strangely melancholy and yet glorious presentiments.
Dawn was already breaking in the lonely turret-chamber, the bell was ringing for matins. The mother sat pale and weary on the edge of the bed and held her child to her breast. She had taken it in her arms unthinkingly--it had waked before the other child--never remembering that after this night"s work the milk might be poison which her frail baby was drinking in eager draughts. Father Eusebius had left her to attend the early ma.s.s. She had not yet slept at all; but now she sank back on the pillow, nature a.s.serted its rights--she fell asleep--while the poison was slowly but fatally coursing through the veins of the infant which, in her slumbers, she still held closely and tenderly to her breast.
CHAPTER IV.
A scream of anguish rang through the still convent court-yard from the eastern tower; it rang out to the clear spring sky and through the open turret-window, following the glorified infant soul that had taken its flight to Heaven up, up into the eternal blue; it startled the brooding swallow from the roof, and fearing some mortal evil she fluttered round her nest; it roused the grey monk in the western tower from the books and writings among which he sat day and night poring over his little desk and imbibing living food for his soul"s roots from the dead parchment. He closed his book and rose. Meanwhile someone was already knocking at his door. For father Eusebius was the sick nurse of the whole convent; whenever any one was ill in the Abbey or in the neighbourhood he was sent for.
"Come quickly, brother Eusebius," cried the messenger. "The nurse"s baby has died suddenly."
Brother Eusebius was not in the least surprised, he had foreseen it; since that night of terror three days ago the little girl had been ill and had defied his utmost skill. Some of the brethren it is true were of opinion that the child was possessed by the devil, because the mother had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her wicked pleasures, and that it ought to be exorcised; but the wise Eusebius knew better--he knew that the feeble infant had drunk its death at its mother"s breast.
He went up to the little room which was lighted up by the brightest sunshine; the poor woman lay stretched over her child"s body, her wild sobs betraying the agony which was rending her heart. The other child lay smiling in his cradle and playing with a wreath of blooming cowslips[1] that his uncle Conrad of Ramuss had brought up from the valley where he had been tending a sick man. The poor little corpse had its eyes still open and they were fixed on the unconscious boy as if she had something to say to him which her little silent lips could not utter. But the mother understood--at least she thought she understood--and she gave that look a cruel and terrible meaning; for her it had no other interpretation than this: "You have killed me."
Eusebius silently laid one hand on the mother"s head and the other on the child"s, and with a practised touch he closed the dead, fixed eyes.
The sobbing mother was pressing her aching head against the cold little breast as if to break through the icy crust laid over it by death, but he raised her head with a firm hand, and without a word pointed to the open window. At that moment a white dove flew through the clear ether, shining like silver in the sunshine--rising higher, growing smaller, as it soared on rapturous wing through immeasurable s.p.a.ce; soon seen no more but as a fluttering speck, higher and still higher--till lost in the blue distance. That was the soul of the dead child--so the mother believed--nay knew for certain. She sank on her knees and with folded hands worshipped the miracle that had been accomplished before her mortal eyes. And so once more the wise old man had been able to triumph over death and misery in that hapless soul by an alliance with Nature which he alone understood--Nature who would utter her divine wisdom to none but him.
But the measure was not yet full.
Out on the moor the lonely outcast husband was rocking in his canoe by the sh.o.r.e of the lake; his nets lay idle at the bottom of the boat and he sat sunk in sullen brooding; it was growing dusk, the lake bubbled and foamed; there was dumb rebellion in its depths--as in the depths of the exile"s soul. Cold gusts dashed frothy, splashing waves on to the banks which were as bare--up at this height--as if it still were winter, and which were so sodden with the melting snows that they could absorb no more of the superfluous moisture; the dry scrub that grew about the place sighed and rustled softly as the wind swept over it.
The fisherman started from his dreaming, unmoored his bark and pushed away from the sh.o.r.e; but hardly had he got a yard from the bank when he heard a voice calling. He stopped and listened; it was a messenger from the monastery to tell him that that morning his little daughter had died.
The man let go his oar and hid his face in his hands sobbing aloud like a child.
The convent servant called out to him compa.s.sionately to "come to sh.o.r.e, to compose himself; that the holy fathers had desired him to promise the afflicted man all kindness, and good wages for the future--" the stricken man rose up in the rage of despair.
"Spare your words," he shouted across the roaring of the waves as they tossed round the frail canoe. "Take yourself off with your hypocritical convent face or I will choke your false throat with your own lying promises. Why should I believe you--how have you kept your word to me?
You have stolen my wife and murdered my child. I curse you--I curse the day when you enticed my wife and child within your dismal walls, I curse the day when that boy was born who is the cause of all the mischief. Be advised while still it is time--kill the child before he does any farther harm--an evil star guides him and he will bring ruin on all who go near him. And now get you gone if you value your life."
The convent servant crossed himself in horror and hastened to obey the warning; he was frightened at the infuriated man, standing up in his bark with his fist clenched, with his tangled hair and flaming eyes like a "Salw.a.n.g," one of those most fearful giants, before whom not mortals only, but even the "phantom maidens" fly.
And as soon as the messenger had disappeared the unhappy man threw himself on his face again and abandoned himself to his sorrow. The canoe drove over the waves--rudderless as the boatman"s soul. He did not heed the spring-storm that blew in deeper and deeper gusts across the lake, nor the waves that ran higher and higher as though Nature were dreaming uneasily in her sleep--till suddenly a swift current caught the boat and carried it on with increasing rapidity down the lake. The man started up, and his aroused consciousness made him clutch sharply at the oar, for he perceived with horror through the darkness that he was driving towards the spot where the Etsch[2] rushes out of the lake with a considerable fall. But alas! the oar was gone--it had slipped away, escaping him in his anguish without his being aware of it; the loop of straw which had served to fasten it was hanging broken to the hook. For an instant he was stunned, then he gave an involuntary shout for help--then came the knowledge of the danger, the certainty that he was lost. He went through a brief struggle of vigorous healthy life against the idea of destruction--a short pang of terror of death--and then came the calmness of despair, and a still heroism that none could see but G.o.d! The lost man sat with his arms folded in the boat, driven down the stream beyond all hope of rescue, with one last prayer on his lips--a loving prayer for the wife he was leaving behind.
Far away on the sh.o.r.e he sees the lights of the brethren of St.
Valentine--they call to him--signal to him--the boat rushes on, in headlong haste, to its fate. There--there are the falls--a thundering roar--the canoe tips up on end--then it shoots over head foremost, turning over twice in its fall, till it lies crushed and smashed among the stones in the bed of the cataract. It is all over--the swollen spring-flood of the Etsch carries a mangled corpse and dancing fragments down into the valley on its sportive and roaring waters.
"Now indeed, poor woman--you have lost all!"
Father Eusebius was sitting in the nurse"s little room, which during the last three days had been to her a cell of torment; he held the unconscious woman"s head between his hands and rubbed her forehead and temples with strong spirit of lavender; but her mind was wandering far away in the twilight of oblivion and must return to a consciousness of nothing but horror--torment and to suffering. Her hands moved with a feeble gesture to push him away, her dumb lips parted as though she would say, "Do not be cruel--do not wake me--I am at peace--leave me, leave me."
But though his heart seemed to stand still for pity, he must call her back to life.
At last she was roused; she looked round enquiringly, for all her world was in ruins and she knew not whom she could turn or cling to. Before her on the floor lay her dead husband"s clothes--there stood the cradle out of which they had carried away her baby only yesterday to the charnel-house--what was left her in the world? There still was one!
Father Eusebius took the living baby from the bed and brought it to her. "It is a stranger"s child," he said. "But it is yours too!" and the bleeding heart-strings, torn up by the roots, clung to the strange child as if he were her own--the poor beggared soul accepted it as the last alms of love bestowed upon her by the Creator; for she was humbled in her misfortune, she did not strive, she did not contend, nor did she bear any malice to the child, for all that it had unconsciously been guilty of. "The child is yours," spoke comfort to her heart, and she believed it as father Eusebius himself did when he spoke the words.
"What is yours? Who within these walls may venture to boast that anything is his own?" said Correntian"s stern voice at the door.
"Oh! that man!" shrieked the terrified woman and she fled with the child into the remotest corner of the room from the sinister monk who now came in.
"I spoke of the child--to comfort the poor soul, and if you are a man you will leave her that comfort," said brother Eusebius.
"In this house nothing is ours--but suffering and the hope of redemption," the dark man went on pitilessly. "Know that, woman; and remember it at every hour--The venerable fathers have sent me to tell you that you must now wean the child, that the shock of the last few days may do him no harm."
A flood of tears burst from the nurse"s large and innocent eyes as she heard this, and she asked with white lips,
"Must I go away then?"
"No, not so long as the child is still little and needs a woman"s care.
Now, you know the fathers" determination--act accordingly."
And without vouchsafing her a glance he quitted the room.
Calm, clear and gentle, like the moon in the high heaven when the sun has set, father Eusebius stood before the poor woman whose sun of life had set, and in half-inarticulate words she made her lament to him, telling him her sorrow; to him she dared to weep out all the unutterable anguish that would have driven her mad if she had had to bear it alone.