THE
HOUR WILL COME
A TALE OF AN ALPINE CLOISTER
BY WILHELMINE von HILLERN, AUTHOR OF "THE VULTURE MAIDEN (DIE GEIER--WALLY)" ETC.
FROM THE GERMAN BY CLARA BELL.
IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. II.
_Copyright Edition_.
LEIPZIG 1879
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
LONDON: SAMPSON LAW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON.
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
PARIS: C. REINWALD & Cie, 15 RUE DES SAINTS PeRES.
_The Author reserves the Right of dramatizing this Tale_.
THE HOUR WILL COME.
BOOK II.
MARTYRDOM.
(CONTINUED.)
CHAPTER IV.
The heath lay silent and still, as a mother might refrain from disturbing her weeping son; thus the night wore on; dew fell on the victim"s head--he heeded it not; the bright moon paled and the young day painted the first streaks on the rim of the eastern horizon--he saw it not. The icy morning-breeze swept keenly down from the glaciers--he did not stir.
Presently a silvery tinkle sounded across the heath through the morning air; it was the bell ringing for matins at St. Valentine"s. This roused the penitent from his torpor, and so strong are the ties of obedience that at the first stroke the simple sound of the bell recalled the whole scattered troop of his vital faculties to their duty. His rebellious defiance, the first impulse of disobedience he had ever known, and which had driven him to his nocturnal flight, vanished like a wild dream. As the bell was ringing up here for matins, he would just have time to get down to ma.s.s; for prayers were an hour earlier here than at Marienberg. If the brethren met together for common prayer in the familiar chapel--and he--he were missing!--An unspeakable sorrow came over him--a home-sick longing for the Abbot, for his companions, for the place where he was so tenderly brought up; and without further delay he started up and hastened back to the convent. As day grew broader reflection and composure returned to him, and he was ashamed of his weakness. Without once looking behind him, he left the heath--his mother earth--the earth that had drunk his despairing tears--and walked stoutly on, down to Marienberg again; but in his too great haste he missed his way and suddenly found himself on a thickly wooded hill at one side of the monastery. An extensive ruin stood up among the dark umbrageous branches; he knew where he was now--on the hill of Castellatz, where stood the remains of an ancient Roman castle that had served at a later period as a stronghold of the Trasp family.
Huge walls lay fallen one upon the other; walls that had once been inhabited by a defiant race who had borne themselves manfully in many a b.l.o.o.d.y fight. The labouring peasants still dug out bones of extraordinary size--broad angular skulls of Huns and high narrow skulls of Goths--they had all fought round these old walls and none of them had yielded, only faith had conquered them. When Ulrich, the pious scion of the race, had built the convent at Marienberg because he thought that a House of G.o.d was the surest fortress that he could take refuge in, he razed the castle to its foundation so that no enemy of the Church should henceforth make use of it as a bulwark against the people of G.o.d.
Thus fell the proud walls that had defied the power of man. The youth trod the soil that had a thousand times been drenched in blood, with a reverent step; peace now reigned over the spot, and silence--a Sabbath stillness. High above his head the shadowy tree-tops rustled as though they were murmuring some long forgotten heroic legend, or a battle-song of which the echoes had long since died away. And he, the peaceful son of that stern mother, the Church--he stood there as one ashamed of his own feebleness, and humbly folding his hands he prayed--"I am no warrior, no hero--I need not fight with the sword or measure the strength of my young limbs, man for man with others--my heroism must lie in obedience. Strengthen me therein, my Lord and G.o.d, that I may never fear to fulfil Thy will."
And he went forward again, renewed in strength; here--on this old scene of many struggles, where every blade of gra.s.s had sprung from blood that heroes had spilt--here, in this bitter hour, he had grown to be a man and his courage had ripened within him; courage for that hardest fight of all, for the heroism of suffering. His resolve was formed--not in mad terror and haste as before in Correntian"s cell, but quietly, clearly, aye joyfully--his resolve to purchase his salvation. He will await the Lord"s will, and if the Lord give him the strength to close his eyes against all temptation, he will accept it as a gift of mercy saving him from the worst. If he fall into one single fault more--if he turn one single longing look more on a woman"s form--then he will carry out the sentence as it has this night been pa.s.sed upon him--for then he will know that it is G.o.d"s will.
A broad sunbeam broke through the bushes which grew on all sides, their tough roots forcing their way between the grey stones; close by his side a bird twittered in a juniper bush which grew out of a ruined window arch. The little creature had its nest there and it looked at him with its keen eyes to see if it had any cause to fear for its brood; and there in the shrub sat the little birds with gaping, yellow beaks clinging in helpless fright to the swaying branches and screaming for their mother. A pretty picture!--How many a mother might have sat, long ago, under this arch, anxiously watching the foe that threatened her nest while the father was far away--at the chase or fighting in b.l.o.o.d.y feud in some enemy"s country for all that was dear to him.
"Oh! sweet and wonderful bonds of love, and faith, and closest ties of blood! can it be that ye are not of G.o.d!" The question came involuntarily from the depth of the young man"s heart.
And there!--as if ghosts walked in the ruins--there was a sudden movement among the shrubs; a tall girlish figure broke hastily through the boughs and behind her came a boy--a st.u.r.dy lad, the wood-cutter to the monastery. He threw his arm round the girl"s buxom form and whispered, "And if I ask you where you went so early, what will you say then?"
"To gather berries," she cried laughing and swinging her basket.
"Just wait and I will kiss your lips till they are so red that folks will think you tumbled down among the berries," said the lad. "Come, we will find a quiet place to rest in." And he disappeared again amongst the bushes dragging the girl with him without much trouble.
Donatus hastily turned to go, but suddenly they both gave a little cry of alarm, "O Lord! a wild woman of the woods!" and they fled crossing themselves. Donatus stood still; "What was there? what had frightened the pair so much?" He went towards the spot where they had been sitting; the briars hid a ruined arch-way through which he could look into the desolate castle-yard all overgrown with weeds, and there--wonder of wonders--lay a woman, asleep on a bank of turf artificially constructed and screened by a projection of the wall, that might at some former time have formed a niche where the poor and wretched sat on a stone bench to eat the meal they had begged. But the woman who was sleeping there was neither poor nor wretched; there she lay wrapped in a rich cloak of costly furs and dressed in a green robe embroidered with gold--like a forest-fairy! The playing beams of the morning sun that fell upon her through the whispering boughs, threw a bright light on her cheeks that were rosy with sleep, and the morning breeze blew her soft, silky hair across her dreaming brow, like a film of golden vapour.
Donatus stood as if spell-bound, incapable of going either forwards or backwards--he gazed and gazed and the whole world around him was forgotten. Was it a real living woman--or a trick from h.e.l.l--it seemed to him that it was the same woman--yes, it was she--! She opened her eyes and a flash of delight, brighter than the morning sunshine sparkled in those eyes.
"Is it you! you?" she exclaimed, springing up. And as Donatus looked into her blue eyes he knew that it was she--she, who, dressed in a peasant"s garb, had yesterday so bewildered his senses--she, who so lately had stood before him as the maid-of-honour. And to-day she was here--up here, sleeping on the gra.s.s, with no roof over her head--like a wood-fairy--Could she be indeed a real woman and yet capable of such sudden changes? He had never believed in fairies, but could there be such beings? and were they good or evil spirits? And while he thought over all this he stood as if rooted to the spot, regarding the wonderful apparition with astonishment. He saw her sign to him, he heard her call him, and he made no reply--It was not real, it was only a vision, a dream.
"Are you turned to stone? Wait a minute, I will go to you as you will not come to me." The voice was close to his ear and the brilliant figure lightly climbed up the ruined stone-work and in a moment was standing close to him under the arch and bending over towards him.
Those azure lakes, in which, only yesterday, his whole consciousness had been lost, were again close to his intoxicated gaze and pouring their flood of blueness into his soul. It stopped his breath--it ran through all his veins--he leaned against the mullion of the window like one stunned, and gazed and gazed--he could not take his eyes off her--Heaven and earth had faded from his ken--She was too lovely!
"How come you here? What has troubled you so? You are pale and your hair is wet with night dews?" she asked him, softly stroking his tangled curls with her slender white hand.
He staggered as if a flash of lightning had struck him without destroying him; a strange shiver ran through his limbs, a gentle tremor as when the morning breeze shakes the dews of night from the topmost branches of a tree; and nearer, nearer comes the sweet face, and warm breath floats round him--Still he stirs not.
"Do not fix your eyes on me so--as if I were not a creature of flesh and blood," she whispered in his ear. "Put away your sternness; I deserve it of you. For your sake I have pa.s.sed the night here with my people; here in this uncanny ruin, under the open sky, only to find some way of seeing you again. You have done for me, once for all, with your dreamy face and your severity, and deny it as you will--that which drove you at night out of your narrow cell was my image which pursued you, and while you fled from me you went in truth to seek me! Have I guessed rightly?" And she laid her arm softly round his neck and her lips were close to his ear, while she spoke so that every word was like the breathing of a kiss. He let his head drop and lean against her bosom--he felt dizzy, as if in that instant he had fallen from some towering height. She took him caressingly by the chin, raising his head and looking longingly into his eyes.
"Oh, those eyes! those maddening eyes. Who looks into them is lost!
A man who has such eyes as yours can never be a monk!" she exclaimed in a tone of tender jest. "Those eyes give the lie to all your severity--they look fire and kindle fire."
"And that fire shall be extinguished for ever!" cried Donatus suddenly, tearing himself from her arms as if roused from a dream. "It is well for me that you have warned me. With such eyes a man can never be a monk!--it is G.o.d himself who has spoken by your lips."
And he fled away as from the City of Destruction, leaving the temptress startled and astonished. She called after him to stay--she implored, she conjured him--in vain. The matins bell was ringing in the valley below, and he heard that above all her tempting; that was a mightier call. Like a hunted deer that can find no shelter, the unhappy man fled back to the sacred cloister walls where only rest and peace were to be found.