"At early dawn, at dead of night, in the hush of the summer morn, in twilight such as this? We know not. The day and the hour knoweth no man.
"But this year; suddenly, as the lightning which comes before the thunder.
"As the thief on the slumbering household, as the tramp of the foe on the slumbering army.
"If ye will, if ye can, sleep on still!
"But listen! already is there no rumble of the far-off storm? no faint far-off murmur of His footsteps?
"When the thunder-peal comes, it will be too late to warn. The _lightning will have come first_, shrivelling the earth like a heap of dry gra.s.s, and heaven like a roll of old parchments, leaving you alone with your Judge; all the world there, and each one as much alone with Him as if no one else were there, seen through, searched through, scorched through with one gleam of the eyes that are as a flame of fire.
"Before you the Judge, behind you the flames. The Judge so terrible that the wicked will rush backward from Him into the fire rather than meet those eyes again, those eyes which are as a flame of fire searching and burning through and through.
"And what do they search? _You_, for sin. What will they burn? You, _with_ your sin, if you will not give up the sin."
And then he laid bare sin after sin--avarice, evil-speaking, wrongs wrought, wrongs unforgiven, injustice, envy, unmercifulness, pride, selfishness in all its disguises--until heart after heart felt itself seen through and laid bare.
Then turning and pointing to the great Crucifix above them he said,--
"Not one of you, not one of us but has helped to weave that crown, to drive in those nails, to pierce that heart.
"Repent, for He is at hand.
""_Apparebit repentina._" Suddenly and so soon."
And then suddenly the penetrating voice ceased, and there was a great hush, broken now and then by a sob, as, high above them, catching the last rays of the wintry sun, the sacred bowed Head, and the outstretched hands, rose lifted up on high.
And when the hush began to break up again into separate movement, and the voice which had bound the mult.i.tude into unity had ceased for some minutes, and one and another turned their eyes again towards the pulpit, it was empty.
And none in that city ever saw the face of the preacher or heard his voice again.
Like a voice crying in the wilderness, he vanished again into the wilderness, and was heard no more.
But from the voices of the choir, begun it was scarcely known how, broke forth in a long wail the hymn--
"Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini."
When the last notes of the solemn chant had died away, and once more left a silence in the vast church, the mult.i.tude still kept together. A common instinct of unity seemed to have come on them, as on a besieged city, or on a ship in a storm.
Not to one, here and there, uncertainly, as death came; but to all!
Suddenly, and this year, the one great event was to come, which was to unite them all and to divide them all for ever!
Not that this message and this terror were altogether new to them. Long it had been floating in the air that the distracted world was not to last beyond the thousand years.
The probability had long loomed vaguely before them; and now this stranger came and proclaimed, with a.s.sured conviction, the certainty.
They waited and waited on, as if listening for the first peal of the Last Trump; but no sound broke the stillness. The dusk silently died into the dark, the last rays faded from the Crucifix to which the monk had pointed, and then slowly the congregation began to creep away to their homes.
Out of the silent church under the solemn silent vault of stars; each household again beneath its own roof, yet all still under that great roof of heaven from which at any moment might burst the final fires.
The city roofs, great and little for the time had become the shadows, and the upper light shone terribly through.
There was little talking on the way home through the streets, none of that eager bubbling up of pent-up thoughts which marks the dispersing of a great listening throng. The mighty common expectation which united all, sent each back into his own life with great searchings of heart.
For the day at hand was to be a Judgment Day. The day of the great gathering was also to be the day of the great dividing.
II.
Two fellow-students, Hermann and Gottfried, went back to the Abbey School together.
And when they reached their cells, Hermann flung his books into a corner and cried, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity; vain instruments of vain learning, farewell! Of what use is it to climb a few steps higher than our fellow-men, if all are to be levelled again at the bar of G.o.d so soon?"
But Gottfried knelt at the little window of his cell, and looked up at the stars and said, "O Thou Holy and Beautiful, it has been a joy to brush off a few grains of the dust which hid Thy works. What will it be to see Thee as Thou art?"
Old Gammer Trudchen, whose stall was close to the Minster door, crept silently into her chamber that night; for her stall of beads and cakes was a wasp"s nest of malicious gossip where all dark surmises and evil reports naturally gathered, sure of something to feed on and something to sting. And she felt somewhat p.r.i.c.ked in conscience; for the preacher had spoken of "the measure wherewith we mete being measured to us again," and of evil-speaking _in itself_, whether false or true, being sure to be severely judged in that day. She did not quite see the justice of it: if people were to be punished for their evil deeds, why was she to be punished for foreseeing and antedating the verdict?
Nevertheless, if that was, as the monk said, the rule of the Supreme Court, it might be as well to take care. And, moreover, one might sometimes make mistakes. She must admit to herself that possibly she had been a little too hasty and hard about that poor orphan-girl whose character had afterwards been cleared, but not soon enough to satisfy her lover, who had believed the evil report, and gone and died in the wars, and left her to die of a broken heart at home. She had only repeated what others hinted, but no one was infallible, not even the whole town, which might, perhaps, be one reason why the giving sentence beforehand was objected to. And it certainly might be as well to be careful, if one"s words, even one"s whispers, were to be brought up against one in public on that day, and before another year.
Master Gregory, the exchanger, went home to his chests of treasure; and on his way he pa.s.sed the widowed daughter of his old master the goldsmith, looking pinched and poor as usual, with a racking cough, leading her two frail, half-starved children. They were neatly clothed, as always, in their patched garments; and she greeted him with her wonted gentle friendliness, expecting nothing from him.
But his heart smote him.
"Perhaps I did make rather a hard bargain when her husband died," he said; "and her father certainly had been good to me. It is true she should not have married as she did, and I have left her more than she lost in my will. But if this monk is right, wills and testaments will not henceforth count for much in the reckoning of that Day. I might as well, perhaps, do something for her at once."
And that night, as he counted over his gold and parchments (for in those days misers had more visual delight in their possessions than they have now), the parchments seemed to shrivel in the light of the fire which was to consume the very heavens as a scroll, and instead of the pleasant ring of gold, the dry rustle of dead leaves was in his ears.
But the poor widowed mother he had pa.s.sed went home lightened in heart, with her children. And when she had given them their scanty supper, and folded them to sleep, she knelt beside them, and her thankful tears fell on the thin little hands over which she wept.
"Thank G.o.d!" she murmured, "at last I may long to go to my beloved; for we shall go _together_, we three, his babes and I; and he will see his prayers answered, and will know I did my best for them, and did not hasten away to him too soon, for all the longing to go."
And even the prattling voice of little Hilda, the child of Blind Bruno, the basketmaker, was hushed as she led her father through the streets, instead of the faithful dog Keeper, who was growing old. She only clung to her father"s hand closer than usual.
Bruno also was very silent.
Margarethe, the mother, met them, as always, on the threshold; for Bruno liked no other hands but those which had tended him so faithfully for twenty years to welcome him, and unloose his cloak, and settle him at the table or by the hearth. He could not see how thin the hands had grown, and how worn the face was. The feeble fingers seemed to gather strength always to do anything for him; and if sometimes he thought they failed a little, the soft clear voice had always its old tones to cheer him, and he had always words of tender greeting for her.
But to-night he scarcely seemed to heed even his wife. He leant his head on his clasped hands for a long time, and said nothing until old Keeper came, as was his wont, and rubbed his s.h.a.ggy head against the master"s knees, and little Hilda"s hands, for a welcome.
At this, Hilda"s composure gave way altogether, and she burst into tears and sobbed.
"Oh, Keeper, you don"t know, and we can"t tell you!"