Then Bruno roused himself, and the great cry of the preacher burst from his lips.
""_Apparebit repentina_,"" he said; "suddenly it will come, and this year."
And slowly and solemnly he repeated what they had heard.
A strange joy came over the mother"s face as he spoke.
She was lifting up her heart to G.o.d and saying,--
"I thank Thee. At last I can long with all my heart to come to Thee. For we shall not be parted. And I shall not be leaving those Thou gavest me to keep."
Bruno went on.
"The Judge!" he murmured, "the Avenger, to avenge all wrongs at last!"
And there was a flash of fierce joy on his face, such as might have gleamed in the eyes of his heathen forefathers, dying in the slaughter of their foes.
But as she saw it, the quiet delight faded from the mother"s face, and she said tenderly,--
"Our little wrongs, beloved, what will they seem when we see the nail-prints on His hands and feet?"
"They will not seem little to Him!" replied Bruno sternly.
It was an old controversy between them, and the only one. She had long ceased to carry on her side of it in any way but in silent prayer.
For the wrong was great, and the doing of it as fresh in her memory as ever;--the day when her husband"s kinsman, Baron Ivo, had entered their castle and treacherously ma.s.sacred all who would not acknowledge him to be the rightful lord; had bound Baron Bruno to a pillar, and had him blinded, and then had turned them out with their helpless babe into the frost and snow of the winter night, to wander whither they would, or die.
Many weary months they had roamed up and down through the land, seeking redress, until the babe had died. But the enemy was strong, and it was an age when right could only be held by might. And though many pitied, none ventured to take up the blinded Baron"s cause. And so at last they crept back to the old city, and found a dwelling beside a brook in the forest, not far from the city gate, yet in a secret place, where no one need see them. And Bruno made baskets from the osiers, and she sold them.
And the poor sightless eyes were healed, but not the heart.
Again and again she had begun to hope the bitter yearning for vengeance would be softened. Sometimes when his voice faltered as they said the Lord"s Prayer; sometimes when his hand quivered in hers as they knelt together by the great cross before the hermit"s cave; and especially when, their little Hilda was born, the child of their poverty, the sunbeam of their dark days.
But always, when she had dared to speak of forgiveness, the old wound seemed to bleed afresh. And now she felt the old fever was burning in his heart as fiercely as ever.
Once more that night she pleaded voicelessly with the compa.s.sionate Lord.
"Thou knowest, O merciful One," she said in the depths of her heart, "it is not his blindness he cannot forgive; it is our poverty and the child"s. It is not his wrong he would have avenged; it is ours. If there is hatred in his heart, love is beneath the hate, Thou knowest. Forgive, oh, forgive him! even if he cannot quite forgive."
And then, in her tearful prayers, she pleaded the day when Baron Ivo himself had come to their hut, pursued by some of the many who had been turned into beggars, or robbers, by his high-handed tyranny; when, not seeing Bruno, Bruno had recognized him by his voice, and, nevertheless, had spared him, and suffered her to hide him from his pursuers, and suffered the child Hilda to quench his thirst with fresh water from the spring.
"He could have, avenged himself then," she pleaded. "And, instead, he saved. Is not that forgiving? Will not that cup of cold water be remembered by Thee?"
Yet her heart was tossed by anxiety and doubt. Could it be forgiving to wish evil? And could the unforgiving be forgiven?
That night Bruno also lay awake, and he answered her thoughts, and said reproachfully to her,--
"Wilt thou, even thou, be hard on me? Forgiveness is Divine; but vengeance also is Divine. The Judge is just, or we could not trust Him.
If it were a slave, if it were a dog that had been so wronged, must I not rejoice the wrong-doer should be punished?"
"Thou art wiser than I, my beloved," she said. "I have no wisdom but His face and His words. "_Father, forgive them_," He said; and with Him forgiveness meant Paradise to the forgiven. Else where were we?"
And they said no more.
And that night, in the castle of Baron Ivo, the hall was lighted and the tables were spread for a great feast. The lights flashed from the castle steep, from many windows, over the forest and the city.
And a feast in Baron Ivo"s castle meant a revel; cowed slaves hurrying about at the master"s bidding; guests, many of them scarcely less cowed, making forced mirth at his pleasure.
To ears that could hear there was always heaviness in the laughter at Ivo"s feasts. The moans from the dungeons below rose across it all.
But on this night the mirth jarred like a cracked bell; and ere they rose, the seneschal ventured timidly to ask the Baron if he might accept the ransom offered by the young wife of the latest captive. "Otherwise,"
he said, "death might be beforehand. And if--if, indeed, the Great Day was so near, and the reckoning was to come so soon!"
Baron Ivo rose with a curse, and strode off to his chamber in the tower which looked over the forest, with the dungeons at its base.
But no sleep came to him that night. He seemed to hear a long procession of heavy steps slowly tramping up the turret-stair from the dungeons to his chamber. Too often, indeed, had the wails of tortured captives come up that way.
But as he lay tossing on his bed, all the rest seemed to grow faint and far-off in comparison with one face which had haunted him often before;--a kinsman"s face, with sightless eyes, which riveted his own on them, and with groping, imploring hands, which he had once ruthlessly bound. He would have given the world for one glance of those eyes, and one forgiving clasp of those blindly groping hands.
"So long ago!" he moaned; "so long ago! And never further off! And now perhaps I shall soon see him close, too late to atone. There to face the horror which has stung me to crime after crime! For, having committed this, I had to do the rest, to ward off vengeance, to secure what had been so hardly won. That first was crime; the rest were self-defence, the fruit of mortal fear--of fear, and yet also of love, all so terribly entangled, love to the child my wife left to my care when she died.
_She_ knew nothing of that terrible past, and loved and trusted me. But the child for whom I would shed my blood, for whom belike I have given my soul, does she know? Does she love or trust me? Pure and soft as a white dove, yet those tender eyes search and scorch me through and through. Is there no repentance, no reparation possible? And that Day they say coming so soon! Reparation! how can such a wrong be repaired?
Probably they are all long since under the ground, he and the young wife who stood so unflinchingly by him, and the babe. For if it were possible to restore him the castle, what of the sight, and the ruined life? It is not possible; no, it is not possible! That blind beggar in the forest-hut could _not_ have been Bruno! And if he were to instal that beggar"s family in the castle, what reparation were that?"
He had risen, and was looking down on the forest, and a little gleaming light caught his eye, and strangely smote his heart. It seemed to come from where that beggar"s hut was. Even yet, after all, _might_ it be possible to atone?
But on the other side, in the next turret of the castle, a light shone from the window of his young daughter, his only child.
"Give _her_ inheritance up to them? Never!" he moaned. And once more the strong will rose and barred the door of repentance which might have been a door of hope.
But in that turret-chamber of Baron Ivo"s daughter, and in the little hut in the forest, the lamp of prayer never went out.
In the turret the child Beatrix knelt at her window and said,--
"O gentle Jesus! I cannot but be glad, altogether glad at Thy coming. If I ought to be afraid also, forgive me. But my mother, before she died, told me Thou wert so gracious and so kind! And Thy face and Thy voice always seem to me most like hers; and the faces and voices around me here are harsh and rough, so that I cannot help longing and longing to see and hear Thine. Thine and my mother"s; but even most Thy own, because of that wonderful love of Thy dying for us. If it were not for my father! Every one seems in such terror of him; and there was the piercing wail that day in the dungeon which he could not explain! To me he is always tender, and yet I find it so hard to return his fondness as I would. Something in his eyes seems by turns to scorch and to freeze me. But if he is not ready for Thee, wait, O patient Saviour! wait, and make him ready! and let that look there can be in his eyes for me, be there for others and for Thee! Belike I ought to fear Thy coming, Holy and Mighty One, for myself, but I cannot. And yet I cannot say the "Veni cito," Come quickly, lest it should be too soon for _him_. If he has done wrong to any man, teach, oh, teach him to make it up before Thou shalt come!"
And in the little hut the mother Margarethe still pleaded,--
"Holy forgiving Lord Christ! it is not the wrong to himself, it is the wrong to me and the children he finds it so hard to forgive. And even Thou, dost Thou forgive cruel unrepented wrong to Thy beloved? Thou who didst say of Thy sufferers of old, "Why persecutest thou _Me_?" And Thou, when Thou forgivest, makest Thy foes Thy friends. Thou forgivest because thou lovest, and because Thou knowest the most pitiable misery is not being wronged, but doing wrong, and because Thy forgiveness melts the hearts of the forgiven. By the touch of Thy love move my husband to forgive, and let his forgiveness like Thine save the forgiven. I am a sinful woman, and yet I cannot dread Thy coming. Saviour of sinners, only for _him_! Wait, oh, wait till he is ready; make him ready, and then come, oh, come!"
Meantime little Hilda could not sleep all that night, and at last she could bear her lonely thoughts no longer, and crept out of her little bed to her mother"s side; and finding her awake, she whispered,--
"Oh, mother, what shall we do to-morrow? Will it ever be worth while to do anything any more but go to church and pray?"
"We may be sure the good G.o.d will not forget to feed His sparrows to-morrow, darling," the mother replied; "and He certainly would not have us forget our hens and chickens. And if the King Himself were to come to-morrow, what would He wish thee to be doing but just the little task He sets thee every day: lighting the fire, and getting thy father"s breakfast, and helping mother, day by day, on to the last, the Great Day."
"But, oh! mother," the little one resumed with a tremulous voice, "what will it be like, that Great Day? I saw the Kaiser come into the city with the hors.e.m.e.n and the trumpets, and the crowd I thought would have crushed father and me, and broken down the bridge on which we stood.
Will it be like that? Only, the hors.e.m.e.n great angels in the clouds, and the trumpets thunders, and the whole earth trembling and shaking as the bridge trembled beneath that rushing crowd, and everything falling to pieces? Will it be like the great fire when half the street was burned down--only, instead of half the street, all the world? fire, and nowhere to flee to? What will that dreadful Day be like?"