Part 6 (1/2)

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 suns.h.i.+ne; 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, s.h.i.+ning like silver in the suns.h.i.+ne--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 wors.h.i.+pped 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.