Part 2 (1/2)
Tabea was not prepared for this. Severity she could have defied; but this cry of a prophet awakened her own conscience, and she trembled as if she had been in the light of a clear-seeing divine judgment.
”You can speak so, Brother Friedsam, for you have no human weaknesses.
I am not suited to a convent; I never can be happy here. I am not submissive. I want to be necessary to somebody. n.o.body cares for me here. You do not mind whether I sing in the chorals or not, and you will be better pleased to have me away, _and I am going_.” Then, finding that the director remained silent, she said, with emotion: ”Brother Friedsam, I have a great reverence for you, but I wish you knew something of the infirmities of a heart that wants to love and to be loved by somebody, and then maybe you would not think so very hardly of Tabea after she has gone.”
There was a tone of beseeching in these last words which Tabea had not been wont to use.
The director looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved without speaking, and his face a.s.sumed a look betokening inward suffering.
”Great G.o.d of wisdom, must I then tell her?” said Friedsam when he got breath. He stood up and gazed out of the square window in indecision.
”Tabea,” he said presently, turning full upon her and looking into her now pale face upturned to the light, ”I thought my secret would die in my breast, but you wring it from me. You say that I have no infirmities--no desire for companions.h.i.+p like other men or women. It is the voice of Sophia, the wisdom of the Almighty, that bids me humble myself before you this day.”
Here he paused in visible but suppressed emotion. ”These things,” he said, pointing to his wooden couch, ”these hards.h.i.+ps of the body, these self-denials of my vocation, give me no trouble. I have one great soul-affliction, and that is what you reproach me for lacking, namely, the longing to love and to be loved. And that trial you laid upon me the first time I saw your face and heard your words in your mother's house on the Wissahickon. O Tabea, you are not like the rest! you are not like the rest! Even when you go wrong, it is not like the rest. It is the vision of the life I might have led with such a woman as you that troubles my dreams in the night-time, when, across the impa.s.sable gulf of my irrevocable vow, I have stretched out my hands in entreaty to you.”
This declaration changed instantly the color of Tabea's thoughts of life. Daniel Scheible and his little love scrawls seemed to her lofty spirit as nothing now that she saw herself in the light thrown upon her by the love of the great master whose spirit had evoked Ephrata, and whose genius uttered itself in angelic harmonies. She loathed the little life that now opened before her. There seemed nothing in heaven or earth so desirable as to possess the esteem of Friedsam. But she stood silent and condemned.
”I have had one comfort,” proceeded Brother Friedsam after a while.
”When I have perceived your strength of character, when I have heard your exquisite voice uttering the melodies with which I am inspired, I have thought my work was sweeter because Tabea shared it, and I have hoped that you would yet more and more share it as years and discipline should ripen your spirit.”
The director felt faint; he sat down and looked dejectedly into the corner of the room farthest away from where Tabea stood. He roused himself in a few moments, and turned about again, to find Tabea kneeling on the flagstones before him.
”I have denied the Lord!” she moaned, for her judgment had now come completely round to Friedsam's standpoint. His condemnation seemed bitterer than death. ”Brother Friedsam, I have denied the Lord!”
Friedsam regarded the kneeling figure for a moment, and then he reached out his hands, solemnly placing them on her head with a motherly tenderness, while a tremor went through his frame.
”Thou, dear child, shalt do thy first work over again,” he said. ”Thou shalt take a new vow, and when thou art converted then shalt thou, like Peter, strengthen the others.” And, withdrawing his hands, he said: ”I will pray for you, Tabea, every night of my life when I hear the c.o.c.k crow.”
Tabea rose up slowly and went out at the door, walking no longer like a Hofcavalier, but like one in a trance. Dimly she saw the sisters standing without the door of Sharon; there was Thecla, with half-amused face, and there was Persida, curious as ever; there were Sister Petronella and Sister Blandina and others, and behind all the straight, tall form of austere Jael. Without turning to the right or to the left, Tabea directed her steps to the group at the door of Sharon.
”No! no! come, dear Tabea!” It was the voice of Daniel Scheible, whose existence she had almost forgotten.
”Poor Daniel!” she said, pausing and looking at him with pity.
”Don't say '_Poor_ Daniel,' but _come_.”
”Poor boy!” said Tabea.
”_You are bewitched!_” he cried, seizing her and drawing her away. ”I knew Friedsam would put a charm on you.”
She absently allowed him to lead her a few steps; then, with another look full of tender pity and regret at his agitated face, she extricated herself from his embrace and walked rapidly to the door.
Quickening her steps to escape his pursuing grasp, she pushed through the group of sisters and fled along the hallway and up the stairs, closing the door of her cell and fastening down the latch.
Scheible, sure that she was under some evil spell, rushed after her, shook himself loose from the grip of Sister Jael, who sought to stop him, and reached the door of Tabea's cell. But all his knocking brought not one word of answer, and after a while Brother Jabez came in and led the poor fellow out, to the great grief of Sister Persida, who in her heart thought it a pity to spoil a wedding.
The sisters who came to call Tabea to supper that evening also failed to elicit any response. Late in the night, when she had become calm, Tabea heard the crowing of a c.o.c.k, and her heart was deeply touched at the thought that Friedsam, the revered Friedsam, now more than ever the beloved of her soul, was at that moment going to prayer for the disciple who had broken her vow. She rose from her bench and fell on her knees; and if she mistook the mingled feelings of penitence and human pa.s.sion for pure devotion, she made the commonest mistake of enthusiastic spirits.
But she was not left long to doubt that Friedsam had remembered her; by the time that the c.o.c.k had crowed the second time the sound of the monastery bell, the rope of which hung just by Friedsam's bedside, broke abruptly into the deathlike stillness, calling the monks and nuns of Ephrata to a solemn night service. Tabea felt sure that Friedsam had called the meeting at this moment by way of a.s.suring her of his remembrance.
Daniel Scheible, who had wandered back to the neighborhood in the aimlessness of disappointment, heard the monastery bell waking all the reverberations of the forest, and saw light after light twinkle from the little square windows of Bethany and Sharon; then he saw the monks and nuns come out of Bethany and Sharon, each carrying a small paper lantern as they hastened to Zion. The bell ceased, and Zion, which before had been wrapped in night, shone with light from every window, and there rose upon the silence the voices of the choruses chanting an antiphonal song; and disconsolate Scheible cursed Friedsam and Ephrata, and went off into outer darkness.