CHAPTER XXI
Hilda followed Verus's retreating figure with a long, long look; at last, with a slight shake of her beautiful head, she went up to Gelimer and said: "Do not be angry, my King, if I ask a question which nothing gives me the right to utter, except my anxiety for your welfare, and that of all our people."
"And my love for you, brave sister-in-law," replied Gelimer, gently stroking her flowing golden hair, and seating himself on the couch again. "For," he added, smiling, "though you are a wicked pagan and often cherish--as I well know--secret resentment, nay, animosity, against me, I love you, foolish, impetuous young heart."
She sank down at his feet, on a high, soft cushion covered with leopard skins, while Gibamund paced slowly up and down the spacious hall, often gazing out through the lofty arched window over the wide sea. No light was burning in the apartment; but the full moon, which meanwhile had risen above the dark flood and the harbor wall, poured in the full splendor of her rays, which, falling on the features of the three noble human beings, illumined them with a spectral light.
"I will not," Hilda began, "as Zazo and my Gibamund have repeatedly done, until you wrathfully forbade it, warn you against this priest, who--"
With neither impatience nor anger, Gelimer interrupted: "Who first discovered the wiles of Pudentius; who revealed to us the treachery of Hilderic; to whom alone I am indebted for my escape from assassination that night; who has saved the kingdom of the Vandals from the snare."
Gibamund paused in his walk.
"Yes, it is true. I had almost said, unfortunately true. For I would rather have owed it to any other man."
"It is so strikingly true that even our Zazo, who at first accused him harshly to me, could scarcely find any objection to mutter, when I took the brilliant man among my councillors and intrusted to him (for he is an expert in letter-writing) the care of the correspondence. And how unweariedly he has toiled since, priest and chancellor at the same time! I marvel at the number of papers he lays before me every morning; I do not believe he sleeps three hours."
"Men who neither sleep nor fight, drink nor kiss, are unnatural to me," cried Gibamund, laughing.
"I do not warn," said Hilda, "but I ask"--she laid her hand lightly on the King's arm--"how does it happen, how is it possible, that you, the warlike Prince of the Vandals, loved this gloomy Roman, this renegade, better than all who stood nearest to you?"
"There you are mistaken, fair Hilda," smiled the King, stroking her hand.
"Yes," she answered, correcting herself; "doubtless you love Ammata better; he is the apple of your eye."
"My father, on his death-bed, confided this brother (he was then only a prattling boy) to my care. I cherished him in my inmost heart, and reared him as though he were my own child," said Gelimer, tenderly. "It is not love," he went on, "that binds me to Verus. What constrains me to revere in him my guardian spirit on earth, to look up to him with ardent gratitude, with blind, credulous trust, is the confidence, nay, the superhuman certainty: yes," here he shuddered slightly, "it is a revelation of God, a miracle."
"A miracle?" Hilda repeated.
"A revelation?" Gibamund asked incredulously, stopping before them.
"Both," replied the King. "Only, to understand it, you must know more, you must know all, you must learn how my mind, my soul, was tossed to and fro by conflicting powers; you must live through with me once more my wanderings, my perils, and my deliverance. Yes, and you shall, you who are my nearest and dearest, now and here; who knows when the impending war will grant us another hour of leisure?
"Even in my earliest childhood, my father told me, I was not like ordinary children; I dreamed, I asked questions beyond my years. Then, it is true, came the happy days of boyhood: arms, arms, and again arms, my only sport, my only labor, my only study. At that time I grew to the power and the pleasure in the use of weapons--" his eyes flashed in the moonlight.
"Which made you the hero of your people," cried Gibamund.
"But suddenly an end came. By chance the leader of the hundred who was commanded to execute the order fell sick, and I was next in the list: I, a lad of sixteen, was sent with my troop to witness the terrible tortures of Romans, Catholics, who would not abjure their faith, in the courtyard of this citadel. The shrieks of agony which pierced through the thick walls had repeatedly roused the Carthaginians to insurrection; it was absolutely necessary to guard the dungeons. I had heard that such things were done; I was told that they were needful; that the Catholics were all traitors to the kingdom, and the rack was used only to compel them to reveal the secrets of their disloyal plans. But I had never witnessed the scene. Now suddenly I beheld it. The boy of sixteen was himself the commander of the executioners. Horrible! horrible! About a hundred persons, among them women, old men, boys and girls scarcely as old as I. I commanded a halt. 'By order of the King!' replied the Arian priest. I wanted to rush to the aid of the tortured prisoners. Alas! Verus's whole family were among the victims. I wanted to tear his gray-haired mother from the stake, from the ascending flames, amid which, in spite of her iron chains, she writhed, shrieking in unutterable agony. My own soldiers held me! 'By order of the King!' they shouted. I struck about me, I foamed, I raged. In vain! I shut my eyes that I might see the terrible scene no longer! But ah--"
The King hesitated and passed his hand across his brow. Then he went on,--
"My name, in a shrill scream, reached my ear. I involuntarily opened my eyes again and saw, stretched toward me, the naked, fettered, arm of the gray-haired woman. 'Curses on you, Gelimer!' she shrieked. 'Curses on you upon earth and in hell! Curses on all you Asdings! Curses on the Vandal people and kingdom! God's vengeance for your own and your fathers' sins shall pursue you from childhood to old age. Curses, curses on you, murderer Gelimer!' And I saw her eyes, horribly disfigured by suffering and hate, piercing mine. Then I sank down in the convulsions which, later, often attacked me, and lay gasping under the burden of the thought: even though I myself am free from sin, the despairing woman cursed me as she died; she bore the curse to the throne of God. I must bear the burden of guilt of all our family." He trembled, beads of perspiration stood on his brow.
"For God's sake, brother, stop! Your illness might return."
But Gelimer continued: "When I came to my senses, I was no longer a youth; I was an old man; or crushed, half mad, as you will call it. I threw off my sword-belt, helmet, shield, and all my weapons, and--oh, never shall I forget it--that one terrible word alone pressed through my poor brain, deadening all else: 'Sin--the curse of sin rests upon me, my family, my people!'
"I sought comfort. I seized the Bible. I had been taught that God speaks to us through the oracles of the Sacred Book. With a sharp dagger in my hand I unrolled the passages of Holy Writ. I appealed to God. 'O Lord, wilt Thou really punish me for the sins of my ancestors?' I struck haphazard with my dagger at the open page; it pierced the verse: 'For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.'
"I almost died of terror. Once more I controlled myself. From the street below rose the blast of the Vandal horns; glittering in brilliant armor, our horsemen were going out to battle with the Moors. That was my joy, my pride. Twice already I myself had mingled in the victorious conflict. My heart, my courage, my joy in life, revived. I said to myself: 'Even though all pleasure is forever dead to me, my people, the Vandal kingdom, the hero's duty to live, to fight, to die for his country, summon me. Is this, too, nothing? Is sin, too, an idle nothing?' Again, in another place, I questioned the word of God. I closed the roll, opened it again, and my dagger's point touched the words: All is vanity!
"Then I sank down in despair. So people and country and heroism, which our ancestors had fostered and praised as at once the highest duty and the greatest pleasure,--this, too, is vanity, is sin before the eyes of the Lord."
"It is a cruel chance," said Gibamund, wrathfully.
"And it is folly to believe it," cried Hilda. "O Gelimer, thou hero, grandson of Genseric, does not every pulsation of your heart give the lie to this gloomy delusion." She sprang up, throwing back her flowing hair and fixing a fiery glance upon him.
"Sometimes, doubtless, fair leader of the Valkyrie," replied Gelimer, smiling. "And especially since--since God saved me by a miracle. And fear not, granddaughter of Hildebrand, you will have no cause to be ashamed of your brother-in-law, the Vandal King, when the tuba of Belisarius summons us to battle." He raised his noble head, clenching his fist.
"Oh, joy to us, my husband," cried Hilda, "that is still the inmost care of his being--the hero!" And she eagerly pressed her husband's hand.
"Who knows the inmost care of his own being?" Gelimer went on. "At that time--and for years after--all joy in the pomp and glitter of arms was over for me. I was so ill! At that second oracle the convulsions returned; and later they came very frequently, so that my father was compelled to yield to my earnest desire, for I was not yet fit for military service. I was permitted to enter a monastery of the monks of our religion as a pupil, and to remain there in the solitude of the desert. I spent many years within those walls, and during that time I burned all the war songs which I had written in our language to sing to the accompaniment of the harp."
"Oh, what a shame!" exclaimed Hilda.
"But a few were preserved by the lips of our soldiers," said Gibamund, consolingly; "for instance,--
"'Grandsons most noble
Of ancestors noblest,
Ancient blood of the Asdings,
Gold-panoplied race
Of mighty Genseric,
To ye hath descended
The Sea-Kings' power.'"
"And the fatal harvest of his sins!" said Gelimer, bowing his head gloomily. He was silent for a time, then he began again,--
"Instead of the Vandal verse, I now composed Latin penitential hymns. My brothers thought that the tortures of the condemned groaned, the flames of hell darted through these trochees. Doubtless there were flames--those which I had seen consume living human beings. There was no mortification, no asceticism, which I did not practise to excess. I raged against my flesh; I hated myself, my sinful soul, my body, which dragged with it the curse of mortal sin. I fasted, I scourged myself, I wore the nail-studded belt till it pierced deep wounds. I secretly invented fresh tortures, when the abbot forbade the undue infliction of the old ones. At the same time I devoured all the books in the monastery and the libraries of Carthage. I persuaded my father to let me go to Alexandria, to Athens, to Constantinople, to hear the teachers there. I had become more learned, not wiser, when I returned from those schools to the monastery in the desert. At last my father summoned me from this monastery to his deathbed; he committed to me, as a sacred legacy, the care of my youngest brother, the child Ammata. I could not selfishly hasten from my father's grave to the desert, as I desired; the care of the child was a human, healthy duty which restored me to the world. I lived for the darling boy."
"No father could watch over him more tenderly," cried Gibamund.
"At that time I was urged to marry. The King, the whole nation wished it. The lady belonged to the royal race of the Visigoths, and came to visit Carthage. A beautiful, noble, brilliant Princess, she charmed my heart and ray eyes. I ruled both, and said, No."
"To live solely for Ammata?" asked Hilda.
"Not that alone. The thought entered my mind," his brow clouded again, "the curse which the old woman had called down upon my head should not, according to those terrible words of Scripture, be transmitted by me from generation to generation. I should tremble to see in my children's faces the features of their accursed father. So I remained unwedded."
"What a gloomy idea!" Gibamund whispered in the ear of his beautiful wife, as, drawing her tenderly toward him, he kissed her cheek.
"I suppose it was at that time," said Hilda, "that you composed that denunciation which condemns all love as sin?"
"Maledictus amor sextus,
Maledicta oscula,
Sint amplexus maledicti
Inferi ligamina."
"It is all untrue," she added smiling, warmly returning her husband's embrace.
But Gelimer went on: "The result will teach us the truth--on the Day of Judgment. The care of the boy cured me. I again turned to the practice of arms; it would soon be necessary to teach my pupil their use. But a still greater aid was the duty--"
"You owed your people and your native land," interrupted Hilda.
"Yes," added Gibamund. "At that time the Moors had proved greatly superior to our effeminate troops, and especially our unwarlike King. We were defeated in every battle, and could no longer hold our own in the open field against the camel-riders. Our frontier was harried year after year. Nay, the robbers of the desert grew bold enough to penetrate deep into the heart of the proconsular province, till they made forays to the very gates of Carthage. Then I was summoned to become the shield of my people; I did so gladly. The old love of arms waked anew, and I said to myself: 'No vain, sinful greed for fame urges you on.'"
"What? Is heroism called a sin?" cried Hilda. "You were fighting only to defend your people."
"Ah, but he found much pleasure in it," replied Gibamund, smiling at his wife. "And he often pursued the Moors farther into the desert, and in following them killed many more with his own hand than the protection of Carthage would have required."
"May Heaven pardon all that I did beyond what was necessary," said Gelimer, in a troubled tone. "The thought, 'It is a sin,' often paralyzed my arm, even in the midst of battle. Often, too, I was overwhelmed by the old melancholy, the torturing fear of sin, the consciousness of guilt, the burden of the curse of the burning woman, the words piercing to the quick: 'All is sin, all is vanity!'
"Then came the day which brought to me the most terrible ordeal,--tortures little less than those suffered by the Catholics, the parents and relatives of Verus, and at the same time the decision, rescue, deliverance, through Verus. Yes, as Jesus Christ is my Redeemer in Heaven, this priest became my savior, my redeemer on earth."
"Do not blaspheme," warned Gibamund. "I, unfortunately, am not so devout a Christian as you; but the Saviour is only like unto, not equal with, God--"
"You have learned your Arian creed by heart, my dear one," cried Hilda, laughing. "But old Hildebrand said he was neither like nor equal to the gods of our ancestors."
"No, for they are demons," said Gelimer, wrathfully, making the sign of the cross.
"Yet I should not like to compare the gloomy Verus with Christ," replied Gibamund.
"I had felt toward him as you, as Zazo, as almost all did; he did not attract, he rather repelled me. That he--he alone of all his kindred, whose death for their faith he had witnessed, should have adopted the religion of their executioners! Was it from fear, or really from conviction? I distrusted him! It displeased me, too, that King Hilderic, the friend of the Byzantines, whose plots against my own succession to the throne I already suspected, so greatly favored him. How greatly I wronged Verus there he has now proved; he--he alone saved me and the Vandal kingdom. Thus he has done visibly what God's sign announced to me in the most terrible moment of my life. Now listen to what only our Zazo yet knows; I told him, as an answer to his warning. Hear, marvel, and recognize the signs and wonders of God."