CHAPTER VI.
A lonely rider was at this same hour of the night traversing the storm-beaten forest that lay below Marienberg. His cloak clung dripping round him; his horse's hoofs were inaudible on the soaking moss and he rode noiselessly forward towards a red, glowing spot in the distance, which looked to him like a little heap of burning charcoal shining dimly through the damp night air. He was not deceived, and a woman close by it lay with a child who vainly endeavoured to keep up the smouldering fire. The woman was lying on the bare earth, the child knelt close by, and the rider was startled as he caught sight of her face lighted up by the ruddy glow, and her large eyes which reflected the flame she strove to fan with her breath.
At this instant the midnight toll sounded out from the tower on the mountain, the woman raised her arm and shrieked in a piercing voice, "Aye! ring away! If there is a God in Heaven that is your knell. On the heath, in the wilderness, in the wood--thus may you all die as I am dying; may your house fall as my hovel fell. May despair rend your hearts, and remorse scorch your brains as they have mine."
"Mother, mother, do not curse, it is a sin, you yourself said so," implored the little girl, clasping the woman's outstretched hand with a soothing gesture.
"It is only what they have done," complained the woman. "Oh, I was pious and good like you once; I would have been content if only they would have let me see Donatus for one hour."
The rider pulled up his horse behind the bushes, and dismounted to listen.
"Only one hour," she went on, "in return for a whole ruined life-time! But even that they would not grant me--not even that. No, let me be, I have nothing but curses that I can fling at their heads; give me an arm to strike with, and I will spare my words."
"Woman," cried a voice suddenly behind her, "here is the arm you need to carry out your curse, I am just in the mood for such a task!"
The child started up in alarm at seeing the grim looking man, and fled to the other side of her mother.
The woman gazed thoughtfully at the stranger; something in his face struck her, but she could not tell what. The rider tied up his horse, and flung himself down on his cloak by the woman's side.
"Your rage is against the monks of Marienberg; what have they done to you?"
And the woman told him at full length all that had happened from the beginning, how she had lost her child and her husband for the sake of the strange infant, and how she had loved him so much all the same, that she would willingly have sacrificed everything if only she might have clasped him once to her heart, and have made her last confession to him. But not even that would they grant her, a dying woman. They had driven the little girl from the door, and called her an adder. Ah! and there was a great weight on her mind about the girl too, and now the child must perish miserably; for when she was dead there would be no one to care for her in all the wide world.
The stranger looked absently at the child; he paused for a moment as if the large, tawny-brown eyes with their dark, meeting brows had struck him; but another idea possessed him wholly.
"And you do not know who the boy was that you nursed?" he asked almost breathlessly.
"No, they did not tell me."
"Do not you know either where he was brought from?"
"Yes," said the nurse, "a lay-brother of Saint Valentine's was there when I went, who had brought him to Marienberg."
The man vehemently grasped the woman's wasted arm.
"Do you not remember his name?"
"I do not know it, my lord, no one told me. But he was very old, and must be dead long since."
"Saint Valentine's," repeated the stranger between his teeth. "Indeed, Saint Valentine's--there perhaps I might find a trace," and he started up in haste to remount his horse; but the woman clutched him by the sleeve,
"My lord, my lord," she cried, "for God's sake! you will not leave us in our misery--and my child, the poor orphan--My hour is near--Have pity on the child or she must starve."
The knight flung a gold-piece into the sick woman's lap. "Here, that is all I carry with me in case of emergency; now, keep me no longer."
But she clung to him in her dying agony, "Gold is of no use to us, what does the child know of gold; wicked men may take it from her, and then she will be as helpless as ever. Shelter, my lord, and protection for the innocent! Oh, my lord, she is not my child, she is a child of sin; but the child is pure, my lord, as pure as the dew, as innocent as the fawn in the forest. I have brought her up in decency and the fear of God. Take charge of her, she is of noble blood; her mother was a lady, and the knight, her husband, was so long away in the field that she thought he was dead; then she fell into trouble. And the child's father--God save his soul--was a minnesänger at Count Albert's court, and the child has come by many gifts through him; she can sing and is full of pretty tunes, and hidden things are revealed to her. You would find her a joy to you, my lord."
The dark-looking man struck his hand against his forehead with a loud and scornful laugh.
"It serves me right! I cast out my own flesh and blood, and in exchange I get a bastard; now I am searching again for my own outcast child, and again, oh! mocking Fate, you fling the bastard scornfully into my lap. Ay, Thou art just, Thou severe God, and Thy ways are past finding out."
The woman and the girl looked in alarm at the powerful man; but after a pause he spoke more calmly,
"I am the Count of Reichenberg," he said, "whose guilty wife gave this child into your charge."
"Great God!" cried the nurse, crossing herself. "Do not harm her, my lord, she could not help it."
The count's gaze gradually softened as he looked at the girl's childish beauty.
"No, you cannot help it. You have your mother's eyes, but they are not false like hers. I forgave her on her death-bed, and how could I be cruel to you? By Heaven, the child bewitches me as her mother did before her. Be off with your sick nurse there to Reichenberg; you shall no longer wander about homeless. Give this ring to the warder as a token that I have sent you, and that he is to take you in to the castle, and take care of you. I shall come after you later, but first I have important work to do in this neighbourhood."
"Thank you, my lord, and may God reward you," cried the nurse, who was almost bewildered by such unexpected good fortune; "I cannot get so far, for I feel my end is near, but the child--I will send her to you at once."
But the little girl shook her head, and threw the ring from her.
"No," she said, "I will not go with the strange man, I will stay with you, mother."
"Child, do not be foolish; when I am dead, what then?"
"Then I will stay with the angel, he will take care of me."
"Oh, you silly child!" wailed the woman. "He cannot help you, for he is only a man, and is himself shut up a prisoner among the monks there."
"Then I will go to the blessed maidens that they may set him free," said the child confidently.
The Count had not been listening to the last words; he had thrown himself on horseback and set off again--away through wind and weather, straight across country, over roots and broken branches in fevered haste, to the heath of Mals, and he raised his fist threateningly at the convent on the height where the gleaming windows shone far out over the dark scene around.
Up in the convent all were astir. The monks were assembled for a solemn and fearful task; they were sitting in judgment on a breach of their holy rule--the crime of self-mutilation--of which Donatus was guilty.
This was culpa gravis, punishable by the heaviest penance that could be inflicted.
One word could absolve the criminal; he had only to say that one of the priests had ordered the deed, that he had done it in obedience to a superior command; but this word he did not speak, for his guilt would then fall on that other one, and he would have none but himself bear his cross.
And he, that other who could save him, he spoke not. The lips of both remained sealed. If Donatus had still had eyes, the cruel instigator of the crime might well have blenched before the silent appeal with which his victim turned to him; but those eyes were gone which might have spoken, and the bloodstained bandage concealed even the unspoken anguish stamped on the pale brow.
The enquiry was ended, the sentence only was wanting; the monks stood in a half-circle round the Abbot who supported himself on the arms of his chair; his hands trembled, his face was as pale as death. The younger brethren covered their faces and wept; Donatus waited in humble resignation for the sentence to be pronounced.
Three times the Abbot rose, three times his voice failed him--at last he spoke.
"Seeing that the holy rule of Saint Benedict strictly forbids any follower of his to lay violent hands upon himself, in that he is no longer his own but belongs to the holy Church, and, as such, may not injure himself any more than any sacred vessel, garment, altar, temple or whatever else is the Church's property--
"Seeing that you, unhappy child, have been instructed and indoctrinated in that holy rule and have wittingly sinned against it out of your own pride of judgment as to what is best, and have thus rendered yourself unfit to do the Church that service for which God had especially chosen you--
"Seeing that by the commission of this deed, you have rebelled against the will of your spiritual and temporal superiors and so are guilty of the gravest disobedience--
"We declare and pronounce that, as a terrible example to the votaries of all Orders and at all times you--" here again his voice failed and he had to draw a long breath, "that you shall be imprisoned to all perpetuity in the Convent dungeon."
Donatus bowed his head in silence--the Abbot sank back in his chair and clasped his hands over his face which was bathed in tears. One single inarticulate sob broke from all the conclave; only Correntian stood unmoved and his eyes were fixed upon the prisoner. A long silence followed; over their heads stared the fixed stony face of Duty--that pitiless divinity--suppressing every outward expression of the sorrow that filled their shrinking hearts.
At last the Abbot rose and turning to Correntian with an awful and reproachful look,
"You, Correntian," he said, "may fill the office of executioner and lead him away--for not one of us could bear it."
And, just as he had long ago snatched him from his nurse's arms, ruthlessly and without delay Correntian grasped the blind man's arm--to tear him from the last hearth of humanity that was open to him--from the midst of the brotherhood. Donatus obediently turned to follow him.
"Forgive us!" cried the sobbing group of monks, "We only do our duty."
The blind man spread out his arms as though he would clasp them all in one embrace, "If I had eyes to weep, my brethren, it should be for you all and not for myself."
The Abbot could contain himself no longer; with a cry of anguish he flung himself upon Donatus; "My son, my son--why have you done this to me?"
The youth sank into his arms with unutterable affection and they stood in close embrace through a long silence.
But even these loving arms, which had once rescued him from Correntian's iron grip, could not save him now; that iron hand tore him from them and led him away--an unresisting prey. Correntian remained the victor.
"Let us mourn and fast for forty days, my brethren, as for one that is dead," said the Abbot to the conclave. "And send for brother Eusebius--why is he not here?--He must bind up that poor boy's eyes to the best of his skill--the law does not forbid that," and as he spoke he tottered and put out his hand to cling to the man nearest to him--the strong man's powers were spent and the brethren had to support him, or he would have fallen.
Correntian led his victim down the slippery dungeon stair; two of the convent servants followed him with hand-cuffs. They reached the damp vault in silence. Correntian led his prisoner to a bed made of a heap of straw in a corner, close to which, riveted to the wall, were the rings to which he was to be fastened.
"Chains too?" said Donatus; and in the tone in which he spoke these two words there was something which penetrated even Correntian's hard heart to that secret human core, which up to this minute no lament, no dying sigh of any mortal had ever touched; but he strangled the emotion before it found birth, and said calmly, "So it must be."
"If it is possible," said Donatus humbly, "spare me that--Yet, not my will but thine be done."
"So it must be," repeated Correntian, and the lad was silent. Only once he pressed his hand on the bandage which covered his burning sockets, then he submissively held out his trembling hands for the chains; it was quickly done, the irons were riveted and the servants went away. The two monks were alone.
"Now you have indeed preserved yourself from temptation!" cried Correntian, as Donatus dropped his fettered hands without a sound of lamentation passing his lips. "Martyr! open the eyes of your soul, the crown is hanging above your head!"
Donatus fell on his knees before the terrible monk and folding his weary, iron-bound hands as if in prayer, he exclaimed, "Now, now, I understand you."
"Donatus!" cried Correntian, as if his lifelong torpor was suddenly unpent in a lava-flood of extasy--his eye flashed, his pulses throbbed, his breast heaved--"At one word from me you would have been exempt from this fearful punishment--and I was silent. Donatus, tell me, have I been your salvation or your ruin?"
"My salvation and I thank you!" groaned Donatus, and a terrible smile of bliss passed over his drawn lips; he feebly grasped Correntian's hands; the damp walls, like an open grave, echoed back his words: "I thank you."
Correntian hastily threw his arms round the unconscious boy as he sank to the ground; for the first time in his life a human form rested on his breast, and with the first rays of morning, which fell on him through the slit in the wall, high above him, the first ray of love sparkled in the stern master's eyes and was merged in the martyr's crown that shone on the disciple's head.