"Blessed in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."
CHAPTER XXII
SONNLEIN TAKETH THE ORDEAL
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.
—Shakespeare.
Over a month had passed away since the death of our Brother Alburtus and his lonely burial far up in the mountain. My brethren, though at first of a mind to bring him to our little graveyard in the meadow, at last reluctantly came to my way of thinking that he should be left to rest undisturbed where I had laid him.
Often as the days came and went I wondered what Sonnlein would say when he returned, to find his dear Brother Alburtus gone. Oftener still in those dreary days I would ponder and puzzle over the dying words of our brother. I could understand how by the great shock of his fall he did not know me, for I had seen more than once what a misty veil cometh over the sight of the dying so that they know not at all even their most beloved ones. But what I could not solve was why he called himself by a name I had never heard before. Was David Seymour his own, right name or the name of some friend of earlier days, and did our brother in his last moments imagine himself that other one? And 'Lisbeth and the baby, were these wife and child, or merely long-buried memories of acquaintances revived in the very shadow of death? With all my pondering and puzzling I could not solve the matter, and gradually it left me, though never wholly cast aside.
Indeed, with the wandering away of our Brother Alburtus and his dying up in those lonely mountains, and the loss of our Genoveva and my boy, my cup of woe was well-nigh running over. The winter was now on the wane, almost three months having elapsed since Sister Genoveva and Sonnlein had gone, and still we knew no more than when they left us; for though our justice kept me and our little Kloster in most affectionate remembrance, I receiving many letters from him in all his great work and responsibility, yet he had nothing to tell us other than not to lose faith and courage; and for this we loved him, even though he gave us no knowledge of our lost ones.
But surely it is cowardly and ungrateful in man or woman to complain because the infinite Father doth not always explain to our narrow, little minds why and wherefore he doeth this or that, for I have ever found that if one will but possess his soul in patience and cease repining and keep on doing his work all will come out right in the end.
So on a beautiful moonlight night, after I had retired to my Kammer, shortly after the midnight services and had fallen into my usual sound sleep, I felt, or at first dreamt I felt, a shaking of my arm; but as I was about to turn over in my drowsy state, I received another shake of the arm, this time so decided I no longer doubted I was awake. As I sat up more frightened than I care to tell, I saw bending over me a form—surely it could not be! but then as I heard my boy call me, "Vaterchen," with such sadness and despair and weariness in his voice as I thought would make my heart burst with very pity for him, I clasped him in my arms and kissed him and wept over him as some mother over a long-lost child. Such a simpleton was I, as all will agree, and yet I doubt not I should do the same thing over again were there similar occasion for it.