Saint Michael: A Romance

by E. Werner

Michael entered the church, quite empty at this hour of the afternoon, but having donned its modest festal garment. Here upon these lonely heights there were no fragrant blossoms of the spring,--column and portal were wreathed about with dark evergreen, and little nosegays of Alpine flowers were the sole decoration of the altar. There was, nevertheless, a breath of spring in the solemnity reigning in the quiet, spacious structure, now filled with the golden light of the declining sun. The church might wear a more festal aspect when thronged with a devout crowd, but it was much more beautiful in the profound consecrated repose in which it awaited its festival, still untouched, as it were, by all the aspirations, prayers, and laments which would arise from within its walls on the morrow. No inharmonious sound disturbed its quiet; even the roaring of the wind outside, dying away in long-drawn notes, sounded like the tones of a distant organ.

Saint Michael was enthroned above the high altar; not the dim picture of the saint which time had half destroyed, and which had been but the crude outcome of mediæval piety,--that had been respectfully transferred to the church vestibule,--but the work of the young artist who was making a name and fame for himself. Michael had been familiar with it from its first conception, he had seen it repeatedly; but it had been for him, as for the public, and even for the painter himself, only a picture, a scene of conflict, accidentally illustrating a legend of the church. He was surprised to the last degree by the impression produced by the picture in its present place. In the twilight of the chancel, between the tall Gothic windows with their glowing colours, it took on quite another appearance; it seemed freed from all earthly taint, the embodiment of the ancient sacred legend, repeated in all religions and among all races of mankind, of the victory of light over darkness.

Rodenberg slowly approached the high altar, and as he did so he became aware of a kneeling female figure, hitherto concealed by a column from his observation. It was no peasant: a gown of dark silk fell in folds upon the ground, and beneath the veil of black lace that had been thrown over the head there was a gleam as of red gold which Michael knew only too well. He paused as if stayed by a spell. Was this a freak of his fancy which was always bringing up before him the same image? Just then the lady, roused by the sound of his footstep, turned her head; an exclamation of surprise that was almost terror escaped her lips. Those were Hertha's eyes gazing at him.

It was surely a fate that had brought these two together for the second time in a lonely Alpine village, at an hour when each had believed the other miles away,--at least thus this unexpected meeting seemed to them. Both so lost their self-possession that neither observed the other's embarrassment; there was a pause, which Michael was the first to break. "I am sorry to have disturbed you, Countess Steinrück; I thought the church was empty, and did not perceive you until this moment."

Hertha slowly arose from her knees, conscious that her exclamation, her apparent dismay, called for some explanation. She had been lost in contemplation of the picture; she could not have told how long she had been gazing at Saint Michael, when suddenly he whom the saint suggested stood before her. There was a tremor in her voice as she rejoined, "I was, indeed, surprised. His reverence had not told me that you also were to be his guest."

"I arrived unexpectedly only half an hour ago, and had not heard of your being here, having been told only that you, with the Countess your mother, were at Steinrück."

"We both meant to come to Saint Michael," said Hertha, who by this time had regained her self-possession, "but my mother was taken ill,--not seriously, however,--yet I came with some anxiety. It was her express wish that at least one member of our family should be present at the festival and at the consecration of her gift, and so I yielded to her desire."

Michael uttered a few words of condolence and sympathy, mere phrases, which fell mechanically from his lips and were scarcely heeded. He did not look at Hertha as he spoke, and she avoided glancing at him. Instinctively their looks refused to encounter each other; they dwelt upon the picture, now fully illumined by the setting sun, which, streaming through the side windows into the nave of the church, cast a broad band of golden light upon the high altar.

The picture had none of the traditional setting of its predecessor: no circle of angelic heads looked down from above; no flames flickered up from the abyss; the two life-size figures were alone within the frame, each powerful and effective in its way. Above them arched the clear shining heavens; beneath them yawned a rocky gulf, the abode of eternal night.

Dashed from on high, on the very edge of the abyss, Satan was writhing upwards with the last desperate effort of a conquered foe not in the guise of the horned dragon-like monster of the legend, but in a human form of strange demoniac beauty, with dark wings like those of a bird of night. The face expressed agony, rage, and at the same time horror of the power that had hurled him to destruction; while in the upturned eyes there was the hopeless despair of a lost soul conscious of the light that had been radiant about it, but to be henceforth quenched in eternal night. It was Lucifer, once the Son of the Morning, and now showing in his ruin a gleam of his former splendour.