It was night; the white heads of the glaciers looked down like pale watchers into the silent and sleeping Trafoy Thal. There it lay, deep in the shadows of the sheltering mountain walls, the lonely little valley. Fragments and boulders of fallen rocks strewed the earth--a sea of stones--and only here and there a red glow shone in the darkness, the light of the smelting furnaces of which several were scattered about; not a living creature was to be seen far and near.
Tired to death and with bruised feet the lonely couple toiled through the stony chaos towards the still invisible green nook, where the miraculous waters of the three Holy Wells take their rise.
"Do you see anything?" asked Donatus in a weary tone, "all is so still--"
"I see nothing far and wide," answered the child.
"Beata," said Donatus, "if she is not here either!--" he broke off, the terrible thought choked his utterance.
And on they went again. He listened for the least sound that might betray the presence of a travelling encampment and she strained her keen sight for his sake; but sharp as were her eyes, quick as was his ear, there was nothing to be seen, nothing stirring. They had traversed the whole valley.
"I can hear the rush of water, are we not near the Holy Wells?" asked Donatus.
"Yes, here we are," said Beata, trembling as if she feared to tell him.
"And there is no one to be seen?"
"No one," she said hardly audibly.
"All merciful God!--and I can go no farther." Donatus sank to the ground on the spot where he was standing, and hid his face in his clasped hands.
"Oh, good God! what misery!" lamented the girl. "Lie here a while, I will go back to the smelting houses, and get some news of the Duchess."
"Beata, you can walk no farther," sighed Donatus.
"For you I can do anything," she said boldly and steadily, and soon the blind man lost the sound of her steps in the distance. An endless term of waiting in motionless patience ensued, and the agonised watcher felt the dull silence around like the influence of a petrifying basilisk, slowly tormenting its victim to death. He listened and listened, and yet could hear nothing but the singing of the blood in his ears, the ceaseless trickle of the three streams close at hand, and the distant thunder of the waterfalls that fling themselves from the precipices of the Königspitze. From time to time his thoughts became confused; he heard the noisy travelling-train of the Duchess approaching, he called to her what his errand was, but she did not hear, he could not make himself intelligible and he tried to scream but he could not. The horses went over him, he felt their trampling feet, then he started up and felt all round him; the hard stones on which he was lying had bruised him all over, and the tramp of horses that he had fancied he heard was no more than the roar of the water. All was silent, and all remained silent. Then again a dread came over him lest Beata should never return, some harm might have befallen the child among the smelters--a half wild crew--and he, a miserable mere shade of a man, he could not save her, he must depend for succour on a weak and helpless woman. He loathed himself; could God take delight in such a miserable cripple? "Wretch, blind feeble wretch--die!" he groaned, and his limbs shook with fever. "Son of all misfortune, what are you alive for? That you may scatter abroad the seeds of misery which you bear in your bosom--" and then again fear for the child overcame him, and he shouted to the night, "Beata, Beata, where are you?" till once more his consciousness was clouded.
At last she bent over him, and softly called his name.
"Is it you, Beata?" he cried, starting up, and his trembling arms clasped her slender form as though he thought she might be a dream and would melt away. His hair clung to his brow, his breath came quickly, his face was flushed with incipient fever. Beata saw in a moment that he was ill, very ill.
"My dear master--I have brought a boy, the smelter's son from the hut out yonder, and he will help me to carry you under his father's roof, so that you may get some rest."
Donatus staggered to his feet. "No--no--I cannot rest--the Duchess, where is the Duchess?" he cried.
"We shall never catch her up, my poor master," said Beata hesitatingly. "She set out at night on account of the heat--she has been gone an hour, and no one can tell me where."
"An hour!" shrieked Donatus. "That was the hour of my temptation--that was the hour that I wasted dreaming in the wood--the hour I let you sleep because as you slept your breath kept me spell-bound, and I forgot everything--everything depended on that one hour, and now it is lost--all lost--by my fault." He stood tottering and tried to take a few steps. "After her--I must go after her--"
"How can you, my dear master--consider, they are on horseback and have an hour's start of us. Besides you are ill and cannot stir from the spot."
"Oh Lord God! work a miracle--Thou hast done so many for others--do one for us! Help me, bear me up--we shall overtake them--only go on, go on!" he panted; and he sank into the arms of Beata and the boy. "The clouds, the clouds, they are strong enough, they will bear me--no, stop, I am going too fast--Heaven and earth! I am giddy--do not let me fall."
"Oh, dear master--!" Beata burst into tears and sank on her knees under her heavy burden, resting his head in her lap. The boy, a smutty fellow with dull, staring eyes, stood by stupidly looking on.
"Go and fetch your father to help us," said Beata.
The boy shook his head. "Father cannot leave the ore till the furnace is tapped," he said.
"Well, go and beg him to come as soon as he can," and the boy slowly strolled away.
The towering peaked walls of the Ortler--Madatsch, and the glaciers of Trafoy--stared pitilessly down on the forsaken pair--there was not a projecting rock, not a cave that could offer shelter to the sick man. They stood up appallingly bare and steep and almost perpendicular, like giant walls built up to protect the world's Holy of Holies. And there it was too--that Holy of Holies. The three Holy Wells poured out in the moon-shine like rivulets of light, from the hearts of the wooden images of the Virgin mother, the Redeemer and the Baptist, which were protected by a little wooden structure which might well afford shelter to the sick man also. There--if she could only get him there; and she whispered in his ear, imploring and urging him till at last he heard her and began to move.
"Dear master--if you could only go a few steps farther--there flows the holy water--that will make you well--"
The sick man caught her words. "Where--where?" he said.
"Come--only come, I will help you up--there, now one step--one more--we are there now." With a tremendous effort she had got him there, and she let him softly slide down on to the soft ground under the shrine in front of the Madonna.
"You are kneeling before our Mother Mary," she whispered reverently, and she bathed his brow and eyes with the miraculous water.
"Oh, Holy Virgin! have mercy upon us," she prayed, and she held up the folded hands of the blind man who no longer had strength enough to raise them in prayer.
"Have mercy upon us!" he stammered, after her "Rosa mystica, maris stella, stella matutina"; his feeble lips went through the thousand-times repeated rosary, and then his head sank back in the girl's lap, and he lost consciousness.
Nine times had the sun risen and set without the sick man's darkened spirit being conscious of it. It is true that his blinded eyes would not have told him even if he had been conscious, but the measure of time of which men have an instinctive idea would have served him even in his darkness, and have driven the tortured man home to his imperilled brethren. From time to time indeed he had roused a little, and had asked the time, but the girl--God will forgive her--had deceived him; had taken advantage of his blindness, and had made him believe he had slept but an hour, while a whole day or a whole night had gone by. She meant it well, that he might be content to rest, and not get so ill as to die. So each time he had laid his head down again, and let himself be persuaded--"till it was day"--to go no farther. And thus it had nine times been day, and nine times night. To-day for the first time the rage of his fever was subdued, and his reawakened consciousness began to light up his pale face.
"Beata, are you there?" he asked.
"Yes, master."
"I believe you have not slept the whole night through--whenever I have called you you have been awake. Is it not yet day?"
"Yes, dear master, very soon; but rest a little longer."
Donatus felt around him; he was surprised to find a soft straw-bed under him, and by his side a wall.
"Where am I?"
"In the smelter's hut; we carried you in that you might be sheltered from wind and weather."
"Then we are among men?"
"Yes, they are poor folks, but compassionate and helpful."
"How many are they?"
"A man and his son."
"Do you think the boy could conduct me to Marienberg?"
"To Marienberg?" said Beata, turning pale.
He did not answer for some time, then he said,
"It is so sultry and heavy in here; if you would do me a last service, help me up and lead me out into God's open air that I may collect my senses."
"You are still too weak to stand; have a little patience," she begged.
"Not a minute longer must I delay; I must go home to my brethren to share the danger which I could not avert." He rose from the bed, and the girl led him silent and tottering out into the air. The sky bent in ethereal blue over the mighty glaciers, an icy morning-wind blew down from them and waved the sick man's hair across his face, for it had grown long. He inhaled the pure air of the heights in long deep breaths like a man risen from the grave. Heaven sent him a greeting from the cloud-capped peaks, it invited him up there; he felt it, the flames of hell thirsted for him in vain; the child seated him on a stone bench by the door of the hut.
"Beata," he said in a hollow voice, "we must part." The child uttered a cry of pain that pierced him to the very heart. He went on, "Beata, I have erred and gone astray. I believed that I might escape love if I blinded myself, and I lulled my soul in that security, till temptation was upon me before I suspected it. It was so fair a dream, Beata, when we wandered on together in innocence, as in Paradise, but original sin has driven us out of it! From the first hour when your sweet charm stirred my soul with earthly longings, from that hour our Paradise was lost. Beata, hell would fain have power over the immortal part of us, let us snatch it from its power. It is yet time; I have as yet withstood that hellish temptation, but now let us part lest the darker deed should follow hard on the dark thought. I gave up my eyes that I might keep myself pure, now I will give you up too. Be strong, Beata, prove yourself worthy of the suffering I endure for your sake, and obey in silence."
"No, no! Require what you will of me but not that," shrieked the child. "Plant a knife in my heart and I will not shrink, but do not require me to part from you without crying out like some wild creature that is only half killed, and can neither live nor die."
Donatus clasped his hands, and a cold sweat stood on his brow; Beata flung herself before him.
"My lord and master, do not drive me away; you cannot be so cruel, you only fancy that you can, and you will rue it when you are gone a few hundred yards, and you will call your child to come back to you; but it will be too late. I have been with you in the hour of anguish, my eyes are dim with watching by your bed, my bleeding feet have stained the stones on the paths along which I have led you, and you will drive me away? Oh, dear good master! you would not drive away a lost dog that humbly licked your hand, and have you no pity on my suffering and my tears?" And she laid her tear-bathed face on his hands and tremblingly clasped his knees.
The tortured man cried out from the depths of his soul, "Oh God, my God! is it not enough? Beata, have pity, have pity, no devil could torture me as you are doing. Beata, if you are not indeed of the powers of hell, if you are not an emissary of the devil sent to torment me, go from me. Oh holy Spirit! enlighten her, purify her, deliver her, as Thou hast delivered me."
He rose and solemnly lifted his hand, "Beata would you win everlasting bliss?"
"I ask for no bliss without you," said the girl.
"Beata, do you wish me to lose it too?"
The child shuddered but did not speak.
"Beata if you renounce me I may yet be saved. But if you will not quit me, if you make me faithless to my vows, I must be eternally damned. Now choose, which is it to be?"
The girl answered in a tremulous and hardly audible voice, "I will--go."
All was silent, as when the last life struggle is past, and the bystanders whisper, "All is over!"
For a few minutes longer the wretched man listened, his face bathed in a sweat of anguish; then he threw up his arms to heaven as if to ask, "What can be left to me to suffer more?" then he felt his way back into the hut.
"Spare me your boy," he said to the smelter, "that he may guide me to Marienberg."
"Do you want to go on again?" asked the man. "Where is the girl that was leading you?"
"She--she must stay here, take care of her; you are a good man. Take care of the child as the apple of your eye; oh! Angels of Heaven will guard your hut so long as she is in it." He hid his face in his hands and burst into loud sobs.
"If it troubles you so why do you leave her?" asked the man.
"Do not ask, do not talk, give me your son and let me go. When I have got back to the Abbey, I will send you a rich reward by your son." The boy sprang forward when he heard of a reward; Donatus took his rough hand, his heart tightened as he took it; it was not Beata's soft and loving touch.
"Farewell!" he called out to the man, and the rocks dismally echoed, "Farewell."
His foot had crossed the threshold, and he set forth without delay towards Marienberg.
For the ninth time since he first had set out the sun was setting behind the cliffs of Mals and Burgeis when the weary wanderer returned from his dreary and fruitless pilgrimage. Poor and wretched as if the wind and waves had tossed him on shore after a shipwreck; scorched and desolate in spirit as if in some pilgrimage in the Holy Land the burning sun of the Desert had consumed him heart and brain, and he had fled without earning his title to Salvation.
He laboriously climbed the mountain, led by his clumsy guide; the boy had heedlessly brought him by the lonely and little used 'Goats'-steps,' so called because only goats and goat-herds could climb it without turning giddy; at every step the blind man was in danger of falling into the yawning depth below.
The dank mists of evening fell thickly on the mountain, the vesper bell must presently ring, Donatus had been listening for it all the way.
"Boy, do you see no lights in the convent."
"No," said the lad, "all is dark."
"And yet it must be late," said Donatus, panting but hurrying still more up the steep ascent.
"Aye, it is late," said the boy.
At this moment the vesper bell rang out and up from Burgeis; now they will ring here too--
He listened, his heart throbbed once, twice, thrice, all was still.
What had happened? A shudder ran through him, the cold night wind blew down from the peaks and chilled his very marrow. The vesper bells rang out, each in a separate note, from the valleys far and near; only up here was it dumb.
"Can you see the convent yet?" asked the blind man.
"Yes, there it is," said the lad indifferently.
"Take me to the door."
The boy obeyed; Donatus put out his hand for the knocker, his hand grasped the air.
"The door is open," said the lad.
"Wait out here," said Donatus, and he went in. He easily found his way across the familiar court-yard; it was incomprehensible that the door should be open and no one in the way. He felt his way by the wall to the inner entrance--this too was open. He felt to right and left of him--the door-posts were there, but no door! Perhaps he had mistaken his way in the open space, and was in a quite different direction to what he believed. But how could there be a gap in the walled quadrangle that formed the court-yard if it were not the doorway? He will call out--does no one hear him? he listens--no answer! There is something gruesome in this silence; an unaccountable alarm takes possession of him. He can feel the stone of the threshold quite plainly with his foot--he is standing in the very doorway; then if he feels to the right the wall must be there, and the holy-water vessel of stone--yes, there it is, and the vessel too, so he has come the right way, he dips his hand in the piscina to take the holy-water--it is empty. It is strange, who can have emptied it?
He comes to the door of the refectory--there at last the brethren must certainly be. Here are the carved and iron-bound door-posts, he feels for the massive handle--again he grasps the empty air, and his foot is on the vacant threshold.
Is he delirious? or does his blindness cheat him with false ideas of space? His sense of touch perhaps betrays him--or some demon is tricking him, and juggling with his senses to torment him? Perhaps he is still out in the sheds, and only fancies he has made his way to the refectory?
A searching draught blew in his face through the open halls and corridors; a sickening wind bringing a horrible reek of smoke as if it blew across the dead embers of a burnt city, and a cloud of dusty ashes was wafted into his face.
"Is no one there?" He called aloud--all was still.
Then he walked on again--aimlessly, taking no particular direction in the darkness; suddenly his foot struck some unwonted object. He stooped--the refectory table lay in pieces at his feet--again he perceived the same strange smell of burning, and his hand fell on some charred fragments--the table was half burnt. Donatus walked all round it; wherever he trod there were ruins; he started back, finding himself suddenly at the opposite wall. Then he felt for a window--his feet trampled on crashing splinters of glass--the opening was empty, the wood work all charred.
Invasion had been here, and the fearful traces that it leaves wherever it enters--terror and desolation--depicted themselves vividly on the blind man's fancy.
"My brethren--my Abbot--where are you?" he shouted in despair to the darkness and chaos.
"My father--my brothers!" he cried out--but the words rang in the deserted rooms--and he wandered on without aim or purpose among the ruins and timbers--now straight forward, now round and round, without knowing why or whither.
"To the chapel--to the sacristy!" an inward voice suddenly suggested. "Perhaps they are there, praying--" and with infinite trouble he felt his way on through the chaos of destruction. He could no longer find his way, for everything he was familiar with, and that could serve him as a starting point had been torn from its place or destroyed, and he toiled in vain through the darkness to reach the spot which he always missed though so close to it.
"Help--light!" he shrieked as if demented--as though he could see the light even if there were one. He forgot his blindness--he forgot everything, he was half crazed with terror.
Then again he stood still and listened--nothing was stirring but the storm which sang unceasingly its wild lament through the ruined windows.
He wandered on again towards the chapel. At last the smell of burning was mingled with the odour of stale incense, and a wild confusion of broken choir-seats, images, and candelabra impeded his steps.
"Are you here, my brethren? Is no one here?" He shouted again and listened. He heard something--this time it was not the wind, it was a low groan from some human being.
"Who is there? answer me!" he cried, trembling.
"Who are you?" A well-known but broken voice fell upon his ear.
"Correntian!" cried Donatus, between fear and joy.
"Donatus!" answered the voice, and a strange shudder ran through him--as if he were called to the last judgment, and a voice from the clouds had read his name on the list of the damned.
"Donatus," repeated Correntian, "miserable son, why are you come so late? You have been our ruin."
"Correntian, my brother, I will tell you all; give me your hand and help me over these ruins."
"I am lying with crushed limbs under the overturned altar, I cannot help you," groaned Correntian.
"All-merciful God! How has this happened?"
"I wanted to rescue the charter of the convent from the enemy, and to hide it under the altar, but they surprised me, and in the struggle the altar was overturned upon me," groaned Correntian.
"And the brethren, where are they?"
"They have fled, driven away stripped and bare, the whole party. Our herds are driven off, the convent destroyed and plundered. Your father, who had leagued himself with your mother's kindred, committed the crime."
Trembling as he went, and with infinite effort, the youth had made his way through the medley of fragments and ruins towards the spot whence the voice proceeded; a hand now arrested his lifted foot.
"Stop, you will tread upon me." He stooped down, there lay Correntian on the bare stone half buried under the enormous mass of the stone altar.
"Oh! misery and horror!" screamed the blind man. "Crushed like a worm, a great, strong man! and no one to help you, no one!"
"The brethren could scarcely save their own lives, the people of the neighbourhood fled from the fearful scene; for three days I have lain here, abandoned, and not a hand to give me a draught of water."
"I will fetch you some water, I will find the spring," cried Donatus, but Correntian held him back.
"No, never mind, the well is choked, and it would not serve me now. My torture is near its end, I feel--"
"Oh poor soul, and must you end so miserably?" lamented the younger man. "Crushed by the altar you so faithfully served!"
"Do not grieve for me, I die as I have lived--for the Church. It is the highest mercy that God should grant me to die such a death. There is one who is yet more to be pitied than I." Donatus staggered.
"God help me, not the Abbot?"
"Yes, unhappy boy, the Abbot, who loved you with a love which was a sin against the rules of our holy Order--he expiated his sin fearfully."
"Speak, for pity's sake, torture me no longer," implored Donatus. "What happened to him?"
"Count Reichenberg demanded that he should give you up, for he thought you were hidden in the convent, and when he refused--was obliged to refuse--he had him bound and dragged into the court-yard and then--" Correntian paused for breath.
"And then, what then?"
"Then they made him give his eyes for yours, as the Count had sworn."
A scream rang through the chapel, and its quivering echoes shook the broken panes; then there was a silence as if the youth's heart had cracked in that one cry, and he had fallen lifeless.
Correntian breathed slowly and painfully; angels of death spread their dark wings and hovered round that ruined altar. Presently the stupor that had followed the first blow was broken.
"Oh! eternal Justice, where art Thou that this should happen?" sobbed Donatus. "God of grace, God of mercy! where wert Thou that such things could be done? That pure, innocent and saintly man, punished for my guilt--God of pity, how could'st Thou allow this?" And he sank down by the broken altar, and wept as though he could shed all at once all the tears that flood the world.
"Those eyes, those kind eyes, that so often looked at me with affection, that watched over me so faithfully. Oh God! give me mine again that I may weep for those far dearer ones!" But his lamentations grew less loud and violent as though he were kneeling at the Abbot's feet, and were listening tenderly to his soothing words as of yore.
"Oh! Lamb of God, patient and long suffering victim. You, in your gentle soul, forgave me, for you were too lofty a spirit to remember evil, but I, I can not forgive myself; my father, give me once--only once, your beloved hand, that I may press a kiss of remorse upon it--only once, only once, and then will I sink into damnation and expiate for ever that which I can never make amends for." And then again he was silent, all his strength of soul, which is needed even for suffering, was spent; he was forced to pause and draw breath for a fresh outburst.
"And the brethren," he groaned at length, "could they not protect him?"
"They were out numbered, there was a whole host of marauders," said Correntian. Donatus stood up, "Oh if I had been there I would have protected him. I would have covered him with my own body against a whole world of them."
"Aye, if you had come at the right time, then it would all have been different. Why did you not come, where were you waiting so long?"
"I followed the Duchess in vain for two whole days."
"And then?"
"And then I hastened home."
"And did that take nine days and nights!" cried Correntian.
"Brother! what are you saying? I left you only three days since."
"Woe upon you, son of the evil one!" screamed Correntian. "Where were you? What cheated your senses as to the time? Did you linger in the nether world that the days hastened by uncounted? Were you bewitched that you did not observe that since you left more than a week is past?"
"Merciful Heaven! a week?" said Donatus, "and she told me that I had slept but a night. Oh Beata! Beata! could you so deceive me?"
"Beata!" repeated Correntian. "Then it was a woman who stole all consciousness of time from you! And you ruined all for a woman's sake. This is how you kept your word to us, this is what came of your vows? Woe, woe, all is come to pass that I foretold at your birth; you were the changeling laid by the devil in our peaceful home to work our ruin, and yet you deceived even me into recalling my own prediction and trusting you. Nay more, Hear, oh Lord! and punish me for my sin. You were the first human being I ever loved. And at the very moment when I thought to set the crown of martyrdom on your head you relapse into the base element whence you rose and drag us all down with you in your fall!"
"Correntian, hear me. Yes, it is true, I have sinned; yes I have led you all into ruin for a girl's sake, and I will expiate it through all eternity. Not even my blindness could save me, Eusebius was right, the devil is more cunning than man, and yet I am innocent and pure!"
"Pure," shouted Correntian. "How dare you call yourself so, criminal," and with all the added horror of his suffering he raised the upper part of his body and stretched out his arm towards Donatus. "The curse that was upon you even in your mother's womb, I take it up and pour it, a double curse upon your head. Only your father's curse has weighed upon you hitherto, I add to it your mother's curse; for your mother is the Church you have brought to shame. An outcast shall you be, perjured wretch, an outcast from the Church, an outcast from humanity--an outcast from the flock of penitents who yet may hope. The grass shall wither under your feet; the hand be palsied that offers you the sacred Host; death and pestilence shall visit him who takes pity on your hunger. Your bones shall fall to dust, and that their pestilential reek may not poison the earth that yields food for other mortals, I bid you flee away to the ends of the earth, up to the realm of death, to the ice of the glaciers, as far as your feet can bear you, where not a blade can grow that can imbibe the poison of your corpse. All that is mortal of you shall be blotted out from creation to the very last jot, and what is immortal shall suffer to all eternity such torment as has racked my very marrow for these three days--" His voice failed, the rigor of death had fallen upon him, he fell back on the stone floor. Once more he raised himself, his clenched fists clutched at the fissures in the ground in his last agony.
"Oh, Lord God! have mercy on my sins!" he groaned, seized with sudden horror at the thought that he must depart without the last sacraments and with a curse on his lips. He felt that death had laid its icy hand on his heart; it was too late, his lips tried to stammer some words, but his jaws were clenched in a convulsion. Thus he gave up his cold and stubborn spirit, without consolation, without atonement, hoping for no mercy, for he had shown none; yet he had been true to himself and the Church, true even unto death.
But Donatus, crushed and banned, knelt by the corpse and prayed for mercy on the hapless erring soul. Would God hearken still to the prayer of the accursed? Could it reach the Throne of God? He bowed his forehead to the dust, and gave the cold stones a farewell kiss. Then he rose, and made his way back to the door where the boy was to wait.
"Boy, where are you?" he called out. No answer, the boy was gone. He had heard Correntian's curse, and had fled; the blind man was abandoned wholly.
Where should he go? The Church had disowned him, the earth cast him out. "Lord, hast Thou not a drop of mercy left for me out of Thine inexhaustible fount of grace? Did I not obey Thy will in so far as I understood it? I gave the light of my eyes to escape love; the staff that was the prop of my darkened life I broke and cast from me, and all my sacrifices have turned to curses and my obedience to fatal ends. I may well say with Job, 'My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death. Not for any injustice in mine hands, also my prayer is pure.' Oh, Lord my God! if Thou didst see me in the hour when I drove away the girl, that pure and faithful child, Thou must know whether I then did not expiate my sins, and deserve Thy mercy or not. Yea, I will flee from all the ties of life, I will die alone like the chamois that hides itself in the glacier when its end is nigh; I will efface the trace of my steps on earth that fatality may no longer pursue me. Oh, God, my God! will the measure of my sorrows never be full?"
So he stood, his arms uplifted, a dumb image of suffering--like a tree stricken by a storm.
A few stars peeped out from time to time between the driving clouds; the abyss lay in slumberous silence at his feet, and the night-breeze snatched pitilessly at the ragged garments that scarcely sufficed to cover him. The empty windows of the ruined stronghold of faith stared at him like hollow eye-sockets, in dumb reproach. No cry from Heaven above or the earth beneath responded to his lament, no pitying hand clasped his to lead him to his last bourne; he sank down on a stone, and hid his head in his hands. "O! God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
High, high up where no blade of corn can grow, in the glacier desert of the Ortler chain, the solitary penitent lived on the extremest verge where it was possible for flesh and blood to live and breathe--fulfilling literally Correntian's curse. Below lay the unfathomable depth of the valley of Trafoy between its deeply cleft walls, like an open grave. The glacier torrents roared down through fissures and crevices, feeding the three Holy Wells in the gorge below; the rock crumbled away beneath the volume of the mighty waters, and wide floods devastated the land.
A strange herd-boy had led him up whom he had met with that night at Marienberg, and who had taken pity on him for God's sake. It was a difficult task to guide the blind man up to these heights, but guardian spirits were with him and upheld him, or he would have slipped from the boy's weak hand a hundred times and down the steep and slippery path.
It is only from those who love life that God requires it; the wretch to whom death would be release may not die!
Again and again the boy was fain to stop, but the penitent was not to be persuaded to stay where a bird's call was still to be heard--where he could still lay his hand on fruitful soil. So, after long wandering, they had reached their goal--the last for which he longed--the realm of everlasting peace, where no sound of a human voice could pierce, where no slenderest thread could reach to link man to man. Here is the first circle of hell, cold and silent, here he might atone and die, and live above for ever.
The boy had contrived an indispensable shelter against the wind and rain under an overhanging rock, and then had left him; but from time to time he came to bring bread to the hermit. He was a strange boy, he came and went without the blind man's perceiving it, noiselessly and without a word, and Donatus was grateful to him for that. He would have felt it a desecration to break the sacred silence that bathed his soul like a sea which no profane sound might pierce.
Once every week his moss-bed was freshly made, and a fragrant loaf laid by the side of it; but he who brought it vanished as he came. Often it seemed to the blind man that it could be no boy of flesh and blood, but a friendly angel of death sent by God to guide him hither, and to support his existence until he were fit to die; and as the season advanced, and it became more and more difficult for any human being to find his way up the snow-covered path, he believed this still more firmly. What could prompt a strange and lowly herd-boy to such a fearful sacrifice? For what hope of reward could he do this? And what to him was the accursed outcast--the hapless wretch who could no longer give him even a blessing? Yes, it was daily clearer to his mind that it was a messenger from the other world; daily he felt more sure that here, with the earth far below him, he was nearer to the world of spirits. In the roaring of the storm, in the thunder of the avalanche, in the freezing snow-drift, in all the terrors of the wilderness, he felt with reverent awe the nearness of Him who rides the clouds and speaks in the thunder; and that which appals most mortals and fills them with dread, uplifted his soul which had triumphed over this life, in jubilant hope of redemption and release.
"Crush, mangle this body!" he would shout to the raging blast, to the falling rocks, to the torrents of heaven, when they whirled round him in wild uproar, and he kissed the invisible hand of the storm that lashed him, he thanked the pain that gnawed his numbed limbs--it all was penance, and penance meant deliverance; and then again when the tumult had subsided, when the last faint rays of the autumn sun shone from the once more peaceful sky, and all the air was still--then he felt as if a reconciled spirit hovered over him too--a divine something, for which he found no name. And then, indeed, a mood would come over him in which he would stretch out his arms to the vacant air, and a cry would escape his lips--like a bird freed from its cage--"Beata."
So near, so real, did her watchful spirit seem that he would fancy he heard her breathing and almost thought he felt her passing lightly by him.
"Beata--have you died down in the valley, and come up to watch by me till I may follow you into eternity? Oh, poor child, the son of perdition may not follow you--not even when he has shed this mortal husk, for you will soar upwards to the fields of the blest--and I must sink among the souls in purgatory," and then it seemed to him that the wind bore a soft cry to his ear. Yes, certainly--it was her soul--that mourned for him, that prayed for him with tears to the Saints. And could they withstand her prayers? In such an hour he felt as if a breath of salvation floated round him; here, up at the limits of the earth, on the brink of the other world, the very air was full of revelation. The two realms seemed to touch and mingle, and he learned more and more to understand their gentle ebb and flow.
Thus it grew to be winter and the chastening hand fell more roughly, and the fetters of death closed more tightly upon him; still he prayed and sang praises without ceasing, and as often as he found a fresh loaf by his couch and a warm skin to preserve him from the increasing cold, he received it as a miracle from God the Lord, who in days of old rained down Manna on his starving people. So long as God sent him nourishment, so long it was His will that he should live, and he relished the bread with a thankful heart, full of devout meditation as if it were the body of Christ--which no mortal hand might evermore present to him.
At last the supplies of bread ceased. He knew not how many days had passed, for him there was neither day nor night; but he perceived that it was longer than usual, for his meagre store had never been exhausted before the fresh supply came. Now it was exhausted, and the place where he was wont to find his bread was empty. Now he knew that the last trial was at hand. Nature inexorably asserted her claims, and gnawing hunger tormented his vitals; death was approaching in the form of starvation. He felt it--it was a cruel death, but he could thank the Lord for it; now the hour was come when, like the chamois, he must end in a hidden crevasse; he wound his rosary round his hand, and only prayed, "Grant, Lord, that I may bear the trial with honour."
He went out of his cave to seek a cleft in the ice so as to carry out his vow; something checked his steps--it was lying at his feet, and softly caressing his knee like a faithful dog. But it was not a dog, it clung to him and grasped his arm with a human hand. "Donatus," it whispered in a beseeching tone. "Donatus, forgive me!"
"Beata!" shrieked the blind man, staggering back against the cliff. He felt as if the mountain had fallen and had buried everything under it--man, and all his works and laws--as if he were left alone with Beata and with God. But that God was He who spoke, saying, "I am Love."
"Donatus, I could not help myself any longer--I can get you no more bread," stammered the girl. "For three days I have been trying in vain, but I can do no more--my limbs are frozen--the cold--I am dying. Oh, poor soul, what will become of you?"
"Beata! angel of my life--angel of my soul!" cried Donatus, rejoicing and weeping in the same breath. "Beata! blessed one, having overcome the world! You have been with me all the time, you have brought me food, have been by my side through snow and frost, in death and desolation? All-merciful God, why were you so long silent?"
"That you should not sin for my sake, nor drive me away--that is why I was silent! Forgive me for disobeying you--I could not, could not leave you."
"Forgive you--I forgive you, you messenger of grace." And with a strong arm the blind man raised the dying girl and carried her into the sheltering cave, and laid her on his bed, covering her with the warm skins that she herself had brought him in her indefatigable care. Then he flung himself down by the couch and covered her care-worn face and faithful breast, and her poor, frozen, little feet with innumerable kisses. He could say no more; only moans and inarticulate sounds of love and sorrow escaped him, and he held her in his arms, and rocked her and soothed her as a mother does her dying child.
And she clung to him in a perfect extasy of joy. "You see--now I am dying by your side--it has happened as I said"--she whispered in his ear. "And you have kept your word; you wanted to lead me to bliss--now I am indeed blessed."
The blind man was like one in the very whirlwind of a celestial revelation.
"Oh, sweet martyr! You have done what no man ever did. We, when we deny ourselves and subdue ourselves, we hope for a future reward and fear future punishment--but you have renounced all, and fought the fight without hope and without fear. You have sacrificed yourself freely and without compulsion, and have bled to death in silence. What is all that heroism and chastity have ever achieved in comparison with this deed? No--it is no power of the devil that has accomplished this. It is not with dying lips that the evil one seeks to tempt--nor with the kiss of death that he entangles his victims. It is a higher power--yes--now I see and know it! Beata, your death has released me from my bonds--there is a love, that is God--and we have loved each other with such a love, and for that love's sake we shall find mercy."
"Amen!" said the girl, and with a smile of rapture she clasped his head that had sunk upon her breast. And there was peace--the peace of God, in their souls. Her breath was now short and weak, but she clasped him to her with all her remaining strength. He pressed her to his breast and rubbed her frozen limbs, and breathed on her with his warm breath. He implored her with a thousand loving words.
"Do not die, my child, my wife--gift of God, stay with me. God who gave you to me, will let you stay with me one day--one hour, only one little hour that I may make up to you for all you have suffered!"
In vain! the cold hand could no longer stroke his head; it fell by her side.
"Beata!" he called in her ear. "I abandoned you in life, but in death I will not forsake you, I will die with you."
She still heard, a sigh of rapture answered him as from a happy bride--it was her last--then she bowed her head and slept, softly and peacefully, with a smile on her lips. She was gone like the night-moth whose fate it is never to rejoice in the light of the sun, that is snatched away by the first frosts of winter, without a sound, without a wail--out of darkness into darkness.
Donatus still listened for a while to hear if the stilled heart beat no more--not a breath, not a throb, all was over. Long, long did he lie so, the body clasped to his heart; then he rose, and saying half-aloud as though she still could hear, "Come, my child," he laid the slender form across his shoulders like a dead lamb, and went out into the open air.
Snow was falling, softly and lightly spreading a white coverlet under his feet over which he glided inaudibly, feeling his way by the rocky wall. Whither was he going, what did he seek? He could not answer himself these questions, the time for thought was over; one feeling alone possessed him, and that was love. All seemed light to his blind eyes; a slight form rose out of the darkness, and floated before him with a sad but blissful smile. It was Beata's glorified spirit. She pointed out the way, and signed to him to follow with a look of unutterable love.
"Yes, I am coming, I follow," he cried, and hurried on as fast as he could through the snow--after her. Presently the sweet vision reached a spot where the rock ended precipitously, a perpendicular cliff of more than a thousand fathoms. She stood still and looked round. "Wait, I am coming!" he cried. Once more she beckoned, then she soared up and floated across the abyss up--away. By this time he too had reached the spot, and without a shudder he sprang after her; but his mortal body with its burden weighed him down. He slid into the abyss in a cloud of snow, and the loosened mass came plunging after him, a thundering avalanche that filled the air with an ocean of snow.
But just as the air that clings to a heavy body when it is plunged into the depths of the sea rises to rejoin its parent element in shining globules, the spirit of the engulfed Donatus rose from the deep to its eternal home.
The earth lay dead and dumb as if the sun could never rise again, as if love had perished for ever--and yet it will return, bringing softer airs, under whose quickening breath Heaven and earth shall once more be reconciled.