CHAPTER XTHE EVENING LIGHT
W
WHEN the attackers moved once more on their prey they entered the great court of the Wartburg, and never a sword flashed forth to halt them. But as Freiherr Gustav at their head bade his men scatter through dungeon and attic, to drag the victims forth, lo! he and the three hundred at his back halted, then stood awed and reverent, as the figure of Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale moved to meet them. Then some doffed their basinets, some even fell on their knees, but all besought his blessing, for they knew that here was the saint of the Thuringerwald. And Freiherr Gustav, bowing the knee, with loud voice thanked Our Lady and Her Blessed Son who had released from sorestperil this holy man; then vowed to Jerome that his late oppressors should shortly have foretastes of their everlasting gehenna. But Jerome stayed him with a sign, forbidding the doing of this reverence.
“For I have come to confess mine own great fault when I cried to you to destroy this Ulrich and his men. I have heard by your glad shouts that Agnes the maid is found, and in the respite whilst you tarried, the Spirit of God, speaking from my mouth, has touched these despairing sinners, and they will submit themselves to you, expecting no mercy from man, but trusting even at the eleventh hour to the abundant mercies of God. Therefore I command you to be exceeding pitiful unto them, and let him that is guiltless himself cast the first stone against them.”
Now this exhortation to compassion Freiherr Gustav loved little; but who could say “no” to a living saint? So he ordered Jerome to be escorted down the slope to Ludwig, at whose mercy any captives lay; while the Freiherr’s men soon haled out Ulrich and Michael, Franz and Clement, and thefour were speedily roped, and shiveringly awaiting the result of the holy man’s embassy.
Jerome found the Graf before a splendid tent, with pages and squires about him, himself, in his silvered hauberk, the tallest and proudest of them all; but nestled against his side, tattered, mud-stained, dishevelled, happy, stood Agnes the maid. When she saw Jerome she forgot that he had prayed to be delivered from her tempting. She gave the coo of a dove beholding its long-sundered mate, and ran to him, and he, never asking whether he staked his soul or not, reached down to her, closed his arms on her, and kissed her red mouth seven times. Some smiled, a few nigh laughed, a few nigh wept, but no man thought Jerome the less a saint. Then when Agnes saw so many eyes upon her she grew scared, and fled into the tent; but the great Graf himself had bended the knee before Jerome.
“Holy Father,” spoke Ludwig; and he lifted his plumed casque, so that the hermit could look fairly upon his proud, strong, bearded face. “Holy Father, you have saved from death or worse my only child. Florins orfief-lands you do account as vanities, or I would proffer them. Yet what shall be your reward? Shall I give doles to two thousand poor at Goslar? Shall I set crucifixes at three hundred cross-roads? Shall I give Saint Michaelis of Hildesheim pyx, chalice, and candlestick of pure red gold?”
“None of these things, though all such works are holy,” answered Jerome; yet as he spoke, and gazed upon the Graf, in some strange manner he seemed all unstrung, so that some whispered darkly, “Ulrich has tortured him.” But still he looked on Ludwig with wide, heart-searching eyes; and as he looked the chief was marvellously troubled also.
“None of these things,” spoke Jerome, as if compelling speech by force of will; “if gratitude is mine, let my reward be this,—the lives of Ulrich and his crew, that they may be yet changed from Children of Wrath to Children of Obedience.”
But here My Lord Graf was very sore displeased. One could see the purple veins in his high forehead swell, and through his haughty lips sped forth an oath,—yet in no Christiantongue,—a cry to some foul jinn of the East. Then to his great amaze Jerome staggered as though a sling-stone smote him.
“Catch him! He faints!”
So cried the Graf, outstretching a strong arm, and many ran, but the hermit rose in stately pride. Next in that same strange Orient speech he addressed Ludwig, and the proud chief in turn startled.
“Invoke no paynim fiends but answer. Have you been long in the East?”
“Yes.” But in turn Ludwig gazed as do men when turning mad, while two squires, not understanding the tongue, crossed themselves, fearing their lord was wantonly angering the saint.
“How long?”
“Five years at Acre, two at Antioch, three years a prisoner at Hems.”
“That was a long time since?”
“I have been in Europe now fourteen years.”
Jerome was staring harder than ever, and all men grew more frighted. Why did he press the Graf so fiercely? Why did the Graf tremble as he answered?
“And you say your name is—”
“Ludwig of the Harz;” but again the Graf winced, and the wondering bystanders knew not what to hope or what to fear. They saw Jerome’s stern face growing all grey and pale, yet still he questioned.
“You were three years a prisoner at Hems, then returned direct to Germany?”
“No; I searched for my father. I had heard he had entered a convent when I was taken, but I could not find him. He is surely dead.”
The Graf was retreating step by step; the hermit followed him. They could see Jerome was nigh to falling, and that his great will bore him up.
“And was that father a man swift to wrath and swift to strike?”
“Yes; but, ah! dear Christ, so was I!” and now the Graf was more ashen than the hermit.
“And did you and your father part in love or hate? Speak for the fear of God!”
“He cursed me. He is dead. At the Judgment Bar he will rise up against me. I cannot bear it. God can forgive me; never he.”
Ludwig pressed his hands to his face; his great frame shook.
“Now tell what was your father’s true name,” commanded the hermit.
“I will not tell!” The Graf nigh screamed it in panic-stricken defiance.
“Youwilltell, and tell it truly, that God may pity you on His last Great Day. What was your father’s name?”
“Heinrich of Waldau.”
“And your true name is not Ludwig, but—”
“Sigismund.” The word was dragged across the Graf’s set teeth. But a loud cry rang through the forest.
“Jesu!”
And Jerome lay as one dead upon the greensward.
Many swore “he is dead,” and even the Graf’s Padua-trained physician was one of them. But Witch Martha brought him back to breath, though it took small wisdom in leech-craft to know that if he woke at all, it could not be for long. Nevertheless he did wake just as the afternoon shadows were falling inslanting glory across the hill of the Wartburg. Many stood by, hoping to be edified by the last words and moments of a very saint; but Graf Ludwig made a commanding gesture, and all vanished from the tent, saving he. Then he knelt down by the camp-bed, and a tear rolled down the iron cheek of Ludwig of the Harz, to fall on the iron cheek of Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale.
“My father.”
“My son.”
That was all for a very long time; and then Ludwig (for so men would call him still), that tall strong man, before whom robber-barons trembled, spoke, and his voice was nigh to sobbing.
“Father, father, I have sinned against heaven, and am not worthy to be called your son.”
“The fault was mine, Sigismund,—mine.”
Thus Jerome, but Ludwig answered him:—
“I was wilful and swift to wrath. I defied you at Antioch when we stood in the room where the form of my sister Agnes lay unburied. I have richly earned your curse. I strode from your presence impenitent. Irode away on the foray to Hems, and was taken prisoner. Amongst the infidels I was once close to winning liberty by renouncing Our Lord. What but the prayers of Mathilde, my sainted mother in heaven, of my angel sister, and of you held me steadfast? I escaped from captivity to hear that you had returned to Europe to bury yourself in a convent. I sought in every abbey in France and Italy, Germany and Spain, to fall at your feet, and crave but the two words, ‘I forgive.’ Finding you not, I was sure that you were dead, and at the throne of God would rise up, implacable, to accuse me; and your curse is dinning in my ears ever! ever!”
“They told me you were slain before Hems,” said Jerome, simply.
“I had disgraced your name. I took another. In the war and wrack, into which Germany fell, I found means of advancement. I married a woman, pure and good, but the wise God soon took her away. She left a little maid. I named her Agnes for my sister. Is she not an angel born?”
“And I dreamed she was a fiend,” said Jerome.
“And now, my father, I have prospered mightily. I am trusted of kaiser and feared of vassal. I have lands, and lieges, and nobly growing fame. But your curse has bittered every sweet; has darkened every sunbeam. Forgive, forgive me, oh, my father!”
Jerome sat upon the camp-bed, and his lips moved in prayer.
“Now God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Then he looked on the Graf, who had bowed his head, whilst tears rained fast.
“I will forgive you, oh, Sigismund, for whose soul I have prayed and striven these many years. For you I have fled the world, the company of men, the love of women, wrestling, toiling, suffering, that I might redeem your soul from the endless death. I will forgive you. But do you first forgive me?”
And then what more they said it is not wise to tell.
After a while Jerome asked of Ludwig:—
“Where is the little maid?” So they brought in Agnes, who cooed and chattered in the great saint’s arms, for “saint” she would call him still, though he said he was her grandfather.
“And you will take him away with us to Goslar?” she asked the Graf; “and because he is holy you will set him over the abbey, and he shall dwell in splendid state with chaplains and palfreys, acolytes and squires, like the Lord Prince Bishop of Bamberg?”
Ludwig answered “Yes”; but Jerome only repeated:—
“Chaplains and palfreys, acolytes and squires,—mine?”
Whereat—most marvellous of all the marvels written in this book—the Saint of the Dragon’s Dale laughed as brightly as might Maid Agnes herself; and she was very happy. After a while he kissed Agnes again, and grew pensive; yet, as all others listened, Jerome spoke:—
“I am weary, weary. I have waited long. But God is very good, and of the things to come I can fear nothing. I have wrought and fought in North Land and South Land, with paynim, with Christian. Byzantium and Paris, Jerusalem and Bergen, Palermo and Cairo,—I know them all. I have suffered and sorrowed, in pain and in darkness, but at the end, at the end,—” and his faceglowed with it sinborn brightness,—“it shall come to pass, that at evening time there shall be light!”
They found him in the morning sleeping. Maid Agnes wept for long. Graf Ludwig was shut within his tent an hour, and went for a month with a face which men had fear to look upon. There was wisdom in plenty, for some said that Jerome had long been suffering of a mortal complaint which only his iron will had battled back, and now that will was relaxed; others, that in excess of joy the mortal cords were loosed; but most, that angels had visited him by night to set him in the burning chariot and bear him up to heaven. Yet all were agreed in saying, “It is well; to-day the bells on high must ring, and all the golden streets be garland-lined, for Christ’s strong warrior enters for his crown.”
The Prior of Halberstadt who rode with the army fain would have had the holy clay transported to his abbey, there to be cased in gold, and adored by many a pilgrim; but Graf Ludwig answered sternly, “Nay,” forhe knew his father’s heart. Therefore they wound down the Dragon’s Dale,—priests, and lords, and men-at-arms, approaching the hut in the clearing. No sombre procession this; but for the lack of heralds and of minne-singers one might have deemed it a triumph. “Alleluia!” sang many, as they started the red deer in the coppice; and soon all broke forth into praise of Our Blessed Lady, who welcomed her servant home.
“Ave maris stellaDei Mater alma,Atque semper virgoFelix cœli porta!”
“Ave maris stellaDei Mater alma,Atque semper virgoFelix cœli porta!”
“Ave maris stella
Dei Mater alma,
Atque semper virgo
Felix cœli porta!”
And the stream as it purled through the Annathal, the birds as they answered the talking pines, the wind as it crooned over the green sea of the Thuringerwald,—all swelled the echoing chorus,—
“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen!”
Graf Ludwig strove to penetrate Witch Martha’s secret when he thanked her for the service done his child. Would she not come to Goslar? Would she not forsake her uncanny art and be a nurse and governess tothe little Gräfin? She had only refusals. She would tell nothing of her life-story,—which Ludwig guessed must have been a strange one,—she would not quit the forest. She only accepted a little gold “that she might not vex him.”
“The greenwood covers many a secret, and let it cover mine,” was her answer.
So she kissed Maid Agnes twice, and with Zodok and Zebek a-croaking on her shoulders vanished under the trees. Harun gave one regretful howl above a new grave, and trotted after. Nor did Agnes ever see the witch again.
As for Ulrich and Franz, Michael and Clement, they solemnly swore to go immediately to Rome and perform any penance commanded by the Holy Father, and the Graf sent them on their way (first smiting off their thumbs to keep them from temptation); but whether they ended in heaven or elsewhere is known best by the recording angel. However, Freiherr Gustav, whom Ludwig left in the Wartburg, warned perchance by Martha, pounced on Fritz the Masterless full soon, and hanged him andDame Gerda high—thus proving that ravens bear ill luck, and also leaving two less sinners in an overwicked world.
As for Maid Agnes,—“Maid” no more, but “The Most Gracious Gräfin,”—she became a great lady in the North Country. Still, though she grew worldly-wise, stately, and the wife of a very duke, every year she went on pilgrimage to a certain shrine near Eisenach. And if any one marvelled at her piety, her daughters always said:—
“Our mother came rightly by her holiness; her grandfather was a true-born saint.”
Thus, for many years, until the pillage and sack of the Peasants’ War, the good folk of Thuringia went on pilgrimage to the little shrine under the talking tree in the Dragon’s Dale, and to their prayers failed not to add, “Sancte Hieronyme Eisenachæ, ora pro nobis.”
MR. WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, the author of “A Friend of Cæsar,” “God Wills It,” and “The Saint of the Dragon’s Dale,” was born on April 30, 1877, at the home of his grandfather, President William Stearns of Amherst College. His father is William V. M. Davis, who for many years has been pastor of the First Parish Church of Pittsfield, Mass. Before coming to Pittsfield, Mr. Davis, Senior, was pastor of the Euclid Avenue Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, O.; and the author of “God Wills It” spent his boyhood in that city. From both his father and his mother he inherited literary tastes, and he has always lived in the atmosphere of books.It was his fortune, good or bad, to be shut out from the normal boy-life, from the age of ten to eighteen, by a sickness that baffled the physicians. During these years of imprisonment, however, he learned to forget his pain by historical reading, and, later, by trying to write for himself histories and historical romances. His father preserves some seven thousand pages of manuscript written before the boy was eighteen. During the years before he entered Harvard he wrote six historical novels, none of which has ever seen the light of day, or ever will. At the age of eighteen a new physician discovered and removed the cause of his sickness. Immediately the boy’s ambition arose; and he fitted himself, in about eighteen months, to enter Harvard College. His schooling had been much interrupted by illness and invalidism, but his mind was so keen and active that when he was able to study, he more than made up for lost time.Entering Harvard when he was twenty, he graduated in 1900, at the age of twenty-three. He not only went through in three years, which is a rare feat, but he also attained such high rank in his class that he was the first drawn for the Phi Beta Kappa, in a class of nearly five hundred men. In particular he distinguished himself in historical studies; but he made no attempt at writing for publication, beyond a few bits of verse, until his sophomore year at Harvard.During that year he wrote his first novel, “A Friend of Cæsar.” He gathered the materials and compiled the outline for the book while too ill to pursue legitimate consecutive studies. The book was actually written as ajeu d’espritand without thought of publication. It was immediately received as a remarkable attempt to reconstruct ancient life. After graduating, he stayed another year at Harvard; and while thus gaining his master’s degree, he wrote his second book, “God Wills It,” a vivid picture of European society at the time of the First Crusade. His first book established him at once as one of the writers who are trying to do something worth while, and who are worth consideration. Primarily, he desired to write an interesting story. Secondarily, he tried to render lucid certain phases in ancient society and to show the development of character and the true greatness of Julius Cæsar. Besides this, he wished to make the classical atmosphere somewhat less vague and impracticable than it is to a great many people, even cultivated people, to-day.The year following his last at Harvard was spent largely in European travel, during which, however, he found time to write a third story. Like his others, it dealt with life at a time very remote from the present. The new novel upon which Mr. Davis is now working, by the way, pictures the life of Athens at the era of its greatest glory, about the year 440B.C.Many of the famous men of Athens at that time enter into the book, which has for hero a typical young Athenian.As in the case of many bright men who have not enjoyed good health, Mr. Davis is essentially a student and a scholar. (It is his plan, by the way, to return to Harvard this fall to complete his studies for the doctorate.) Yet his interest in the eras of which he writes is first of all concerned with their human elements. Who the people of those days were, how they lived and thought and acted, what they moved toward, and what they believed and aimed for, constitute his chief interest in them. His style is good; his narrative is always clear; his plots, though containing plenty of elements to afford variety, are never so complicated as to be confusing. His readers find that peculiar unconscious enjoyment which comes from a book wherein the author has had something to say and has said it well.
MR. WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, the author of “A Friend of Cæsar,” “God Wills It,” and “The Saint of the Dragon’s Dale,” was born on April 30, 1877, at the home of his grandfather, President William Stearns of Amherst College. His father is William V. M. Davis, who for many years has been pastor of the First Parish Church of Pittsfield, Mass. Before coming to Pittsfield, Mr. Davis, Senior, was pastor of the Euclid Avenue Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, O.; and the author of “God Wills It” spent his boyhood in that city. From both his father and his mother he inherited literary tastes, and he has always lived in the atmosphere of books.
It was his fortune, good or bad, to be shut out from the normal boy-life, from the age of ten to eighteen, by a sickness that baffled the physicians. During these years of imprisonment, however, he learned to forget his pain by historical reading, and, later, by trying to write for himself histories and historical romances. His father preserves some seven thousand pages of manuscript written before the boy was eighteen. During the years before he entered Harvard he wrote six historical novels, none of which has ever seen the light of day, or ever will. At the age of eighteen a new physician discovered and removed the cause of his sickness. Immediately the boy’s ambition arose; and he fitted himself, in about eighteen months, to enter Harvard College. His schooling had been much interrupted by illness and invalidism, but his mind was so keen and active that when he was able to study, he more than made up for lost time.
Entering Harvard when he was twenty, he graduated in 1900, at the age of twenty-three. He not only went through in three years, which is a rare feat, but he also attained such high rank in his class that he was the first drawn for the Phi Beta Kappa, in a class of nearly five hundred men. In particular he distinguished himself in historical studies; but he made no attempt at writing for publication, beyond a few bits of verse, until his sophomore year at Harvard.
During that year he wrote his first novel, “A Friend of Cæsar.” He gathered the materials and compiled the outline for the book while too ill to pursue legitimate consecutive studies. The book was actually written as ajeu d’espritand without thought of publication. It was immediately received as a remarkable attempt to reconstruct ancient life. After graduating, he stayed another year at Harvard; and while thus gaining his master’s degree, he wrote his second book, “God Wills It,” a vivid picture of European society at the time of the First Crusade. His first book established him at once as one of the writers who are trying to do something worth while, and who are worth consideration. Primarily, he desired to write an interesting story. Secondarily, he tried to render lucid certain phases in ancient society and to show the development of character and the true greatness of Julius Cæsar. Besides this, he wished to make the classical atmosphere somewhat less vague and impracticable than it is to a great many people, even cultivated people, to-day.
The year following his last at Harvard was spent largely in European travel, during which, however, he found time to write a third story. Like his others, it dealt with life at a time very remote from the present. The new novel upon which Mr. Davis is now working, by the way, pictures the life of Athens at the era of its greatest glory, about the year 440B.C.Many of the famous men of Athens at that time enter into the book, which has for hero a typical young Athenian.
As in the case of many bright men who have not enjoyed good health, Mr. Davis is essentially a student and a scholar. (It is his plan, by the way, to return to Harvard this fall to complete his studies for the doctorate.) Yet his interest in the eras of which he writes is first of all concerned with their human elements. Who the people of those days were, how they lived and thought and acted, what they moved toward, and what they believed and aimed for, constitute his chief interest in them. His style is good; his narrative is always clear; his plots, though containing plenty of elements to afford variety, are never so complicated as to be confusing. His readers find that peculiar unconscious enjoyment which comes from a book wherein the author has had something to say and has said it well.