Easter Day—one of the God-blest mornings in the sweet of the year when it is happiness enough to be alive.
Mona is setting her house in order and feeling as if she were doing everything for the last time. When she thinks she has finished she suddenly remembers that she has not had breakfast. But that does not matter now. How thirsty she is, though! So she brews herself a pot of tea and drinks two strong cups of it.
The church bells begin to ring, and she determines to go to church—also for the last time. Why not? It is true she intends to do something which good people would condemn, but it is no use thinking of that now.
How sweet the air outside is, with the odour of the violets and the gorse and with that tang of salt that comes up from the sea! The young birds, too, how merrily they are singing! It is a pity! A great pity!
She is late. The bells have ceased to ring, and there is nobody on the road. It had taken her long to dress—she had felt so tired and had had to sit down so often.
The service has begun when she reaches the church. Through the inner door, which is half open, she can see the congregation on their knees and hear the vicar reading the General Confession, with the people repeating it after him. She cannot go in just now, so she stands by the porch and waits.
The Sunday-school children, kneeling together on the right of the pulpit, are bobbing their heads up and down at intervals—they are so happy and proud in their new Easter clothes. She, too, used to be proud and happy in her Easter clothes. It is almost heartbreaking. Life looks sweet now, death being at the door.
When the voices cease and she is about to enter, some of the congregation look round at her. She feels as if they are thinking of her as the kind of woman-penitent who in the old days used to stand at the door of the church in her shame. Thatstops her, and she remains where she is standing.
The service goes on—the psalms and lessons and hymns appropriate to the day. At length comes the last hymn before the sermon:
“Jesu, lover of my soul,Let me to thy bosom fly....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul,Let me to thy bosom fly....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul,Let me to thy bosom fly....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly....”
Mona has known it all her life, yet it seems as if she had never understood it until now.
“While the gathering waters roll,While the tempest still is high.”
“While the gathering waters roll,While the tempest still is high.”
“While the gathering waters roll,While the tempest still is high.”
“While the gathering waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.”
She is in tears before she is aware of it. The sermon begins, and the vicar’s voice comes out to her in the open air and mingles with the twittering of the birds in the trees and the bleating of the lambs in the fields.
It is about the last days of Jesus—His death and resurrection, the hatred of His enemies and the desertion of His friends—all the dreadful yet beautiful story.
“He might have avoided His death, but He did not do so. He died of His own free will. Why? Because He was confirmed in the belief that His death would save the world.”
Jesus died to show that nothing mattered to man but the welfare of his soul. Riches did not matter, rank did not matter, poverty did not matter. It was nothing to Jesus that He was hated and despised and friendless and homeless and alone and cast out of the family of men. Nothing mattered to Him but love, and because He loved the world He died for it.
“And that is why all suffering souls come to Him—have been coming to Him through all the two thousand years since His pilgrimage here below—will continue to come to Him as long as the world lasts! ‘Let me to thy bosom fly.’”
Before the vicar’s voice has ceased, and while he is pronouncing the blessing, Mona is hurrying home. There are no tears in her eyes now, and in her heart there is only a great exaltation.
Hitherto she has been thinking of what she intends to do as something that God would have toforgive her for. Not so now. If Jesus died of His own free will, if He died for love, why shouldn’t she? And if by dying He saved the world, would it not be the same with her also?
In the dizzy whirl of her brain she can see no difference. What she intends to do ceases to be a sin and becomes a sacrifice. If the world is full of hatred, as the consequence of the war, her death may save it. She is only a poor girl, and nobody on earth may ever know what she has done and why she has done it, yet God will know.
But Oskar? She had not intended to tell Oskar. He loved her so much that he might have tried to dissuade her. Just to slip away when the time came for him to go back to his own country—that had been her plan. But she could not reconcile herself to this now—not now, after this great new thought. Oskar must know everything.
Hours pass. She is sure Oskar will come to-day—quite sure. While waiting for him she drinks many cups of tea, forgetting that she hasnot eaten since yesterday. At last he comes. As usual, it is late at night, and she is so weak from emotion and want of food that she can scarcely reach the door to open it.
“May I come in?”
“Yes, indeed, come.”
He steps into the house, never having done so since the night of her father’s seizure, and sits by her side before the fire. His face is lividly white, his lips are twitching, and his voice is hoarse.
“What’s to do with you, Oskar?”
“Nothing. Don’t be afraid. I have come to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I’ve just had my orders. I am to go away in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, with the last batch. The last of the officers and guard are going too, so the camp will be empty after to-morrow.”
Mona’s heart is beating hard, and she tries to ease it by asking an irrelevant question.
“What are the men saying?”
He laughs bitterly, and his words spurt out of his mouth.
“The men? Oh, they’re saying they’ll soon be here again. They want to stay in England, and if they are to be sent back to their own overburdened country, to suffer and to starve, they will return some day with hatred in their hearts.”
“That means another war some day, doesn’t it?”
“It does, and when that day comes God help the poor old world and everything in it.”
In her excited mood Mona thinks she knows better, but she cannot speak of that yet; and Oskar, too, as if trying to gain time, goes on talking.
“The world had its great chance at the end of the war, Mona, but then came those damnable old men with their conferences making a peace that was worse than the war itself. And now the churches—look at the churches who have been told to teach that there’s no peace under the soldier’s sword, standing by while the world is rushing on to destruction! What snares! What hypocrisy!What spiritual harlotry! Why don’t they burn down their altars and shut their doors and be honest?... But that is not what I came to say—to tell you.”
“What is, Oskar?”
He hesitates for a moment, and then in a flood of words he says:
“I don’t want to frighten you, Mona. You must not let me frighten you. I should never forgive myself if.... But you are all I have now, and ... I can’t go away and leave you behind me.... I simply can’t.... It’s impossible, quite impossible.”
“But if they force you, Oskar?”
Oskar laughs again—it is wild laughter.
“Force me? Nobody can be forced if only he has courage.”
“Courage?”
“Yes, courage.... Don’t you see what I’ve come to tell you, Mona? Come, don’t you? When the idea came to me first I thought you might be afraid and perhaps faint and even try to turn me from my purpose, so I made up mymind to say nothing. But when the order came to-night I said to myself, ‘No, she’s not like some women. She’s brave; she’ll see there’s nothing else for it.’”
Mona sees what is coming, and her heart is throbbing hard, but she says:
“Tell me. It’s better that I should know, Oskar.”
With that he gets closer to her and speaks in a whisper, as if afraid the very walls may hear:
“When they look for me in the morning I shall be gone.... Don’t you understand me now?—gone! So I’ve come to-night to say farewell. We are meeting for the last time, Mona.”
He looks at her, thinking she will cry out, perhaps scream, but her eyes are shining. All the pain in the thought of their parting has passed away with a mighty rushing.
“Oskar,” she says, “don’t you think it would be just as hard for me ... to stay here after you were ... gone?”
The tears are in Oskar’s eyes now, for flesh is weak and his wild heart is softening.
“What would become of me without you, Oskar?”
“Don’t say that, Mona.”
“But if ... if it’s inevitable that you should go, if there is nothing else for it, can’t we ... can’t we gotogether?”
“Together?” He is looking searchingly into her shining face. “Do you mean ...?”
She takes his hand. It is trembling. Her own is trembling also.
“Oskar, do you remember the fight of the bulls on the cliff-head?”
“When the old ones wouldn’t let the young one live, and he had to....”
She bows her head. He is breathing rapidly. She lifts her eyes and looks at him. They are silent for a moment, then he says:
“My God, Mona! Do you meanthat?... Really mean it?”
“Yes.”
And then she tells him everything—all her great, divine, delirious project.
He gasps, and then his face also shines, as little by little her dream rises before them.
“Do you think that vain and foolish, Oskar ... that we should do as He did, of our own free will, to save the world from all this hatred and bitterness?”
Oskar throws up his head; his eyes are streaming.
“No! No! For God’s in His heaven, Mona.”
And then, these two poor creatures whom the world has cast out, clasped hand in hand, and seeing no difference in the wild confusion and delirium of their whirling thoughts, talk together in whispers of how they are going to save the world from war, and the bitter results of war, by doing as He did who was the great Vanquisher of death and Redeemer of the soul from sin—give up their lives in love and sacrifice.
“So even if the churches are all you say, there’s Jesus still....”
“Yes, yes, there’s Jesus still, Mona.”
At five o’clock next morning a young man and a young woman are climbing the hill that stands between the camp and the sea.
There is only a pale grey light in the sky; the last stars are dying out; the morning is very quiet. Sometimes a cock crows in the closed-up hen houses of the neighbouring farms; sometimes a dog barks through the half-darkness. Save for these there is no sound except that of the soft breeze which passes over the earth before daybreak.
The two walk side by side. They can hardly see each other’s faces, and are holding hands to keep together. Partly because of the darkness and partly for reasons obscure even to themselves, they are walking slowly, and pausing at every few steps to take breath. They are trying to make their journey as long as possible. It is to be their last.
“Forgive me, Oskar,” says Mona.
“There is nothing to forgive, Mona. It had to be.”
“Yes, it had to be. There was no other way, was there?”
“No, there was no other way, Mona.”
What remained of the internment camp had not been stirring when they passed through the lane that led from the farm to the grazing land, but by the time they are half-way up the hill there are sounds from the black ground below them. Looking back, they see groups of vague figures moving about in the Third Compound. A little later they hear the call of a bugle—the last batch of prisoners is being gathered up. Still later, when the light is better, there is the sharp ringing of a bell—the roll has been called and Oskar is missing.
“It’s for me,” he says, and they stop.
By this time they are near to the wall of the little cemetery that surrounds the tower, and to avoid being seen they wait under its dark shelter.
There is a period of suspense in which neitherspeaks, but after a while they see the black-coated prisoners form into file, with their yellow-clothed guard on either side, and march out of their compound.
“They’ve given me up,” says Oskar, and they both breathe freely.
They hear the word of command, deadened by distance. Then they see the procession of men pass down the avenue and through the big outer gates into the high road. At first there is only the dull thud of many feet on the hard ground, but as the guards close the gates behind them, and the sharp clang of the iron hasps comes up through the still air, the prisoners break into a cheer.
It is wild, broken, irregular cheering, as of fierce disdain, and it is followed by defiant singing—
“Glo-ry to the brave men of old,Their sons will copy their virtues bold,Courage in heart and a sword in hand....”
“Glo-ry to the brave men of old,Their sons will copy their virtues bold,Courage in heart and a sword in hand....”
“Glo-ry to the brave men of old,Their sons will copy their virtues bold,Courage in heart and a sword in hand....”
“Glo-ry to the brave men of old,
Their sons will copy their virtues bold,
Courage in heart and a sword in hand....”
A few minutes later the dark figures are hidden by trees, and as they turn the corner of theroad by Kirk Patrick their voices die away.
They are gone—back to their own country, which wants them not. The camp that has been their prison for four years is empty. It lies, in the quickening daylight, like a vast black scar on the green face of the mountain.
Suddenly a new thought comes to Mona. They may still avoid death. Life may yet be open to them.
“Oskar,” she says, speaking in a rapid whisper, “now that the officers and the guard have gone, isn’t it possible that we could escape to somewhere ... where we should be unknown....”
“Impossible! Quite impossible, Mona.”
“Ah yes, I suppose it is,” she says, and they rise to resume their journey.
But just then, in the first rays of morning, from a cottage that is between them and the sea, she hears the voice of a woman singing. She knows who the woman is—one of her former maids, who has lately been married to a farm labourer. Perhaps her husband has gone to his work in the fields, and she is out in their little garden,gathering up the eggs of the hens that are clucking. How happy she must be!
For a moment Mona’s heart fails her. She forgets the great thoughts of yesterday, and regrets the loss of the simple joys that are reserved for other women.
“It seems a pity, though, doesn’t it?” she says.
“Do you regret it, Mona?” says Oskar, looking round at her. But at the next moment her soul has regained its strength.
“No! Oh, no! It had to be.... And then there is our great hope, our wonderful idea!”
“Yes, our great hope, our wonderful idea.”
They continue their climbing, still holding each other’s hands, but rarely speaking. Sometimes she stumbles, but he holds her up. The larks are singing now, and the young lambs on John Corlett’s farm are bleating. Far down, on the seaward side, sheltering in the arms of its red cliffs, is the little white town of Peel. It is beginning to smoke for breakfast.
“Oskar, do you still think that when all this is over, and the hatred and bitterness have died outof people’s hearts, they will make war on each other no longer?”
“Yes, in the years to come, perhaps—or they must wipe themselves off the earth, Mona.”
“And do you think that God will accept our sacrifice?”
“I’m sure He will—because we shall have died for love and given up all.”
“Yes, we shall have died for love and given up all,” says Mona, and after that she liberates her hand and walks on firmly.
As they approach the crest of the hill the deep murmur of the sea comes over to them, and when they reach the top its salt breath smites their faces. There it lies in a broad half-circle, stretching from east to west, cold and grey and cruel.
Mona trembles, and the revulsion which comes to the strongest souls at the first sight of death seizes her for an instant. In a faltering voice she says:
“It won’t be long, will it, Oskar?”
“No, it won’t be long, Mona.”
“Only a few moments?”
“Yes, only a few moments.”
“And then we shall be together again for ever?”
“For ever.”
“Oh, I shan’t care if at the cost of a few moments of suffering I can be happy with you for ever.”
She is not afraid now. In front of them are the heather-clad slopes that go down to the precipitous cliffs. They clasp hands again and walk forward. Tears are in their eyes, but the light of heaven is there also.
In a few minutes more they are on the cliff head. It overhangs the sea, which is heaving and singing in its many voices, seventy feet below. The sun is rising, and the sky to the east is flecked with crimson. There is nothing else in sight anywhere, and no other sound except the cry of the sea fowl on the rocks beneath.
“This is the place, isn’t it?”
“This is the place, Mona.”
“Shall we do as we intended?”
“Yes, let us do as we intended.”
And then these two children of the universalFather, cast out of the company of men, separated in life and about to be united in death, go through the burial service which they have appointed for themselves.
First, they kneel on the cliff edge, as close as they can get to it, and repeat their prayer:
“Our Father, who art in Heaven ...Geheiligt wird dein name ...Forgive us our trespasses ...As we forgive them that trespass against us....”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven ...Geheiligt wird dein name ...Forgive us our trespasses ...As we forgive them that trespass against us....”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven ...Geheiligt wird dein name ...Forgive us our trespasses ...As we forgive them that trespass against us....”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven ...
Geheiligt wird dein name ...
Forgive us our trespasses ...
As we forgive them that trespass against us....”
Then they rise, and, standing hand in hand, with their heads up and their faces to the sea, they sing their hymn:
“Jesu, lover of my soul ...Lass mir an dein brust liegen....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul ...Lass mir an dein brust liegen....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul ...Lass mir an dein brust liegen....”
“Jesu, lover of my soul ...
Lass mir an dein brust liegen....”
Then Oskar unfastens his coat, and taking off the long belt he is wearing he straps it about bothof them. They are now eye to eye, breast to breast, heart to heart.
“The time has come, hasn’t it, Oskar?”
“Yes, the time has come, Mona.”
“I can kiss you now, can’t I?”
He puts his arms tenderly about her and kisses her on the lips. She kisses him. It is their first kiss and their last.
“God bless you for loving me, Oskar.”
“And God bless you, too, Mona. And now good-bye!”
“No, not good-bye. Only—until then.”
“Until then.”
The sun rises above the horizon in a blaze of glory. The broad sea sings her everlasting song. The cliff head is empty.
After a while, when the sky is blue and the morning sunlight is dancing on the waters, a steamer, decked with flags from stem to stern, comes round the headland on the south. It iscrowded with soldiers, who are crushing to starboard to catch their first sight of the town which lies behind the headland to the north.
There is the sharp crack of a rocket from the lifeboat house at Peel, and then a band on the steamer begins to play, and the soldiers to sing in rapturous chorus:
“Keep the home-fires burning...Till the boys come home....”
“Keep the home-fires burning...Till the boys come home....”
“Keep the home-fires burning...Till the boys come home....”
“Keep the home-fires burning...
Till the boys come home....”
A little later the church bells begin to ring. They ring louder and louder and faster and faster every moment, as if pealing their joyous message up to the cloudless sky:
“Peace! Peace! Peace!”
Queenstown,April, 1919.—Rather more than a week ago the bodies of a young man and a young woman, tightly strapped together, closely clasped in each other’s arms, and floating out towards the ocean, were picked up by Kinsdale fishermen as they were returning to harbour in the early hours of morning. Inquiries into identity appear to show that the young man was a German of good family and superior education, who, until recently, was a prisoner at Knockaloe, the well-known internment camp for alien civilians in the Isle of Man, and that the young woman was a native of the island, a girl of fine character, the owner of a farm which is connected with the camp and called by the same name.
It is known that, in spite of the difference of race and notwithstanding the difficulties of their position, they became strongly attached, and that when, shortly after the Armistice, the order was given that prisoners of war should be returnedto the countries of their origin, the young German tried, first, to remain in England with the girl, whom he wished to marry, and afterwards to be allowed to take her back with him to Germany. Failing in both efforts, he fell into a deep melancholy, which seems to have communicated itself to the young woman, and to have resulted in a death-pact.
When the time came for the camp to be closed the young man had disappeared, and later it was discovered that the young woman was also missing. How they escaped is unknown, but it is assumed that they threw themselves into the sea from the cliffs of Contrary, the most westerly headland in Man, and, being caught in the Gulf stream, which flows close to the island at that point, were carried down to the waters in which they were found.
The mackerel fishers of Kinsdale (simple, but imaginative and often religious men, belonging to many nationalities—Irish, Scotch, French, and even German) have been deeply touched by the fate of the young lovers who, finding their love doomed by the hatred between their races, andnothing left to them in life, preferred death to separation. A few days ago they asked permission to bury the bodies, and yesterday they did so, choosing as the place of rest the summit of Cape Clear, which looks out on the Atlantic. To-day they have built over the spot a broad and lofty cairn, which will henceforth be the first thing seen by the passengers on the great liners who are coming in from the New World to the Old, and the last by those who are going out from the Old World to the New.—The Times.
“Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.... Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”