The Hour Will Come Part 4

"G.o.d is righteous and does not punish the innocent," Bero was now heard to say. "And why have we been awakened from the darkness of heathenism to the bright light of the Holy Spirit, if like the ancients we persist in believing in a blind fate, conjured up by a curse?"

"The Devil--the Devil is the Fate of the ancients, and is at all times the same!" cried Correntian. "A parent's curse tears a rent in the divine order and in human nature, in which the seed of h.e.l.l at once strikes root and, like a poisonous fungus, feeds its growth on all around it."

"Well--" said Bero with a bright look. "May be you speak the truth, brother Correntian, but if we were not fully capable of extirpating the brood of h.e.l.l by the power of the Holy Ghost and pure resolve there would be no such thing as guilt! We should be the helpless sport of Satan without any guilt or responsibility, and at the last judgment the Lord could not ask us, 'Why did ye this or that?'"

The Abbot and the brethren murmured a.s.sent; only Wyso and Correntian were silent.

"I ask you," Bero went on, "since G.o.d gives us the power to choose our own course of life and whether we will follow the path of virtue or of sin, can we prove incapable of guiding this boy into the way of righteousness if we all gather round him to watch every thought of his brain, every impulse of his heart, every glance, every breath."

"And yet it must come."

A voice like the breathing of a spirit spoke in the farthest corner of the hall; every eye turned towards the spot. A very small monk was leaning in the deepest shadow against a projecting pillar; his little grey figure was as inconspicuous as that of some little gnome, but his eyes were keen and bright, as if they could pierce the depths with their gaze, and their genial glance shone through the gloomy hall.

"What, is it you, brother Eusebius?" said the Abbot. "It is an event indeed when you quit your turret-cell to a.s.sist at the council of the brethren, and the occasion must have seemed to you a serious one for you to open your lips. Speak on--what do you mean? Who or what must come?"

The old man looked at him with a smile.

"Do you not understand me?" said he, and his eye rested thoughtfully on the excited circle. "There are only two sorts of just rights--the rights of Heaven and the rights of man. Man's rights are his share of the joys of Creation. If he casts them away of his own free impulse for the sake of the rights of Heaven he makes the highest effort of which man is capable, and the angels sing Hosannas over him. But never ought you to steal them from him--as in the case of this infant--for they are bestowed on him by his Maker, and it is Him whom you aggrieve. Bring the child up, but bring him up free; and leave him to choose, when he is ripe to make the choice. If he is called he will remain faithful, but let it be without compulsion. For if he is not called, better let him withdraw than that he should remain among you against his will, with a divided heart, half attached to the world and half to the Church--a tool with a flaw in it that s.h.i.+vers in the hand, and recoils on him who would use it. For the hour will come upon him which none can escape. Do you what you will--it must come upon him as it has come upon each of us. You know it well--only those that are called can triumph, and the weak fall in the conflict between pleasure and duty. _Divisum est cor eorum, nunc interibunt_--their heart is divided and they perish. And to you it can bring neither glory nor reward; for it depends upon the Spirit and not on the number of the servants of our Church, and never can an unwilling sacrifice be dear in the sight of the Lord."

Then Conrad Stiero struck his fist a mighty blow on the arm of his chair.

"What spirit, what human right?--'called' or 'not called!' We need strong arms to protect our venerable house, for we have fallen on evil times, and the n.o.bles covet our goods and our authority. It is time to protect them as best we may. Shut him in and keep him close, then he will be ours and no one's else."

"I know of only one really sure way," said Correntian quietly, "and that is to blind the boy."

A cry of horror broke from every one.

"Shame on you, brother Correntian! are you a man?" cried Bero in wrath.

"You see how you start at an empty word! Ye feeble ones! Do you call the physician cruel who by one swift cut obviates future--nay eternal suffering? If any one had released me from the torment of sight and its myriad temptations while I was still slumbering in the cradle, I would have thanked him as my lifelong benefactor. However, fear nothing; I know well that no shedding of blood beseems us, and it was only an idea, suggested by the truest pity."

"You are a great man, Correntian, but fearful in your strength," said the Abbot, and the brethren agreed with a shudder.

But the little gnome leans unmoved and silent against his pillar; he feels no astonishment, no horror--he knows that there are many different growths in the Lord's garden; deadly poisonous plants by the side of wholesome and nutritious ones, and that each has its use and purpose. This brother Eusebius knows right well, for the hidden properties and relations of things are clear to his penetrating eye. He is the herbalist, the astronomer and the physician of the convent. He watches the still growth of roots and germs in the bosom of the earth as well as the course of the blood in the human body, and that of the stars in the immeasurable firmament, and in all he sees the same ordering, the same great inexorable law against which the creature for ever rebels, and which ever works out its own vengeance. But he says no more at present, for he sees that it would be in vain.

But Conrad Stiero would have no mistake as to his meaning,

"I say walls--they are the best security! Let Heaven and h.e.l.l fight for him, our walls are thick, and we will not let him go outside them."

The little man by the pillar folded his hands.

"Oh! human wit and human wisdom!" thought he.

"Allow me to say a few words," said Wyso, addressing the whole conclave, "and do not take what I say amiss. You are all dreamers, thras.h.i.+ng empty straw. The small thread of one's patience is easily broken when one has to listen to such idle talk on an empty stomach.

What have we to do here with the Almighty and the devil? or which of them we may least offend? This is above all things a matter for the law, a trifle which it seems to me that you have all forgotten. If you have a mind to receive the child as a guest, and make a nursery of the old house, well and good, no one can prevent you; it is not forbidden either by canon law or by the rule of St. Benedict to give shelter to the homeless so long as they need it. But if you think of receiving the boy into the order--and your solemn talk seems to imply it--one of these days we shall find ourselves laid under ban and interdict, so that not even a thief on the gallows will ask absolution at our hands."

An uneasy movement ran through the conclave.

"Aha! now there is a stir in the ant-hill. But is it not so? Do you not remember that in the tenth canon of the Council of Trent under Pope Clement III. the Order was forbidden to receive as members children under years of discretion without the express consent of their parents?

What? Have you any fancy to defy pope and bishop, church-law and interdict for the sake of this infant? I fancy that would be somewhat worse than a compact with the devil."

"Guard your lips, brother Wyso! remember Duramnus of Predan, who, as a punishment for his scandalous talk, was burdened for ever with a hideous, foul snout," threatened the Abbot. "You can never keep yourself from abuse and scoffing; what you say is good, but the way you say it is bad. Brother Wyso speaks the truth, my brethren," he continued, turning to the monks, who were ashamed of their own ignorance. "It appears that our senses are still clouded by sleep, or we should have thought of the new law. We cling too naturally to old usages, and it is difficult to accustom ourselves to such newfangled ways. However we must submit to them if we would not bring evil consequences on ourselves. It is true that the mother has given the child over into our keeping, but the father's consent is wanting, and so we cannot receive him. I say it with pain, for I would fain have held the vow of a dead woman as sacred. And I am grieved to thrust the child out among the wild waves of life. Still, so it must be, and we can but resign him to the mercy of him who clothes the lilies of the field."

At this point Conrad of Ramuss rose modestly.

"Pardon me, father, if I, though in disgrace, once more take part in your discussion."

"Speak, my son, only in a more becoming manner," answered the Abbot.

Then the young monk went on,

"It is indeed true that we may receive no child without its father's will. But this child has no father. He who is called its father has cast it out and denied it; it is an orphan. Who--by the laws of the world--who takes its father's place, brother Wyso?"

"Its next blood-relation on the father's or the mother's side," replied Wyso.

"Well then," continued Ramuss, "I myself am its nearest relation, the boy's uncle, his mother's brother; I now am his father, and I dedicate him to the cloister."

A shout of joy from the brethren answered him.

"Amen, my son," said the Abbot. "I receive him at your hands, and I hope that we have acted rightly."

He turned to the pictures of the Tarasps. "Give him your blessing, n.o.ble and glorified masters, whose memory we this day keep holy." The conclave was over, they all crossed themselves before the pictures, and then went up into the light of day. They hastened to the sacristy to baptise the child, for the solemn tolling of the big bell was already calling the inhabitants of the valley to high-ma.s.s.

The morning-sun shot its bright beams through the tall arched windows, and scattered the mists and shadows that Correntian, the sinister friar, had conjured up.

"The light must be victorious!" This was the happy promise with which it filled all hearts.

The folding doors sprang open; the Prior entered with the child. It was prettily wrapped in the Lady Uta's white linen, and lay there flooded in a ray of morning sun-s.h.i.+ne as if transfigured. And drawn by a strange and tender human emotion the younger monks gathered round the tiny brother that Heaven had sent them, and pressed a kiss of welcome on his sweet and innocent lips. And the celestial Mother of Sorrows smiled down on them from the wall as if she were indeed the mother of them all, and rejoiced to see her elder sons welcoming the new-born child as a brother.

No--this is no gift of h.e.l.l--this heart-winning, sun-lighted child that rouses so pure and harmless a joy in every breast; and the Abbot lifts his hands in blessing, and says, "Donatus we will call him, my brethren, for he is given to us, and his name shall mean a gift."

"Yes, yes--he shall be called Donatus," cried the monks in delight.

"And now swear to me," continued the Abbot, "before we proceed to the sacred ceremony--swear to me on the innocent head of this infant--that you will help to preserve him for Heaven; that you will watch over the boy at every hour, and protect him from every temptation that may alienate him from us--and above all from that which is the devil's most dangerous weapon, to which many a youth has fallen a victim--from earthly love."

The brethren raised their hands in solemn a.s.severation and, like a pillar of sacred sacrificial incense, the steamy cloud from thirty throats rose to Heaven in one united breath, "We swear it!"

The brethren gathered round the child like a wall--stronger than those walls of stone of which brother Stiero had spoken, and brother Correntian towered above the rest like an invincible bulwark. But brother Eusebius silently shook his head and said to himself, "And yet it must come."

CHAPTER III.

There is an old story of a king of the dwarfs whose wife died in giving birth to the heir to the throne. This king chose a poor woman from the human race to be his son's wet-nurse, and as the woman would not come of her own free will the little dwarf-folk fetched her one night and brought her by force into the underground kingdom of the gnomes. The woman was not to be allowed to return till she had fulfilled her office of nurse to the little dwarf prince, and she lived a year in exile far from her people under the spell of the strange uncanny folks in their realm of ore and earth. She had to surrender all of her human nature, that gave joy to her heart in the fountain of life, by which the child was nourished--mother's milk and mother's love--but otherwise she might never be in any way human and her reward was barren gold.

But she persevered, not for the sake of the gold only, but because motherly-love is so good a thing, a thing that grows with rapid increase, throwing out aerial roots that cling blindly to any support that is offered them. As the hen loves her changeling duckling, so the human foster-mother clung to her dwarf foster-child, and so the cloistered wet-nurse loved the child of the Church that had been forced upon her although she also felt that she was in a strange realm; in a realm between the grave and Heaven, quite other indeed and higher than the kingdom of the dwarfs, but inhabited too by uncanny beings outside and beyond all natural relations.h.i.+ps, and having nothing in common with flesh and blood; and that the child to whom she was as a mother belonged to the same strange race. And the more deeply she felt this, the more painfully did her heart cling to the child to whom she had no right; that might never be truly human and that yet was nourished by the milk of a human mother. She knew not what her feeling was--it was a strange pity for the boy, so that she loved him almost better than her own child. Her own child had its natural belongings--a mother and a father--but this poor child had no one in the world. The cold and strong church-walls were its home and no human lip might ever touch it, nor its head ever rest on a soft warm human breast. And as if to compensate to it for all future privations she loved and kissed it with double fervour, and cradled it with double tenderness in her bosom.