CHAPTER LXXIV.
“ICH HABE GELEBT, AND GELIEBET.”
The wintry sun’s last rays fall lingeringly athwart the little graveyard of Saint Thomas, illumining to transparent golden its scant russet garb of autumn leaves, streaked to-day for the first time with folds of glistening snow; for Yule-tide month is at hand again, bringing with it many memories to the Professor Conrad Dasipodius, as he wends his way along the narrow by-path leading to the fair marble cross marking the grave of Chretei Herlin.
A year ago to-day it is that they laid the old man to his rest; and it has been a frequent custom of the mathematician’s to make this little pilgrimage to his old master’s grave, and one which in these brighter days of his he has in no wise forsworn, only that oftener now than not he does not perform it alone. And a mighty strange spot too, say the gossips, watching from afar the gracious figures of the blind mathematician, and his betrothed, with his hand linking down trustfully into her helpful arm, a marvellous strange spot for a lover to go taking his sweetheart to, poor thing!
But Sabina by no means holds herself an object for commiseration; and that is not the first time by scores that the world, in attempting to dive between the wills and ways of lovers, has come with its head against a post. Wondrous wise, of course, it is in this case, and has at fingers’ ends a dozen garbled versions of the eventful loves of these two; but it will never know, as Sabina has come to know now, how the courses of Conrad’s life and of her own swirled into such fateful channels here, to-day a year ago. Neither can it grasp, what even she must be content to apprehend only in part, aught of the attraction which draws him to the solemn spot; and how here, as nowhere besides so entirely, the intellect, still “chained to time,” communes with the disembodied spirit hovering there.
For Dasipodius, the old man’s grave is a shrine of consolation, a cheering refuge from the world’s turmoil; and what it is for him, that and no other can it be for his promised wife. To-day, however, he is alone, perhaps because some inference of her unselfish devotion has prompted the fancy that solitude and silence will be more prized by him, just for a while, than even her presence; or possibly for no more occult reason than that the wreath of flowers, sweet and fair as herself, which she is weaving for the old monk’s grave, lacks a few finishing touches.
For an instant Dasipodius, unconscious of the task she was so absorbed in, had stood hesitating and disturbed by her refusal to come with him, lest one of those attacks of weakness and pain, still lingering on the track of the ordeal she had passed through, had seized her now; but she had earnestly assured him that she was “only busy—very busy”. “And with that you’ll have to be content, Professor,” Burgomaster Niklaus had said laughingly, “and go your ways, asking no questions. The sooner you clearly understand that Mistress Sabina von Steinbach is the most unbending despot on the face of this earth, the better for your peace and quietness.”
“Till we meet again then, dear heart,” smiled Dasipodius. And so he had come up alone.
Probably this enhances the vividness of his associations with that day whose anniversary this is. Alone! now as then, a then which seems but yesterday, and yet an age ago. Only one short year, yet so long!
Nature, who is no precisian, and assumes to herself in such matters a certain law of liberty, had last year donned her full suit of snow two weeks earlier; and that scene of utter, unrelieved whiteness, upon which the black curtain of his affliction had fallen, and made the fair world a blank for evermore, rose a strange, contrasting picture in his memory, as he paused for an instant before turning along the little winding pathway, leading to Herlin’s grave, passing on, with a step so firm and sure, as utterly to falsify that little fiction of Sabina’s, he so unblushingly lent himself to, that her eyes were absolutely necessary for his goings to and fro upon the earth.
The clocks have already chimed four; and as the mathematician stands leaning on his stick, beside the smooth grass-grown mound, the last faint sunrays fade, and leave him in the twilight greyness, and the silence, broken only by the low soft twittering of a redbreast among the cypresses. Hush! Not all silent; and the little bird, with quicker sense even than the blind man’s, has caught that strain of sweet music, and lifts his voice in gentle response to the prayer of the brethren, where, in the dimly-lighted chapel yonder, they are gathered to chant the memorial requiem for the soul of the beloved brother departed. “Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et Lux perpetua dona eis.”
A strange thrill seizes Dasipodius, as those slow, solemn cadences fall upon his ear. It wanted but their well-remembered sounds to complete the illusion, and transport him a year back along the troubled stream of time, to that gloomiest moment, save one, of all his darkened existence. To that moment when, in his great agony, his voice had gone up against the high God’s ruling, and he had begged for death. “Is there no mercy—no pity left in Heaven? Let me die now—Father Chretei! Father Chretei! My God! to think that it must come!”
And now in humble recognition of the infinite Power which had let this supplication fall unheeded, Dasipodius bowed his head; but if something of humiliation at his own finite conception of the supreme goodness troubled him then, it all faded in the abiding sense of thankfulness and trustful content, which death nor life could ever steal from him; and out of his soul’s deepest depths, he murmured: “Peace—peace. Amen.”
Very hard it may be for the wretched to realise that there is joy still left in the world; but almost harder still it is for men whose failing cup of happiness has been suddenly and richly replenished to conceive that things have not grown universally cheerier. The mathematician’s gentle soul would have had the whole world of quick—ay, and of dead too—share in the blessedness which had come to shine upon him. Truly it seemed to him that fuller than ever it had been before, that coming Yule-tide would be of “Peace and goodwill towards men”.
“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“Conrad Dasipodius!”
That voice! Dasipodius started from his reverie with some strange pang of self-accusing; for the accents told him, as no sound besides, human or superhuman, that there were flaws in his cup of charity. Only not her! The deepest-dyed criminal who had ever sued for mercy would have found it this calm, sweet twilight of a waning year, had Dasipodius been his judge. Had he not pleaded for Tobias Hackernagel?—but that voice he shrank from, with a horror so unspeakable that it deadened his sense, and for the moment struck him speechless. If the associations of the spot had been already so powerful, what were they now? Those self-same tones! Oh, Heaven! was all indeed a dream then? and was he wakening to the bitter reality once more? Those self-same tones! And yet how changed! There was music in them yet, but how hollow and low, broken, and catching so painfully for breath, though only his name had passed the parched and trembling lips.
“Mistress von Steinbach,” he said at last.
“Ay,” she hoarsely whispered. “Yes—we meet again, at—the old trysting-place, Conrad.”
He recoiled, for she had neared him by another pace.
“Nay,” continued she, with a low hollow laugh, and laying on his chilled hands fingers that burned into them like fire, “but it is for the last time.”
“When last we met,” he replied in hard, metallic tones, as he shook himself free, “would have been our fittest leave-taking.”
The light force he used sent her staggering against the cross; and stretching out her shadowy arms, all shrunken from their once perfect contours, she clung to it, a veritable Magdalene, with her dishevelled hair hanging about her shoulders, and a wild unearthly brilliancy burning in her dark eyes, fixed passionately as of old on him. “Say you so?” she gasped.
“Ay, that do I, by my faith,” he answered.
“By your faith,” she echoed, a mocking smile quivering to her lips—“that tells no sinner may die unshriven. And, Conrad Dasipodius, I am here to seek my dying shrift of you.”
“Am I your priest confessor?” he demanded. “God be thanked, mistress, no; for I must have perished by a thousand tortures, before I could have given shrift to you.” And again he strove to pass on; but she, leaving her hold upon the cross, glided to her knees at his feet. “Trample on me,” she said, “if you will. My poor breath would soon be spent, and death from you would be sweet; but go you shall not, till——”
“What will you have of me?”
“Pardon.”
“Ask your priest, I say, for that, in God’s name; but do not ask it of me. Leave hold, mistress—your very touch is loathsome to me. Let me pass on.”
But her clutch upon him grew tighter. “Pardon, ere I die. Pardon.”
He shook his head; a marble face would have looked softer than his.
“Ere I die, did I say?” she went on. “It is that I may die. I cannot, till you— Oh, many and many a time, they have thought me dead, for the rigidness of death that has seized my limbs; but that was because all hell’s fiends clawed me so fast down, gibbering and howling in my ears that your heart could know—no—pardon for me.” For an instant her voice failed her, then rallied again with the strength of despair. “Give them the lie to that—give—them the lie to it, by that mercy you will one day need. Ah, Heaven! your face grows human—at last. Your sweet, sweet face, I bartered my soul’s health for, and would again, would—again——”
“Hush, mistress. This is the delirium of sickness. You should be in your bed. How came you here?”
“Do I know?” she said, dropping her voice and glancing round with a strange cunning defiance in her eyes. “They—who were watching beside me, left me—for a little—thinking I slept. Ha! ha!—slept! How long is it, I wonder, since the blessed sleep, and—and I parted company? Then I stole out—before—she could fall upon me—that woman—with her murderous fingers, to claw me down—down with her. Oh, yes, she was there, I tell you. She was there, frightfullest among them all, with her cruel beautiful face, though these hands tore it shred by shred, that—that night when— Oh, yes, did I not hear her? She wolf—screeching in my ears as I fled: ‘Come! come! for thou too hast marred two loves—two lives—as I did. Come!’ But”—and a piercing discordant shriek of laughter broke from her—“but, Conrad Dasipodius, I—I turned on her, and— ‘No, no—there is time—time yet,’ I cried, ‘and he is angel good, and pitiful. He will forgive—forgive.’ Ah, God! you shake your head!”
“Go home, mistress,” was all he said. “Death lurks for you here in this cold.”
“Ay; cold, cold,” she shivered, cowering to the ground, and gathering her scanty covering closer about her. “And yet I burn. Mercy!—hark! Do you hear how they sing yonder? Rest—rest—eternal rest, for that good brother, him thy soul loved so well, Conrad. I knew”—and a tender wistfulness moistened the arid glitter of her eyes—“I was sure you would be here to-night. Ah!” And as the requiem hymn broke again upon her ears, she clasped her hands over them as if she would have shut out the sounds. “Rest! rest! What prayers can ever avail for me,” she moaned, “if you rise up and bid them hush?”
“God forbid I should do that, woman,” he said.
“What can they do for me, if you deny,” persisted she, “Conrad Dasipodius, as here I hang upon you now, so my tortured soul shall one day stay your feet at—Heaven’s Golden Gate, till it wrings from you my pardon—pardon. Ah! is your heart turned steel that you can look like that? Conrad, by all my life’s unloved loneliness——”
“Unloved!”
“Ay,” she said, with a terrible echo of her old disdainful laugh, “unloved. By my forgotten grave, which dank and rotting weeds shall hide—for who will remember Radegund von Steinbach? A beggar or two—a dog, mayhap—Bruno for a little month even—Bruno Wolkenberg, until some gentle maiden, out of his dream-stories, comforts him. Oh, Conrad, mercy, pity—by all your love for—her.”
“By that it is,” he said solemnly, “I look into my soul, and find there no pity for you. Did you spare her——”
“He that is without sin among you,” said a voice that was not Radegund’s, “let him first cast a stone.”
“I cast it not, my lord,” answered Dasipodius, turning to face the Bishop. “As there is a Heaven above us, Mistress,” he continued, “I swear I think I have never nursed anger against you, for myself’s sake. But she—when her life’s blood— Oh, God! I feel it now, upon these hands, through—through to my heart. This cold, miserable, miserable heart that had dared to doubt her. And you, will you have me lie, mistress? I do not pardon you. Go home.”
Alas! for the eyes that could not see the agony of the fast-glazing ones upturned to his! nor the despair of the grey face damp with mortal dews. Did he know that death’s agonies wrung the hands clasped about his feet? Could he see, as others saw, that already her sense was dead to the presence of those who had sorrowingly sought her, and found her thus? That she knew not how he who had thrown himself beside her now, and with hands trembling in his soul’s supreme anguish, yet strong for his great passionate love’s sake, was he who felt her shame to be his, and her death the severing of all that made life worth living for him, Bruno Wolkenberg?
“There is joy in Heaven,” pleaded Bishop John once again, “over one sinner that repenteth——”
“In Heaven, surely, my lord,” returned Dasipodius with cold reverence. “Let her seek there for what I have not to give.”
“She is dying—here at your feet,” brokenly said the Bishop.
“Even so, my lord,” said Dasipodius, paling to ashen whiteness.
Can this rigid, pitiless face indeed be the face of him whom men and—God help them!—women so love for its infinite tenderness?
“The throes of death convulse her now—while I speak,” implored the Bishop, in a voice broken with sobs of grief and indignation. “They rend her——”
“Can they be as cruel as those my darling suffered, when that villain’s knife——”
“Conrad!” burst forth Bruno, “are you human still?”
The dying woman’s lips moved, and she turned on her lover a look that to his life’s own last breath he cherished with a joy no earthly thing ever gave him more.
“Ay, Bruno,” sighed Dasipodius, starting slightly at the sound of his voice, “human indeed. And not even for your sake can I do this.”
The burden in Bruno’s arms is growing heavy with death. Each gasp as it struggles to her lips, bears with it another wave of the ebbing life; and the awful intensity gleaming through the fast-gathering film in the cavernous eyes fixed on Dasipodius, alone tells that life and consciousness linger.
The sun has set, shadows are stealing swiftly over the graves. Yonder in the Monastery chapel the music is hushed. Not the faintest breeze stirs the sombre branches, only the fearsome struggling for breath of the dying artist breaks the utter silence, and the low rustle of withered leaves under Dasipodius’ foot, as he turns to leave the spot; but a hand stays him, with a touch. Heavens and earth! how firm and gentle and persistent! “You here, Sabina?” he demands in stern surprise.
“Ay, Conrad.” And she leads him, before he is well aware, back to Chretei’s grave. “Bid her die in peace.”
“Child, I cannot.”
“Oh, love, love! Think of her misery. Think—what is all the rest now?—of Bruno, for his sake, Conrad.” And her tears rain fast upon his two hands she has gathered up in hers. Yet no sign of relenting softens his face, scarcely more lifelike than the dying woman’s. “Conrad!” wails the distracted girl, “if your eyes could see what mine do now. Must my heart break too? Conrad, by all her love for you——”
“My God, no!” he cries shiveringly. “Come away, child; here is no place for you.” And he strives to lead her from the spot, but she clings heavily to him.
“Speak to her—speak—for Christ’s sake! Mercy! mercy! before it is too late! For my sake—oh, love!—love——”
Some emotion he vainly struggles to stifle down flushes all his face, glorifying it back to life, as she, lifting the hands hers hold, lays them against her bosom. “Love,” she murmurs, “by that pain I bore for you.”
And slowly he turned to the woman at his feet. “Die in peace,” he said, “if my pardon can win it you. Radegund, with all my heart, which is hers, as I hope to be forgiven, I forgive you now.”
“Conrad——”
So the artist’s soul went forth; and over the passion-wrung face, like some pure veil, spread the infinite calm of death; and in her eyes, fixed on him, lingered like the summer afterglow upon still waters, the sudden radiance which lit them, as he spoke the words her weary remorseful spirit thirsted for. With his name upon her lips she had gone hence. And he in whose arms she had died, Bruno, unremembered in that supreme moment, laid her down with the tender reverential gentleness of a mother laying her sleeping babe to rest; and carefully, so carefully, as though presently she would waken again, he pillowed the beautiful head upon the soft low snow-covered hillock of the monk’s grave, and—for does it not grow cold and chill, and in the light of the moon rising clear and round over the chapel belfry, snowflakes are sparkling down a crown of diamonds and pearls upon her dark hair—he draws the mantle protectingly about her wasted form.
And so, silent, tearless, unconscious seemingly of human presence there, Bruno Wolkenberg tended his dead love. Only when Sabina, stepping to her side, knelt, and softly kissing the marble cheek, reverently laid on her bosom the wreath of snow-white flowers she had brought for Father Chretei, some dim wistful memory of his old sweet smile flitted across his agony-stricken face.
Noiseless but swiftly now the snow is falling; darker and darker the shadows creep on apace; the bird’s lullaby song in the cypress is hushed, and silence falls, the veritable silence of the grave. Yet hark!—where from the storied panes the tapers’ golden light gleams forth to mingle with the silver moonrays’ radiance—still goes up the prayer for the repose of the dead.
“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”
And so they go down to the great city again, and leave Bruno alone with his love.