The Ravens and the Angels Part 14

"Out of the mouth of the babes who are Thine, out of the mouth of Thy poor, O Christ, Thou speakest. I listen--I obey. G.o.d wills it.--My boy,"

she said quietly, pressing him to her heart, "G.o.d has surely spoken by thee. My heart speaks by thee. We will go."

She sat beside the child till he slept, till the long lashes shaded the flushed cheek, and the half-open lips and the small clenched hand seemed to tell of some boyish dream of conflict with the infidel.

Kneeling beside her sleeping child, she made her first vow in the presence of all that made life living to her.

And then she went down to keep solitary vigil in the castle-chapel; to kindle those sepulchral lamps which were seen far across the valley, which she never suffered any hands but her own to trim or feed.

Her own room was bare and austere as any monastic cell. All her precious things were lavished on the mortuary chapel, which was her treasure-chamber, the resting-place she longed to share, the threshold of the Father's house. On the steps of that memorial altar, which was a tomb, and there only in the world, she felt at home.

The light of the flickering lamps, contending with the steadfast, silent moonbeams, wrought strange magical contrasts of glow and gloom on silver shrine, and polished marble pavement, and jewelled paten, and chalice, and gold-embroidered drapery; and beyond, on the rich Gothic sculpture, here and there relieving the shadows of the arched aisle.

And kneeling there once more, she renewed the vow, in the presence of what made life death to her, and death as the threshold of life.

"_Dieu le veut_," she said, pressing her forehead on the cold marble. "O Christ, I take the cross on me, for me and for him. Accept it for both, and shelter us both with Thine."

It was early spring.

Forth through the green Danube valley they went,--the mother and her son, Snorro the old castellan, and Gunhilda the nurse, with other faithful old servants of the house.

At night they slept under a tent, or in any lowly hut they could find.

In the morning they awoke with no stately walls between them and Nature.

To the boy, the journey amongst the forests and by the streams was one perpetual holiday.

And on the mother also soft dews of healing began to fall, from sunsets and sunrises, and the opening of leaves, and the songs of birds, and the life of all the humble happy creatures.

But most of all from this, that she had stepped down from the cold height of her solitary sorrow, and went forth as one bearing the common burden of humanity.

"We are going to the Holy Grave that belongs to us all!" she said to herself. "We go with Thy poor, Thou who wast poor Thyself! We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou also _hast died and hast been buried_!"

Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.

"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."

Meanwhile, all the time the earth was bearing her lowly witness to the resurrection in opening buds and nestling birds, and all the renewal of the spring. Yet the Lady thought only, "My love is dead. My Lord has died."

But one twilight, as they walked together in the sombre shadows of a pine-forest, the boy said to her,--

"Mother, I heard strange talk last night by the camp-fires. Old Snorro was talking to Gunhilda, and he said he could not make out all this wandering to the Sepulchre in the Morning Land. His mother, he said, used to tell him how, when they lived far away by the Northern Seas, the young men and maidens mourned for the death of Balder the Good and Beautiful, the sun-G.o.d, until one day a stranger priest came, with the Cross, from the south, and told them to mourn no longer for the slain G.o.d, for he brought them tidings of One good, and strong, and beautiful, the Light of all the worlds, who had wrestled with death and had _not_ been overcome, but had broken through the grave and risen in immortal life to give life to men. If indeed He lived, Snorro said, why did all the people run away from the places He set them in, to His grave, where He was not, instead of praying to Him, and trying to please Him in the heaven where He is? And Gunhilda said Snorro must not talk of things he did not understand; that it was a good and holy work to wrest the Holy Grave from the infidel; the priest said so, and the Pope said so; and how should he know who had only been a Christian at all for two generations? Old Snorro did not seem satisfied. He said he only wanted to understand. And she said he ought not to want to understand; that was like Eve, and like the devil, and was the beginning of all wickedness.

And so they were whispering on when I fell asleep.

"Mother, what did old Snorro mean?"

She took his hand, and they walked on some little time in silence.

"Was old Snorro quite wrong, mother?" the boy said at length.

"Not quite, my son," she said. "I think not altogether wrong. Our Lord is surely living. Nevertheless, it is surely right that we should reverence the Holy Grave, and seek to wrest it from the unbeliever."

But that night she had a strange dream. She thought the ancient spirits, with legends of whom her Northern land was full, were all awake, careering through the forest like winds, flickering like the flames of the dying camp-fires, flitting to and fro like shadows; water-spirits from the forest-pools, dwarfs from the mountains, gnomes from under the hills. And some were laughing, some were sighing; but all kept saying to each other,--

"It is the old funeral procession we remember so long ago; it is the old, old wail. The children of men are mourning once more their Good and their Beautiful slain, and buried, and lost. Once more they find their best and dearest in a grave. For a little while we thought the death-wail was interrupted, swallowed up in the New Song of Life and Victory. But it has come back. Balder the Beautiful, the Light of heaven, is slain. This new Light of Life, this new Hope of the children of men, is also slain. It is the old funeral train, and the old death-wail. We--the earth-born, spirits of the waters and the forests and the hills--live on, and send our echoes on from age to age.

They--the heaven-born--die, and mourn, and pay vain wors.h.i.+p to their dead. Once more the religion of the children of men is a pilgrimage to a grave."

All that day the wondering doubt of old Snorro the Norseman, and the moans and whispers of that strange dream, sent wild, bewildering echoes through the Lady's heart.

And that evening it chanced that the encampment lay amidst the ruins of some deserted dwellings on the outskirts of a walled city.

The Lady could not sleep; and as she lay awake in the silence, broken only now and then by the howling of wolves from the forest, and the baying of watch-dogs from the city, every now and then a low faint moaning fell on her ear, as if from a little distance.

At first she thought it was but some of those strange moanings which the winds make at night among the woods. She listened more intently, until she became sure that faint articulate sounds mingled with the moans, which she knew could only come from a human voice.

Softly she arose, and glided to where the sound seemed to be.

And there, in the angle of one of the charred and shattered walls, she found a young maiden stretched helplessly on a heap of dry leaves.

At the gentle tones of the Lady's voice, the maiden's eyes languidly opened.

After a time she consented to take a little food and wine from the Lady's hands: and then slowly she told how she was of the hated and hunted Hebrew race, and had lived with her people in this the Jewish Quarter, outside the city walls, until, two nights ago, a wild band of Crusaders had fallen on them at midnight, had set fire to their dwellings, and killed all who could not flee, calling them Infidels and Enemies of Christ; while she herself, long laid on a sick-bed, unable to move, had been strangely overlooked, and left there to die alone.

Many days the Lady sat beside her, and tenderly soothed and served her, refusing to abandon this dest.i.tute sufferer, even to pursue the way of the Holy Cross.

"For," she said, "I would not have Him say to me in that day, 'I was sick and a stranger, and ye visited Me not.'"

Thus the company of Crusaders went on their way; and the Lady and her son, with their retainers, were left by themselves among the ruined dwellings between the city and the forest.

At first the sick girl seemed to revive with the tender care lavished on her; and her heart opened freely to the motherly heart that had thus taken her to itself.

"It is very strange," she would say; "what does it all mean? He whom you wors.h.i.+p was one of our people. A good man of your people told me once He loved our race; and forgave even those who were most cruel to Him; and wept over our sorrows, which He foresaw; and forbade any to think He did not love us. Such a lovely portrait the good man drew of your Christ, I thought if I had lived on earth when He did, I must have been a Christian. But His Christians hate our race, and never forgive, and hunt us to death."

"Not all," the Lady said tenderly. "It is He who bade me minister to you."

"If you are like Him, and all Christians were like you," the maiden said, "I might be a Christian even now. But all is so strange!" she went on. "Our people say your Christ is dead, and was buried long ago. But your Book says He rose again, and lives evermore. Yet all His Christians seem to think He has left nothing so precious behind, belonging to Him, as His grave. But if indeed He lay in it only those three days, what was it more than a sick-bed, from which one rises to new health and strength? It is strange. If He lives, has He left you nothing more precious than a grave?"

"Surely He lives!" the Lady said; "and I think He has left us much more precious and dearer to Him than His grave. Poor child," she said, her whole face radiant with the thought, "I think _you_ are dearer, dearer to Him than His Holy Sepulchre. For you may be His living shrine. He said once in a parable, '_In that ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto Me_.'"

A heavenly light shone from the dark Oriental eyes of the dying girl.

"Did He say so?" she said. "Then your Christ was indeed different from those who call themselves by His name."

And soon afterwards she resumed,--

"Lady, it may be that I shall see Him soon--see your Christ. It may be I shall find He is our Christ. It may be I shall find He was born my Saviour also, and that He will receive even me among His brethren. It may be He will be pleased with what you have done for me."

And soon afterwards the large wistful eyes grew languid, and were closed in death.