The Hour Will Come: A Tale of an Alpine Cloister. Volumes I and II. Wilhelmine von Hillern
church must give to each severally that which he needs, why should she let the suckling starve that wants a mother's breast--she, the All-bountiful, the Mother of all," he went on, giving the child back to the old man. "In such an unprecedented case it is allowable to make an exception to the rule, to save a soul for the church."
"You are great and wise, my Lord Abbot," cried Florentinus with grateful joy, and rocking the child on his arm to quiet it. "It is strange how soon one gets used to a little thing like this. I have quite set my old heart on this little brat, it is so helpless and forsaken!"
"It is no longer helpless nor forsaken," said the Abbot gravely. "When matins are over, and the child has been properly attended to we will baptise it. Meanwhile tell me in detail all that has happened, for it must all be recorded in the chronicles of the monastery, as is fitting."
He seated himself in the deep arm-chair at the upper end of the table, supporting himself on the monstrous dragon's heads which formed the arms of the seat.
Brother Florentinus conscientiously narrated the melancholy occurrences of the night.
"The body must be fetched and interred in the church," said the Abbot, "but without any inscription, for if we are to carry out the dead lady's vows we must efface every trace of her. Nay, the boy himself must never learn who his parents were, so that none of his family may dispute our right to him."
"You are always wise and choose the right, most reverend Abbot," Florentinus again declared.
They heard a sound of hasty steps on the stone floor of the corridor, and the Prior knocked at the highly ornamented door.
"Come in, in the name of the Lord," cried the Abbot.
The door opened, and a handsome young woman entered, whose fine, tall figure was poorly clad in miserable rags. She remained standing timidly at the door.
"Here is a woman who will be a mother to the child, if your reverence thinks proper."
"What is your name?"
"Berntrudis."
"Only think, after the pious waiting maid of the Lady Uta of Trasp, our noble foundress."
"She was my great-grandmother's sister."
"You come of a good stock, so I hope the fruit too is of a good sort," said the Abbot kindly.
The woman was modestly silent.
"I know you already by sight. You are the wife of the fisherman whose business it is to catch fish in the lake for the convent."
"Yes."
"How old is your child?"
"Two weeks."
"Is it a girl or a boy?"
"A girl."
"And you feel that you can nurse another child as well?"
"Six, if you like," said the woman smiling, and showing two rows of dazzling white teeth.
"Good, healthy and strong," said the Abbot to the Superior; "but," he added in Latin, casting a thoughtful glance at the blooming figure before him, "the brethren must not come in her way, you must be answerable for no scandal coming of it." Then he said to the wet-nurse,
"Take the child then, in the name of the Lord. The Prior here knows where your room is, and will see that your own child is brought to you. You may go at your pleasure into the convent-garden so long as the brethren are at vespers or at their meals, but you must never on any account go outside the convent-walls. You are henceforth under the rules of the order, and must submit to live like a nun. Will you?"
The woman hesitated a little, but then said,
"Well--yes; it will not last for ever."
The old white-bearded men looked at each other and shook their heads,
"Oh women--women!"
"Take her away," said the Abbot to the Superior, laying the child in her arms. "Now do your duty, and the convent will give you a handsome reward."
The woman pressed the child compassionately to her bosom and was about to kiss him. But the Abbot checked her severely.
"You are never to kiss the child--do you hear? under the severest penalties; so that the boy may not be accustomed from his cradle to foolish caresses and wanton tenderness, for they are not seemly for a son and future servant of the Church. No woman's lips may ever touch him--not even those of his nurse."
The woman looked at the Abbot half-surprised and half-indignant.
"Oh! you poor, poor little child!" she murmured in her Rhætian dialect. "But--when no one sees us I will kiss you, all the same," she thought, and followed the Superior out of the room. The two old men looked at each other and again they shook their heads.
"Who would have thought of telling us, brother Florentinus, that at the end of our days we should be inspecting a wet-nurse?" said the Abbot laughing. "So it is, the unclean stream of life penetrates even the strongest convent walls and fouls the very foot of our sacred altars."
"It is the duty of the strong to help the weak," said Florentinus simply, "and such a humble labour of love disgraces no one, be he ever so high!"
The Abbot nodded assent.
"Now come to the chapel, brother Florentinus, else we shall miss the mass."
With slow steps they passed along the corridor and into the choir of the darkened church, which was lighted only by the scattered wax-lights of the brethren who were deciphering their manuscript breviaries. A grateful fragrance of pine-wood pervaded the consecrated place and, so far as the scattered tapers allowed, a number of festal garlands were visible, made of pine-branches and red-berried holly twisted round the pillars and carvings by the brethren who, during the night, had thus decorated the chapel for the coming anniversary; and with hearts lifted up in praise the two old men knelt down to perform their deferred devotions.
Meanwhile the Superior had conducted the wet nurse through the spacious building to the eastern tower. A shudder came over her as she felt her way up the narrow spiral stairs, while the pine torch held by the Prior--who let her pass on in front of him--threw her gigantic shadow on the steep steps before her, and the solid masonry on each side. It was so damp and cold, so uncannily still, so painfully narrow--she felt as if a weight lay on her breast. "Where am I going? How high will this take me?" She begins to get giddy. Turning after turning--always one turn more--till she turns round with the stairs, and the stairs with her--she feels as if she were spinning round and round on one spot and yet she gets higher and higher, farther and farther from mother earth on which till this day she has always walked, which hitherto she has tilled with her own hands, in poverty and want, but happy in her labour and free!
She climbed wearily up with the child, frequently treading on her gown, for she had never before mounted steps in her life; she had lived in a humble hut under a scanty straw-roof, or in the fields and meadows. She had never thought it possible that men should build such tall high dwellings, and she was seized by a secret terror, a real anguish of fear, lest she should never be able to get down again.
The Superior spoke to her. "Only a few steps more, and it will be done; we shall be at the top directly--in a moment." But the steps seemed to grow before her, and her guide's "directly" was half an eternity to the poor frightened soul. At last she almost hit her head against some wooden beams and rafters; she was under the roof, and before her was a small low door covered with curious iron-work; this was the turret-chamber which she was to inhabit. She stood despondingly in front of the door, but her guide opened it, stooped and went in before her--she too had to stoop in order not to hit her head as she entered the room. However, she was used to low doorways, that did not scare her, and inside the room it was not so inhospitable as on the dark, stone, spiral stairs. A first glimmer of day-light shone in through the lens-shaped panes of the turret window; it was only a narrow opening, high up in a deep niche in the wall, but three stone steps led up to it and a stone seat was built