Pretty Michal Part 9

With that he took out of his side pocket a key with a double ward, and unlocked therewith a secret door, discovering a spiral staircase which led up to a tower.

Henry knew from experience that the old man kept his treasures in this tower. That his father should lead him thither seemed therefore an omen of good.

"Take the lamp and go on before."

Henry took the lamp and led the way up the staircase whilst the old man closed the iron door behind them.

After ascending twelve steps, they came to a large round room.

Heaped up all round lay, not the treasures of the master, but all the instruments of his trade which were employed in the torturings and executions of those times, with a description of which we will not harrow the readers of this sufficiently sad story. Nowadays these instruments are only to be found in museums; men have discovered other ways of ameliorating their fellow-creatures.

Henry looked around him with horror at this frightful a.r.s.enal. He could not imagine what the old man had to say to him in such a place.

The master did not leave him very long in doubt. On the wall hung an enormous two-edged sword in a sheath of black leather. This sword the old man took down, and drew from its red velvet-lined sheath the broad blade, which was concave at both edges from much grinding, and of a mirror-like brightness; then, seizing the weapon with both hands, he said to his son in a cold, calm voice:

"Kneel down, my lad. You must die!"

"Oh! my father!" cried Henry.

"No, not your father. Your judge and executioner."

"Why do you want to kill me?"

"I have been headsman of Zeb for forty years. During that time I have dispatched many malefactors to the other world; but such a precious scoundrel as you are it has never yet been my misfortune to meet."

"What offense have I committed?" asked the horror-stricken Henry.

"You have run through a whole catalogue of crimes, each one of which is sufficient to bring a man to the scaffold. You are a thief! You have robbed the benefactor who received you into his house. You are a liar! You have denied your own father. You are a blasphemer! You have stretched out your hand toward the sacrament of the altar, knowing all the time that you were profaning that holy rite. You are a murderer--a parricide! For never was a man's affection so cruelly murdered as mine has been by you, to say nothing of the honor of this innocent woman and her father. Enough; you must die!"

"But if I have committed such crimes, why not bring me before the judges? I ought to be judged according to law and equity."

"Hold your tongue. You are beyond the pale of the law. There is a statute in force against abductors. That statute says that whosoever is caught in the act of abducting a youth or a maiden need not be brought before the tribunals, but may be sent direct to the headsman who is to judge and sentence him forthwith. Now you are such a robber. You have abducted a girl. You are caught in the act. And I will be a merciful judge to you, for I'll condemn you simply to be beheaded. Undress and kneel down!"

Henry rallied all his courage. He began to smile. Perhaps the old man was jesting with him. Perhaps he wanted to try his courage.

"'Tis well, my father. You've scared me enough now. A truce to jesting. I've neither murdered nor robbed. I am certainly anything but a parricide. If I did not honor my father, I should not be here now. Pray give me your blessing, therefore, and let me go to my wife. Michal followed me of her own free will, and she is waiting for me now."

"The virgin you have brought with you is not your wife, and she awaits you in vain. At dawn I will send her back to her father under a strong escort together with the news of your death."

At these words the son was seized with a paroxysm of rage. Trusting in the great strength by which he had so often distinguished himself among his fellow-scholars, he fell fiercely upon his father. He fancied he would be able to wrest the sword from him, break loose from this ambuscade, and venture another leap through the dormer window and over the palisades, as he had done ten years before. But he reckoned without his host. The old man had only to stretch out his left hand, seize him by the chest and hurl him like a young kitten to the other side of the room, where he bounded head foremost against the wall, and fell all of a heap.

"It only needed that," murmured the old man. "Now that you have raised your hand against your master and judge, against your own father, you've not another crime to commit. This is the first case among the thousands of which I have had experience in which the condemned has presumed to wrestle with the headsman. Curer of souls indeed! In what Bible did you learn that, I should like to know."

The humiliated wretch, after this overthrow, lost his strength of mind altogether. The hero who had thus found his master in a physical encounter no longer felt equal to an intellectual contest; he writhed to his father on his knees, and cried, sobbing loudly all the time:

"Mercy, my father! I am your only son!"

"A precious only son, truly, who has outraged his own father. You fled from me. You said to yourself: 'My father pursues a dishonorable trade. I will not share his fate!' Alas! that it should be so. I cleanse the human race of its filth. My hand cannot be as white as a lily. They send for me to wipe away all their dirt, all that is vile and disgusting. A terrible fate! But someone, if it be only one in a hundred thousand, must submit to it. Evil-doers thrive like a brood of serpents. You have seen them yourself. You have been surrounded by them. You have felt how powerful they are even where the sword has been whetted to destroy them. I have already peopled many a room in h.e.l.l with these d.a.m.ned spirits, and yet they spring up again like so many poisonous funguses. But for the gallows the dominion of Satan in these parts would gain the upper hand. I too live in a state of horror night and day. When I am alone I loathe myself. When I lay me down to sleep, someone must stand by my bedside to wake me when I dream, for the dreams I dream are ghastly.

Once I even resigned my office. The King's grace releases the headsman after a thirty years' service, and a Royal decree enn.o.bles him after a thirty years' obloquy. But I had not laid the sword aside for more than six months when traveling in the district became impossible. In the town, women were robbed in the broad daylight, and malefactors danced in the churches, which they had broken open and plundered. I again began to work in blood. A ghastly work! Men hide themselves, dogs howl, grazing flocks disperse when they scent me from afar. There is no seat for me in the church, and every door in the town is closed against me. The good abhor me even more than the evil. But for all that I care nothing. What does grieve me is that my son should loathe me. The thousands of terrifying shapes which are waiting for me in the next world to stone me with their decapitated heads do not frighten me. My own son, who smites me in the face, he it is who really hurls me into h.e.l.l."

"No, my father," interrupted Henry, "I adjure you by the living G.o.d not to say so. I do not abhor you. You, too, serve humanity. I condemn you not. But Heaven has not given me so strong a heart as yours. I have chosen the mission of reconciliation, of amelioration.

I, too, would destroy the evil which you destroy, if not with the sword at least by the Word of G.o.d."

"Then you think it belongs to the eternal fitness of things that your father should be a headsman, while you are a curer of souls; that when you are dispensing the Lord's Supper, all the people should look with fear and loathing at your hand to see whether you have not inherited some blood-mark from your father; that the children in your parish should come into the world with red blotches instead of moles; that the rabble, when we sit side by side in the felons' car, should cry out: 'There go the headsman and his son, the parson; the old 'un flays the sinners, and the youngster patches 'em up again!' Perhaps, however, you think nothing of the sort. Perhaps you will prefer to go on denying your father. Perhaps you will prefer to live a lie six days in the week, and then ascend the pulpit to preach eternal truth on the seventh day. But then would not the words 'Our Father' stick in your throat? Would you not hear the devil whispering in your ear every time you repeated the fifth commandment? But enough of this. Keep steady! Stretch out your head, and let us make an end of it!"

The young man was almost in a state of collapse. He tried to raise himself from the floor with one hand, and, as if even the cold stones had pity upon him, there suddenly resounded from the room below a soft chant, a lowly prayer sung by a woman's gentle voice:

Glory be to G.o.d the Lord, My refuge and my great reward.

To Him my prayer shall ever be Who holp me in extremity.

The young man began to sob. The father leaned with both hands upon his sword. For a long time he was silent. He would not speak so long as that evening prayer lasted.

His son threw himself sobbing on the ground, and moistened the flagstones with his tears.

"Do you wish to live?" asked the father in a low voice.

Henry rose from the ground with overflowing joy. He was certain from this sudden softness of tone that the mortal rage of his father had given way to a milder frame of mind.

"Are you not sorry for that poor creature?" inquired his father.

"I love her as I love my own soul."

"I didn't ask you that, I asked you whether you feel compa.s.sion for her; you need say no more."

"Yes, I do."

"Do you feel compa.s.sion for your father?"

"I love and honor you."

"Don't talk so much, but answer my question!"

"G.o.d knows that I feel compa.s.sion for you."

"You take the name of the Lord into your mouth much too often. If you want to live, if you have any pity for me and for that poor creature, rise up! Don't blubber! It's not pretty and does not become you. You are a man, remember! Take off that garment! Here's another! Put it on and follow me!"

Henry took off his black ca.s.sock and put on the linen jacket which the old man had taken out of a cupboard for him. It was a plain jacket, without either b.u.t.tons or buckles, and fastened round the waist by a leather girdle. It did not escape Henry that the old man carefully counted out two hundred gold pieces, which he took from the same cupboard and put into the girdle. "'Tis yours," said he, as he buckled the girdle round his son's body. Then he beckoned to him to take the lamp and again go on in front, only this time they descended the staircase. The old man took the sword with him.

Henry was thinking to himself that if he could only escape from his father with a whole skin he would never venture within those walls again so long as the old man was alive.

But the old man also knew very well what his son's thoughts were, and he himself was thinking of how he could best prevent him from doing anything of the sort again.

CHAPTER X.

In which is shown how vain it is for womankind to murmur against the course and order of this world.