Ecce Homo

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Title:     Ecce Homo
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

A STORY OF THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND.

I.

"Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini."[1] Again and again the words of the old Latin hymn echoed through the aisles of the Minster.

It was the dusk of a short winter's day in the year of our Lord One Thousand.

The shadowed spaces were filled with a vast crowd; all the city had gathered together to hear the stranger monk. He had come into the city yesterday, and was to leave to-morrow.

It was reported that he came from an island beyond the seas, of an ancient race, rich in saints when the Teutons were still wild heathen tribes; from the borders of the sea without a shore.

All was mystery about him. He flitted through the land like a wandering voice, a voice crying in the wilderness. No man knew certainly whence he came or whither he went. He came not so much to teach or to preach, as to utter a great "cry," and be gone.

It was the old cry, that the generations of men are as the crops of grass, mown down surely by the mower; and the glory of man as the flower of the grass, scattered before the mowing-time by any passing wind.

But the old cry would scarcely have gathered the people together and riveted them in breathless, awe-struck attention as this voice gathered and fixed them.

To the old cry was added a new cry, "an exceeding great and bitter cry."

"The mowers are at hand, the harvest is come. It may not be to-day or to-morrow. But this year it will be.

"It is the Saturday night of the ages.

"The world is doomed.

"The thousand years have run their course at last. The long-suffering of God has an end.

"You may sow your fields this spring.

"You may possibly reap the seed you sow this autumn.

"But you will never see another spring.

"You will never reap another harvest.

"'Apparebit repentina.' Suddenly and so soon!

"You may keep one more Easter.

"But before the next the graves will have been opened. The resurrection to endless woe or joy will have come.

"You may even possibly keep one more Christmas. But it will be the last. It must be all but the last day of the world, for before its octave has dawned 'apparebit repentina.'

"He will have come. Not as a babe smiling on His mother's knee, not as the lowly Saviour to the manger, to live, and teach, and heal, and suffer, and die.

"As the Judge, to punish, to reward, to avenge.

"And before Him all the world will be gathered, all the ages, and all the nations.

"But not in one band; in two bands. Divided for ever into two flocks. Not Teuton and Latin, not rich and poor, not noble and slave, not clergy and laity, not learned and ignorant; but wicked and good, just and unjust, merciful and unmerciful, those who love God and men, and those who love only themselves.

"And the division exists now.

"'Apparebit repentina,' His fan in His hand; the winnowing fan. What does the fan do? It only stirs the air; it stirs the wind of God. It does not make the wheat wheat, or the chaff chaff. It only divides them; the wheat into the garner, the chaff away.

"Away whither?

"It does not make wheat wheat, or tares tares.

"The wheat to the barn; the tares whither? In bundles to be burned.

"This year, this year, in His heavens, or in His fires.

"And what will be burned in His fires? Your gold? your houses? your harvests? Nay, earthly fires can do that.

"You, you yourselves: in His fires.

"'Apparebit repentina.'

"Suddenly, and this year.

"At early dawn, at dead of night, in the hush of the summer morn, in twilight such as this? We know not. The day and the hour knoweth no man.

"But this year; suddenly, as the lightning which comes before the thunder.

"As the thief on the slumbering household, as the tramp of the foe on the slumbering army.

"If ye will, if ye can, sleep on still!

"But listen! already is there no rumble of the far-off storm? no faint far-off murmur of His footsteps?

"When the thunder-peal comes, it will be too late to warn. The lightning will have come first, shrivelling the earth like a heap of dry grass, and heaven like a roll of old parchments, leaving you alone with your Judge; all the world there, and each one as much alone with Him as if no one else were there, seen through, searched through, scorched through with one gleam of the eyes that are as a flame of fire.

"Before you the Judge, behind you the flames. The Judge so terrible that the wicked will rush backward from Him into the fire rather than meet those eyes again, those eyes which are as a flame of fire searching and burning through and through.

"And what do they search? You, for sin. What will they burn? You, with your sin, if you will not give up the sin."

And then he laid bare sin after sin--avarice, evil-speaking, wrongs wrought, wrongs unforgiven, injustice, envy, unmercifulness, pride, selfishness in all its disguises--until heart after heart felt itself seen through and laid bare.

Then turning and pointing to the great Crucifix above them he said,--

"Not one of you, not one of us but has helped to weave that crown, to drive in those nails, to pierce that heart.

"Repent, for He is at hand.

"'Apparebit repentina.' Suddenly and so soon."

And then suddenly the penetrating voice ceased, and there was a great hush, broken now and then by a sob, as, high above them, catching the last rays of the wintry sun, the sacred bowed Head, and the outstretched hands, rose lifted up on high.

And when the hush began to break up again into separate movement, and the voice which had bound the multitude into unity had ceased for some minutes, and one and another turned their eyes again towards the pulpit, it was empty.

And none in that city ever saw the face of the preacher or heard his voice again.

Like a voice crying in the wilderness, he vanished again into the wilderness, and was heard no more.

But from the voices of the choir, begun it was scarcely known how, broke forth in a long wail the hymn--

"Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini."

When the last notes of the solemn chant had died away, and once more left a silence in the vast church, the multitude still kept together. A common instinct of unity seemed to have come on them, as on a besieged city, or on a ship in a storm.

Not to one, here and there, uncertainly, as death came; but to all! Suddenly, and this year, the one great event was to come, which was to unite them all and to divide them all for ever!

Not that this message and this terror were altogether new to them. Long it had been floating in the air that the distracted world was not to last beyond the thousand years.

The probability had long loomed vaguely before them; and now this stranger came and proclaimed, with assured conviction, the certainty.

They waited and waited on, as if listening for the first peal of the Last Trump; but no sound broke the stillness. The dusk silently died into the dark, the last rays faded from the Crucifix to which the monk had pointed, and then slowly the congregation began to creep away to their homes.

Out of the silent church under the solemn silent vault of stars; each household again beneath its own roof, yet all still under that great roof of heaven from which at any moment might burst the final fires.

The city roofs, great and little for the time had become the shadows, and the upper light shone terribly through.

There was little talking on the way home through the streets, none of that eager bubbling up of pent-up thoughts which marks the dispersing of a great listening throng. The mighty common expectation which united all, sent each back into his own life with great searchings of heart.

For the day at hand was to be a Judgment Day. The day of the great gathering was also to be the day of the great dividing.

II.

Two fellow-students, Hermann and Gottfried, went back to the Abbey School together.

And when they reached their cells, Hermann flung his books into a corner and cried, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity; vain instruments of vain learning, farewell! Of what use is it to climb a few steps higher than our fellow-men, if all are to be levelled again at the bar of God so soon?"

But Gottfried knelt at the little window of his cell, and looked up at the stars and said, "O Thou Holy and Beautiful, it has been a joy to brush off a few grains of the dust which hid Thy works. What will it be to see Thee as Thou art?"

* * * * *

Old Gammer Trüdchen, whose stall was close to the Minster door, crept silently into her chamber that night; for her stall of beads and cakes was a wasp's nest of malicious gossip where all dark surmises and evil reports naturally gathered, sure of something to feed on and something to sting. And she felt somewhat pricked in conscience; for the preacher had spoken of "the measure wherewith we mete being measured to us again," and of evil-speaking in itself, whether false or true, being sure to be severely judged in that day. She did not quite see the justice of it: if people were to be punished for their evil deeds, why was she to be punished for foreseeing and antedating the verdict? Nevertheless, if that was, as the monk said, the rule of the Supreme Court, it might be as well to take care. And, moreover, one might sometimes make mistakes. She must admit to herself that possibly she had been a little too hasty and hard about that poor orphan-girl whose character had afterwards been cleared, but not soon enough to satisfy her lover, who had believed the evil report, and gone and died in the wars, and left her to die of a broken heart at home. She had only repeated what others hinted, but no one was infallible, not even the whole town, which might, perhaps, be one reason why the giving sentence beforehand was objected to. And it certainly might be as well to be careful, if one's words, even one's whispers, were to be brought up against one in public on that day, and before another year.

* * * * *

Master Gregory, the exchanger, went home to his chests of treasure; and on his way he passed the widowed daughter of his old master the goldsmith, looking pinched and poor as usual, with a racking cough, leading her two frail, half-starved children. They were neatly clothed, as always, in their patched garments; and she greeted him with her wonted gentle friendliness, expecting nothing from him.

But his heart smote him.

"Perhaps I did make rather a hard bargain when her husband died," he said; "and her father certainly had been good to me. It is true she should not have married as she did, and I have left her more than she lost in my will. But if this monk is right, wills and testaments will not henceforth count for much in the reckoning of that Day. I might as well, perhaps, do something for her at once."

And that night, as he counted over his gold and parchments (for in those days misers had more visual delight in their possessions than they have now), the parchments seemed to shrivel in the light of the fire which was to consume the very heavens as a scroll, and instead of the pleasant ring of gold, the dry rustle of dead leaves was in his ears.

But the poor widowed mother he had passed went home lightened in heart, with her children. And when she had given them their scanty supper, and folded them to sleep, she knelt beside them, and her thankful tears fell on the thin little hands over which she wept.

"Thank God!" she murmured, "at last I may long to go to my beloved; for we shall go together, we three, his babes and I; and he will see his prayers answered, and will know I did my best for them, and did not hasten away to him too soon, for all the longing to go."

* * * * *

And even the prattling voice of little Hilda, the child of Blind Bruno, the basketmaker, was hushed as she led her father through the streets, instead of the faithful dog Keeper, who was growing old. She only clung to her father's hand closer than usual.

Bruno also was very silent.

Margarethe, the mother, met them, as always, on the threshold; for Bruno liked no other hands but those which had tended him so faithfully for twenty years to welcome him, and unloose his cloak, and settle him at the table or by the hearth. He could not see how thin the hands had grown, and how worn the face was. The feeble fingers seemed to gather strength always to do anything for him; and if sometimes he thought they failed a little, the soft clear voice had always its old tones to cheer him, and he had always words of tender greeting for her.

But to-night he scarcely seemed to heed even his wife. He leant his head on his clasped hands for a long time, and said nothing until old Keeper came, as was his wont, and rubbed his shaggy head against the master's knees, and little Hilda's hands, for a welcome.

At this, Hilda's composure gave way altogether, and she burst into tears and sobbed.

"Oh, Keeper, you don't know, and we can't tell you!"

Then Bruno roused himself, and the great cry of the preacher burst from his lips.

"'Apparebit repentina,'" he said; "suddenly it will come, and this year."

And slowly and solemnly he repeated what they had heard.

A strange joy came over the mother's face as he spoke.

She was lifting up her heart to God and saying,--

"I thank Thee. At last I can long with all my heart to come to Thee. For we shall not be parted. And I shall not be leaving those Thou gavest me to keep."

Bruno went on.

"The Judge!" he murmured, "the Avenger, to avenge all wrongs at last!"

And there was a flash of fierce joy on his face, such as might have gleamed in the eyes of his heathen forefathers, dying in the slaughter of their foes.

But as she saw it, the quiet delight faded from the mother's face, and she said tenderly,--

"Our little wrongs, beloved, what will they seem when we see the nail-prints on His hands and feet?"

"They will not seem little to Him!" replied Bruno sternly.

It was an old controversy between them, and the only one. She had long ceased to carry on her side of it in any way but in silent prayer.

For the wrong was great, and the doing of it as fresh in her memory as ever;--the day when her husband's kinsman, Baron Ivo, had entered their castle and treacherously massacred all who would not acknowledge him to be the rightful lord; had bound Baron Bruno to a pillar, and had him blinded, and then had turned them out with their helpless babe into the frost and snow of the winter night, to wander whither they would, or die.

Many weary months they had roamed up and down through the land, seeking redress, until the babe had died. But the enemy was strong, and it was an age when right could only be held by might. And though many pitied, none ventured to take up the blinded Baron's cause. And so at last they crept back to the old city, and found a dwelling beside a brook in the forest, not far from the city gate, yet in a secret place, where no one need see them. And Bruno made baskets from the osiers, and she sold them.

And the poor sightless eyes were healed, but not the heart.

Again and again she had begun to hope the bitter yearning for vengeance would be softened. Sometimes when his voice faltered as they said the Lord's Prayer; sometimes when his hand quivered in hers as they knelt together by the great cross before the hermit's cave; and especially when, their little Hilda was born, the child of their poverty, the sunbeam of their dark days.

But always, when she had dared to speak of forgiveness, the old wound seemed to bleed afresh. And now she felt the old fever was burning in his heart as fiercely as ever.

Once more that night she pleaded voicelessly with the compassionate Lord.

"Thou knowest, O merciful One," she said in the depths of her heart, "it is not his blindness he cannot forgive; it is our poverty and the child's. It is not his wrong he would have avenged; it is ours. If there is hatred in his heart, love is beneath the hate, Thou knowest. Forgive, oh, forgive him! even if he cannot quite forgive."

And then, in her tearful prayers, she pleaded the day when Baron Ivo himself had come to their hut, pursued by some of the many who had been turned into beggars, or robbers, by his high-handed tyranny; when, not seeing Bruno, Bruno had recognized him by his voice, and, nevertheless, had spared him, and suffered her to hide him from his pursuers, and suffered the child Hilda to quench his thirst with fresh water from the spring.

"He could have, avenged himself then," she pleaded. "And, instead, he saved. Is not that forgiving? Will not that cup of cold water be remembered by Thee?"

Yet her heart was tossed by anxiety and doubt. Could it be forgiving to wish evil? And could the unforgiving be forgiven?

That night Bruno also lay awake, and he answered her thoughts, and said reproachfully to her,--

"Wilt thou, even thou, be hard on me? Forgiveness is Divine; but vengeance also is Divine. The Judge is just, or we could not trust Him. If it were a slave, if it were a dog that had been so wronged, must I not rejoice the wrong-doer should be punished?"

"Thou art wiser than I, my beloved," she said. "I have no wisdom but His face and His words. 'Father, forgive them,' He said; and with Him forgiveness meant Paradise to the forgiven. Else where were we?"

And they said no more.

* * * * *

And that night, in the castle of Baron Ivo, the hall was lighted and the tables were spread for a great feast. The lights flashed from the castle steep, from many windows, over the forest and the city.

And a feast in Baron Ivo's castle meant a revel; cowed slaves hurrying about at the master's bidding; guests, many of them scarcely less cowed, making forced mirth at his pleasure.

To ears that could hear there was always heaviness in the laughter at Ivo's feasts. The moans from the dungeons below rose across it all.

But on this night the mirth jarred like a cracked bell; and ere they rose, the seneschal ventured timidly to ask the Baron if he might accept the ransom offered by the young wife of the latest captive. "Otherwise," he said, "death might be beforehand. And if--if, indeed, the Great Day was so near, and the reckoning was to come so soon!"

Baron Ivo rose with a curse, and strode off to his chamber in the tower which looked over the forest, with the dungeons at its base.

But no sleep came to him that night. He seemed to hear a long procession of heavy steps slowly tramping up the turret-stair from the dungeons to his chamber. Too often, indeed, had the wails of tortured captives come up that way.

But as he lay tossing on his bed, all the rest seemed to grow faint and far-off in comparison with one face which had haunted him often before;--a kinsman's face, with sightless eyes, which riveted his own on them, and with groping, imploring hands, which he had once ruthlessly bound. He would have given the world for one glance of those eyes, and one forgiving clasp of those blindly groping hands.

"So long ago!" he moaned; "so long ago! And never further off! And now perhaps I shall soon see him close, too late to atone. There to face the horror which has stung me to crime after crime! For, having committed this, I had to do the rest, to ward off vengeance, to secure what had been so hardly won. That first was crime; the rest were self-defence, the fruit of mortal fear--of fear, and yet also of love, all so terribly entangled, love to the child my wife left to my care when she died. She knew nothing of that terrible past, and loved and trusted me. But the child for whom I would shed my blood, for whom belike I have given my soul, does she know? Does she love or trust me? Pure and soft as a white dove, yet those tender eyes search and scorch me through and through. Is there no repentance, no reparation possible? And that Day they say coming so soon! Reparation! how can such a wrong be repaired? Probably they are all long since under the ground, he and the young wife who stood so unflinchingly by him, and the babe. For if it were possible to restore him the castle, what of the sight, and the ruined life? It is not possible; no, it is not possible! That blind beggar in the forest-hut could not have been Bruno! And if he were to instal that beggar's family in the castle, what reparation were that?"

He had risen, and was looking down on the forest, and a little gleaming light caught his eye, and strangely smote his heart. It seemed to come from where that beggar's hut was. Even yet, after all, might it be possible to atone?

But on the other side, in the next turret of the castle, a light shone from the window of his young daughter, his only child.

"Give her inheritance up to them? Never!" he moaned. And once more the strong will rose and barred the door of repentance which might have been a door of hope.

But in that turret-chamber of Baron Ivo's daughter, and in the little hut in the forest, the lamp of prayer never went out.

In the turret the child Beatrix knelt at her window and said,--

"O gentle Jesus! I cannot but be glad, altogether glad at Thy coming. If I ought to be afraid also, forgive me. But my mother, before she died, told me Thou wert so gracious and so kind! And Thy face and Thy voice always seem to me most like hers; and the faces and voices around me here are harsh and rough, so that I cannot help longing and longing to see and hear Thine. Thine and my mother's; but even most Thy own, because of that wonderful love of Thy dying for us. If it were not for my father! Every one seems in such terror of him; and there was the piercing wail that day in the dungeon which he could not explain! To me he is always tender, and yet I find it so hard to return his fondness as I would. Something in his eyes seems by turns to scorch and to freeze me. But if he is not ready for Thee, wait, O patient Saviour! wait, and make him ready! and let that look there can be in his eyes for me, be there for others and for Thee! Belike I ought to fear Thy coming, Holy and Mighty One, for myself, but I cannot. And yet I cannot say the 'Veni cito,' Come quickly, lest it should be too soon for him. If he has done wrong to any man, teach, oh, teach him to make it up before Thou shalt come!"

And in the little hut the mother Margarethe still pleaded,--

"Holy forgiving Lord Christ! it is not the wrong to himself, it is the wrong to me and the children he finds it so hard to forgive. And even Thou, dost Thou forgive cruel unrepented wrong to Thy beloved? Thou who didst say of Thy sufferers of old, 'Why persecutest thou Me?' And Thou, when Thou forgivest, makest Thy foes Thy friends. Thou forgivest because thou lovest, and because Thou knowest the most pitiable misery is not being wronged, but doing wrong, and because Thy forgiveness melts the hearts of the forgiven. By the touch of Thy love move my husband to forgive, and let his forgiveness like Thine save the forgiven. I am a sinful woman, and yet I cannot dread Thy coming. Saviour of sinners, only for him! Wait, oh, wait till he is ready; make him ready, and then come, oh, come!"

Meantime little Hilda could not sleep all that night, and at last she could bear her lonely thoughts no longer, and crept out of her little bed to her mother's side; and finding her awake, she whispered,--

"Oh, mother, what shall we do to-morrow? Will it ever be worth while to do anything any more but go to church and pray?"

"We may be sure the good God will not forget to feed His sparrows to-morrow, darling," the mother replied; "and He certainly would not have us forget our hens and chickens. And if the King Himself were to come to-morrow, what would He wish thee to be doing but just the little task He sets thee every day: lighting the fire, and getting thy father's breakfast, and helping mother, day by day, on to the last, the Great Day."

"But, oh! mother," the little one resumed with a tremulous voice, "what will it be like, that Great Day? I saw the Kaiser come into the city with the horsemen and the trumpets, and the crowd I thought would have crushed father and me, and broken down the bridge on which we stood. Will it be like that? Only, the horsemen great angels in the clouds, and the trumpets thunders, and the whole earth trembling and shaking as the bridge trembled beneath that rushing crowd, and everything falling to pieces? Will it be like the great fire when half the street was burned down--only, instead of half the street, all the world? fire, and nowhere to flee to? What will that dreadful Day be like?"

"My darling, I know not. No one knows. But the great question for us all is not, what will the Day be like? but what is the Judge like?"

"And, oh! mother, how are we to know that?"

"Think of the dear Babe in the manger," she said; "think of the patient Sufferer on the cross; think of the gracious One in the picture taking the little child in His arms; think of the story of His watching the poor widow giving her half farthings, and being pleased with her."

"Will the Judge be the same as that, mother?"

"The very same. Not what it will be like, not what the Day will be like--what He is like matters to us, and what pleases Him."

III.

On the next morning Baron Ivo woke from a heavy sleep, and shook his night thoughts of his wronged kinsman angrily from him.

The stir of life was in the castle; his labourers going out to his fields, his woodmen to his forests, his men-at-arms jesting as they brightened their weapons, whilst one in a full bass voice carolled out half unconsciously a phrase of the very hymn which had appalled them all the night before, "Apparebit repentina;" but it sounded dream-like, as the voice of an owl by day. Baron Ivo stood once more on the solid ground of possession. If the Great Day were to come this very year, it was only a little sooner than they had feared; and to-day was here, and had to be lived. Let the morrow take care of the things of itself! One thing, indeed, he did. To give up the castle and atone to his kinsman was indeed a wild fancy; but he would accept the ransom of that latest captive and set him free. And, although the ransom was in itself a robbery, it might have been larger; and so he congratulated himself on having done a good deed.

* * * * *

And in the forest-hut blind Bruno awoke the next morning, and as he went towards the city with his baskets, an armed band dashed past him with the clatter of arms and spurs: and he heard his kinsman's voice in harsh tones of command, and the old bitterness was deep in his heart, as he said to himself, "'Apparebit repentina.' All wrongs shall be avenged at last. Better to suffer and be avenged, than to be in Paradise and see that villain smile there too, his sins forgotten and unpunished."

* * * * *

The next morning, when the miser awoke and found all in the familiar room as usual--the great iron chests solid as ever, his housekeeper Griselda's voice as sharp as ever when she called him--he wondered a little at his own panic the night before.

"My master's daughter made a foolish marriage, poor thing!" he said to himself, "and I am not bound to repair other people's mistakes; and if I had yielded her a little more from what her father left, she would probably only have wasted it. It is after all safer in my keeping than in hers. And if the monk was right, and she does not come in for the reversion I have secured in my will, that is not my fault; we are not to know the times and the seasons. However, there is certainly a good deal about feeding the hungry. I will tell Griselda to boil down those mutton bones that were left yesterday into broth for the poor woman; she had a cough."

But when he came down to breakfast, Griselda laughed scornfully at the suggestion, and said she had given the bones to the dog; and Griselda being the one being in the world who represented public opinion to him, and of whom he was afraid, because her scornful honesty was essential to him, the master's widowed daughter went without the broth. But Gaffer Gregory trusted the intention would go to his credit. He, indeed, went himself to market, intending to get a larger joint, so as to have some to spare; but mutton was dear that week, so he waited till the next market day. It was not likely the End would come before that.

Habit was stronger than terror. The market day close at hand still preponderated over any day even a year off.

* * * * *

Gammer Trüdchen had hardly been seated an hour at her stall, the next morning, when one of her cronies came with a whisper that the Burgomaster's young wife had been seen, quite late one night that week, in one of the lowest lanes of the city, shrouded close in her hood, and evidently not at all wishing to be recognized.

Trüdchen had a twinge about evil-speaking, and the monk's warning; but after all, as she said to her crony, if somebody did not look after the morals of the place, what would become of them? The Burgomaster's young wife was fair as a lily, and had the reputation of a saint, although "she had always had her doubts, for those were just the dangerous people, who must be watched, and must not be suffered to impose on others. And besides, it might be well to teach men like the Burgomaster to choose their brides in their own town, and not go roaming to strange cities to bring home young women of whose family no one knew anything."

And so an evil rumour was hatched no one knew how, and a buzz of malignant murmurs began to gather around the sweet unconscious young stranger; and when, a month afterwards, the same old crony who had brought the whisper, came to tell Gammer Trüdchen that the Burgomaster's wife had been visiting a poor sick fellow-townswoman of her own that evening, and did not wish her husband to know because of his fear of infection for her, the one evil whisper had hatched a swarm which no contradiction of Gammer Trüdchen's could silence.

* * * * *

And the next morning the student who had thrown away his books gathered them together again, and was intent on his work; for next week there was to be a great competition for prizes, and the prizes and praises were precious, and nearer than the Judgment. Where the heart is, the treasure will be also.

But the student Gottfried, who had rejoiced in science as a revealing of God, had arisen first, and was below in the infirmary helping the lay brothers to nurse the sick. For there had been a pestilence in the city, and the beds were full, and he thought, "After that Day, O Master, there will be time to learn of Thy works; but there is little time left to minister to Thee and Thy sick. The time of service is short; I will wait to know!"

And even as he served, he learned many things. Love deepened the capacity for knowledge. The hours in the intervals of work were more fruitful than the whole day had been before.

IV.

So the months passed on, and old habits regained their force. The miser collected the treasure he loved; Gammer Trüdchen's stall still gathered to it the evil reports she welcomed; the student won the honours he toiled for, and toiled for more; the baron delayed his reparation; blind Bruno nursed the bitter sense of his wrongs.

Terror could not break the chains of habit. The dread of a Day could not change the heart.

But all the time mother Margarethe's prayers went up from the hut in the forest, and the maiden Beatrix's from the turret in the castle.

And little Hilda sought in her heart on all sides for the answer to the question, not what will the Day be like? but what is the Judge like, and what pleases Him now?

So it went on until the Holy Week; and then on Good Friday old Christopher the hermit came from his solitude in the pine forest to preach to the people.

It seemed to little Hilda he had come on purpose to answer the question of her heart.

To him, in his solitude among the rocks and the pines, all days were alike filled with the majesty and the joy of the presence of God, and with the great pity for the sins and needs of men.

People came to him from cities and villages all around for counsel and comfort; for to him all human troubles and wants were sacred.

Sometimes the poor mothers left their little children with him while they went to toil in the fields, and he taught the little ones the alphabet, and the story of Bethlehem.

Sometimes veteran warriors sought him, and worn-out statesmen, and perplexed students, and broken-hearted women, or successful men of the world who had won its prizes and found them dust. And he taught these also their alphabet, the Our Father, and the Cross.

And now he came to speak in the great Minster, as much alone with each hearer as when each sought him in the forest-cell; as much alone with God as when they all left him in the silence of the forest.

His words were simple and quiet.

"Ecce Homo," he began. "Behold the Man!"

Then after a pause he continued, "Apparebit repentina," and the words rang on the hearts of many like a knell of broken resolves made when they had heard them last.

"What will appear suddenly? And Who?

"Is it the Day you are dreading, or the Judge?

"Is it the sentence, or Him who will award it?

"Is it the Day, men and women of the world, which is to turn all your glory into dust? Is it the Day, beloved, which is to turn all your sorrow into joy?

"Of the Day I can tell you little.

"Of the Man I know a little, and will tell you what I know."

Then for a few minutes he took up another strain, and pictured the rending rocks, the trembling earth, the terror-stricken multitude, the shaking of all that seems most solid, the vanishing of all that seems most permanent.

His words recalled the terrors of the wandering monk, and when he paused for a minute the hush of awe-stricken expectation lay once more on all the throng.

But, as they gazed, hushed in terror, the tones which had been echoing through the aisles like the wail of wild winds, like the hollow vibrations of thunder among the hills or of the waves in a sea-cave, changed to tender human appeal.

He spoke of the Babe on the mother's knee; of the Child listening and learning in the Temple; of the hands that touched the leper; of the lips that spoke peace to the penitent sinner; of the pity, the justice, and the patience. And then, turning to the Crucifix, he said, "Beloved, if we wish, we may know Him better than we know those who dwell by our own hearths.

"If all the records of that holy life, of its gracious words and mighty deeds, could be blotted out and lost, I think we might know Him as we know no heart on earth only from His words as He hung there. His words, and His silence. Seven last words in three hours of silence.

"Listen! the voice is low, the voice which is to rend the tombs. And yet, though you may fail to hear the gathering of the storm that is coming, no heart that listens shall fail to catch the murmurs of those dying lips.

"For the murderers not yet repenting, 'Father, forgive them.' To the Blessed Mother, 'Behold thy son.' To the beloved disciple, 'Behold thy mother,'--binding His faithful ones to each other.

"To the poor tortured penitent thief, 'To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise.'

"Son of Mary, He cares tenderly for her in the languor of death, and in the agonies of redemption.

"Son of God, He gives paradise from the cross.

"To you who love, to you who repent, thus He speaks, 'Paradise,' 'Behold thy mother, and thy son.' But to you who have not loved, who have not repented, still 'Father, forgive.'

"Look, listen! it is this voice which will award our sentence. Can we doubt what pleases Him? Beloved, He is love; always; then, and now, and at that Day.

"Nothing pleases Him but holy love; nothing is like Him but love; nothing separates from Him but the death of love. What He will be hereafter, He is now.

"Is there no wrong you can forgive now before it is too late?

"No wrong you can repair now?

"No need you can supply now? No sorrow you can soften?

"It is not yet too late.

"I speak no more. Listen to Him.

"I say to you now, not, look forward to the Day, but Ecce Homo--Behold the Man!"

* * * * *

And that night blind Bruno knelt beside his wife Margarethe in the forest-hut, and said, "Beloved, let us say the Lord's Prayer together. I can say it from my heart at last," and gentle tears flowed from his sightless eyes as he murmured, "Forgive, as we forgive."

And in the little turret-chamber of the castle the Baron came and stood beside his daughter's bed, his hands clasped in agony.

"Child," he said, "I come to make thee homeless and a beggar, and to make thee hate me."

And he confessed the whole dark story to her, and told her how he meant to restore the lost inheritance and divest themselves of all.

Then she rose and fell on his breast, and said, "Father, you make me richer than ever I could have been, and you make me love you as I never could before. We will go through the world together, thou and I, until we find the injured kinsman, and restore him all."

And the next morning, before any in the castle were awake, the Baron went with his daughter down the turret-stairs, and through a postern gate, down the steep, and through the forest to the hermit's hut.

And the Baron knelt and wept like a child at the hermit's feet.

His was a long shrift. Crimes about which there could be no self-deception, a life of high-handed wrong. The first wrong which won him his kinsman's heritage had placed him almost inevitably among the beasts of prey, and made his dwelling a den of rapine. Yet, happily for him, he had preserved unsoiled the belief in a just and avenging God. Sullenly, hopelessly, he had pursued his track of violence; but he had never been able to falsify to himself this vision of the Just One, or to hope to appease Him by any payment or fine, save the one he thought it hopeless to attempt, the reversal of his wrong-doings and leading a just life.

And now on the Face he had believed irrevocably set against him, for the first time he had seen the yearning of forgiving pity, not only for the wronged, but for him, the criminal.

A ray of hope, a beam of holy Almighty love dawned on the long polar night of his soul, and the ice began to melt. And in the light of that hope he dared to stand face to face with his sins.

But the long array rising before him from his own lips, reflected in the compassionate sternness of the hermit's eyes, seemed to crush him to the dust; and when he came out from that terrible hour, he seemed to his young daughter to have shrunk into a feeble old man.

She drew close to him and laid her hand in his; but as they moved away, it seemed to her as if it were no longer he who sustained her, but she who sustained him.

"The holy man has given thee counsel, father," she said tenderly.

"He bids me call all our people together, at once," he said, "and confess to them my sin, and bid them proclaim my intention of restitution. That," he said, "is at once the truest penance, and the surest way to find the means of restitution."

"I will be beside thee, father," she said. "All thy burdens are mine."

"Nay," he said, with a sob in his voice, "it is thee I cannot bear to degrade."

"Nay," she said, "we are one in the depths together, now, and that will be the first bitter step on our joyful upward way."

But as they returned, it chanced that they lost the path and found themselves before the threshold of blind Bruno's hut.

And for the first time since his sorrow, the wronged man's heart was so light with the joy of forgiving that he was singing as he wove his baskets, chanting half-unconsciously the hymn "Apparebit repentina."

And the tones of the voice seemed familiar to Baron Ivo, and he paused and looked, and saw the upturned sightless face with the new peace on it, and recognized his wronged kinsman.

He strode up to him and knelt at his side, and said in a low voice half-stifled with shame and grief, "Bruno, you are avenged at last; I can never forgive myself. Can you forgive?" And after a brief pause from the quivering lips came the pardon,--

"I forgave you last night, thank God."

They said no more.

But on the morrow Baron Ivo gathered the whole of his retainers together, and as many of the townsmen as could come, and leading his kinsman, with his wife and child, to the chair of state in the great hall of the castle, he knelt before him and made confession of his wrong. And then, by his command (his last as their lord), his retainers took from him arms, and helmet, and sword, and coat of mail, and left him in rough woollen garments such as his serfs wore, girded with a rope; humbled and degraded, as he well knew, before no sympathetic eyes--for, large as the assembly was, there were few in it who had not against him some memory of rapine and wrong, and through the hall there was a murmur of execrations.

But the true Baron rose and said, "Let no man reproach him. ONE has atoned for him, and for me, and for all. Let no man reproach him, or pity me. For since I have seen that forgiving Face, I am content to be blind to all beside. Ecce Homo. Forgive, as He forgave."

And the hermit lifted the cross on high, and took one hand of the penitent, while his daughter held the other in both hers, and together they went forth through the hushed crowd, out of the castle-gates, into the forest-hut to dwell there alone.

* * * * *

And the miser went home from the hermit's sermon once more a stricken man--stricken before by terror to the conscience, but now smitten by love to the heart.

Once more he turned to his coffers. And the gold, which terror for a night had turned into dead leaves, seemed transmuted into coin of the Kingdom; for, once more, the thought of the goldsmith's widowed daughter and her children came to his heart. And this time he made no excuses, and no delays, but hurrying out alone with eager haste, he searched out the three destitute ones in their poor chamber in the roof, and took them home to his house, and fed and clothed them, and made himself their servant. And so the spell of death passed from his treasures, and they became living grain.

* * * * *

And even to Gammer Trüdchen, the power of forgiving love, the might of the thorn-crowned Face, slowly penetrated. She could not banish from her heart the tenderness of that gracious countenance. The words, "For envy they delivered Him, for envy," stung her to the heart, and dimly and slowly she grew to feel herself among those who had accused Him. And His face seemed to haunt her, with a look in it that recalled the pale saddened countenance of the Burgomaster's young wife: for lately she could not help seeing that the lady's fair bright face had grown grave and white; the shadow of calumny lay heavy on the young life alone in the strange city.

So it went on, until one day Gammer Trüdchen was seized with sudden illness, and nothing would content her, as she lay tossing on her bed, but to see again that saddened face whose memory so haunted her.

Willingly the lady came, and the old woman told her all, and the lady would not leave her until she had nursed her into health again.

And from that time the stall by the Minster door ceased to be a nest of stinging rumours, and instead, the children came to her, and the suffering, and a quiet glow fell at eventide on her heart.

* * * * *

And so the new year dawned familiarly on all. But the Great Day dawned not yet on the world; only on one, under Gaffer Gregory's roof, the morning of new life had suddenly arisen.

The long struggle with want and toil had worn out the delicate frame of the goldsmith's widowed daughter, and on the new year's morning the worn and patient face lay motionless on the pillow with an unutterable peace stamped on it from the soul which had learned the full meaning of the words, "Behold the Man."

* * * * *

Still, on earth, remained the shadow of the irreparable wrongs; not on those who had suffered, but on those who had wrought them.

Bruno's sightless eyes had indeed opened on a vision of peace beside which all earthly light is dark. But from Ivo, who came and did faithful service to him in his castle, the vision of his crime could never depart on this side the grave.

To the Burgomaster's wife the calumny proved but as a purifying fire, making her fair with a more heavenly beauty than before. But to Gammer Trüdchen the harvest of the evil words she had sown was ever returning.

And in the miser's house and heart the blank of the worn-out life he might have saved lay heavy; while the blessed spirit thus set free was resting with Him she had so faithfully loved in the Paradise of God.

On the wrong-doers fell indeed healing dews of forgiveness.

But the brows of the sufferers were glorious with the likeness of the thorn-crowned Lord, and with His own crown of forgiving love.

But to all these forgiven and forgiving, the cry, "Apparebit repentina," the Day shall appear, had become glad tidings of great joy, because to the heart of each had come, as the command of love and the inspiration of life, "Ecce Homo," Behold the Man!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Suddenly to all appearing the great Day of God shall come."

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Ecce Homo

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