by Ouida
But the little flame was too feeble to show him even whereabouts he was, and he could not in the darkness tell one grave from another.
Stooping and stretching out his hands, he could feel the rank grass and the hillocks all round him; there were a few head-stones, but only a few; of such dead as were buried in the graveyard of St. Fulvo, scarce one mourner in a century could afford a memorial stone or even a wooden cross.
He stood still and helpless, not having foreseen the difficulty of the darkness.
He could feel the stirring of wings in the air around him. His sense told him that they were but owls and bats, of which the old tower was full; but he shivered as he heard them go by; who could be sure what devilish thing they might not be?
The horror of the place grew on him.
Still, harmless, sacred though it was, it filled him with a terror which fastened upon him, making his eyeballs start, and his flesh creep, and his limbs shake beneath him.
Yet he gripped his pickaxe closer and tighter, and held his ground, and waited for the moon to shine from the clouds.
Santina should see he was no white-livered boy. He would get her what she asked, and then she would be his — his — his; and the woods would hide their loves and the cold moss grow warm with their embrace.
Stung into courage and impatience by her memory, he struck violently upon one of the stones his whole handful of brimstone matches; they flared alight with a blue, sharp flash, and he saw there at his feet his mother’s grave.
He could not doubt that it was hers; it was a mound of clay on which no grass had had time to grow, and there were the cross-sticks he had set up on it as a memorial, with a bit of an old blue kerchief which had been hers tied to them.
It was just as he had left them there four months before, when the summer had been green and the brooks dry and the days long and light. She was there under his feet where he and the priest had laid her, the two crossed chestnut sticks the only memorial she would ever have, poor soul!
She was there, lying out in all wind and weather alone — horribly, eternally alone; the rain raining on her and the sun shining on her, and she knowing nought, poor, dead woman!
Then the wickedness of what he came to do smote him all of a sudden so strongly that he staggered as under a blow, and a shower of hot tears gushed from his eyes, and he wept bitterly.
‘Oh, mother, poor mother!’ he cried aloud.
She had been a hard mother to him, and had had ways which he had feared and disliked, and a cruel tongue and a bad name on the hillside, but she had been his mother, and when she had lain dying she had been sorrowful to think that she would leave him alone.
She had been his mother, and he came to rifle her grave.
What a crime! What a foul, black crime, such as men and women would scarce speak of with bated breath by their hearths in the full blaze of day! What a crime! He abhorred himself for doing it, as he would have abhorred a poisoner or a parricide seeing them pass to the gallows.
‘Oh, mother, mother, forgive me! She will have it so!’ he sobbed with a piteous prayer.
He thought that, being dead, his mother would understand and forgive, as she would never have understood or forgiven when living.
Then he struck his spade down into the heavy clay on which no bird-sown seed of blade or blossom had yet had any time to spring.
He dug and dug and dug, till the sweat rolled off his limbs and his shoulders ached and his arms quivered.
He threw spadefuls of clay one after another out on the ground around, his eyes growing used to the darkness, and his hands gripping the spade handle harder and harder in desperation. The very horror of his action nerved him to feverish force.
‘Oh, Santina, Santina, you give my soul to hell fires everlasting!’ he cried aloud once, as he jammed the iron spade down deeper and deeper into the ground, tearing the stiff soil asunder and crushing the stones.
The moon came forth from the clouds, and the burial-ground grew white with her light where the shadows of the wall did not fall. He looked up once; then he saw black crosses, black skulls and cross-bones, rank grass, crumbling headstones, nameless mounds all round him, and beyond them the tower of the church.
But his mother’s coffin he did not find. In vain he dug, and searched, and frantically tossed aside the earth in such haste to have ended and finished with his horrible task.
His mother’s coffin he could not find.
Under the rays of the moon the desecrated ground lay, all broken up and heaped and tossed together, as though an earthquake had riven the soil. But the deal shell which he had made with his own hands and borne thither on his own shoulders, he could not find.
‘She will never believe! she will never believe!’ he thought.
Santina would never believe that he had come there if he met her at dawn with empty hands. He could hear in fancy her shrill, cruel, hissing shriek of mockery and derision; and he felt that if he did so hear it in reality it would drive him mad.
He dug, and dug, and dug, more furiously, more blindly, going unconsciously farther and farther away from where the two crossed chestnut sticks had been; they had been uprooted and buried long before under the first heap of clay which he had thrown out from the grave.
He had forgotten that they alone were his landmarks and guides; in the darkness which had been followed by the uncertain, misleading light of the moon, he had gone far from them.
His work had become almost a frenzy with him; his nerves were strung to an uncontrollable pitch of excitation, fear, and horror, and obstinacy, and a furious resolve to obtain what he sought, with a terrible dread of what he should see when he should reach it, had together, in their conflict of opposing passions, driven him beside himself.
He dug on and on, without any consciousness of how far he had gone from his goal, and no sense left but the fury of determination to possess himself of what he knew was there in the earth beneath him.
He stood up to his knees in the yawning clay, with the heavy clods of it flung up on either side of him, and the moon hanging up on high in the central heavens, her light often obscured by drifting cloud wrack, and at other times shining cold and white into his face, as though by its searching rays to read his soul.
How long he had been there he knew not; time was a blank to him; his supernatural terrors were lost in the anguish of dread lest he should be unable to do Santina’s will.
He felt as though he strove with the fiend himself.
Who but some hideous power of evil could have moved the corpse and baffled and beaten him thus? Perhaps truly the charms had been things born of the devil, and the devil had taken them both to himself, and the body of his mother with them. He dug on and on frantically, deriving relief from the fever within him through that violent exertion which strained every vein and muscle in his body, till he felt as though beaten with iron rods.
He did not see, in the confusion of his mind and the gloom of the night, that he had come close under the graveyard wall, and was digging almost at its base. He believed himself still to be on the spot where he had buried his mother; and he had deepened the pit about him until he was sunk up to his loins. He never remembered the danger of the priest or the sacristan waking and rising and seeing him at his occult labour.
He never remembered that the bell would toll for matins whilst the stars would be still in their places, and the hills and the valleys still dark. All sense had left him except one set, insane resolve to obtain that by which the beauty of a woman was alone to be won.
Of crime he had grown reckless, of emotion he had none left; he was only frantically, furiously determined to find that which he had come to seek. Standing in the damp, clogging soil, with the sense of moving creatures about him which his labours had disturbed in the bowels of the earth, he dug and dug and dug until his actions had no purpose or direction in them, only hurling clod upon clod in breathless, aimless, senseless monotony and haste.
At last his spade struck on some substance othe
r than the heavy soil and the slimy worms; he thrilled through all his frame with triumph and with terror.
At last! At last! He never doubted that it was the coffin he sought; he did not know that his mother’s grave lay actually yards away from him. Oh, were there only light, he thought; it was so dark, for the moon had now passed down behind the wall of the graveyard, and there would be only henceforth growing ever darker and darker that dense gloom which precedes the dawn. He dared not go on digging; he was afraid that the iron of his spade should stave in the soft wood of the coffin, and cut and maim the body within it. He stooped and pushed the clay aside with his hands, trying to feel what the tool had struck.
What met his touch was not wood, but metal — rounded, smooth, polished; though clogged and crusted with the clay-bed in which it lay. He pushed the earth farther and farther away, and the object he had reached seemed to lie far down, under the soil, and to be held down by it.
He was himself hemmed in by the broken clods, and stood in the hole he had dug, half imprisoned by it. But he could move enough to strike a few remaining matches on the iron of the spade, and let their light fall on what he had unearthed.
Then it seemed to him that a miracle had been wrought.
Before him lay a silver image of the Child Christ. His knees shook, his whole frame trembled, his lips gasped for breath; the flame of the matches died out; he was left in the dark with the image.
‘It is the Gesu! It is the Gesu!’ he muttered, sure that his dead mother, or the saints, or both, had wrought this miracle to show him the evil of his ways.
In truth, the statue had lain there many centuries, buried against the wall by pious hands in times when the torch of war had been carried flaming over all the wasted villages and ravaged fields in the plain below.
But no such explanation dawned on the mind of Caris.
To him it was a miracle wrought by the saints or by the dead. In the dark he could feel its round shoulders, its small hands folded as in prayer, its smooth cheek and brow, its little breast; and he touched them reverently, trembling in every nerve.
He had heard of holy images shown thus to reward belief or to confound disbelief.
His faith was vague, dull, foolish, but it was deep-rooted in him. He was a miserable sinner; and the dead and the saints turned him thus backward on his road to hell; so he thought, standing waist-deep in the rugged clay and clutching his spade to keep himself from falling in a swoon.
V
To Caris miracles were as possible as daily bread.
He knew little of them, but he believed in them with his whole soul. It seemed wonderful that the heavenly powers should create one for such a poor and humble creature as himself; but it did not seem in any way wonderful that such a thing should be.
The Divine Child was there in the earth, keeping away all evil things by its presence, and he could not doubt that the saints who were with Mary, or perchance his own mother’s purified spirit, had called the image there to save him from the fiend.
He sank on his knees on the clay, and said over breathlessly all the Aves he could think of in his awe. They were few, but he repeated them over and over again, hoping thus to find grace and mercy for his sin for having broken into these sacred precincts and disturbed the dead in their rest.
But what of Santina? Would she believe him when he told her of this wondrous thing?
If he went to her with his hands empty, would she ever credit that he had courage to come upon this quest? He could hear, as it were, at his ear, her mocking, cruel, incredulous laughter.
She had said, ‘Bring me the magic toys.’ What would the tale of a miracle matter to her? She wanted treasure and knowledge. She would care nothing for the souls of the dead or the works of the saints — nothing.
He knew that her heart was set on getting things which she knew were evil, but believed were powerful for good and ill, for fate and future.
Suddenly a thought which froze his veins with its terror arose in him, and fascinated him with its wickedness and his daring. What if he took the holy image to her in proof that he had tried to do her will, and had been turned from his errand by powers more than mortal?
Since she had believed in the occult powers of his mother’s divining tools, surely she would still more readily believe in the direct and visible interposition of the dead?
If he bore the Gesu to her in his arms, she could not then doubt that he had passed the hours of this night in the graveyard of St. Fulvo.
She could not, before its sacred testimony, be angry, or scornful, or incredulous, or unkind.
But could he dare to touch the holy thing? Would the image consent to be so taken? Would not its limbs rebel, its lips open, its body blister and blast the mortal hands which would thus dare to desecrate it?
A new fear, worse, more unspeakable than any which had moved him before, now took possession of him as he knelt there on the bottom of the pit which he had dug, gazing through the blackness of the darkness to the spot where he knew the silver body of the Christ Child lay.
The thing was holy in his eyes, and he meant to use it for unholy purposes. He felt that his hands would wither at the wrist if they took up that silver Gesu from its bed of earth.
His heart beat loudly against his ribs, his head swam.
It was still dark, though dawn in the east had risen.
He crawled out of the pit of clay with difficulty, holding the silver image to his bosom with one arm, and stood erect, and gazed around him.
If saints or friends were there beside him, they made no sign; they neither prevented nor avenged the sacrilege.
The sweet, sharp smell of the wet blowing grasses was in his nostrils, and the damp clinging sods were about his feet, dragging at the soles of his boots, that was all.
He began to think of the way in which he could, thus burdened, climb the wall.
The silver Christ was heavy in his hold, and he needed to have both hands free to ascend the height above him.
He knew it was an image and not a living god; yet none the less was it in his sight holy, heaven-sent, miraculous, potent for the service of the saints, and to take it up and bear it away seemed to him like stealing the very Hostia itself.
True, he would bring it back and give it to the vicar, and let it, according to the reverend man’s choice, be returned to its grave or laid on the altar of the church for the worship of the people, and the continued working of miracles.
Yes, he said to himself, assuredly he would bring it back. He would only bear it in his arms most reverently to Santina, that she might see and believe, and become his; and then he would return hither with it and tell the priest the wondrous story.
Yet he shook as with palsy at the thought of carrying the blessed image as though it were a mere living human babe.
It seemed to him as if no man could do such a deed and live. The anointed hands of a priest might touch it, but not his — his so hard and rough and scarred with work, never having held aught better than his pipe of clay and his tool of wood or of iron, and the horn haft of his pocket-knife.
Nor was even his motive for taking it pure. He wanted through it to justify himself in the sight of a woman, and to find favour with her, and to gratify a strong and furious passion. His reasons were earthly, gross, selfish; they could not redeem, or consecrate, or excuse his act. That he knew.
All was still, dusky, solitary; the church was wrapt in gloom, the daybreak did not reach it; only above the inland hills the white light spread where he could not see; behind the high wall of the graveyard, beyond the ranges of the inland hills, the gray soft light of daybreak had arisen.
He thought he heard voices all around him, and amongst them that of his mother warning him to leave untouched the sacred Child, and get up on his feet and flee. But above these he heard the laughter of Santina mocking him as an empty-handed, white-livered fool, who came with foolish tales of visions to hide his quaking soul.
Better that his arms should shrivel, that his
sight should be blinded, that his body should be shrunken and stricken with the judgment of heaven, than that he should live to hear her red lips laugh and call him a feckless coward.
With all the life which was in him shrinking and sickening in deadly fear, he stooped down, groped in the dark until he found the image, grasped its metal breast and limbs, and dragged it upward from the encircling earth.
It was of the size of a human child of a year old.
He plucked it roughly upward, for his terror made him rude and fierce, and held it in his arms, whilst he wondered in his great awe and horror that no judgment of affronted heaven followed on his desperate act.
All was still well with him; he saw, he heard, he breathed, he lived; the cool night air was blowing about him, the clouds were letting fall a faint fine mist-like rain.
He undid the belt about his loins — a mere piece of webbing with a buckle — strapped it around the body of the Gesu, and taking the ends thereof between his firm, strong teeth, sought in the dark for the place whence he had descended, and found it.
He climbed the wall with slow, laborious, and painful effort, the dead weight of the silver figure encumbering him as he mounted with cat-like skill, cutting his hands and bruising his skin against the rough, undressed stones.
He dropped carefully down on the earth beneath, and began the descent of the hill.
‘When I can bring the little Christ back, I can get the tools,’ he thought. It seemed a small matter.
He was forced to leave behind him his spade and pickaxe.
VI
When at last he reached the top of the coping, he saw that it was dawn. His heart leaped in his breast. Down in the chestnut coppice Santina would be awaiting him; and she would believe — surely, certainly she would believe — when she should see this holy Gesu brought out from the tomb.
He was in good time. It was barely day. He unslung the little Christ and took it again in his arms, as carefully as a woman would take a new-born child. The polished limbs grew warm in his hands; its small face leaned against his breast; he lost his awe of it; he ceased to fear what it might do to him; he felt a kind of love for it.