The Masquerade

THE doctor had been summoned quickly, accidentally as it were, with his hand on the reins ready to drive elsewhere. And now he followed the maid into a bedroom darkened and still. He lifted the white hand lying on the coverlet, he felt for the beat of the heart, and finally he leaned over to examine the face. The patient was not dying ; she was dead. Yet might it not be sleep, he asked, “ with his poppy coronet” ? Urged by the doubt, with abrupt decision he drew back the curtains, admitting a ghastly grayish shaft of light which clearly revealed the woman in all her cold placidity. He stood bewildered, seeing alternately the soft face his memory recalled, and the face before him transformed by the magic touch of death into regal beauty.

All at once the silence was broken. A woman’s voice, false and disagreeable, fell upon his ear.

“ So you ’re the doctor ! ” she exclaimed. “ As you perceive, it was useless to come ; but the maid would go in search of some one.” Then the nurse straightway proceeded to give the information that she knew would be required of her, her hurried statement of symptoms somehow suggesting an uneasy anticipation of discovery. “ The patient,” she continued, “ was better yesterday, and this morning I heard her say to her husband, ‘ Don’t hurry back on my account. I’m feeling quite myself again.’ But when I brought her breakfast she was languid and refused to eat.”

Although the doctor spoke falteringly, almost as if he had some impediment of speech, with forced persistency he asked many questions, some of them seeming to the nurse uncalled for, especially since he had had nothing to do with the case. Nor, in truth, had any other physician visited the patient for many a day.

At last relaxing his hold upon the back of the chair against which he had steadied himself, he sank wearily into the seat. His eyes fixed upon the lifeless form, in a dim, groping way he said to himself, —

As he was preparing to leave, a servant beckoned to the nurse. She went to the door, partly closed it behind her, then shut it, and soon the murmur of voices ceased. Left alone, the doctor knelt beside the bed. A stifled groan escaped him. He kissed the eyelids of the dead woman, and her cold white lips.

When the nurse returned, reaching for his hat, Dr. Marston said, “ I ’ll go now; it’s hardly worth while to stay longer.”

“ So it has come to this,’ he reflected, as he drove along through the crowded streets, scarcely knowing whither, seeing only the beautiful marble face, every flitting look of which he knew by heart, — not by cold memory. It had been long since he had looked upon it in life, — then radiant with the bloom of youth, but no more lovely than now. As he thought of the kiss that he had laid devoutly upon the lips of the reposeful woman, there was the faintest reminiscence of an acrid odor which some minutes later he could still perceive ; and finally, when his horse with loose rein brought him back to his office, seeing a vender of flowers near by, Marston bought a bunch of carnations, — there had been some in the death-chamber. While inhaling the fragrance of the blossoms that he held in his hand, a strange analytical look stole over his countenance.

Entering his office, the doctor tossed the flowers on his desk. Presently he sat down beside it. With his elbows resting on the desk and his head on his hands he pondered, now and then reaching out for the carnations, inhaling their perfume, and throwing them aside again. No, he could not get rid of that other venomous odor. After a while he rose and walked the floor, saying aloud as he paced to and fro, “They won her from me. Dear gentle soul, it was not for her to resist. Besides, he was rich, I was poor, and the mother was a cruel worldling.”

The clock struck the hour. “ Heavens ! ” he exclaimed, “ how long I’ve been idle here! ”

The November day that had had no sunshine in it was already waning. It was cold and very dreary. Nevertheless, having still many sick to visit, the doctor hurriedly left his office.

All that insalubrious winter Marston worked hard. Indeed, he had no distractions, no ties either of kindred or of love, to curb his professional zeal. His enthusiasm found its solace in the laboratory, its outlet in the sick-room. The whole world had become to him a pathological study. Everything else might be transitory, but sickness of the body and of the soul was abiding. Could individuals, he asked, be held responsible for their physical maladies ? As for the disorders of the soul, where did personal responsibility begin or end ? Pondering such problems, he often walked the streets at night, in the merciless glare of the electric light, scanning the faces of those he met, measuring with practiced eye the abnormalities he saw, — which eyebrow was the higher, which cheek the fuller, the differences in the height of men’s shoulders, the leg that was shorter, — seeing beneath the superficial asymmetry the more profound organic malformation.

One evening, just at dusk, while he was walking briskly toward his office, Dr. Marston’s attention was suddenly arrested by the movements of a man in front of him. As it happened, he carried his head inclined to one side ; he also had a slight hitch in his gait, and other characteristics that were very unpleasant to Marston, with his trained sensitiveness to the least departure from the normal type. To the ordinary observer, however, the man was not without his attractions.

“ Yes, we do look alike,” said the doctor, reiterating the common impression, “ with these exceptions,” — running over in his mind an inventory of the other’s defects. Then almost unconsciously, with the facility of a mobile nature, he fell into the same tricks of carriage. Indeed, in his imitative zeal he came so near to his model that he could easily have touched his shoulder; or, in the manner of the garroter, he could have encircled his neck with his arm, in a way that would have stopped the swinging of Grindel’s damned head, stopped the movements of his body altogether. Then a sardonic smile stiffened the doctor’s lips, and, pricked by conscience, he turned precipitately into another street ; noticing at the moment, as distinctly as when he first perceived it, the drowsy medicinal odor which haunted him still. But instead of seeing in his mind’s eye the woman lifeless, he beheld her as she had looked when he and Grindel first were rivals.

At the end of another winter the doctor felt the weariness of incessant work, and, abating somewhat his strenuous labors, he amused himself as best he could, spending an evening sometimes at the theatre. On one of these occasions, sitting beside his friend Ingolsby, in the intervals of the play he fell to talking with him.

“ Why don’t you come to the club any more ? ” Ingolsby asked.

“ I have n’t time.”

“ Have n’t time ! You ’re working too hard. Heaven knows a lawyer sees enough of the tragedies of life, but a doctor ” —

“ Yes,” said Marston, “ no doubt; the profession is a grind.” Then alluding to the scene upon which the curtain had just dropped, “ Actors,” he remarked, suppressing a yawn, “ make a great mistake in yielding too soon to the effects of poison. What we have just witnessed is n’t true to fact ; ” and they began talking about the various toxicants, — the poisoned glove of the Borgias, the “ unbated and envenomed sword,” and the latest “ quietus ” discovered in the laboratory.

“ It’s all grist,” said Ingolsby, “that comes to the lawyer’s mill. Strangely enough, Grindel showed unusual skill, the other day, in getting an acquittal for a young man accused of poisoning a rich old uncle. Indeed, he must have gone pretty deeply into the subject. At any rate, he maintained, with convincing logic, that a clever, well-educated gentleman like his client would never have made use of a drug so easily detected as arsenic. He would have employed, most likely, he said, some slow, insidious vegetable poison.”

“ Most likely,” repeated the doctor, with a cynical smile, as he bent his eyes in the same direction in which his companion was looking.

“ There ’s Grindel now,” said Ingolsby, putting down his glasses and speaking low in Marston’s ear. “He’s always here when Blandford plays. They say that at one time he wanted to marry her, you know, and all that sort of thing. She threw him over ; but still he comes.”

“ When did the acquaintance begin ? ” asked Marston carelessly, glancing up at the great chandelier above him ; then, with narrowed intensity, fixing his eyes upon the back of Grindel’s head.

“ More than two years ago, when Blandford first catne over.”

Marston said nothing, and the subject was dropped.

On his way out Marston joined some friends, and after he had assisted the mother and daughter into their carriage, as a sort of afterthought the young woman held out her hand. “ Do come to see us, doctor,” she said ; adding with sweet, regretful accent, “you don ’t know how much we ’ve missed you.”

While walking homeward Marston mused. “ Why not go ? Charming people ! Emily Leland is one of the loveliest girls I know.” And then, notwithstanding his desire to think of her, his thoughts flew back into the old accustomed channel. “ What ’s the use ! ” he exclaimed. “ There’s no positive proof; besides, she ’d be the last to seek revenge. No, it’s best to leave it alone. It’s not the first unpunished crime, nor the last one either, I take it,” and as he strode along his cane struck the pavement with sharp reëchoing sound.

As the months slipped by Marston saw nothing more of Grindel. Indeed, he was beginning to wonder what had become of him, and at the same hour for several successive days Grindel was uppermost in his thoughts. At last, although he feared he was becoming the victim of an idée fixe, he yielded to the impulse to go into Grindel’s neighborhood for the mere chance of seeing him. There was something about the upward slant of his left eyebrow which at the moment had a strange fascination for him. He wanted, he said to himself, to observe how it was that so slight a peculiarity could leave so strong an impression. Not long after, led by some blind impulse, he stopped in front of a vast building appropriated to offices, and almost before he was aware of the fact he was a passenger in the elevator. But when he asked the way to Grindel’s office, he learned that the lawyer had moved, and, strange to say, he could find absolutely no clue to his whereabouts.

Marston experienced a keen chagrin. The desire to see the man had grown to be a passion, and now, without the chance of meeting him, it seemed as if he were suddenly deprived of a stimulant. Indeed, there was a positive void in life. He became aware of a sort of incapacity for his work, for more than once he found himself writing the wrong prescription, even specifying in one instance a deadly drug he had no intention whatsoever of administering. Fortunately, he still had force enough to regard himself with the clinical eye, and in consequence was compelled to admit that it was time for a change.

The professional judgment having been speedily resolved into a purpose, Marston set out on his travels. A languid interest seized him at the idea of shooting in the Rockies. At any rate, he would visit outlying places, and eventually, perhaps, see something of life in the heart of his country.

Meanwhile, happily for the doctor, in the midst of grand and solitary scenery, the perturbing importance of man and his ways became swallowed up in the great universe of predestined course. This in itself was a regenerating solace ; and although there remained the sense that something in him was extinct, some part of his being lay buried with his lost love, the soul-sick wanderer gradually regained his old temperate view of life.

At last, weary of living, as it were, upon the outskirts of human interests, Marston concluded to travel eastward ; having in mind to tarry awhile with some friends in a region of far-famed plenty and perfection.

Arriving at Minstrelburg with the sightseer’s humor still upon him, he acceded to the innkeeper’s suggestion that he should visit the most remarkable of the local curiosities. Accordingly, early one afternoon he set out for the Trappist monastery near by, — its inmates, in that land of outspoken volubility, easily ranking among the greatest of the world’s wonders.

He made fair speed along the winding road, only loitering now and then by the river’s bank or on some rustic bridge, to look down into the black waters of the slender, cliff-pent stream ; but as he approached the massive red brick building, its gilded cross catching the glint of slanting sunbeams, he was struck by its melancholy aspect, and while he reflected upon the austere habits of the men within, upon their “ pale contented sort of discontent,” a feeling of despondency crept over him.

Within the great arched doorway, according to the custom of the place, two Brothers, clad in white, drew near, and prostrating themselves at Marston’s feet, remained thus for some seconds, with their foreheads touching the ground, — a sign of welcome, he was afterward told, given for the sake of him who said, “ The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” Rising and making sign to him to follow, they entered the chapel, where the sub-prior appeared, graciously offering to show the stranger whatever he might wish most to see.

Following his guide,— who in truth was far removed from the typical product of the “hermit’s fast,”—Marston entered a long, low hall, where a great clock caused him to pause in silent wonder. The rim of its disk was a serpent; its minute-hand a scythe grasped by a grinning skeleton, whose fingers pointed toward the fleeting moments, and whose eyes seemed bent upon the frail mortal who might stop to count the passing fateful hours. This sinister design made Marston shudder involuntarily, and then he thought, in pleasing contrast, of the pagan symbol of death, — the beautiful Greek youth holding in his hand an extinguished torch.

As they walked along, the doctor found himself vastly interested in his broadshouldered, erect companion. His astute and swart face — showing the heat of an Italian sun — suggested curious questionings, such as have been asked ever since the brilliant Bouthillier de Rancé, leading the way in the reforms as well as in the strange romances of the order, plunged into mad dealings with the flesh and spirit, fiercely seeking the kingdom of heaven, because, it was said, Madame la Duchesse, dying suddenly, left him a pauper in the kingdom of love.

Marston asked himself why this man, the genial prior, fitted to grace drawingrooms, should have joined the silent Brothers in their downward race (at least, so it seemed to the doctor), and forthwith he caught himself at his old trick of watching for abnormalities, wondering about the crime it had been possible for the white-gowned cleric to commit before seeking penance, perhaps repentance, in this gloomy abode, over whose portal was written, “ Sedibit, solitarius, tacibit.”

On his part, the prior, whose pleasurable duty it was to do the talking for the paters and fraters of the community, recognizing in his visitor an accomplished man of the world, quickly reverted to social incidents of his past experience; not infrequently breaking off in the middle of a story un peu risqué to perform one of his numerous offices, and, fhe hurried performance over, resuming his narrative at the point where conventual zeal had interrupted it. When, apparently, he had quite talked himself out, for the moment at least, Marston seized the opportunity to inquire concerning the pious observances of the place, and was not a little surprised that, after answering his questions, the prior should ask, with the eagerness of inspiration, “ Would n’t you like to make a retreat here yourself ? ”

“ I ’m afraid,” he responded, laughing, “ it would hardly do. I ’m a Protestant, you know.”

“ Oh, that does n’t signify,” answered the lonely prior, with large catholicity as well as an eye to his own entertainment; and he glanced at his new acquaintance with avaricious eyes, showing a spiderlike greed to entice him within the web, not so much for the purposes of piety as to serve the ends of good-fellowship.

In the refectory, the bare tables and hard benches — though fit to be scorned by the saintly Barbabec, who would sit only upon a chair with a porcupine cushion of nails pointing upward — were sufficiently suggestive of penance to have caused one even less addicted to Sardanapalian luxury than Marston to wince. Nor in the long, low-roofed dormitory was the impression of austerity effaced. Although this chill, dank place was without provision for fire, yet if one of the lowly Brothers wished to warm himself there was the means ; for, hanging at the head of his bed, a whip of knotted cords was ready to his hand.

Here, thought Marston, finding it difficult to divest himself of the idea that he was in a prison instead of a sanctuary, in the “ dead vast and middle of the night,” these stung and remorseful souls suffer the torment of their deeds. Continuing to follow his guide through the outer door, at that moment he observed a monk issuing from one of the many dimly lighted labyrinths of the old building, and — seemingly unconscious of any other presence — this soul-burdened man, one of those who proclaim, ” We are happy, perfectly happy,” threw out his arms in wild gesture, while his face, though half concealed within his ample capouche, showed the grim agony of one battling with some demon of regret or despair.

The two men exchanged glances and went on out into the garden, where, walking between rows of ancient trees and along paths that hushed the sandaled footfall, they met the silent, sad-robed Brothers, spectre-like, flitting to and fro on their endless rounds of labor.

In this age of alert and curious prying into the faces and affairs of others, Marston experienced a singular personal satisfaction in encountering these men with vague, regardless eyes, practically blind to the life about them. It was, indeed, strange that he, the frankest of men, should find a secret joy, an undreamed-of peace, among hermits so isolated from the world and from one another that one of them — so ran the story — actually buried his own brother without knowing who he was.

Yet, despite this imputed self-concentration, the doctor fancied that some of the faces he saw were still capable of reflecting the mundane interest, especially that of the monk digging in the vegetable garden, filled with the drowsy drone of bees, through which they passed; his countenance was so communicative that Marston imagined he might now be suffering the penance of enforced silence for past indiscreet babbling.

As they approached the little wicket gate that shut off this part of the grounds, a gentle breeze wafted the odor of growing things, — of something spicy and aromatic. Marston paused and glanced about him.

Observing the look of inquiry, “ Here,” said the prior, “ is the corner where we cultivate our medicinal herbs. This is hydroscyamus,” pointing to one of the plants ; and plucking the leaf of another, “this is the monk’s-hood.”

Had he turned his eyes upon his visitor at that moment, he would have seen how pale the latter had suddenly grown. Indeed, it was the first time for months that Marston had perceived the old ethereal, malefic odor which held for him the memory of a swift and deadly horror. With this unlooked-for revival of the slumbering misery, he mentally exclaimed, “ Can I never escape my calling ? Must it always be disease in one form or another? ” and absorbed by his own thoughts he was deaf to the voice of his guide. Then, roused by the prior’s question, “ Do you see that man yonder, in front of us ? ” he quickly looked up.

“ You mean the one in the open field ? Yes. What is he doing ? ”

“ In the midst of life we are in death,” answered his companion, making the sign of the cross. “ When one grave is filled we dig another, just to remind us, you know, that we are mortal.”

“ A gruesome task indeed,” remarked Marston. “ Between compulsory silence and the digging of graves, I should think it would not take long to put every man here beneath the sod.”

“ It does not,” was the laconic reply. And after a slight pause the prior continued : “ As for talking, much energy is wasted, I assure you, in superfluous speech. The restraint leads to a precious winnowing of words. Yet ” —

The remark was cut short, for one of the Brothers, who, unobserved, had drawn near, conveyed with swift gesture and a few trenchant words some intelligence to his superior, evidently of importance ; immediately the prior’s face took on the aspect of haughty authority, and turning toward Marston he said, “ Will you excuse me ? If I do not return, perhaps you can find your way back to the house. Meanwhile, though there is not much else to see, you are at liberty to go where you will.”

“ It is already late,” the doctor replied. “I must bid you good-by. I see an open gate over yonder, — I ’ll go that way ; ” and thanking his host for his courteous entertainment, he turned away.

“ I hope you ’ll come back to us some time,” said the prior ; and as he made this remark a strange acrid smile flitted across his lips, while his black eyes rested upon his visitor with cold, straight glance. “ Indeed, I think you will,” he added blandly.

Though persuaded that this bit of mediævalism was well worth the seeing, Marston experienced a certain lightness of heart at having discharged his duty by it, and, walking along with equable stride, he would soon have reached the outer road, had he not, impelled by an irresistible impulse, swerved from the straight path toward the spot where the stooping Trappist was still at work in the desolate graveyard. His back was turned to the visitor, and at the moment he seemed to be bestowing that lingering care, tending to excellence, so suggestive of the true artist. In the interest of science, the doctor thought he would like to look into the face of this delving ascetic, that he might note the psychological state as reflected in the countenance of one so curiously occupied, and in surroundings so remote from the eager stir of worldly life. Therefore, just as the monk straightened himself up for the last time before leaving his task, Marston’s searching glance fell full upon him.

The men stood still, transfixed; one through force of habit remaining silent. The other, giving a low cry, distilling into the one word “ murderer ” the pentup rage so long slumbering within his soul, leaped at Grindel’s throat. The action, though sudden to the hand, was doubtless in itself a resurgent impulse of the time when, walking behind the man in the crowded thoroughfare, Marston had thought how easy a thing it would be to Strangle the life out of him.

A struggle ensued, and then the Brother, losing his footing, fell in a contorted heap into the yawning earth. There was a convulsive movement, a groan ; the silence of the monk, the silence of the grave. With the instinct of the physician, Marston sprang to the rescue, lifting Grindel to his feet; but the head hung over to one side ; the neck was broken; the pulse was gone ; life was extinct.

Dumfounded at the all too swift realization of his baleful thought, for an instant Marston remained inactive. Then, accustomed to think quickly in the face of disaster, he seized the spade which had fallen from the dead man’s grasp, and began to dig yet deeper into the compact earth. With the energy of despair he quickly gained the desired depth, and first stripping the inert form of its garb, be dragged it back once more into the pit. But before covering forever from sight the dead monk’s face, Marston was again struck with the resemblance between himself and his victim, and at once a look of satisfaction, of keen decision, swept across his pallid visage. Then he hastily heaped in the earth, trod it firmly down, erased his footprints, and made the surrounding parts to appear as they had formerly done. At the height of his perfervid labors he heard the silvery tinkle of the monastery bell, and felt thankful that with the call to compline he was likely to be left undisturbed.

Exhausted, but not vanquished, Marston gathered up the rifled robes, and, divesting himself of his own garments, assumed those of the dead Trappist; congratulating himself while so doing that of late he had worn a shaven face and close-cut hair. Habited in the guise of the silent recluse, for the first time during these moments of chilled excitement he thought of the other alternative. Why not, he asked himself, have left the man as he was ? That the monk had accidentally fallen into the grave, and so ended his days, could easily be believed. But now that he himself was a criminal in a world where most things were awry, in a place where there were “ many with deeds as well undone,” why not, flashed the thought, expiate his offense as the other had done? Yet, after all, was it murder, or something less ? questioned the doctor, though all the while, in obedience to an instinct more subtle than casuistry, he was intent upon tying the cord — “ that cord which is wont to make those girt with it more lean ” — about his waist, and continued his silent mental preparation to fill the place of the monk now dead; only to anticipate by a very little, he thought, the mocking silence of eternity.

As Marston foresaw, in a brief moment of recoil, the weary tale of years before him, the difficulties that awaited him in the unaccustomed and fraudulent rôle, though he was grateful for the scant knowledge he had gleaned from the prior, his courage almost forsook him. But having once put on the vesture of penance he could not escape its thrall. So, concealing the clothes he had put aside, he went over by the well and sat down upon a seat, — the stone of sorrow, it might have been called. The new moon, just then climbing the heavens, threw its wan light upon the encircling stones of the cool deep pool, whitening them into marble, and casting here and there the imagery of dark leaves upon their mossy surface. The whole scene, indeed, was one of such weird beauty that gradually a sense of rest and of spiritual repletion stole over the guilty man ; this sense of repose being heightened yet further by the last twitter of a sparrow from a neighboring cypresstree, as it seemed to settle itself contentedly in its nest for a night of peaceful slumber. And strange to say, in spite of his alien dress and the unwonted surroundings, there was a curious feeling of familiarity about it all, as if a forlorn wretch had found covert; a wanderer in uncongenial places, one desolate and disappointed, a lost soul, had come home. Then there followed a certain exhilaration, — a brief reaction, Marston well knew, from the lugubrious strain of the past hour. While it lasted, however, he was disposed to profit by the verve it gave ; for, accustomed to range the wide fields of thought, yet knowing full well, without the personal tie, — his love severed from hope having taught him the lesson, — the deceitfulness of the world’s interests, already there was with him the conscious foreshadowing of the priestly contraction, a sense of the foreordained, a dangerous contempt of consequences.

So, doubting not his ability to meet the novel situation as it might arise, he turned his steps toward the house ; his craving for shelter, now that his strength was low, dulling for the time all feeling of apprehension.

Reaching the shadow of the chapel, the stranger heard first the dying notes of “Deus in meum adjutorum intende,” and afterward the response, “ Deus ad adjuvendum me festina.” Then falling in line with the procession of outcoming monks, and imitating their ordered movements, he managed to evade attention until the hour of rest, when, going with the others to the dormitory, his anticipated perplexity as to where he should lay his head speedily vanished; for, in passing a particular cell, one of the monks stepped aside as if to make room for him. Sensitive by training to the slightest suggestion, Marston seized the clue, and, with weariness in his limbs and dull anguish in his heart, entered, and threw himself upon the mattress of straw dimly seen in the light of the moon, now forsaking the narrow window of his cell; its transient beauty having power even then to lift for a brief space the dark pall that hung about his soul.

That first night, the coarse robe, which no Trappist lays aside, pricked Marston’s flesh and yielded an added torment. But Heaven was merciful, and finally he slept. Even in his dreams there was a faint though short-lived echo of sweet song. And again, in the dead of night, he heard an invisible penitent lashing his fleshless bones with hissing, writhing whip-end.

At the morning meal, the rigorous rules of St. Benedict, “abstinence, perpetual silence, manual labor,” seemed to have penetrated the very atmosphere itself. “ If any one will not work, neither let him eat,” was the pervasive warning addressed to the unprotesting monks, the victims of a discipline which hammered down the strong and broke the weak. At intervals Marston stole a glance at the hooded faces of his comrades, wondering at looks so dolorous ; and, imitative by nature, before the meal was over he felt that he too wore a similar half-defiant, half-abject expression, to which, with sinister insight, he doubted not his spirit would soon conform. While he was making this reflection one of the Brothers lifted his eyes, and it seemed to Marston that they dwelt upon him for a moment with lingering surprise. It was, however, only in later days, when he met the sub-prior, by habit a “ discerner of sins,” that, whether rightly or wrongly, a suspicion of the utter tutility of his disguise and expiatory sacrifice swept over him. Yet, despite this suspicion, he would instantly emphasize the most obvious facial peculiarities of the man he was personating, lifting still higher the left eyebrow and drawing down one corner of his mouth. So, by watchfulness and care, Marston, or rather Brother Hilarius, — this being the name which, he afterward learned, had by some diabolical mockery fallen to Grindel. — made shift to sustain the character of his masquerade, to fulfill the arduous duties of the monk.

These duties were so relentless that it was only near the hour of vespers, on the second day of his service, that he found himself alone and without prescribed task. Therefore, seizing the moment, he approached the spot where he had lingered before with results so tragic. To his instant relief, he perceived that the grave holding his secret — if secret it were, the doubt creating a sickening dread, a fear of some mysterious inquisitorial torture — was filled, rounded over, and a new cross of cypress wood had been placed at the head. Immediately there appeared plainly enough the truth of what he had mistaken the night before for a vision or a fantastic dream : for at the hour of midnight he had seen a dim light, and not far from his cell the floor of the dormitory strewed by shadowy hands with ashes in the form of a cross : then a pale monk, borne by silent Brothers, had been laid upon this symbol of crucifixion, and after a while the stertorous breathing had ceased and all became quiet again.

Realizing for the first time what the solemn act had signified, Marston was far from despising the sacerdotal magic. Indeed, he was quite content with the poetry of religious observances ; for already the many pious though alien rites in which he was taking part were beginning “ to tease ” him “ out of thought.”

Another monk was fiercely digging a new grave. Marston questioned, with inward shrinking, which one among the tortured souls he now in a fashion called his familiars was destined first to find its dark and easeful rest.

In the silent, grim monotony of monastic striving the days sped on. The ingenious interpretation of face and gesture, the fateful stories he wove about the lowly Brothers, gave scope at first to the activities of Marston’s mind; but in time these outward speculations yielded to the bane of introspection. As for the guilt of his deed, it did not seem so heinous within the sombre monastic pile where a stainless soul would have been counted an anomaly indeed. Still, there were times when the fate of his victim weighed upon the conscience of the unconverted monk. Although he was used to death in its multifarious forms, there had been a touch of ghoulish horror about this one which, amid these narrow limits for the play of natural feeling, curbed any effective spring toward hopeful repentance, and, beggared though he was, he could not bring himself to shout into the ear of Providence his personal calculations of future rewards or punishments.

Nevertheless, although he refused to seek mercy for himself, the new Brother could not altogether suppress the generous motives of his nature, and not infrequently surprised his mates, by some kind act, out of their self-centred apathy into a dumb show of gratitude. He would indicate, perhaps, to a feverish Brother, not yet compelled to self-murder, the particular herb that might yield for his benefit a wholesome distillation ; or the inmates of the infirmary would profit by his skillful adaptation to their needs of the primitive means found there. All these friendly offices tended to accumulate a sentiment in his favor quite at variance with the former dislike in which Brother Hilarius had been held. It also came about that a kindly service, within the stunted possibilities of the place, was sometimes rendered this weary, gaunt, and rueful-looking monk.

At last came summer, nowhere so golden as in that land of far-famed beauty in which the isolated home of ecclesiastical rule found place ; yet, after all, not so isolated as to prevent rumors of the dire disease then abroad from reaching the ears of the self-absorbed community. Eager for the task he had never hitherto declined, Marston asked, with prodigal use of his hoarded words, if it were permitted a man, for the good of his soul, to go forth to nurse the sick.

“ It cannot be,” the sub-prior answered. “ You, my Brother,” fixing his eyes with keen glance on Hilarius, “ are bound fast by the rules of the order.”

At these words the monk’s valiant soul sprang into his face, but he said nothing. Indeed, he was not expected to say anything. Nevertheless, his thoughts were with the stricken over beyond the low purple hills, and one morning at matins Brother Hilarius was missing.

Meanwhile the disease drew nearer and nearer, until the line of desolation, the completed serpent-coil resembling the Egyptian emblem of immortality, strange as it may seem, held the ever uselessly toiling Brothers in mortal bond. Tidings of the heroic battle fought to stay the enemy leaped the monastery walls, and the white-cowled monks heard also — for Fame herself sounded the trumpet from the hilltops of the plentiful land yielding even unto death an unstinted harvest — of the deeds of one as lowly, as self-forgetful as Father Damien himself. According to its wont, the order appropriated the glory, and sent to urge the monk, when his task was done, to come back to the fold. But the messenger, loitering, came too late ; for already one swifter than he, Death himself, had “ stepped tacitly ” and taken Brother Hilarius where he never more would see the sun.

Penrhyn Lee.