The Count of the Saxon Shore; or The Villa in Vectis.<br />A Tale of the Departure of the Romans fro, Church and Putnam [summer beach reads TXT] 📗

By the side of the wounded man stood the household physician, a venerable-looking slave, who had [pg 53]acquired such knowledge of medicine and surgery as sufficed for the treatment of the commoner ailments and accidents. This case was beyond his skill, or indeed the skill of any man. He could do nothing but from time to time put a few drops of cordial between the sufferer’s lips. Next to the physician stood the priest, and his skill, too, seemed to be at fault. A messenger, sent by Carna, had warned him that a dying man required his ministrations, but had added no further particulars, and the worthy man, who was busy at the time in littering down his cattle, had hastily changed his working dress for his priestly habiliments, and had come ready, as he thought, to administer the last consolations of the Church to a dying Christian. The case utterly perplexed him. He had tried the two languages with which he was familiar, and found them useless. No one had been able to understand a single word of the dialogue which had passed between the brothers. The dying stranger was as hopelessly separated from him and the means of grace that he could command as if he had been a thousand miles away. He could not even venture—for his theology was of the narrowest type—to commend to the mercy of God the passing soul of this unbaptized heathen.

Carna understood the situation at a glance. She saw death in the Saxon’s face; she saw the hopeless perplexity in the expression of the priest.

“Father,” she cried, “can you do nothing, nothing at all for this poor soul?”

“My daughter,” said the priest, “I am helpless. He knows nothing; he understands nothing.”

“Can you not baptize him?”

“Baptize him without a profession of repentance, without a confession of faith! Impossible!”

“Will you let him perish before your eyes without an effort to save him?”

“Child,” said the priest, with some impatience in his tone, “I have told you that I am helpless. It was not I that brought these things about.”

The girl cast an agonized look about the room, as of one that appealed for help, and seized a crucifix that hung upon the wall. She threw herself upon her knees by the bedside, and after pressing the symbol of Redemption passionately to her lips, held it to the mouth of the dying man. The Saxon, on his first entrance into the room, had removed his look from his brother and fixed it steadfastly on this beautiful apparition. Clad in white from head to foot, with a golden girdle about her waist, her eyes shining with excitement, her whole face transfigured by a passion of pity, she seemed to him a vision from another world, one of the Walhalla maidens of whom his mother had talked to him in days gone by. His lips closed feebly on the crucifix which she held to them; a smile lighted up his fading eyes, and he [pg 55]muttered with his last breath “Valkyria.” The girl heard the word and remembered without understanding it. The next moment he was dead, and one of the women standing by stepped forward and closed his eyes.

Carna burst into a passion of tears.

“He is gone,” she cried, amidst her sobs, “he is gone, and we could not help him.”

The priest was silent. He had no consolation to offer. Indeed, but that he recognized the girl’s saintliness—a saintliness to which he, worthy man as he was, had no pretensions—he would have thought her grief foolish. But the old physician could not keep silence.

“Pardon me, lady,” he said, “if I seem to reprove you. I pray you not to suffer your zeal for the salvation of souls to overpower your faith. Do you think that the All-Father does not love this poor stranger as well as you, nay, better than you can love him? that He cannot care for him as well? that you, forsooth, must save him out of His hands? Nay, my daughter—pardon an old man for the word—do not so distrust Him.”

“You are right, father, as always,” said the girl. “I have been selfish and faithless. I was angry, I suppose, to find myself baffled and helpless. You must set me a penance, father,” she added, turning to the priest.

The Saxon meanwhile had contrived by his gestures to make his guards understand that he wished to take his farewell of his dead brother. They allowed him to approach the bed. He stooped and kissed the lips of the dead, and then, choking down the sobs which convulsed his breast, turned away, seemingly calm and unmoved. But as he passed Carna he contrived to catch with his manacled hands one of the flowing sleeves of her white robe, and to lift the hem to his lips.