V ◊ Envy
A Complete Short Story
THE winter sun, pale and clear as thrice-refined gold, warmed the rich countryside which lay beneath the Convent; the pine trees with fox-red cones, the thick olive trees with the clustering grey fruit, the chestnuts heavy with tawny foliage, covered the hill-slopes to where they joined the valleys, divided by silver-stemmed larches and slender poplars, bearing a few last leaves, flat and bright as a gipsy’s sequins, into fields where men, women and oxen worked, turning over the fresh brown earth.
On the roofs of the farmhouses figs were drying in flat baskets; from the doors and windows hung the red gold strings of maize; and in the gardens, by the stone wells or the marble shrines of the Madonna set in the wall, the orange trees showed the dark glossy foliage and the brilliant fruit.
The wine harvest was over; in the stone courtyards sat girls and children rapidly fashioning covers for the flasks from the dried stems and leaves of the maize; the laurels were covered with berries, scarlet, purple and green; and here and there in some sheltered garden a white or crimson rose blossomed on the same stem as the vivid yellow fruit.
Through this winter landscape rode a young lord with a sin on his soul; he rode to the Convent. In his furred habit, with tassels of scarlet, he went humbly through the cloisters where the slanting sunlight lay, and confessed to Father Aloysius. And though the good monk absolved him, he was still uneasy, for his sin was a grievous one.
“How can it be?” he cried, “that I shall be forgiven?”
Then Father Aloysius took him by the hand and led him into the garden.
It was very still; above the low line of the cloisters fine insects crossed each other in the blue sky; there was just breeze enough to rustle the shining leaves of the lemon trees that drooped heavy fruit against the wall.
“There is no sin,” said the monk, “too heinous to be forgiven, if one truly repents. As witness the tale of the hangman of Pisa, which is out of the book called The Rosarie of Our Lady, wherein are other examples, there being one for each bead on the rosary.
“Now this hangman was a wicked and bitter man, who had never done a good action in his life, but had taken up his awful trade for pleasure in it and would go to a hanging as merrily as a maid to a dancing. There was no one who loved him or respected him or pitied him; never was he seen in a church, nor any holy place, and when some poor wretch, about to die under his hand, would murmur a prayer for God’s pity, my hangman would laugh and scoff in a way horrid to hear.
“It happened one day that he was going forth to hang an offender; he was clothed in the garments of the men he had executed, and he carried a rope in his hand, for there was need of a new one for the gallows.
“It was a sweet and lovely day in spring, the flowers were blowing in the gardens and on the hillsides, and many people were singing because of the pleasant season of the year.
“The hangman felt suddenly uneasy: for the first time in his wicked life he noticed how the children and the young maidens ran away when they saw him coming, how the men crossed to the other footway, so that his path was always lonely.
“And for the first time since he had begun his present horrid occupation, he thought of the poor prisoner whom he was going to hang.
“When he came to Pisa bridge, where is the shrine of the Virgin set into the wall, a child running from him dropped a cluster of wood-violets. And the hangman, on the impulse, picked up the flowers and placed them on the little shelf before the Virgin, and at the same time commended his soul to Our Lady.
“Then he went on his way again, but, passing through a narrow street, he was intercepted by some relations of the man he was going to hang, and they slew him.
“Now there was then in Pisa a certain priest who nightly walked about every church in the city, and that night he rose up and went to the church of Our Lady.
“And as he passed through the churchyard, he saw a great many dead men gathered together in a company.
“Some of these dead men he knew, and of them he asked what was the matter.
“And one of them answered, ‘The hangman is slain, and the Devil challenges his soul from Our Lady, who says it is hers; and the Judge is even at hand coming hither to hear the cause, and therefore,’ said they ‘we are now come together.’
“Then the priest thought that he also would be at this hearing, and so hid himself behind a thorn tree, and anon saw the judicial seat prepared and furnished, whereon the judge, to wit, St. Michael, sat, and near him was Our Lady.
“Soon after, the devils brought in the soul of the hangman pinioned, and they proved by good evidence that he belonged to them.
“On the other hand, Our Lady pleaded for this poor wretch, contending that he at the hour of death commended his soul to her, and laid a bunch of violets before her shrine on Pisa bridge.
“St. Michael, hearing the matter so well debated on either side, willing to obey Our Lady’s desire, and yet loath to do the devils any wrong, gave sentence that the hangman’s soul should return to his body, and by his future conduct should his fate be decided; he further ordered that the Pope should set forth a public form of prayer for the hangman’s soul.
“Thereupon the devils demanded who should do this errand to His Holiness?
“‘Why,’ said Our Lady, ‘yonder priest who lurketh behind the thorn tree.’
“So the priest was called forth, and the message given him, which he did accept, saying however, ‘By what token shall I persuade His Holiness?’
“Then Our Lady took a rose from her girdle and delivered it him, saying, ‘This shall be the token whereby ye may desire the Pope to take the pains to do as has been decreed.’
“So the soul of the hangman returned to his body, and the priest went to Rome, and when the Pope saw the beauty and freshness of the rose after it had been three days in the priest’s wallet, he knew that the story was true, and he ordered prayers to be sent up for the recovered hangman.
“And the hangman so lived in holiness that when he died those about him very plainly heard the opening of heaven’s door to admit his soul.
“By which you see,” added Father Aloysius, “that one simple prayer and a handful of flowers were sufficient to save the soul of a wicked man.”
At which the young lord rejoiced, and went away comforted.
But a certain young novice, seeing him depart in his finery, envied him, saying, “Look at his furred boots and his tassels, and the hat with the heron’s feather, and the chain and the beryl stone!”
Father Aloysius heard him and rebuked him:
“That man whom you envy,” said he, “is fallen so low that he considered himself lost until I comforted him with the tale of the great mercy vouchsafed to the hangman of Pisa.
“He takes no pleasure in his hat or his feather, in his furred boots, nor in his chain with the beryl stone: therefore be not envious of this splendour of his. And I would further remind you that Envy or Invidia is the fifth of the Deadly Sins.”
Now several of the novices who were about under the lemon trees, picking the fruit and piling it into deep wand baskets, began to dispute and complain about this dictum.
For envy (said they) could by no means be called a deadly sin, only a venial one, for what harm could come of it to anyone—either to the object envied or to the person who envied?
Neither could this sin be considered the beginning of other sins, or the root of evil, as were Pride, Greed, Wrath.
Besides, it was a failing common to all, and by no means to be subdued save by a saint or hermit, and even these had been known to envy the angels in heaven.
Thereupon Father Aloysius seated himself on the edge of the well, where he had the sun, and expounded the fifth deadly sin, which some, he said, put second, as next to Pride and before Greed and Wrath.
And after this manner he expounded:
Augustine saith, “Envy is sorrow of other men’s weal, and joy of other men’s woe”; and that is a true definition.
It is a very horrible sin (said the Father), inasmuch as it goes secretly and is very often undiscovered, so escaping among the ignorant, such as ye, as a venial fault hardly to be noticed, when instead it is the generator of more evil in the world than three of the other sins put together.
And I tell ye this, though there may be many a good or brave man, tinct in some way with the other sins, yet there was never one that had a spark of virtue in him who was a prey to envy; for it is properly a sin of mean, small, creeping souls who lack the courage for lustier vice.
Envy is one and the same with Malice, which it is sometimes called; it is against all virtue and all goodness, and it is like the Devil, inasmuch as it rejoices at the harm which befalls mankind. It is the parent of back-biting, detraction, slander, false witness, scandal, unkindness and cruelty.
So great a sin is it that it is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, which say nothing of Pride, nor Greed, nor Avarice.
It goes against God when it complains of God’s orderings, as, the pains of hell, or poverty, or loss of cattle, or rain, or tempest, all of which ills man should suffer patiently, for they come from God’s own hand.
And Envy is cowardly, and dare not openly show its face, but murmurs and grumbles and complains and detracts privately; and these secret mutterings of Envy are termed the Devil’s Pater Noster, though the Devil never had a Pater Noster, but lewd folk so call this sour whispering of Envy.
And from Envy come rancour, and grudging, and bitterness of heart, and discord, and false witness, and malignity.
And it is the most difficult sin of all to fight, for it goes generally cloaked in the semblance of some virtue.
And there is this tale to be told of Envy, though there are many others more pointed and dreadful; but this I know to be true:
It happened in a far country, where there is much snow and little sun, many clouds and few flowers.
There the hills are so high that one may walk all day through the valleys, and never see the sun, though it be never so brightly shining. There are great waterfalls and ravines and lonely stretches of rock; and the land is mostly barren, for they find there neither gold nor silver mines, nor marble quarries nor any natural riches; nor does any fruit flourish nor any grain-save that little they painfully grow on the shelves of rocks. But in the lakes and bays are plenty of fish, and there are vast forests of pine, of which they sell the wood.
In this country is a castle, the most considerable they have, close to their largest town. They call it the Blue Tower because it is built of wood and painted blue; they use neither brick nor marble in their building, but of wood they can make anything, a delicate toy for a child or a ship that will sail over the world’s seas.
They are a rude people, strong and fair, and still barbarous in their ways; they have no arts save those of embroidery and carving, and their sole poetry is a number of wild, fierce songs they sing in the evenings round the fire; it is said that many of them are not even Christians, but still devoted to heathen idols.
However this may be, they are cruel and brave in war, and dart out on their icy seas in their dragon-prowed galleys and seize any luckless ship that may be in their waters.
And there is the excuse to be made for their godless conduct that they have a hard and bitter life in their cold and barren land.
In this Blue Tower lived a certain nobleman with his daughter. They were very rich for that country, and would drive to and fro the town in a sledge with scarlet cushions and silver bells, drawn by four reindeer, with little gold tips to their horns; and there was always plenty of meat on their table, even in the scarce seasons, and plenty of mead in their horn goblets, a great fire burning always on their hearth, hangings of gaily worked woollens and coloured lamps in their chambers, and on the lady’s arms bracelets of rough gold, and in her ears pendants of turquoise.
They were, besides, much loved by their people, for they were open-handed and gay, and brave and just and kindly.
Among their peasants was one named Frithiof, who was good and intelligent, and clever indeed at the wood-carving in which these people excelled; he could take a little bit of rough wood and turn it into the likeness of a flower, or a face, or a bird, or a toad, or a witch, or a fairy, while he drove the reindeer to their stables.
And his master encouraged him, buying his work and praising it, and at last ordered him to carve him a chair to sit in on feast-days, a chair deep and high, with the old heroes they sang of after supper carved on the back, an inch deep in the good thick wood.
Now when Frithiof heard this it was to him as if all the little silver sledge-bells were ringing in his heart, for he was in love with a maiden named Rieke, and she loved him, and the price of the chair would be sufficient wherewith to build a house and buy a piece of ground, and perhaps even a reindeer, and so they could be married before the winter was over.
His lord knew of this ambition of his, and favoured it, and showed him the piece of land waiting for him, and his daughter declared she would give the bride a square of scarlet cloth for a wedding present; and Frithiof heard the silver bells ring louder in his heart, and saw the cold northern sky rosy with hope.
Now Rieke was a very lovely maiden, with thick pale yellow hair, which hung to her knees, and blue eyes like the little flowers which grow up in the snow-hills, and are put there by the angels to remind men of God in desolate places.
She was pious, too, and industrious; she could comb and card wool, spin and dye cloth, fashion garments and embroider them, milk the reindeer and harness them, make caps and purses and gloves and bags out of fur.
But withal she was of a discontented and jealous mind, and though she truly loved Frithiof, she never saw him in his good rough garments but she was shamed in her heart and wished that she had a finer lover.
And when he came and told her of his good fortune with the chair he was to carve for his lord, she was not so pleased as he had thought she would be, and she sighed to herself, saying, “This is not a grand future: a few yards of ground and a hut.” And in secret she filled her heart with all the old legends and tales in which maidens had come to marry great knights by reason of their fair faces.
So the winter came, and the world was white and silent with snow; it lay on the ground, on the boughs of the fir trees, on the mountains and on the ice that covered the lakes and bays, on the roof of the Blue Tower, and on the roofs of all the little huts beneath.
And as Rieke sat at her door, spinning, wearing a red gown and a blue apron and cross-cloths of yellow and red on her head, she saw the lord’s daughter driving in her sledge through the forest.
She was going to some feast, for it neared Christmastide, and she wore, plainly visible beneath her fur mantle, a white vesture.
Now she, being a gracious lady and seeing Rieke working at her door, stopped her sledge and entered the hut and spoke kindly to the girl about the wedding drawing so near.
And as she stood talking in the warm room, she put back her mantle, and Rieke saw the white gown, pure as the snow, with white fur on the bodice, buckled with rough pearls; and she heeded nothing of what the lady said, but thought only of the white gown; and when she had gone, tinkle, tinkle with her reindeer over the snow, Rieke sat down and wept.
“I should look fairer than she in a white robe,” she thought, “for I have yellow hair and hers is dark—but no one will ever give me such a gown.”
So she lamented until the devils of discontent and envy and malice and jealousy got hold of her, and when Frithiof came to her that evening, flushed and happy from his work, she received him sullenly.
As he sat by the fire and her old mother told them fairy tales, he carved her a necklet of the blue mountain flowers, so delicately done that at a breath they trembled like living petals.
But Rieke put it about her white neck sadly, and thought of the fine chains the lord’s daughter had worn, of pure gold, seven times round her throat, and then hanging to her knees.
And as the days went on she became more and more gloomy and distracted, and took no pleasure in Frithiof’s eager talk of the home they would have, nor her mother’s gossip of the wedding feast, of the mead the good lord would send, and the piece of scarlet cloth that was to be the gift from his daughter; for every day she longed more and more for the white gown, and when they spoke of the dancing there would be, she looked at her rough shoes and thought, “How can I dance in these?”
Now there was a certain neighbour of hers, named Helva, who owned a pair of shoes made of soft skin and laced with silk, and on Rieke once telling her how she envied them she pleasantly promised to lend them for the wedding.
“But what is the use,” thought Rieke, “of fine shoes, if I have to go in a coarse coloured gown?’
And she became so pale and ill and sad that Frithiof, full as he was of his own joy, could not fail to notice it, and often demanded of her what the grief was; but she put him off, since she was ashamed to tell.
But one evening he came to her, happy and singing, with the price of the chair in his pocket, and she could bear it no more, but broke into tears and told him how she longed for a white gown.
And Frithiof went out into the snow and looked up at the stars above the pine trees and tried to understand.
He loved her, therefore he could give her no blame; he only realised that he had gold in his pocket, and that she was weeping for a white gown. So he sighed, and sighed, and presently went to a neighbour and borrowed his sledge and drove to the town.
And there he went to a merchant’s and bought a white gown with fur and rough pearl buckles, and the price of it was the gold he had got for the chair, and his savings besides, so that all the long labour of days and nights and months and years went in this flimsy piece of finery.
But Frithiof did not care; they could wait for the wedding and the house as long as he could make her gay and joyous with his gift.
And gay and joyous she was when he brought it to her; she kissed him, she danced and sang, and cared nothing when he told her their wedding must be postponed, for he must go back to his work again to earn the money for the house and the piece of land and the reindeer.
So he went away and took a great block of wood and began hopefully to carve a dragon for the prow of a ship, the which he hoped to sell to the shipbuilders who were getting ready new ships for the spring.
But Rieke thought of nothing save the white gown. She did not like to show it to her mother, because she had a kind of shame in the possession of anything so costly; but late one afternoon, just before it came to the time of candle-lighting, she crept up to her room, slipped out of her red and blue clothes, and put on the white gown.
Alas, there was no mirror on the rough pine walls, so Rieke could not admire herself; but she combed out her long yellow hair and shook it over her shoulder, and fingered the texture of the gown and admired the way the silver border rippled over the floor.
But her coarse shoes spoilt all, and she thought that she would go to Helva and borrow the fine slippers, at the same time making a show of the white gown before her friend, to whom she wanted to say, “See what a fine lover I have! He went into the town and bought me this gown!
So she stole softly downstairs and out into the snow. It was very cold, and heavy grey clouds were coming up over the hills, but Rieke thought she could get to Helva’s and back before the storm came, and she put on no cloak, for she had none worthy of such a gown.
Hurrying she went over the snow. It was beginning to get dark, shadows lay blue beneath the pines, and the girl’s breath showed frozen before her; shivering with cold and panting with running she came to Helva’s cottage.
Impatiently she knocked at the door, crying, “Come, Helva, and see my new gown!”
But there was no answer, nor any light coming from the window.
“Come quick,” cried Rieke, “for the storm is hastening over the trees. It is getting dark, and I have no mantle!”
Then, as there was still no answer, she raised the latch and entered.
And she beheld Helva’s mother and little sister weeping, and they took no notice at all of her attire.
“Helva is dead,” they said, and Rieke bowed her head and wept with them.
Yet she could not help secretly wondering what had become of the fine silk-sewn slippers.
And presently she went into the bedchamber to say farewell to her friend.
And there lay Helva, smiling, on the clean sheets, and on her feet were the shoes.
Now Rieke began to envy the dead.
“What are the shoes to her?” she thought. “She does not need them in her grave; if she had been alive she would have given them to me, and it is foolish for these shoes to be lost in the corruption of the earth-when I need them.”
And so, from envy and jealousy of the dead, she came to a more dreadful thing.
She slipped the shoes off Helva’s feet and hid them in her bosom, and ran out of the cottage.
The sky was now dark and the twilight fast descending, but at the edge of the wood Rieke stopped and took off her shoes and put on the fine slippers, already cold from the cold flesh of the dead; and as she put them on she shivered to her heart.
And she began to be afraid.
“Just for to-night,” she said; “to-morrow I will give them back.”
Now she was dressed like the lord’s daughter, but she was cold—ah, cold!
She wrapped her hair round her shoulders to keep herself warm, and she tried to hurry, but her limbs were too stiff to move swiftly, and the storm came up, and the snow began to fall in great flakes, softly, softly, softly.
When she reached home she saw the cottage lights fall cheerfully across the night; eagerly she knocked and cried to them to admit her, quick, quick! But her mother looked from the window, and seeing the white figure crouching outside she said, “This is not my daughter Rieke, this is a ghost or witch. My daughter Rieke is up at the Blue Tower helping the maids card wool”; and she closed the shutters and bolted the door.
And Rieke cried and lamented outside in the falling snow, and darkness, and the keen wind which shook the pines.
And when she saw that her mother would not open she turned away to Frithiof’s cottage, and rapped with her frozen knuckles on the lattice. Frithiof was seated gazing into the red roses of the fire, and dreaming of the days when Rieke would sit beside him during the long winter evenings.
Then, while he carved, she would spin, and they would tell each other tales of the long ago, of dragons, salamanders, elves, witches and fairies, and great heroes in gold armour.
And he counted up once more on his fingers how long it would take him to earn enough for their wedding, and while he counted he heard the tap, tap, tap at the window, and presently a voice crying, “Let me in, let me in!”
So he hurried to open the door and look out into the night, and out of the snowstorm came Rieke, chilling the room with her cold presence.
And she was all white, save for the long strands of her wet yellow hair.
And Frithiof brought her to the fire, and besought her to speak to him; but she could say never a word more, for she was frozen to the heart.
Wet and chilly was the white gown, wet and chill the thin shoes; the bitter snowflakes melted on her cheeks and clung like a wreath about her hair; and though Frithiof kissed her and put his warm cheeks next hers, he could bring no life into her; and though he brought hot mead, he could not force it between her blue lips.
So he wrapped her up in his fur coat, and set her before the fire, and ran out to fetch her mother and the neighbours.
But what was the use of their hurrying with their possets and their blankets?
Rieke was dead in her garments of ice, dead and cold, cold as the flying snow outside.
And they found that her feet were bare, so believed she had lost her shoes; and when they came to put Helva in her grave they found the fine slippers on her feet as if they had never been disturbed, which is a matter the good angels know of, surely.
So Frithiof never carved the dragon prow for the shipbuilders; of the wood he made a coffin for Rieke, and she was laid in it in the white gown, and on the day before Christmas buried in the little church on the hill-side.
And Frithiof went away from there, no one knowing what he did with his days, though it is believed he wandered much and died a monk in Syria.
But the chair with the price of which he bought the white gown may still be seen in the great hall of the Blue Tower, and though it is a little eaten by the worms and the rats, you may still discern the old heroes carved in the good black wood.
Now I might tell you many more stories of Envy—as that of the man who envied his neighbour who had the ceiling of his dining-hall covered with gold pieces, and at last did his own in like fashion; but as he was not rich, he used gilded lead, and one day as he was carving the meat, down fell a false piece of eight and killed him; or the lady who envied her brother’s wife for her small waist, and drew in her own so tightly that she died; or the man who out of malice bore witness to a forgotten crime of his neighbour’s, and so discovered one of his own for which he ended his life in prison; or the thieves who envied each other’s share of the booty and quarrelled so loud they were all apprehended and justly hanged;. or the maid who swore evil things of another, and was ducked as a witch for coming by such secret knowledge of another’s sins, which she could only have discovered (they said) by the aid of the Devil; or the monk who envied the abbot and spoke maliciously of him, and that day (being Friday) was choked with a fish-bone; or the woman who envied the statue of Our Lady for her jewelled crown, at which the lamp before the shrine went out, and in the dark the woman fell and broke her neck. But I have spoken enough of Envy and all the evil consequences thereof, which I pray you heartily beware.
So the novices took up their baskets of lemons and carried them into the Convent.