Sometimes it seemed to lier as though even now, after these years, she still ought to summon him and say this. But time passed on and passed away, and it remained unsaid.
She rode often through the same woods, now in full leaf, with sunny waters tumbling and sparkling through their flower-filled moss, but he crossed her path no more. He might have come thither, she thought, in some brief hope of possible reconciliation to her, and then his courage might have failed him, and he might have returned to whatsoever distant climate held him, whatsoever manner of life consoled him. That he might dwell amidst the hills, unseen of men, for her sake, never once seemed to her possible. Egon Vàsàrhely might have done that; but not he—he loved the world.
The summer weighed wearily upon her. The light, the fragrance, the gaiety of nature hurt her. In winter all the earth seemed of accord with herself; it was silent, stern, solitary. The keen winds, the glittering snow, the air that was like a bath of ice, the sense of absolute isolation and seclusion which the winter brought with it were precious to her. Not even the pretty figures of the children running through the bowers of blossom and of foliage could make the summer otherwise than oppressive and mournful to her.
Sometimes she thought of how it had been on other summer nights, when he had wandered with her through the white lines of the lilies by the starlight, or sent the melodies of Schumann and of Beethoven out upon the dewy, balmy air. Then she could bear no more to look upon the moonlit gardens.
The love she had borne him stirred at those times beneath the gravestones of scorn and wrath and almost hatred which she had heaped upon it, to keep it buried far down for evermore. All the echoes of passion came to her at those moments; she despised herself because she felt that she would give her soul to feel his lips on hers again. She was ashamed that the mere sight of him could thus have moved her. Again and again she recalled noble acts, beautiful thoughts, which had been his; again and again she recalled the early hours of their love with burning cheeks and longing heart. She could have scourged herself to banish those memories, those desires. They were terrible and irresistible to her as the visions that assailed the saints of the Thebaïd. Her whole soul softened to him, yearned for him, forgave him. Then she would shrink in disdain from her own weakness, and pace her chamber like a wounded lioness.
The first flush of autumn came upon the woods. Soon it would be three years since Olga Brancka had driven thither, and her work had held good and never been undone. Bela and Gela had grown tall and slender as the young fir trees; and Bela often said to his brother: 'I was ten years old on Easter Day. That is quite old. If ever I am to find him I am old enough now.'
He had not forgotten. He never forgot. Every day he wearied his little brain with thinking what he could do. Every night he asked Heaven to help him. He had read a Bohemian ballad which had fascinated him; the story of how, in the days of chivalry, Wratislaw, the son of Berka, when but twelve years old, had made, all by himself and on foot, a pilgrimage from Prague to Tartary, to release his brother from captivity. Bela knew very well that the world had changed since then, and that if some things were easier some were harder now than then. But if Wratislaw had done so much at twelve, why should he, who was ten, not do something?
He thought himself quite old. He had a big pony, and Folko was ridden by his little brothers. He had been taught to shoot at a target and a running mark; he had become skilful at climbing with crampons and managing a boat. When he rode he had long boots that pulled up to his knees. He could drive three ponies, harnessed in the Russian way, with skill and surety. Perhaps, he thought, the Bohemian boy had not been able to do half as much as this. The ballad spoke of him as a little weakling, and yet he had found his way from Prague, in her dusky plains, to burning Tartary.
Almost he was ready to set forth on a Quixotic search without any clue to where his father dwelt, but his educated sense checked him with the remembrance that, wide as the world was, it would be of no avail to begin a harebrained pilgrimage with no fixed goal. Even Wratislaw, who was his ideal, had been certain that his brother languished in the Tartar tents before he had set his fair face to the southeast. So he remained patient in his impatience, and strove with all his might to perfect himself in all bodily exercises and manly habits, that he might be the better fitted to go on his errand whenever he should have any thread of guidance. No one guessed the resolves and the hopes which fermented like new wine in his pretty golden-haired head. His attendants thought each year that he grew gentler and more serious, and his tutors found him at once more docile and more absent-minded. But no one imagined that he was bent on any unusual enterprise.
His father had not been recognised by the groom who had accompanied his mistress in the drive through the woods of the Reggen Thörl; and no rumour of the near presence of Sabran had reached any of the household. Greswold alone knew that amidst the solitudes of the avalanche and the glacier, in the chill of the air where the eagle and the vulture alone made their home, in a life of absolute isolation, asceticism, and physical denial of every kind, the man who had sinned against her spent his exile, in such self-chosen expiation as was possible to one who had neither the faith nor the humility needful to make him seek refuge and atonement in any religious service. He dwelt in the loneliness of the ice-slopes, leading the life of a common hunter, shunning all men, accepting each monotonous and joyless day as portion of his just punishment; in the perils of winter on the mountains doing what he could to save human or animal life; knowing no solace save such as existed for him in the sense of being near all that he had lost, and the power of watching the distant movements of his wife and children at such rare hours as he ventured to approach the hills of Hohenszalras and turn his telescope on the gardens of his lost home. A hunter or two, a guide or two of the Umbal and the Trojerthal had his confidence, but the loyalty which is the common virtue of all mountaineers made them preserve it faithfully. For the rest, in these unfrequented places, avoidance of all those who might have recognised him was easy; he was clothed like the men of the hills, and lived like them in a châlet, high perched on a ledge of rock at a great altitude in the wild and almost inaccessible region of the Hintere Umbalthörl. Of the future he never dared to think; he took each day as it came; the best he hoped for was a mountaineer's death some hour or another, amidst the clear serene blue ice, the everlasting snows.
When he had gone out from the chamber of his wife, banished and accursed, all his spirit had died in him, and nothing had seemed clear in his memory except that love which had been so insufficient to wash out his sin. The world would no doubt have welcomed him; he was not too old for its distractions and its ambitions to be still possible for him; but he had no courage left to take them up, no energy to make another future for himself. His whole life was consumed in a vain regret, as vain a desire, as vain a penitence. Had he had the faith of those men who dwelt under the willows of the Holy Isle he would have joined them. But he had no belief; he had only a futile, heart-broken, hopeless repentance, which availed him nothing and could atone for nothing.
Perhaps, he thought, if she had known that, it might have changed her. But he did not dare to approach her by any written appeal. It seemed to him as if any words from him would only appear but added falsehood, added insult. He never, even in his own thoughts, reproached her for her separation from him. He recognised that no other path was open to her. The pure daylight of her nature could find no mate in the dusk and shadow of his own; the loyalty of truth could not unite with the servitude and cowardice of falsehood. He knew it, and never rebelled against his chastisement.
Whilst still it was dawn one morning, his young son, just awaking, heard a pebble thrown at his window. He sprang out of bed and ran and looked out. Old Otto stood below.
'My little lord,' he said softly; 'if you can come to me in the woods, when you are dressed, I have something to tell you.'
'Of him?' cried Bela.
The huntsman made a sign of assent.
The child, excited to intense emotion, hardly knew how his servant dressed him, or how he swallowed his breakfast. After their morning meal he could always run in the woods, as he chose, before beginning his studies, and he sped as fast as his feet could bear him to the trysting-place.
'My lord, your father has been seen on the other side of Glöckner by my underling, Fritz,' said Otto, gravely; 'and I have heard, too, that the villagers have seen him in Pregratten. I made bold to tell you, Count Bela, for I had given you my word.'
Bela's whole form shook with excitement.
'I knew if he had died I should have known it!' he said, with a hushed ecstasy. 'Tell me more, tell me more, quick!'
'There is no more to tell, my little lord,' said Otto. 'Fritz will swear that he saw your father, though there was a stretch of glaciers and many fathoms of ice between them. He says there was no mistaking the way he sighted his rifle and fired. And I have heard by gossip, too, from the folks of the Hintere Umbalthörl that there can be no manner of doubt of the fact that His Excellency has dwelt there, for a time at least.'
Bela gave a deep breath.
'Then he lives, and I can find him!'
'Yes, he lives; the Lord be praised! 'said Otto.
When he went to the house the boy told no one his precious secret. He studied ill, and was punished, but he did not heed it. His heart was full of joy; his brain teemed with projects.
'I will go and bring him back!' he kept saying to himself; and no force could hold his thoughts to his Homer or his Euclid.
He would tell no one, he resolved, not even Gela; and he would go alone, all alone, as the Bohemian boy had gone.
'What ails Bela to-day? He is not like himself,' said his mother to Greswold, who assured her he was well, but added that he was often careless.
The child shut his secret up in his own breast, and though he longed to tell Gela he did not. He had been tempted to confide in Otto, but resisted even that desire, knowing that Otto was stern where duty pointed, and had been always forbidden to let the little nobles wander alone to the mountains. He had his father's power of reticence, his mother's strength of self-control.
He knew what hill work was like. The elder boys often went climbing, with their guides, on fine days from May to September, and had a little tent which was set up for them at a fair altitude, whence Greswold taught them to take observations and measurements. But the mountaineering for the season was now over; it was now S. Michael's Day, and avalanches fell and snow-storms had begun on the higher slopes. He knew that if anyone saw him he would be stopped and taken back. For that reason he said nothing to Gela, who could never be persuaded to a disobedience; and he rose in the dark, before the hour at which his attendant came to dress him, got his clothes on as best he could, slipped the sword Vàsàrhely had given him in his belt, and took his crampons and alpenstock in his hand.
He had kneeled and said his prayers, fervently though quickly.
'A soldier cannot prayverylong if he hear the trumpets sounding,' he had thought, as he rose. He felt neither irresolution nor fear; he was strong with ardour and an exalted sense of right-doing.
He had the little knapsack which, in the long forest walks with his tutor, he was used to carry packed with simple food for a morning meal when they halted under the pines. He had put some bread and cakes into this overnight, and he had filled his little silver flask with milk, as he had seen the flasks of the gentlemen filled with wine in those grand days when the Kaiser and the Court had hunted with his father. Thus equipped he managed to escape from the house by a side door, left open by some of the under-servants, who had just risen. He knew the quick way to reach the Glöckner slopes, for he had been taken there by Otto to learn mountaineering, and for his age he climbed well. His eye was sure, his step firm, and he knew not fear. He never thought of the misery his absence might cause; he was absorbed in his self-imposed mission.
'I will bring him back,' he thought, 'and then she will smile again.'
He had been trained in the lore of the high hills too well not to know that it would take him several days to reach the Hintere Umbalthörl; but he said to himself that this must be as it would. He would climb on and on, sleep in any hut he could, and find what food he might. The Bohemian boy had crossed many mountains and seas and deserts before he had ransomed his brother.
It was a fine morning, with light pleasant winds. There was a clear blue in the sky, though north-east there was a brown haze, such as hunters fear, upon the hills.
'It will rain or snow to-morrow,' thought Bela, who had been made wise in the signs of the weather. But even that prevision did not deter him; he had his liberty and he meant to use it. He had been well trained to all bodily exercises, and he could walk long and fast without fatigue. His slender fair limbs were as strong as steel, and his health was perfect. He knew all the tracks of the home-lying woods, and he wanted no one to guide him. He got, with promptitude and address, out of sight of the terraces and towers of Hohenszalras, and soon entered what was called the Schwarzenwald, a dense pine-wood ascending abruptly the mountain side from the gardens; the only place where the wildness of the hills came in unbroken contact and close proximity to the lawns and flowers of the south side of the schloss, the lower spurs of the Gross Glöckner descending there so steep and stern that they enclosed the parterres with a gigantic rampart of granite.
The contrast of the rose gardens with these huge overhanging heights had always so pleased the tastes of the Szalras châtelaines, that they had never allowed any attempts to be made to change or modify the savage grandeur and sombre wilds of the black wood.
He was already a trained pedestrian, and he covered five miles without pausing to breathe himself. Then he thought he had come far enough to make it safe to pause and eat. He drank his milk and opened his knapsack. There was turf still about him, and a few trees, but he had come into the rocky region. Huge walls of red and grey marbles leaned over him; white limestone crags faced him. Precipices, black with pines and firs, shelved downward. He was still on his mother's land, but in a part unknown to him.
Once rested, he climbed up manfully, straining his little velvet breeches and soaking his silver-buckled shoes in the wet moss as he went; for in the Schwarzenwald regular paths soon ceased. There was the barest track visible, made by sheep, and pushing its upward way under branches, over boulders, and through wimpling burns. It was the loneliest part of all the woods and hills; descending as it did to the rose gardens of the burg, the hunters and shepherds seldom passed through it. Steep and solitary, crowned with bare rocks, and leading only to the glacier slopes, few steps ever went over its short grass save those of woodland animals and of shepherds' flocks. At this time of the year even the latter were not near. They had been already brought down to their stables from the green stretches of pasture between the rocks. Bela met no one; not even one of his own peasantry.
He climbed and climbed uninterrupted, at first enjoying his solitude rapturously, his triumph boisterously, and then going on more solemnly, being a little awed by the sense of utter silence round him, in which no sound was heard except of rippling water, of blowing boughs, and afar off some faint tinkle of a church bell from a distant hamlet.
His spirits were exalted and full of enthusiasm. Joined to his boldness and ardour he had the German love of the mystical and marvellous. All the vast white range of the Glöckner to him was as a fairyland opening on enchanted empires all his own. All the forenoon he was happy.
His brain, was busy with many pictures as he went. He saw his search successful and his father found; he saw his happy return, and the crowd of the glad household which would flock to meet his steps; he thought how he would kneel down at her feet, and never rise until his prayer should be heard, and his mother smile again; he thought how he would cry out to her, 'Oh, mother, mother! I have brought him home!' and how she would look, and the light and the warmth come back into her face. It was so little to do—only to climb amidst these kindly familiar mountains that had been always above him and around him since first his eyes had opened. Wratislaw had gone over lands, and seas, and deserts, and braved the jaws of lions, and the steel of foemen, and the dragon's breath of the hot sand wind; he himself had so little to do; only to climb some rough uneven ground, some green steep pastures, some smooth fields of ice. He felt sad to think it was such a little thing.
Far down below he could hear the great bells of the burg chiming and clanging, and he knew that they were giving the alarm for him; he saw men small as mice grouping together here, and running apart there; he knew they were coming out to search for him. He resolved to be very wary. He had got so long a start that he was high on the hills ere he heard the alarm-bells ring. He knew that he must avoid being seen by anyone he met, or, known as he was to the whole country-side, his liberty would soon be at an end. But the huts of the cattle-keepers were empty, and the chances of meeting a mountaineer were few. Hundreds of men might come upward in search of him, and yet miss him amidst those endless walls of stone, those innumerable peaks and paths and precipices, each one the fellow of the other.
He climbed the grassy slopes, the steep stone ways, as he had learned to do with Otto, and though he was still for from the sides of Glöckner he was yet soon on very high ground. A great mountain, green at the base, snow-covered half the way down, frowned above him; it was but one of the spurs of the Glöcknerwand, but he believed it to be the king of the Austrian Alps itself. He met no one; the mountains were solitary; the first breath of autumn had scared the cattle-keepers downward with their flocks and herds. Sometimes, very far off, he saw a lonely figure, a pedlar, or a hunter, or a shepherd, or somealmstill tenanted by its flock, but they were mere specks on the immensity of the glacier slopes and the domes of snow. The solitude enchanted him at first; he had never been alone before. He drank from a stream, ate more bread, and held on firmly and fearlessly. The thought that his father was there beyond him, amidst those dazzling peaks, those lowering clouds, seemed to shoe his little feet with fire. He felt weaker, for his bread had nourished him but little, and he had not found a hut of any kind as he had expected to do. But he toiled on, the slope of the same mountain always facing him, always seeming to recede and to grow higher and higher the further and further he went.
The wall of granite which he was on, nine miles or more above and beyond his home, was known as the Adler Spitze. He had been near it in other days, but he did not recognise it now; all these stern slopes and steeps, all these domes and roof-like ridges of snow and ice, so resemble each other that a longer apprenticeship to the hills than his had been is needed to distinguish them one from another. The Adler Spitze was a dangerous and seldom traversed peak; its sides were bristling with jagged rocks, and its chasms were many and deep. More than one death had been caused by it in late years, and near its summit his mother, had caused to be erected a refuge, one of the highest of the district, where a keeper was forever on the watch for belated travellers. These were, however, very few, for the mountain had gained a bad name amongst the hunters and pedlars and muleteers who alone traversed these hills, and was left almost entirely to the birds of prey, which were numerous there and had given it its name.
When the pine-woods ceased, and there was only around him mere naked rock, with a little moss growing on it here and there, Bela knew that he had come very high indeed. And he had his wish: he was quite alone. There was nothing to be seen here except the dusky forest, shelving downward, and vast slopes of naked grey stone, with large loose rocks scattered over them, as if giants had been playing there at pitch-and-toss. There was too much mist in the north and west, which faced him, for the opposite mountains to be seen, for it was still early in the day. He did not now feel the joy and excitement he had expected. He had climbed to the glacier region indeed, but the scene around was dreary, and the vast expanse of vapour surrounding him looked chill and melancholy.
In the excitement and exultation of his thoughts he had forgotten many things which he knew very well, trained to the hills as he was; he had forgotten that it might rain or snow before he reached any halting-place, that fogs came on at that season with fatal suddenness, that if the sun were obscured the cold would soon become great, that if a mist came down he would be unable to find any road, and that men had been often killed on those heights who had known every inch of the hills.
Something of his buoyancy and certainty of success began to pale and grow dull as the isolation lost its sense of novelty, and that intense silence of the glacier world, which is at all times so solemn, began to strike awe into his intrepid soul. He had often been as high, but there had been always on his ear his brother's voice, and his guide's laugh, and the merry sounds of the men chattering together as they climbed. Now there was no sound anywhere, save now and then a splitting cracking noise, which he knew was ice giving way under the noon-day heat of the sun. 'It must be just as still as this in the grave,' he thought, with a chill in his warm eager leaping young blood. A little tuft of edelweiss growing in a crevice, and analpenlerchewinging its way through the blue air, seemed to him like friends.
He wished now that Gela were with him.
'But it would have been of no use to ask him,' he thought sadly. 'He never will disobey, even to make good come of it.'
A white mist had settled over all the lower world, one of the autumn fogs which come from the lower clouds enwrapped all the lakes and pastures and forests of Hohenszalras. Nothing could better baffle and distract his pursuers; perplexed and blinded, they would be wholly at a loss to trace his steps. It did not occur to him that the fog on the lower lands might mean also storm and snow, and the darkness and dampness of ice-cold vapours, in the upper air where he was.
It had become rough, hard, toilsome work; he was bruised, and almost lame, and very tired. But the spirit in him was not crushed; he kept always thinking: 'If it did not hurt, it would be nothing to do it.'
He had now got above all grass; the ground was loose shingle where it was not bare granite, limestone, or marble, on all of which it was difficult to keep a hold. There was snow not very far above him. The air here was intensely cold. He had not thought to bring any furs with him. His limbs were sorely cramped, his feet began to feel numb, his fingers were so chilled he could hardly grip his alpenstock; the hard slopes gave scarcely any footing to his climbing-irons; there were clouds about him enveloping him, freezing him in their icy mist. He began to think piteously of his brother, of his home, and of the warm-cushioned nooks by the study fire, but he would not give in; he toiled on, cutting and hurting his hands and knees as he groped on his upward way. He reminded himself of Wratislaw, of Cassabianca, and all the boy-heroes he had ever read of; he would not yield in endurance to any one of them.
But, looking up, he knew by the colour of the sky that it was about to snow; the heavens were of a leaden uniform grey, and seemed to meet and touch the mountain. Then Bela knew that in all likelihood he would never see Gela or his home again.
He choked down the sob that rose in his throat, and tried to think what he could do to save himself. The ascent was now so steep that he could make no upward way, and could barely keep himself from sliding downwards. He caught at a projecting boulder and pulled himself with great effort up on to it; there he could sit in a cramped position and take breath. When he looked down he saw no forests, no land, no rocks, nothing but a sea of fog, which had gathered thick and grey beneath him. In autumn and spring the mountain weather changes in ten minutes from fair to foul.
The odd stupor that comes from long exposure at a great altitude in cold and vapour was stealing over him. Strange noises sounded in his ears, and his feet and hands tingled. He began to fear that he should get no further on his way, and he had not listened so often to the tales told by huntsmen without knowing clearly enough the dangers which await those who are out on the mountain side in bad weather when daylight goes.
As he sat there, gazing dizzily into the ocean of vapour below him, and upward to the huge walls of granite and of snow, he saw coming and descending towards him from out the clouds a huge dark bird; the immense wings seemed wide as heaven itself as it circled and swept the air.
Bela's heart stood still: it was a male eagle, a golden eagle, and he knew it.
The child's aching eyes watched the monarch of the upper air with a horrible fascination. It looked black as night against the steely sky, the snow-covered peaks.
He sat erect, and cried aloud to it in half delirious indignant reproof. 'Oh, you great bird! you are treacherous, you are thankless!Wehave spared you and yours always, and now you will kill me! Oh, do you not hear? The Szalras have always spared you! Do you not hear?' But the shouts of his young voice died away against the granite walls around him, and the king-bird paused not, but came nearer, and nearer, and nearer.
It circled round and round, and each circle narrowed, till it was poised immediately above his head, motionless, balancing itself upon its outstretched pinions. He could see its eyes bent on him, see the giant claws drawn up against its belly, see the hooked yellow beak. The eagle was lord of the air, and he had intruded on its royalty: in another moment he felt that it would descend on him and bear him off in its talons or batter him to death with the blows of its wings. He drew his little sword and waited for it; his eyes did not shrink, his body did not cower; he looked upward with his toy-blade drawn in as true a courage as that of Leonidas.
'If only I could take him home once—once—I would not mind dying here afterwards,' he thought, in his dreamy exultation; 'Gott und mein Schwert!' he muttered, and waited still, calmly. Yet to die with his errand undone—that seemed cruel.
The huge dark mass balanced itself one moment, more, then measuring its prey rushed through the air towards him. But, ere it had seized him, a shot flashed through the shadows, and rang through the silence; the bird dropped dead in a ring of blood on the naked stone of the mountain side.
Bela sprang up, and tottering on the slippery shelving rock threw his arms outward with a loud cry.
'I came to find you!' he shouted, in his rapturous joy; then cold and fatigue and past terror conquered him. He swooned at his father's feet.
Sabran had not known that it was his son whom he saved. He had seen a child menaced by a bird of prey, and so had fired. When the boy staggered to him with that cry of welcome, he was for the moment stunned with amazement and gratitude and inexpressible emotion; the next he raised the little brave body in his arms.
'Oh! tell me where your mother kissed you last, that I may set my lips there!' he murmured to the child: but Bela heard not.
He was cold, inanimate, and senseless. He had gained his goal, but he had no sight or sense to know it. His father looked around him with terror for his sake. The snow had begun to fall, the darkness was deepening, the mists were creeping upward; he, who for three years had dwelt a mountaineer amidst these mountains, knew the danger of being belated amidst them in autumn, when, at a stroke, autumn became winter; sometimes in a single night. He himself had his dwelling far from there upon the Isel water, under the Umbal glacier. If he had to carry the boy it would be useless to dream of reaching the rude place which he had made his home: the weight of a tall child of ten years old is no light burden, and he knew that even if Bela regained his consciousness he would be incapable of exertion in the cold, which would intensify with every hour. But he wasted no moments in hesitation. He knew what the white fall of those softly-descending feathers from above, what the darkness and wetness of the dense fog down below, meant, out on the spurs of Glöckner after sunset. Lives were lost here every year; herds that had stayed on the Alps too late were surprised and destroyed by early snow-storms; pedlars and carriers were belated, and sent to a last sleep by that sudden plunge of autumn into frost. He knew his way inch by inch, and he knew that there was, some mile or so beyond him, the Wandahutte, erected in a dangerous pass by his wife, as a thanksgiving in the first months of their marriage. There he would find a rude bed, food, wine, and shelter for the night. He set himself to reach it.
It was hard to climb with the child, held by one arm, and thrown across one shoulder, as shepherds throw a disabled lamb. His other hand gripped his alpenstock; he had left his rifle under a ledge of rock, as a useless load. He had stripped off the hunter's jacket that he wore, and wrapped it round Bela, whose body and limbs felt frozen. Down below in the valleys fruit trees had still their plums and pears, and asters and dahlias still flowered, but at this elevation the cold was piercing and the snow froze as it fell.
A high wind also had risen, as the day declined, and blew the white powder of the snow in whirling clouds: the terribletourmenteof the Alps which every traveller dreads. In the confusion of it he knew that he might walk round and round on the same road all night, making no progress. Soon it grew dark, though not quite four o'clock. He had no light with him, for he had not intended to be out at night; he had but come thither, as he often came, to see the distant gleam of the Szalrassee, the far-off outline of the Hohenszalrasburg. He had been reascending and returning when he had seen a child menaced by an eagle, and had fired. Had he been by himself he would have found the hut speedily, but weighted with the burden of Bela's inert body he made little way, and staggered often on the slippery frozen steep. He had no hands free to wield his hatchet and cut his way by steps over the ice which had formed in all the fissures of the rocks.
The mountains had been his only friends in his exile. He had returned to them, he had dwelt amongst them, he had borne his sorrows through their help, and strengthened himself with their strength. But they menaced him sorely now. For himself he cared not, but his heart ached for the child, whose courage and affection had brought him thither to meet his death.
'My poor Bela!' he murmured, as the boy's fair head hung over his shoulder, 'why did you come to me? I give you nothing but evil. Safety, comfort, happiness, honour, all come fromher.'
The whole heavens seemed to open, so dense a storm of snow now poured upon him. There were strange deep noises ever and again, as from the very bowels of the hills; a thousand times had he rejoiced to match his strength against the mountains and to conquer, but now they were his masters. All around him were the bastions and walls and domes of the great ice peaks; the huge glaciers hung above like frozen seas suspended; he could not behold them but he felt their presence and their awe.
'The snow is in my blood and my blood is yours, and now it claims us,' he muttered to the senseless ear of the child. He and the child had loved the snow, met it with welcome, sported with it in triumph; and now it killed them. They would lie down in it, and be one with it for ever.
But although these fancies drifted in his brain, he strove with all his might to keep in movement, to ascend ever in the easterly direction of the refuge which he sought to gain. So far as he could, weighted with his burden and blinded by the darkness, he continued to climb, gripping the hard slopes with his feet and his alpenstock. He had given his coat to the child; the cold made every vein in his own body numb; his limbs pricked and seemed to swell; he had only his woollen shirt, above his linen one, and his velvet breeches between him and the frozen air, that could slay a hundred sheep massed together in their warmth and wool. He knew that the hut was but a mile, or little more, from the place where he had shot the eagle; but half a mile in the snowstorm and the darkness was longer than forty miles in sunshine and fair weather. He could not be even sure that he went aright; he could see nothing; the sky was covered with the low dense clouds; he could only guess. All the slender signs and landmarks, that would even in mere twilight have served to guide his steps, were now hidden. A thick woolly impenetrable gloom enshrouded him; he felt as though he were muffled and suffocated by it, and the fatal drowsiness—the fatal desire to lie down and be at rest—with which frost kills, stole on him.
With all the manhood in him he resisted it for the child's sake.
He had been climbing and wandering three short hours only, and he had believed that it was midnight at the least. Bela still hung like a lifeless thing over his shoulder, but he felt that his limbs were warmer, and his heart beat feebly, but with regularity.
'God grant me power to save him, for his mother's sake,' thought Sabran; 'then there may come what will.'
He struggled anew against the mortal sleepiness, the increasing numbness, that grew upon himself. Suddenly, as he turned, without knowing it, the corner of a wall of rock he saw a starry light. He knew that it was the lamp of the refuge which, by his wife's command, was lit at twilight every evening the whole year round. It was now but a few roods off; he could see even the outline of the cabin itself, black against its background of snow. But he had taken the wrong path to it. Between him and it there yawned a wide crevasse in the glacier on which he now stood.
He shouted loud, but the wind was louder than his voice. The keeper in the refuge could not hear. He paused doubtfully. To retrace his steps and seek the right path would be certain destruction; it would take him many miles about, and there was no chance even in the darkness that he would ever find it; his strength, too, was failing him, and the child was still unconscious. There was but one way of escape, to leap the fissure. It was wider than any man could be sure to clear, and if he fell within it he would fall into jagged ice a thousand fathoms down. By daylight he had often looked down into its awful depths, blue in their darkness, set with jagged teeth of ice like a trap's jaws.
The leap might be death or life.
He hesitated a few instants, then drew quite close to the edge, and cast aside his pole, for the chasm was too wide for that to help him, and he needed both hands free to hold the boy more firmly. The lamp from the hut shed light enough to guide him; the snow fell fast, the wind was violent. He paused another moment on the brink, drew the child closer to him and clasped him with both arms; then, gathering all his force into his limbs, he leaped.
He cleared the fissure, but staggered on the slippery ice beyond. He fell heavily, but still held his son so that Bela fell uppermost and dropped upon him.
Crushed by his weight, Sabran sank at full length on the white crystal ground; alone he would have leaped as surely as the chamois.
The shock awoke Bela from his trance; he opened his blue eyes giddily.
'It is you!' he murmured feebly, as he felt himself lying on his father's breast.
'It is I!' said Sabran. 'My child, if you can move, try and creep to that hut and call. I cannot.'
The child, without a sound, trembling sorely, and with a sense of confusion making his head dizzy, obeyed, drew himself slowly up, and dragged his tired, aching, cramped limbs over the snow.
'You are brave,' murmured his father, whose eyes followed him. 'You are your mother's son.'
Bela reached the door of the hut and beat on it with his little frozen hands, and then fell down against it.
'It is I—Count Bela!' he managed to cry aloud. 'Come to my father; quick!'
The door was flung aside, and the keepers of the hut rushed out at the first cry. They had been asleep. They were old jägers, past the work of the forests, but still strong. Having lighted the beacon without, they had drunk a little wine, and chattered, and then dosed. Terrified at their own negligence and at the sight of their lady's son, they staggered out into the night, and together they bore the body of Sabran into the refuge. He was unable to rise.
'You cannot move!' sobbed the child, raining kisses on his hands.
'I am stiff from the cold; nothing more,' said his father, faintly.
Then he looked at the men.
'One of you, if it be possible, go to the Burg. Tell the Countess von Szalras that her son is safe. You need not speak of me. Bring the physician here when it is morning; but say nothing of me to-night. Give me a little of your wine——'
His lips were blue, he felt faint; in his own heart he said to himself, 'I am hurt unto death.'
Bela had thrown his arms about him, and, trembling like a leaf, clung there and sobbed aloud deliriously.
'You are hurt, you are hurt, and all for me!' he sobbed, as he saw his father placed on the truckle bed set aside for any belated wanderer on the hills.
Sabran smiled on him.
'My child, do not grieve so; it is nothing; a mere momentary wrench; do not even think of it. No, no! I am not in pain.'
The wine revived him, and restored his strength, and he sought to conceal his injury for the boy's sake.
'Warm some of this wine and give it to my son,' he said to the keeper of the hut; 'then undress him, wrap him warmly, and make him sleep before the fire.'
'You are hurt, you are ill!' moaned Bela. 'I came to find you to take you back. Our mother has never been the same;—she has never smiled——'
'Hush!' said Sabran, almost sternly. 'Do not speak of your mother before these men, her servants. You came to seek me, my poor little boy? That was good of you, and it was good to remember me. It is three years——'
Bela clung to him and put his lips to his father's ear, that the men might not hear.
'The others have always prayed for you,' he murmured, 'because we were all told. But me, I have loved you always. I have never thought of anything else. And I have tried to be good, oh! Ihavetried!'
A great suffering came on his father's face as he heard the innocent words, and a great tenderness.
'When I am dead, as I shall be so soon, will he remember, too?' he thought.
Aloud he said:
'My child, it is very sweet to me to hear your voice again. But if you love me now, obey me. You will have fever and ague if you do not drink some warm wine, let yourself be undressed, and lie down before the fire. Do not be afraid. You will see me when you awake. I shall not stir.'
He thought as he spoke:
'No, I shall never stir again; they will bear me away to my grave, that is all. I am like a felled tree. All is over. Well, perchance, so best: when I am dead she may forgive—she may love the children.'
When at last Bela, sobbing piteously, had reluctantly obeyed, and when, despite all his struggles, nature, frozen, weary, and worn out, compelled him to close his eager eyes in heavy dreamless slumber, Sabran with a glance called the keeper to him.
'Now the child sleeps,' he said, 'get my clothes off me, if you can. Touch me gently. I think my back is broken.'
It was twelve o'clock in the night. Wanda von Szalras paced the Rittersaal with feverish steps and limbs which, whilst they quivered with fear, knew no fatigue. It had been nine in the morning when Greswold and the servants, having searched in vain, came at last to her with the tidings that her first-born son was lost; his bed empty, his clothes gone, his little sword away from its place. All the day she had sought herself, and organised the search of others with all the energy and courage of her race. She had not given way to the despair which had seized her, but in her own soul she had said: 'Does fate chastise me thus for my own cruelty? I have shrunk from their sweet faces because they were like his. For two long months I exiled them, I thrust them from my presence and my heart. I have been ashamed of them. Does God punish me through them? Shall I lose my children, too? Can I forgive myself? Have I not even wished them unborn? Oh, my Bela, my darling, my first-born! Yes, you are his, but more than all, you are mine!'
When night closed in, and all the many separate search-parties returned, bringing no news of him, she thought that she would lose her reason. All had been done that could be done; the men on the estates were scattered far and wide. It was known that there were snow-storms on the heights; the white fury had even at eventide descended to the lower ground, and the terraces and gardens shone white as the lights of the heavens fell upon them. Every now and then there came the report of a gun on the hills; the men were firing in hope that the child, if lost, might hear the shots. The evening passed on and midnight came, and no one knew where Bela was in those vast forests, those immense hills, all hidden in the impenetrable darkness. She saw him at every moment lying white and cold in some hollow in the snow; she saw the cruel winds blow his curls, his fair limbs stiffen. Every year the winter and the mountains took their toll of lives.
She had known nothing of the purport of the child's disappearance; she had been left to every vague conjecture with which her mind could torture her. The whole household and all the woodsmen and huntsmen had scoured the hills far and wide, and the whole day and night had gone by with no tidings, no result. Sleep had visited no eyes at Hohenszalras; from its terraces the snow-storm and hurricanes beating around the head of Glöckner were discernible by the agitation of the clouds that hid one-half the heights.
Gela had stayed up beside her, his little pale face pressed to the window frame, his terrified eyes staring into the gloom which near at hand grew red with the beacon fires.
As midnight tolled from the clock tower he came to her, and touched her hand.
'Mother,' he whispered, 'I dared not say it before, but I must say it now. I think—I think—Bela is gone to try and bringhimhome.'
'Him!' she echoed, while a thrill ran like fire and ice together through her, from head to foot. 'You mean—your father?'
'Yes.'
She was silent. Her breast heaved.
'What makes you say that?' she asked, at last.
'Bela thought of nothing else all this year and last year, too,' said Gela, in a hushed voice. 'He was always talking of it. When he was smaller he thought of riding all over the world. Yesterday he was so strange, and when we went to bed he kissed me ever so many times; and he prayed a long, long while. And for nothing less would he have taken the sword, I think. And—and I heard the men saying to-day that our father was somewhere near; and I think that Bela might have heard that, and so have gone to bring him home.'
'To bring him home!'
The words, uttered in his son's soft, grave, flute-like voice, pierced her heart. She could not speak.
'Will he rob me even of my first-born?' she thought, bitterly.
At that moment Greswold entered. Gela, looking in his face, gave a shout of joy.
'You have found my Bela!' he cried, flinging his arms about the old man.
'Yes, your brother is safe, quite safe! My Lady hears?'
She heard, and the first tears that she had ever shed for years rushed to her eyes. She drew Gela, with a passionate gesture, to her side, and falling on her knees beside the Imperial throne in the Kittersaal, praised God.
Then, when she rose, she cried in very ecstasy:
'Fetch him; bring him at once!—oh, my child! Who found him? Who has him now? If a peasant saved his life, he and his shall have the finest of all my land in Iselthal in grant for ever and for ever!—--'
Greswold looked at her timidly; then said:
'May I speak to your Excellency alone?'
She touched Gela's hair tenderly.
'Go, my darling, and bear the good news to our reverend mother. You know how she has suffered.'
The boy obeyed and left the hall. She turned to Greswold.
'Tell me all, now.'
The old man hesitated, then took his courage up and answered.
'My Lady—his father found your son.'
She put her hand out and clenched the arm of the throne as if to save herself from falling.
'His father!' she echoed. 'How came he there? Answer me, with the truth, the whole truth.'
'My Countess,' said Greswold, while his voice shook, 'your husband has dwelt amidst the Glöckner slopes almost for the last three years. When he left here he remained absent awhile, but not long. He has lived in utter solitude. Few knew it. The few who did kept his secret. I was one of these. He had corresponded with me ever since he left your house. You may remember being angered?'
She made a gesture of assent.
'Go on,' she murmured. 'He found my child, you say?'
'He found Count Bela; yes. It seems he had come as near here as some nine miles eastward; near the hut which your Excellency built, not very long after your marriage, on the crest of the Adler Spitze, in consequence of the fatal accident to the Bavarian pedlars. He knew nothing of Count Bela's loss, but there he saw a young boy threatened by an eagle, and shot the bird. The fog was even then coming on upon the heights. He found his son insensible from fatigue, and cold, and terror, and bore him in his arms until he reached the refuge. He had been near it all the time, but as the mist deepened and the snow fell he lost his way, and must have gone round and round on the same path for hours. We were, in sheer despair, mounting towards the Adler Spitze, though we did not believe the child could have possibly got so far, when we met one of the keepers descending with the news. The storm is at its height; we could only grope our way, and we missed it many times, so that we have been four mortal hours and more coming downward those seven miles. The keeper said that my lord desired you should hear at once of the safety of the child, but not of his own presence in the hut. But I felt that your Excellency should be told of all.'
'You were right. I thank you. You have been ever faithful to me and mine.'
She stretched out her hand to him in dismissal, and sought a refuge in her oratory.
She felt that she must be alone.
She almost forgot the safety of her first-born in the sense that his father was near her. She fell on her knees before the Christ of Andermeyer and praised heaven for her child's preservation, and with a passion of tears besought guidance in her struggle with what now seemed to her the long and cruel hardness of her heart.
To hear thus of him whom once she had adored, blinded her to all save the memories of the past, which thronged upon her. If he had repented so greatly was it not her obligation to meet his penitence with pardon? It would be bitter to her to live out her life beside one whose word she would for ever doubt, whose disloyalty had cut to the roots of the pride and purity of her race. Nevermore between them could there be the undoubting faith, the unblemished trust, which are the glorious noonday of a cloudless love. She might forgive, but never, never, she thought, would she be able to command forget fulness.
But for that very reason, maybe, would her duty lie this way.
The knowledge of those lonely desolate years, passed so near her, whilst he kept the dignity and the humility of silence, touched all the generosity of her nature. She knew that he had suffered; she believed that, though he had betrayed her, he had loved and honoured her in honesty and truth. One lie had poisoned his life, as a rusted nail driven through an oak tree in its prime corrodes and kills it. But he had not been a liar always. She had made his life her own in bygone years: was she not bound now to redeem it, to raise it, to shelter it on her heart and in her home? Was not the very shrinking scorn she felt for his past a reason the more that she should bend her pride to union with him? She had thought of her life ever as the poet of the flower:
the ever sacred cupOf the pure lily hath between my handsFelt safe unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold.
Had there been egotism in the purity of it, self-love beneath love of honour? Had she treasured the 'grain of gold' in her hands rather with the Pharisee's arrogance of purity than with the true humility of the acolyte?
She kneeled there before the carven Christ in an anguish of doubt.
He had given her back her first-born. Should she be less generous to him?
Should she for ever arrogate the right of judgment against him, or should she stretch the palm of pardon even across that great gulf of wrong dividing them as by a bottomless pit?
Tears came like dew to her parched heart. It was the first time that she had ever wept since the night when she had exiled him. Three long barren years had drifted by; years cold and dark and joyless as the winter days which bound the earth under bands of iron, and let no living thing or creeping herb rejoice or procreate.
When she rose from her knees her mind was made up, a great peace had descended on her soul. She had forgiven her own dishonour. She had laid her heart bare before God and plucked her pride up from its bleeding roots.
All the early hours of her love recurred to her with an aching remembrance, which had lost its shame and was sweet in its very pain. His crime was still dark as the night in her eyes, but her conscience and her awakening tenderness spoke together and pleaded for her pardon.
What was love if not one long forgiveness? What raised it higher than the senses if not its infinite patience and endurance of all wrong? What was its hope of eternal life if it had not gathered strength in it enough to rise above human arrogance and human vengeance?
'Oh, my love, my love!' she cried aloud. 'We will live our lives out together!'
Her resolve was taken when she left her oratory and traversed her apartments to those of the Princess Ottilie, who met her with eager words of joy, herself tremulous and feeble after the anxious terrors of the past day. Some look on Wanda's face checked the utterance of her gladness.
'Is it not true?' she said in sudden fear. 'Is the child not found?'
'Yes; his father has found him,' she answered simply. 'Dear mother, long you have condemned me; judged me unchristian, unmerciful, harsh. I know not whether you were right, or I. God knows, we cannot. But give me your blessing ere I go out into the night. I go to him; I will bring him here.'
The other gazed at her doubting, incredulous, touched to a great hope.
'Bring him?' she echoed, 'your child?'
'My husband.'
'You will do that?—ah! mercy is ever blessed; the grace of Heaven will be with you!'
She sighed as she raised her head.
'Who can tell? Perhaps my harshness will make heaven harsh to me.'
When she came forth again from her own rooms she was clothed in a fur-lined riding-habit.
'Bid them saddle a horse used to the hills,' she said, 'and let Otto and two other men be ready to go with me.'
'It is a fearful night,' Greswold ventured to suggest. 'It will be as bad a dawn. It snows even here. We met the keeper almost midway up the Adler Spitze, yet it took us four hours to make the descent.'
She did not even seem to hear him.
'May I follow?' he asked her humbly. She gave a sign of assent, and stood motionless and mute; her thoughts were far away.
When the horse was brought she went out into the night. The storm of the upper hills had descended to the lower; the wind was blowing icily and strong, the snow was falling fast, but on the lower lands it did not freeze as it fell, and riding was possible, though at a slow pace from the great darkness. She knew every step of the way through her own woods and up to the spurs of the Glöckner. She rode on till the ascent grew too steep for any animal; then she abandoned the horse to one of her attendants, took her alpenstock and went on her way towards the Adler Spitze on foot, the men with their lanterns lighting the ground in front of her. It was wild weather and grew wilder the nearer it grew to dawn. There was danger, at every step from slippery frozen ground, from thin ice that might break over bottomless abysses. The snow was driven in her face, and the wind tore madly at her clothes. But she was used to the mountains and held on steadily, refusing the rope which Otto entreated her to take and permit him to fasten to his loins. They kept to the right paths, for their strong lights enabled them to see whither they went. Once they crept along a narrow ledge where a man could barely stand. The ascent was long and weary in the teeth of the weather; it tried even the stout jägers; but she scarcely felt the force of the wind, the chill of the black frost.
No woman but one used as she was to measure her strength with her native Alps could have lived through that night, which tried hardly even the hunters born and bred amidst the snow summits. By day the ascent hither was difficult and dangerous after the summer months, but after nightfall the sturdiest mountaineer dreamed not of facing it. But on those heights above her, in the dark yonder, beneath the clouds, were her husband and her child. That knowledge sufficed to nerve her limbs to preternatural power, and the men who followed her were loyal and devoted to her service; they would have lain down to die at her word.
When her body seemed to sink with the burden of fatigue and cold, she looked up into the blackness of the air, and thought that those she sought were there, and fancied that already she heard their voices. Then she gathered new strength and crept onward and upward, her hands and feet clinging to the bare rock, the smooth ice, as a swallow clings to a house wall.
She had issued from a battle more bitter with her own soul; and had conquered.
At last they neared the refuge built by and named from her, and set amidst the desolation of the snow-fields. She signed to her men to stay without, and walking onward alone drew near the heavy door.
She opened it a little way, paused a moment, drawing her breath with effort; then looked into the cabin. It was a mere hut of two chambers made of pitch pine, and lighted by a single window. There was no light but from the pallid day without, which had barely broken. Before the fire of burning logs was a nest of hay, and in it lay the child, sleeping a deep and healthful sleep, his hands folded on his breast, his face flushed with warmth and recovered life, his long lashes dark upon his cheeks.
His father was stretched still as a statue on the truckle-bed of the keeper who watched beside him.
The day had now broken, clear, pale, cold; the faint rose of sunrise was behind the snow peaks of the Glöckner, and analpenflühevogelwas trilling and tripping on the frozen ground. From a distant unseen hamlet far below there came a faint sound of morning bells.
She thrust the door further open and entered. She made a gesture to the keeper, who started up with a low obeisance, to go without. She fastened the latch upon him; then, without waking the sleeping child, went up to her husband's bed. His eyes were closed; he did not notice the opening and shutting of the door; he was still and white as the snow without; he looked weary and exhausted.
At sight of him all the great love she had once borne him sprang up in all its normal strength; her heart swelled with unspeakable emotion; she stood and gazed on him with thirsty eyes tired of their long denial.
Stirred by some vague sense of her presence near him he looked up and saw her; all his blood rushed into his face. He could not speak. She stooped towards him and laid her hand gently upon his.
'I am come to thank you.'
Her voice trembled.
He gave a restless sigh.
'Ah! for the child's sake,' he murmured. 'You do not come for me!—--'
She hesitated a moment, then she gathered all her strength and all her mercy.
'I come for you,' she answered in low clear tones. 'I will forget all else except that I once loved you.'
His face grew transfigured with a great joy.
He could not speak; he gazed at her.
'You were my lover, you are my children's father. You shall return to us,' she murmured, while her voice seemed to him heard in some dream of Heaven. 'Your sin was great, yes; but love pardons all sins, nay, effaces them, washes them out, makes them as though they were not. I know that now. What have not been my own sins?—my coldness, my harshness, my cruel, unyielding—pride? Nay, sometimes I have thought of late my fault was darker than your own; more hateful in God's sight.'
'Noblest of all women always!' he said faintly. 'If it be true, if it be true, stoop down and kiss me once again.'
She stooped, and touched his lips with hers.
The child slept on in his nest of hay before the burning wood. The silence of the high hills reigned around them. The light of the risen day came through the small square window of the hut. Outside the bird still sang.
He looked up in her eyes, and his own eyes smiled with celestial joy.
'I am happy!' he said simply. 'I have lived amongst your hills almost ever since that night, that I might see your shadow as you passed, hear the feet of your horses in the woods. The men were faithful; they never told. Kiss me once more. You believe, say you believe,now, that I did love you though I wronged you so?'
'I do believe,' she answered him. 'I think God cannot pardon me that I ever doubted!'
Then, as she saw that he still lay quite motionless, not turning towards her, though his eyes sought hers, a sudden terror smote dully at her heart.
'Are you hurt? Cannot you move?' she whispered. 'Look at me; speak to me! It is dawn already; you shall come home at once.'
He smiled.
'Nay, love, I shall not move again. My spine is hurt, not broken, I believe—but hurt beyond help; paralysis has begun. My angel, grieve not for me, I shall die happy. You love me still! Ah, it is best thus; were I to live, my sin and shame might still torture you, still part us, but when I am dead you will forget them. You are so generous, you are so great, you will forget them. You will only remember that we were happy once, happy through many a long sweet year, and that I loved you;—loved you in all truth, though I betrayed you!'
The hunters bore him gently down in the cool pale noontide along the peaceful mountain side homeward to Hohenszalras, and there, after eleven days, he died.
The white marble in its carven semblance of him lies above his grave in the Silver Chapel; but in the heart of his wife he lives for ever, and with him lives a sleepless and an eternal remorse.
CONTENTSCHAPTER XXIX.CHAPTER XXX.CHAPTER XXXI.CHAPTER XXXII.CHAPTER XXXIII.CHAPTER XXXIV.CHAPTER XXXV.CHAPTER XXXVI.CHAPTER XXXVII.CHAPTER XXXVIII.CHAPTER XXXIX.CHAPTER XL.CHAPTER XLI.CHAPTER XLII.CHAPTER XLIII.