Part 19

This was told in a broken, disconnected fashion, the speaker's eyes being all the while riveted persistently upon Michael. If the captain took any part in the conversation the forester was mute; his shyness seemed to increase rather than to diminish; his wonted self-assertion had vanished. Michael, moreover, was as taciturn and absent-minded as he had previously been in talking with the priest; even this unexpected meeting could not keep his thoughts from incessantly following the little mountain wagon, which had now probably accomplished a third of its journey, and he suddenly left the room to see if the moon, which had just risen, were shining brightly enough for the mountain drive.

Wolfram looked after him, and then said to the priest in a strangely--subdued tone, "Is it really true, your reverence? Is that really and truly Michael,--our Michael?"

Valentin could not forbear smiling, as he replied, "I should think you could see that for yourself."

"Yes, I do see it, but I can't believe it," the man declared. "_That_ the boy to whom I have given many a blow for his stupidity and obstinacy? The innkeeper said the captain was so wonderfully clever that they had put him on the general's staff, and in the last war he fought furiously, and made short work with the enemy. And now he's a captain, just like my Herr Count when I entered his service forty years ago, and some day he may be a general like his Excellency."

"It is quite possible. But did not the innkeeper mention his name when he told you all this?"

"No; he called him only 'the captain.' Oh, he has a great respect for him. Well, so far as I can see, there's no being very familiar with Herr Michael now. He is friendly enough, but there is a kind of way about him that makes you keep your distance. He calls me Herr Forester; I suppose I must call him Herr Captain."

"You certainly must conform yourself to altered circumstances," said the priest, gravely. "And one thing more, Wolfram. It is not necessary that you should tell the innkeeper and your other acquaintances that Captain Rodenberg is your former foster-son. He had very little intercourse with the villagers in old times, and is so much altered that no one recognized him when he returned here an officer. I know that Count Steinrueck enjoined silence upon you with regard to your foster-son, and you were silent. You would oblige Michael and myself if you would pursue the same course now."

"I never was a tattler, as your reverence knows," rejoined Wolfram. "I shouldn't gain much by my former prophecies about Michael; the people would be sure to tease me with them, and I must go home the day after to-morrow; I don't want anybody here to get wind of the matter until after I have gone."

Michael's return put a stop to the conversation. Immediately afterwards the forester took his leave and returned to the little village inn, which stood at a considerable distance from the parsonage. Meanwhile the night had set in, and St. Michael soon lay buried in slumber.

* * * * *

The signs in the heavens, which had been so evident to a practised eye, had not prophesied falsely. Towards midnight the storm burst with a savage fury rarely equalled even in these mountains. The little Alpine hamlet was sufficiently familiar with the storms of autumn and of spring, and its inhabitants were wont to sleep calmly and quietly while the wind raged above the low stone-laden roofs and rattled at the doors and windows. But to-night the uproar was so terrible that it roused them from their repose. They crossed themselves and lay awake listening; it seemed as if Saint Michael were to be swept off the face of the earth.

There was a gleam of light in the parsonage. The priest had risen, and was standing at the window, entirely dressed, when he heard Michael's step upon the stairs.

"I saw a light in your room, and so came down," the captain said as he entered. "The storm has roused you from your bed. I thought it would do so."

"And you have not been in bed at all," rejoined Valentin. "At least I have heard your step continually above my head. You must have paced your room for hours."

"I could not sleep, and I forgot that I should disturb you."

"Not at all; my sleep was broken with anxiety about the Countess Hertha and her mountain drive. Thank God, the storm did not come until near midnight! She must have reached the castle by eleven."

"Are you perfectly sure of that?" asked Michael, eagerly.

"Yes; the drive down could not, even with extreme caution, take more than three hours, and for that length of time the sky was tolerably clear; moreover, the moon is at the full. What I feared was that the storm would overtake the Countess on the way. Once in the valley she was out of danger."

"If she arrived there. But how can we be sure of it?" murmured Michael. He could not but admit that the priest was right; in all probability Hertha had long since been safe in the castle; but the restless anxiety which had robbed him of sleep would not leave him; it possessed him with a vague dread, a foreboding of evil.

He, too, had gone to the window, and both men stood looking out silently into the storm and night, illuminated by a gray light from the moon, which behind its veil of clouds shone brightly enough to reveal objects at some distance. Suddenly the dim figure of a man appeared, seeming to come directly from the village, and making his way with sturdy steps in the teeth of the wind towards the parsonage. Michael's keen eye first detected him; he pointed him out to the priest, who shook his head, surprised. "In such weather! Some one must be desperately ill and requiring the sacrament, but I know of no one in the village who is ailing. The man is certainly coming here. I must go and let him in."

He went to open the door himself, and immediately afterwards Wolfram's voice was heard. "It is I, your reverence. I come like a ghost in the night, but it can't be helped. If you had been asleep I should have had to knock you up."

"What is the matter? What brings you here?" Valentin asked, anxiously, as he conducted his visitor into the room.

"No good, your reverence. First let me get my breath. That cursed wind,--it nearly knocked me down! I come about the young Countess----"

"Countess Steinrueck? Where is she?" Michael hastily interrupted him.

"Heaven only knows! She has not returned to the parsonage?"

"Good God, no!" exclaimed Valentin. "The Countess set out for the castle."

"Yes, but she had to turn back. That confounded horse shied at a mountain brook! I should like to wring the brute's neck! And the coachman, instead of holding on to the reins, was tossed off the box, and there he lies with a hole an inch deep in his head. The servant got him back with difficulty to the inn, and the young Countess was lost on the way back. Not a soul knows where she is,--and in such a night, when all the fiends are abroad!"

He paused to take breath. Michael had grown very pale. Confused and vague as was the man's tale, he saw that his forebodings were justified.

"Was the Countess uninjured. Where did the accident happen? At what time? Answer! answer!"

He assailed the forester so peremptorily with his questions that Valentin, in spite of his anxiety, gazed at him in amazement. Wolfram did his best to tell his story more connectedly, and was partly successful, but his tidings were not more consoling. "At first all went well. The road was perfectly clear in the moonlight, and they drove on tolerably fast. Then the brute, the horse, suddenly shied at a brook that tumbled swollen down the mountain, rushed into the stones by the wayside, fell, and pulled over the carriage with him."

"And the Countess was not injured?" The question was as eager as the foregoing ones.

"No, she was on her feet in an instant, but the coachman lay bleeding on the ground, and the wagon had lost a wheel. Of course the men lost their heads,--that kind of folk never have any sense outside the walls of their castle. The young Countess seems to have been the only one to have her wits about her, and she brought the others to order. She could not go on with the broken wagon; there was nothing for it but to return. The coachman, who could not walk, was put into the wagon among the cushions, and one of the servants with the shying horse stayed with him, while the Countess and the other servant mounted the other horses and set out to go back to Saint Michael, promising to send help. Nothing has been seen or heard of her since."

"At what time did this happen?" Michael interrupted him.

"At about nine o'clock."

"Then she ought to have been here by ten, and it is now one hour past midnight!"

He uttered the words in a tone of such anguish that the priest again cast at him a look half inquiry, half dismay. But Michael had eyes and ears only for the forester and his tidings, and he urged him impatiently, "Go on! go on!"

"There's not much more to say," Wolfram declared. "The two men waited for help for two hours, and when it did not come, and the weather grew more threatening, they had the sense to set out by themselves. The coachman had somewhat recovered, and was put upon the horse, which the other man led by the bridle, and so at last they reached the inn, but could go no farther, for the storm was too furious; they were perfectly sure that the Countess was at the parsonage. But she never got back to the village; she would have had to pass the inn, and no one had seen her. The servant is crying like an old woman about his young mistress, but he could not be prevailed upon to go to the parsonage through the storm. So I came,--and there your reverence has the whole story. What is to be done?"

"There has been an accident!" exclaimed the priest, his anxiety increasing with every moment. "I feared it when this wretched mountain journey was undertaken. They have fallen down some roadside precipice."

"They are more likely to have lost their way," said Michael, his voice faltering in spite of his effort to steady it. "Did the two servants who returned find no trace of the others?"

"No, not the least."

"Then there can have been no plunge down a precipice; two persons, and two horses, could not disappear from a tolerably safe road without a trace left behind. They have lost their way."

"But that is impossible,--there is no other road," said the priest.

"Yes, one, your reverence, near Almenbach, where the path winds upward to the mountain chapel. The roads are very similar, moonlight is illusive, and if the Countess did not soon find out her mistake, she must have got among the clefts of the Eagle ridge!"

"God protect us!" exclaimed the priest. "That would be almost as bad as a plunge down a precipice!"

Michael bit his lip; he knew that this was no exaggeration; from his boyhood he had been familiar with the clefts and abysses of the Eagle ridge.

"It is the only imaginable possibility," he rejoined. "At all events, there is not a moment to be wasted; hours have been lost already. We must set out immediately."

"Now? In such a night?" asked Wolfram, staring at the captain as if he thought him insane, while Valentin exclaimed,--

"What are you thinking of, Michael? You do not mean----?"

"To go in search of the Countess. Of course. Do you suppose I could stay quietly here while she is exposed to all the horrors of this night?"

"You ought to wait, and not attempt impossibilities. You know our mountains, and that nothing is to be done while the storm is raging thus. As soon as it subsides, as soon as the morning dawns, we will do all that men can do. To go out now would be worse than folly,--it would be madness!"

"Madness or not, it must be attempted!" Michael burst forth. "Do you imagine that I set the least value on my life weighed against hers? If I had to follow her to the summit of the Eagle ridge, where death seemed certain, I would either deliver her from peril or perish with her!"

Valentin clasped his hands in dismay. This burst of despair and anguish betrayed to him the well-guarded secret of which he had, indeed, within the last few minutes had some suspicion, and he exclaimed under his breath, "Can this be? Good God!"

Michael paid him no heed; he had turned to Wolfram, and said, hastily, "I need companions; we must search in different directions; will you go with me?"

"I? Now, when all the fiends of hell are loose in the mountains? The Wild Huntsman was never so furious in all the years I spent at the forest lodge."

"Infernal superstition!" muttered Rodenberg, stamping his foot. "Then go for the innkeeper; he is a good mountaineer and a brave man."

"That may be, but he'll not stir out in weather like this. He took his oath of that when some one spoke of it awhile ago, and he said a ton of gold would not tempt him, for he had a wife and children to take care of."

"Then I will go alone. Send help after me as soon as the morning dawns. Let the innkeeper and a party take the road towards the mountain chapel, which I shall follow, and pursue it to the Eagle ridge, if necessary. You, Wolfram, with some others, search the forest around the lodge, your former domain. Your reverence will please to have the road gone over again as far as to the spot where the accident occurred. Summon the whole village to help. I have no more time to lose."

In spite of his terrible agitation, he spoke in the energetic tone of command which he was wont to use to his subordinates, and as he hastily left the room the forester looked after him with a bewildered air, evidently greatly impressed.

"He has learned how to command. That's plain!" he said, in an undertone. "He behaves as if the entire village belonged to his regiment and had to obey orders. Queer! My Herr Count was just so. Michael's look and tone are just like his; he might have learned them from him, or have been his son. There's something queer in it, your reverence; it looks like witchcraft."

The priest made no reply,--he was as if stunned. Hertha's danger, Michael's reckless resolve to follow her, the discovery he had just made with regard to the pair, everything coming at once upon the venerable man, unused as he was to any passionate emotion, overpowered him: he felt dizzy.

In a few moments Michael returned, completely equipped for his midnight expedition in a rough plaid, with his mountain staff; he held out his hand to his old teacher: "Farewell, your reverence, and if we should not see each other again, God protect us!"

Valentin clasped his hand and held it fast; fear lest he should lose his favourite outweighed the thought of Hertha's peril. "Michael, be reasonable. Hark! how the wind is roaring! You'll not be able to get a hundred steps from the house. Wait at least for half an hour!"

Rodenberg withdrew his hand impatiently. "No, every minute may be fraught with life and death. Farewell."

He walked to the door, where Wolfram was standing motionless. His hard features worked strangely as he asked, with hesitation, "You really mean to go, Herr Captain, and all alone?"

"Yes, since no one has the courage to go with me," said Michael, bluntly.

"Oho! we are not cowards either!" exclaimed the forester, offended. "A Christian man like the innkeeper, who has a wife and children, ought not, indeed, to venture, but I have nothing of the kind, and since there's no help for it--why, I don't care--I'll go too!"

Valentin was greatly relieved by these words,--glad that Michael was not, at least, to go alone; but Rodenberg merely said, "Come, then! Two are always better than one."

"That depends," said Wolfram. "Perhaps the Wild Huntsman thinks so too, and will carry off both of us. Good-bye, your reverence; it can do no harm for you to pray hard for us while we are gone. You are a holy man, and if you will speak a good word for us to Saint Michael, he may, perhaps, interfere and put the hellish crew outside to rout; 'tis high time."

Michael waved his hand to the priest from the threshold of the door; Wolfram followed him, and in a few minuses both were lost to sight outside.

* * * * *

The Eagle ridge had, in fact, sent forth one of the spring storms, so justly dreaded in all the country round. Those who shared the forester's superstition might well believe that a rabble of fiends from the pit were abroad dealing destruction about them. There was a wild uproar in the air, a crashing and howling in the forest, while the moon, veiled by the rack of clouds, shed over earth and sky a weird ghostly light more dreary than any darkness. Wolfram crossed himself from time to time when the wind shrieked its loudest, but he tramped bravely onward through the storm,--it needed a man of his physical vigour and one familiar with the mountains to make headway on such a night and in such a place.

Both men reached the road to the mountain chapel without discovering a trace of those whom they were seeking; here they separated.

Michael, in spite of his companion's remonstrances, pressed on to the Eagle ridge, which began here, while Wolfram turned aside towards his old domain about the forest lodge. It was agreed that he who first discovered the missing ones should conduct them to the mountain chapel and there await daybreak. In any case the two men were to meet there at dawn, in order, if their search had been fruitless, to wait for the villagers from Saint Michael, and to continue the quest by daylight. These were Captain Rodenberg's orders.

"I wonder if he will ever get back again!" muttered Wolfram, pausing for a short breathing-space in the midst of the forest. "It is sheer madness to go among the cliffs of the Eagle ridge; but he'll climb it if he does not find the Countess below. I'll wager my head on that! No use to gainsay him; on the contrary, he orders me round as if he were my lord and master. I wonder why I put up with it, and why on earth I came with him. His reverence is right; it is madness to climb the mountains on such an infernal night, when not a cry could be heard, no signal be seen. We don't even know which way to go, but Michael doesn't care for that. And I thought him cowardly! To be sure he always, as a boy, wanted to run into the midst of the Wild Huntsman's crew to see them closer,--it was only men that he ran away from. Now he seems to have stopped running away from them, but he orders them about like a lord. And you have to obey,--there's no help for it,--just like my old master the Count."

He heaved a sigh, and was about to march on. Just then there was a slight lull in the blast, and the forester gave a long, loud shout, as he had been doing at intervals. This time, however, he started and listened, for he seemed to hear something like the sound of a human voice. Again Wolfram shouted with all the force of his lungs, and from no great distance came the wailing tones, "Here! Help!"

"At last!" exclaimed the forester, turning in the direction whence came the voice. "It is not the Countess, I can hear that; but where one is the other must be."

Giving repeated calls, he hurried on, the answers coming more and more distinctly, until in about ten minutes he came upon Hertha's attendant, who no sooner saw him than he threw his arms about him, clinging to him like a drowning man.

"Take care, you'll upset me!" growled Wolfram. "Did you not hear me shout before? For two hours we have been hallooing in every direction. Where is the Countess?"

"I don't know; I lost her an hour ago."

The forester roughly shook the man off the arm to which he was still clinging: "What? Lost? Thunder and lightning, man! what do you mean? Just when I think I have found the Countess, you turn up without her. Why did you not stay with her, as was your bounden duty?"

"It was not my fault," wailed the man. "The fog--the storm--and the horses have gone too!"

"Hold your tongue about the horses!" Wolfram interposed, roughly. "Men's lives are at stake, and you tell me nothing that I can understand. How came you here without the Countess?"

It was some time before the exhausted man was able to answer the forester's questions. He was an old family servant, faithful and trustworthy, and had therefore been chosen by the Countess to attend her daughter on this expedition, but he had completely lost his presence of mind in the face of the present peril, and had been of no service whatever to his mistress.

As Michael had surmised, they had taken the wrong road, and had discovered their mistake only upon reaching the mountain chapel. Then they had turned their horses' heads; but the moon, which until then had shone brightly, began to be obscured, and their ignorance of the country was disastrous. In vain did they turn in every direction; they could not find the road again and were completely lost. The horses, bewildered and nettled by the aimless wandering to and fro, finally refused to stir a step. There was nothing for it but to alight.

Then the tempest began; clouds gathered from all quarters. The Countess sent her attendant back a short distance for the horses, which had been left at the foot of a declivity, in a last hope that by trusting to their instinct the way might be found; but the servant had no sooner left her than the gathering mist closed about him, obscuring everything. He could not find the horses, nor make his way back to his mistress. His cry of distress was drowned by the roar of the tempest, and he had probably wandered away from her in his attempt to find her. How he had gone astray he could not tell.

"That is the worst of all!" exclaimed the forester. "The Countess is now entirely alone, and very likely has wandered towards the Eagle ridge, as Captain Rodenberg supposed. I should like to know why he chooses to run blindly into all kinds of danger after her? What we have to do, however, is to get to the mountain chapel as soon as possible. Come along! On the way we can go on shouting; it may do some good."

The storm raged with undiminished fury. Black clouds swept overhead and enveloped the mountains, breaking from time to time into a host of misty phantom shapes. And there was a roaring, a shrieking, and a howling, as of a myriad voices of the night echoing from the air above and from chasm and abyss below.

At the foot of a huge fir, the summit of which soared bare and dead into the air, a female figure was crouching, worn out by fruitless wandering, chilled by the mist and despairing of succour. The delicate child of luxury, whom hitherto the winds of heaven had not been allowed to visit too roughly, had nevertheless bravely confronted a real peril, and had done everything to encourage her attendant while they were together. The trembling old servant could neither advise nor aid his mistress; but he had at least given her a sense of human companionship, and now he had disappeared. No searching for him, no call, was of any avail; she was alone amid the horrors of this night,--entirely alone.

More than an hour had passed thus,--a time which must always be dream-like in her memory. She wandered on and on. Gloomy forests; dark rocky crests reared aloft like phantoms; mountain streams, whose foaming waters gleamed dimly in the fitful glimpses of the moon,--all passed her by, shadowy and indistinct. Like a somnambulist, she wandered on the brink of clefts and abysses, not heeding the perils of a path which she never would have dreamed of traversing in the broad light of day. But at last it came to an end in its upward course, and she could go no farther; she sank down exhausted.