Part 20

There was a moment's lull in the storm; the clouds broke, and the moon, sailing into the clear space, illumined the scene clearly. Hertha saw that she had reached a narrow rocky eminence, and that an abyss yawned close beside her. Around her was a broken sea of cliffs and rocks, below her was the black night of the forest, and above her soared the dizzy heights of the Eagle ridge, about whose rocky crests the clouds were flying, while the topmost peaks gleamed ghost-like in their robes of snow. The distant muffled roar of the glacier streams fell upon her ear, but only for a few moments. Then the roaring of the wind began afresh, drowning all other sounds; the moon vanished, and the dim, weird twilight fell on all.

The old fir-tree creaks and groans and sways; it seems as if the blast would tear it loose from its rocky bed. Hertha clasps her arms about the trunk, neither moaning nor weeping, but a tremor runs through her entire frame, and there is an icy pressure upon her temples. Her eyes are fixed upon the white gleaming peaks still glistening distinctly, and the old legend recurs to her. From those summits Saint Michael sweeps down at dawn the next day. Cannot the mighty patron saint of her race, the victorious leader of the heavenly host, to whom thousands will pray on the morrow, come to the rescue of a poor child of mortality whose warm young life shudders at the thought of the icy embrace of death? But his dominion begins with the dawn,--it is with the first ray of morning that his sword of flame flashes forth beneficently over the earth; and now night and destruction reign.

A fervent prayer bursts from the poor girl's very soul. Clearly and distinctly the picture rises upon her mental vision: the archangel with the eagle's wings and eyes of flame enthroned above the high altar, surrounded as by a halo by the light of the setting sun, and by her side stands one, strangely like the picture,--one who had once declared to her, 'If my bliss were as lofty and unattainable as the Eagle ridge, I would scale the heights though each step threatened destruction.'

Ah! she knew it was no empty boast. Michael would follow her through peril of all kinds: he would seek her and find her if he knew of her danger; but he now supposed her long since safe at the castle. And yet it seemed to her as if the intense passionate yearning that filled her heart, mind, and soul must draw him to her side, as if he could and would hear the desperate cry that burst from her lips, half a prayer to St. Michael and half a call to him whom she loved: "Michael,--help!"

Surely there was an answering call, distant and faint, but still his voice, and she hears it through the tempest as he has heard hers: "Hertha!" And again it comes louder, and with an exultant sound: "Hertha!"

She rises to her feet and answers. Nearer and nearer sounds the succouring call, until just below her she hears: "What! Up there? Courage, dearest, I am coming."

Then ensue minutes that seem endless. Michael is ascending slowly, laboriously, but at last she sees him; he plants his mountain-staff firmly and swings himself up beside her, clasps her in his arms, and she clings to him as if never to leave him more.

But this blissful moment of forgetfulness is brief: danger still threatens; not an instant must be lost.

"We must go," urged Michael. "The fir is tottering, and may fall at any moment; these clefts are never safe. Come, dearest."

He clasped his arm about her, and she leaned upon him in unquestioning confidence, as he half led, half carried her down the rocky slope. The moon had emerged again, and lighted them on their way, revealing at the same time all the terrors of the path by which Hertha had ascended half unconsciously, and the perils of which were doubled in descending. But not in vain had Michael lived for ten years in these mountains; the man had not forgotten what had been familiar to the boy for whom no rocky summit had been too lofty, no cleft too deep. Thus they made the descent, the abyss close beside them, the wild uproar of the stormy night about them, their hearts filled with an exultant joy that no tempest, no abyss, could affect. At last they reached a place of safety. Michael had kept his word: he had snatched his bliss from the Eagle ridge.

Morning was approaching, and the tempest was subsiding; it no longer raged with savage fury, and the heavens were gradually clearing; the clouds slowly dispersed, and about the mountain-tops the first gray glimmer of dawn appeared.

Michael made a halt as they issued from the rocky gorge. The mountain chapel was almost a mile away, and his exhausted companion was obliged to rest. All peril was past; there was no difficulty about the rest of the way if it were traversed by daylight. He found a shelter for Hertha beneath a protecting rock, where she sat shielded from the wind, while he stood beside her. The young Countess's attire had suffered sadly: her dark wrap was torn and muddy, she had lost her hat, her heavy braids hung loose about her shoulders, as, pale and weary, she leaned her head back against the wall of rock. And yet Michael thought he never had seen her look half so lovely as at this moment,--his love, whom he had battled for and won through storm and tempest.

They had scarcely spoken on the way hither, each step was taken at the risk of life, and now they were still silent, gazing upward at the Eagle ridge, where the gray dawn was beginning to yield to a crimson tint that deepened every moment. At last Michael bent over her and said, gently, "Hertha!"

She looked up at him, and suddenly held out to him both her hands. "Michael, how did you ever find me in those abysses? You could have had no clue to guide you."

He smiled and carried her hands to his lips. "No; but I divined where my Hertha was,--where she must be. And you, too, dearest, knew that I should come to you: you called me before you heard my voice. Now I no longer dread that harsh refusal which fell from your lips yesterday. I have no fear of the promise given by you to one whom you do not love. I have won you from the Eagle ridge, and I shall surely triumph over Raoul Steinrueck."

"I can never be his wife!" exclaimed Hertha. "I know now that it is impossible! But do not quarrel with him again, Michael, I implore you. If it is possible----"

"But it is not possible!" Michael gravely interrupted her. "Do not deceive yourself, Hertha; there must come a struggle, probably a break with your entire family, who never will forgive you for dissolving a tie so desired by all of them,--for sacrificing a Count Steinrueck to a bourgeois officer. And there is something beside with which they will taunt both you and me,--I told you of it yesterday in the church,--the blot upon my life."

"Your father's memory," she said, softly.

"Yes; they will never cease to remind you that you are giving yourself to the son of an adventurer, whose name is not without stain. I thought to terrify you with this yesterday, but, God bless you! you thought only of my suffering. Nevertheless, shall you be able to endure the shadow upon your life when that name shall be your own?"

His eyes sought hers with a look in them of the old mistrust of the former Countess Steinrueck with her haughty self-consciousness. But the delusive gleam had vanished from the eyes which the boy had pronounced 'beautiful evil eyes,'--they were shining with the clear sunshine of love and happiness.

"Must I repeat to you, then, what I said to you yesterday when you spoke of your mother?--'I, too, can follow him whom I love even into misery and disgrace,--ay, even to ruin.'"

He clasped her in his arms, and she rested there as she had done before on the Eagle ridge, behind which there was a dark crimson glow,--a flaming herald of the morning as it mounted aloft. The snowy summits began to blush with rosy tints, and the clouds still lying on the horizon were all 'in crimson liveries dight.'

"The day is breaking," said Michael, pressing his lips again and again upon the 'red fairy gold' of the head resting on his breast. "As soon as you are able we will set out upon our homeward way. I will take you to your mother to-day."

"My mother!" exclaimed Hertha, regretfully. "Oh, how could I so far forget her! God grant I have been nearer death than she! My mother would give ear to my entreaties, I know, but she submits blindly in everything to my uncle Michael, and there will be a severe struggle with him."

"Leave him to me," Michael interposed. "Immediately upon my return I will inform the general that you wish to annul your contract with Raoul, that----"

"No, no!" she remonstrated. "I must bear the first brunt of his anger. You do not know my guardian."

"I know him better than you think; this will not be our first encounter. If any one can measure himself against the general it is I,--his near of kin."

Hertha looked at him in bewilderment. "What do you mean? I do not understand."

He released her from his clasping arms, and, gazing into her eyes, said, "I have intentionally delayed a disclosure that must be made to you, dearest. I could not make it until I was sure that you were mine, even although you saw in me only the son of a homeless adventurer. I am no alien to you or to your people, nor was my father. Did you never hear of the general's other child, his daughter?"

"Certainly,--Louise Steinrueck. She was once, I think, on the eve of betrothal to my father; but she died very young,--scarcely eighteen."

"You have been told, then, that she died. I thought so. She did die for her father, her family, who cast her off when she married the man of her choice. She was my mother."

The young Countess looked at him in utter amazement. "Is it possible? You a Steinrueck?"

"No; a Rodenberg, Hertha. Do not forget that I have no share in the name of my mother or of her family, nor do I wish to have."

"And your grandfather? Does he know----"

"Yes; but he sees in me only the son of an outcast father, whose name, even, must not be mentioned in his presence; and now that I shall snatch you from his heir, Raoul, he will oppose us to the utmost. But what matters it? You are mine of your own free will, and I shall know how to guard my treasure."

He did, indeed, look ready to defy the world for her sake. Then he clasped her hand in his to guide her back to that world which lay in the depths below them, still woven about by mist and twilight. Up above, the snowy summits were bathed in crimson light; the eastern skies gleamed and flamed; there was a flash, as of the waving of a sword, and the sun rose slowly, red and glowing. Born of the tempest, the young day gave greeting to the earth. On the brilliant beams of the morning sun Saint Michael descended from the Eagle ridge.

* * * * *

The Countess Steinrueck was indeed seriously ill, so seriously that by the advice of the physician she was kept in ignorance of the peril through which her daughter had passed. Hertha, upon her arrival, simply told her mother that the storm had detained her in Saint Michael for the night, and thus the Countess was not even aware of the meeting with Captain Rodenberg.

About a week later, in one of the reception-rooms of the castle, the priest of Saint Michael was sitting with his brother, who had lately arrived, and had sent a messenger to summon Valentin. The conversation between the brothers was evidently of a serious nature, and Professor Wehlau said at last, "Unfortunately, I can give you no hope. This last attack of the disease from which the Countess has suffered for so many years, is a mortal one. Her condition is, happily, free from pain, but it is hopeless. She may live four or five weeks longer; she will never witness her daughter's marriage."

"I feared this when I saw the Countess last," rejoined Valentin. "But it is a comfort to have you here. I know what a sacrifice you make in coming in the midst of your university course, and when you have so entirely given up practice."

Wehlau shrugged his shoulders: "What else could I do? My relations with the Steinruecks are almost as old and as intimate as your own; and then Michael, who brought the news of the Countess's illness, gave me no peace. He urged me so strongly that at last I consented to come. I thought it odd, for he knows the Countess only in society, but he insisted that I should yield to her request and come."

The priest was evidently interested to hear this, but he merely asked, "And you brought Hans with you? I shall see him, then."

"Certainly; he will go to you in a day or two. He of course stays with our relatives in Tannberg, while I take up my abode here on the Countess's account. The boy's whims are unaccountable. Early in April he began to talk of going to the mountains to sketch, and I had to convince him that it would be folly, since the mountains were then deep in snow. And when I made up my mind to come here, he suddenly discovered that it was necessary he should go to Tannberg for 'relaxation.' He must need it after all the flattery and nonsense that have been put into his head of late, and which my sister-in-law will doubtless keep fresh in his memory."

"But you brought him?"

"Brought him? As if I had anything to do with it! Oh, my gentleman is quite independent now. I dare not do anything to clip the wings of such a genius, however ridiculous may be the flights it undertakes. He came with me, and comes over here every day with the greatest regularity to inquire after me and the Countess. I can't understand the fellow any more than I can Michael. They could not show more tender interest in the Countess if she were their own mother. And she is in very good hands with the country physician here, and that young god-daughter of hers,--what is her name?"

"Gerlinda von Eberstein."

"Ah, yes! A queer little thing, who scarcely opens her lips, and makes the most remarkable courtesies. But she is a capital nurse, with her quiet, gentle ways. Countess Hertha is too agitated and anxious beside a sick-bed."

They were interrupted. The physician had arrived and wished to speak with his distinguished colleague. Wehlau rose and left the room. Then the servant added that the forester, Wolfram, was below, desiring to see his reverence. Valentin told the man to admit him, and upon his entrance said, kindly, "You here still, Wolfram? I thought you had gone home some days ago."

"I am going to-morrow," the forester replied. "My business is finished in Tannberg; I wanted to ask once more after the gracious Countess. The servants told me that your reverence was here, and so I thought I----" He stammered and hesitated and seemed unable to proceed.

"You wished to bid me good-bye," Valentin interposed.

"Yes, I wanted that, and something else besides. I've been worried about the thing for a week, your reverence, and haven't breathed a word of it to a living soul; but I can't help it, I must tell your reverence."

"Tell me, then. What is it?"

Wolfram glanced towards the door, and then, approaching the priest, said, almost in a whisper,--

"'Tis Michael,--Captain Rodenberg, I mean. The next thing he'll snatch the sun from the sky if he takes it into his head to want it. What he's at now is not much less. It will make no end of a fuss in the Count's family. The general will rage and scold, and then Michael will be down upon him just as he was before. Oh, he'll stop at nothing."

"Are you talking of Michael?" Valentin asked, bewildered. "He went to town long ago; my brother has just brought me a message from him."

"That may be. I only know about the night of the storm. When I took the servant whom I found to the mountain chapel, as had been agreed, I left him there and went some distance towards the Eagle ridge just at day-dawn, in hopes of finding some trace of the captain or the Countess. I really did not think that I should ever see either of them again alive. But after a while I saw them both on a rock, and they were very much alive: he kissed her!"

"What!" exclaimed the pastor, recoiling.

"No wonder your reverence is shocked. I was too, but I saw it with my bodily eyes. He, Michael,--Captain Rodenberg I mean,--had his arm around the Countess's waist, and he kissed her. I thought the world had come to an end."

Valentin would probably have thought the same had he not been in some measure prepared for the revelation; therefore he was more troubled than surprised as he said, more to himself than to the man, "It has come to a declaration, then. I feared this."

"And the young Countess seemed very well pleased; she made no objection at all. They neither of them saw or heard me, but I plainly heard him say 'My Hertha!'--quite as if she belonged to him; and she betrothed to the young Count! Now, I ask your reverence, what is to be done? That boy was always at some mischief. And he's at it still. He'll never be content with a kiss; he'll marry the Countess right out of the midst of her ancestors and her millions. If they won't give her to him he'll shoot the young Count, send the general and all the family to the right about, turn every one out of doors, and carry off 'his Hertha' from the castle, just as he got her away from the Eagle ridge, and marry her. Ah, your reverence, I know him!"

Wolfram had apparently fallen into the other extreme; whereas he had formerly despised his foster-son, he now entertained a boundless respect for his capability, which he veiled, it is true, in grumbling, discontented words. He was quite sure that Michael could do what he chose in spite of every one, even of the general, in Wolfram's eyes the most awe-inspiring of individuals.

The priest was much distressed by this revelation, confirming as it did his worst fears, but he could do nothing at present save enjoin silence upon the forester. There was no fear that his injunction would be disobeyed. Wolfram evidently regarded his communication in the light of a confession, and readily promised to divulge no word of his discovery. When he had gone, the old man clasped his hands and said to himself, "The struggle will be for life and death. And when those two unyielding, iron natures confront each other in enmity--Good God! what will be the issue?"

* * * * *

On the afternoon of the same day Valentin was already on his way back to Saint Michael, and the Professor sat in his room answering some letters, when the Freiherr von Eberstein was announced.

The old gentleman had come to see his daughter and to inquire after the Countess, and when he heard of the arrival of the famous professor from the capital he resolved to take advantage of the occasion to consult him with regard to his own ailments. Wehlau suspected something of the kind when the frail, stooping figure appeared, and instantly assumed a reserved demeanour, for he was nowise inclined to extend to strangers the exceptional privilege accorded to the Countess.

"Udo, Freiherr von Eberstein-Ortenau on the Ebersburg," said the old man, inclining his head with solemn dignity.

"So I have just heard," said Wehlau, dryly, offering his visitor a chair. "What can I do for you?"

The Freiherr took a seat, rather discomfited by this reception. His name and title had not apparently produced the slightest effect.

"I hear that you have been summoned to attend the Countess Steinrueck," he began again, "and I wished to speak with you about her."

The Professor muttered some inarticulate words. He was not fond of discussing cases of illness with unprofessional people, and was not at all inclined to retail here the opinion he had expressed to his brother. Eberstein, however, took his inarticulate mutterings for assent, and continued,--

"At the same time I wish to consult you with regard to an ailment of my own, which for years----"

"Excuse me," Wehlau bluntly interrupted him, "I no longer practise medicine, and was not summoned hither professionally. I hastened to the Countess's sick-bed from motives of friendship. I could not possibly accept a stranger as a patient."

The Freiherr stared in surprise and indignation at the bourgeois professor who could speak of the medical treatment of a Countess Steinrueck as a matter of friendship, and refuse to accept as a patient a Freiherr von Eberstein. In his seclusion he had formed no idea of the social position of the famous investigator, but he had heard formerly that scientific men were all eccentric, entirely unacquainted with the usages of polite society, and consequently rude and unpolished in the extreme. He therefore magnanimously forgave the Professor for these characteristics of his class, and, since he really needed his advice, he determined to make him understand clearly who and what his visitor was.

"I am a near friend of the Countess's family," he began again. "We two are the oldest lines in the country; my family is in fact two hundred years the elder: it dates from the tenth century."

"Very remarkable," said Wehlau, without the least idea of what the tenth century had to do with the matter.

"It is a fact," declared Eberstein, "an historically authenticated fact. Count Michael, the Steinruecks' ancestor, first emerges from the twilight of legend during the crusades, while Udo von Eberstein----" And off he went into the ancient chronicles of his house, beginning a discourse similar to the one with which Gerlinda had so terrified the guest at the Ebersburg. It swarmed with knightly names and feuds, and with all the glorious mediaeval blood and murder in which the Ebersteins had a share.

At first the Professor seemed desirous of discovering some means of cutting short this unwelcome visit, but he gradually became attentive, even drawing up his chair close to that of the old Freiherr and gazing steadily into his eyes. Suddenly he interrupted him in the middle of a sentence and seized his hand.

"Permit me,--your case interests me. Strange, the pulse is all right!"

The Freiherr exulted; this discourteous professor knew now that he was in presence of the scion of a lofty line, and was ready to give the advice he had at first refused.

"You find my pulse all right?" he asked. "I am glad of that; but you will nevertheless prescribe for----"

"Applications of ice to the head during twenty-four hours at least," said Wehlau, laconically.

"What! with my gout!" the old gentleman exclaimed, in dismay. "I cannot endure the least cold, and if you will investigate my case----"

"Not the slightest necessity. I know perfectly well what ails you," declared the Professor.

The Freiherr's respect increased for this famous physician, who could pronounce upon a patient's condition by merely looking at him, without asking a single question.

"The Countess certainly spoke in the highest terms of your keenness of apprehension," he rejoined; "but I should like to ask you a question, Herr Professor Wehlau. Your name strikes me as familiar. Can you be in anywise related to Wehlau Wehlenberg of the Forschungstein?"

"Forschungstein?" Again the Professor hastily felt the Freiherr's pulse, while the old man resumed, condescendingly,--

"It would not be the first time that a member of an ancient family had refused to adopt a title when forced by circumstances to embrace a bourgeois profession."

"Bourgeois profession!" exclaimed Wehlau. "Herr von Eberstein, do you imagine that scientific pursuits are followed like--shoemaking, for example?"

"They certainly are very unbefitting noble blood," said Eberstein, haughtily. "As for the Forschungstein, it is the ancestral seat of a young nobleman who came to the Ebersburg last autumn and partook of my hospitality during a stormy night. An amiable young man that Hans Wehlau Wehlenberg----"