Part 20

Christian had no time to employ his imagination in hunting for answers to this riddle. The day was rapidly drawing to a close. It was only half-past one in the afternoon, and already the transparent shadows of the snowy peaks around were lengthening upon the blue surface of the lake. It was a beautiful sight, and, had his affairs permitted, Christian would have loved to gaze upon it. These short northern days have aspects infinitely picturesque; and even at noon they are full of striking effects, as painters say, resulting from the obliquity of the sun’s rays, which cover the landscape with strong lights and shades, such as in other countries are only visible at morning and evening. This is probably the reason of the beautiful sunlight which northern travellers are so enthusiastic about. It is not alone the extraordinary landscapes, impetuous waterfalls, immense lakes and splendid auroras of Sweden and Norway, of which they retain such intoxicating recollections; quite as remarkable, they affirm, is the delicious purity of the atmosphere, in which even the most trifling objects assume a brightness and a charm of which nothing anywhere else can give an idea.

But our hero, while he observed the beauty of the heavens, observed also the swift decline of the day, and discerned, afar off, the actual preparations for the very entertainment for which, in fulfilment of his engagement, he was to be in part responsible. The chimneys of the new chateau were sending out thick columns of black smoke, that showed strongly against the evening sky, flecked with rosy and pearl-hued clouds. Gun-shots, repeated by the muffled echoes of the snowy hills, announced that the huntsmen were at work to supply the spits of those Pantagruelian fireplaces. Busy messengers on skates were speeding in all directions, crossing each other’s tracks, and occasionally falling headlong upon the ice of the lake. All the country round was being ransacked for everything it could furnish, from the monstrous back-logs that were to adorn the fires in every room of the house, down to the poor little white partridge, which had trusted to his winter’s garb to protect it from the sagacious eye of man, and the pitiless scent of the hunting-dog.

The fifth night of the Christmas festivities--for this was December 28th--promised to be a splendid one. Christian alone was not enjoying the prospect; he was becoming impatient for the return of Puffo. Having resumed his poor devil’s suit, pulled his abundant hair over his handsome forehead, and his steeple-crowned hat down over his eyes, he went to hunt up his subordinate in the court, in the _gaard_, and even in the kitchen, where he had so frightened Ulphilas the evening before. It never occurred to him to go down into the cellar. If he had, he would have discovered Puffo, established in the very paradise of his dreams.

He was about returning, when it occurred to him to explore Stenson’s little fruit-garden. With a preliminary glance, to be sure that the old overseer whom he had alarmed so much was not there, he descended the steep walk that led down to the edge of the lake. From this point he could see the whole length of the _gaard_, built along the slope that plunged down to the little bay. The old masonry was so well united to the rock, that one could hardly distinguish the natural from the artificial fortification, especially under their clothing of long wall-plants, crystallized by the frost, and hanging down below into the lake, where they were deeply imbedded in the ice. As he stood there, he tried to trace the route he had followed the day before, on his expedition into the secret passage of the bear-room. We promised the reader an account of this expedition, and this is the proper time for it.

It will be remembered that in setting out to hunt up something for supper, he had ventured into a passage hidden by a door very neatly fitted into the wood-work, and leading from under the stairs, which he supposed might conduct to the lodging of M. Stenson. Such was, however, by no means the case. After a few steps along a confined passage, Christian had come to a narrow staircase, steep, and obstructed with rubbish, as if no human foot had ascended it for a long time. At the foot of the staircase, which was very long, he had found an open door. Surprised at this free entrance to a passage apparently itself so mysterious, he was stepping through it, when a gust of wind extinguished his candle, and he was left in darkness. He still advanced cautiously a few steps, when the moon appeared from behind some clouds, and he saw that he was in a sort of cavern, or gallery, opening at intervals upon the lake. The water of the lake penetrated into this gallery, which seemed to be a natural excavation. He followed it for some distance, walking upon the ice the latter part of the way, until he reached, at last, a small wicket, over which he climbed without difficulty, and thus gained admittance first to the fruit-garden, and thence to M. Stenson’s gaard.

Christian at once recognized this little gate, flanked on either side by two young yew-trees, cut into a sugar-loaf shape; and, with this for a guide, he was able to recognize the principal points of his nocturnal expedition. Although he had no particular expectation of finding Puffo in that quarter, he passed through the fruit-garden, and walked along the lake around the outer cliffs, in the direction of the donjon. He was curious to see by daylight the path along which he had made his way the night before, partly by feeling, and partly by the light of the moon.

He soon came to the entrance of what he had taken for a grotto. It was, in fact, only a deposit of enormous blocks of granite, of that sort termed erratic boulders--that is, blocks isolated from their primitive location, and now lodged where they could not have been originally formed. The position of such boulders is due, it is supposed, to some primeval or modern cataclysm--a vast rush of waters, or the slow transportation of glaciers or icebergs--which has brought them from distant regions to their final resting-place. Those now in question were rounded, like so many enormous pebbles, and their capricious superposition, one above another, seemed to indicate that while whirled along by a tremendous force, they had been suddenly arrested and piled against the mica-schist mass of Stollborg, of which they thus became, as it were, buttresses or outworks. It was difficult to walk among them, on account of the snow, which, during the storm of the night before, had been swept, or rather rolled by the wind into great drifts or ridges, stretching, like a vast winding-sheet, along the range of boulders.

Christian found his progress so impeded, that he was about to retrace his steps, when he was struck by the picturesque aspect of the donjon towering above him, and withdrew a little to see it to better advantage. He tried, mechanically, to make out the position of the bear-room, and easily recognized it by its one window, about a hundred feet above the level of the lake, and fifty above the summits of the boulders. The cold was not very extreme, and Christian, who always carried a little drawing-book in his pocket, began an outline sketch of the tower, with its lofty escarpment in the rock below, and its chaos of gigantic boulders, which were flung together in such a way as to form--like the sandstone rocks at Fontainebleau--covered passages and galleries, whose effect was extremely fantastic.

While studying this characteristic scene, Christian heard some one singing, at first without paying much attention to the fact. It was a woman’s voice, and that of a rustic, true enough in intonation, but veiled, and sometimes tremulous, as of an infirm or aged person. She seemed to be chanting a kind of psalm, and, although monotonous, there was something agreeable in the melancholy air. This sad and quavering melody soothed the mind of the artist as it continued, and brought him into the very mood for understanding and representing the features of a locality with which the voice seemed to be in perfect harmony. The words of the chant were at first indistinct: but as Christian listened mechanically, he gradually recognized them as Swedish, pronounced with the Dalecarlian accent. Their meaning now seemed so strange, that he began to listen more attentively:

“I saw a tower, a square tower by the setting sun. Its gates look to the north. Drops of poison sweat from its openings. It is paved with serpents.

“The tree of the world embraces it; the strong ash-tree shakes. The great serpent bites the waves. The eagle screams; with its pale beak it tears the corpses; the ship of the dead is launched.

“Where are the Ases and the Alfes? They sigh by the entrance of the caves. The sun begins to be darkened; all things perish.

“But earth, green and beautiful, begins to brighten again from the east; the waters awake, the cascades flow.

“I saw a palace fairer than the sun upon the top of Gimli--I see it no more. The Vala falls again into the night.”

In these sombre poetical fragments Christian gradually recognized verses, arranged or repeated at random, from the antique poem called the _Voluspa_. This, considering the rustic pronunciation of the singer, he thought very extraordinary. Could it be that the peasants in that country had preserved a tradition of the sacred chants of the Scandinavian mythology? This seemed hardly probable, and yet who could have taught them to this woman? Christian, who, as a traveller, was curious on all subjects, resolved to find and cross-examine the singer, as soon as he had finished his sketch; but when he returned his album to his pocket a few moments afterwards, the voice had ceased. He looked all about, but could see no one. Supposing that she must be concealed behind the boulders, he proceeded to explore them, and found this not much easier than walking in the deep margin of the snow-drift outside. Within the expanse of the principal cavern, which followed the turns of the rock for some fifty steps, there was no footing except on a floor of ice, very slippery and wavy on the surface, as if the rippling water had been instantaneously frozen on some cold autumn night.

However, our adventurer succeeded in discovering the traces of his own steps, made the night before, when he imagined he was walking over fragments of bricks and tiles; and soon he found, also, the mysterious door, by which he had issued from the donjon. It was now fastened with two strong iron staples and a padlock, the key of which had been carried off. This must have been just done; the singer was undoubtedly some dependent, like Stenson and Ulphilas, who was employed about the old manor. She could not be far off, for he had heard her singing scarcely five minutes before, and she must have been behind the boulders, for Christian could see over the lake in all directions, and from top to bottom of the cliffs at the base of the tower, and no one was visible. He now retraced his steps to leave the grotto, which, as it was only lighted by a natural opening in about the middle of its whole extent, was rather dark. Pausing for a moment under this natural opening, to look at the sky, he saw, between himself and the heavens, an object projecting over the rock from the smooth and naked flank of the donjon. This he quickly recognized as the under-side of the stone balcony that supported the double window of the bear-room, and which was so situated that any one, with a cord or ladder, might easily descend through the space between the rocks below, when he would at once find himself under cover in the vault which they formed just at this place.

Christian, always inclined to be romantic, immediately thought out a plan of escape to be adopted in case of siege or captivity in Stollborg. He scaled the irregular rocks that formed the sides of the grotto, and, with a good deal of exertion, climbed out through the opening which, he was satisfied, had not been made by the hand of man. This examination led him to reflect, as we have all had occasion to do at least once in our lives, that even in the most desperate situations chances occasionally occur so improbable that they seem to belong, not to real life, but to the world of the imagination. However, still bent upon pursuing the singer, he continued his examination amongst the boulders, between almost any two of which there was room for penetrating. Finding no one, he was just giving up the chase, when he heard the voice again, coming this time from much lower down than he had supposed it to be when he heard it in the first place. He went towards it, but as he approached the spot where he thought the mysterious rhapsodist must be stationed, the chant, which had suddenly ceased, like that of the cicada on the approach of man, was heard once more in another direction, and from much higher up, as if floating in the air above him. Raising his head, Christian now perceived, in the side of the donjon, a long fissure, half hidden by ivy, and extending almost vertically, from a window in the upper story, a good deal to the right of the window in the bear-room, down to a ruinous part of the wall, below which were some other masses of rock.

He even thought that he could see pieces of stone falling along this fissure, as if some person had just made their way into it; but, on approaching as near as he could, it seemed to him quite inaccessible, and he went further on.

And now the voice once more began its plaintive chant, and Christian--amused at first, but finally with a feeling of irritation--followed the singer from one place to another in the little chaos of granite rocks. He was constantly disappointed, until he really began to be somewhat startled. These savage verses, fragments of a gloomy apocalypse, disconnected and wild, as if inspired by delirium, had something frightful in them, when heard in that gloomy place, at that melancholy evening hour. Christian thought involuntarily of the water-witches who are the centre of all the legends of Sweden, and indeed of all popular beliefs throughout the north of Europe.

At last he persuaded himself that the voice must come from the tower itself. Perhaps some captive was hidden there in a secret dungeon. He called aloud three times, using at a venture the mythological name of Vala, that is Sibyl, which the singer, in her chant, had seemed to wish to appropriate. At this the voice became silent again, as if in confirmation of the superstitious belief of the country, that whenever you succeed in calling one of the malevolent or melancholy spirits who dwell among the mountains by its name, it is either frightened or consoled, and in either case is reduced to silence.

But still another thought haunted Christian, as he finally turned to go back to the tower by an outside path. He could not help asking himself whether one of the victims of the mysterious Baron Olaus, crazed with suffering, was not lamenting in a dungeon under his feet. However, he forgot all about this fantastic idea, when he found M. Goefle seated at table in the bear-room.

“Well,” said the lawyer, without troubling himself to rise, “you came near bringing me into a pretty scrape with your prank last evening. The baron, strange to say, did not mention a word about it; but the Countess Elveda absolutely would not believe me when I protested and swore that I had neither a nephew nor a natural child.”

“What, M. Goefle! did you disown a son who has done you so much honor?”

“I did indeed; it would have been quite impracticable for me to keep up the joke, or to assume the responsibility of such a mystification! Do you know that you did not escape observation by any means? Quite independently of the scene with your host, everybody seems to have been struck by your style and graces, the ladies especially. In the countess’s room I met five or six of the more fashionable ladies of the province, who were quite infatuated about you; and when I swore upon my honor that I had nothing whatever to do with this unknown, you should have heard their suppositions and commentaries! Some of them were inclined to suggest that it might have been Christian Waldo, of whom so many adventurous stories are told; but the prevailing opinion was that you were the prince royal, travelling incognito about his future kingdom.”

“Prince Henry, who is now at Paris?”

“Yes; and this served capitally to account for the baron’s nervous attack, for he detests the prince, and would naturally have been agitated on meeting him, by the conflict between his hate and resentment on the one hand, and the respect due to the future heir of the throne on the other.”

“But the Countess Elveda cannot have been deceived by such a silly idea as that?”

“Oh no, certainly not, she knows the prince too well; but she is extremely fond of quizzing, and she amused herself by pretending to these ladies that you were so much like our future monarch, that she did not know what to think. Only, as I was going out, she took me aside and said: ‘You are severe, my friend, in disowning this imprudent young man. For my own part, I thought him very agreeable, and if he does not resemble you in features, he takes after you at least in his wit and distinguished manners.’”

“Why, Monsieur Goefle, that is very flattering to me. But then she persists in believing me your son?”

“Without doubt; and the more I protested to the contrary, the more she laughed, and insisted that it was impossible for me to disown you, since you had so publicly presented yourself in society under my name. ‘The wine is drawn,’ she said, ‘and you must drink it.’ He is a roguish fellow, and is trying to plague you. It is a just punishment of the follies of our youth, to become the parents of ‘such terrible children!’ Please to observe the stain which you have brought upon my reputation! At last, to rid myself of you, I said that whether son or nephew, you had gone away; that I had packed you off in disgrace for having been disrespectful to his lordship the baron.”

“Very right, Monsieur Goefle: you did quite right; for, as to the baron, I don’t know whether I am dreaming, but I am really beginning to consider him almost as much of a Blue-Beard as the reports about him represent. I should have found out all about it, if I had had more time.”

“Ah! ah! really? Well, you must tell me all about it; but, in the meanwhile, have something to eat. It is after two o’clock, and you must be almost dead with hunger.”

“I? No, not at all. It seems to me as if I had just got up from table. Were we not eating until almost noon?”

“Well, but don’t you know that in such a cold climate as this you need to eat every two hours? I have just had coffee at the new chateau; this is dinner, now; at four, we will have coffee together; at six we will have the aftonward; that is, we will take some bread and butter and cheese, while waiting for supper.”

“Good heavens! how you keep at it! I knew perfectly well that that was the regimen of the fat burghers at Stockholm; but you, M. Goefle, who are so slender still!”

“Well, do you want me to become a skeleton? I should very quickly, if I should vary from our customs. Believe me, you had better conform to them, or you will very soon be ill.”

“To enable me to obey you, M. Goefle, I need two things: time, and my assistant Puffo. Now, time is flying; and Puffo only appeared to me a moment, and then disappeared, perhaps not to return until to-morrow morning.”

“But could I not help you myself? What is to be done?”

“A good many things; but most of all, to decide upon our piece and run it over together, so that that animal, Puffo, may be ready to represent with me. He has a sufficiently good memory, if he can have one rehearsal before the performance; but now, as we have been travelling some days without doing anything, and as he is probably drunk to-night already--”

“Come, come! You have five hours before you--an immense quantity of time! More than I have needed, sometimes, to prepare a cause a great deal more complicated than your comedies of marionettes! I promise to help you, I tell you, but on condition that you will sit down and eat with me, for I don’t know anything more uncomfortable than to eat alone.”

“You will permit me to be pretty quick, then, won’t you?” said Christian, taking a seat opposite the lawyer, “and not to talk too much, for I shall need all my lungs this evening.”

“Very well, very well,” replied M. Goefle, cutting off for Christian an enormous piece of cold veal--a dish greatly esteemed by the middle classes in Sweden, when properly cooked; “but what were you saying to me just after you came in? What was it you would have discovered, if you had had a little more time?”

Christian related his adventure, and at the close of his story asked M. Goefle if he supposed the lower part of Stollborg contained any old prison.

“Upon my word I don’t know anything about it,” replied the advocate. “It is very possible that there may be some kind of cell in the great mass of masonry here under our feet, and if so, I have no doubt that it has been used as a prison. Our ancestors were not persons of very refined manners, and even yet our nobility have justiciary rights on their own domains.”

“And do you think it equally probable that this sub structure of the donjon may be serving as a prison now?”

“Who knows? What are you thinking of?”

“That possibly some person may be wickedly buried there, a still living victim of one of the thousand dark and secret crimes attributed to the vengeful baron.”

“Really, it would be strange enough to discover that!” said the lawyer, who had suddenly become thoughtful. “Are you sure you were not dreaming when you thought you heard the voice and strange songs?”

“Sure! how can you ask?”

“There is no knowing; you said yourself a little while ago that people are sometimes subject to hallucinations. Now the ear, as well as the eye, may become the medium of the illusion; and you ought to be aware--to be properly on your guard--to what an extent hallucinations prevail in Sweden, especially towards the north, where really, with two-thirds of the population, they are a sort of chronic condition.”

“Yes, I know that such visions become contagious when reinforced by superstition; but I beg you to believe that I have no faith in the witches or evil spirits of either lakes, torrents, or old castles, and that I could not be influenced, therefore, in any such way.”

“Nor I, assuredly. And yet--Well, Christian, there must be, independently of superstition, something inexplicable in the effects produced by the natural scenery and conditions of the north upon vivid imaginations. It is in the air; in the singular sounds that go ringing along the ice; in the mists, full of mysterious forms; in the marvellous mirage of our lakes, called the _hagring_, an extraordinary phenomenon which you must have heard of, and which you may see at any moment. Possibly something of it may result from physical disorders in the circulation of the blood, induced by constantly passing out of the icy atmosphere into the over-heated air of our rooms, and the contrary. Anyhow, it is a fact that we find the most reasonable people, those in the most perfect health, the least credulous, even such as have passed the greater portion of their lives free from illusions, all at once becoming subject to them. Even I myself----”

“Go on, I beg you, M. Goefle--at least unless the subject is too painful; you are as white as your napkin.”