Part 37

Just as the young Dalecarlian had finished these mysterious words, a sleigh, advancing at great speed, began rapidly to gain upon them, and the resounding voice of the coachman cried imperiously, “Room! room!” At the same time he whipped savagely his four horses, who had been terrified, while still at a distance, by the odor of the bears brought by Christian. They had left the mountain, and were on a narrow road running along the edge of a gorge, and which led to the lake. Christian, fearing that they would be upset unless he should get out of the way, and seeing no means of accomplishing this unless by pitching headlong into the stream at the bottom of the gorge, whipped the danneman’s horse so as to get forward and reach a place where there would be room for the other vehicle to pass; but, just as he had succeeded in drawing a little to the right, the brutal coachman of the advancing sleigh urged forward his fiery horses, the two vehicles grazed, and were upset simultaneously.

Christian found himself on the earth with Olof and his four bears, and so effectually buried in the snow piled up along the edge of the road, that it took him some time to discover whereabouts, and in what company, he had been interred in this fashion. The first voice that struck upon his ear, the first face that rejoiced his sight, were the face and voice of the illustrious Professor Stangstadius. The learned man had not been at all injured; but he was furious, and, making his first attack upon Christian, who was not masked, and with whom, as he arose, he found himself face to face, he overwhelmed him with insults, and threatened him with divine vengeance and the maledictions of the universe.

“There, there, gently, gently!” replied Christian, helping him to get up upon his unequal legs once more; “you have no bones broken, Monsieur Professor, God be praised! I call the universe and heaven to witness how glad I am! But, if it is you who drive your equipage so crazily, I must say that you are not very considerate of people whose horses are not as good as yours. There now, leave me alone,” he added, quietly pushing away the geologist, who was attempting to seize him by the collar, “or else, the first time I meet you on the lake, I will leave you to freeze there, instead of bruising my shoulders by carrying you.”

The professor, without seeking to recognize Christian, continued declaiming, to prove to him that it was his fault that the accident had happened, when Christian, who was only thinking of picking up his game and Olof, noticed, in the midst of the four bears, a man of lofty stature, stretched out and motionless, with his face to the earth. At the same time, a young man, dressed in black, and pale with terror, came from the opposite bank, where he had been thrown, and running forward, cried:

“The baron! Where is the baron?”

“What baron?” said Christian, who had just lifted up the swooning man, and was supporting him in his arms.

At this moment the son of the danneman pushed Christian with his shoulder, and whispered:

“The iarl! look at the iarl!”

The baron’s young physician hastened to remove his fur cap, which had got pulled down over the invalid’s face, so that he was in danger of suffocating; and Christian came very near opening his strong arms and letting him fall back into the snow, on recognizing, with an insurmountable horror, in the dying man whom he was trying to succor, the Baron Olaus de Waldemora.

They stretched him out on the pile of bears; it was the best bed possible under the circumstances, and the terrified physician implored Stangstadius, who had formerly taken a degree as a physician, to assist him with his advice and experience, in a case which seemed to him extremely grave. Stangstadius, who was making ready to try all his joints, to satisfy himself that he was not more damaged than usual, consented, at last, to pay some attention to the only person whom the overturn seemed to have seriously endangered.

“_Parbleu!_” he said, looking at the baron, and touching him; “it is perfectly plain: the pulse inert, the face purple, the lips swollen, a death rattle, and, notwithstanding, no injury--It is as clear as day; it is a fit of apoplexy. He must be bled--bled quickly, and abundantly.”

The young physician looked for his case of surgical instruments, and could not find it. Christian and Olof assisted him in his search, but with no better fortune. The baron’s fiery horses had run away with his sleigh, and, by this time, it was almost out of sight. The coachman, thinking that his master would have him beaten to death for his awkwardness, was running after it, half crazy, and startling the desolate silence with his imprecations.

As the danneman’s docile horse had stopped short, they talked of putting the invalid in the peasant’s sleigh, and removing him to the chateau as quickly as possible. Stangstadius protested that he would be dead before they could arrive. The doctor, out of his senses, proposed running after the runaway horses, so as to look for his case in the baron’s sleigh. At last he found it in his pocket, where, thanks to his agitation, he had touched it a dozen times without feeling it; but his hand trembled so, when the moment came to open the vein, that Stangstadius, who was perfectly indifferent to anything outside himself, and who, besides, was very well pleased at being able to prove his superiority in all respects, was obliged to take the lancet and do his work for him.

Christian, who was standing near by, contemplated, with deep inward emotion, this strange and gloomy picture, lighted by the pale gleams of the setting sun: this man, with his powerful frame and terrible countenance, tossing convulsively on his strange couch,--a confused pile of corpses of ferocious beasts; his large, white arm, from which a stream of black blood, congealing upon the snow as it fell, was slowly flowing; the young physician, with his mild, pusillanimous face, upon his knees by his terrible patient, and seemingly divided between the fear of seeing him die under his hands, and a childish terror at the growling of the still living bears by his side; the overturned sleigh, the scattered weapons; the startled look of the young danneman, through which--strangely blending with his terror--flashed a gleam of malignant satisfaction; the thin horse smoking after his rapid race, as he indifferently ate the snow; and, above all, the fantastic face of Stangstadius, lighted up by a smile of triumph which had become his habitual expression, and his sharp voice, haranguing about all that had happened, in a self-satisfied and pedantic tone. It was a scene never to be forgotten: a group at the same time laughable and tragic; at a first glance, perhaps, incomprehensible.

“My poor doctor,” said Stangstadius, “there is no use in hiding it, if your invalid escapes he will be lucky! But don’t imagine it is the upset that has brought on this fit; it has been threatening for the last twenty-four hours. How is it that you did not foresee it?”

“I foresaw it plainly,” said the young doctor rather spitefully, “and told you so an hour ago, Monsieur Stangstadius, when he received that letter at the hunting pavilion, that disturbed him so; as he read it, his very features grew distorted. It is not my fault if you have forgotten what I said. I did everything in my power to prevent his lordship from going to the hunt. He would not listen to anything; the most he would consent to, was to allow me to accompany him in his sleigh.”

“By heavens! a valuable assistant you are! If I had not offered to return with the two of you, when I saw that he was not in a condition to hunt, he would probably have stifled here. You would not have had presence of mind enough--”

“You are very hard upon young people, Monsieur Professor,” replied the physician, more and more offended; “there is some excuse for losing your presence of mind when you have just been thrown ten feet out of a sleigh, and are no sooner up again than you are called upon to judge, at the first glance, of what is perhaps a hopeless case.”

“A fine matter, truly, a fall in the snow!” said M. Stangstadius, shrugging the one shoulder which was obedient to his will. “If you had fallen, as I did, into the bottom of the shaft of a well! A fall of fifty feet, seven inches, and five lines, a swoon lasting six hours, fifty-three--”

“Goodness gracious! Monsieur Professor, it is the swoon of my patient that I am troubled about, and not yours! What is past is past. Will you be so good as to hold his arm, while I look for a ligature?”

“No, not at all; the fact is that there are some people who complain about everything,” continued Stangstadius, coming and going, without listening to the doctor.

Then, forgetting that he had just been in a terrible rage against Christian, the quick-tempered, but really good-natured worthy, turned gayly to him.

“Did I so much as turn pale,” he said, “when I found myself under those four animals--without counting the two others, you and your comrade? Two awkward clowns, be it said in passing! But what matter a few bruises more or less, after all? I did not even think of myself! I was all ready to give an opinion about the invalid, and to bleed him. My eye rapid and sure, my hand firm!--How now--where the devil have I seen you?” he continued, still addressing Christian, and forgetting all about the sick man. “Did you kill all these beasts? There is a fine prize, to be sure, a bear of the large kind, the brown species with blue eyes! When one thinks that that imbecile of a Buffon--But where did you meet with it? It is rare in this country!”

“You must excuse me from replying, at present,” said Christian; “the doctor requires my help.”

“Let him alone--let the blood flow;” remarked the geologist, quietly.

“No, no, he has lost enough!” cried the physician; “the bleeding has had a good effect. Come and see, Monsieur Professor; but we must not abuse the remedy; it is as dangerous now, as the evil it is to counteract.”

Christian, not without a shudder of mortal and inexplicable repugnance, held the baron’s cold, heavy arm, while the physician closed the vein. The sick man opened his eyes, and soon tried to make out where he was. His first glance was for the strange bed where he was lying, the second for his blood-stained arm, and the third for his trembling physician.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a feeble voice, and in a scornful tone, “you have been bleeding me! I forbade it.”

“It was necessary, your lordship; you are much better, thank heaven!” replied the doctor.

The baron was too weak to argue. He tried to look around him with his faded eyes, in which appeared an expression of gloomy anxiety; but, when he saw Christian’s face, his eyes dilated, and fastened upon him with a stupefied stare. At that moment, Christian was bending forward to help the physician to lift him up; he repulsed him with a convulsive gesture; and the faint semblance of a lifelike hue, that was beginning to return to his face, was succeeded by a livid pallor.

“Open the vein again,” cried Stangstadius to the doctor; “I knew you were closing it too soon. Did I not tell you so? Open it, and afterwards leave him quiet for at least five minutes.”

“But the cold, Monsieur Professor,” said the physician, obeying Stangstadius mechanically; “are you not afraid that the cold will be fatal, under such circumstances?”

“Bah! the cold!” replied Stangstadius; “I laugh at the cold of the atmosphere! The cold of death is much worse! Let him bleed, I tell you, and then let him rest. You must follow the prescription, come what may.”

Turning to Christian, he added:

“The tall baron is in a bad scrape. I would not like to be in his skin just now. There now--where the devil have I seen you?”

Just then he picked up something on the snow, which set him running on a new tack.

“What is that piece of red stone doing here?” he cried; “a fragment of porphyry, in a region of gneiss and basalt? You must have brought it from up yonder,” he added, pointing to the peaks rising to the west. “It was in your pocket. Ah! you see it is not very easy to deceive me! I know the character and form of all the rocks at ten leagues distance!”

The baron’s sleigh finally returned, and a few moments afterwards, as he began to seem a little better again, they were able to close the vein, and place the sick man in his equipage, which proceeded slowly to the chateau, while Christian started, in advance, with the son of the danneman.

“Well,” said the young lad, when they had left the gloomy vehicle behind them, “what was I telling you when it happened? What did my aunt Karine say?”

“I did not understand the song very well,” said Christian, absorbed in his thoughts; “it was not very cheerful, I remember.”

“‘He left his soul at the house,’” repeated Olof; “‘and when he shall come to rejoin it, he will no longer find it.’ Is not that perfectly plain, Herr Christian? The iarl was ill; he wanted to shake off his malady; but his soul did not want to go to the hunt, and with good reason, perhaps, for it is bound now on a villanous journey!”

“You hate the iarl!” said Christian. “You think his soul is going to hell!”

“As to that, God knows! But as to hating him, I don’t hate him any more than every one does. You don’t love him yourself, do you?”

“I--I do not know,” replied Christian, shuddering inwardly at the consciousness of the hate which filled his heart, more intense, perhaps, than was felt by any other person.

“Well, if he gets well,” resumed the lad, “you will hear about it! He will soon find out who upset him, and, if you are wise, you will quit the country.”

“So, then, every one believes that it will not do to offend him?”

“Good gracious! He poisoned his father, he stabbed his brother with a dagger, and he starved his sister-in-law; and he has killed ever so many other people besides that my aunt Karine knows about, and that every one would know about, if she would speak; but she will not!”

“And don’t you feel afraid that the baron’s anger will be directed against you, when he shall learn that it is your father’s sleigh that upset him?”

“It is not the fault of the sleigh, and mine still less. You would drive! If I had been driving it would not have happened, perhaps; but what is to happen, happens; and when harm befalls wicked men, it is because it is the will of God!”

But Christian, constantly haunted by the dreadful idea that had taken possession of him, shuddered at the thought that destiny had perhaps chosen him as the parricidal instrument for accomplishing the baron’s destruction.

“No, no!” he cried, in answer to his own thoughts, rather than to the son of the danneman; “I did not cause his fit. The physicians said that he had been doomed for twenty-four hours.”

“And my aunt Karine said so too!” rejoined Olof; “so you can rest easy, he will not recover.”

Thereupon, Olof began humming the sad refrain which reminded Christian more and more of the melancholy air which he had heard the previous evening among the boulders.

“Does not your aunt Karine sometimes go to Stollborg?” he asked of Olof.

“To Stollborg?” said the lad. “I should only believe it if I saw it.”

“Why?”

“Because she does not like that place; she will not even allow it to be named where she is.”

“Why so?”

“Who can tell? And yet, in former years, when the Baroness Hilda was alive, she lived there; but I cannot tell you anything more about it, because I have told you now all that I know; we never speak, at our house, either of Stollborg or of Waldemora!”

Christian felt that there would be something indelicate in questioning the young danneman about the relations that may have existed between his aunt and the baron; besides, he had become so gloomy and depressed, that he had not the heart, for the moment, to make any further inquiries.

The sudden change in the atmosphere contributed not a little to his melancholy. The sun, whether beneath the horizon or not, had entirely disappeared in one of those thick fogs which very frequently, in the short winter days, suddenly envelop earth and sky, especially towards sunset, or in the morning at sunrise. It was a heavy, melancholy veil, of a dull, leaden gray, which grew thicker every instant, and which soon left nothing visible but the bottom of the gorge, into which it had not yet fully penetrated. In proportion as it approached this goal, it seemed to sweep forward in dense waves, but it did not mingle at all with the black smoke rising from great fires kindled in the depths of the valley, to preserve harvests or keep open small streams of water.

Christian did not even ask Olof the object of these fires; he gave himself up to the dreary amusement of watching their red and spectral forms, glimmering like rayless, fluctuating meteors on the banks of the stream, and in following with his eye the persistent and fantastic struggle of their gloomy flames and clouds of smoke, with the fog, which, through the contrast, seemed even whiter than it was. The frozen torrent was still visible; but, by some strange optical delusion, it sometimes appeared so near the road that Christian imagined he could touch it with the end of his whip, and sometimes seemed buried in immeasurable depths, while in reality it was infinitely less distant, and infinitely less near, than the deceptive undulations of the fog caused it to appear.

Night followed, with the long northern twilight. At this hour there is usually a delicate greenish tint in the atmosphere, but this evening it was colorless and livid. Not a living being was visible on the face of the globe; whatever had life was concealed, motionless, silent. Christian felt oppressed at this universal gloom of nature, and then he accepted it with a sort of apathetic resignation. Olof jumped out to lead the horse, for the road, as it now descended to the shore of the lake, spreading like a vague ocean of vapor beneath them, was almost perpendicular. Christian imagined that he was descending the sharp declivity of the globe itself, and about to plunge off into the void abysms of space. Two or three times the horse slipped until he was thrown back upon his haunches, and Olof came very near letting go the bridle and leaving him to his fate, together with the sleigh and the traveller. The latter was overwhelmed by a mortal indifference. The baron’s son! These three words, written, as it were, in black letters upon his brain, seemed to have killed within him hope in the future, and love of life. It was not despair that he felt, but a profound disgust for all that life can offer; and, in this mood, the only thing he noticed was the one immediate fact that he felt overwhelmed with sleep, and that he would have been quite willing to fall asleep forever by rolling, without a sound, to the bottom of the lake. He did really lose himself, and so completely, that he had entirely forgotten where he was, when a voice as faint as the twilight, as veiled as the sky and the lake, sang close to him these words, to which he listened unconsciously, and gradually comprehended:

“Behold, the sun is rising! Beautiful and clear it shines on the meadow enamelled with flowers. I see the fairies all in white, crowned with garlands of willow-boughs and lilacs; the fairies who dance in the valley, on the moss glittering with dew. The child is in the midst of them, the child of the lake, more beautiful than the morning.

“Behold, the sun climbs to the zenith! The birds are silent; the little flies buzz in the beams of dusty gold. The fairies have entered a grove of azaleas, to seek the cool, refreshing shade on the shore of the stream. The child is asleep on their knees--the child of the lake, more beautiful than the day.

“Behold, the sun is setting! The nightingale sings to the diamond star that mirrors itself in the waters. The fairies are seated at the foot of the sky, on the staircase of rosy crystal; they sing a lullaby to the child, who smiles in his downy nest; the child of the lake, more beautiful than the star of the evening!”

Once again it was the voice heard among the boulders that struck upon Christian’s ear, but it seemed, as it now chanted poetic words set to an agreeable and melodious air, far sweeter than before. The words were, perhaps, a modern song which the sibyl had understood and remembered exactly. However, it was in vain that Christian tried to catch the faintest glimpse of a human form. He could not even see the horse that was conducting him, or rather, to speak more correctly, which was no longer conducting him, for the sleigh was standing still, and Olof was not there. Far from feeling uneasy about his situation, Christian listened until the three verses were completed. The first had seemed to him to be sung a few steps behind him, the second nearer, and the third farther on; gradually the voice died away in advance of him.

The young man came very near jumping out of the sleigh, to try and seize the invisible singer as she passed; but, as he put out his foot, he became aware that there was a void under him instead of solid ground; and, as the tender words of the song had revived within him the instinct of self-preservation, he stretched out his hand, to find out where he was. He felt the reeking rump of the horse, and called Olof several times, without receiving any reply. Then, as the singer’s voice began chanting again, still farther away, he called her also, by the name of _Vala Karina_; but she either did not hear him, or would not answer. He resolved then to get out on the other side of the sleigh, and he found himself on a steep road, which he explored for about twenty steps, still calling Olof with the greatest anxiety. Could the child have rolled over a precipice during Christian’s brief slumber? At last he saw, gleaming through the fog, an imperceptible point of light, which came towards him, and soon he recognized Olof carrying a lighted lantern.

“Is it you, Herr Christian?” said the lad, who had not heard him approach, and who was terrified at meeting him thus suddenly face to face. “It was wrong of you to get out of the sleigh when you could not see well; this is a very dangerous place, and I told you not to budge while I went to light my lantern, at the mill close by. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Not at all; but you, did not you hear some one singing?”

“Yes, but I did not listen. You often hear voices on the shore of the lake, and it is not good to understand what they sing, for then they will lead you into places from which you never return.”

“Very well, for my part, I listened,” said Christian, “and I recognized the voice of your aunt Karine. She must be close by--Let us look for her, since you have a light, or call her; she will, perhaps, answer you.”

“No no!” cried the boy; “leave her alone. If she is in her dream, and we wake her up, she will kill herself!”

“But she is in just as much danger of killing herself if we leave her walking on the edge of this ravine, where you can’t see your hand before you!”

“Where we cannot see, she can; be quiet, unless you wish to bring some misfortune upon her, and to prevent her from returning to the house, where I am very sure I shall find her as usual.”

Christian was obliged to give up the idea of seeking the seeress, especially as the light of the lantern was scarcely sufficient to show them where to plant their feet, the fog was so impenetrable. Christian helped Olof to guide the horse cautiously to the shore of the lake, and there the lad, who did not seem at all alarmed by their adventures, asked him whether he would get into the sleigh again, and go on to the major’s bostoelle.

“No, no,” said Christian, “I must go to Stollborg. Must I not turn to the right?”

“No,” said Olof, “try to walk forward in a straight line, while you count three hundred steps. If you take two steps more and don’t come to the rock, you have gone wrong.”

“And what must I do then?”