CHAPTER XIII.

Back to her Father.

In Wally's room, on Wally's bed, lay Joseph, stretched out, insensible. All was silent and still around him; she had sent every one away, she knelt by the bed, she hid her face in her convulsively clasped hands, and prayed.

"Oh, Lord God!--my God! my God! have mercy and let him live; take from me everything--everything--but let him live. I'll ask no more of him, I'll shun him--I'll leave him to Afra even--only he must not die!" And then she stood up again and made fresh bandages for his head where the blood flowed from a gaping wound, and for his breast that had been torn by the crag, and threw herself upon him as though with her body she would close those portals through which his life was streaming away.

"Oh, thou poor lad! thou poor lad! so stricken and brought down--oh, the sin of it--the sin of it! Wally, Wally, what hast thou done? Should thou not sooner have struck a knife into thine own heart--sooner have stood by at Afra's wedding, then gone home quietly and died, than have laid him there to see him perish like cattle that the butcher has felled?"

Thus she lamented out loud whilst she bound his wounds, turning against herself with the same anger with which she had been used to revenge herself on others. She would have torn her heart out with her own hands if she could, in the wild and frenzied remorse that had seized her. Just then the door opened softly. Wally looked round in astonishment, for she had forbidden any one to disturb her. It was the cure of Heiligkreuz. Wally stood before him as before her judge, pale, trembling in her very soul.

"God be praised!" cried the old man, "he is here then." He went up to the bed, looked at Joseph, and felt him. "Poor fellow," he said, "you have been roughly handled."

Wally set her teeth to keep herself from crying out at these words.

"How did they get him up again?" asked the priest, but Wally could not answer.

"Well, thank God, He has averted the worst in His mercy," continued the cure. "Perhaps he will get well, and you will then at least have no murder on your conscience, though before the eternal judge the intention is as bad as the deed."

Wally tried to speak.

"I know everything," he said with severity; "Vincenz came to me when he fled, and confessed all--your love and his jealousy. I refused him absolution, and sent him to join the Papal army; there he may earn God's forgiveness by good service to the Holy Father, or expiate his crimes by death. But what shall I say to thee, Wally?" He looked at her sadly and piercingly with his shrewd eyes.

Wally clasped her hands before her face. "Oh!" she cried aloud, "none can punish me with so bitter a punishment as I have brought on myself. There he lies dying, whom I loved best in all the world, and I have to tell myself that I did it. Can there be greater misery than that? Needs there anything more?"

The priest nodded his head. "This then is what you have done--you have become a rough piece of wood, fit to slay men with! It has happened as I told you; you have resisted the knife of God, and now the Lord casts you on one side and leaves the hard wood to burn in the fire of repentance."

"Ay, your reverence, it is so, but I know of water that will quench that fire. Into the Ache I will fling myself if Joseph dies--then all will be at an end."

"Alas, poor fool! do you think that is a flame that earthly water can quench? Do you really think that, with your earthly body, you can drown your immortal soul? That would burn in the tormenting flame of eternal remorse, even if all the seas in the world were poured upon it."

"What shall I do then?" said Wally gloomily; "what can I do but die?"

"Live and suffer: that is nobler than death."

Wally shook her head. Her dark eyes looked vaguely before her. "I cannot--I feel it--I cannot live, the phantom maidens thrust me down--all has happened as they threatened me in my dream: there lies Joseph crushed and broken, and I must follow him; it is fated so, and it must happen so, none can prevent it."

"Wally, Wally!" cried the priest, clasping his hands in horror, "what are you saying? The phantom maidens? What phantom maidens? In Heaven's name! do we live in the dark heathen times when men believed that evil spirits made sport of them? I will tell you who the phantom maidens are:--your own passions. If you had learnt to tame your own wild unbridled will, Joseph would never have fallen over the precipice. It is easy to lay the blame of your own evil deeds to the influence of hostile powers. For that it is that our Lord came to us, to teach us to acknowledge that we bear the evil in ourselves, and must fight with it. If we control ourselves, we control the mysterious powers which drove even the giants of the past to destruction, because with all their strength they had no moral power to withstand them. And with all your strength, your hardness and your daring, you are but a pitiful, weak creature, so long as you do not know what every homely, simple handmaid of the Lord performs, who, every day in the strict discipline of her cloister-life, lays on God's altar the dearest wish of her heart, and esteems herself blessed in the sacrifice! If you had only one glimmer of such greatness in your soul, you need have no more fear of the 'phantom maidens,' and your foolish dreams would no longer direct your destiny, but your own clear and conscious will. Reflect for once whether that were not nobler and happier."

Wally leaned against the bed-post; she felt as if raised to a newly-awakened and noble consciousness. "Yes," she said shortly and decidedly, and crossed her arms on her heaving breast, "your reverence is right--I understand, and I will try."

"I will try!" repeated the old priest, "once before you said that to me--but you did not keep your word."

"This time, your reverence, I will keep it," said Wally, and the priest silently admired the expression with which she spoke the simple words.

"What security will you give me?" he said.

Wally laid her hand on Joseph's wounded breast, and two large tears sprang to her eyes; no spoken vow could have said more. The wise priest was silent also, he knew no more was needed.

The wounded man turned in his bed and muttered some unintelligible words. Wally made him a fresh bandage for his head; he half-opened his eyes, but closed them again and fell back in a death-like slumber.

"If only the doctor would come!" said Wally, seating herself on a stool by the bed. "What o'clock may it be?"

The priest looked at his watch. "What time did you send for him?" he said.

"About five o'clock."

"Then he cannot be here yet. It is only ten o'clock, and it is quite three hours to Soelden."

"Only ten o'clock," Wally repeated in a low voice, and the good priest was filled with pity to see her sit there so quietly, her hands folded in her lap, whilst her heart beat with anguish so that it could be heard.

He bent over the sick man, and felt his head and his hands, "I think you may be easy, Wally," he said, "he does not appear to me like a dying man."

Wally sat motionless, gazing fixedly before her. "If the doctor comes and says that he'll live, I care for nothing more in this world," she said.

"That is right, Wally, I am glad to hear you say that," said the cure approvingly, "and now relate to me how it was that Joseph was saved--that will help to shorten the time till the doctor comes."

"There's not much to tell," answered Wally shortly.

"Nay, it is a noble deed that does honour to the men of the Sonnenplatte," said the priest, "were you not there?"

"Oh yes!"

"Well then, be less short in your answers. I spoke with no one on the way, and have heard nothing about it. Who fetched him up from the ravine?"

"I!"

"God be gracious! You, Wally? you yourself?" cried the old man, staring at her with astonishment.

"Yes--I!"

"But how can you have done it?"

"They let me down by a rope, and I found him fixed between a rock and the trunk of a fir-tree; if the tree had not been there he must have fallen into the torrent, and no one'd ever have seen him alive again."

"Child," cried the old man, "that is a great thing to have done."

"May be so," she answered quietly, almost hardly, "as I'd had him thrown yonder, it was for me to fetch him up again."

"You are right,--that was only fair," said the priest, controlling his emotion with difficulty. "But it is not the less an act of atonement that may take some part of the guilt from your hapless soul."

"That is all nothing," said Wally, shaking her head. "If he dies, it's I that have murdered him."

"That is true, but you gave a life for a life. You risked your own to save his; you have atoned as far as was in your power for the crime you have committed--the issue is in God's hands."

Wally heaved a deep sigh; she could not take in the comfort that lay in the priest's words. "The issue is in God's hand," she repeated out of the depths of her burdened heart.

The eye of the priest rested on her with content; God would not reject this soul, in spite of its great faults and imperfections. Never yet, old as he was, had he met with her equal in power for good, as for evil. He looked at the wounded man who unconsciously clenched his fist in defiance. It almost angered him that he should despise the noblest gift that earth can offer man--a devoted love; that through his indifference he should have had it in his power to harden a heart so noble in its nature and capable of such high-minded sacrifice. "You stupid peasant-lout," he muttered between his teeth.

Wally looked at him enquiringly: she had not understood.

There was a knock at the door, and at the same moment the doctor entered the room. Wally trembled so that she was obliged to hold by the bedpost. Here was the man on whose lips hung redemption or condemnation. A crowd of people pressed in after him to hear what he would say, but he soon turned them all out again. "This is no place for curiosity; the sick man must have the most perfect quiet," he said decidedly, and shut the door. He was a man of few words. Only, when he took the bandage from the sick man's head, "There has been foul play again here," he muttered.

Wally stood white and silent as a statue. The cure purposely avoided looking at her; he feared to disturb her self-possession. The examination began; anxious silence reigned in the little chamber. Wally stood by the window with averted face while the surgeon examined the wounds and used his probe. She had picked up something from the ground which she held convulsively clasped between her hands, and pressed again and again to her lips. It was the thorn-crowned head of the Redeemer that she had broken in the night. "Forgive, forgive," she prayed, pale and quivering in her deadly anguish. "Have mercy on me--I deserve nothing--but let Thy mercy be greater than my sin."

"None of the wounds are mortal," said the doctor in his dry way. "The fellow must have joints like an elephant."

Then Wally's strength went from her. The chord, too long and too highly strung, gave way, and loudly sobbing she threw herself on her knees by the bed, and buried her face in Joseph's pillows. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!"

"What is the matter with her?" asked the doctor. The priest answered him by a sign that he understood.

"Come, collect yourself," he said, "and help me to put on the bandages."

Wally sprang up at once, wiped the tears from her eyes, and lent a helping hand. The priest observed with secret pleasure that she assisted the doctor as carefully and skilfully as a sister of charity; she did not tremble, she wept no more, she showed a steady and quiet self-control--the true self-control of love. And withal there was a glory on her brow, a glory in the midst of sorrow, so that the priest hardly knew her.

"She will do yet--she will do," he said joyfully to himself, like a gardener who sees some treasured faded plant suddenly put forth new shoots.

When the bandages were all fixed and the doctor had given his further orders, the priest went out with him, and Wally remained alone with Joseph. She sat down on the stool by the bed and rested her arms on her knees. He breathed softly and regularly now, his hand lay close to her on the counterpane--she could have kissed it without moving from her place. But she did not do it, she felt as if now she dared not touch even one of his fingers. If he had lain there dying or dead, then she would have covered him with kisses, as heretofore, when she believed him lost; the dead would have belonged to her--on the living she had no claim! He had died to her in the moment when the doctor had said he would live, and she buried him with anguish as for the dead in her heart, while the message of his resurrection came to her as the message of redemption. So she sat long, motionless by the side of the bed with her eyes fixed on Joseph's beautiful, pale face--suffering to the utmost what a human soul can suffer--but suffering patiently. She neither sighed nor lamented now, nor clenched her fist as formerly, in anger at her own pain; she had in this hour learnt the hardest of all lessons--she had learnt to endure. What sort of right had she, the guilty one, to complain--what better did she deserve? How could she dare still to wish for him, she who had almost been his murderess? How could she dare even to raise her eyes to him? No, she would bewail herself no more. "Thou dear God, let me expiate it as Thou will--no punishment is too great for such as I am--" So she prayed, and bowed her head humbly on her clasped hands.

All at once the door was flung open, and with a cry of "Joseph, my own Joseph!" a girl rushed in, past Wally, and threw herself weeping upon Joseph; it was Afra. Wally had started up as if a snake had touched her: for an instant the battle raged within, the last and hardest fight. She grasped herself, as it were, with her own arms, as though to keep herself back from falling upon the girl and tearing her away from the bed--from Joseph. So she stood for a time, while Afra sobbed violently on Joseph's breast; then her arms fell by her side as if paralyzed, and beads of cold sweat stood on her brow. What would she have? Afra was in her rights.

"Afra," she said in a low voice, "if thou truly loves Joseph, be still and cease these cries--the doctor says he must have perfect quiet."

"Who can be still that has a heart, and sees the lad lie there like that?" lamented Afra, "it's easy for thee to talk, thou doesn't love him as I do. Joseph is all I have--if Joseph dies I am all alone in the world! Oh Joseph, dear Joseph--wake up, look at me--only once--only one word!" and she shook him in her arms.

A low groan escaped from Joseph's lips and he murmured a few unintelligible words.

Then Wally stepped forward and took Afra gently but firmly by the arm; not a muscle of her pale face moved.

"I have this to say to thee, Afra: Joseph is here under my protection, and I am responsible for all being done according to the doctor's orders; and this is my house that thou'rt in, and if thou will not do what I tell thee, and leave Joseph in peace, as the doctor wishes, I'll use my right and put thee out at the door, till thou's come to thy senses and art fit to take care of him again--then," her voice trembled, "I'll leave him to thee."

"Oh, thou wicked thing, thou--" cried Afra passionately, "thou'd turn me out of the house because I weep for Joseph? Dost think everyone has so hard a heart as thou, and can stand there looking on like a stone? Let go my arm! I've a better right than thou to Joseph, and if thou doesn't like to hear me cry, I'll take him up in my arms and carry him home--there at least I can weep as much as I please. I'm only a poor servant-maid, but if I'd to pay for it by serving all my days for nothing, I'd sooner nurse him in my own little room than let myself be shown the door by thee--thou haughty peasant-mistress!"

Wally let go of Afra's arm; she stood before her with a white face, and with marks of such deadly suffering round her closed lips, that Afra cast down her eyes in shame, as if she divined how unjust she had been.

"Afra," said Wally, "thou's no need to show such hatred, I don't deserve it of thee; for it was for thee I fetched him out of the abyss--not for me,--and it is for thee he will live, not for me! Look here, Afra, only an hour ago I'd sooner have throttled thee than have left thee by his bedside--but now all is broken, my spirit, and my pride, and--my heart," she added low to herself "And so I'll make way for thee willingly, for he loves thee, and with me he'll have nought to do. Stay thou with him in peace--thou need not take away the poor sick man. Sooner will I go myself. You two can stay at the farm so long as you will--I will account for it with him to whom it belongs now. And I will take care of you in everything, for you are both of you poor, and cannot marry if you have nothing. And so perhaps some day Joseph will bless the Vulture-maiden--"

"Wally, Wally," cried Afra. "What art thou thinking of? I pray thee--oh Joseph, Joseph--if only I might speak!"

"Let it be," said Wally, "keep thyself quiet--for love of Joseph, keep thyself quiet. And now let me go in peace; torment me no more, for go I must. Only one thing I pray thee in return for what I've done for thee, take good care of him. Promise me thou will, that I may go with an easy mind."

"Wally," said Afra entreatingly, "don't thou do that, don't go away! What will Joseph say when he hears we've driven thee out of thy own house?"

"Spare all words, Afra," said Wally firmly, "when once I have said a thing, it stands, come what may."

She went to the chest, and took out a change of clothes, which she tied together in a bundle and threw over her shoulder. Then from a box she took a bundle of linen. "See, Afra," she said, "here is old and fine linen that thou'll need for bandages, and here is coarser to make lint, which the doctor will want when he comes this evening. Look, there are scissors--thou must cut it into strips the length of my finger. Dost understand? And every quarter of an hour, thou must put a fresh bandage on his head to draw the heat out. Tell me, can I trust thee not to forget? Think what it would be if, after I have fetched him out of the ravine, I should find that thou--thou had been careless in nursing him--here, at his bedside. And see, he must always lie with his head high, that the blood may not go to it--and shake the pillows up often. That is all, I think, now--I know of nought else. Ah, my God, thou'll not be able to lift him and lay him down as I do--thou hasn't got the strength. Get Klettenmaier to help thee; he is trustworthy. Now I leave him in thy hands--" Her voice failed her, her knees trembled, she could hardly hold the bundle that she carried. She threw a last glance at the wounded man: "God keep thee!" she said, and left the room.

Outside, the priest was talking with Klettenmaier. Wally went up to them.

"Klettenmaier," she shouted in the old man's ear, "Go in and help Afra to mind Joseph; Afra is there now in my place. Joseph will stay at the farm, and I am going away. You are all to treat Joseph as if he were the master, and to obey him as if I were by, till I come back; and woe to you, if he has to complain of ought. Let all the servants know!"

Klettenmaier had understood, and shook his head, but he did not venture to make any remark. "Good-bye, mistress," he said, "Come back again soon."

"Never!" said Wally softly.

Klettenmaier went into the house; Wally stood before the priest, and met his questioning glance. "Now nought is my own that my heart clings to, but the vulture," she said sadly, as if exhausted. "But him I cannot give up--he must come with me. Come, Hansl." She beckoned to the bird, which sat puffed up and drowsy on a railing; he came flying towards her with difficulty.

"Thou must learn to fly again now, Hansl," she said, "we're going away."

"Wally," said the priest, much concerned, "what do you mean to do?"

"Your reverence, I must go away--Afra is in there! Is it not plain that I cannot stay? I will do anything, I will all my life go bare and homeless, and wander through the country, and leave everything to him--everything--but I cannot look on at his Afra's love--only that I cannot--cannot bear!" She set her teeth to keep back the springing tears.

"And for his sake you will really give up house and home? Do you know what you are doing, my child?"

"The farm no longer belongs to me, your reverence. Since yesterday I've known that it belongs to Vincenz, whenever he puts in his claim. But my money, what I have besides, shall be for Joseph. If he is crippled by my fault, and cannot earn his bread,--it is my accursed guilt, and I must provide for him."

"What, is it possible," cried the priest, "that your father disinherited you of house and home?"

"What do I care for house and home? The home I belong to is always ready," said Wally.

"Child," said the old man, much disturbed, "you would not do yourself an injury?"

"No, your reverence, never now. I see now how right you are in everything, and that God Almighty will not be defied by us. Perhaps, when He sees that I truly repent, He'll have pity on me and grant peace to my weary soul."

"Now blessed be the hour, hard though it may have been, that broke your proud spirit! Now Wally, you are truly great! But where are you going, my child? Will you go to some charitable refuge? Shall I take you to the Carmelites?"

"No, your reverence, that would never suit the Vulture-maiden. I cannot be shut up in a cell between walls--under God's free sky, as I have lived, will I die--I should feel as if God could not come through such thick walls. I'll repent and pray as if I were in a church, but I must have the rocks and the clouds about me, and the wind whistling in my ears, or I couldn't get on at all--you understand, do you not?"

"Yes, I understand, and it would be folly to try to dissuade you. But where then are you going?"

"I'm going back to my father Murzoll--there is now my only home."

"Do as you will," said the priest. "Go in God's name, my child--I can part from you in peace, for wherever you go now--it is back to your Father!"