CHAPTER III.

Outcast.

"Up on the Hochjoch!" It was a fearful sentence. For in the inhospitable regions of the Hochjoch there is none of the joyous life of the lower pastures, where the sweet aromatic air resounds with the tinkle of bells, with the calls of the herdsmen and mountain girls--here are eternal winter, and the stillness of death. Sadly and gently as a mother kisses the pale forehead of her dead child, so the sun kisses these cold glaciers. Scanty meadows, the last clinging vestiges of organic life penetrate, as though lost, the wintry desert, till the last shoot perishes, the last drop of rising sap is frozen; it is the slow extinction of nature. But the frugal peasant utilises even these niggard remains; he sends his flocks up to graze on what they may find there, and the straying sheep tempted to reach after a plant which has wandered hither from a milder region, not unfrequently falls into some crevice in the ice.

Here it was that the child of the proud chief peasant, whose possessions extended for miles in every direction and reached up even to the clouds, must spend her bloom in everlasting winter. While on the lower earth May-breezes were blowing, the rising sap opening every bud, the birds building their nests, and all things stirring in joyous unison, she must take the herdsman's staff and quit the spring-meadows for the desert of the glaciers above; and only when autumn winds should be sighing and winter preparing to descend into the valley, might she also return thither, as though she had been sold to winter, life and limb.

No one of the peasants of the neighbourhood would send his shepherds up there, but they let out the meadows to the Schnalser people who lay nearer to the ridge on the farther side, and they sent a few half-wild, weather-beaten fellows, who clothed themselves in skins and lived miles asunder in stone cabins like hermits; and now Stromminger, who hitherto had always leased his pastures, condemned his own child to lead the life of a Schnalser herdsman. But from Wally's lips came no complaint; she prepared herself in silence for her mountain journey. Early in the morning, long before sunrise, whilst her father, the men, and the maids were still sleeping, Wally set out from her father's house for the mountain. Only old Luckard, "who had known it all beforehand from the cards" and who had passed the night with Wally helping her make up her bundle, stuck a sprig of rue in her hat as a farewell-token, and went part of the way with her. The old woman wept as if escorting the dead to the grave. Klettenmaier came behind with the pack. He was a faithful old servant, the only one that had grown grey in Stromminger's service, because he was deaf and did not hear when his master stormed and swore. This was the guide her father had selected for Wally. Luckard went with her till the road began a steep ascent. Then she took leave of them and turned back, for she had to be home in time to prepare the first meal.

Wally climbed the hill and looked down upon the road along which the old woman went crying in her apron, and even her heart almost failed her. Luckard had always been good to her; though she was old and feeble, at least she had loved Wally. Presently the old woman turned once more and pointed above her head. Wally's eyes followed the direction of her finger, and behold! something floated towards the mountain heights clumsily, uncertainly through the air, like a paper kite when the wind fails, now flying on a little way, then falling, and with difficulty rising again. The vulture with his clipped wings had painfully fluttered the whole way after her; but now his strength seemed to give way and he could only scramble along, flapping his pinions.

"Hansl!--oh, my Hansl!--how could I forget thee!" cried Wally, springing like a chamois from rock to rock the shortest way back to fetch the faithful bird. Luckard stood still till Wally once more reached the narrow path, then greeted her again as if after a long separation. At last Hansl too was reached, and Wally took him in her arms and pressed him to her heart like a child. Since last evening the bird was so identified in all her thoughts with Joseph, that it seemed almost as if it were a dumb medium between him and her; or as though Joseph had changed into the vulture, and in holding Hansl she clasped him in her arms.

As an ardent faith creates its own visible symbols to bring near to itself the unattainable and the remote and to seize the intangible, and as to faith a wooden cross and a painted image become miraculous--so ardent love creates its own symbols, to which it clings when the beloved one is far off, unattainable. Even so Wally derived now a wonderful consolation from her bird. "Come, Hansl," she said tenderly, "thou shall go with me up to the Ferner; we two will never be parted more."

"But, child," said old Luckard, "thou never can take the vulture up there, he'd die of hunger. Thou's no meat for him up there, and creatures like him eat nothing else."

"That is true," said Wally sadly, "but I can't part from the bird; I must have something with me up there in the wilderness. And I can't leave him alone at home either; who'd look after him and take care of him when I'm away?"

"Oh! for that thou may be easy," cried Luckard, "I'll look after him well enough."

"Ay, but he'll not follow thee," said Wally; "thou'rt not used to his ways."

"Nay, let me have him," said Luckard. "All this long time I've taken care of thee, surely I can take care of the bird. Give him me here, I'll carry him home," and she pulled the vulture out of Wally's arms. But it would not do; the noble bird set himself on the defensive, and pecked so angrily at Luckard that she was frightened, and let go. It was of no use for her to think of taking him home with her.

"Thou sees," cried Wally joyfully, "he'll not leave me; I must keep him, come what will. I was once called the Vulture-maiden and the Vulture-maiden I must still remain. O, my Hansl, as long as we two are together, we shall want for nothing. I'll tell thee what, Luckard, I'll let his wings grow now, he'll not fly away from me, and then he can find food for himself up yonder."

"God bless thee, then, take him with thee. I'll send thee up some fresh and salt meat by the boy, thou can give him that till he can fly abroad." And so it was settled. Wally took the vulture under her arm like a hen, and parted from Luckard who began to cry afresh. But Wally, without further delay, went up the mountain again after the guide, who had meanwhile gone on ahead.

In two hours they reached Vent, the last village before entering the realms of ice. Wally mounted the hill above Vent; here began the path to the Hochjoch. Once more she paused, and leaning on her Alpenstock looked down on the quiet, still half-dreaming village, and over the lake beyond, and the last houses of the Oetz valley, to the farms of Rofen which, lying almost at the foot of the ever-advancing, ever-receding Hochvernagtferners, seemed defiantly to say to it, "Crush us!"--even as Wally yesterday had defied her father. And like her father the Hochvernagt each time withdrew its mighty foot, as though it could not bear to destroy the home of its brave mountain children, "the Kloetze of Rofen."

While she thus stood, looking down on the utmost dwellings of man before mounting to the desert beyond the clouds, there rose from the church-tower of Vent the sound of the bell for matins. Out of the door of the little parsonage, where the buds of the mountain-pink tapped the window in the morning breeze, came the priest and went with folded hands to his pious duty in the church. Here and there the wooden houses opened their sleepy eyes, and one figure after another coming out, stretched itself and took its way slowly to the church. Carefully and losing no tone by the way, the wind-winged angels bore the pious sound up the slope, and it rang in Wally's ear like the voice of a child that prays. And as a child arouses its mother by its sweet lisping, so the peal from Vent seemed to have aroused the sun. He opened his mighty eye, and the rays of his first glance shot over the mountains, an immeasurable shaft of flame that crowned the eastern heights. The dim grey of the twilight sky suddenly lighted up to a transparent blue, each moment the beam grew broader in the heavens, and at length mounted in full splendour over the cloud-veiled peaks, and turned his flaming countenance lovingly to earth. The mountains threw off their misty shrouds, and bathed their naked forms in streams of light. Deep down in the ravines the clouds heaved and rolled, as though they had sunk down thither from the pure heaven above. In the air was a rushing as of wild hymns of joy, and the earth wept tears of blissful waking, like a bride on her wedding morning; and like the tears on the eyelashes of the bride, the dewdrops quivered joyfully on each blade and spray. Joy lay everywhere,--above on the mountain tops where the dazzling rays were mirrored in the farseeing eyes of the chamois,--below in the valley where the lark soared, warbling, from amongst the springing corn.

Wally gazed intoxicated on the awakening world, with eyes that could hardly take in the whole shining picture in its pure morning beauty. The vulture on her shoulder lifted its wings as though longingly to greet the sun. Below in Vent, meanwhile, all was awakening to new life. From where Wally stood she could see everything distinctly in the clear morning light. The lads kissed the maidens by the well. White smoke curled upwards from the houses, vanishing without a trace in the serene spring air, as a sorrowful thought loses itself in a happy soul. On the green in front of the church the men assembled in white Sunday shirt-sleeves, their silver-mounted pipes in their mouths. It was Whit-Monday, when all make holiday and rejoice. Oh! holy Whitsuntide! just such a day must it have been when the Spirit of the Lord fell on the disciples and enlightened them with divine illumination, that they might go forth into all the world and preach the Gospel of Love, preach it to open hearts, touched by the happy spring--for, in the spring-tide of the year appeared also the spring-tide of man--the religion of love. For her only who stood up there on the mountain was there no Whitsuntide, no revelation of love. In her no persuasive voice had quickened the gospel into life. A meaningless letter it had remained to her, a buried seed which needed the vivifying ray to make it spring up in her heart. No dew of peace fell on her from the deep blue heavens; the bird of prey on her shoulder was to her the only messenger of love.

At last Wally broke away from her dreamy contemplation. She gave one farewell glance to the merry, noisy villagers, then she turned to climb the silent snow fields of the Hochjoch--in banishment.