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.