It was night; the white heads of the glaciers looked down like pale
watchers into the silent and sleeping Trafoy Thal. There it lay, deep
in the shadows of the sheltering mountain walls, the lonely little
valley. Fragments and boulders of fallen rocks strewed the earth--a sea
of stones--and only here and there a red glow shone in the darkness,
the light of the smelting furnaces of which several were scattered
about; not a living creature was to be seen far and near.
Tired to death and with bruised feet the lonely couple toiled through
the stony chaos towards the still invisible green nook, where the
miraculous waters of the three Holy Wells take their rise.
"Do you see anything?" asked Donatus in a weary tone, "all is so
still--"
"I see nothing far and wide," answered the child.
"Beata," said Donatus, "if she is not here either!--" he broke off, the
terrible thought choked his utterance.
And on they went again. He listened for the least sound that might
betray the presence of a travelling encampment and she strained her
keen sight for his sake; but sharp as were her eyes, quick as was his
ear, there was nothing to be seen, nothing stirring. They had traversed
the whole valley.
"I can hear the rush of water, are we not near the Holy Wells?" asked
Donatus.
"Yes, here we are," said Beata, trembling as if she feared to tell him.
"And there is no one to be seen?"
"No one," she said hardly audibly.
"All merciful God!--and I can go no farther." Donatus sank to the
ground on the spot where he was standing, and hid his face in his
clasped hands.
"Oh, good God! what misery!" lamented the girl. "Lie here a while, I
will go back to the smelting houses, and get some news of the Duchess."
"Beata, you can walk no farther," sighed Donatus.
"For you I can do anything," she said boldly and steadily, and soon the
blind man lost the sound of her steps in the distance. An endless term
of waiting in motionless patience ensued, and the agonised watcher felt
the dull silence around like the influence of a petrifying basilisk,
slowly tormenting its victim to death. He listened and listened, and
yet could hear nothing but the singing of the blood in his ears, the
ceaseless trickle of the three streams close at hand, and the distant
thunder of the waterfalls that fling themselves from the precipices of
the Königspitze. From time to time his thoughts became confused; he
heard the noisy travelling-train of the Duchess approaching, he called
to her what his errand was, but she did not hear, he could not make
himself intelligible and he tried to scream but he could not. The
horses went over him, he felt their trampling feet, then he started up
and felt all round him; the hard stones on which he was lying had
bruised him all over, and the tramp of horses that he had fancied he
heard was no more than the roar of the water. All was silent, and all
remained silent. Then again a dread came over him lest Beata should
never return, some harm might have befallen the child among the
smelters--a half wild crew--and he, a miserable mere shade of a man, he
could not save her, he must depend for succour on a weak and helpless
woman. He loathed himself; could God take delight in such a miserable
cripple? "Wretch, blind feeble wretch--die!" he groaned, and his limbs
shook with fever. "Son of all misfortune, what are you alive for? That
you may scatter abroad the seeds of misery which you bear in your
bosom--" and then again fear for the child overcame him, and he shouted
to the night, "Beata, Beata, where are you?" till once more his
consciousness was clouded.
At last she bent over him, and softly called his name.
"Is it you, Beata?" he cried, starting up, and his trembling arms
clasped her slender form as though he thought she might be a dream and
would melt away. His hair clung to his brow, his breath came quickly,
his face was flushed with incipient fever. Beata saw in a moment that
he was ill, very ill.
"My dear master--I have brought a boy, the smelter's son from the hut
out yonder, and he will help me to carry you under his father's roof,
so that you may get some rest."
Donatus staggered to his feet. "No--no--I cannot rest--the Duchess,
where is the Duchess?" he cried.
"We shall never catch her up, my poor master," said Beata hesitatingly.
"She set out at night on account of the heat--she has been gone an
hour, and no one can tell me where."
"An hour!" shrieked Donatus. "That was the hour of my temptation--that
was the hour that I wasted dreaming in the wood--the hour I let you
sleep because as you slept your breath kept me spell-bound, and I
forgot everything--everything depended on that one hour, and now it is
lost--all lost--by my fault." He stood tottering and tried to take a
few steps. "After her--I must go after her--"
"How can you, my dear master--consider, they are on horseback and have
an hour's start of us. Besides you are ill and cannot stir from the
spot."
"Oh Lord God! work a miracle--Thou hast done so many for others--do one
for us! Help me, bear me up--we shall overtake them--only go on, go
on!" he panted; and he sank into the arms of Beata and the boy. "The
clouds, the clouds, they are strong enough, they will bear me--no,
stop, I am going too fast--Heaven and earth! I am giddy--do not let me
fall."
"Oh, dear master--!" Beata burst into tears and sank on her knees under
her heavy burden, resting his head in her lap. The boy, a smutty fellow
with dull, staring eyes, stood by stupidly looking on.
"Go and fetch your father to help us," said Beata.
The boy shook his head. "Father cannot leave the ore till the furnace
is tapped," he said.
"Well, go and beg him to come as soon as he can," and the boy slowly
strolled away.
The towering peaked walls of the Ortler--Madatsch, and the glaciers of
Trafoy--stared pitilessly down on the forsaken pair--there was not a
projecting rock, not a cave that could offer shelter to the sick man.
They stood up appallingly bare and steep and almost perpendicular, like
giant walls built up to protect the world's Holy of Holies. And there
it was too--that Holy of Holies. The three Holy Wells poured out in the
moon-shine like rivulets of light, from the hearts of the wooden images
of the Virgin mother, the Redeemer and the Baptist, which were
protected by a little wooden structure which might well afford shelter
to the sick man also. There--if she could only get him there; and she
whispered in his ear, imploring and urging him till at last he heard
her and began to move.
"Dear master--if you could only go a few steps farther--there flows the
holy water--that will make you well--"
The sick man caught her words. "Where--where?" he said.
"Come--only come, I will help you up--there, now one step--one more--we
are there now." With a tremendous effort she had got him there, and she
let him softly slide down on to the soft ground under the shrine in
front of the Madonna.
"You are kneeling before our Mother Mary," she whispered reverently,
and she bathed his brow and eyes with the miraculous water.
"Oh, Holy Virgin! have mercy upon us," she prayed, and she held up the
folded hands of the blind man who no longer had strength enough to
raise them in prayer.
"Have mercy upon us!" he stammered, after her "_Rosa mystica,
maris stella, stella matutina_"; his feeble lips went through the
thousand-times repeated rosary, and then his head sank back in the
girl's lap, and he lost consciousness.