CHAPTER II. GOING TO THE NEW HOME
CHAPTER III. UNCLE
CHAPTER IV. BABETTE
CHAPTER V. THE RETURN HOME
CHAPTER VI. A VISIT TO THE MILL
CHAPTER VII. THE EAGLE'S NEST
CHAPTER VIII. I HOLD FAST TO BABETTE
CHAPTER IX. THE ICE-MAIDEN
CHAPTER X. THE GODMOTHER
CHAPTER XII. THE POWERS OF EVIL
CHAPTER XIII. IN THE MILLER'S HOUSE
CHAPTER XIV. VISIONS IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION
THE FELLOW-TRAVELER
THE OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP
THE GARDEN OF PARADISE
RUDY AND BABETTE;
OR,
THE CAPTURE OF THE EAGLE'S NEST.
CHAPTER I.
LITTLE RUDY.
Let us now go to Switzerland, and see its wonderful mountains, whose
steep, rocky sides are covered with trees. We will climb up to the
fields of snow, and then make our way down to the grassy valleys, with
their countless streams and rivulets, impetuously rushing to lose
themselves in the sea. The sunshine is hot in the narrow valley; the
snow becomes firm and solid, and in the course of time it either
descends as an avalanche, or creeps along as a glacier. There are two
of these glaciers in the valleys below the Schreckhorn and the
Wetterhorn, near the long village of Grindelwald. They are a
remarkable sight, and therefore many travelers from all countries come
in the summer to visit them: they come over the high mountains covered
with snow, they traverse the deep valleys; and to do this they must
climb, hour after hour, leaving the valley far beneath them, till they
see it as if they were in an air-balloon. The clouds hang above them
like thick mists over the mountains, and the sun's rays make their way
through the openings between the clouds to where the brown houses lie
spread, lighting up some chance spot with a vivid green. Below, the
stream foams and blusters; but above it murmurs and ripples, and looks
like a band of silver hanging down the side of the rock.
On either side of the path up the mountain lie wooden houses. Each
house has its little plot of potatoes; and this they all require, for
there are many children, and they all have good appetites. The
children come out to meet every stranger, whether walking or riding,
and ask him to buy their carved wooden châlets, made like the houses
they live in. Be it fine or be it wet, the children try to sell their
carvings.
About twenty years since you might have seen one little boy standing
apart from the others, but evidently very desirous to dispose of his
wares. He looked grave and sad, and held his little tray tightly with
both hands as if he was afraid of losing it. This serious look and his
small size caused him to be much noticed by travelers, who often
called him and purchased many of his toys, though he did not know why
he was so favored. His grandfather lived two miles off among the
mountains, where he did his carving. He had a cabinet full of the
things he had made. There were nut-crackers, knives and forks, boxes
carved with leaves and chamois, and many toys for children; but little
Rudy cared for nothing so much as for an old gun, hanging from a
rafter in the ceiling, for his grandfather had told him it should be
his own when he was big enough to know how to use it.
Though the boy was little, he was set in charge of the goats; and Rudy
could climb as high as any of his flock, and was fond of climbing tall
trees after birds' nests. He was brave and high-spirited, but he never
smiled except when he watched the foaming cataract, or heard the
thundering roar of an avalanche. He never joined in the children's
games, and only met them when his grandfather sent him to sell his
carvings; and this employment Rudy did not much like. He would rather
wander alone amongst the mountains, or sit by his grandfather while he
told him stories of former ages, or of the people who lived at
Meiningen, from whence he had come. He told him they had not always
lived there, but had come from a distant northern country called
Sweden. Rudy took great pride in this knowledge; but he also learnt
much from his four-footed friends. He had a large dog, named Ajola,
who had been his father's; and he had also a tom-cat who was his
particular friend, for it was from him he had learnt how to climb.
"Come with me on the roof," the cat said to him; for when children
have not learnt to talk, they can understand the speech of birds and
animals quite as well as that of their father and mother; but that is
only while they are very little, and their grandfather's stick seems
as good as a live horse, with head, legs, and tail. Some children lose
this later than others, and we call them backward. People say such
funny things!
"Come with me, little Rudy, on the roof," was one of the first things
the cat had said which Rudy had understood: "it is all imagination
about falling; you don't fall if you are not afraid. Come; put one of
your paws so, and the other so! Feel for yourself with your fore-paws!
Use your eyes and be active; and if there's a crevice, just spring and
take firm hold, as I do!"
Rudy did as he was told, and you might often have seen him sitting
beside the cat on the top of the roof; afterwards they climbed
together to the tops of the trees, and Rudy even found his way to the
rocky ledges which were quite out of the cat's reach.
"Higher! higher!" said the trees and the bushes; "see how we can
climb. We stretch upwards, and take firm hold of the highest and
narrowest ledges of the rocks."
So Rudy found his way to the very top of the mountain, and often got
up there before sunrise; for he enjoyed the pure invigorating air,
fresh from the hands of the Creator, which men say combines the
delicate perfume of the mountain herbs with the sweet scent of the
wild thyme and the mint found in the valley. The grosser part of it is
taken up by the clouds, and as they are carried by the winds, the
lofty trees catch the fragrance and make the air pure and fresh. And
so Rudy loved the morning air.
The happy sunbeams kissed his cheek, and Giddiness, who was always
near, was afraid to touch him; the swallows, who had built seven
little nests under his grandfather's eaves, circled about him and his
goats, singing: "We and you! and you and we!" They reminded him of his
home, his grandfather, and of the fowls; but although the fowls lived
with them in the same house, Rudy had never made friends with them.
Although he was such a little boy, he had already traveled a
considerable distance. His birthplace was in the canton of Vallais,
whence he had been brought over the mountains to where he now lived.
He had even made his way on foot to the Staubbach, which descends
through the air gleaming like silver below the snow-clad mountain
called the Jungfrau. He had also been to the great glacier at
Grindelwald; but that was a sad story. His mother lost her life at
that spot; and Rudy's grandfather said that it was there he had lost
his happy spirits. Before he was a twelvemonth old his mother used to
say that he laughed more than he cried, but since he had been rescued
from the crevasse in the ice, a different spirit seemed to have
possession of him. His grandfather would not talk of it, but every one
in that district knew the story.
Rudy's father had been a postilion. The large dog, which was now lying
in the grandfather's room, was his constant companion when traveling
over the Simplon on his way to the Lake of Geneva. Some of his
relations lived in the valley of the Rhone, in the canton of Vallais.
His uncle was a successful chamois-hunter and an experienced guide.
When Rudy was only a twelvemonth old his father died, and his mother
now wished to return to her own relations in the Bernese Oberland. Her
father lived not many miles from Grindelwald; he was able to maintain
himself by wood-carving. So she started on her journey in the month of
June, with her child in her arms, and in the company of two
chamois-hunters, over the Gemmi towards Grindelwald. They had
accomplished the greater part of their journey, had passed the highest
ridge and reached the snow-field, and were now come in sight of the
valley where her home was, with its well-remembered wooden houses, but
still had to cross one great glacier. It was covered with recent snow,
which hid a crevasse which was much deeper than the height of a man,
although it did not extend to where the water rushed below the
glacier. The mother, while carrying her baby, slipped, fell into
the cleft, and disappeared from sight. She did not utter a sound, but
they could hear the child crying. It was more than an hour before they
could fetch ropes and poles from the nearest house, and recover what
seemed to be two corpses from the cleft in the ice. They tried every
possible means, and succeeded in restoring the child, but not his
mother, to life; so the old man had his daughter's son brought into
his home, a little orphan, the boy who used to laugh more than he
cried; but he seemed to be entirely changed, and this change was made
down in the crevasse, in the cold world of ice, where, as the Swiss
peasants think, lost souls are imprisoned until Doomsday.
[Illustration: She started on her journey, with her child in her arms,
and in company of two chamois-hunters.]
The immense glacier looks like the waves of the sea frozen into ice,
the great greenish blocks heaped together, while the cold stream of
melted ice rushes below towards the valley, and huge caverns and
immense crevasses stretch far away beneath it. It is like a palace of
glass, and is the abode of the Ice-Maiden, the Queen of the Glaciers.
She, the fatal, the overwhelming one, is in part a spirit of the air,
though she also rules over the river; therefore she can rise to the
topmost peak of the snow mountain, where the adventurous climbers have
to cut every step in the ice before they can place their feet; she can
float on the smallest branch down the torrent, and leap from block to
block with her white hair and her pale blue robe flying about her, and
resembling the water in the beautiful Swiss lakes.
"I have the power to crush and to seize!" she cries. "They have robbed
me of a lovely boy whom I have kissed, but have not killed. He now
lives among men: he keeps his goats amid the hills, he ever climbs
higher and higher away from his fellows, but not away from me. He
belongs to me, and I will again have him!"
So she charged Giddiness to seize him for her, for the Ice-Maiden
dared not venture among the woods in the hot summer time; and
Giddiness and his brethren--for there are many of them--mounted up to
the Ice-Maiden, and she selected the strongest of them for her
purpose. They sit on the edge of the staircase, and on the rails at
the top of the tower; they scamper like squirrels on the ridge of the
rock, they leap from the rails and the footpath, and tread the air
like a swimmer treading water, to tempt their victims after them and
dash them into the abyss. Both Giddiness and the Ice-Maiden seize a
man as an octopus seizes all within its reach. And now Giddiness had
been charged to seize little Rudy.
"I seize him!" said Giddiness; "I cannot. The miserable cat has taught
him all her tricks. The boy possesses a power which keeps me from him;
I cannot seize him even when he hangs by a branch above the precipice.
I should be delighted to tickle his feet, or pitch him headlong
through the air; but I cannot!"
"We will succeed between us," said the Ice-Maiden. "Thou or I! I! I!"
"No, no!" an unseen voice replied, sounding like distant church bells;
the joyful singing of good spirits--the Daughters of the Sun. These
float above the mountain every evening; they expand their rosy wings
which glow more and more like fire as the sun nears to setting over
the snowy peaks. People call it the "Alpine glow." And after sunset
they withdraw into the snow and rest there until sunrise, when they
again show themselves. They love flowers, and butterflies and human
beings; and they were particularly fond of Rudy.
"You shall never catch him--you shall never have him," said they.
"I have captured bigger and stronger boys than he," said the
Ice-Maiden.
The Daughters of the Sun now sang a song of a traveler whose cloak was
carried away by the storm: "The storm took the cloak but not the man.
You can grasp at him, but not hold him, ye strong ones. He is
stronger, he is more spiritual than we are! He will ascend above the
sun, our mother! He has the power to bind the winds and the waves, and
make them serve him and do his bidding. If you unloose the weight that
holds him down, you will set him free to rise yet higher."
Thus ran the chorus which sounded like distant church bells.
Each morning the sunbeams shone through the little window of the
grandfather's house and lighted on the silent boy. The Daughters of
the Sun kissed him, and tried to thaw the cold kisses which the Queen
of the Glaciers had given him, while he was in the arms of his dead
mother, in the deep crevasse, whence he had been so wonderfully
rescued.