It was twelve o'clock in the night. Wanda von Szalras paced the
Rittersaal with feverish steps and limbs which, whilst they quivered
with fear, knew no fatigue. It had been nine in the morning when
Greswold and the servants, having searched in vain, came at last to her
with the tidings that her first-born son was lost; his bed empty, his
clothes gone, his little sword away from its place. All the day she had
sought herself, and organised the search of others with all the energy
and courage of her race. She had not given way to the despair which had
seized her, but in her own soul she had said: 'Does fate chastise me
thus for my own cruelty? I have shrunk from their sweet faces because
they were like his. For two long months I exiled them, I thrust them
from my presence and my heart. I have been ashamed of them. Does God
punish me through them? Shall I lose my children, too? Can I forgive
myself? Have I not even wished them unborn? Oh, my Bela, my darling, my
first-born! Yes, you are his, but more than all, you are mine!'
When night closed in, and all the many separate search-parties
returned, bringing no news of him, she thought that she would lose her
reason. All had been done that could be done; the men on the estates
were scattered far and wide. It was known that there were snow-storms
on the heights; the white fury had even at eventide descended to the
lower ground, and the terraces and gardens shone white as the lights of
the heavens fell upon them. Every now and then there came the report
of a gun on the hills; the men were firing in hope that the child, if
lost, might hear the shots. The evening passed on and midnight came,
and no one knew where Bela was in those vast forests, those immense
hills, all hidden in the impenetrable darkness. She saw him at every
moment lying white and cold in some hollow in the snow; she saw the
cruel winds blow his curls, his fair limbs stiffen. Every year the
winter and the mountains took their toll of lives.
She had known nothing of the purport of the child's disappearance;
she had been left to every vague conjecture with which her mind could
torture her. The whole household and all the woodsmen and huntsmen had
scoured the hills far and wide, and the whole day and night had gone by
with no tidings, no result. Sleep had visited no eyes at Hohenszalras;
from its terraces the snow-storm and hurricanes beating around the head
of Glöckner were discernible by the agitation of the clouds that hid
one-half the heights.
Gela had stayed up beside her, his little pale face pressed to the
window frame, his terrified eyes staring into the gloom which near at
hand grew red with the beacon fires.
As midnight tolled from the clock tower he came to her, and touched her
hand.
'Mother,' he whispered, 'I dared not say it before, but I must say it
now. I think--I think--Bela is gone to try and bring _him_ home.'
'Him!' she echoed, while a thrill ran like fire and ice together
through her, from head to foot. 'You mean--your father?'
'Yes.'
She was silent. Her breast heaved.
'What makes you say that?' she asked, at last.
'Bela thought of nothing else all this year and last year, too,' said
Gela, in a hushed voice. 'He was always talking of it. When he was
smaller he thought of riding all over the world. Yesterday he was so
strange, and when we went to bed he kissed me ever so many times; and
he prayed a long, long while. And for nothing less would he have taken
the sword, I think. And--and I heard the men saying to-day that our
father was somewhere near; and I think that Bela might have heard that,
and so have gone to bring him home.'
'To bring him home!'
The words, uttered in his son's soft, grave, flute-like voice, pierced
her heart. She could not speak.
'Will he rob me even of my first-born?' she thought, bitterly.
At that moment Greswold entered. Gela, looking in his face, gave a
shout of joy.
'You have found my Bela!' he cried, flinging his arms about the old man.
'Yes, your brother is safe, quite safe! My Lady hears?'
She heard, and the first tears that she had ever shed for years rushed
to her eyes. She drew Gela, with a passionate gesture, to her side,
and falling on her knees beside the Imperial throne in the Kittersaal,
praised God.
Then, when she rose, she cried in very ecstasy:
'Fetch him; bring him at once!--oh, my child! Who found him? Who has
him now? If a peasant saved his life, he and his shall have the finest
of all my land in Iselthal in grant for ever and for ever!----'
Greswold looked at her timidly; then said:
'May I speak to your Excellency alone?'
She touched Gela's hair tenderly.
'Go, my darling, and bear the good news to our reverend mother. You
know how she has suffered.'
The boy obeyed and left the hall. She turned to Greswold.
'Tell me all, now.'
The old man hesitated, then took his courage up and answered.
'My Lady--his father found your son.'
She put her hand out and clenched the arm of the throne as if to save
herself from falling.
'His father!' she echoed. 'How came he there? Answer me, with the
truth, the whole truth.'
'My Countess,' said Greswold, while his voice shook, 'your husband has
dwelt amidst the Glöckner slopes almost for the last three years. When
he left here he remained absent awhile, but not long. He has lived in
utter solitude. Few knew it. The few who did kept his secret. I was one
of these. He had corresponded with me ever since he left your house.
You may remember being angered?'
She made a gesture of assent.
'Go on,' she murmured. 'He found my child, you say?'
'He found Count Bela; yes. It seems he had come as near here as some
nine miles eastward; near the hut which your Excellency built, not
very long after your marriage, on the crest of the Adler Spitze, in
consequence of the fatal accident to the Bavarian pedlars. He knew
nothing of Count Bela's loss, but there he saw a young boy threatened
by an eagle, and shot the bird. The fog was even then coming on upon
the heights. He found his son insensible from fatigue, and cold, and
terror, and bore him in his arms until he reached the refuge. He had
been near it all the time, but as the mist deepened and the snow fell
he lost his way, and must have gone round and round on the same path
for hours. We were, in sheer despair, mounting towards the Adler
Spitze, though we did not believe the child could have possibly got so
far, when we met one of the keepers descending with the news. The storm
is at its height; we could only grope our way, and we missed it many
times, so that we have been four mortal hours and more coming downward
those seven miles. The keeper said that my lord desired you should hear
at once of the safety of the child, but not of his own presence in the
hut. But I felt that your Excellency should be told of all.'
'You were right. I thank you. You have been ever faithful to me and
mine.'
She stretched out her hand to him in dismissal, and sought a refuge in
her oratory.
She felt that she must be alone.
She almost forgot the safety of her first-born in the sense that
his father was near her. She fell on her knees before the Christ of
Andermeyer and praised heaven for her child's preservation, and with a
passion of tears besought guidance in her struggle with what now seemed
to her the long and cruel hardness of her heart.
To hear thus of him whom once she had adored, blinded her to all save
the memories of the past, which thronged upon her. If he had repented
so greatly was it not her obligation to meet his penitence with pardon?
It would be bitter to her to live out her life beside one whose word
she would for ever doubt, whose disloyalty had cut to the roots of the
pride and purity of her race. Nevermore between them could there be
the undoubting faith, the unblemished trust, which are the glorious
noonday of a cloudless love. She might forgive, but never, never, she
thought, would she be able to command forget fulness.
But for that very reason, maybe, would her duty lie this way.
The knowledge of those lonely desolate years, passed so near her,
whilst he kept the dignity and the humility of silence, touched all the
generosity of her nature. She knew that he had suffered; she believed
that, though he had betrayed her, he had loved and honoured her in
honesty and truth. One lie had poisoned his life, as a rusted nail
driven through an oak tree in its prime corrodes and kills it. But he
had not been a liar always. She had made his life her own in bygone
years: was she not bound now to redeem it, to raise it, to shelter it
on her heart and in her home? Was not the very shrinking scorn she felt
for his past a reason the more that she should bend her pride to union
with him? She had thought of her life ever as the poet of the flower:
the ever sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands,
Felt safe unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold.
Had there been egotism in the purity of it, self-love beneath love of
honour? Had she treasured the 'grain of gold' in her hands rather with
the Pharisee's arrogance of purity than with the true humility of the
acolyte?
She kneeled there before the carven Christ in an anguish of doubt.
He had given her back her first-born. Should she be less generous to
him?
Should she for ever arrogate the right of judgment against him, or
should she stretch the palm of pardon even across that great gulf of
wrong dividing them as by a bottomless pit?
Tears came like dew to her parched heart. It was the first time that
she had ever wept since the night when she had exiled him. Three long
barren years had drifted by; years cold and dark and joyless as the
winter days which bound the earth under bands of iron, and let no
living thing or creeping herb rejoice or procreate.
When she rose from her knees her mind was made up, a great peace had
descended on her soul. She had forgiven her own dishonour. She had laid
her heart bare before God and plucked her pride up from its bleeding
roots.
All the early hours of her love recurred to her with an aching
remembrance, which had lost its shame and was sweet in its very pain.
His crime was still dark as the night in her eyes, but her conscience
and her awakening tenderness spoke together and pleaded for her pardon.
What was love if not one long forgiveness? What raised it higher than
the senses if not its infinite patience and endurance of all wrong?
What was its hope of eternal life if it had not gathered strength in it
enough to rise above human arrogance and human vengeance?
'Oh, my love, my love!' she cried aloud. 'We will live our lives out
together!'
Her resolve was taken when she left her oratory and traversed her
apartments to those of the Princess Ottilie, who met her with eager
words of joy, herself tremulous and feeble after the anxious terrors of
the past day. Some look on Wanda's face checked the utterance of her
gladness.
'Is it not true?' she said in sudden fear. 'Is the child not found?'
'Yes; his father has found him,' she answered simply. 'Dear mother,
long you have condemned me; judged me unchristian, unmerciful, harsh. I
know not whether you were right, or I. God knows, we cannot. But give
me your blessing ere I go out into the night. I go to him; I will bring
him here.'
The other gazed at her doubting, incredulous, touched to a great hope.
'Bring him?' she echoed, 'your child?'
'My husband.'
'You will do that?--ah! mercy is ever blessed; the grace of Heaven will
be with you!'
She sighed as she raised her head.
'Who can tell? Perhaps my harshness will make heaven harsh to me.'
When she came forth again from her own rooms she was clothed in a
fur-lined riding-habit.
'Bid them saddle a horse used to the hills,' she said, 'and let Otto
and two other men be ready to go with me.'
'It is a fearful night,' Greswold ventured to suggest. 'It will be as
bad a dawn. It snows even here. We met the keeper almost midway up the
Adler Spitze, yet it took us four hours to make the descent.'
She did not even seem to hear him.
'May I follow?' he asked her humbly. She gave a sign of assent, and
stood motionless and mute; her thoughts were far away.
When the horse was brought she went out into the night. The storm of
the upper hills had descended to the lower; the wind was blowing icily
and strong, the snow was falling fast, but on the lower lands it did
not freeze as it fell, and riding was possible, though at a slow pace
from the great darkness. She knew every step of the way through her own
woods and up to the spurs of the Glöckner. She rode on till the ascent
grew too steep for any animal; then she abandoned the horse to one of
her attendants, took her alpenstock and went on her way towards the
Adler Spitze on foot, the men with their lanterns lighting the ground
in front of her. It was wild weather and grew wilder the nearer it grew
to dawn. There was danger, at every step from slippery frozen ground,
from thin ice that might break over bottomless abysses. The snow was
driven in her face, and the wind tore madly at her clothes. But she was
used to the mountains and held on steadily, refusing the rope which
Otto entreated her to take and permit him to fasten to his loins. They
kept to the right paths, for their strong lights enabled them to see
whither they went. Once they crept along a narrow ledge where a man
could barely stand. The ascent was long and weary in the teeth of the
weather; it tried even the stout jägers; but she scarcely felt the
force of the wind, the chill of the black frost.
No woman but one used as she was to measure her strength with her
native Alps could have lived through that night, which tried hardly
even the hunters born and bred amidst the snow summits. By day the
ascent hither was difficult and dangerous after the summer months, but
after nightfall the sturdiest mountaineer dreamed not of facing it. But
on those heights above her, in the dark yonder, beneath the clouds,
were her husband and her child. That knowledge sufficed to nerve her
limbs to preternatural power, and the men who followed her were loyal
and devoted to her service; they would have lain down to die at her
word.
When her body seemed to sink with the burden of fatigue and cold, she
looked up into the blackness of the air, and thought that those she
sought were there, and fancied that already she heard their voices.
Then she gathered new strength and crept onward and upward, her hands
and feet clinging to the bare rock, the smooth ice, as a swallow clings
to a house wall.
She had issued from a battle more bitter with her own soul; and had
conquered.
At last they neared the refuge built by and named from her, and set
amidst the desolation of the snow-fields. She signed to her men to stay
without, and walking onward alone drew near the heavy door.
She opened it a little way, paused a moment, drawing her breath with
effort; then looked into the cabin. It was a mere hut of two chambers
made of pitch pine, and lighted by a single window. There was no light
but from the pallid day without, which had barely broken. Before the
fire of burning logs was a nest of hay, and in it lay the child,
sleeping a deep and healthful sleep, his hands folded on his breast,
his face flushed with warmth and recovered life, his long lashes dark
upon his cheeks.
His father was stretched still as a statue on the truckle-bed of the
keeper who watched beside him.
The day had now broken, clear, pale, cold; the faint rose of sunrise
was behind the snow peaks of the Glöckner, and an _alpenflühevogel_
was trilling and tripping on the frozen ground. From a distant unseen
hamlet far below there came a faint sound of morning bells.
She thrust the door further open and entered. She made a gesture to
the keeper, who started up with a low obeisance, to go without. She
fastened the latch upon him; then, without waking the sleeping child,
went up to her husband's bed. His eyes were closed; he did not notice
the opening and shutting of the door; he was still and white as the
snow without; he looked weary and exhausted.
At sight of him all the great love she had once borne him sprang up in
all its normal strength; her heart swelled with unspeakable emotion;
she stood and gazed on him with thirsty eyes tired of their long denial.
Stirred by some vague sense of her presence near him he looked up and
saw her; all his blood rushed into his face. He could not speak. She
stooped towards him and laid her hand gently upon his.
'I am come to thank you.'
Her voice trembled.
He gave a restless sigh.
'Ah! for the child's sake,' he murmured. 'You do not come for me!----'
She hesitated a moment, then she gathered all her strength and all her
mercy.
'I come for you,' she answered in low clear tones. 'I will forget all
else except that I once loved you.'
His face grew transfigured with a great joy.
He could not speak; he gazed at her.
'You were my lover, you are my children's father. You shall return to
us,' she murmured, while her voice seemed to him heard in some dream
of Heaven. 'Your sin was great, yes; but love pardons all sins, nay,
effaces them, washes them out, makes them as though they were not.
I know that now. What have not been my own sins?--my coldness, my
harshness, my cruel, unyielding--pride? Nay, sometimes I have thought
of late my fault was darker than your own; more hateful in God's sight.'
'Noblest of all women always!' he said faintly. 'If it be true, if it
be true, stoop down and kiss me once again.'
She stooped, and touched his lips with hers.
The child slept on in his nest of hay before the burning wood. The
silence of the high hills reigned around them. The light of the risen
day came through the small square window of the hut. Outside the bird
still sang.
He looked up in her eyes, and his own eyes smiled with celestial joy.
'I am happy!' he said simply. 'I have lived amongst your hills almost
ever since that night, that I might see your shadow as you passed, hear
the feet of your horses in the woods. The men were faithful; they never
told. Kiss me once more. You believe, say you believe, _now_, that I
did love you though I wronged you so?'
'I do believe,' she answered him. 'I think God cannot pardon me that I
ever doubted!'
Then, as she saw that he still lay quite motionless, not turning
towards her, though his eyes sought hers, a sudden terror smote dully
at her heart.
'Are you hurt? Cannot you move?' she whispered. 'Look at me; speak to
me! It is dawn already; you shall come home at once.'
He smiled.
'Nay, love, I shall not move again. My spine is hurt, not broken, I
believe--but hurt beyond help; paralysis has begun. My angel, grieve
not for me, I shall die happy. You love me still! Ah, it is best thus;
were I to live, my sin and shame might still torture you, still part
us, but when I am dead you will forget them. You are so generous, you
are so great, you will forget them. You will only remember that we were
happy once, happy through many a long sweet year, and that I loved
you;--loved you in all truth, though I betrayed you!'
The hunters bore him gently down in the cool pale noontide along the
peaceful mountain side homeward to Hohenszalras, and there, after
eleven days, he died.
The white marble in its carven semblance of him lies above his grave
in the Silver Chapel; but in the heart of his wife he lives for ever,
and with him lives a sleepless and an eternal remorse.
THE END.