Saint Michael

Michael waved his hand to the priest from the threshold of the door; Wolfram followed him, and in a few minuses both were lost to sight outside.

The Eagle ridge had, in fact, sent forth one of the spring storms, so justly dreaded in all the country round. Those who shared the forester's superstition might well believe that a rabble of fiends from the pit were abroad dealing destruction about them. There was a wild uproar in the air, a crashing and howling in the forest, while the moon, veiled by the rack of clouds, shed over earth and sky a weird ghostly light more dreary than any darkness. Wolfram crossed himself from time to time when the wind shrieked its loudest, but he tramped bravely onward through the storm,–it needed a man of his physical vigour and one familiar with the mountains to make headway on such a night and in such a place.

Both men reached the road to the mountain chapel without discovering a trace of those whom they were seeking; here they separated.

Michael, in spite of his companion's remonstrances, pressed on to the Eagle ridge, which began here, while Wolfram turned aside towards his old domain about the forest lodge. It was agreed that he who first discovered the missing ones should conduct them to the mountain chapel and there await daybreak. In any case the two men were to meet there at dawn, in order, if their search had been fruitless, to wait for the villagers from Saint Michael, and to continue the quest by daylight. These were Captain Rodenberg's orders.

"I wonder if he will ever get back again!" muttered Wolfram, pausing for a short breathing-space in the midst of the forest. "It is sheer madness to go among the cliffs of the Eagle ridge; but he'll climb it if he does not find the Countess below. I'll wager my head on that! No use to gainsay him; on the contrary, he orders me round as if he were my lord and master. I wonder why I put up with it, and why on earth I came with him. His reverence is right; it is madness to climb the mountains on such an infernal night, when not a cry could be heard, no signal be seen. We don't even know which way to go, but Michael doesn't care for that. And I thought him cowardly! To be sure he always, as a boy, wanted to run into the midst of the Wild Huntsman's crew to see them closer,–it was only men that he ran away from. Now he seems to have stopped running away from them, but he orders them about like a lord. And you have to obey,–there's no help for it,–just like my old master the Count."

He heaved a sigh, and was about to march on. Just then there was a slight lull in the blast, and the forester gave a long, loud shout, as he had been doing at intervals. This time, however, he started and listened, for he seemed to hear something like the sound of a human voice. Again Wolfram shouted with all the force of his lungs, and from no great distance came the wailing tones, "Here! Help!"

"At last!" exclaimed the forester, turning in the direction whence came the voice. "It is not the Countess, I can hear that; but where one is the other must be."

Giving repeated calls, he hurried on, the answers coming more and more distinctly, until in about ten minutes he came upon Hertha's attendant, who no sooner saw him than he threw his arms about him, clinging to him like a drowning man.

"Take care, you'll upset me!" growled Wolfram. "Did you not hear me shout before? For two hours we have been hallooing in every direction. Where is the Countess?"

"I don't know; I lost her an hour ago."

The forester roughly shook the man off the arm to which he was still clinging: "What? Lost? Thunder and lightning, man! what do you mean? Just when I think I have found the Countess, you turn up without her. Why did you not stay with her, as was your bounden duty?"

"It was not my fault," wailed the man. "The fog–the storm–and the horses have gone too!"

"Hold your tongue about the horses!" Wolfram interposed, roughly. "Men's lives are at stake, and you tell me nothing that I can understand. How came you here without the Countess?"

It was some time before the exhausted man was able to answer the forester's questions. He was an old family servant, faithful and trustworthy, and had therefore been chosen by the Countess to attend her daughter on this expedition, but he had completely lost his presence of mind in the face of the present peril, and had been of no service whatever to his mistress.

As Michael had surmised, they had taken the wrong road, and had discovered their mistake only upon reaching the mountain chapel. Then they had turned their horses' heads; but the moon, which until then had shone brightly, began to be obscured, and their ignorance of the country was disastrous. In vain did they turn in every direction; they could not find the road again and were completely lost. The horses, bewildered and nettled by the aimless wandering to and fro, finally refused to stir a step. There was nothing for it but to alight.

Then the tempest began; clouds gathered from all quarters. The Countess sent her attendant back a short distance for the horses, which had been left at the foot of a declivity, in a last hope that by trusting to their instinct the way might be found; but the servant had no sooner left her than the gathering mist closed about him, obscuring everything. He could not find the horses, nor make his way back to his mistress. His cry of distress was drowned by the roar of the tempest, and he had probably wandered away from her in his attempt to find her. How he had gone astray he could not tell.

"That is the worst of all!" exclaimed the forester. "The Countess is now entirely alone, and very likely has wandered towards the Eagle ridge, as Captain Rodenberg supposed. I should like to know why he chooses to run blindly into all kinds of danger after her? What we have to do, however, is to get to the mountain chapel as soon as possible. Come along! On the way we can go on shouting; it may do some good."

The storm raged with undiminished fury. Black clouds swept overhead and enveloped the mountains, breaking from time to time into a host of misty phantom shapes. And there was a roaring, a shrieking, and a howling, as of a myriad voices of the night echoing from the air above and from chasm and abyss below.

At the foot of a huge fir, the summit of which soared bare and dead into the air, a female figure was crouching, worn out by fruitless wandering, chilled by the mist and despairing of succour. The delicate child of luxury, whom hitherto the winds of heaven had not been allowed to visit too roughly, had nevertheless bravely confronted a real peril, and had done everything to encourage her attendant while they were together. The trembling old servant could neither advise nor aid his mistress; but he had at least given her a sense of human companionship, and now he had disappeared. No searching for him, no call, was of any avail; she was alone amid the horrors of this night,–entirely alone.

More than an hour had passed thus,–a time which must always be dream-like in her memory. She wandered on and on. Gloomy forests; dark rocky crests reared aloft like phantoms; mountain streams, whose foaming waters gleamed dimly in the fitful glimpses of the moon,–all passed her by, shadowy and indistinct. Like a somnambulist, she wandered on the brink of clefts and abysses, not heeding the perils of a path which she never would have dreamed of traversing in the broad light of day. But at last it came to an end in its upward course, and she could go no farther; she sank down exhausted.

There was a moment's lull in the storm; the clouds broke, and the moon, sailing into the clear space, illumined the scene clearly. Hertha saw that she had reached a narrow rocky eminence, and that an abyss yawned close beside her. Around her was a broken sea of cliffs and rocks, below her was the black night of the forest, and above her soared the dizzy heights of the Eagle ridge, about whose rocky crests the clouds were flying, while the topmost peaks gleamed ghost-like in their robes of snow. The distant muffled roar of the glacier streams fell upon her ear, but only for a few moments. Then the roaring of the wind began afresh, drowning all other sounds; the moon vanished, and the dim, weird twilight fell on all.

The old fir-tree creaks and groans and sways; it seems as if the blast would tear it loose from its rocky bed. Hertha clasps her arms about the trunk, neither moaning nor weeping, but a tremor runs through her entire frame, and there is an icy pressure upon her temples. Her eyes are fixed upon the white gleaming peaks still glistening distinctly, and the old legend recurs to her. From those summits Saint Michael sweeps down at dawn the next day. Cannot the mighty patron saint of her race, the victorious leader of the heavenly host, to whom thousands will pray on the morrow, come to the rescue of a poor child of mortality whose warm young life shudders at the thought of the icy embrace of death? But his dominion begins with the dawn,–it is with the first ray of morning that his sword of flame flashes forth beneficently over the earth; and now night and destruction reign.

A fervent prayer bursts from the poor girl's very soul. Clearly and distinctly the picture rises upon her mental vision: the archangel with the eagle's wings and eyes of flame enthroned above the high altar, surrounded as by a halo by the light of the setting sun, and by her side stands one, strangely like the picture,–one who had once declared to her, 'If my bliss were as lofty and unattainable as the Eagle ridge, I would scale the heights though each step threatened destruction.'

Ah! she knew it was no empty boast. Michael would follow her through peril of all kinds: he would seek her and find her if he knew of her danger; but he now supposed her long since safe at the castle. And yet it seemed to her as if the intense passionate yearning that filled her heart, mind, and soul must draw him to her side, as if he could and would hear the desperate cry that burst from her lips, half a prayer to St. Michael and half a call to him whom she loved: "Michael,–help!"

Surely there was an answering call, distant and faint, but still his voice, and she hears it through the tempest as he has heard hers: "Hertha!" And again it comes louder, and with an exultant sound: "Hertha!"

She rises to her feet and answers. Nearer and nearer sounds the succouring call, until just below her she hears: "What! Up there? Courage, dearest, I am coming."

Then ensue minutes that seem endless. Michael is ascending slowly, laboriously, but at last she sees him; he plants his mountain-staff firmly and swings himself up beside her, clasps her in his arms, and she clings to him as if never to leave him more.

But this blissful moment of forgetfulness is brief: danger still threatens; not an instant must be lost.

"We must go," urged Michael. "The fir is tottering, and may fall at any moment; these clefts are never safe. Come, dearest."

He clasped his arm about her, and she leaned upon him in unquestioning confidence, as he half led, half carried her down the rocky slope. The moon had emerged again, and lighted them on their way, revealing at the same time all the terrors of the path by which Hertha had ascended half unconsciously, and the perils of which were doubled in descending. But not in vain had Michael lived for ten years in these mountains; the man had not forgotten what had been familiar to the boy for whom no rocky summit had been too lofty, no cleft too deep. Thus they made the descent, the abyss close beside them, the wild uproar of the stormy night about them, their hearts filled with an exultant joy that no tempest, no abyss, could affect. At last they reached a place of safety. Michael had kept his word: he had snatched his bliss from the Eagle ridge.

Morning was approaching, and the tempest was subsiding; it no longer raged with savage fury, and the heavens were gradually clearing; the clouds slowly dispersed, and about the mountain-tops the first gray glimmer of dawn appeared.

Michael made a halt as they issued from the rocky gorge. The mountain chapel was almost a mile away, and his exhausted companion was obliged to rest. All peril was past; there was no difficulty about the rest of the way if it were traversed by daylight. He found a shelter for Hertha beneath a protecting rock, where she sat shielded from the wind, while he stood beside her. The young Countess's attire had suffered sadly: her dark wrap was torn and muddy, she had lost her hat, her heavy braids hung loose about her shoulders, as, pale and weary, she leaned her head back against the wall of rock. And yet Michael thought he never had seen her look half so lovely as at this moment,–his love, whom he had battled for and won through storm and tempest.

They had scarcely spoken on the way hither, each step was taken at the risk of life, and now they were still silent, gazing upward at the Eagle ridge, where the gray dawn was beginning to yield to a crimson tint that deepened every moment. At last Michael bent over her and said, gently, "Hertha!"

She looked up at him, and suddenly held out to him both her hands. "Michael, how did you ever find me in those abysses? You could have had no clue to guide you."

He smiled and carried her hands to his lips. "No; but I divined where my Hertha was,–where she must be. And you, too, dearest, knew that I should come to you: you called me before you heard my voice. Now I no longer dread that harsh refusal which fell from your lips yesterday. I have no fear of the promise given by you to one whom you do not love. I have won you from the Eagle ridge, and I shall surely triumph over Raoul Steinrück."

"I can never be his wife!" exclaimed Hertha. "I know now that it is impossible! But do not quarrel with him again, Michael, I implore you. If it is possible–"

"But it is not possible!" Michael gravely interrupted her. "Do not deceive yourself, Hertha; there must come a struggle, probably a break with your entire family, who never will forgive you for dissolving a tie so desired by all of them,–for sacrificing a Count Steinrück to a bourgeois officer. And there is something beside with which they will taunt both you and me,–I told you of it yesterday in the church,–the blot upon my life."

"Your father's memory," she said, softly.

"Yes; they will never cease to remind you that you are giving yourself to the son of an adventurer, whose name is not without stain. I thought to terrify you with this yesterday, but, God bless you! you thought only of my suffering. Nevertheless, shall you be able to endure the shadow upon your life when that name shall be your own?"

His eyes sought hers with a look in them of the old mistrust of the former Countess Steinrück with her haughty self-consciousness. But the delusive gleam had vanished from the eyes which the boy had pronounced 'beautiful evil eyes,'–they were shining with the clear sunshine of love and happiness.

"Must I repeat to you, then, what I said to you yesterday when you spoke of your mother?–'I, too, can follow him whom I love even into misery and disgrace,–ay, even to ruin.'"

He clasped her in his arms, and she rested there as she had done before on the Eagle ridge, behind which there was a dark crimson glow,–a flaming herald of the morning as it mounted aloft. The snowy summits began to blush with rosy tints, and the clouds still lying on the horizon were all 'in crimson liveries dight.'

"The day is breaking," said Michael, pressing his lips again and again upon the 'red fairy gold' of the head resting on his breast. "As soon as you are able we will set out upon our homeward way. I will take you to your mother to-day."

"My mother!" exclaimed Hertha, regretfully. "Oh, how could I so far forget her! God grant I have been nearer death than she! My mother would give ear to my entreaties, I know, but she submits blindly in everything to my uncle Michael, and there will be a severe struggle with him."

"Leave him to me," Michael interposed. "Immediately upon my return I will inform the general that you wish to annul your contract with Raoul, that–"

"No, no!" she remonstrated. "I must bear the first brunt of his anger. You do not know my guardian."

"I know him better than you think; this will not be our first encounter. If any one can measure himself against the general it is I,–his near of kin."

Hertha looked at him in bewilderment. "What do you mean? I do not understand."

He released her from his clasping arms, and, gazing into her eyes, said, "I have intentionally delayed a disclosure that must be made to you, dearest. I could not make it until I was sure that you were mine, even although you saw in me only the son of a homeless adventurer. I am no alien to you or to your people, nor was my father. Did you never hear of the general's other child, his daughter?"

"Certainly,–Louise Steinrück. She was once, I think, on the eve of betrothal to my father; but she died very young,–scarcely eighteen."

"You have been told, then, that she died. I thought so. She did die for her father, her family, who cast her off when she married the man of her choice. She was my mother."

The young Countess looked at him in utter amazement. "Is it possible? You a Steinrück?"

"No; a Rodenberg, Hertha. Do not forget that I have no share in the name of my mother or of her family, nor do I wish to have."

"And your grandfather? Does he know–"

"Yes; but he sees in me only the son of an outcast father, whose name, even, must not be mentioned in his presence; and now that I shall snatch you from his heir, Raoul, he will oppose us to the utmost. But what matters it? You are mine of your own free will, and I shall know how to guard my treasure."

He did, indeed, look ready to defy the world for her sake. Then he clasped her hand in his to guide her back to that world which lay in the depths below them, still woven about by mist and twilight. Up above, the snowy summits were bathed in crimson light; the eastern skies gleamed and flamed; there was a flash, as of the waving of a sword, and the sun rose slowly, red and glowing. Born of the tempest, the young day gave greeting to the earth. On the brilliant beams of the morning sun Saint Michael descended from the Eagle ridge.

The Countess Steinrück was indeed seriously ill, so seriously that by the advice of the physician she was kept in ignorance of the peril through which her daughter had passed. Hertha, upon her arrival, simply told her mother that the storm had detained her in Saint Michael for the night, and thus the Countess was not even aware of the meeting with Captain Rodenberg.

About a week later, in one of the reception-rooms of the castle, the priest of Saint Michael was sitting with his brother, who had lately arrived, and had sent a messenger to summon Valentin. The conversation between the brothers was evidently of a serious nature, and Professor Wehlau said at last, "Unfortunately, I can give you no hope. This last attack of the disease from which the Countess has suffered for so many years, is a mortal one. Her condition is, happily, free from pain, but it is hopeless. She may live four or five weeks longer; she will never witness her daughter's marriage."

"I feared this when I saw the Countess last," rejoined Valentin. "But it is a comfort to have you here. I know what a sacrifice you make in coming in the midst of your university course, and when you have so entirely given up practice."

Wehlau shrugged his shoulders: "What else could I do? My relations with the Steinrücks are almost as old and as intimate as your own; and then Michael, who brought the news of the Countess's illness, gave me no peace. He urged me so strongly that at last I consented to come. I thought it odd, for he knows the Countess only in society, but he insisted that I should yield to her request and come."

The priest was evidently interested to hear this, but he merely asked, "And you brought Hans with you? I shall see him, then."

"Certainly; he will go to you in a day or two. He of course stays with our relatives in Tannberg, while I take up my abode here on the Countess's account. The boy's whims are unaccountable. Early in April he began to talk of going to the mountains to sketch, and I had to convince him that it would be folly, since the mountains were then deep in snow. And when I made up my mind to come here, he suddenly discovered that it was necessary he should go to Tannberg for 'relaxation.' He must need it after all the flattery and nonsense that have been put into his head of late, and which my sister-in-law will doubtless keep fresh in his memory."

"But you brought him?"

"Brought him? As if I had anything to do with it! Oh, my gentleman is quite independent now. I dare not do anything to clip the wings of such a genius, however ridiculous may be the flights it undertakes. He came with me, and comes over here every day with the greatest regularity to inquire after me and the Countess. I can't understand the fellow any more than I can Michael. They could not show more tender interest in the Countess if she were their own mother. And she is in very good hands with the country physician here, and that young god-daughter of hers,–what is her name?"

"Gerlinda von Eberstein."

"Ah, yes! A queer little thing, who scarcely opens her lips, and makes the most remarkable courtesies. But she is a capital nurse, with her quiet, gentle ways. Countess Hertha is too agitated and anxious beside a sick-bed."

They were interrupted. The physician had arrived and wished to speak with his distinguished colleague. Wehlau rose and left the room. Then the servant added that the forester, Wolfram, was below, desiring to see his reverence. Valentin told the man to admit him, and upon his entrance said, kindly, "You here still, Wolfram? I thought you had gone home some days ago."

"I am going to-morrow," the forester replied. "My business is finished in Tannberg; I wanted to ask once more after the gracious Countess. The servants told me that your reverence was here, and so I thought I–" He stammered and hesitated and seemed unable to proceed.

"You wished to bid me good-bye," Valentin interposed.

"Yes, I wanted that, and something else besides. I've been worried about the thing for a week, your reverence, and haven't breathed a word of it to a living soul; but I can't help it, I must tell your reverence."

"Tell me, then. What is it?"

Wolfram glanced towards the door, and then, approaching the priest, said, almost in a whisper,–

"'Tis Michael,–Captain Rodenberg, I mean. The next thing he'll snatch the sun from the sky if he takes it into his head to want it. What he's at now is not much less. It will make no end of a fuss in the Count's family. The general will rage and scold, and then Michael will be down upon him just as he was before. Oh, he'll stop at nothing."

"Are you talking of Michael?" Valentin asked, bewildered. "He went to town long ago; my brother has just brought me a message from him."

"That may be. I only know about the night of the storm. When I took the servant whom I found to the mountain chapel, as had been agreed, I left him there and went some distance towards the Eagle ridge just at day-dawn, in hopes of finding some trace of the captain or the Countess. I really did not think that I should ever see either of them again alive. But after a while I saw them both on a rock, and they were very much alive: he kissed her!"

"What!" exclaimed the pastor, recoiling.

"No wonder your reverence is shocked. I was too, but I saw it with my bodily eyes. He, Michael,–Captain Rodenberg I mean,–had his arm around the Countess's waist, and he kissed her. I thought the world had come to an end."

Valentin would probably have thought the same had he not been in some measure prepared for the revelation; therefore he was more troubled than surprised as he said, more to himself than to the man, "It has come to a declaration, then. I feared this."

"And the young Countess seemed very well pleased; she made no objection at all. They neither of them saw or heard me, but I plainly heard him say 'My Hertha!'–quite as if she belonged to him; and she betrothed to the young Count! Now, I ask your reverence, what is to be done? That boy was always at some mischief. And he's at it still. He'll never be content with a kiss; he'll marry the Countess right out of the midst of her ancestors and her millions. If they won't give her to him he'll shoot the young Count, send the general and all the family to the right about, turn every one out of doors, and carry off 'his Hertha' from the castle, just as he got her away from the Eagle ridge, and marry her. Ah, your reverence, I know him!"