Yes, he said that and he said other things, too. He told her how much he cared for her and that he had come to Interlaken for her sake, and not to prove his skill as a marksman.
While he talked Babette grew very quiet; his confession was almost more than she could bear.
As they walked the sun set and the snow-capped “Maiden,” framed by the forest-clad mountains, showed herself in all her glory. For a moment everyone stood still and looked at the majestic sight, even Rudy and Babette.
“Nowhere is it as beautiful as here!” said Babette.
“Nowhere!” echoed Rudy, who was looking at Babette. “Tomorrow I must leave,” he said a little while later.
“Come and visit us in Bex,” she whispered. “I am sure it will please my father.”
CHAPTER FIVE: THE WAY HOME
How many things Rudy had to carry on his way home the next day! There were three silver cups, two quite good rifles, and a silver coffeepot that would come in handy when he settled down. And he was carrying something else that was even more valuable, something that was not a burden and seemed almost to carry him over the high mountains.
The weather was far from pleasant. It was gray, rainy, and raw. Heavy clouds rested on the mountains like veils of grief, obscuring their peaks. From far below, Rudy heard the woodman’s ax, and the trees as they rolled down the mountainside looked like toothpicks, though many were tall and stout enough to become the masts of ships. The Lütschine River continuously struck its single chord, and the wind sang its monotonous song as the clouds sailed by overhead.
Just ahead of Rudy a girl suddenly appeared, walking in the same direction as he was, on her way across the mountains. Her eyes seemed to have a strange power. Rudy found himself looking into them; they were clear as glass and fathomlessly deep.
“Have you a sweetheart?” Rudy asked, for those in love can think only of love.
“I have no one!” she exclaimed, and laughed, but something in her voice made him think that she was lying. “Let’s not take the longest way,” she said. “Here we must go more to the left; it’s a shorter way.”
“Yes, to the bottom of an ice crevasse,” said Rudy. “If you don’t know the mountains better than that, you shouldn’t play guide.”
“Oh, I know the way,” she replied. “I have my wits about me. You seem to have left yours down in the valley. Watch out, when you are in the mountains you must think about the Ice Maiden. Men believe that she is no friend of human beings.”
“I am not afraid of her,” Rudy said with confidence. “She had to let me go when I was child; now that I am a man she will not dare to touch me.”
It grew darker. There was a heavy rain that finally turned to snow, a white blinding world.
“Come, take my hand. I will help you climb,” the girl offered, and stretched out her hand toward him. Her fingers were cold as ice.
“You help me!” Rudy exclaimed. “I do not need a girl’s help to climb.”
He walked faster, away from her. The snowstorm swept around him like a blanket. Through the whirling of the wind he could hear a girl’s laughter and singing. “She must be a servant of the Ice Maiden,” he thought; and he remembered the tales he had heard from the guides on his journey across the mountains when he was a boy.
It almost stopped snowing. He had climbed above the clouds. Still he heard laughter and singing below him, but the voices did not sound human.
When Rudy reached the top of the pass, where the way begins to descend into the Rhone Valley, he saw a patch of clear sky in the direction of Chamonix. Two brilliant stars appeared. He thought of Babette and himself, and of how lucky he had been.
CHAPTER SIX: A VISIT TO THE MILL
“You will bring honor to our family. You will rise above both your father and your uncle,” Rudy’s aunt said; and her strange eaglelike eyes gleamed, while she moved her long neck more quickly than usual in the peculiar birdlike way she had. “You are fortunate, Rudy. Come, let me kiss you, for you are as good to me as any son could have been.”
Although he submitted and let his aunt kiss him, Rudy’s expression told that he considered it a duty.
“How handsome you are!” the old woman sighed.
“That’s just something you tell yourself,” he replied, and laughed; but her words had pleased him.
“I’ll repeat it. You are lucky,” his aunt said, and smiled.
“There I agree with you!” Rudy exclaimed, for he was thinking of Babette. Never before in his life had he longed for the valley as he did now. “They must have come home by now. They have probably been home two days already. I must go to Bex.”
When Rudy arrived in Bex he found the miller at home. He even seemed glad to see him and mentioned that he had regards for him from his family in Interlaken. Babette hardly spoke. She seemed to have become so silent, but her eyes talked and their message was eloquent enough for Rudy.
The miller, who was used to being the center of attention, to having people laugh at his jokes and listen to his stories, took an interest in what Rudy had to say. He enjoyed hearing about the life of a hunter, of the difficulties and dangers that one had to endure to hunt the chamois. It was exciting to listen to Rudy tell how he had to make his way along a narrow ledge, high up where the mountainside was a sheer cliff, and how he sometimes had to make use of the bridges nature furnished to cross many a cleft, bridges made only of ice and snow that might give way beneath his foot at any moment, hurling him to his death far below. Rudy looked bold and his eyes shone as he spoke of hunting the chamois. He told, too, about the animal itself: the chamois, that goatlike antelope that lives in the Alps. He described how clever it could be and how courageous it was. He talked of the foehn wind, of avalanches, of landslides that could bury a whole village. And all the while he was speaking he knew that, the better the miller liked his stories, the fonder he would grow of the storyteller.
The miller appeared to be most interested in hearing about buzzards, falcons, hawks, and eagles. Rudy told him about an eagle’s nest. It was not far away in the canton of Valais. It had been built very cleverly, on a tiny ledge underneath an overhanging cliff. In the nest there was a young eagle. Only a few days ago an Englishman had offered Rudy a handful of gold coins for the live eaglet.
“But that’s too dangerous even for me,” laughed Rudy. “That young eagle is quite safe. It would be madness to try to climb up there and get it.”
As the wine flowed freely, tongues were loosened, and the evening seemed very short to Rudy, even though it was after midnight when he walked homeward after his first visit to the mill.
It was a while before the last candle in the miller’s house was put out. From a little window in the roof the parlor cat stepped out for a bit of fresh air, and in the gutter beneath the eaves she met the kitchen cat.
“Something new has happened at the mill, do you know what it is?” the parlor cat asked. “Someone is secretly engaged in this house, and Father doesn’t know about it yet! Rudy and Babette sat all evening stepping on each other’s paws under the table. Twice they stepped on my tail, but I didn’t meow for fear of attracting attention.”
“I would have,” said the kitchen cat.
“What can pass for manners in the kitchen is improper behavior in the parlor. I wonder what the miller is going to say when he hears about the engagement.”
Yes, what would the miller say? Rudy wanted to know that too, so before many days had passed he was seated in a stagecoach on his way to Bex. He was filled with confidence as the vehicle rumbled over the Rhone bridge, which separates the canton of Valais from that of Vaud. He was imagining the scene when he would be officially engaged that very evening.
When the coach returned later that evening, Rudy was again on it; this time he was going home. Down at the mill the parlor cat ran all over the house spreading the news.
“You there, kitchen cat.… Do you want to know what’s happened? … The miller knows everything. Rudy came early this evening, and he and Babett
e stood out in the hall, near the miller’s room, and whispered and whispered. I heard everything they said, for I was lying at their feet.
“ ‘I am going straight in to your father,’ Rudy said.
“ ‘Shall I come with you to bolster your courage?’ Babette asked.
“ ‘I have courage to spare; but come along anyway, because when your father sees you he cannot help but look upon us kindly, whether he wants to or not,’ he answered. Then into the miller’s room the two of them went.
“Rudy’s a clumsy fellow. He stepped on my tail and I meowed as loud as I could, but it was as if they had all lost their ears. But I was first in the room and I jumped up on a chair. It’s dangerous to get anywhere near Rudy’s feet, for you might get kicked. But I needn’t have worried about that because it was the miller who did the kicking. He gave Rudy a good kick right out the door and back up into the mountains. Now he can aim at chamois and not at our Babette.”
“But tell me how it happened. What did they say to each other?” demanded the kitchen cat.
“Say? … They said everything that you have to say when you are courting: ‘I love her and she loves me.… When there is milk enough in the pail for one, then it will do for two.’
“But the miller replied, ‘You aim too high! Babette is sitting on a whole pile of grain sacks, sacks filled with golden grain! You can’t get up there.’
“ ‘Nothing is so high that you cannot reach it if you want to badly enough,’ Rudy said, for he is very bold.
“The miller smiled. ‘What about the eagle you told me about the last time you were here? That was too high for you, you admitted that; well, Babette is even higher.’
“ ‘I will reach them both!’ Rudy exclaimed.
“ ‘All right. I will give Babette to you when you give me the little eagle alive.’ Then he laughed till tears streamed down his face. ‘But thank you for calling all the same. Come again tomorrow and we’ll be sure not to be home. Good-by, Rudy.’ Babette said good-by too, but she sounded as miserable as a kitten that cannot find its mother.
“ ‘Don’t cry, Babette,’ Rudy consoled her. ‘A word is a word, and a man is a man. I will bring back the eaglet.’
“The miller stopped laughing and said, ‘I hope you will break your neck, so that we will be spared the sight of you here again.’ Now that was a kick, wasn’t it?
“Rudy is gone. Babette is crying, and the miller is singing a German song that he learned at Interlaken. I wouldn’t have cried. What’s the point of it? It doesn’t help.”
“But it keeps up appearances,” said the kitchen cat.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE EAGLE’S NEST
Someone was yodeling as he came up the mountain, yodeling as if he did not have a care in the world. It was Rudy on his way to visit his friend Vesimand.
“You must help me. I will get Ragli to join us. There’s an eagle’s nest on a tiny ledge near the top of the canyon and I must have the eaglet.”
“Why don’t you try to fetch the dark of the moon instead? It would be easier.” Vesimand smiled. “What makes you so happy today?”
“I am thinking of getting married. But seriously, let me tell you what has happened.”
Less than an hour later both Vesimand and Ragli knew why Rudy wanted the eaglet. “You are too daring,” they said. “It can’t be done. You will break your neck.”
“You cannot fall if you don’t believe you can,” Rudy replied.
At midnight they set out, carrying staves, ropes, and ladders. The path led through brushwood and over huge boulders, ever upward in the dark night. Far below they heard the voice of the river and above them the songs of the tiny waterfalls. Clouds heavy with rain sailed by. Finally they reached a crag on the side of a cliff; they could climb no farther. Above them the granite sides of the cleft almost met, leaving only a sliver of the sky visible. The night seemed to grow darker. They sat down on the narrow ledge to wait for morning to come. In the ravine, far below, the water was rushing. Silently and patiently they waited for dawn. First they must shoot the eagle before making any attempt to capture the eaglet. Rudy sat on his haunches, as motionless as the rock he was sitting on. His gaze rested on that part of the bluff that jutted out and hid the tiny ledge on which the eagle had built its nest. His gun was ready. But the three hunters had long to wait.
At last they heard that terrible whizzing sound of the eagle’s great wings beating the air. Against the tiny patch of sky between the cliffs of the crevice they could clearly see the shape of the huge bird. Two of the hunters had their rifles trained on the eagle, but only one shot rang out.
For a moment the wings continued to flap, then they stopped and the bird fell slowly downward. So large did the bird seem, so great the span of its wings, that the hunters suddenly feared that there might not be space enough in the narrow canyon for the bird to fall without brushing against them in its descent, so that one or even all of them might be pushed into the abyss. But the bird did not touch them and soon they heard the breaking of branches below them.
Now the hunters had to get busy. Believing that three ladders, when tied together, would reach the eagle’s nest, they began tying the top of one to the bottom of another. Resting the lowest ladder on the very edge of the crag, they leaned the ladders up against the side of the cliff. They were not long enough! Above the top rung of the third ladder the granite continued to rise and it was as straight as a man-made wall for several feet before it curved outward, and thereby protected the eagle’s nest.
The young hunters decided that there was only one way to reach the nest. They must retrace their steps and find a place where they might ascend to the top of the canyon, and from there lower two ladders and somehow attach them to the other three.
It was only with the greatest difficulty that they managed to carry the ladders up to the highest point of the precipice. They tied them together and slowly lowered them into the abyss. On the lowest rung of the second ladder sat Rudy.
It was an ice-cold morning. The bottom of the canyon far below him was hidden in vapors. Rudy was like a fly sitting on a piece of straw that some bird while nest building had dropped and that had alighted on the rim of a tall factory chimney; the difference being that, should the straw fall, the fly would take flight, but Rudy had no wings, he could only break his neck. The wind blew around him. He heard the voice of the rushing river in the depths below; it carried the water from the melting snow of the glacier that was the palace of the Ice Maiden.
Rudy swung on the ladders as a spider dangles on a single thread, searching for a place to fasten her web. The fourth time that his fingertips touched the ladders that were leaning against the side of the cliff he managed to get a good grasp. With steady hands he bound the two sets of ladders together, then, as his friends slackened their ropes from above, he forced the two new additions to his giant ladder to rest against the granite wall.
The five ladders were like a reed that at any moment might begin to sway, but they appeared to reach up high enough for Rudy to climb from their topmost rung into the eagle’s nest. Now came the most dangerous part of the expedition. Rudy must climb as well as a cat, but he knew how, for a cat had been his teacher. The Ice Maiden’s servant, Vertigo, reached out her arms like a sea anemone, but Rudy did not feel her touch.
Rudy’s ladder was, after all, not long enough; he could reach the nest by stretching his arms upward but he could not see into it. With his hands he explored the outermost layer of branches that had been braided by the eagle to form its nest. Finding a particularly heavy bough that did not give way when he pulled on it, Rudy swung from the ladder to the nest. His head and shoulders were above its rim. A stench of rotten meat greeted him: half-consumed carcasses of chamois, lambs, and birds were strewn everywhere. Vertigo, who had not been able to disturb him before, now gently blew the odious smell into his face, hoping that the fumes would make him dizzy. Down in the waters of the rushing river waited the Ice Maiden with her white-green hair and her deadly eyes which, l
ike the muzzles of a gun, were trained on Rudy. “Now I shall catch you!” she exclaimed.
Near the rim sat the eaglet. Although it could not fly, it was large, almost full grown. Rudy stared intently at the bird. Holding onto the branch with one hand, he cast a noose around the feet of the eaglet with the other. He pulled the string and the bird was captured. He flung the captive over his shoulder; because of the length of the cord, it hung down below Rudy’s feet. Now his other hand was free to grasp the rope that held the ladders, until his feet were on the rungs once more.
“Hold on! Don’t believe that you can fall and you won’t.” That was the wisdom that he had taken with him as he scaled the shaking ladders and cleaved to the wall of granite. He had not believed that he could fall, and he hadn’t fallen.
Through the canyon the happy sound of yodeling could be heard. Rudy was again standing on solid earth and he had the eaglet with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT: WHAT THE PARLOR CAT KNEW
“Here is what you asked for,” Rudy announced. As he stepped into the miller’s house at Bex, he put a large covered basket down on the floor. When he lifted the cloth two savage yellow eyes, rimmed in black, stared wildly at first one thing and then another, as if those eyes burned to attack everything they saw. Its short but strong bill was half open, prepared to bite. Its red neck was covered with down.
“The eaglet!” shouted the miller.
Babette screamed and stepped back, but she did not take her eyes away from Rudy or the bird.
“You do not frighten easily.” The miller looked at Rudy and the hunter returned his gaze.
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 86