The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories

by Émile Erckmann

  I turned round, and as my eye dwelt upon the portrait the lady pointed to, I shuddered.

  It was a long, pale, thin face, cold and rigid as death, and only luridly lighted up by two dark, deep-set eyes, fixed, burning, and of a terrible intensity.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “How much that woman must have suffered!” I said to myself with a pain striking at my heart.

  “I know not how my mother made that terrible discovery,” added Odile, “but she became aware of the mysterious attraction of the Black Pest and their meetings in Hugh Lupus’s tower; she knew it all—all! She never suspected my father—ah no!—but she perished away by slow degrees under this consuming influence! and I myself am dying.”

  I bowed my head into my hands and wept in silence.

  “One night,” she went on, “one night—I was only ten—and my mother, with the remains of her superhuman energy, for she was near her end that night, came to me when I lay asleep. It was in winter; a stony cold hand caught me by the wrist. I looked up. Before me stood a tall woman; in one hand she held a flaming torch, with the other she held me by the arm. Her robe was sprinkled with snow. There was a convulsive movement in all her limbs and her eyes were fired with a gloomy light through the long locks of white hair which hung in disorder round her face. It was my mother; and she said, ‘Odile, my child, get up and dress! You must know it all!’ Then taking me to Hugh Lupus’s tower she showed me the open subterranean passage. ‘Your father will come out that way,’ she said, pointing to the tower; ‘he will come out with the she-wolf; don’t be frightened, he won’t see you.’ And presently my father, bearing his funereal burden, came out with the old woman. My mother took me in her arms and followed; she showed me the dismal scene on the Altenberg of which you know. ‘Look, my child,’ she said; ‘you must for I—am going to die soon. You will have to keep that secret. You alone are to sit up with your father,’ she said impressively—‘you alone. The honour of your family depends upon you!’ And so we returned. A fortnight after my mother died, leaving me her will to accomplish and her example to follow. I have scrupulously obeyed her injunctions as a sacred command, but oh, at what a sacrifice! You have seen it all. I have been obliged to disobey my father and to rend his heart. If I had married I should have brought a stranger into the house and betrayed the secret of our race. I resisted. No one in this castle knows of the somnambulism of my father, and but for yesterday’s crisis, which broke down my strength completely and prevented me from sitting up with my father, I should still have been its sole depositary. God has decreed otherwise, and has placed the honour and reputation of my family in your keeping. I might demand of you, sir, a solemn promise never to reveal what you have seen to-night. I should have a right to do so.”

  “Madam,” I said, rising, “I am ready.”

  “No, sir,” she replied with much dignity, “I will not put such an affront upon you. Oaths fail to bind base men, and honour alone is a sufficient guarantee for the upright. You will keep that secret, sir, I know you will keep it, because it is your duty to do so. But I expect more than this of you, much more, and this is why I consider myself obliged to tell you all!”

  She rose slowly from her seat.

  “Doctor Fritz,” she resumed in a voice which made every nerve within me quiver with deep emotion, “my strength is unequal to my burden; I bend beneath it. I need a helper, a friend. Will you be that friend?”

  “Madam,” I replied, rising from my seat, “I gratefully accept your offer of friendship. I cannot tell you how proud I am of your confidence; but still, allow me to unite with it one condition.”

  “Pray speak, sir.”

  “I mean that I will accept that title of friend with all the duties and obligations which it shall impose upon me.”

  “What duties do you mean?”

  “There is a mystery overhanging your family; that mystery must be discovered and solved at any cost. That Black Pest must be apprehended. We must find out where she comes from, what she is, and what she wants!”

  “Oh, but that is impossible!” she said with a movement of despair.

  “Who can tell that, madam? Perhaps Divine Providence may have had a design connected with me in sending Sperver to fetch me here.”

  “You are right, sir. God never acts without consummate wisdom. Do whatever you think right. I give my approval in advance.”

  I raised to my lips the hand which she tremblingly placed in mine, and went out full of admiration for this frail and feeble woman, who was, nevertheless, so strong in the time of trial. Is anything grander than duty nobly accomplished?

  CHAPTER XII

  An hour after the conversation with Odile, Sperver and I were riding hard, and leaving Nideck rapidly behind us.

  The huntsman, bending forward over his horse’s neck, encouraged him with voice and action.

  He rode so fast that his tall Mecklemburger, her mane flying, tail outstretched, and legs extended wide, seemed almost motionless, so swiftly did she cleave the air. As for my little Ardenne pony, I think he was running right away with his rider. Lieverlé accompanied us, flying alongside of us like an arrow from the bow. A whirlwind seemed to sweep us in our headlong way.

  The towers of Nideck were far away, and Sperver was keeping ahead as usual when I shouted—

  “Halloo, comrade, pull up! Halt! Before we go any farther let us know what we are about.”

  He faced round.

  “Only just tell me, Fritz, is it right or is it left?”

  “No; that won’t do. It is of the first importance that you should know the object of our journey. In short, we are going to catch the hag.”

  A flush of pleasure brightened up the long sallow face of the old poacher, and his eyes sparkled.

  “Ha, ha!” he cried, “I knew we should come to that at last!”

  And he slipped his rifle round from his shoulder into his hand.

  This significant action roused me.

  “Wait, Sperver; we are not going to kill the Black Pest, but to take her alive!”

  “Alive?”

  “No doubt, and it will spare you a good deal of remorse perhaps if I declare to you that the life of this old woman is bound up with that of your master. The ball that hits her hits your lord.”

  Sperver gazed at me in astonishment.

  “Is this really true, Fritz?”

  “Positively true.”

  There was a long silence; our mounts, Fox and Rappel, tossed their heads at each other as if in the act of saluting one another, scraping up the snow with their hoofs in congratulation upon so pleasant an expedition. Lieverlé opened wide his red mouth, gaping with impatience, extending and bending his long meagre body like a snake, and Sperver sat motionless, his hand still upon his gun.

  “Well, let us try and catch her alive. We will put on gloves if we have to touch her, but it is not so easy as you think, Fritz.”

  And pointing out with extended hand the panorama of mountains which lay unrolled about us like a vast amphitheatre, he added—

  “Look! there’s the Altenberg, the Schnéeberg, the Oxenhorn, the Rhéthal, the Behrenkopf, and if we only got up a little higher we should see fifty more mountain-tops far away, right into the Palatinate. There are rocks and ravines, passes and valleys, torrents and waterfalls, forests, and more mountains; here beeches, there firs, then oaks, and the old woman has got all that for her camping-ground. She tramps everywhere, and lives in a hole wherever she pleases. She has a sure foot, a keen eye, and can scent you a couple of miles off. How are you going to catch her, then?”

  “If it was an easy matter where would be the merit? I should not then have chosen you to take a part in it.”

  “That is all very fine, Fritz. If we only had one end of her trail, who knows but with courage and perseverance—”

  “As for her trail, don’t trouble about that; that’s my business.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yes, mine.”

  “What do you kn
ow about following up a trail?”

  “Why should not I?”

  “Oh, if you are so sure of it, and you know more about it than I do, of course march on, and I’ll follow!”

  It was easy to see that the old hunter was vexed that I should presume to trespass upon his special province; therefore, only laughing inwardly, I required no repetition of the request to lead on, and I turned sharply to the left, sure of coming across the old woman’s trail, who, after having left the count at the postern gate, must have crossed the plain to reach the mountain. Sperver rode behind me now, whistling rather contemptuously, and I could hear him now and then grumbling—

  “What is the use of looking for the track of the she-wolf in the plain? Of course she went along the forest side just as usual. But it seems she has altered her habits, and now walks about with her hands in her pockets, like a respectable Fribourg tradesman out for a walk.”

  I turned a deaf ear to his hints, but in a moment I heard him utter an exclamation of surprise; then, fixing a keen eye upon me, he said—

  “Fritz, you know more than you choose to tell.”

  “How so, Gideon?”

  “The track that I should have been a week finding, you have got it at once. Come, that’s not all right!”

  “Where do you see it, then?”

  “Oh, don’t pretend to be looking at your feet.”

  And pointing out to me at some distance a scarcely perceptible white streak in the snow—

  “There she is!”

  Immediately he galloped up to it; I followed in a couple of minutes; we had dismounted, and were examining the track of the Black Pest.

  “I should like to know,” cried Sperver, “how that track came here?”

  “Don’t let that trouble you,” I replied.

  “You are right, Fritz; don’t mind what I say; sometimes I do speak rather at random. What we want now is to know where that track will lead us to.”

  And now the huntsman knelt on the ground.

  I was all ears; he was closely examining.

  “It is a fresh track,” he pronounced, “last night’s. It is a strange thing, Fritz, during the count’s last attack that old witch was hanging about the castle.”

  Then examining with greater care—

  “She passed here between three and four o’clock this morning.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “It is quite a fresh track; there is sleet all round it. Last night, about twelve, I came out to shut the doors; there was sleet falling then, there is none upon the footsteps, therefore she has passed since.”

  “That is true enough, Sperver, but it may have been made much later; for instance, at eight or nine.”

  “No, look, there is frost upon it! The fog that freezes on the snow only comes at daybreak. The creature passed here after the sleet and before the fog—that is, about three or four this morning.”

  I was astonished at Sperver’s exactitude.

  He rose from his knee, clapping his hands together to get rid of the snow, and looking at me thoughtfully, as if speaking to himself, said—

  “It is twelve, is it not, Fritz?”

  “A quarter to twelve.”

  “Very well; then the old woman has got seven hours’ start of us. We must follow upon her trail step by step; on horseback we can do it in half the time, and, if she is still going, about seven or eight to-night we have got her, Fritz. Now then, we’re off.”

  And we started afresh upon the track. It led us straight to the mountains.

  Galloping away, Sperver said—

  “If good luck only would have it that she had rested an hour or two in a hole in a rock, we might be up with her before the daylight is gone.”

  “Let us hope so, Gideon.”

  “Oh, don’t think of it. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never tires; she tramps along all the hollows in the Black Forest. We must not flatter ourselves with vain hopes. If, perhaps, she has stopped on her journey, so much the better for us; and if she still keeps going, we won’t let that discourage us. Come on at a gallop.”

  It is a very strange feeling to be hunting down a fellow-creature; for, after all, that unhappy woman was of our own kind and nature; endowed like ourselves with an immortal soul to be saved, she felt, and thought, and reflected like ourselves. It is true that a strange perversion of human nature had brought her near to the nature of the wolf, and that some great mystery overshadowed her being. No doubt a wandering life had obliterated the moral sense in her, and even almost effaced the human character; but still nothing in the world can give one man a right to exercise over another the dominion of the man over the brute.

  And yet a burning ardour hurried us on in pursuit; my blood was at fever heat; I was determined to stand at no obstacle in laying hold of this extraordinary being. A wolf-hunt or a boar-hunt would not have excited me near so much.

  The snow was flying in our rear; sometimes splinters of ice, bitten off by the horse-shoes, like shavings of iron from machinery, whizzed past our ears.

  Sperver, sometimes with his nose in the air and his red moustache floating in the wind, sometimes with his grey eyes intently following the track, reminded me of those famous Cossacks that I had seen pass through Germany when I was a boy; and his tall, lanky horse, muscular and full-maned, its body as slender as a greyhound’s, completed the illusion.

  Lieverlé, in a high state of enthusiasm and excitement, took bounds sometimes as high as our horses’ backs, and I could not but tremble at the thought that when we came up at last with the Pest he might tear her in pieces before we could prevent him.

  But the old woman gave us all the trouble she could; on every hill she doubled, at every hillock there was a false track.

  “After all, it is easy here,” cried Sperver, “to what it will be in the wood. We shall have to keep our eyes open there! Do you see the accursed beast? Here she has confused the track! There she has been amusing herself sweeping the trail, and then from that height which is exposed to the wind she has slipped down to the stream, and has crept along through the cresses to get to the underwood. But for those two footsteps she would have sold us completely.”

  We had just reached the edge of a pine-forest. In woods of this description the snow never reaches the ground except in the open spaces between the trees, the dense foliage intercepting it in its fall. This was a difficult part of our enterprise. Sperver dismounted to see our way better, and placed me on his left so as not to be hindered by my shadow.

  Here were large spaces covered with dead leaves and the needles and cones of the fir-trees, which retain no footprint. It was, therefore, only in the open patches where the snow had fallen on the ground that Sperver found the track again.

  It took us an hour to get through this thicket. The old poacher bit his moustache with excitement and vexation, and his long nose visibly bent into a hook. When I was only opening my mouth to speak, he would impatiently say—

  “Don’t speak—it bothers me!”

  At last we descended a valley to the left and Gideon pointing to the track of the she-wolf outside the edge of the brushwood, triumphantly remarked—

  “There is no feint in this sortie, for once. We may follow this track confidently.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because the Pest has a habit every time she doubles of going three paces to the right; then she retraces her steps four, five, or six in the other direction, and jumps away into a clear place. But when she thinks she has sufficiently disguised her trail she breaks out without troubling herself to make any feints. There now! What did I say? Now she is burrowing beneath the brushwood like a wild boar, and it won’t be so difficult to follow her up.”

  “Well, let us put the track between us and smoke a pipe.”

  We halted, and the honest fellow, whose countenance was beginning to brighten up, looking up at me with enthusiasm, cried—

  “Fritz, if we have luck this will be one of the finest days in my life. If we catch the old
hag I will strap her across my horse behind me like a bundle of old rags. There is only one thing troubles me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That I forgot my bugle. I should have liked to have sounded the return on getting near the castle! Ha, ha, ha!”

  He lighted his stump of a pipe and we galloped off again.

  The track of the she-wolf now passed on to the heights of the forest by so steep an ascent that several times we had to dismount and lead our horses by the bridle.

  “There she is, turning to the right,” said Sperver. “In this direction the mountains are craggy; perhaps one of us will have to lead both horses while the other climbs to look after the trail. But don’t you think the light is going?”

  The landscape now was assuming an aspect of grandeur and magnificence. Vast grey rocks, sparkling with long icicles, raised here and there their sharp peaks like breakers amidst a snowy sea.

  There is nothing more sadly impressive than the aspect of winter in a mountainous region. The jagged crests of the precipices, the deep, dark ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable melancholy. The silence is so profound that you hear a dead leaf rustling on the snow, or the needle of the fir dropping to the ground. Such a silence is oppressive as the tomb; it urges on the mind the idea of man’s nothingness in the vastness of creation.

  How frail a being is man! Two winters together, without a summer between, would sweep him off the earth!

  At times we felt it a necessity to be saying something if only to show that we were keeping up our spirits.

  “Ah, we are getting on! How fearfully cold! Lieverlé, what is the matter? what have you found now?”