by Ouida
‘She liked that, I suppose.’
‘Of course she liked it; everyone ought to like it at what was her age then, and what is yours now.’
‘I like this,’ said the Countess Wanda, to change the subject, as the servants set a little Japanese tea-table and two arm-chairs of gilt osier-work under one of the Siberian pines, whose boughs spread tent-like over the grass, on which the dogs were already stretched in anticipation of sugar and cakes.
From this lawn there were seen only the old keep of the burg and the turrets and towers of the rest of the building; ivy clambered over one-half of the great stone pile, that had been raised with hewn rock in the ninth century; and some arolla pines grew about it. A low terrace, with low broad steps, separated it from the gardens. A balustrade of stone, ivy-mantled, protected the gardens from the rocks; while these plunged in a perpendicular descent of a hundred feet into the lake. Some black yews and oaks, very large and old, grew against the low stone pillars. It was a favourite spot with the mistress of Hohenszalras; it looked westward, and beyond the masses of the vast forests there shone the snow summit of the Venediger and the fantastic peaks of the Klein and Kristallwand, whilst on a still day there could be heard a low sound which she, familiar with it, knew came from the thunder of the subterranean torrents filling the Szalrassee.
‘Oh, it is very nice,’ said the Princess, a little deprecatingly. ‘And of course I at my years want nothing better than a gilt chair in the sunshine. But then there is so very little sunshine! The chair must generally stand by the stove! And I confess that I think it would be fitter for your years and your rank if these chairs were multiplied by ten or twenty, and if there were some pretty people laughing and talking and playing games in those great gardens.’
‘It is glorious weather now,’ said her niece, who would not assent and did not desire to dispute.
‘Yes,’ interrupted the Princess. ‘But it will rain to-morrow. You know we never have two fine days together.’
‘We will take it while we have it, and be thankful,’ said Wanda, with a good-humour that refused to be ruffled. ‘Here is Hubert coming out to us. What can he want? He looks very startled and alarmed.’
The old major-domo’s face was indeed gravely troubled, as he bowed before his lady.
‘Pardon me the intrusion, my Countess,’ he said hurriedly. ‘But I thought it right to inform you myself that a lad has come over from Steiner’s Inn to say that the foreign gentleman who was here fifteen days ago has had an accident on the Umbal glacier. It seems he stayed on in Matrey for sake of the climbing and the shooting. I do not make out from the boy what the accident was, but the Umbal is very dangerous at this season. The gentleman lies now at Pregratten. You know, my ladies, what a very wretched place that is.’
‘I suppose they have come for the Herr Professor?’ said Wanda, vaguely disturbed, while the Princess very sorrowfully was putting a score of irrelevant questions which Hubert could not answer.
‘No doubt he has no doctor there, and these people send for that reason,’ said Wanda, interrupting with an apology for the useless interrogations. ‘Get horses ready directly, and send for Greswold at once wherever he may be. But it is a long bad way to Pregratten; I do not see how he can return under twenty-four hours.’
‘Let him stay two nights, if he be wanted,’ said the Princess, to whom she spoke. She had always insisted that the physician should never be an hour out of Hohenszalras whilst she was in it.
‘Your friend has been trying to shoot a kuttengeier again, I suppose,’ said her niece, with a smile. ‘He is very adventurous.’
‘And you are very heartless.’
Wanda did not deny the charge; but she went into the house, saw the doctor, and requested him to take everything with him of linen, wines, food, or cordials that might possibly be wanted.
‘And stay as long as you are required,’ she added, ‘and send mules over to us for anything you wish for. Do not think of us. If my dear aunt should ail anything I can dispatch a messenger to you, or call a physician from Salzburg.’
Herr Joachim said a very few words, thanked her gratefully, and took his departure behind two sure-footed mountain cobs that could climb almost like chamois.
‘I think one of the Fathers should have gone too,’ said Mme. Ottilie, regretfully.
‘I hope he is not in extremis,’ said her niece. ‘And I fear if he were he would hardly care for spiritual assistance.’
‘You are so prejudiced against him, Wanda!’
‘I do not think I am ever prejudiced,’ said the Countess von Szalras.
‘That is so like a prejudiced person!’ said the Princess, triumphantly.
For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the gentleman’s own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and the kitchens.
The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely anxious and troubled. ‘Such a charming person, and so handsome,’ she said again and again. ‘I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with him.’ Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always discreetly mute at Hohenszalras.
For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her — of the bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of her doctor’s counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner’s Inn, greatly to his own discomfort, her own confessor.
‘Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,’ she said to her niece; ‘and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the dying.’
‘But no one is dying,’ said Wanda, a little impatiently.
‘That is more than any human being can tell,’ said the Princess, piously. ‘At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion judiciously and well.’
Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for administration of the Sacrament.
The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault of the physician,
and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on spiritual belief as soon as he should return.
‘If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,’ she said severely.
‘He is orthodox, dear aunt,’ said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. ‘He adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little moss that clothes the rocks.’
‘What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!’ said the Princess. ‘I never should have imagined that you would have jested on sacred themes.’
‘I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old Professor’s is a perpetual prayer.’
‘Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,’ rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. ‘The order was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda — at least I have always thought so — but you read too much German and French philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that alarms me at times.’
‘I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries’ charges,’ said her niece, quietly. ‘You would have faith blindfolded. They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to please all.’
‘Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,’ said the Princess, severely. ‘Her Majesty must know that there can never be too great an excess in faith and service.’
On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted to immediate audience with his ladies.
‘Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,’ he said, after his first very humble salutations. ‘But if your excellencies permit it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, my ladies, he is lying at Steiner’s Inn in Pregratten, a poor place enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.’
‘But I thought he left here to go to Paris?’
‘He did so, my Countess,’ answered the doctor. ‘But it seems he loves the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner’s is a dull place: there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the fret of the Isel waters.’
‘That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can bear it?’ said Wanda. ‘I think he cannot very well come here. We know nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and from here every comfort.’
‘Why should he not be brought to this house?’ interrupted Mme. Ottilie; ‘there are fifty men in it already — —’
‘Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further burdened with a hospitality he never asked!’
‘Of course it is as you please!’ said the Princess, a little irritably.
‘Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.’
The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be taken to the island.
‘I shall see her again,’ he thought, with a little anger at himself. The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had granted his.
On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed by the distant Rhœtian Alps.
The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler’s nest is hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, one gorgeous evening of a summer’s day — one month after he had lifted his rifle to bring down the kuttengeier in the woods of Wanda von Szalras.
‘Almost thou makest me believe,’ he murmured, when he lay and looked upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong.
They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades.
The sun had just then set. There was a lingering glow upon the water, a slender moon had risen above a distant chain of pine-clothed hills, the slow, soft twilight of the German Alps was bathing the grandeur of the scene with tenderest, faintest colours and mists ethereal. The Ave Maria was ringing from the chapel, and presently the deep bells of the monastery chimed a Laus Deus.
‘Do you believe in fate?’ said Sabran abruptly to his companion Greswold.
The old physician gave a little
gesture of doubt.
‘Sometimes there seems something stronger than ourselves and our will, but maybe it is only our own weakness that has risen up and stands in another shape like a giant before us, as our shadow will do on a glacier in certain seasons and states of the atmosphere.’
‘Perhaps that is all,’ said Sabran. But he laid his head back on his pillow with a deep breath that had in it an equal share of contentment and regret, and lay still, looking eastward, while the peaceful night came down upon land and water unbroken by any sound except that of a gentle wind stirring amidst the willows or the plunge of an otter in the lake.
That deep stillness was strange to him who had lived so long in all the gayest cities of the world; but it was welcome: it seemed like a silent blessing: his life seemed to stand still while holy men prayed for him and the ramparts of the mountains shut out the mad and headlong world.
With these fancies he fell asleep and dreamed of pathless steppes, which in the winter snows were so vast and vague, stretching away, away, away to the frozen sea and the ice that no suns can melt, and ceaseless silence, where sleep is death.
In the monastic quiet of the isle he soon recovered sufficient strength to leave his bed and move about slowly, though he was still stiff and sprained from the fall on the Umbal; he could take his dinner in the refectory, could get out and sit under the great willows of the bank, and could touch their organ as the monks never had heard it played.
It was a monotonous and perfectly simple life; but either because his health was not yet strong, or because he had been surfeited with excitement, it was not disagreeable or irksome to him; he bore it with a serenity and cheerfulness which the monks attributed to religious patience, and Herr Joachim to philosophy. It was not one nor the other: it was partly from such willingness as an overtaxed racer feels to lie down in the repose of the stall for a while to recruit his courage and speed: it was partly due to the certainty which he felt that now, sooner or later, he must see face to face once more the woman who had forbade him to shoot the vulture.