Delphi collected works o.., p.587
Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated), page 587
He thought himself quite old. He had a big pony, and Folko was ridden by his little brothers. He had been taught to shoot at a target and a running mark; he had become skilful at climbing with crampons and managing a boat. When he rode he had long boots that pulled up to his knees. He could drive three ponies, harnessed in the Russian way, with skill and surety. Perhaps, he thought, the Bohemian boy had not been able to do half as much as this. The ballad spoke of him as a little weakling, and yet he had found his way from Prague, in her dusky plains, to burning Tartary.
Almost he was ready to set forth on a Quixotic search without any clue to where his father dwelt, but his educated sense checked him with the remembrance that, wide as the world was, it would be of no avail to begin a harebrained pilgrimage with no fixed goal. Even Wratislaw, who was his ideal, had been certain that his brother languished in the Tartar tents before he had set his fair face to the southeast. So he remained patient in his impatience, and strove with all his might to perfect himself in all bodily exercises and manly habits, that he might be the better fitted to go on his errand whenever he should have any thread of guidance. No one guessed the resolves and the hopes which fermented like new wine in his pretty golden-haired head. His attendants thought each year that he grew gentler and more serious, and his tutors found him at once more docile and more absent-minded. But no one imagined that he was bent on any unusual enterprise.
His father had not been recognised by the groom who had accompanied his mistress in the drive through the woods of the Reggen Thörl; and no rumour of the near presence of Sabran had reached any of the household. Greswold alone knew that amidst the solitudes of the avalanche and the glacier, in the chill of the air where the eagle and the vulture alone made their home, in a life of absolute isolation, asceticism, and physical denial of every kind, the man who had sinned against her spent his exile, in such self-chosen expiation as was possible to one who had neither the faith nor the humility needful to make him seek refuge and atonement in any religious service. He dwelt in the loneliness of the ice-slopes, leading the life of a common hunter, shunning all men, accepting each monotonous and joyless day as portion of his just punishment; in the perils of winter on the mountains doing what he could to save human or animal life; knowing no solace save such as existed for him in the sense of being near all that he had lost, and the power of watching the distant movements of his wife and children at such rare hours as he ventured to approach the hills of Hohenszalras and turn his telescope on the gardens of his lost home. A hunter or two, a guide or two of the Umbal and the Trojerthal had his confidence, but the loyalty which is the common virtue of all mountaineers made them preserve it faithfully. For the rest, in these unfrequented places, avoidance of all those who might have recognised him was easy; he was clothed like the men of the hills, and lived like them in a châlet, high perched on a ledge of rock at a great altitude in the wild and almost inaccessible region of the Hintere Umbalthörl. Of the future he never dared to think; he took each day as it came; the best he hoped for was a mountaineer’s death some hour or another, amidst the clear serene blue ice, the everlasting snows.
When he had gone out from the chamber of his wife, banished and accursed, all his spirit had died in him, and nothing had seemed clear in his memory except that love which had been so insufficient to wash out his sin. The world would no doubt have welcomed him; he was not too old for its distractions and its ambitions to be still possible for him; but he had no courage left to take them up, no energy to make another future for himself. His whole life was consumed in a vain regret, as vain a desire, as vain a penitence. Had he had the faith of those men who dwelt under the willows of the Holy Isle he would have joined them. But he had no belief; he had only a futile, heart-broken, hopeless repentance, which availed him nothing and could atone for nothing.
Perhaps, he thought, if she had known that, it might have changed her. But he did not dare to approach her by any written appeal. It seemed to him as if any words from him would only appear but added falsehood, added insult. He never, even in his own thoughts, reproached her for her separation from him. He recognised that no other path was open to her. The pure daylight of her nature could find no mate in the dusk and shadow of his own; the loyalty of truth could not unite with the servitude and cowardice of falsehood. He knew it, and never rebelled against his chastisement.
Whilst still it was dawn one morning, his young son, just awaking, heard a pebble thrown at his window. He sprang out of bed and ran and looked out. Old Otto stood below.
‘My little lord,’ he said softly; ‘if you can come to me in the woods, when you are dressed, I have something to tell you.’
‘Of him?’ cried Bela.
The huntsman made a sign of assent.
The child, excited to intense emotion, hardly knew how his servant dressed him, or how he swallowed his breakfast. After their morning meal he could always run in the woods, as he chose, before beginning his studies, and he sped as fast as his feet could bear him to the trysting-place.
‘My lord, your father has been seen on the other side of Glöckner by my underling, Fritz,’ said Otto, gravely; ‘and I have heard, too, that the villagers have seen him in Pregratten. I made bold to tell you, Count Bela, for I had given you my word.’
Bela’s whole form shook with excitement.
‘I knew if he had died I should have known it!’ he said, with a hushed ecstasy. ‘Tell me more, tell me more, quick!’
‘There is no more to tell, my little lord,’ said Otto. ‘Fritz will swear that he saw your father, though there was a stretch of glaciers and many fathoms of ice between them. He says there was no mistaking the way he sighted his rifle and fired. And I have heard by gossip, too, from the folks of the Hintere Umbalthörl that there can be no manner of doubt of the fact that His Excellency has dwelt there, for a time at least.’
Bela gave a deep breath.
‘Then he lives, and I can find him!’
‘Yes, he lives; the Lord be praised! ‘said Otto.
When he went to the house the boy told no one his precious secret. He studied ill, and was punished, but he did not heed it. His heart was full of joy; his brain teemed with projects.
‘I will go and bring him back!’ he kept saying to himself; and no force could hold his thoughts to his Homer or his Euclid.
He would tell no one, he resolved, not even Gela; and he would go alone, all alone, as the Bohemian boy had gone.
‘What ails Bela to-day? He is not like himself,’ said his mother to Greswold, who assured her he was well, but added that he was often careless.
The child shut his secret up in his own breast, and though he longed to tell Gela he did not. He had been tempted to confide in Otto, but resisted even that desire, knowing that Otto was stern where duty pointed, and had been always forbidden to let the little nobles wander alone to the mountains. He had his father’s power of reticence, his mother’s strength of self-control.
He knew what hill work was like. The elder boys often went climbing, with their guides, on fine days from May to September, and had a little tent which was set up for them at a fair altitude, whence Greswold taught them to take observations and measurements. But the mountaineering for the season was now over; it was now S. Michael’s Day, and avalanches fell and snow-storms had begun on the higher slopes. He knew that if anyone saw him he would be stopped and taken back. For that reason he said nothing to Gela, who could never be persuaded to a disobedience; and he rose in the dark, before the hour at which his attendant came to dress him, got his clothes on as best he could, slipped the sword Vàsàrhely had given him in his belt, and took his crampons and alpenstock in his hand.
He had kneeled and said his prayers, fervently though quickly.
‘A soldier cannot pray very long if he hear the trumpets sounding,’ he had thought, as he rose. He felt neither irresolution nor fear; he was strong with ardour and an exalted sense of right-doing.
He had the little knapsack which, in the long forest walks with his tutor, he was used to carry packed with simple food for a morning meal when they halted under the pines. He had put some bread and cakes into this overnight, and he had filled his little silver flask with milk, as he had seen the flasks of the gentlemen filled with wine in those grand days when the Kaiser and the Court had hunted with his father. Thus equipped he managed to escape from the house by a side door, left open by some of the under-servants, who had just risen. He knew the quick way to reach the Glöckner slopes, for he had been taken there by Otto to learn mountaineering, and for his age he climbed well. His eye was sure, his step firm, and he knew not fear. He never thought of the misery his absence might cause; he was absorbed in his self-imposed mission.
‘I will bring him back,’ he thought, ‘and then she will smile again.’
He had been trained in the lore of the high hills too well not to know that it would take him several days to reach the Hintere Umbalthörl; but he said to himself that this must be as it would. He would climb on and on, sleep in any hut he could, and find what food he might. The Bohemian boy had crossed many mountains and seas and deserts before he had ransomed his brother.
It was a fine morning, with light pleasant winds. There was a clear blue in the sky, though north-east there was a brown haze, such as hunters fear, upon the hills.
‘It will rain or snow to-morrow,’ thought Bela, who had been made wise in the signs of the weather. But even that prevision did not deter him; he had his liberty and he meant to use it. He had been well trained to all bodily exercises, and he could walk long and fast without fatigue. His slender fair limbs were as strong as steel, and his health was perfect. He knew all the tracks of the home-lying woods, and he wanted no one to guide him. He got, with promptitude and address, out of sight of the terraces and towers of Hohenszalras, and soon entered what was called the Schwarzenwald, a dense pine-wood ascending abruptly the mountain side from the gardens; the only place where the wildness of the hills came in unbroken contact and close proximity to the lawns and flowers of the south side of the schloss, the lower spurs of the Gross Glöckner descending there so steep and stern that they enclosed the parterres with a gigantic rampart of granite.
The contrast of the rose gardens with these huge overhanging heights had always so pleased the tastes of the Szalras châtelaines, that they had never allowed any attempts to be made to change or modify the savage grandeur and sombre wilds of the black wood.
He was already a trained pedestrian, and he covered five miles without pausing to breathe himself. Then he thought he had come far enough to make it safe to pause and eat. He drank his milk and opened his knapsack. There was turf still about him, and a few trees, but he had come into the rocky region. Huge walls of red and grey marbles leaned over him; white limestone crags faced him. Precipices, black with pines and firs, shelved downward. He was still on his mother’s land, but in a part unknown to him.
Once rested, he climbed up manfully, straining his little velvet breeches and soaking his silver-buckled shoes in the wet moss as he went; for in the Schwarzenwald regular paths soon ceased. There was the barest track visible, made by sheep, and pushing its upward way under branches, over boulders, and through wimpling burns. It was the loneliest part of all the woods and hills; descending as it did to the rose gardens of the burg, the hunters and shepherds seldom passed through it. Steep and solitary, crowned with bare rocks, and leading only to the glacier slopes, few steps ever went over its short grass save those of woodland animals and of shepherds’ flocks. At this time of the year even the latter were not near. They had been already brought down to their stables from the green stretches of pasture between the rocks. Bela met no one; not even one of his own peasantry.
He climbed and climbed uninterrupted, at first enjoying his solitude rapturously, his triumph boisterously, and then going on more solemnly, being a little awed by the sense of utter silence round him, in which no sound was heard except of rippling water, of blowing boughs, and afar off some faint tinkle of a church bell from a distant hamlet.
His spirits were exalted and full of enthusiasm. Joined to his boldness and ardour he had the German love of the mystical and marvellous. All the vast white range of the Glöckner to him was as a fairyland opening on enchanted empires all his own. All the forenoon he was happy.
His brain, was busy with many pictures as he went. He saw his search successful and his father found; he saw his happy return, and the crowd of the glad household which would flock to meet his steps; he thought how he would kneel down at her feet, and never rise until his prayer should be heard, and his mother smile again; he thought how he would cry out to her, ‘Oh, mother, mother! I have brought him home!’ and how she would look, and the light and the warmth come back into her face. It was so little to do — only to climb amidst these kindly familiar mountains that had been always above him and around him since first his eyes had opened. Wratislaw had gone over lands, and seas, and deserts, and braved the jaws of lions, and the steel of foemen, and the dragon’s breath of the hot sand wind; he himself had so little to do; only to climb some rough uneven ground, some green steep pastures, some smooth fields of ice. He felt sad to think it was such a little thing.
Far down below he could hear the great bells of the burg chiming and clanging, and he knew that they were giving the alarm for him; he saw men small as mice grouping together here, and running apart there; he knew they were coming out to search for him. He resolved to be very wary. He had got so long a start that he was high on the hills ere he heard the alarm-bells ring. He knew that he must avoid being seen by anyone he met, or, known as he was to the whole country-side, his liberty would soon be at an end. But the huts of the cattle-keepers were empty, and the chances of meeting a mountaineer were few. Hundreds of men might come upward in search of him, and yet miss him amidst those endless walls of stone, those innumerable peaks and paths and precipices, each one the fellow of the other.
He climbed the grassy slopes, the steep stone ways, as he had learned to do with Otto, and though he was still for from the sides of Glöckner he was yet soon on very high ground. A great mountain, green at the base, snow-covered half the way down, frowned above him; it was but one of the spurs of the Glöcknerwand, but he believed it to be the king of the Austrian Alps itself. He met no one; the mountains were solitary; the first breath of autumn had scared the cattle-keepers downward with their flocks and herds. Sometimes, very far off, he saw a lonely figure, a pedlar, or a hunter, or a shepherd, or some alm still tenanted by its flock, but they were mere specks on the immensity of the glacier slopes and the domes of snow. The solitude enchanted him at first; he had never been alone before. He drank from a stream, ate more bread, and held on firmly and fearlessly. The thought that his father was there beyond him, amidst those dazzling peaks, those lowering clouds, seemed to shoe his little feet with fire. He felt weaker, for his bread had nourished him but little, and he had not found a hut of any kind as he had expected to do. But he toiled on, the slope of the same mountain always facing him, always seeming to recede and to grow higher and higher the further and further he went.
The wall of granite which he was on, nine miles or more above and beyond his home, was known as the Adler Spitze. He had been near it in other days, but he did not recognise it now; all these stern slopes and steeps, all these domes and roof-like ridges of snow and ice, so resemble each other that a longer apprenticeship to the hills than his had been is needed to distinguish them one from another. The Adler Spitze was a dangerous and seldom traversed peak; its sides were bristling with jagged rocks, and its chasms were many and deep. More than one death had been caused by it in late years, and near its summit his mother, had caused to be erected a refuge, one of the highest of the district, where a keeper was forever on the watch for belated travellers. These were, however, very few, for the mountain had gained a bad name amongst the hunters and pedlars and muleteers who alone traversed these hills, and was left almost entirely to the birds of prey, which were numerous there and had given it its name.
When the pine-woods ceased, and there was only around him mere naked rock, with a little moss growing on it here and there, Bela knew that he had come very high indeed. And he had his wish: he was quite alone. There was nothing to be seen here except the dusky forest, shelving downward, and vast slopes of naked grey stone, with large loose rocks scattered over them, as if giants had been playing there at pitch-and-toss. There was too much mist in the north and west, which faced him, for the opposite mountains to be seen, for it was still early in the day. He did not now feel the joy and excitement he had expected. He had climbed to the glacier region indeed, but the scene around was dreary, and the vast expanse of vapour surrounding him looked chill and melancholy.
In the excitement and exultation of his thoughts he had forgotten many things which he knew very well, trained to the hills as he was; he had forgotten that it might rain or snow before he reached any halting-place, that fogs came on at that season with fatal suddenness, that if the sun were obscured the cold would soon become great, that if a mist came down he would be unable to find any road, and that men had been often killed on those heights who had known every inch of the hills.
Something of his buoyancy and certainty of success began to pale and grow dull as the isolation lost its sense of novelty, and that intense silence of the glacier world, which is at all times so solemn, began to strike awe into his intrepid soul. He had often been as high, but there had been always on his ear his brother’s voice, and his guide’s laugh, and the merry sounds of the men chattering together as they climbed. Now there was no sound anywhere, save now and then a splitting cracking noise, which he knew was ice giving way under the noon-day heat of the sun. ‘It must be just as still as this in the grave,’ he thought, with a chill in his warm eager leaping young blood. A little tuft of edelweiss growing in a crevice, and an alpenlerche winging its way through the blue air, seemed to him like friends.
