CHAPTER XIII.
Sperver had gone, bearing the body of poor Lieverle in his cloak. I haddeclined to follow; my sense of duty kept me by this unhappy woman, and Icould not leave her without violence to my own feelings.
Besides, I must confess I was curious to see a little more closelythis strange mysterious being, and therefore as soon as Sperver haddisappeared in the darkness of the glen I began to climb up to reach thecavern.
There I beheld a strange sight.
Extended upon a large cloak of white fur lay the aged woman in a long andragged robe of purple, her fingers clutching her breast, a golden arrowthrough her grey hair.
Never shall I forget the figure of this strange woman; her vulture-likefeatures distorted with the last agonies of death, her eyes set, hergasping mouth, were fearful to look upon. Such might have been theterrible Queen Fredegonde.
The baron, on his knees at her side, was trying to restore her toanimation; but I saw at a glance that the wretched creature was dying,and it was not without a profound sense of pity that I took her by thearm.
"Leave madame alone--don't touch her," cried the young man withirritation.
"I am a surgeon, monseigneur."
He looked in silence at me for a moment, then rising, said--
"Pardon me, sir; pray forgive my hasty language."
He trembled with excitement, scarcely yet subdued, and presently he wenton--
"What is your opinion, sir?"
"It is over--she is dead!"
Then, without speaking another word, he sat upon a large stone, with hisforehead resting upon his hand and his elbow on his knee, his eyesmotionless, as still as a statue.
I sat near the fire, watching the flames rising to the vaulted roof ofthe cave, and casting lurid reflections upon the rigid features of thecorpse.
We had sat there an hour as motionless as statues, each deep in thought,when, suddenly lifting his head, the baron said--
"Sir, all this utterly confounds me. Here is my mother--for twenty-sixyears I thought I knew her--and now an abyss of horrible mysteries opensbefore me. You are a doctor; tell me, did you ever know anything sodreadful?"
"Monseigneur," I replied, "the Count of Nideck is afflicted with acomplaint strikingly similar to that from which your mother appears tohave suffered. If you feel enough confidence in me to communicate to methe facts which you have yourself observed, I will gladly tell you what Iknow myself; for perhaps this exchange of our experiences might supply mewith the means to save my patient."
"Willingly, sir," he replied, and without any further prelude he informedme that the Baroness de Bluderich, a member of one of the noblestfamilies in Saxony, took, every year towards autumn, a journey intoItaly, with no attendant besides an old man-servant, who possessed herentire confidence; that that man, being at the point of death, haddesired a private interview with the son of his old master, and that atthat last hour, prompted, no doubt, by the pangs of remorse, he had toldthe young man that his mother's visit to Italy was only a pretence toenable her to make, you observed, a certain excursion into the BlackForest, the object of which was unknown to himself, but which must havehad something fearful in its character, since the baroness returnedalways in a state of physical prostration, ragged, half dead, and thatweeks of rest alone could restore her after the hideous labours of thosefew days.
This was the purport of the old servant's disclosures to the young baron,who believed that in so doing he was only fulfilling his duty.
The son, anxious at any sacrifice to know the truth of this account, had,that very year, ascertained it, first by following his mother to Baden,and then by penetrating on her track into the gorges of the Black Forest.The footsteps which Sebalt had tracked in the woods were his.
When the baron had thus imparted his knowledge to me, I thought I oughtnot to conceal from him the mysterious influence which the appearance ofthe old woman in the neighbourhood of the castle exercised over thecount, nor the other circumstances of this unaccountable series ofevents.
We were both amazed at the extraordinary coincidence between the factsnarrated, the mysterious attraction which these beings unconsciouslyexercised the one over the other, the tragic drama which they performedin union, the familiarity which the old woman had shown with the castle,and its most secret passages, without any previous examination of them;the costume which she had discovered in which to carry out this secretact, and which could only have been rummaged out of some mysteriousretreat revealed to her by the strange instinct of insanity. Finally,we were agreed that there are unknown, unfathomed depths in our being,and that the mystery of death is not the only secret which God has veiledfrom our eyes, although it may seem to us the most important.
But the darkness of night was beginning to yield to the pale tints ofearly dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darknesswith a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrowbottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, withthe first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron'sservant; its bottom was littered with straw; on this the body was laid.
I mounted my horse, who seemed not sorry to use his limbs again, whichhad been numbed by standing upon ice and snow the whole night through. Irode after the sledge to the exit from the defile, when, after a gravesalutation--the usual token of courtesy between the nobility and thepeople--they drove off in the direction of Hirschland and I rode towardsthe towers of Nideck.
At nine I was in the presence of Mademoiselle Odile, to whom I gave afaithful narrative of all that had taken place.
Then repairing to the count's apartments, I found him in a verysatisfactory state of improvement. He felt very weak, as was to beexpected after the terrible shocks of such crises as he had gone through,but had returned to the full possession of his clear faculties, andthe fever had left him the evening before. There was, therefore, everyprospect of a speedy cure.
A few days later, seeing the old lord in a state of convalescence, Iexpressed a desire to return to Fribourg, but he entreated me soearnestly to stay altogether at Nideck, and offered me terms sohonourable and advantageous, that I felt myself unable to refusecompliance with his wishes.
I shall long remember the first boar-hunt in which I had the honour tojoin with the count, and especially the magnificent return home in atorchlight procession after having sat in the saddle for twelve hourstogether.
I had just had supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus's towercompletely knocked up, when, passing Sperver's room, whose door was halfopen, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the mostjovial spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamedtwenty square rosy faces, bright and ruddy with health and fun.
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an incessant tinkling andclattering. There was sitting Sperver with his bossy forehead, hismoustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his greyhair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his leftKnapwurst. He was raising aloft the ancient silver-gilt and chased gobletdimmed with age, and on his manly chest glittered the silver plate ofhis shoulder-belt, for, according to his custom on a hunting day, he wasstill wearing the uniform of his office.
The colour of Marie Lagoutte's cheeks, rather redder even than usual,told of an evening of jollity, and her broad cap-frills seemed as if theywere wanting to fly all abroad; she sat laughing, now with one, then withanother.
Knapwurst, squatting in his arm-chair, with his head on a level withSperver's elbow, looked like a big pumpkin. Then came Tobias Offenloch,so red that you would have thought he had bathed his face in the redwine, leaning back with his wig upon the chair-back and his wooden legextended under the table. Farther on loomed the melancholy long face ofSebalt, who was peeping with a sickly smile into the bottom of hiswine-glass.
Besides these worthies there were present the waiting-people, men andwomen servants, comprising all that little community which springs uparound the board of the great people of the land and
belongs to them asthe ivy, and the moss, and the wild convolvulus belong to the monarch ofthe forests.
Upon the groaning board lay a vast ham, displaying its concentric circlesof pink and white. Then among the gaily-patterned plates and dishes camethe long-necked bottles containing the produce of the vineyards thatborder the broad and flowing Rhine--long German pipes with little silverchains, and long shining blades of steel.
The light of the lamp shed over the whole scene its amber-coloured hueand left in the shade the old grey and time-stained walls, where hung inample numbers the brazen convolutions of the hunting-horns and bugles.
What an original picture! The vaulted roof was ringing with the joyousshouts of laughter.
Sperver, as I have already told, was lifting high the full bumper andsinging the song of Black Hatto, the Burgrave,
"I am king on these mountains of mine,"
while the rosy dew of Affenthal hung trembling from his long moustaches.As soon as he caught sight of me he stopped, and holding out his hand--
"Fritz," said he, "we only wanted you. It is a long time since I felt socomfortable as I do to-night. You are welcome, old boy!"
As I gazed upon him with surprise--for since the death of Lieverle I hadnever seen him smile--he added more seriously--
"We are celebrating the return of monseigneur to his health, andKnapwurst is telling us stories."
All the guests turned my way, and I was saluted with kindly welcomes onall sides.
I was dragged in by Sebalt, seated near Marie Lagoutte, and found a largeglass of Bohemian wine in my hand before I could quite understand themeaning of it all.
The old hall was echoing with merry peals of laughter, and Sperver,throwing his arm round my neck, holding his cup high, and with an attemptat gravity which showed plainly that the wine was up in his head, heshouted--
"Here is my son! He and I--I and he--until death! Here's the health ofDoctor Fritz!"
Knapwurst, standing as high as he was able upon the seat of his arm-chair,not unlike a turnip half divided in two, leaned towards me and held meout his glass. Marie Lagoutte shook out the long streamers of her cap,and Sebalt, upright before his chair, as gaunt and lean as the shade ofthe wild jaeger amongst the heather, repeated, "Your health, DoctorFritz!" whilst the flakes of silvery foam ran down his cup and floatedgently down upon the stone-flagged floor.
Then there was a moment's silence. Every guest drank. Then, with a singleclash, every glass was set vigorously down upon the table.
"Bravo!" cried Sperver.
Then turning to me--
"Fritz, we have already drunk to the health of the count and ofMademoiselle Odile; you will do the same."
Twice had I to drain the cup before the vigilant eyes of the whole table.Then I too began to look grave. Could it have been drunken gravity? Aluminous radiance seemed shed on every object; faces stood out brightlyfrom the darkness, and looked more nearly upon me; in truth, there wereyouthful faces and aged, pretty and ugly, but all alike beamed upon mekindly, and lovingly, and tenderly; but it was the youngest, at the otherend of the table, whose bright eyes attracted me, and we exchanged longand wistful glances, full of affection and sympathy!
Sperver kept on humming and laughing. Suddenly putting his hand upon thedwarf's misshapen back, he cried--
"Silence! Here is Knapwurst, our historian and chronicler! He ispreparing to speak. This hump holds all the history of the house ofNideck from the beginning of time!"
The little hunchback, not at all indignant at so ambiguous a compliment,directed his benevolent eyes upon the face of the huntsman, and replied--
"You, Sperver, you are one of the _reiters_ whose story I have beentelling you. You have the arm, and the courage, and the whiskers of a_reiter_ of old! If that window opened wide, and a _reiter_ was to holdout his hand at the end of his long arm to you, what would you say tohim?"
"I would say, 'You are welcome, comrade; sit down and drink. You willfind the wine just as good and the girls just as pretty as they were inthe days of old Hugh Lupus.' Look!"
And he pointed with his glass at the jolly young faces that brightenedthe farther end of the table.
Certainly the damsels of Nideck were lovely. Some were blushing withpleasure to hear their own praises; others half-veiled their rosy cheekswith their long drooping eyelashes, while one or two seemed rather toprefer to display their, sweet blue eyes by raising them to the smokyceiling. I wondered at my own insensibility that I had never beforenoticed these fair roses blooming in the towers of the ancient manor.
"Silence!" cried Sperver for the second time. "Our friend Knapwurst isgoing to tell us again the legend he related to us just now."
"Won't you have another instead?" asked the hunchback.
"No. I like this best."
"I know better ones than that."
"Knapwurst," insisted the huntsman, raising his finger impressively, "Ihave reasons for wishing to hear the same again and no other. Cut itshorter if you like. There is a great deal in it. Now, Fritz, listen!"
The dwarf, rather under the influence of the sparkling wine he had taken,rested his elbows on the table, and with his cheeks clutched in his bonyfingers, and his eyes starting from his head with his concentratedefforts to speak with becoming seriousness, he cried as if he werepublishing a proclamation--
"Bernard Hertzog relates that the burgrave Hugh, surnamed Lupus, or theWolf, when he was old, used to wear a cowl, which was a kind of knittedcap that covered in the crest of the knight's helmet when engaged infighting. When the helmet tired him he would take it off and put on theknitted cowl, and its long cape fell around his shoulders.
"Up to his eighty-second year Hugh still wore his armour, though he couldhardly breathe in it.
"Then he sent for Otto of Burlach, his chaplain, his eldest son Hugh, hissecond son Berthold, and his daughter the red-haired Bertha, wife of aSaxon chief named Bluderich, and said to them--
"'Your mother the she-wolf has bequeathed you her claws; her blood flows,mingled with mine, in your veins. In you the wolf's blood will flow fromgeneration to generation; it shall weep and howl among the snows of theBlack Forest. Some will say, "Hark! The wind howls!" others, "No, it isthe owl hooting!" But not so; it is your blood, mine and the blood of theshe-wolf who drove me to murder Hedwige, my wife before God and theChurch. She died under my bloody hands! Cursed be the she-wolf! for it iswritten, "I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children." Thecrime of the father shall be visited upon the children until justiceshall have been satisfied!'
"Then old Hugh the Wolf died.
"From that dreary day the north wind has howled across the wilds, and theowl has hooted in the dark, and travellers by night know not that it isthe blood of the she-wolf weeping for the day of vengeance that willcome, whose blood will be renewed from generation to generation--so saysHertzog--until the day when the first wife of Hugh, Hedwige the Fair,shall reappear at Nideck under the form of an angel to comfort and toforgive!"
Then Sperver, rising from his seat, took a lamp and demanded of Knapwurstthe keys of the library, and beckoned to me to follow him.
We rapidly traversed the long dark gallery, then the armoury, and soonthe archive-chamber appeared at the end of the great corridor.
All noises had died away in the distance. The place seemed quitedeserted.
Once or twice I turned round, and could then see with a creeping feelingof dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing instrange distortions upon the high tapestry.
Sperver quickly opened the old oak door, and with torch uplifted, hishair all bristling in disorder, and excited features, walked in thefirst. Standing before the portrait of Hedwige, whose likeness to theyoung countess had struck me at our first visit to the library, headdressed me in these solemn words:--
"Here is she who was to return to comfort and pity me! She has returned!At this moment she is downstairs with the old count. Look well, Fritz; doyou recognise her? Is it not Odile?"
Then turning to the picture of Hugh's second wife--
"There," he said, "is Huldine, the she-wolf. For a thousand years she haswept in the deep gorges amongst the pine forests of the Schwartzwald; shewas the cause of the death of poor Lieverle; but henceforward the lordsof Nideck may rest securely, for justice is done, and the good angel ofthis lordly house has returned!"