The Last Miracle Part 21

CHAPTER XXII

END OF DEES

It was on my seventeenth morning in Gratz that, having been fortified with a letter by Herr Oberburgermeister, I saw the Prince-bishop: the morning of an audience: so that I had first to wait a long time among a mob of all sorts of men, who pa.s.sed in one by one at the call of a Spanish abbe with sandals on his feet, a lad of such beauty that one's eyes clung to his face, till my turn at last came, and I was ushered into a chamber almost Pompadour in style, with statues, mirrors, flowers, through a door of which one could see, and smell, the palace-chapel. The Prince-bishop was pacing the floor, shut up within himself. I think that I never saw a more imposing figure, for he was big, and, having lately come from the chapel, had on a most gorgeous large cope, the apparel of his amice sticking up stiffly about his jaws under a dalmatic that might have bought a farm. Here was the Church in the awe of her gaudery. He looked a young man of not more than thirty-five, and stood like a king; but his lengthy chin was retreating, and he had some kind of lisp which made his speech rather common and silly.

He motioned me to a chair, and as I unfolded my tale quietly enough he listened, pacing, pacing; but the moment I had finished he reddened, and, suddenly placing his two palms far forth on the table, bringing his face down to mine, the good man glared at me, giving forth the roar: "_Impious scoundrel!_"

I, for my part, felt myself flush, and half rose to answer the insult, for I fancied that he meant me: but he meant Baron Kolar!

During the remainder of our half-hour's interview it became clear to me that there had been long-standing feud and war before this between the prince-bishop and the baron, an old trial of strengths never yet decided, but now to be decided; and when I deposited the affidavits with the great churchman I deposited them certain that I had at last discovered the key to the dungeon of Dees.

And so it proved: for, to cut short the story of intrigue, and runnings to and fro, and hurried breaths, during the next three days, on my twentieth day in Gratz a body of garrison-soldiers and sicherheitswachmanner, numbering twenty-seven, set out from Gratz for the mountains, I being in the rail-train with them, after having sent to Swandale the telegram: "All goes well; you will see us within four days."

These officers of the law were sent out in secret, under orders to break into any part of Schweinstein Castle if need were, and to set free the priest. I parted from them at Badsogl at four in the afternoon, hurrying on upward on horseback, while the troop followed, travelling afoot. Langler and I clasped hands under the corn-sheaf hung in the guest-court porch, where he stood expecting me, looking, I thought, remarkably well, with the good old smile stretching his lips. It was a most happy meeting: I had returned in triumph to find him safe, with a bundle of edelweiss as white as his soul in his hands and a fine brown in his skin. "Well done, Arthur," said he to me, and I to him: "all through you." "No, nego, nego," he answered. "Well, the point is," said I, "that our pains are all but over, and Swandale once more in sight."

"Ah, Swandale," said he, "well, that, too, by G.o.d's mercy. Did you telegraph to Emily?" "Yes," I answered. "I, too," said he. "Do you think," I asked, "that anyone up here knows yet of the coming of the troop?" "I fancy that Lossow knows," said he. "I wonder how?" said I. "I don't know," said he, "but I fancy that it is antic.i.p.ated; however, it can be of no importance, since the troop are under vigorous orders."

"Let us hope not," said I; "well, but I am very hungry." Just then Lossow's face appeared, trying not to smile, but chubbily smiling, so we ordered a meal, and, pa.s.sing inward, I was met at the foot of the stair by the "kiss the hand, sir!" of the frau, of her children, and of all the household. At that moment, at any rate, I may say that these people wore their wonted faces, and seemed to have no weight on their minds.

While I was feeding upon the old gansbrust and beet, Langler and I made up our minds that we had better be at the burg when Dees was set free, so as to seize upon him, hear whatever he might have to tell, and then speed down in the waggonette to Badsogl, whence we would wire Dees'

story to England, and so, having won our backs bare of the world's business, make for home. All this was settled. My trunk was waiting below at Badsogl; Langler's was ready packed.

In the midst of our talk a boy of the place named Fritz brought us a telegram: it was from Swandale, and in the words: "Yours received, praises to G.o.d, beloved, shall await you Friday night at 9.17 at latest; am quite well, but try, will you, for Thursday." Langler read, and handed it to me. Now, every word from Swandale always powerfully moved him, so I was surprised now that his first words were: "but what is the matter with Fritz?" I answered that I hadn't noticed. "Well, he seems much agitated," said Langler.

I ended my meal, and we sat by our window, smoking and still talking about our plans. I was in the act of looking at my watch, and of saying "within fifteen minutes now the troop should be at the castle-gate,"

when we were startled by the toll of a bell. It seemed to come from the burg. Langler and I looked at each other, as the toll was anew borne to us, s.h.i.+vering up through the forest on the soughs of the evening-breeze.

"Someone must be no more," murmured Langler in a low tone. I uttered no word in answer: I was all hushed and bemused into the mood of the tolls; all the mountain seemed hushed now on a sudden in submission to their meaning and the tremolo of their bleating treble. I murmured to Langler: "they seem to be tolling at the burg; someone must be dead."

The tolling of the bell went on. Presently I got up, and struck the triangle (our bell), in answer to which old Lossow rushed wildly in, no smiling now, in that old man's looks the very ghost and gauntness of awe. "Why, what is the matter, Lossow?" said I, "who, then, is dead?"

"Oh, good gentleman!" he groaned, with an appealing underlook. "But who is dead?" said I again, at which repet.i.tion of my question the old man now seemed to fly into a flurry, and crying out, "I know nothing, nothing of it!" was.h.i.+ng his hands of it, tripped with his petty steps from the room.

I looked at Langler, saying: "we shall learn nothing from him, so let us start for the castle at once; by the time we get there the troop should have come."

We took umbrellas, Langler taking his greatcoat, too, for since my arrival the weather had turned out rough. At the bottom of the stair we saw the Lossows all in a knot, all with the same blankness and eyes of awe, and without stopping to speak to them pa.s.sed out and down through the forest, which every few moments was swamped with s.h.i.+very tempests and volumes of commotion mixed with spray. It was well past six, but there was still some twilight, save in the thick of the timber. Some way beyond the forest we saw a group of men staring at the troop before the burg with faces that told more plainly than words that something tremendous must have awed all these people to the heart. The bell was still tolling, and again tolling, even now telling out to the mountain as with the tongue of a woman its tidings of good-bye and bereavement, the castle flagstaff flying a flag at half-mast. We two hastened up the footpath to the gate, with the river at flood on our right, to find the men of the troop with their field-caps pushed back, their brows flushed from the tramp, for the most part soldiers of the third army-division, proud fellows, dressed in blue-grey _bluses_, with c.o.c.kades and greatcoats. Their leader had just handed his warrant to Herr Tschudi, who lifted his eyes from it to fix upon us two, as we drew nigh, a look of venom. He, too, was white, like every denizen of the valley that untoward night; he strove to keep under his agitation, but the warrant shook in his hand, crackled in the wind; and close behind him the castle bell tolled, and again tolled.

"Well, Herr Feldwebel," I heard him say, "there was certainly such a prisoner in the castle as is named here, but I may tell you that he left it over an hour ago."

"So much the better, Herr Burgvogt," answered the other; "still, I must make a search."

"Willingly from the heart, since that is your pleasure," answered Tschudi.

"Who, then, is dead?" asked Herr Feldwebel: "I hear your bell tolling."

"Oh, one of the men of the alp," was the answer.

"Forward!" said the sergeant-major to his men.

They stooped through the wicket, which closed after them, and Langler and I were left alone. We waited at first under a wood of yews near the outwork, but as there was lightning we drew away again into the open before the portal, dressing our umbrellas against the wind, which anon brewed drizzle. The twilight died out more and more bleakly; the bell continued to toll. We stood silent, waiting. As for me, a fear was in me. I felt that some doom may have overtaken Dees, though, in that case, it seemed hardly to be believed that they would dare to toll the bell in the very presence of the officers of the law; still, I feared; I think that Langler did, too, but he said nothing of it; if we spoke, it was to remark on the strangeness of the lightning, which up there on the heights somehow strikes in different tints, now purplish, now greenish, or rosy. We must have waited forty minutes when seven of the troop came out, bearing pine-torches in their three-fingered gloves, and biting sandwiches. I ran and asked one of them for the news.

"He is not in there," was his answer, "we have searched every nook, and are now going to look round."

"Did you see Baron Kolar inside?"

"No, the baron is not in the castle," he said.

They ran up into the barbacan, ran down again in ten minutes, then ran down the path to the south castle-side, and vanished from our sight.

We abode between fear and hope. No sound was to be heard within or without the burg but the sounds of the winds. It was almost dark before we saw the torches of the troop of seven returning, these having discovered no trace of Dees. They went back into the castle. Some minutes later the whole troop of twenty-seven came out with lanterns and torches. I approached the sergeant-major, to whom I was known, and had some talk with him: all he could say was that the captive named in his commission was nowhere in or near the castle, so that nothing remained to him now but to march back down the mountain.

We saw their torch-lights pa.s.s away down the castle-mound, and up to the forest, and lost to sight, and still we loitered by the portal, not knowing what to think or what next to do.

"Perhaps we had better go back to the guest-court," I said at last; "something may be learned there."

Before Langler could answer the wicket opened, Herr Tschudi stepped out, and, peering at us, cried jauntily: "kiss the hand, sirs! What, still waiting to see the good Pater Dees come out?"

Neither of us answered him.

"You are only losing your time," he went on: "Pater Max, is it? the blessed Max? But no saintly Max will come out here again, by Gott, no.

Look you"--his voice sank secretly--"I'll bite into the sour apple, and give you a hint, just to satisfy you two men. You have been eager to see the lovely saint--eager, eager: well, he is not a thousand metres off, up yonder by the right river-bank, waiting now for you; you go, you will find him, you were eager to see him"--and at once the man dashed inward from us, chuckling, and slamming the wicket after him.

"But what a fury!" said Langler.

"Let me go up the river as he says, and _see_," said I, "and you wait here till I come back."

"But if you can go I will, too," he answered in a strained voice.

We went by a path which, after skirting the castle-back, followed the line of the cliffs a few feet from their edge. Occasionally, in a flash, the river appeared at flood thirty to forty feet below; but mostly it was so murky that we kept on missing the path; our minds, too, were crowded full of gloom, for all that night seemed to us haunted with ghosts and meanings of awe and fear. Some little distance from the burg the river and cliffs had a sudden bend from east to north, thenceforth the cliffs being clad to their foot in fir-forest, and we had gone past this bend, and were going on northward, I holding Langler's arm, when, at a lighting up of the scene of river and forest, we both stood still in a fright. At one place at the base of the opposite cliffs was a patch of sward some inches above the water, a very lonely little spot, and just there, in the cut of the lightning, our eyes seemed to catch sight of a crucifix. It was about twenty feet below us, perhaps fifty yards beyond us.

What stopped my breath was the fact that that was an uncommon place for one of the wooden crucifixes common in Styria, and that I had never chanced to notice a crucifix just there before, though I knew the cliffs well; but we were still standing uncertain as to what we had actually beheld, when somewhere someone was heard to say: "yes, it is my son Max that you see nailed to that wood."

The tone was like a woman's, and not remote, though our eyes could make out no form in the dark; I seemed to find myself with the world of the departed, and while I shrank there from the presence that was with us, I remember hearing in the silence a roaring of waters against the arches of the bridge and the banks of slime below; for the tide was turned, the flood had convened, had teemed, had lasted, and was over now, and the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river was streaming back down, as when hosts stream back homeward from some supremeness and ritual, when all's over now and done, and the mourners stream about the streets.

CHAPTER XXIII

STORY OF DEES

We had never till now even heard of a mother of Dees! so stern a silence must have been imposed by the burg upon the mountain.

"Yes," said the woman to us, "they watched me and the little Undine in my cottage, dreading that I should bespeak the two foreigners, for I fear neither them nor anything--the world knows it." We stood now with her within a hutte, or cowshed, which let in the drizzle, and we had lightning glimpses of a Roman face, and black locks, and proud rags, and of a child whom she called Undine hugged in her powerful arms to her bosom.

"Tell us, if you can, about your son," Langler said to her, "but not if that pains you, for our hearts bleed for you; we tried our best for him, and our best has turned to your utter sorrow, but you will forgive us, if you can, since we meant well."

"But I do not sorrow!" she cried. "I am only glad and proud! There he hangs nailed up like a bat; dead, sirs; with the wind of where he was born blowing his hair. Is it Max? Is it the lad? It was for this, after all, that you were born that Rosenkranz Sunday night. I said to you, 'take care, mind your steps, do not always fly on horses of wind,' but you wouldn't hear, you wouldn't heed, and this is what it was to come to. But better this than rotting in the dungeon--a grand death for a grand lad! Yes, he defied them all, the lad! he thought himself the equal of the baron's self, or of any prince of them. That lad! it is strange, too, where I had the stuff about me to make the lad; his father had nothing in the lad; none knew that lad but me, for a mother knows.

He came as a surprise, the lad: he set himself above them all! But now you hang there, Max, for the eagles----" She was interrupted in this species of raving by someone who, after peering near at us, suddenly cried out: "now, Mother Dees, you know that you should be at home, get you gone from this!" "I defy you all, Hans Richter!" shouted the mother of Dees in answer. "You can do to me nothing worse than has been done to him, and it is that which would be sweet to me." "Yes, yes, but you know that I have caught you blabbing to the foreigners," said the man, "come, come--" And at this I, understanding that he had laid hands upon her, landed him a hit on the chest, whereat, without saying more, he took to his heels.

I suspected that he had run to report to the castle what he had seen, so I pressed the woman to talk, and within some minutes we had from her the tale of Dees' life.