Read Ebook: Saint Michael: A Romance by Werner E Wister A L Annis Lee Translator

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Ebook has 1598 lines and 81415 words, and 32 pages

unusually warm. The heat made itself felt even at this altitude: the temperature was sultry and oppressive. The pasture-lands around Saint Michael were bathed in the sunlight, and the skies were still clear, but mists hovered restlessly about the mountain-ranges, and dark clouds began to gather above their summits, now darkly veiled, and anon gleaming clear and distinct.

"I fear we are going to have a storm this evening," said Valentin. "This has been like a day in midsummer."

"Yes, we felt it so as we were coming up the mountain," said Hertha. "Do you think that we ought to be arranging for our return?"

"No," replied Michael, scanning the mountains, "when the clouds gather, as now, over there above the Eagle ridge, they will hang for hours about the rocks before the storm comes, and then it is apt to take its course down the valley and leave us untouched. But there will be a storm. Saint Michael's flaming sword is flashing there."

He pointed to the Eagle ridge, where in fact it was lightening, faintly and in the distance, but still unmistakably.

"Saint Michael's flaming sword?" Hertha repeated, inquiringly.

"Certainly; do you not know the popular superstition so wide-spread in these mountains?"

"No; I have never been here except for a few weeks at a time, and know nothing of the people."

"Their belief is that the lightning is the sword of the avenging archangel flashing from the skies, and that the storms, which often enough do mischief in the valleys, are punishments wrought by him."

"Saint Michael loves storm and flame," said Hertha, smiling. "I have always felt very proud that the leader of the heavenly host, the mighty angel of war and battle, is the patron saint of our family. You bear his name, too; it is my uncle Steinr?ck's."

Valentin cast an anxious glance at his former pupil, but Michael looked quite unmoved, and replied, composedly, "Yes--by chance."

"The saint's day is close at hand," the young Countess observed to the priest. "The church will be thronged then, will it not, your reverence?"

"The inhabitants of all the surrounding villages visit the church on that day; but our chief church festival comes in May, upon the day when the saint's appearance took place. Then the entire population of these mountains flocks hither from the most distant heights and the most secluded valleys, so that church and village can scarcely contain the crowds. The legend is that on that day Saint Michael, although invisible, descends from the Eagle ridge and ploughs the earth with his flaming sword as he did visibly centuries ago, when his shrine was founded here."

As he uttered the last words they paused before a wayside crucifix rising solitary from the green meadow and facing towards the Eagle ridge. A wild rosebush wreathed about the base of the cross, almost concealing the wood-work, and its thick, luxuriant shoots were woven about the sacred image like a living frame; its time for blooming had long since passed, but the warm, sunny autumn days had lured forth a few late buds, not fragrant and rich in colour like their sisters of the plain, but pale, wild mountain-roses, which, blooming to-day, are torn by the wind to-morrow, and yet they gleamed pink amid the dark green like a last greeting from departing summer.

A peasant lad approached, hat in hand and rather timidly; he had a message for his reverence, whom he had been seeking in the village. His mother was very sick, and was fain to see his reverence; the house was very near, hardly two hundred paces distant, and if his reverence could spare a few minutes the sick woman would be very grateful and much comforted.

"No, your reverence, we will await you here," Hertha interrupted him. "This view of the Eagle ridge is so magnificent!"

"I shall be back again shortly," the priest rejoined, inclining his head courteously, as he turned away with Hies, and walked to a small house near by, within the door of which he vanished.

Saint Michael, as it lay before Hertha and her companion, looked like the most secluded of highland valleys, so embedded was it in the green Alps that surrounded it. There was but one distant view, and it might well vie with all others,--that of the Eagle ridge. The mighty range of rocks rising there in gloomy majesty commanded the landscape, and towered above all the surrounding summits; dark pine forests clothed its sides, and its depths hid savage abysses, down which mountain-torrents tumbled with a roar faintly audible in the clear air. The summit of the ridge indeed, with its naked, jagged peaks and its sheer precipices, seemed inaccessible for mortal man; those peaks soared to dizzy heights, and the highest of them all, the Eagle's head, wore a crown of glaciers that glittered in icy splendour, its giant wings, on each side, seeming to shelter the little hamlet of Saint Michael lying at its feet. The ridge was rightly named; it did, indeed, bear a resemblance to an eagle with outstretched wings.

The silence lasted some time, and was at last broken by Hertha. "According to the legend, then, the archangel descends from that peak."

"With the first ray of the morning sun," replied Michael. "The sun rises there above the ridge. The people cling with unswerving fidelity to their time-hallowed beliefs, and will not relinquish their spring festivals and their worship of the sun. He is the ancient god of light, who either blesses or curses mankind; who mutters in the thunder, and then again ploughs the earth with his flaming sword that the spring may bring forth fresh life and beauty; the Church has clothed him in the shining mail of the archangel."

"That sounds very heretical," the young Countess said, reproachfully. "Do not let his reverence or my mother hear you. It is easy to see that you were brought up beneath Professor Wehlau's roof. Was he an early friend of your father's?"

Michael bowed his head as if in assent. The Professor had insisted upon this concession from him from the first, as it put a stop to all annoying conjecture, and had quite satisfied even Hans himself.

"You lost your father very early?"

"Yes, very early."

"And your mother too?"

"And my mother too."

There was evident distress in his tone, and Hertha, perceiving that she had unconsciously touched some sore spot, hastened to remove the impression by saying, "I, too, was a mere child when my father died. I have but a dim remembrance of him, and of the love and tenderness which he lavished upon me. Where did you live with your parents?"

The young man's lip quivered, and there was bitterness in his heart as he remembered his childhood, with its lack of love and tenderness. The disgrace and misery which he had but half understood had nevertheless stamped themselves upon the boy's memory, and were still vividly present with the man after the lapse of twenty years. "My childhood was far from happy," he said, evasively. "There was so little in it that could possibly interest you that I should be sorry to annoy you with an account of it."

"Your sympathy! with me?" Michael suddenly broke forth, and then paused as suddenly; but what his lips did not utter his eyes said clearly, as he gazed as if spell-bound at the young Countess, whose beauty was certainly not dependent upon dress. She had been bewitchingly lovely in silk and lace, in the brilliant light of the chandeliers, and to-day, in her simple, close-fitting, dark-blue riding-habit, she was even lovelier. Beneath the little hat, with its blue veil, the golden braids gleamed through the thin tissue, and the eyes beamed brightly. There was something unusual in her air to-day; she seemed released from the petty conventional code of the brilliant circle in which she was wont to move, and as if breathed upon by the mighty mountain world around her, and this lent her a new and dangerous charm.

"Well?" she said, smiling, without noticing Michael's sudden pause. "I am waiting."

"For what?"

"For the account of your childhood, which you have not yet given me."

"Nor can I give it you, for I can relate nothing of home or of parental affection. I have grown up among strangers, I owe everything to strangers, and, kindly and generously as it was bestowed, I still feel it as a debt which would crush me to the earth had I not vowed to myself to pay it by my entire future. At last I have taken the helm into my own hands, and can steer out into the open sea."

"And can you trust that sea, with its winds and waves?"

"Yes. Trust the sea and it will carry you safely. Of one thing I am sure, however: I shall never drift ashore on a half-shattered wreck, thankful to escape with mere life. No, I will either steer my vessel into port or go to the bottom with it."

He stood erect as he uttered the last words with resolute emphasis. Hertha looked at him in surprise, and suddenly said, "Strange,--how like you are at this moment to my uncle Steinr?ck."

"I? to the general?"

"Extremely like him."

"That must be an illusion," Michael rejoined, coldly. "I regret having to disclaim the honour of a resemblance to his Excellency, but none can possibly exist."

"Certainly not; you have not a feature in common; the likeness lies in the expression, and now it has vanished again. But at that moment you had the general's eyes, his air, even his voice. It really startled me."

Her eyes still rested upon his countenance, as if she were expecting a reply; but Michael turned somewhat aside, and said, changing the conversation, "The prospect is growing more and more veiled; we shall soon be surrounded by clouds."

The weather did, in fact, look more threatening; the sun had begun to set, but his rays were struggling with the mists floating up everywhere, as if some leader of a mighty host had sounded his trumpet-call, heard of the whole vast mountain world, and the cloud-phantoms were rising on all sides to obey the summons, some with slow majesty, some in desperate haste. Up from the deeps and abysses soared the mist unceasingly, like a white veil, noiseless and ghost-like, sweeping up over the forests, leaving a fluttering pennon here and there amidst the tops of the pines, and then soaring aloft again. From each side across the gray Alps single clouds came trooping, followed by huge masses, all rolling towards the Eagle ridge, where they gathered ever darker and more threatening.

The meadows upon which lay Saint Michael soon looked like an island in the midst of a billowy, swelling sea, the waves of which rose higher each minute. There it gleamed white, like the foam of dashing, leaping breakers, and there it lay gray and formless as in shade, while high above on the peaks of the ridge, still lit by the sunlight, golden, shimmering mists were sailing, shot by strange, quivering rays. A gleaming magic veil was woven about the rocky head and the glacier crown; they stood half veiled, half revealed in the golden atmosphere.

But at their feet the storm was gathering thick, and now the first dull thunder rolled, seeming to come from the very depths of the mountains, and dying rumbling in the distance.

The air had hitherto been quiet; now the wind began to rise. The young Countess's veil fluttered aloft and caught in a hanging branch of the wild-rose bush, from which she vainly tried to extricate it. The thorns held their prey fast, and Rodenberg, who came to her aid, must have been rather awkward, for the band of her hat slipped and the hat fell off. Michael, who was stooping to disentangle the delicate tissue, shrank suddenly and dropped his hand, for close before his eyes gleamed uncovered the thick braids, the 'red fairy gold.'

"Have you scratched your hand?" asked Hertha, noticing his start.

"No!" He plunged his hand into the thorny tangle and pulled away both hat and veil; but the thorns revenged themselves: the veil was torn, and a few drops of blood trickled from the young man's hand.

"Thank you," said Hertha, taking her hat from him; "but you are a rash assistant. How wrong to plunge your hand in among the thorns! It is bleeding."

There was real commiseration in her tone, but the reply was all the colder. "It is not worth mentioning; it is the merest scratch."

He took out his handkerchief and pressed it upon the tiny wounds as he glanced impatiently towards the little house, where the priest yet lingered. His visit there seemed to be endless, and the rack here must be tasted to the last.

The young girl perhaps suspected his agony, but she did not feel called upon to abbreviate it. The spoiled, petted beauty felt it as an offence that this man should dare to defy a power which she had so often exerted over others. He had recognized its might, as she had long since perceived; he had not approached her with impunity, and yet here he stood with that impregnable reserve, that haughty brow, which would not bow. He must be punished!

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