Edelweiss Part 38

Pilgrim's breath came short and quick; his lips grew white, and without another word he left the room.

Petrovitsch sent after him such a look of triumph as a satisfied fox might send after the wounded and fugitive hare whose blood he had sucked, but whose life the poor creature might save as he could.

With great satisfaction he paced about his room, stroking himself down with his hands. He seemed actually so puffed up with satisfaction that he had to let out the ta.s.seled cord of his dressing-gown. Now Petrovitsch is himself again, his every motion seemed to say; last night you behaved like an old fool and forfeited all right to revile the dish-clouts about you.

Pilgrim silently wended his way homeward, but, being in no mood for entering his room at once, pa.s.sed his house and took a long walk through the fields. On returning, he was most agreeably surprised by finding his friend's little boy. That is the way, he thought, when friends heartily love one another. At the very moment I was thinking of Lenz, his heart was full of me. Perhaps he had a presentiment of my intended visit to Petrovitsch, and so sent his boy to help my pet.i.tion.

But the child could have done no good. The voices of men and angels would have been alike useless.

There was no end to the games Pilgrim invented, and the pictures he drew, for the child's entertainment. Little William screamed with delight at the hare and hounds made out of a handkerchief and a black necktie, and called for the same stories over and over again. Pilgrim's great story was of a Turk named Kulikali, who had an immense nose and could swallow smoke. He dressed himself up like the Turk Kulikali, and spreading a cloth on the floor, sat in the middle of it with his legs crossed, and played all manner of tricks. He was as much of a child for the time as his little G.o.dson. After dinner, which they ate down stairs with Don Bastian, William insisted on being taken, in spite of the sleet and slosh, down to the brook. That was the best fun of all. Great blocks of ice went floating by with ravens perched upon them; and when one of their rafts cracked and broke to pieces, the ravens flew up and perched upon another. It was dizzying to look down on them from the height where the two stood. The earth seemed to be in motion while the ice stood still. The child clung anxiously to Pilgrim. When that entertainment failed, Pilgrim took his G.o.dson home and made him up a bed on his well-worn sofa, which they agreed should be little Lenz's own, and he should never go away any more. "At home papa cries," the little fellow said; "and mamma too; and mamma says papa is a wicked man." Poor Pilgrim was cut to the heart at hearing of it. The snow and rain increased so much in violence, and the avalanches from the roofs of the houses and from the upland slopes were so constant, that it soon became impossible to step out of doors. The evening came, but no Lenz.

The servant-maid told of her having met Petrovitsch on his way to the Morgenhalde, not far from the house. He had asked whose the child was, and on her replying it was Lenz's William, had given him a little bit of sugar,--not a whole lump, for he broke off half of it first and put it into his own mouth.

"Is it possible? can Petrovitsch really have been softened? Who can read the hearts of men?"

Petrovitsch, after giving full scope to his exultation at this double triumph over the doctor and Pilgrim, felt very tranquil in his mind. He sat at his window watching the groups of church-goers, till at last all were gone by except a single woman and a single man, who came hurrying along to take their seats before the service should begin.

Petrovitsch's custom was to go to church himself; in fact, so regular was his attendance that it was reported he meant to leave a handsome sum in his will towards erecting a new building. To day, however, he stayed at home, being busy with his own thoughts. One idea in particular occupied his mind: The fellow has good friends in his time of need. Pooh! would they be quite so good if they were rich? Pilgrim's friendship perhaps is sincere; it almost looked so. He was very near letting his pa.s.sion break out at one time; but he kept it down and let me say what I would, rather than injure his friend's cause.--It was all a trick likely enough,--and yet there is such a thing as friendship.

He heard the rumbling of the organ from the distant church, the singing of the congregation, and then came a silence which implied that the minister had begun his sermon. A voice seemed to be preaching to Petrovitsch as he sat with folded hands in his chair. Suddenly he rose saying half aloud: "It is very well to show men their master, but it is pleasant too to be thought well off.--No, no; that is not worth while; that is not what I mean; but to make men rub their eyes and cry: 'Thunder and lightning, who would have thought it?' there is some fun in that."

Petrovitsch had not for many years dressed himself so quickly as he did to-day. Generally he took his dressing easily and comfortably, like most things that he did, spending at least an hour over it; but to-day he was soon ready, even to the putting on of his costly fur coat which he had brought from Russia himself. The old housekeeper, who had seen him a few minutes before in dressing-gown and slippers, stared in amazement, but dared not utter a word, as she was not spoken to. With his gold-headed cane, furnished with a hard, sharp ferrule at the bottom, in case of need, Petrovitsch walked through the village and straight up the hill. No human being was in the street; none at the windows to wonder at seeing him leave his house at this unwonted hour and in this ugly weather. Bubby had to represent the whole absent humanity, and proclaimed, as well as his barking could: My master is behaving himself in a way you would not believe; I would not have believed it myself. He barked it at a raven sitting meditatively on a hedge, sagely reflecting upon the melting snow; he barked it for his own gratification as he leaped ever higher and higher through the deepening drifts, on his useless digressions to and fro; and between his barks his look at his master seemed to say: No human soul understands us two; but we know each other.

I sacrifice all my peace of mind by doing it, said Petrovitsch to himself; but if I don't do it I have no peace of mind either. I might as well secure some thanks at least. After all, he is a good, simple, honest fellow, as his father was before him.

Lenz's door was locked when the two reached the house. Bubby was already on the threshold, and Petrovitsch had his hand on the latch when--he sank to the ground, and an avalanche of snow overwhelmed him.

So much for troubling yourself about other men, was his first thought and his last, for immediately consciousness failed him.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

BURIED ALIVE.

"Strike a light, Lenz; strike a light! If there is any danger, I must see it. What makes you stand there crying in the dark. I feel your tears on my hand. What is the matter? Let me go; I will get up myself and light a lamp."

"Be quiet, Annele," said Lenz, his teeth chattering so he could hardly speak. "Annele, I had meant to kill myself here before your eyes."

"Better kill me; I should be too glad to die."

"Did you not understand me, Annele? We are blocked up by the snow; buried alive with our child."

"If death had had to wait for you to bring it, it never would have come."

Still that hard, cutting tone; those biting, stinging words! Lenz felt his breath come hard.

"Let me get up, let me get up!" continued Annele; "I am not like you, to let my arms hang down at my side. I don't care what becomes of me; but I choose to see the danger. You would like to wait till some one came to dig you out or till the snow went away of itself; that is not my way. Defend yourself, is our family motto."

"Stay where you are; I will strike a light," answered Lenz; but hardly had he reached the next room before Annele stood beside him with the child in her arms. On attempting to go to the garret a new misfortune disclosed itself; the roof had been broken in. "The snow alone could not have done the damage," he said; "it has brought trunks of trees down with it, and that was what made such a crash."

"I don't care what made it; only let us find some help, some way of escape."

She ran hither and thither trying all the windows and doors. Not till she found that all were firmly walled up and yielded nothing under her fiercest efforts, did she admit the full extent of the catastrophe, and setting the child down upon the table, broke out into screams and tears. Lenz took the child in his arms, and with difficulty persuaded Annele to be quiet. "The hand of death is upon our house," he said; "all struggle is unavailing. Did you keep William too at home? Is he concealed anywhere here?"

"No; he went with the maid. I kept only the baby."

"Thank G.o.d! we are not all lost; one of us at least is saved. Poor little child! I sent the boy away, Annele, that he might not see his father kill himself; but now all is changed. G.o.d summons us all. Poor child, to have to perish for your parents' sins!"

"I have not sinned; I have nothing to reproach myself with."

"Good; hold to that to the last. Do you not know that you have murdered me, poisoned the very heart in my body, disgraced me in my own eyes, trodden me under foot, taken all strength from me?"

"A man who allows his strength to be taken from him deserves nothing better."

"An hour more and we may be standing before another judgment-seat. Look into your heart, Annele."

"Keep your preaching to yourself; I don't want it."

An instant afterwards her screams summoned Lenz to the kitchen, whither she had gone to light the fire, and where he found her gazing in terror at the rats and mice congregated on the hearth, while a raven flew round and round the kitchen, knocking down plates and pots in his course.

"Kill them! kill them!" shrieked Annele, and fled into the adjoining room.

The rats and mice were soon disposed of, but the raven it would have been impossible to catch without breaking every article of crockery in the kitchen. The lamp made the bird frantic, and without a light it was impossible to find him. "I might shoot the raven with my pistol which I have here, ready loaded," he said, returning to Annele in the sitting-room; "but the jar would hasten the fall of the house. The best thing I can do is to make this room safe."

He drew a heavy press into the middle of the room directly under the main beam, piled a smaller one above it, and filled in the s.p.a.ce so tightly with clothes as to prop up the roof against a considerable pressure from without.

"We must bring all the eatables we have in here." That too he did quickly and handily, while Annele sat like one paralyzed, and could only look on in wonder.

Lenz brought his own prayer-book and Annele's, opened them both at the same place,--the preparation for death,--and laying his wife's open before her, began to read aloud. Seeing she did not follow him, he looked up presently and said: "You are right not to read; there is nothing there for us. Never were any two like us, who should have lived together in peace, each doubling the other's life; but who instead of that pulled away from each other, and are now both imprisoned at the gates of death, and must die together, since they could not live together. Hark! Do you not hear cries? I thought there was a growling sound."

"I hear nothing."

"We cannot light a fire," continued Lenz; "for there is no way for the smoke to escape, and we should be stifled. Thank G.o.d, there is the spirit-lamp that my mother bought. You help even in death, mother," he said, looking up at the picture. "Light it, Annele; only economize the spirit; we cannot tell how long we shall have to make it last."

Annele watched his movements in blank amazement. She was often tempted to ask whether this were really that Lenz who had been so incapable of helping himself. But no words came from her stiffened lips. She was like a person in a deathly trance who tries to speak and cannot.

Her first swallow of warm milk revived her. "What if the mice should come in here?" was her first question.

"I will kill them here too, and bury them in the snow to get rid of the stench. By the way, I must bury those I killed in the kitchen."

Again Annele looked at him in amazement. Was this man, so bold in the face of death, the old, sensitive, shiftless Lenz? A kind word rose to her lips, but did not get spoken.

"That plaguy raven has bitten me," said Lenz, returning with his hand bleeding. "The fellow is wild with terror at having been swept away by the force of the avalanche; there is no catching him. A whole pillar of snow has fallen down the chimney. Hark! that is ten o'clock. People are coming out of church now. We were buried just as the last bells were ringing. It was our death-knell."

"I will not die yet; I am so young! And my child! I never knew, I never imagined that I was going to my death when I condescended to live in this desert with you clockmakers."

"It is your father's fault," answered Lenz. "My parents were three times snowed up, so that for two and three days they could not go outside the house, on account of the depth of snow that lay there; but they were never buried. Your father disposed of the wood, and had it cut down over my head. This is his work."

"You have no one but yourself to blame. He wanted to give you the wood."