The Alpine Fay

CHAPTER I.

A MOUNTAIN-HOME

High above the snow-crowned summits of the mountains gleamed a rainbow. The storm had passed; there was still a low mutter of thunder in the ravines, and masses of clouds lay encamped about the mountainsides, but the skies were once more clear, the loftiest peaks were unveiling, and dark forests and green slopes were beginning slowly to emerge from the sea of cloud and mist.

The extensive Alpine valley through which rushed a considerable stream lay far in the depths of the mountain-range, so secluded and lonely that it might have been entirely shut off from the world and its turmoil; and yet the world had found the way to it. The quiet mountain-road, usually deserted save for an occasional wagon or a strolling pedestrian, was all astir with bustle and life. Everywhere were to be seen groups of engineers and labourers; everywhere measuring, surveying, and planning were going on; the railway, in a couple of years, was to stretch its iron arms forth into this mountain seclusion, and preparations were already making for its course.

Some way up the mountain-road, on the brink of a hollow whose rocky sides fell away in a steep descent, lay a dwelling-house, which at first sight did not appear to differ much from others scattered here and there among the mountains; a near view, however, soon made plain that it was no peasant's abode situated thus on the spacious green slope. The house had firmly-cemented walls of blocks of stone, and low but broad doors and windows; two semicircular projections, the pointed roofs of which gave them the air of small towers, lent it a stately appearance, and above the entrance there was artistically carved in the stone a scutcheon.

It was one of those old baronial mansions, yet to be found here and there among the mountains, simple and rude, half suggesting a peasant abode, gray and weather-worn, but stoutly resisting the decay to which many a proud castle had fallen a victim. The ascending slope of the mountain formed a picturesque background, and high above a huge peak reared its rocky crest, crowned with snow, lonely and proud.

The interior of the house accorded with its outside. Through a vaulted hall, with a stone floor, a low spacious room was reached which occupied nearly the entire width of the building. The wainscot, brown with age, the gigantic tiled stove, the high-backed chairs, and the heavily-carved oaken cupboards were all plain and simple and showed marks of long years of use. The windows were wide open, affording a magnificent view of the mountains, but the two gentlemen sitting at the table were too earnestly engaged in conversation to pay any heed to the beauties which each moment revealed more fully.

One of them, a man fifty years of age, was a giant in stature, with a broad chest and powerful limbs. Not a thread of silver as yet streaked his thick hair and fair, full beard; his tanned face beamed with the life and health that characterized his entire figure. His companion was of perhaps the same age, but his spare figure, his sharp features, and his gray hair made him appear much older. His face and the high forehead, already deeply lined, spoke of restless striving and scheming, as well as of the energy necessary for them; there was in his expression a degree of arrogance which was far from prepossessing, and his air and speech conveyed an impression of self-confidence, as of a man accustomed to rule those about him.

"So pray listen to reason, Thurgau," he said, in a tone in which impatience was audible. "Your opposition will do you no good. In any case you will be forced to relinquish your estate."

"I, forced!" exclaimed Thurgau, angrily. "We'll see about that. While I live, not a stone of Wolkenstein shall be touched."

"But it is directly in the way. The big bridge starts from here, and the line of railway goes directly through your property."

"Then alter your cursed line of railway! Carry it where you choose, over the top of the Wolkenstein, for all I care, but let my house alone. No need to talk, Nordheim; I persist in my 'no.'"

Nordheim smiled, half compassionately, half sarcastically: "You seem to have entirely forgotten in your seclusion how to deal with the world and its requirements. Do you actually imagine that an undertaking like ours can be put a stop to, just because the Freiherr von Thurgau chooses to refuse us a few square rods of his land? If you persist, nothing is left us save to have recourse to our right of compulsion. You know that we have long been empowered to use it."

"Oho, I have rights too!" exclaimed the Freiherr, bringing his fist down heavily upon the table. "I have protested, and shall continue to protest, while I live. Wolkenstein Court shall be left untouched, though the entire railway company with the Herr President Nordheim at their head should band themselves against me."

"But if you are offered double its value–"

"If I were offered a hundred times its value, it would be all the same. I do not bargain for the last of my inheritance. Wolkenstein Court shall not be touched, and there's an end of it!"

"This is your old obstinacy which has so often stood in your way in life," said the president with irritation. "I might have foreseen it; it is far from agreeable to have my own brother-in-law force to extreme measures the company of which I am president."

"That is why you condescended to come up here yourself, for the first time for years," Thurgau said, with a sneer.

"I wanted to try to talk you into a reasonable state of mind, since my letters were of no avail. You surely know how entirely my time is taken up."

"Yes, yes, heaven knows it is! Nothing would induce me to run the perpetual race which you call life. What good do you get out of your millions and your incredible successes? Now here, now there, you are always on the wing, always burdened down with business and responsibility. There's where you get the wrinkles on your forehead and your gray hair. Look at me!" He sat upright and stretched his huge limbs. "I am a full year older than you!"

"Very true; but then it is not given to every man to live up here with the marmots and shoot chamois. You resigned from the army ten years ago, although your ancient name would have insured you a brilliant career."

"Because the service did not suit me. It never did suit the Thurgaus. You think that is what has brought them down in the world? I can see you do by your sneer. Well, there is not, it is true, much of the old splendour left, but I have at least a roof over my head, and the soil beneath my feet is my own; here no one has a right to order me about and control me, least of all your cursed railway. No offence, brother-in-law, we will not quarrel over the matter, and neither has a right to reproach the other, for if I am obstinate you are domineering. You hector your precious company until they are almost blind and deaf, and if one of them dares to contradict you he is simply tossed aside neck and crop."

"What do you know about it?" asked Nordheim, piqued by the last words. "As a rule, you trouble yourself very little about our affairs."

"True, but I was talking awhile ago with a couple of engineers who were up here surveying, and who, of course, had no idea of the relationship between us; they scolded away at a great rate about you and your tyranny, and favouritism. Oh, I heard a deal that was extremely interesting."

The president shrugged his shoulders with an air of indifference: "My appointment of the superintendent for this district was probably distasteful to the gentlemen. They certainly threatened an open revolt because I advanced to be their superior officer a young man of seven-and-twenty who has more in his head than all the rest of them put together."

"But they maintain that he is a fellow who would shun no means, so it might promote his advancement," Thurgau said, bluntly. "You, as president of the company, had nothing to do with the appointment,–the engineer-in-chief alone has the right to appoint his staff."

"Officially it is so, and I do not often bring my influence to bear in his department; when I do so I expect due deference to be paid to my wishes. Enough, Elmhorst is superintendent and will remain so. If it does not suit the gentlemen they can resign their posts; their opinion is of very little consequence."

In his words there was all the arrogant self-assertion of a man accustomed to have his own way, regardless of consequences. Thurgau was about to reply, but at the moment the door opened, or rather was flung wide, and a something made up of drenched clothes and floating curls flew past the president and eagerly embraced the Freiherr; a second something, equally wet and very shaggy, followed, and also rushed towards the master of the house, springing upon him with loud and joyful barks of recognition. The noisy and unexpected intrusion was almost an attack, but Thurgau must have been used to such onslaughts, for he showed no impatience at the damp caresses thus bestowed upon him.

"Here I am, papa!" cried a clear girlish voice, "wet as a nixie; we were up on the Wolkenstein all through the storm; just see how we look, Griff and I!"

"Yes, it is plain that you come directly from the clouds," Thurgau said, laughing. "But do you not see, Erna, that we have a visitor? Do you recognize him?"

Erna turned about; she had not perceived the president, who had risen and stepped aside upon her entrance, and for a few seconds she seemed uncertain as to his identity, but she finally exclaimed, delightedly, "Uncle Nordheim!" and hurried towards him. He, however, put out his hands and stood on the defensive.

"Pray, pray, my child; you are dripping at every step. You are a veritable water-witch. For heaven's sake do not let the dog come near me! Would you expose me to a rain-storm here in the room?"

Erna laughed, and, taking the dog by the collar, drew him away. Griff showed a decided desire to cultivate an acquaintance with the visitor, which in his dripping condition would hardly have been agreeable. In fact, his young mistress did not look much better; the mountain-shoes which shod her little feet very clumsily, her skirt of some dark woollen stuff, kilted high, and her little black beaver hat, were all dripping wet. She seemed to care very little about it, however, as she tossed her hat upon a chair and stroked back her damp curls.

The girl resembled her father very slightly; her blue eyes and fair hair she had inherited from him, but otherwise there existed not the smallest likeness between the Freiherr's giant proportions and good-humoured but rather expressionless features and the girl of sixteen, who, lithe and slender as a gazelle, revealed, in spite of her stormy entrance, an unconscious grace in every movement. Her face was rosy with the freshness of youth; it could not be called beautiful, at least not yet: the features were still too childish and undeveloped, and there was an expression bordering on waywardness about the small mouth. Her eyes, it is true, were beautiful, reminding one in their blue depths of the colour of the mountain-lakes. Her hair, confined neither by ribbon nor by net, and dishevelled by the wind, hung about her shoulders in thick masses of curls. She certainly did not look as if she belonged in a drawing-room, she was rather the personification of a fresh spring rain.

"Are you afraid of a few rain-drops, Uncle Nordheim?" she asked. "What would have become of you in the rain-spout to which we were exposed just now? I did not mind it much, but my companion–"

"Why, I should have thought Griff's shaggy hide accustomed to such drenchings," the Freiherr interposed.

"Griff? Oh, I had left him as usual at the sennerin's hut; he cannot climb, and from there one must rival the chamois. I mean the stranger whom I met on the way. He had strayed from the path, and could not find his way down in the mist; if I had not met him, he would be on the Wolkenstein at this moment."

"Yes, these city men," said Thurgau,–"they come up here with huge mountain-staffs, and in brand-new travelling-suits, and behave as if our Alpine peaks were mere child's play; but at the first shower they creep into a rift in the rocks and catch cold. I suppose the fine fellow was in a terrible fright when the storm came up?"

Erna shook her head, but a frown appeared on her forehead.

"No, he was not afraid; he stayed beside me with entire composure while the lightning and rain were at their worst, and in our descent he showed himself courageous, although it was evident he was quite unused to that sort of thing. But he is an odious creature. He laughed when I told him of the mountain-sprite who sends the avalanches down into the valley every winter, and when I grew angry he observed, with much condescension, 'True, this is the atmosphere for superstition; I had forgotten that.' I wished the mountain-sprite would roll an avalanche down upon his head on the spot, and I told him so."

"You said that to a stranger whom you had met for the first time?" asked the president, who had hitherto listened in silence, with an air of surprise.

Erna tossed her head: "Of course I did! We could not endure him, could we, Griff? You growled at him when he reached the sennerin's hut with me, and you were right,–good dog! But now I really must change my wet clothes; Uncle Nordheim will else catch cold from merely having me near him."

She hurried off as quickly as she had come; Griff tried to follow her, but the door was shut in his face, and so he decided upon another course. He shook from his shaggy hide a shower of drops in every direction, and lay down at his master's feet.

Nordheim took out his pocket-handkerchief and ostentatiously brushed with it his black coat, although not a drop had reached it.

"Forgive me, brother-in-law; I must say that the way in which you allow your daughter to grow up is inexcusable."

"What?" asked Thurgau, apparently extremely surprised that any one could possibly find anything to object to in his child. "What is the matter with the girl?"

"Everything, I should say, that could be the matter with a Fräulein von Thurgau. What a scene we have just witnessed! And you allow her to wander about the mountains alone for hours, making acquaintance with any tourist she may chance to meet."

"Pshaw! she is but a child!"

"At sixteen? It was a great misfortune for her to lose her mother so early, and since then you have positively let her run wild. Of course when a young girl grows up under such circumstances, without instruction, without education–"

"You are mistaken," the Freiherr interrupted him. "When I removed to Wolkenstein Court, after the death of my wife, I brought with me a tutor, the old magister, who died last spring. Erna had instruction from him, and I have brought her up. She is just what I wished her to be; we have no use up here for such a delicate hot-house plant as your Alice. My girl is healthy in body and mind; she has grown up free as a bird of the air, and she shall stay so. If you call that running wild, so be it, for aught I care! My child suits me."

"Perhaps so, but you will not always be the sole ruling force in her life. If Erna should marry–"

"Mar–ry?" Thurgau repeated in dismay.

"Certainly, you must expect her to have lovers, sooner or later."

"The fellow who dares to present himself as such shall have a lesson from me that he'll remember!" roared the Freiherr in a rage.

"You bid fair to be an amiable father-in-law," said Nordheim, dryly. "I should suppose it was a girl's destiny to marry. Do you imagine I shall require my Alice to remain unmarried because she is my only daughter?"

"That is very different," said Thurgau, slowly, "a very different thing. You may love your daughter,–you probably do love her,–but you could give her to some one else with a light heart. I have nothing on God's earth save my child; she is all that is left to me, and I will not give her up at any price. Only let the gentlemen to whom you allude come here as suitors; I will send them home again after a fashion that shall make them forget the way hither."

The president's smile was that of the cold compassion bestowed upon the folly of a child.

"If you continue faithful to your educational theories you will have no cause to fear," he said, rising. "One thing more: Alice arrives at Heilborn to-morrow morning, where I shall await her; the physician has ordered her the baths there, and the mountain-air."

"No human being could ever get well and strong in that elegant and tiresome haunt of fashion," Thurgau declared, contemptuously. "You ought to send the girl up here, where she would have the mountain-air at first hand."

Nordheim's glance wandered about the apartment, and rested with an unmistakable expression upon the sleeping Griff; finally he looked at his brother-in-law: "You are very kind, but we must adhere to the physician's prescriptions. Shall we not see you in the course of a day or two?"

"Of course; Heilborn is hardly two miles away," said the Freiherr, who failed to perceive the cold, forced nature of his brother-in-law's invitation. "I shall certainly come over and bring Erna."

He rose to conduct his guest to his conveyance; the difference of opinion to which he had just given such striking expression was in his eyes no obstacle to their friendly relations as kinsmen, and he bade his brother-in-law farewell with all the frank cordiality native to him. Erna too came fluttering down-stairs like a bird, and all three went out of the house together.

The mountain-wagon which had brought the president to Wolkenstein Court a couple of hours previously–not without some difficulty in the absence of any good road–drove into the court-yard, and at the same moment a young man made his appearance beneath the gate-way and approached the master of the house.

"Good-day, doctor," cried the Freiherr in his jovial tones, whilst Erna, with the ease and freedom of a child, offered the new-comer her hand. Turning to his brother-in-law, Thurgau added: "This is our Æsculapius and physician-in-ordinary. You ought to put your Alice under his care; the man understands his business."

Nordheim, who had observed with evident displeasure his niece's familiar greeting of the young doctor, touched his hat carelessly, and scarcely honoured the stranger, whose bow was somewhat awkward, with a glance. He shook hands with his brother-in-law, kissed Erna on the forehead, and got into the vehicle, which immediately rolled away.

"Now come in, Dr. Reinsfeld," said the Freiherr, who did not apparently regret this departure. "But it occurs to me that you do not know my brother-in-law,–the gentleman who has just driven off."

"President Nordheim,–I am aware," replied Reinsfeld, looking after the vehicle, which was vanishing at a turn in the road.

"Extraordinary," muttered Thurgau. "Everybody knows him, and yet he has not been here for years. It is exactly as if some potentate were driving through the mountains."

He went into the house; the young physician hesitated a moment before following him, and looked round for Erna; but she was standing on the low wall that encircled the court-yard, looking after the conveyance as with some difficulty it drove down the mountain.

Dr. Reinsfeld was about twenty-seven years old; he did not possess the Freiherr's gigantic proportions, but his figure was fine, and powerfully knit. He certainly was not handsome, rather the contrary, but there was an undeniable charm in the honest, trustful gaze of his blue eyes and in his face, which carried written on its brow kindness of heart. The young man's manners and bearing, it is true, betrayed entire unfamiliarity with the forms of society, and there was much to be desired in his attire. His gray mountain-jacket and his old beaver hat had seen many a day of tempest and rain, and his heavy mountain-shoes, their soles well studded with nails, showed abundant traces of the muddy mountain-paths. They bore testimony to the fact that the doctor did not possess even a mountain-pony for his visits to his patients,–he went on foot wherever duty called him.

"Well, how are you, Herr Baron?" he asked when the two men were seated opposite each other in the room. "All right again? No recurrence of the last attack?"

"All right," said Thurgau, with a laugh. "I cannot understand why you should make so much of a little dizzy turn. Such a constitution as mine does not give gentlemen of your profession much to do."

"We must not make too light of the matter. At your years you must be prudent," said the young physician. "I hope nothing will come of it, if you only follow my advice,–avoid all excitement, and diet yourself to a degree. I wrote it all down for you."

"Yes, you did, but I shall not pay it any attention," the Freiherr said, pleasantly, leaning back in his arm-chair.

"But, Herr von Thurgau–"

"Let me alone, doctor! The life that you prescribe for me would be no life at all. I take care of myself! I, accustomed as I am to follow a chamois to the topmost peak of our mountains without any heed of the sun's heat or the winter's snow,–always the first if there is any peril to be encountered,–I give up hunting, drink water, and avoid all agitation like a nervous old maid! Nonsense! I've no idea of anything of the kind."

"I did not conceal from you the grave nature of your attack, nor that it might have dangerous consequences."

"I don't care! Man cannot balk his destiny, and I never was made for such a pitiable existence as you would have me lead. I prefer a quick, happy death."

Reinsfeld looked thoughtful, and said, in an undertone, "In fact, you are right. Baron, but–" He got no further, for Thurgau burst into a loud laugh.

"Now, that's what I call a conscientious physician! When his patient declares that he cares not a snap for his prescriptions, he says 'you are right!' Yes, I am right; you see it yourself."

The doctor would have protested against this interpretation of his words, but Thurgau only laughed more loudly, and Erna made her appearance with Griff, her inseparable companion.

"Uncle Nordheim is safe across the bridge, although it was half flooded," she said. "The engineers all rushed to his assistance and helped to draw the carriage across, after which they drew up in line on each side and bowed profoundly."

She mimicked comically the reverential demeanour of the officials, but the Freiherr shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Fine fellows those! They abuse my brother-in-law in every way behind his back, but as soon as he comes in sight they bow down to the ground. No wonder the man is arrogant."

"Papa," said Erna, who had been standing beside her father's chair, and who now put her arm around his neck, "I do not think Uncle Nordheim likes me: he was so cold and formal."

"That is his way," said Thurgau, drawing her towards him. "But he has a great deal of fault to find with you, you romp."

"With Fräulein Erna?" asked Reinsfeld, with as much astonishment and indignation in look and tone as if the matter in question had been high treason.

"Yes; she ought to conduct herself like a Fräulein von Thurgau. Oh, yes, child, awhile ago he offered to have you come to him to be trained for society with his Alice by all sorts of governesses! What do you say to such an arrangement?"

"I do not want to go to my uncle, papa. I will never go away from you. I mean to stay at Wolkenstein Court as long as I live."

"I knew it!" said the Freiherr, triumphantly. "And they insist that you will marry some day,–go off with a perfect stranger and leave your father alone in his old age! We know better, eh, Erna? We two belong together and we will stay together."

He stroked his child's curls with a tenderness pathetic in the bluff, stalwart man, and Erna nestled close to him with passionate ardour. It was plain to see that they belonged together; each was devoted to the other, heart and soul.

CHAPTER II.

A MORNING CALL

"Well, Herr Superintendent, you are at your post already? It is one of difficulty and responsibility, especially for a man of your years, but I hope nevertheless that you are quite competent to fulfil its duties."

The young man to whom President Nordheim addressed these words bowed respectfully, but in no wise humbly, as he replied, "I am perfectly aware that I must show myself worthy of the distinction which I owe principally to your influence in my behalf, Herr President."