The Knickerbocker Gallery/The Bride of the Ice-King
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Don. G. Mitchell
The Bride of the Ice-King.
There is not a prettier valley in Switzerland than that of Lauterbrunnen. Whoever has seen it upon a fine day of summer, when the meadows were green, the streams full, and the sun shining upon the crystal glaciers which lie, from the beginning to the end of the year, at the head of the valley, can never forget it.
I do not think it can be more than a half-mile broad; and in many places, I am sure, it is much less. On one side, the rocks, brown and jagged, and tufted with straggling shrubs, rise almost perpendicularly; and a stream of water which comes from higher slopes, far out of sight, leaps over the edge of the precipice. At first, it is a solid column of water; then it breaks and spreads and wavers with the wind; and finally, in a rich white veil of spray, reaches the surface of the vale of Lauterbrunnen, a thousand feet below. They call it the Dust-Fall.
The opposite side of the valley does not change so suddenly into mountain. There are slopes, green or yellow, as the seasons may be, with the little harvests which the mountain-people raise; there are cliffs with wide niches in them, where you may see kids or sheep cropping the short herbage which grows in the shadow of the rocks; and there is a path, zig-zagging up from the road below, I scarce know how. It would be very tiresome, were it not for the views it gives you at every turning. Sometimes, from under a thicket of trees, you look sheer down upon the little bridge you have traversed in the bottom of the valley; seeming so near, that you could toss your Alpinstock into the brook. Sometimes the green of the meadow, and the sparkle of its stream are shut out; and you look straight across upon the Dust-Fall, where it leaps from the cliff abreast of you; and see it shiver, and grow white, and hear it afterward go murmuring away through its valley-bed.
At other times, as you pass farther up, the waterfall seems only a bit of gauze, which is lost over the edge of the cliff; and the heights above, from which the stream comes, break into sight and tower aloft in a way that quite dwarfs the poor valley beneath, and makes it seem a mere nook in the hills.
But by far the grandest sight of all those which belong to this mountain neighborhood, is that of the glacier which shuts up the head of the valley. It is not, indeed, larger or whiter than many others of Switzerland; but like the crown of a monarch, its green, lustrous crystals rise over the forehead of Lauterbrunnen, and charm you by such contrast of the fierce glory of winter, with the soft smile of summer, as can be seen nowhere else.
My first visit to this spot, many years ago, was on a midsummer's afternoon. The mountains were clear of clouds; and their snow-tops, and the green spurs of the glacier in the distance, seemed to wear the same warm glow of sunlight which fell upon the slopes around me, and upon the meadows beneath. I could see the brook trailing white in the bed of the valley; and the Dust-Fall gushing from the cliff into feathery, cloud-like vapor; and the peasants in the meadows, gathering their July crop of hay—yet so far below me, that no murmur of their toil came to my ear; but, in place of it, a mountain girl, from a cottage upon the heights, was singing, in the hope of a few pennies, a plaintive Swiss song, which floated pleasantly on the air, and mingled gracefully with the tinkle of the scattered bells, which the kids wore upon the cliffs above. Except these sounds, a silence haunted the whole region. As I lay under the shadow of a broad-limbed walnut, whose leaves scarce stirred in the summer air, the song, and the tinkle of the bells, and the glow of light upon the distant snow-cliffs, and the delicious haze that lingered over the Arcadian valley beneath me, seemed to belong each to each, and to make up a scene in which a life-time might be dreamed away, without a thought of labor or of duty.
It was different when I went there last. It was not in summer, but in autumn. The green of the meadows had given place to the brown tint which betokens the coming-on of winter. The trees on the slopes, as I toiled up the ascent toward the Wengern-Alp, were stripped of half their leaves; and the yellow and tattered remnants were sighing in a cool wind of October. The clouds hung low, and dashed fitfully across the heights. From hour to hour, great fragments of the glacier, loosened by the heavy rains of the previous night, fell thundering into distant mountain abysses. No sunlight rested upon the valley or upon the ice.
It hardly seemed to me the same spot of country which had so caught my fancy, and bewildered me with its quiet beauty years before. And yet there was a sublimity hanging about the landscape and the sky of which I had no sense on the former visit. At that time, the mountains, and the air, and even the lustrous glacier were subdued into quiet harmony with the valley and the valley-brook below. Even the song of the cottage-girl was an according symphony with the tone of nature.
Now, however, the gray landscape, unlighted by any ray of sun- light, wore a sober and solemn hue, that lifted even the meadow into grand companionship with the mountains and the glaciers; and the crash of falling icebergs quickened and gave force to the impressions of awe, which crept over me like a chill.
I began to understand, for the first time, that strange and savage reverence which the peasants feel for their mountains. And as the thunder of the falling glaciers echoed among the peaks, I grew insensibly into a fear of the great Power which lived and reigned in those regions of ice. It seemed to me that darkness would be only needed to drive away all rational estimate of the strange sounds which crashed, and the silence which brooded among the sombre cliffs. I entertained, with a willingness that almost frighted me, the old stories of ice-gods ruling and thundering among the glaciers.
The active, practical, reasoning world, with its throngs and talk, was far below. Greater things were around me, and challenged my fancy.
All the forces which man boasts of were little, compared with those which made their voice heard among the cliffs. It seemed not only possible, but probable, that some great special Intelligence reigned over the giant forces which stirred around me. The old legends of ice-gods took shadow and form. I strode on to the little shelter-place, which lies under the Jungfrau, with the fearful step of one encroaching upon the domain of some august and splendid monarch. I did not once seek to combat the imaginative humors which lent a tone and a consistency to this feeling. I would not, if I could, have resisted the weird impressions of the place.
A terrific storm burst over the mountains, shortly after I had gained shelter in the little châlet of the Ober-Alp. The only company I found was the host, and a flax-haired German student. This last abandoned his pipe as the storm rose, and listened with me silently, and, I thought, with the same measure of awe, to the crash of the avalanches which were loosened by the falling torrents of rain.
"The Ice-King is angry to-night," said our host.
I could not smile at the superstition of the man; a sense of awe was too strong upon me; there was a feeling born of the mountain presence, and of the terrific crash of the glaciers, which forbade my smiling—a feeling as if an Ice-King might be really there to avenge a slight.
Presently there was a louder shock than usual, and the echoes of the report thundered for several minutes among the cliffs. The mountain host went to the door, which looked out toward the Jungfrau; and soon he called us hurriedly to see, as he called it, the Maid of the Glacier.
The bald wall of rock we could see looming dark through the tempest, and the immense caps of glacier, which lay at the top. The host directed our attention to a white speck half-way up the face of the precipice which appeared to rise slowly in a wavy line, and presently to disappear over the edge of the glacier.
"You saw her?" said the host excitedly; "you never see her, except after some terrible avalanche."
"What is it?" said I.
"We call her the Bride of the Ice-King," said our host; and he appealed to the German student, who, I found, had been frequently in the Alps, and was familiar with all the legends. And when we were seated again around the fire, which the host had replenished with a fagot of crackling fire-wood, the German re-lighted his pipe, and told us this story of the Bride of the Ice-King. If it should appear tame in the reading, beside a Christmas blaze, it must be remembered, that I listened to it first in a storm at midnight, upon the wild heights of the Scheideck.
Many, many years ago, (it was thus his story began,) there lived upon the edge of the valley of Lauterbrunnen a peasant, who had a beautiful daughter, by the name of Clothilde. Her hair was golden, and flowed in ringlets upon a neck which would have rivalled that of the fairest statue of antiquity. Her eye was hazel and bright, but with a pensive air, which, if the young herdsmen of the valley looked on only once, they never forgot in their lives.
The mother of Clothilde, who had died when she was young, came, it was said, from some foreign land; none knew of her lineage; and the people of the valley had learned only that the peasant, whose wife she became, had found her lost upon the mountains.
The peasant was an honest man, and mourned for the mother of Clothilde, because she had shared his labors, and had lighted pleasantly the solitary path of his life. But Clothilde, though the mother died when she was young, clung ever tenderly to her memory, and persisted always that she would find her again where her father had found her—upon the mountains. It was in vain they showed her the grave where her mother lay buried, in the village church-yard.
"No, no," she would say, "my mother is not there;" and her eyes lifted to the mountains.
Yet no one thought Clothilde was crazed; not a maiden of all the village of Lauterbrunnen performed better her household cares than the beautiful Clothilde. Not one could so swiftly ply the distaff; not one who could show such store of white cloth, woven from the mountain flax. She planted flowers by the door of her father's cottage; she watched over all his comforts; she joined with the rest in the village balls; but, unlike all the maidens of the village, she would accept no lover.
There were those who said that her smiles were all cold smiles, and that her heart was icy. But these were disappointed ones; and had never known of the tears she shed when she thought of her mother, who was gone.
The father, plain peasant that he was, mourned in his heart when he thought how Clothilde was the only maiden of the village who had no lover; and he feared greatly, as the years flew swiftly over him, for the days that were to come, when Clothilde would have none to watch over her, and none to share her cottage home.
But the pensive-eyed Clothilde put on gaiety when she found this mood creeping over her father's thought, and cheered him with the light songs she had learned from the village girls.
Yet her heart was not in the light songs; for she loved to revel in the wild and mysterious tales belonging to the mountain life. Deeper things, and things more dread than came near to the talk or to the thought of the fellow-villagers, wakened the fancy of the pensive-eyed Clothilde. Whether it was some dreamy memory of the lost mother, or daily companionship with the mountains and the glaciers, which she saw from her father's door, certain it was, that her thought went farther and wider than the thoughts of those around her.
Even the doctrines she learned from the humble curé of the village, blended with the wilder action of her fancy; and though she kneeled, as did the father and the good curé, before the image at the altar of the village church, she seemed to see Him plainer in the mountains: and there was a sacredness in the pine woods upon the slope of the hill, and in the voice of the avalanches which fell in the time of spring, which called to her mind a quicker sense of the Divine presence and power, than the church chalices or the rosary.
Now, the father of Clothilde had large flocks, for a village peasant. Fifty of his kids fed upon the herbage which grew on the mountain ledges; and half a score of dun cows came every night to his châlet, from the pasture-grounds which were watered by the spray of the Dust-Fall.
Many of the young villagers would have gladly won Clothilde to some token of love; but ever her quiet, pale face, as she knelt in the village church, awed them to silence; and ever her gentle manner, as she clung to the arm of the old herdsman, her father, made them vow new vows to capture the village beauty.
In times of danger, or in times when sickness came to the chalets of the valley, Clothilde passed hither and thither on errands of mercy; and when storms threatened those who watched the kids upon the mountain slopes, she sent them food and wine, and fresh store of blankets.
So the years passed; and the maidens said that Clothilde was losing the freshness that belonged to her young days; but these were jealous ones, and, like other maidens than Swiss maidens, knew not how to forgive her who bore away the palm of goodness and of beauty.
And the father, growing always older, grew sadder at thought of the desolate condition which would soon belong to his daughter Clothilde.
"Who," said the old man, "will take care of the flocks, my daughter? who will look after the dun cows? who will bring the winter's store of fir-wood from the mountains?"
Now, Clothilde could answer for these things; for even the curé of the village would not see the pretty and the pious Clothilde left destitute. But it pained her heart to witness the care that lay upon her father's thought, and she was willing to bestow quiet upon his parting years. Therefore, on a day when she came back with the old herdsman from a village-wedding, she told him that she, too, if he wished, would become a bride.
"And whom will you marry, Clothilde?" said the old man.
"Whom you choose," said Clothilde; but she added, "he must be good, else how can I be good? And he must be brave, for the dangers of the mountain life are many."
So the father and the village curé consulted together, while Clothilde sang as before at her household cares; and lingered, as was her wont at evening, by the chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, in view of the glaciers which rose in the front of the valley.
But the father and the curé could decide upon none who was wholly worthy to be the bridegroom of Clothilde. The people of the valley were honest, and not a young villager of them all but would have made for her a watchful husband, and cared well for the flocks which belonged to her father's fold.
In that day, as now, village fêtes were held in every time of spring, at which the young mountaineers contended with each other in wrestling, and in the cast of heavy boulder-stones, and in other mountain sports, which tried their manliness, and which called down the plaudits of all the village dames. The spring and the spring fêtes were now approaching, and it was agreed between the father and the curé, that where all were so brave and honest, the victor in the village games should receive, for reward, the hand of Clothilde.
The villagers were all eager for the day which was to decide the fortunes of their valley heiress. Clothilde herself wore no cloud upon her brow; but ever, with the same serene look, she busied her hands with her old house-cares, and sang the songs which cheered her old father's heart.
The youth of the village—they were mostly the weaker ones—eyed her askance, and said, "She can have no heart worth the winning, who is won only by a stout arm." And others said still, "She is icy cold, and can have no heart at all."
But the good curé said, "Nay;" and many a one from sick-beds called down blessings on her.
There were mothers, too, of the village, thinking, perhaps, as mothers will, of the fifty kids and of the half-score of dun cows, which would make her dowry, who said, with a wise shake of the head, "She who is so good a daughter will make also a good wife."
Among those who would gladly, long ago, have sought Clothilde in marriage, was a young villager of Lauterbrunnen, whose name was Conrad Friedland.
He was a hunter as well as a herdsman, and he knew the haunts of the chamois upon the upper heights as well as he knew the pasturage-ground where fed the kids which belonged to the father of Clothilde. He had nut-brown hair, and dark blue eyes; and there was not a maiden of the valley, save only the pensive Clothilde, but watched admiringly the proud step of the hunter Friedland. Many a time her father had spoken of the daring deeds of Conrad, and had told to Clothilde, with an old man's ardor, the tale of the wild mountain-hunts which Conrad could reckon up; and how, once upon a time, when a child was lost, they had lowered the young huntsman with ropes into the deep crevasses of the glacier; and how, in the depths of the icy cavern, he had bound the young child to his shoulder, and been dragged, bruised and half-dead, to the light again.
To all this Clothilde had listened with a sparkle in her eye; yet she felt not her heart warming toward Conrad, as the heart of a maiden should warm toward an accepted lover.
Many and many a time Conrad had gazed on Clothilde as she kneeled in the village church. Many and many a time he had watched her crimson kirtle, as she disappeared among the walnut-trees that grew by her father's door. Many and many a time he had looked longingly upon the ten dun cows which made up her father's flock, and upon the green pasturage ground, where his kids counted by fifty.
Brave enough he was to climb the crags, even when the ice was smooth on the narrow foot-way, and a slip would hurl him to destruction; he had no fear of the crevasses which gape frightfully on the paths that lead over the glaciers; he did not shudder at the thunders which the avalanches sent howling among the heights around him; and yet Conrad had never dared to approach, as a lover might approach, the pensive-eyed Clothilde.
With other maidens of the village he danced anu sang, even as the other young herdsmen, who were his mates in the village games, danced and sang. Once or twice, indeed, he had borne a gift—a hunter's gift of tender chamois-flesh—to the old man, her father. And Clothilde, with her own low voice, had said, "My father thanks you, Conrad."
And the brave hunter, in her presence, was like a sparrow within the swoop of a falcon!
If she sang, he listened—as though he dreamed that leaves were fluttering, and birds were singing over him. If she was silent, he gazed on her—as he had gazed on cool mountain-pools when the sun smote fiercely.
The idle raillery of the village he could not talk to her; of love she would not listen; of things higher, with his peasant's voice and mind, he knew not how to talk. And the mother of Conrad Friedland, a lone widow, living only in the love of her son, upon the first lift of the hills, chid him for his silence, and said, "He who has no tongue to tell of love, can have no heart to win it!"
Yet Conrad, for very lack of speech, felt his slumberous passion grow strong. The mountain springs which are locked longest with ice, run fiercest in summer.
And Conrad rejoiced in the trial that was to come, where he could speak his love in his own mountain way, and conquer the heart of Clothilde with his good right arm.
Howbeit, there was many another herdsman of the valley who prepared himself joyously for a strife, where the winner should receive the fifty kids, and the ten dun cows, and the hand of the beautiful Clothilde. Many a mother, whose eye had rested lovingly on these, one and all, bade their sons "Be ready!"
Clothilde alone seemed careless of those, who, on the festal day, were to become her champions; and ever she passed undisturbed through her daily round of cares, kneeling in the village church, singing the songs that gladdened her father's heart, and lingering at the sunset hour, by the chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, whence she saw the glaciers and the mountain-tops glowing with the rich red light from the west.
Upon the night which was before the day of the village fête, it happened that she met the brave young hunter, Conrad, returning from the hills, with a chamois upon his shoulder. He saluted her, as was his wont, and would have followed at respectful distance; but Clothilde beckoned his approach.
"Conrad," said she, "you will contend with the others at the fète to-morrow?"
"I will be there," said Conrad; "and, please the blessed Virgin, I will win such prize as was never won before!"
"Conrad Friedland, I know that you are brave, and that you are strong. Will you not be generous also? Swear to me that if you are the winner in to-morrow's sports, you will not claim the reward which my father has promised to the bravest, for a year and a day."
"You ask what is hard," said Conrad. "When the chamois is near, I draw my bow; and when my arrow is on the string, how can I stay the shaft?"
"It is well for your mountain prizes, Conrad; but bethink you the heart of a virgin is to be won like a gazelle of the mountains"
"Clothilde will deny me, then?" said Conrad reproachfully.
"Until a year and a day are passed, I must deny," said the maiden. But when the snows of another spring are melted, and the fête has returned again, if you, Conrad Friedland, are of the same heart and will, I promise to be yours."
And Conrad touched his lips to the hand she lent him, and swore, "by Our Lady of the Snow," that, for a year and a day, he would make no claim to the hand of Clothilde, though he were twice the winner.
The morning was beautiful which ushered in the day of the fêtes. The maidens of the village were arrayed in their gayest dresses, and the young herdsmen of the valley had put on their choicest finery. The sports were held upon a soft bit of meadow-land at the foot of the great glacier which rises in the front of Lauterbrunnen. A barrier of earth and rocks, clothed with fir-trees, separated the green meadow from the crystal mountain which gleamed above. And ever, when the sun smote hotly, the glacier streams, which murmured upon either side of the meadow, made cool the air.
All the people of the village were assembled, and many a young hunter or herdsman beside, from the plains of Interlacken, or from the borders of the Brienzer-See, or from the farther vale of Grindelwald.
But Conrad had no fear of these; for already on many a day of fête, he had measured forces with them, and had borne off the prizes, whether in wrestling or in the cast of the granite boulders. This day he had given great care to his dress; a jerkin of neatly tanned chamois-leather set off his muscular figure, and it was dressed upon the throat and upon the front with those rare furs of the mountains, which betokened his huntsman's craft.
Many a village maiden wished that day she held the place of Clothilde, and that she, too, might have such champion as the brown-haired Conrad.
A rich cap of lace, worked by the village hands, was round the forehead of Clothilde; and, to humor the pride of the old man, her father, she had added the fairest flowers which grew by the cottage-door. But, fair as the flowers were, the face of Clothilde was fairer.
She sat between the old herdsman and the curé, upon one of the rustic benches which circled the plateau of green, where the village sports were held. Tall poles of hemlock or of fir, dressed with garlands of mountain laurel, stood at the end of the little arena, where the valley champions were to contend. Among these were some whose strong arms and lithe figures promised a hard struggle to the hopeful Conrad; and there were jealous ones who would have been glad to humble the pretensions of one so favored by the village maidens, as the blue-eyed hunter, Friedland.
Many looks turned curiously toward the bench, where sat the village belle, whose fortunes seemed to hang upon the fate of the day; but her brow was calm; and there, as ever, she was watchful of the comfort of the old man, her father.
Half of the games had passed over, indeed, before she turned a curious look upon the strife. Conrad, though second in some of the lesser sports, had generally kept the first rank; and the more vigorous trials to come would test his rivals more seriously, and would, it was thought, give him a more decided triumph.
When the wrestlers were called, there appeared a stout herdsman from the valley of Grindelwald, who was the pride of his village, and who challenged boldly the hunter, Conrad. He was taller and seemed far stronger than Conrad; and there were those—the old herdsman among them—who feared greatly that a stranger would carry off the prize.
But the heart of the brave hunter was fired by the sight of Clothilde, now bending an eager look upon the sports. He accepted the challenge of the stout herdsman, and they grappled each other in the mountain way. The stranger was the stronger; but Conrad, the more active. For a long time they struggled vainly, and the villagers were doubting how the strife might end, when the foot of Conrad, striking a soft bit of turf, failed him, and he fell. There was n low murmur of disappointment; but in an instant, Conrad, by a vigorous effort, freed himself from his rival and was again upon his feet.
They grappled once more, but the heavy herdsman was weary; Conrad pressed him closely; and soon the valley rang with shouts, and the champion of Grindelwald was fairly vanquished.
After this came the cast of the boulders. One after another, the younger men made their trial, and the limit of each cast was marked by a willow wand, and in the cleft of each wand was a fragment of ribbon, bestowed by well-wishing maidens.
Conrad, taking breath after his wrestling-match, advanced composedly to his place at the head of the arena, where stood the fir-saplings with the laurel wreaths. He lifted the boulder with ease, and, giving it a vigorous cast, retired unconcerned. The little blue strip of ribbon which presently marked its fall, was far in advance of the rest.
Again there was a joyous shout. But the men of Grindelwald cried out loudly to their champion, and he came forward; but his arm was tired, and his cast was scarce even with the second of the men of Lauterbrunnen.
Again the shout rose louder than before, and Conrad Friedland was declared by the village umpires of the fête to be the victor, and, by will of the old herdsman, to be the accepted lover of the beautiful Clothilde. They led him forward to the stand where sat the curé, between the old herdsman and the herdsman's daughter.
Clothilde grew suddenly pale. Would Conrad keep his oath?
Fear may have confused him, or fatigue may have forbid his utterance; but he reached forth his hand for the guerdon of the day, and the token of betrothal.
Just then an Alpine horn sounded long and clear, and the echoes lingered among the cliffs and in the spray of the Dust-Fall. It was the call of a new challenger. By the laws of the fête, the games were open until sunset, and the new-comer could not be denied. None had seen him before. His frame was slight, but firmly knit; his habit was of the finest white wool, closed at the throat with rich white furs, and caught together with latchets of silver. His hair and beard were of a light flaxen color, and his chamois boots were clamped and spiked with polished steel, as if he had crossed the glacier. It was said by those near whom he passed, that a cold current of air followed him, and that his breath was frosted on his beard, even under the mild sun of May.
He said no word to any; but, advancing with a stately air to the little plateau where the fir spars stood crowned with their laurel garlands, he seized upon a boulder larger than any had yet thrown, and cast it far beyond the mark where the blue pennant of Conrad still fluttered in the wind.
There was a stifled cry of amazement, and the wonder grew greater still, when the stranger, in place of putting a willow wand to mark his throw, seized upon one of the fir saplings, and hurled it through the air with such precision and force, that it fixed itself in the sod within a foot of the half-embedded boulder, and rested quivering with its laurel wreath waving from the top.
The victor waited for no conductor; but, marching straight to the benches where sat the bewildered maiden, and her wonder-stricken father, bespoke them thus:
"Fair lady, the prize is won; but if, within a year and a day, Conrad Friedland can do better than this, I will yield him the palm; until then I go to my home in the mountains."
The villagers looked on amazed; Clothilde alone was calm, but silent. None had before seen the stranger; none had noticed his approach, and his departure was as secret as his coming.
The curé muttered his prayers; the village maidens recalled by timid whispers his fine figure, and the rich furs that he wore. And Conrad, recovering from his stupor, said never a word; but paced back and forth musingly, the length of the boulder-cast which the white-clad stranger had made.
The old man swore it was some spirit, and bade Clothilde accept Conrad at once as a protector against the temptations of the Evil One. But the maiden, more than ever wedded to her visionary life by this strange apparition, dwelt upon the words of the stranger, and repeating them, said to her father, "Let Conrad wait for a twelvemonth, and if he passes the throw of the Unknown, I will be his bride."
The sun sunk beyond the hills of the Ober-Alp, and with the twilight came a mystic awe over the minds of the villagers. The thoughtful Clothilde fancied the stringer some spiritual guardian: most of all, when she recalled the vow which Conrad had made and had broken. She remarked, moreover, as they went toward their house, that an eagle of the Alps, long after its wonted time of day, hovered over their path, and only when the cottage-door was closed, soured away to the cliffs that lifted above the glaciers of Lauterbrunnen.
The old herdsman began now to regard his daughter with a strange kind of awe. He consulted long and anxiously with the good curé of the village. Could it be that the maid, so near to his heart, was leagued with the spirit-world? He recalled the time when he had met first her mother, wandering upon the mountains. Whence had she come? And was the stranger of the festal day, of some far kindred, who now sought his own? It was remembered how the mother had loved her child, and had borne her in her arms often to the very edge of the glacier, and lulled Clothilde to sleep with the murmur of the deep falls of water, which, in the heats of summer, make mysterious music in the heart of the ice-mountains.
It was remembered how, in girlhood, Clothilde had often wandered thither to pluck Alpine roses, and was heedless always of the icy breath which came from the blue glacier-caverns. Always, too, she hung her votive garlands on the altar of "Our Lady of the Snow," and prayed for the pilgrims, who, in winter, traversed the rude passes of the Ober-Alp. Did the mother belong to the Genius of the Mountain? and was the daughter pledged to the Ice-King again?
The poor old herdsman bowed his hand in prayer; the good curé whispered words of comfort; Clothilde sang as she had sung in the days that were gone, but the old man trembled at her low tones, which thrilled now in his our like the syren sounds, which they say in the Alps, go always before the roar of some great avalanche.
Yet the father's heart twined more and more round the strange spirit-being of Clothilde. It seemed to him, more and more, that the mother's image was before him, and that the mother's soul looked out from the pensive eyes of Clothilde. He said now no word of marringe, but waited with resignation for the dread twelvemonth to pass away. And he looked with pity upon the strong-hearted Conrad, who, fiercer and more daring than before—as if some quick despair had given courage—scaled the steepest cliffs, and brought back stores of chamois-flesh, of which he laid always a portion at the door of the father of Clothilde.
It was said, too, that the young huntsman was heard at night, casting boulder-stones in the valley, and nerving his arm for the trial of the twelvemonth to come.
The maidens of the village eyed askance the tripping figure of the valley belle; the mothers of the young herdsmen spoke less often of the ten dun cows which fed upon her father's pasture-grounds, and counted less often the fifty kids which trooped at night into her father's folds upon the mountain.
Yet ever Clothilde made her sunset walks to the chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, and ever, in her place in the village church, she prayed, as reverently as before, for Heaven to bless the years of the life of the old man, her father.
If she lived in a spirit-world, it seemed a good spirit-world; and the crystal glory of the glacier, where no foot could go, and where her gaze loved to linger, imaged to her thought the stainless purity of angels. If the curé talked with Clothilde of the heaven where her mother had gone, and where all the good will follow, Clothilde—pointed to the mountains.
Did he talk of worship and the anthems which men sang in the cathedrals of cities?
Clothilde said, "Hark to the avalanche!"
Did he talk of a good spirit, which hovers always near the faithful?
Clothilde pointed upward, where an eagle soared over the glacier, a speck upon the sky.
As the year passed away, mysterious rumors were spread among the villagers; and there were those who said they had seen at eventide, Clothilde talking with a stranger in white, who was like the challenger of the year before. And when the winter had covered the lower hills with white, it was said that traces of strange feet were seen about the little chapel of Our Lady of the Snow.
Howbeit, Clothilde neglected not one of the duties which belonged to her in the household of her father, and her willing heart and hand forbade that either the kind old herdsman or the curé should speak aught ill to her, or forbid her the mountain rambles.
The old mother of Conrad grew frighted, indeed, by the stories of the villagers, and prayed her son to give up all thought of the strange Clothilde, and to marry a maiden whose heart was of warmer blood, and who kept no league with the Evil One. But Conrad only the more resolutely followed the bent of his will, and schooled himself for the coming trial. If they talked to him of the stranger, he vowed with a fearful oath, that, be he who he might, he would dare him to sharper conflict than that of the year before.
So, at length, the month and the day drew near again. It was early spring-time. The wasting snows still whitened the edges of the fields which hung upon the slopes of the mountain. The meadow of the fête had lost the last traces of winter, and a fresh green sod, with sprinkled daisies, glittered under the dew and the sunlight.
Clothilde again was robed with care, and when the old herdsman looked on her, under the wreath she had woven out by his cottage flowers, he forgave her all he had thought of her tie to the spirit-world, and clasped her to his heart—"his own, his good Clothilde!"
On the day before the fête, there had been heavy rain; and the herdsmen from the heights reported that the winter snows were loosening, and would soon come down, after which would be broad summer and the ripening of the crops.
Scarce a villager was away from the wrestling-ground; for all had heard of Clothilde, and of the new and strange comer who had challenged the pride of the valley, and had disappeared—none knew whither.
Was Conrad Friedland to lose again his guerdon?
The games went on, with the old man, the father of Clothilde, looking on timidly, and the good curé holding his accustomed place beside him. There were young herdsmen who appeared this year, for the first time, among the wrestlers, and whom the past twelvemonth had ripened into sturdy manhood. But the firm and the tried sinews of the hunter Conrad placed him before all these, as he was before all the others. Not so many, however, as on the year before, envied him his spirit-bride. Yet none could gainsay her beauty; for this day her face was radiant with a rich glow, and her clear complexion, relieved by the green garland she wore, made her seem a princess.
As the day's sports went on, a cool, damp wind blew up the valley, and clouds drifted over the summits of the mountains. Conrad had made himself the victor in every trial. To make his triumph still more brilliant, he had even surpassed the throw of his unknown rival of the year before. At sight of this, the villagers raised one loud shout of greeting, which echoed from end to end of the valley. And the brave huntsman, flushed with victory, dared boldly the stranger of the white jerkin and the silver latchets to appear and maintain his claims to the queen of the valley—the beautiful Clothilde.
There was a momentary hush, broken only by the distant murmur of the Dust-Fall. The thickening clouds drifted fast athwart the mountains.
Clothilde grew suddenly pale, though the old herdsman, her father, was wild with joy. The curé watched the growing paleness of Clothilde, and saw her eye lift toward the head of the glacier.
"Bear away my father!" said she, in a quick tone of authority. In a moment the reason was apparent. A roar, as of thunder, filled the valley; a vast mass of the glacier above had given way, and its crash upon the first range of cliffs now reached the ear. The fragments of ice and rock were moving with frightful volume down toward the plateau.
The villagers fled screaming; the father of Clothilde was borne away by the curé; Clothilde herself was, for the time, lost sight of. The eye of Conrad was keen, and his judgment rare. He saw the avalanche approaching, but he did not fly like the others. An upper plateau and a thicket of pine-trees were in the path of the avalanche; he trusted to these to avert or to stay the ruin.
As he watched, while others shouted him a warning, he caught sight of the figure of Clothilde, in the arms of a stranger flying toward the face of the mountain. He rushed wildly after.
A fearful crash succeeded; the avalanche had crossed the plateau, and swept down the fir-trees; the trunks splintered before it, like summer brambles; the detached rocks were hurled down in showers; immense masses of ice followed quickly after, roaring over the débris of the forest, and, with a crash that shook the whole valley, reached the meadow below. Swift as lightning, whole acres of the green sod were torn up by the wreck of the forest-trees and rocks, and huge, gleaming masses of ice; and then, more slowly, with a low murmur, like a requiem, came the flow of lesser snowy fragments, covering the great ruin with a mantle of white.
Poor Conrad Friedland was buried beneath!
The villagers had all fled in safety; but the green meadow of the fêtes was a meadow no longer.
Those who were hindermost in the flight said they saw the stranger in white bearing Clothilde, in her white robes, up the face of the mountain. It is certain that she was never seen in the valley again; and the poor old herdsman, her father, died shortly after, leaving his stock of dun cows and his fifty kids to the village curé, to buy masses for the rest of his daughter's soul.
"This," said the German, "is the story of the Bride of the Ice-King;" and he re-lighted his pipe.
The storm had now passed over, and the stars were out. Before us was the giant wall of the Jungfrau, with a little rattle of glacier artillery occasionally breaking the silence of the night. To the left was the tall peak of the Wetterhorn, gleaming white in the starlight; and, far away to the right, we could see the shining glaciers at the head of the Lauterbrunnen valley.
If I ever pass that way again, I shall ask the guides to show me the avalanche under which poor Conrad, the hunter, lies buried.