The Count of Nideck Part 12

Every time I come across one like it, it makes a great impression on me.

Heavens! how can such a foot belong to the Black Plague?" And the good fellow fixed his eyes on the floor with a dismal air.

"Well, Sebalt, go on!" said Sperver impatiently.

"To be sure! Well, I recognized the track, and I set out to follow it. I was in hopes of catching the witch in her den, but you shall hear what a dance she led me. I climbed up the roadside, only two gunshots from Nideck, and struck off into the bushes, keeping the trail always on my right; it ran along the edge of the Rhethal. Suddenly it jumped over the ditch into the woods. I kept on, but happening to glance a little to the left of it, I discovered another track that had been following the Black Plague's. I stopped; 'Could it be Sperver's? or Kasper Trumpf's? or any of the other people's?' I asked myself. I stooped over and examined it closely, and you can fancy my surprise when I saw that it belonged to n.o.body in this part of the country. I know every footprint from here to Tubingen, and it was none of these. The owner must have come from a distance. The boot--for it was a kind of soft, well-made boot, with a spur that left a little rowelled line in the snow behind it--instead of being rounded at the end, was square; the sole, thin and without nails, bent at every step. The pace was short and hurried, like that of a man from twenty to twenty-five. I noticed the st.i.tches in the leather at this glance, and I have never seen finer."

"Who could it have been?"

Sperver shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.

"Who can have any object in following the old woman?" I asked, turning to Sperver.

"The devil himself, perhaps," he replied.

We sat for some minutes, each one busied with his own reflections.

"I started on again," pursued Sebalt finally; "the tracks led up the mountain side amongst the fir-trees, and then turned off around the base of the Roche Fendue. When I saw this, I said to myself, 'Ah! you old hag! If there was much game of your sort, the sport of hunting would go to the dogs. It would be better to work as a galley slave!' We came--the two tracks and I--to the top of the Schneeberg. The wind had swept here and the snow was up to my waist, but I must get on! I reached the banks of the Steinbach torrent and there the Black Plague's foot-prints ceased. I stopped, and saw that after having tried up and down, the gentleman's boots had taken the direction of the Tiefenbach. This was a bad sign. I looked at the opposite bank, but there was no sign of a track there. The witch had waded either up or down the stream, to break the scent. Where should I go? To right or left? In my uncertainty, by Jove, I came back to Nideck."

"You have forgotten to tell the doctor about her breakfast."

"To be sure, monsieur! At the foot of the Roche Fendue, I saw she had lighted a fire; the snow was black around it; and I laid my hand on the spot, thinking that if it were still warm the Plague could not be far away, but it was as cold as ice. I noticed a snare in the bushes close by."

"A snare?"

"Yes; it seems the old creature knows how to manage traps. A hare had been caught in it; the impression of his body was still there where he had lain stretched out. The witch had lighted the fire to cook him; she knows a thing or two, you see!"

"Just to think," cried Sperver angrily, "that this old wretch should find meat to feed on, when so many honest people of our villages are starving for the want of a bit of bread! It infuriates me! If I only had her in my clutches--!"

He had no time to finish his sentence. The next moment, we were staring into each other's ashy faces, speechless and immovable. A howl--the howl of a wolf on a bitter winter's night--a cry that you must have heard to comprehend in the least, the agonized plaint of the savage beast,--was echoing through the Castle, and seemed not far from us. It rose from below, so fearfully distinct that we fancied the wild animal just outside our door.

We often hear quoted, as the most terrible of sounds, the roar of the lion, as he rends the silence of approaching night in the immensity of the desert. But if the parched and burning sands of Africa have their voice, like the sound of the autumn tempest growling among the crags of the forest, so, too, have the vast, snowy plains of the North their characteristic cry, that accords so well with the dreary winter landscape, where all is sleeping, and not even a dead leaf rustles to disturb the perfect stillness; and this cry,--it is the howl of the wolf!

Rousing himself with difficulty, Sperver sprang from his chair, rushed to the window, and stared down at the foot of the Tower.

"Can a wolf have fallen into the moat?" he cried.

But the howls came from within the Castle. Then turning to us:

"Gaston! Sebalt!" he cried, "come on!"

We flew down the stairs four steps at a time, and rushed into the armory. Sperver drew his hunting-knife, and Sebalt followed his example; they preceded me along the gallery. The cries were guiding us towards the chamber of the sick man. Sperver spoke no more, and hurried his steps. I felt a shudder pa.s.s over me; something forewarned us that an abominable scene was about to transpire before our eyes.

As we approached the Count's apartment, we found the whole household afoot--hunters, kennel-keepers, and scullions, running this way and that, and asking each other, "What is the matter? where are the cries coming from?" Without waiting for anything, we dashed into the corridor which led to the Count's chamber, and in the vestibule we encountered the good Marie Lagoutte, who alone had had the courage to proceed there before us. She was holding in her arms the young Countess, who had fainted, and was hurrying her away as rapidly as she could. So agitated was I at this pathetic sight that for the moment I forgot the Count, and I sprang forward to Odile's aid; but Marie Lagoutte begged me to hurry to the Count, as her mistress was only in a faint and would soon revive, when she would be terribly distressed if I were not at her father's bedside. Realizing that in spite of my preferences my first duty was to my patient, I reluctantly quitted them, and hastened to overtake my companions.

We reached the Count's room. The howls were coming from within.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEN HE WOULD RESUME HIS FRIGHTFUL CRIES."]

We stared at one another, trying in vain to explain the presence of such a guest. Our ideas were in utter confusion. Sperver threw open the door, and with his hunting-knife tightly grasped, started to enter the room; but he paused on the threshold, motionless as a stone. I glanced over his shoulder, and the sight that presented itself to my gaze froze the blood in my veins. The Count of Nideck, crouching on all-fours on the bed, his head bent forward and his eyes glowing fiercely, was uttering these terrible howls. He was the wolf! That low forehead, that long, pointed face, that bristling beard, that long, thin body, and those wasted limbs,--the expression, the cry, the att.i.tude,--all bespoke the savage beast beneath a human mask. At times he would stop for a second to listen, and the tall curtains of the bed would tremble like leaves. Then he would resume his frightful cries.

Sperver, Sebalt, and I stood nailed to the floor; we held our breath.

Suddenly the Count stopped; like the hunted animal that sniffs the breeze, he raised his head and listened. Far, far away beneath the lofty arches of the snow-clad pines, a cry was heard; feeble at first, it seemed to grow louder as it was prolonged, and soon it rose clear and strong above the roaring of the storm. It was the she-wolf answering its mate.

Sperver, turning towards me with livid face, his arm pointing to the mountain, cried:

"Listen, it is the witch!"

The Count, motionless, with raised head and extended neck, his mouth wide open, and eyeb.a.l.l.s glowing like coals, seemed to understand the meaning of the distant voice, lost in the midst of the deserted gorges of the Black Forest, and a certain savage joy gleamed in his face. At this moment Sperver cried in a broken voice:

"Count of Nideck! What are you doing?"

The Count fell backwards as if thunderstruck. We rushed into the room to his a.s.sistance. The third attack had begun, and it was terrible to witness.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PLAGUE IN MY CHAMBER.--THE MIDNIGHT SCENE ON THE ALTENBERG.

The Count of Nideck was in a dying condition. All that art might accomplish I had tried without avail, and at that moment, when life and death were struggling for the mastery, I was compelled to stand idly by and watch the sands of Time's hour-gla.s.s run out. Towards midnight, the Count seemed almost gone; his pulse beat feebly, and at times seemed to stop. Sometimes I thought the end was but the question of a few moments.

At length, worn out with exhaustion and anxiety, I bid the weeping Sperver remain with his master while I repaired to the Tower to s.n.a.t.c.h a few moments' sleep.

A bright fire was burning in my chamber. I threw myself on the bed without removing my clothes, and soon fell into a heavy, troubled slumber. I slept thus, with my face turned towards the fire, whose rays danced upon the polished flagstones. After an hour, the fire suddenly started up, and as it often happens, the flame, rising and falling momentarily, beat upon the walls its great red wings and tired my eyelids. Lost in a vague slumber, I half opened my eyes to see whence came these alternate lights and shadows, when I was brought wide awake by an appalling sight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I RAISED MYSELF ON MY ELBOW AND STARED FEARFULLY IN THE DIRECTION."]

At the further end of the hearth, hardly revealed by the light of a few glowing embers, a dark profile was dimly visible,--the profile of the Black Plague. At first, I thought it an hallucination, the natural offspring of my feverish thoughts. I raised myself on my elbow, and stared fearfully in the direction, real or fancied, of the image. It was she indeed! Calm and motionless she sat, her hands clasped about her knees, just as I had seen her in the snow, with her long, thin neck, sharp, hooked nose, and thin lips tightly closed,--and she was warming herself before the fire.

I was horrified. How could the creature have got into my room? How could she have climbed the Tower, beneath which precipices yawned on every side? Everything that Sperver had told me concerning her mysterious power seemed no whit exaggerated. The vision of Lieverle growling against the wall pa.s.sed before me like a flash. I huddled close in the alcove, hardly daring to breathe, and watching this immovable silhouette as a mouse watches a cat from the bottom of its hole. The old woman stirred no more than the chimney-breast cut in the solid rock, and her lips moved as she mumbled inarticulate words.

My heart beat painfully fast, and my fear increased from moment to moment, as I gazed on the motionless figure amid the perfect silence.

This lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, when the fire catching a pine splinter, the flame leaped up and a few rays penetrated to the end of the room. This flash sufficed to show me the aged woman dressed in an old gown of purple brocade that s.h.i.+mmered violet and red in different lights, with a heavy bracelet on her left wrist and a gold arrow stuck through her thick, gray hair, which was coiled up on the back of her head. It was like an apparition of past ages.

Still, the Plague could have no hostile designs upon me, or she would have profited by my slumber to execute them. This thought was beginning to rea.s.sure me, when she suddenly got up and moved slowly towards my bed, holding in her hand a torch which she had just lighted at the fire.

I now observed that her eyes were fixed and haggard. I made an effort to rise and cry out, but not a muscle of my body would obey my will, not a sound pa.s.sed my lips, and the old witch, bending over me between the parted curtains, fixed her eyes on me with a strange smile. I tried to spring upon her and cry for help, but her glance paralyzed me as the snake's look charms the tiny bird. During this dumb contemplation, each second seemed to me an eternity. What was she about to do? I was prepared for anything. Suddenly she turned her head, listened, and then crossing the room with a rapid step, she opened the door. At last I had recovered a little courage; an effort of the will brought me to my feet, as if acted upon by an invisible spring, and I followed on the heels of the old woman, who with one hand was holding her torch above her head, and with the other kept the hall-door wide open.

I was about to seize her by the hair when, at the end of the long gallery, beneath the oval archway that opened upon the ramparts, I saw--the Count of Nideck! The Count of Nideck, whom I thought dying, clad in a huge wolf-skin, with its upper jaw projecting like a visor over his eyebrows, the claws resting on his shoulders, and the tail dragging behind him over the flagstones. He wore heavy boots, a silver clasp fastened the wolf-skin at his throat, and his expression, except for the dull, icy look in his eyes, bespoke the strong man born to command,--the master.

In the presence of such a personage my ideas became vague and confused.

Flight was impossible. I had presence of mind enough left, however, to throw myself into an embrasure of the window.

The Count entered the chamber and fixed upon the old woman a rigid stare. They held a whispered conversation, of which I was able to hear nothing, but their gestures were full of meaning. The old hag pointed to the bed. They moved to the fireplace on tiptoe, and there in the shadow of the triforium the Black Plague unrolled a large bundle, grinning hideously meanwhile. Hardly had the Count caught sight of the sack, before he sprang to the bedside and disappeared between the curtains, which stirred in a strange fas.h.i.+on. I could only see one leg still resting on the floor, and the wolf's tail moving back and forth. They seemed to be enacting a mock murder scene.

Nothing could have been more horrible than this mute representation of such an act. The old creature approached the bed in turn, and spread out her sack on the floor beside it. The curtains still moved, and their shadows danced upon the walls. Then a great movement succeeded. The old creature and the Count together crowded the bed clothes into the sack, stamping them down with the haste of a dog scratching a hole in the earth, and the Lord of Nideck, throwing the shapeless bundle over his shoulder, started for the door. A sheet dragged behind him, and the old woman followed him with her torch. They crossed the court.

My knees trembled and almost refused to support my weight; a prayer rose involuntarily to my lips. Two minutes had not pa.s.sed before I was on their footsteps, dragged along by a subtle, irresistible curiosity. I crossed the court at a run, and was about to enter the Gothic Tower, when I perceived a deep, narrow pit at my feet, and into its depths wound a staircase, down which I saw the hag's torch turning, turning about the stone bal.u.s.ter like a firefly, until it became lost in the distance.