CHAPTER XXXIX.
SAVED.
"There are two blows following close upon each other," cried Lenz. "I will make the clocks play together, as a sign to those without."
He set the two musical clocks in motion, but the dreadful confusion of sounds drove him almost frantic. Even in this hour of deadly danger a discord was intolerable to him. He stopped them suddenly. With a pang as of the severing of a heart-string he heard something in his great clock snap at the hasty check.
Again they held their breath and listened; no further sounds were heard.
"You rejoiced too soon," said Petrovitsch, his teeth chattering so that he could hardly speak. "We are nearer death than life now."
The pounding was repeated from above. "Bum, bum!" imitated the child, while Petrovitsch complained that he felt every blow of the hammer in his brain.
Lenz could not have touched the right spring in one of the clocks, for it suddenly began to play the air of the grand Hallelujah. "Hallelujah, blessed be God the Lord!" sang Lenz with the full force of his voice. Annele sang too, keeping one hand upon Lenz's shoulder, and the other upon the head of the child. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" cried a voice from above.
Once more that piercing cry of old rang through the house "My Pilgrim! my faithful brother!"
The chamber-door was battered down with an axe.
"Are you all alive?" cried Pilgrim,
"All; thank God!"
Pilgrim embraced Petrovitsch first, taking him for Lenz, and the old man returned the greeting with a kiss on both cheeks, after the Russian fashion.
Close upon Pilgrim came the engineer, followed by Faller, Don Bastian, and the members of the Liederkranz.
"Is my William safe?" asked Lenz.
"Yes indeed, safe in my house," answered Don Bastian.
Some of the men shovelled away the snow from the outside of the windows.
"Sun, sun! I behold you again!" cried Annele, sinking upon her knees.
The clock kept on playing the Hallelujah, the schoolmaster added his voice, and the whole Liederkranz joined in with full, firm tones. As if shaken by the mighty song, the snow-fortress in front of the house suddenly loosened and rolled down the valley.
The house stood free.
The door into the kitchen was opened, and, upon the window being lifted, the raven darted across the room above the head of the child out into the open air.
"Birdie gone!" cried the child. A second raven was waiting without, and the two now soaring high in the air, now swooping towards the ground, flew up through the valley.
The first woman who made her way to Annele was Ernestine, who, having heard of the disaster on the Morgenhalde, and also of the landlady's death, had lost no time in coming to her cousin's help. She knelt beside her. Lenz leaned upon Pilgrim's bosom.
Petrovitsch was beginning to be angry because no one paid him any attention, when happily the engineer approached him, and, with a manner at once respectful and cordial, congratulated him on his deliverance. The best fellow of the whole company, thought the old man. Pilgrim politely apologized for the embrace he had inadvertently given, and was treated to a cordial shake of the hand.
"I have found a scrap of your mother's handwriting in the snow," said Faller hoarsely; "most of the writing is washed out, but these few words are left: 'This little plant is called edelweiss. Marie Lenz.'"
"The paper is mine!" cried Annele, rising. All looked at her in astonishment. "Why, Annele!" screamed Ernestine, "what in Heaven's name have you on your head? your hair is all white!"
Annele went to the mirror, and, with a cry of anguish, clasped both hands above her head.
"An old woman! an old woman!" she moaned, and fell upon Lenz's neck. After a while she rose, sobbing, dried her tears and whispered in his ear, "That is my edelweiss that has grown for me under the snow."