“Like an army defeated,
The snow had retreated,”
out of the valley, whose rich green shone smiling round the pool into which the Debateable Ford spread. The waterfall had burst its icy bonds, and dashed down with redoubled voice, roaring rather than babbling. Blue and pink hepaticas—or, as Christina called them, liver-krauts—had pushed up their starry heads, and had even been gathered by Sir Eberhard, and laid on his sister’s pillow. The dark peaks of rock came out all glistening with moisture, and the snow only retained possession of the deep hollows and crevices, into which however its retreat was far more graceful than when, in the city, it was trodden by horse and man, and soiled with smoke.
Christina dreaded indeed that the roads should be open, but she could not love the snow; it spoke to her of dreariness, savagery, and captivity, and she watched the dwindling stripes with satisfaction, and hailed the fall of the petty avalanches from one Eagle’s Step to another as her forefathers might have rejoiced in the defeat of the Frost giants.
But Ermentrude had a love for the white sheet that lay covering a gorge running up from the ravine. She watched its diminution day by day with a fancy that she was melting away with it; and indeed it was on the very day that a succession of drifting showers had left the sheet alone, and separated it from the masses of white above, that it first fully dawned upon the rest of the family that, for the little daughter of the house, spring was only bringing languor and sinking instead of recovery.
Then it was that Sir Eberhard first really listened to her entreaty that she might not die without a priest, and comforted her by passing his word to her that, if—he would not say when—the time drew near, he would bring her one of the priests who had only come from St. Ruprecht’s cloister on great days, by a sort of sufferance, to say mass at the Blessed Friedmund’s hermitage chapel.
The time was slow in coming. Easter had passed with Ermentrude far too ill for Christina to make the effort she had intended of going to the church, even if she could get no escort but old Ursel—the sheet of snow had dwindled to a mere wreath—the ford looked blue in the sunshine—the cascade tinkled merrily down its rock—mountain primroses peeped out, when, as Father Norbert came forth from saying his ill-attended Pentecostal mass, and was parting with the infirm peasant hermit, a tall figure strode up the pass, and, as the villagers fell back to make way, stood before the startled priest, and said, in a voice choked with grief, “Come with me.”
“Who needs me?” began the astonished monk.
“Follow him not, father!” whispered the hermit. “It is the young Freiherr.—Oh have mercy on him, gracious sir; he has done your noble lordships no wrong.”
“I mean him no ill,” replied Eberhard, clearing his voice with difficulty; “I would but have him do his office. Art thou afraid, priest?”
“Who needs my office?” demanded Father Norbert. “Show me fit cause, and what should I dread? Wherefore dost thou seek me?”