'No, I shall never stir again; they will bear me away to my grave, that is all. I am like a felled tree. All is over. Well, perchance, so best: when I am dead she may forgive—she may love the children.'
When at last Bela, sobbing piteously, had reluctantly obeyed, and when, despite all his struggles, nature, frozen, weary, and worn out, compelled him to close his eager eyes in heavy dreamless slumber, Sabran with a glance called the keeper to him.
'Now the child sleeps,' he said, 'get my clothes off me, if you can. Touch me gently. I think my back is broken.'
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
It was twelve o'clock in the night. Wanda von Szalras paced the Rittersaal with feverish steps and limbs which, whilst they quivered with fear, knew no fatigue. It had been nine in the morning when Greswold and the servants, having searched in vain, came at last to her with the tidings that her first-born son was lost; his bed empty, his clothes gone, his little sword away from its place. All the day she had sought herself, and organised the search of others with all the energy and courage of her race. She had not given way to the despair which had seized her, but in her own soul she had said: 'Does fate chastise me thus for my own cruelty? I have shrunk from their sweet faces because they were like his. For two long months I exiled them, I thrust them from my presence and my heart. I have been ashamed of them. Does God punish me through them? Shall I lose my children, too? Can I forgive myself? Have I not even wished them unborn? Oh, my Bela, my darling, my first-born! Yes, you are his, but more than all, you are mine!'
When night closed in, and all the many separate search-parties returned, bringing no news of him, she thought that she would lose her reason. All had been done that could be done; the men on the estates were scattered far and wide. It was known that there were snow-storms on the heights; the white fury had even at eventide descended to the lower ground, and the terraces and gardens shone white as the lights of the heavens fell upon them. Every now and then there came the report of a gun on the hills; the men were firing in hope that the child, if lost, might hear the shots. The evening passed on and midnight came, and no one knew where Bela was in those vast forests, those immense hills, all hidden in the impenetrable darkness. She saw him at every moment lying white and cold in some hollow in the snow; she saw the cruel winds blow his curls, his fair limbs stiffen. Every year the winter and the mountains took their toll of lives.
She had known nothing of the purport of the child's disappearance; she had been left to every vague conjecture with which her mind could torture her. The whole household and all the woodsmen and huntsmen had scoured the hills far and wide, and the whole day and night had gone by with no tidings, no result. Sleep had visited no eyes at Hohenszalras; from its terraces the snow-storm and hurricanes beating around the head of Glöckner were discernible by the agitation of the clouds that hid one-half the heights.
Gela had stayed up beside her, his little pale face pressed to the window frame, his terrified eyes staring into the gloom which near at hand grew red with the beacon fires.
As midnight tolled from the clock tower he came to her, and touched her hand.