She gathered together her sacred relics, the cards, on which the dying woman's clammy fingers had traced the last message of her love; then she went out into the kitchen to Annemiedel.
"I will now go on, cousin," she said calmly, "I only beg thee to tell me how things fell out between Luckard and Stromminger--" she no longer called him father. The old woman had just served the soup in a wooden bowl and she insisted on Wally's sharing it with her.
"Thou must know," she said, while Wally was eating, "Vincenz there, he knows just how to come over thy father, and he's got the better of him altogether. Ever since the summer, Stromminger's had a bad foot and cannot walk. So Vincenz goes up to him every evening and passes the time for him playing cards, and always lets him win--he thinks he'll gain once for all when he wins thee. The old man can hardly live now without Vincenz, and so little by little he's given him the oversight of everything, because with his lame foot he can never get about himself. So Vincenz thinks now the house and farm half belong to him already, and bustles in and out just as he pleases. That was how the quarrel began with Luckard, for Luckard, she would always see that everything was right and fair, as she was used to do, and Vincenz took everything out of her hands and she durst never say a word. Then when he saw that Luckard was downright pining, he said to her that he'd let her manage everything just as if she'd been mistress, and that he'd take care to wink at anything she might like to do, if she'd only help him to get thee--for he knew very well that she could do anything with thee. And then Luckard grew angry; 'She'd never stolen in her life,' she said, 'and wasn't going to begin now in her old age--she wanted nothing but what she could earn honestly, and that as for the man who'd look on at cheating and say nothing, she'd never recommend him to Wally,' she said. And what does the villain do? goes straight to Stromminger and accuses Luckard. He'd convinced himself now, he said, that it was only Luckard that had set thee against him and thy father, and it was all her doing, he said, that thou was so unruly, because she was fain to hold everything under her own hand. That's how it all came about. And it just broke her heart to think that such things were believed of her, when not a word of it all was true. It grieved her such injustice should be done. Is it not true, she never said to thee that thou shouldn't obey thy father?"
"Never, never; on the contrary she was always humble and discreet, and never talked about what she had nothing to do with," said Wally, and again her burning eyes were wet. She turned away her face and rose to go. "God keep thee, cousin," she said, "I'll soon come back again." She took her staff and hat, called her bird, and set out hastily towards home.
[CHAPTER VI.]
A Day at Home.
As Wally went back across the bridge, she turned giddy; she felt now for the first time how the blood had mounted to her head. The milder air down here that felt heavy and oppressive after the clear, icy atmosphere of the Ferner, the bird that clung tightly to her shoulder as her rapid movements made his hold insecure--all seemed painful, almost unbearable. At last she came to the village where her home stood, but to reach it she was obliged to go the whole length of the street, to the very last house. All the villagers, who had just finished their dinners, put their heads out of window and pointed at her with their fingers. "See, there goes the Vulture-maiden. Hast ventured down at last, then? And thou's brought the vulture back with thee, thou and he were not frozen together, then? Thy father left thee to shiver up there long enough!" "Let's see, now, how thou'rt looking? As brown and lean as a Schnalser herdsman." "He! he! thou's grown tame enough up yonder; yes, yes, that's the way to serve such as will not obey their father!"
A shower of spiteful comments such as these fell around Wally; she kept her eyes bent on the ground, and the burning red of shame and bitterness mounted to her brow. Insulted--scoffed at--thus the proud daughter of the chief peasant returned to her home. And all--for what? An implacable hatred rose up in her, sorer, bitterer than anger; for anger may subside, but the deep hatred that grows in an embittered, ill-treated heart strikes its roots through the whole being; it is the silent, persistent outcome of helpless revenge.
Silently Wally mounted the hill behind the hamlet whence Stromminger's farm looked proudly down. No one noticed her arrival but the deaf Klettenmaier, who was splitting wood for winter-use under the wooden shed in the yard; all the others were in the field.
"God be praised," he said, and took off his cap to his master's child. She set down her burden, the heavy vulture, on the ground, and gave her hand to the old man.