The Alpine Fay Part 41

"No," said Wolfgang, drawing a deep breath. "The enclosed forest protects the abyss, and the bridge with it; no avalanche can break that down. I foresaw and provided for this danger when I planned it."

"It would be fearful," Nordheim groaned. "The injury even now is incalculable. Should the bridge go all is lost!"

The frown on Elmhorst's brow deepened at this outburst of despair.

"Control yourself!" he said, in a low tone, but with emphasis. "We are observed; every one is looking at us. We must set an example of courage and hope, or the people will lose heart."

"Hope!" the president repeated, catching at the word as a drowning man clutches a straw. "Have you really any hope?"

"No; but I shall fight to the last."

Nordheim looked the speaker in the face. His pale, stern features gave no hint of the tempest raging within, and yet for him everything was at stake. After the fading of his dreams of wealth and power, his work was all that was left to him upon which to build a future if he lived, and to be at least his enduring monument if he should fall by Waltenberg's hand. It was now imperilled. And yet he stood erect and struggled on, while the president was the image of impotent despair. What did he care if others observed his hopelessness? What was it to him that an example of courage was expected from a man in his position? He thought only of the gigantic losses which the catastrophe would cause him,--losses which might ruin him.

"I must return to my post," said Wolfgang. "If you stay, choose carefully the spot where you stand. Stones and earth are continually sliding down: we have had several accidents already."

He turned again towards the bridge, and then first noticed that Nordheim had not come alone. For a moment he paused, and his glance sought Erna. He divined what had brought her hither; he knew that she feared for him, but he made no attempt to approach her, for at her side was the man to whom she belonged, who, mute and inexorable as fate itself, considered her absolutely his property. Waltenberg marked the anxious glance of distress which followed Wolfgang as he returned to his men and took up his stand on a threatened dam, and, as if by accident, he put his hand upon the bridle of the other horse and held it fast.

Suddenly behind the pair Gronau's tall figure appeared; muddy and drenched, but entirely at his ease, he slowly approached. "Here we are," he said, with a bow. "We come directly from Oberstein, but we swam rather than walked."

"We?" asked Ernst. "Is Dr. Reinsfeld with you?"

"Yes; we succeeded at last in bringing the Obersteiners to their senses and in convincing them that their home was not in danger this time. It was a hard piece of work, and we were scarcely through with it when a messenger arrived from the engineer-in-chief to ask the doctor to come and see after some men who had been accidentally injured. The good doctor, of course, ran his fastest, and I ran too, for I thought another pair of stout arms might not come amiss, and it was well I did so. I have established myself in the house there as hospital nurse, and have just come for an instant to let you know I am here, for my hands are quite full."

"There have been accidents, then. I hope nothing serious?" Erna asked, eagerly.

Gronau shrugged his shoulders; "One of the men was carried away by a cataract and fished out in a mangled condition; the doctor is afraid he cannot pull him through; and another was struck on the head by a fragment of falling rock; his case too is serious; the others are only slightly injured."

"If Dr. Reinsfeld needs help I am ready to do all I can," the young girl declared, turning her horse as if to go to the house Grouau had pointed out.

"Thanks, Fraulein von Thurgau, we can get along very well by ourselves," Veit replied, while Waltenberg looked at his betrothed in surprise.

"What, Erna, you? There are others to do that work. Gronau is helping the doctor. Why so superfluously heroic?"

"Because I cannot endure to stand idly and unsympathetically by while every one else is toiling to the very death!"

There was a stern reproof in her words, but Ernst did not seem to understand it: "No, you certainly are not unsympathetic, you are actually trembling with emotion," he observed. "But, in fact, the men are using their utmost exertions in spite of the danger that continually threatens them."

"Because the engineer-in-chief is always foremost in peril," Veit continued the sentence. "If he were not everywhere, showing them an example of scorn of all danger, they would waver and hesitate; but such a leader inspires even the timid. There he stands in the very centre of that dam which the water may carry away at any moment, and issues his orders as if he could control the entire mountain-realm. For three days now he has been battling with this accursed Alpine fiend, who seems positively mad with fury, and I verily believe he will get the upper hand of her. But I must go back to the doctor. Good-bye."

He went, and the president, who just then returned to his companions, saw him as he vanished within-doors. He shuddered involuntarily; the appearance of this man was one more evil omen,--it reminded him that a danger menaced him which had nothing to do with the present peril, already terrible enough.

His short conversation with Wolfgang had deprived Nordheim of the last gleam of hope. If the upper stretch of railway were destroyed, what would remain of all the buildings, the erection of which had absorbed millions, and which he could not possibly restore? He had from the beginning owned the chief part of the railway stock, and of late, in view of the enormous profit he hoped to gain upon his retirement, he had greatly increased the number of his shares, so that the tremendous loss would be his almost alone. He knew that his property, invested in many other speculations, could not stand such a blow, and if Gronau should make good his threat and accuse him publicly, all was lost. The millionaire secure in his position might perhaps have defied him, the half-ruined speculator would be overwhelmed; Nordheim knew the world in which he had lived so long.

Neither his energy nor his presence of mind stood him in stead now. The man who had for so long been the spoiled darling of Fortune, for whom everything had turned to gain, could not understand how she could suddenly prove thus false to him. He had always been a bold, clever man of business, but he had no force of character; in misfortune he was pitiably cast down. In dull, dumb despair he stood gazing at the men, at whose head the engineer-in-chief had again placed himself.

Wolfgang seemed to be everywhere; one moment he was standing on the most imperilled part of the dam, anon he breasted the tempest in the centre of the bridge, and then he hurried to the station-house to issue his orders thence. He was dripping from head to foot,--the water was trickling from his hair, from his clothes; he did not seem to feel it, or to be in need of either rest or refreshment, and yet nothing but the most fearful tension of mind and body sustained him in the conflict which had now been going on for three times four-and-twenty hours.

These were hours when Wolfgang Elmhorst might have forced even his bitterest enemies to respect and admire him.

And his mortal enemy was thus forced, but none the less did his hatred and jealousy burn fiercely. Waltenberg was familiar with danger,--he had often invoked it and dallied with it recklessly,--but there was something far beyond dalliance in the unconquerable energy with which Elmhorst thus devoted himself to duty. He knew that his was a forlorn hope; half of his work was already destroyed, he could not save the rest, and yet he worked on, seeming determined to die rather than yield.

And as he thus struggled, Ernst Waltenberg on horseback looked on at 'the very interesting spectacle,' but was conscious of the part he had condemned himself to play. He had invited Erna to ride with him to the scene of disaster; the same calculating cruelty which had tormented her by silence had dictated the proposal. He knew she would accede to it, since it would give her an opportunity to see Wolfgang again, and she should see him in the midst of the danger to which he so recklessly exposed himself, she should tremble in mortal distress, and yet never betray by a change of feature the anguish of her soul. Elmhorst was right: this man's love was mere selfishness. What was it to him that the woman he loved was tortured and in agony, if but his savage thirst for revenge were allayed? Erna should suffer as he suffered; he would be as pitiless to her as fate had been to himself.

But he underestimated the fearless nature of his betrothed when he thought that she would merely tremble at this danger. Her eyes were indeed riveted on Wolfgang in breathless anxiety, but they flashed with pa.s.sionate admiration, with proud satisfaction, on beholding how he bore himself in the conflict, how he gazed into the terrible countenance of the Alpine Fay and strove with her to the death. In this mortal struggle he was for her all hero, her whole soul went out to meet him. Every shadow which had formerly obscured his image in her heart was dispersed in this light; he stood before her, as he had confronted Nordheim, free from all shackles in the triumph of his own true nature.

Ernst was thus obliged to feel the shaft which he had shot so cruelly rebound upon himself. He had meant to show Erna the danger of the man whom she loved; he had shown her only his heroism. To be sure, he stood guard over her, determined to prevent a meeting, but he could not prevent the mute language of their eyes, the glances that sought and found each other in spite of distance and separation, of tempest and destruction, and in this language they told each other everything.

Wolfgang felt that at this moment the barriers which his wooing of Alice had erected between himself and his love were levelled, and in the midst of the hopelessness of his efforts there gleamed upon him a ray of light, like the gleam of sunset indeed, but all-inspiring.

It seemed in fact as if the success of the work of salvation depended upon the presence of this man. The most dangerous of the torrents which rushed wildly against the railway-dike had been successfully turned aside, Elmhorst having diverted its course to a deep cut in the rocks, whence it fell harmlessly into the Wolkenstein abyss, carrying with it the ma.s.ses of earth and stones which had been so destructive. The most imminent danger was averted, and for the moment the tempest seemed to subside. The rain ceased, the wind became less violent, and it began to look brighter about the Wolkenstein.

There was a few minutes' pause in the work. The president and Waltenberg, who also had alighted, walked along the bridge, where some of the workmen were gathered, to observe the diverted torrent foaming in the abyss. Everything looked more hopeful.

The engineer-in-chief, however, stood on one side apart from the rest.

He did not hear the cheerful exclamations of the men, but, leaning forward, seemed to listen intently to a sound muttering on high through the air, like the distant roll of thunder; his eyes were fixed upon the crest of the Wolkenstein, and suddenly his face took on a death-like pallor.

"Away from the bridge!" he shouted to the rest. "Save yourselves! Run for your lives!"

His last words were drowned in a dull rumble that grew to a crash as of thunder, but his cry of warning had been heard. The people scattered hastily; they felt the approach of something terrible,--there was no time to understand what it was; they deserted the bridge as quickly as possible.

Nordheim and Waltenberg were carried away by the rush, and the former reached firm land, but Ernst stumbled and fell while yet on the bridge.

Past him and over him the others ran wildly; in the selfishness of mortal terror every one thought only of his own safety, while Waltenberg, stunned by his fall, lay on the ground quite unable to rise for the s.p.a.ce of a minute, when seconds were precious.

Suddenly he felt a strong arm grasp him and lift him from the ground, then bear him onward, to release him only when the stout trunk of a tree was reached, around which he could clasp his own arms to hold himself upright.

Then came the wind, howling and roaring like a hurricane,--a blast to which all that had gone before during the last three days had been but as the sighing of a breeze,--and everything in its path was prostrated or carried away. This was the herald of the Alpine Sprite, preparing a way for her; and now she herself descended from her cloud-veiled throne. A roar as of a thousand peals of thunder filled the air, echoing from every height, from every abyss, as if the entire mountain-realm were cras.h.i.+ng to fragments; the rocks seemed to tremble, the earth to rock, as this terrible something, white and phantom-like, thundered past. It lasted for a minute, and then there was silence,--a silence as of death.

The avalanche had torn its way from the peak of the mountain directly into the abyss, and destruction marked its course. The extensive, protecting, enclosed forest at the foot of the cliffs had vanished, and where it had stood there was a desolate, dreary waste. The course of the stream was blockaded; the chasm was half filled with jagged ma.s.ses of ice, from among which projected trunks of trees and huge fragments of stone, and where the bridge had thrown its bold arch from rock to rock now yawned sheer emptiness. Two of the huge shafts were still standing, the rest were partly or entirely torn down, and about them hung some of the iron ribs, bent and snapped like reeds; all the rest lay below in the abyss. She had avenged herself, the savage Alpine Fay.

Crushed and splintered at her feet lay the proud creation of man.

CHAPTER XXV.

NOT ALL DESPAIR.

A scene of indescribable confusion followed upon the catastrophe. At first no one fully grasped what had occurred, and when at last it became clear, all rushed to the rescue. The warning shout of the engineer-in-chief had indeed averted the worst,--at the instant of its destruction no one had been upon the bridge; but some of the men lay senseless, thrown to the ground by the concussion of the air, others had been more or less injured by flying stones and bits of ice; no one, however, at first seemed mortally hurt, and all who were able were intent upon aid. There were shouts and cries, and a running to and fro in wild confusion. Very few preserved their presence of mind, and these few could not make themselves heard.

One group, however, a.s.sembled about a severely wounded man, was quiet enough, and in a few moments this group became a centre of attraction.

Engineers and workmen crowded around with faces of dismay, a whisper ran from lip to lip, "The president? Nordheim himself? For G.o.d's sake bring the doctor!"

It was indeed President Nordheim who lay here bleeding and unconscious.

He had reached what he thought a place of safety, when one of the heavy iron stanchions of the bridge, torn from its place, had felled him to the earth. Erna and Waltenberg were busied about him, and all were doing what they could to restore him to consciousness, when the circle opened to admit the engineer-in-chief and Dr. Reinsfeld.

Benno was rather paler than usual, but perfectly calm, as he knelt down and began to examine the injury. The pain of this examination seemed to rouse Nordheim; with a groan he opened his eyes, and gazed into the countenance of the man bending over him. He did not recognize him, but probably fancied he saw his early friend, whom the son closely resembled, for with an unmistakable expression of horror and a convulsive movement he tried to rise and to push aside the helping hand. With another agonized groan he sank back, the blood gus.h.i.+ng from his mouth.

The by-standers observed only the signs of physical pain. Benno alone divined the truth; he bent still lower, and as he gently put his hand beneath the sufferer's head he said, softly, "Do not reject my help. It is given you freely, from my heart!"

Nordheim was unable to speak, and the effort he had made exhausted him; again he became unconscious. The young physician examined with all possible gentleness the injury in the breast, and then turned with a very grave face to Waltenberg and Elmhorst.