Saint Michael

The young man slowly approached. He wore the same Sunday suit which he had worn on that eventful day, but it had evidently been exposed to the wind and rain.

"I have been anxious about you," Valentin said, reproachfully. "No trace of you for forty-eight hours! Where have you been?"

"In the forest."

"And where did you pass the nights?"

"In the empty herdsman's-hut on the mountain."

"In all the storm? Why did you not go home?"

"I knew that Wolfram would attempt to beat me, and I do not mean to be beaten again. I wished to spare both him and myself what would have happened."

His answers sounded monotonous, but the old indifference had gone; there was something in Michael's whole air and bearing strange, gloomy, decided. He was very different from his former self. The priest looked at him with anxiety.

"Then you ought to have come to me. I expected you."

"I have come to your reverence, and what they have told you of me is not true. I am no thief."

"I know it. I never for an instant believed that you were, and now no suspicion rests upon you. The missing star has been found; little Countess Hertha carried it off for a plaything."

Michael stroked aside the damp curls from his brow, and his face wore a strange, hard expression. "Ah, the child with the red-gold hair and the beautiful evil eyes. It is she that I have to thank, is it?"

"The little girl is not to blame; she simply, after the fashion of spoiled children, carried off from her uncle's room what she supposed to be a plaything, and took it to her mother. You were the one at fault; you ought to have exculpated yourself calmly and sensibly, and the affair would have been immediately explained, instead of which–Michael, can it be true that you lifted your hand against Count Steinrück?"

"He called me a thief!" Michael gasped. "Oh, if you knew how he treated me! I was to confess–to return what I had not stolen. He never asked whether I were guilty or not. He would have liked to kick me out of the castle."

There was a degree of savage bitterness in the lad's words, and Valentin could understand it; he saw that his pupil had been irritated to madness. "They did you wrong," he said, "grievous wrong, but you ought not to have given way to furious passion, and the consequences of your anger will recoil heavily upon yourself. The Count is naturally indignant at what has occurred. You need no longer reckon upon his aid, he will hear nothing more of you."

"Will he not? But he shall hear from me! Once more at least."

"What do you mean? You do not propose to–?"

"Go to him! Yes, your reverence. Now that he knows to what unmerited disgrace he subjected me, he shall take it all back!"

"You propose to call Count Steinrück to account?" the priest exclaimed in dismay. "What an insane idea! You must give this up."

"No!" said Michael, in a hard, cold tone.

"Michael!"

"No, your reverence, I will not, even although you forbid my going. I choose to ask him why he called me thief."

All his thoughts revolved about this one point, the disgrace which had been heaped upon him, and which burned into his soul like red-hot iron. Valentin was at his wit's end; he saw that here his remonstrances could avail nothing, and the savage desire for revenge that was plain in this intent of the lad's filled him with dread. If Michael really carried out his plan of taking the Count to task, and if the Count should undertake to chastise the 'rough, unbridled fellow,' some terrible misfortune might ensue; it must be prevented at all hazards.

"I never thought that my words would avail so little with you," he said, sorrowfully. "Well, then, something else must appeal to you. Whether the Count has wronged you or not, it would be a crime for you to lift a finger against him; you must never–heed what I say–never confront him as a foe; he stands nearer to you than you dream."

"To me? Count Steinrück?"

"Yes. I meant to have told you hereafter of what I now reveal to you, but your insane behaviour forces me to speak. You would else be in danger of making a second assault upon–your grandfather!"

Michael started, and stood staring wide-eyed at the speaker. "My grandfather! He is–?"

"Your mother's father. But you must cherish no hopes from the tie; your mother was disinherited and cast off. Her marriage separated her forever from her family, and was her ruin."

He paused and looked at Michael, who for the moment said not a word, although it was evident that the revelation had agitated him terribly. His features worked, and his chest rose and fell as though he were labouring for breath; at last after a long pause he said, gloomily, "Go on,–is there no more to tell?"

"No, my son, no more for the present. It is a sad story, ending in grief and misery; a tissue of crime and misfortune that you could hardly understand. Hereafter, when you are older and more mature, you shall hear everything; for the present let the bare facts content you: I vouch for their truth. You see now that the person of Count Steinrück should be sacred to you."

"Sacred? When he hounded me like a thief from his door?" Michael suddenly burst forth. "He knew that he was my grandfather, and yet could treat me so! Like a dog! Ah, your reverence, you ought not to bid me hold him sacred. I hated the Count because he was so hard and pitiless to a stranger, but now,–I should like to–"

He clinched his fist with so terrible a look that Valentin involuntarily recoiled. "For the love of all the saints you would not–?"

"Touch him,–no! I know now that I must not lift my hand against him, but if I could call him to account otherwise, I would give my life for a chance to do so."

Valentin stood speechless, dismayed, though this savage outbreak was not alone what dismayed him. He too saw now what had so surprised his brother, that strange gleam that flashed out suddenly like lightning to vanish as instantly. The rugged, undeveloped features were the same, but the dreamy face had gone; as if a veil had been raised all at once there were revealed other eyes, another brow, and the movement with which Michael turned to leave the room was full of savage resolve.

"Where are you going?" the priest asked, hastily. "To the forest lodge?"

"No; I have nothing to do there now. Farewell, your reverence."

"Stay! Where, then, are you going?"

"I do not know,–away,–out into the world."

"Alone? Without means? Utterly ignorant of the world and of life? What will you do?"

"Go to ruin like my mother," the lad replied, roughly.

"No, by heaven, that you shall not!" exclaimed the priest, rising with unwonted determination. "If my vows tie my hands,–if I cannot take care of you,–I can intrust you to another. It was a special providence that brought my brother here; he will not refuse to help me: I can rely upon him."

Michael shook his head in dissent. "Better let me go, your reverence; I am accustomed to be maltreated and turned out everywhere; I do not want to be a burden upon a stranger. I can scarcely be worse off out in the world than I was with my parents. I can remember it from my earliest childhood. Neither my mother nor I ever had a kind word from my father, and he often used to beat us both; it was not very different from the life at the lodge, except that I was not starved at the forester's."

Valentin shuddered; he could not help it at the thought of the woman whom he had formerly seen in all the pride of her beauty and rank. This, then, had been the end of it all. A terrible glimpse into the depths of human misery.

"You must not go, Michael," he said, gently but decidedly. "There can be no question of your return to the lodge. Here you will stay until I hear from my brother,–I know beforehand what he will say,–and until then I take charge of you."

Michael did not gainsay this, and made no further attempt to depart. He turned darkly away to the window, and stood there with folded arms looking out, the same sullen determination in his look that had characterized it when he would have rushed away. Yes, the somnambulist had wakened when his name had been called, out the call had been rude, and the awakening bitter.

A golden autumnal day had arisen from the dim morning mists; the mountains were unveiled and the valleys were filled with sunshine.

The little mountain-town, which lay about a league from Castle Steinrück, nestling most picturesquely at the entrance of the valley, was harbouring a distinguished guest. Professor Hans Wehlau, of worldwide reputation as a light of science, was paying a visit to his brother-in-law, the burgomaster of the little town. For ten years the Professor had now been living in the capital of Northern Germany, where he occupied a prominent position in the university. Since the death of his wife he had rather withdrawn from society, from which his two sons were also secluded by the duties of their several occupations; the younger was completing at another university the studies in natural science which he had begun under his father's tuition, and the elder, an adopted son, the child of a friend who had died, having embraced a military career, was stationed with his regiment in a provincial town. All, however, were to share in this excursion to relatives among the mountains. The Professor had been here for some weeks, and his sons had arrived on the previous day.

The burgomaster's fine spacious house looked out upon the market square, and the upper rooms, usually unoccupied, had been placed at the disposal of the guests. The Frau Burgomeisterin did all that she could to make the stay beneath her roof of her dead sister's husband agreeable to him, and her efforts in this direction were all the more praiseworthy since she was always upon a war-footing with him. She was perpetually vacillating between respect for his reputation, very flattering to her vanity in so near a relative, and detestation for the 'godless' scientific doctrines to which he owed his fame, and it was a great trial to her that her nephew, whom, in the absence of any children of her own, she loved like a son, should have been compelled by his father's command to pursue the path of science.

It was early in the morning, and the Professor was standing at the window of his room looking out upon the quiet market square. Wehlau had changed but little in the last ten years. He had the same intellectual face, with its sarcastic expression and piercing eyes; the hair, however, had grown gray. Beside him stood the Frau Burgomeisterin, an imposing figure, of whom the evil-disposed in Tannberg affirmed that she ruled the ruler, and was the autocrat of her household.

"And our boys are here at last!" said the Professor, in apparently high good humour. "You'll have noise and confusion enough now, for Hans will turn the house upside down. You know him of old. They both look very well: Michael, especially, has a very manly air."