Kitabı oku: «Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 714», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THE THIRD

The morrow saw Master Fleming and Mistress Deborah speeding along the fields. Charlie carried a mighty stick, cut from a tough ash-tree, and a knife beneath his skirts; Deborah too, secretly, had a long blade concealed, to her own heart's satisfaction. Drawn to danger like moths to candle-flare, these little hardy Flemings sought an adventure after their own hearts. When they reached the level downs and the long expanse of shining water, the gipsy camp burst full on view. It was a sight familiar to their eyes; the dauntless Charlie knew it well. Many an hour, when Dame Marjory, shut in with her pickles and preserves, thought Master Fleming intent over his books, he was riding a bare-backed pony on the downs amidst a ragged crew. Many a raid on those same camps had Master Fleming dared; and twice, hunted by them, had the bold boy fled for liberty, or life. So that, knowing the gipsy nature, he did not approach the camp with Deborah without misgiving or unprepared for flight.

'Now see; if the gipsies curse or hunt us,' he said to Deborah, as they paused, 'that you do not lay hold on me, but run for your life; you can run like a hare; so can I. They may not be best pleased to see us.'

With a heart that beat somewhat faster at her brother's words, Deborah gave assent, and they advanced hand in hand. But in another moment their approach was seen by one ragged sentinel, and with shrill cries of delight they were surrounded by a weird elfin band. Their eyes were beautiful and black, as in Deborah's vision; but upon close quarters, they were all rags and dirt. They swarmed round their old playmate, staring in dumb amaze at Deborah's fair loveliness. Charlie clutched his stick.

'Now stand back!' he cried, in a loud authoritative voice, 'an' I will give you copper pence.' He struck his stick on the ground, and the ragged boys and girls all started back and stood in a circle round them. Deborah was abashed and overwhelmed with admiration at her brother's potent sway; her eyes were riveted upon him. The youthful captain was aware of this, and with added dignity turned upon his troop: 'First, first,' quoth he, 'you must catch two ponies for Mistress Deborah an' for me, the biggest an' the best, an' we will race you. The first one who wins gets the prize; an' if I win or Mistress Deborah wins, we win the prize, an' give it to the first man in: an' that is fair play, seein' our ponies must be the biggest an' the best. But stay. Come on the common, and let them not see us in the camp. After the race is done, we will go an' speak to your grandam, old Dame Shaw, and stay the night mayhap.'

With yells of glee the whole troop rushed hooting over the common, tearing hither and thither after colts as tameless. Deborah's hat was off and her hair flying, the soul of glee was dancing in her eyes. They caught one restive steed; in a moment she was across his back like a boy, and in another minute they were off! Thus the hours fled away, all too fast for them; all the largess of the young captain was thrown away and scrambled for. Deborah's dress flew in tatters round her; she looked the wildest gipsy of them all.

Night came, and vainly through the shades of evening did old Dame Marjory, shading her eyes in the doorway, look for her truants. Sir Vincent was out, and not likely to return. At last she sought Jordan Dinnage, her ancient lover and Enderby's right hand. 'Jordan, hast seen Master Charlie and Lady Deb? A pretty kettle o' fish to fry if they return not to-night, an' the master comes home i' the mornin'. Go seek them, for heaven's sake, man. I am distraught!'

'Why, this comes, Mistress Marjory, o' lettin' the young Master run wild; he's a handful for thee! I know'd how 'twould end, when he's day an' night out gipsyin'. There's where they be, Mistress Marjory, with the gipsies; an' thank yer stars if ye ever set eyes on them agen!'

Old Marjory turned as white as her apron. 'Now, don't ye be goin' to frighten me, Jordan. But if ye speak truth, man, run with all the men you can get along, an' hunt them gipsies down, an' find my two poor dears. O their poor mother! O Jordan, Jordan, Jordan Dinnage!' And Marjory, with her apron to her face, cried as if her true heart would break.

This was too much for Jordan; he was arming already. Snatching a short rusty sword from the wall, and with one comforting hand-thud on Dame Marjory's back, and a 'Comfort thee, my lass!' the active old man was off. The hue-and-cry was raised – all Enderby rang with it. But behold the gipsy camp was gone! Smouldering fires blackened the common; no other trace of the fugitives was visible. But old Jordan rode and rode, with all his men behind him; some on horseback, some on foot, they scoured the country far and near. In vain did Dame Marjory and the servants sit up till morning dawn. It was only late on the following day that the bailiff rode up the avenue with another horseman, one carrying a boy before him, the other a girl; the dresses of both men and children were torn and travel-stained, and the head of Jordan Dinnage tied up. At this sight Dame Marjory ran forward and screamed, and all the women screamed.

'Here be thy childer,' said Jordan; 'an' a hard fight we made for it. Keep a tight hand on 'em, Dame Marjory; but no scoldin' yet.'

So Charlie and Deborah, looking penitent and demure, but rejoicing madly in their hearts at seeing home again, ran in. They were feasted royally in the servants' hall that day!

For many days Sir Vincent did not return, and Jordan Dinnage kept a sharp watch on the gate, to see that the children did not stir beyond. The old vicar called on the little culprits; he looked to daunt them by his words and presence. He was a sad-looking man with a long sallow face; yet some quaint humour lurked in his nature too. Severely he bade Dame Marjory send 'Master and Mistress Fleming' to him. The boy stoutly rebelled; but at last hand in hand, scrubbed and ruffled, they were ushered into the room where the awful vicar sat. Charlie was dressed in a little black velvet doublet and hose, with silk stockings and buckle-shoes, and ribbons at his knees; his long red-brown hair was cut square on his white forehead, and flowed loose on his shoulders; his lips were set firm, his brown brows were knit, and his eyes, large dark and sombre like a stag's, glowered defiantly beneath them. Mistress Deborah was dressed in pale blue silk, pointed to her fairy shape, and trimmed with rose-coloured ribbons; her hair was in hue like her brother's, and cut the same in front, but falling lower behind, and tied at the end with a bow; her lips were apart, and her white teeth gleamed with irrepressible humour; her large bright eyes, gray like a falcon's, gleamed with laughter too; she half hung behind her brother, with her head upon his shoulder, saucy yet shy.

The vicar, in his long black clothes, gazed upon the pretty picture from a high-backed chair, stern, melancholy, resigned. The little Flemings stood before him just as they had entered. 'Children,' quoth the vicar of Enderby, 'it hath afforded me great grief to hear of thy misdeeds; they have been reprehensible in the extreme. Thou hast encouraged vagabondism, and run near becoming vagabonds thyselves; in fine, thou hast outraged propriety and set all social laws at defiance. To thee, Charles, I should have looked, in thy father's absence, to set an example to thine inferiors, to guard the house, and to protect thine infant sister (or little better than an infant, either in years or discretion). Thou hast proved thyself, Charles, incapable of either charge; indeed, if thou art not sent to school, to feel a master's rod, I entertain great fears for thy future, and so I shall inform thy father. To thee, Mistress Deborah, I say little; thou art young and inexperienced, though much given to vanity, it is said, both in dress and person; but though thou art as yet incorrigible, I would have thee reform, and entertain some hopes of thee. Thou art the future mistress of this house; how then, when thou comest to years of discretion, wilt thou fulfil thy duties of mistress and of hostess, if thou dost now run wild amid grooms and gipsies? Mistress Fleming, Mistress Fleming, I have much against thee! What induced thee the second time to run away from such a home as this?'

But Deborah only hung her head and smiled.

Then quoth Charlie sturdily, glowering with his red-brown eyes: 'She loves the gipsies, like to me.'

'Charles, Charles!' said the vicar, 'I will not bandy words with thee. Forsake such evil company, and stick to thy Latin more.'

'I don't love Latin, Master Vicar, an' never shall.'

'Goodsooth, thou wilt and shall. What wouldst thou be? Wouldst idle here all thy days?'

'I'd be a soldier.'

'A soldier? An ungodly set!'

'Father says the priests are the ungodly ones.'

At this the vicar held his peace in despair.

'I'd be a gipsy queen,' chimed in Deborah's treble voice. 'Dost not love the gipsies, Master Vicar? When I am a woman grown I'll run off and travel over the world – I will! Charlie does not love Latin; no more do I love Dame Marjory's lessons.' And forgetting her fear, she nestled up to the vicar's side and gazed up with her laughing dauntless eyes. At that moment the clank of horse's hoofs resounded on the stones of the court-yard.

A TYROLESE CATASTROPHE

Many and varied are the calamities to which those people are exposed who have their abodes among the grim mountain fastnesses of Switzerland and the Tyrol, or indeed who live in any similarly situated region, where Nature still reigns in undisputed majesty, and manifests her power by those swift and awful catastrophes which strike terror to the hearts of all who come within their influence. In winter the snow falls heavily and constantly, and forms a huge overhanging mass, that overtops the often narrow pass below, and is suspended, like the sword of Damocles, by the slightest possible retaining hold; a trifling noise, such as the discharge of a rifle or even the prolonged blast of the Alpine horn, being sometimes sufficient to dislodge the vast snow-wreath, and send it gliding on its silent but deadly course towards the valley beneath. The destruction caused by the overwhelming avalanche is too well known to need description. Scarcely a Swiss hamlet or mountain pass but has its record of some sad calamity caused by the resistless force of those fatal snow-falls. Single travellers, parties varying in number, châlets, and even entire villages, have on different occasions been buried under the snow; no warning having been afforded to the hapless victims till the icy pall of death descended relentlessly upon them, and hid them, sometimes for long months, sometimes for ever, from their fellow-men.

Those who live on the banks of the narrow, swift-running torrents that intersect the valleys, have another danger to encounter. Those little streams, greatly swollen in summer by the melting of the snow on the higher ranges of the mountains, frequently overflow their boundaries and spread destruction and death around. If, as occasionally happens, the stream becomes choked by débris from the overhanging precipices, it is turned aside from its natural channel, and flows in quite another direction; sometimes forming in its progress a lake or a small tarn, which never again subsides, and which may destroy in a moment the long and arduous labour of the husbandman.

A third and even more tremendous catastrophe is that known as a berg-fall or mountain land-slip; when an overhanging portion of some steep precipice becomes loosened from its foundations, and on some unusual impetus being given to it, topples suddenly over and hurls itself upon the plain beneath it. These berg-falls occur very frequently in the Tyrol, sometimes occasioning comparatively little damage, and even adding an element of picturesqueness to the great natural beauty of the region; while on other occasions they are followed by widespread havoc and destruction.

In 1771 a terrible calamity of this nature befell the little village of Alleghe, situated on the banks of the river Cordevole, not far from the town of Caprile in the Tyrol. The district was a fertile and beautiful one, with several scattered villages surrounded by orchards and corn-fields, and protected from the fierce blasts of winter by the range of high mountains, which were at once its safeguard and its peril. At the base of one of the loftiest of this great range, called Monte Pezza, stood the little village of Alleghe. In the month of January, when the mountains around were all covered with heavy snow, a charcoal-burner was at his work in the woods of Monte Pezza, when his attention was suddenly arrested by a distinctly tremulous movement of the ground, and by the frequent rattling down of stones and débris from the rocky precipices behind him. These were sufficient indications of danger to the practised ear of the mountaineer. He knew too well the portents of those overwhelming catastrophes that are continually to be dreaded; and on listening more attentively, he became convinced that serious peril was impending. Even as he watched, several large boulders became detached from the face of the mountain, and rolled down to a considerable distance; while at intervals the trembling motion of the ground was too evident to be mistaken. It was growing late in the afternoon, and darkness would soon fall on the valley; so hastily quitting his work, he made the best of his way down to the nearest village, and with the excitement naturally caused by anxiety and fear, he told the inhabitants of the alarming indications he had just witnessed, and urged them to make their escape without loss of time from the threatened danger. Strangely enough, they seem to have attached no value to the signs of approaching mischief which the man described to them; and it would appear that they considered the falling débris to be attributable to some accidental snow-slip, caused possibly by the warm rays of the noonday sun.

Whatever they may have thought, they paid no heed to the warning; and the charcoal-burner having done all he could to save them from the threatened calamity, went on as fast as possible to carry his terrible news to three other villages, which were all directly exposed to the like danger. But they also utterly disbelieved in it, and laughed at the fears of the poor man, whose breathless and agitated condition clearly testified to the truth of his conviction that a very great peril was close at hand. One and all, they refused to quit their dwellings; and the charcoal-burner, having vainly endeavoured to awaken them to a sense of their danger, quitted the spot himself, and sought shelter elsewhere. Hours passed, and no further disturbance of any kind taking place, the villagers concluded the whole thing to have been a false alarm, and at night all retired to rest as usual, without apparently a shadow of misgiving. Suddenly, in the midst of the silence and darkness, a fearful crash of falling rocks sounded far and wide through the valley; and when the first rays of the sun lighted up the mountain peaks, a terrible scene of ruin and death was revealed. The four little hamlets had entirely disappeared; two of them, those that lay nearest to the slopes of Monte Pezza, were completely buried under an immense mass of fallen earth and rocks; the other two were submerged beneath the waters of the river Cordevole, which had been driven from its coarse by the berg-fall, and had spread out into what is now known as the Lake of Alleghe. None of the unhappy victims had a moment's time for escape, even had escape been possible. The rushing down of the mountain was instantaneous, and buried them as they lay sleeping; and the water flowed with impetuous rapidity into the unprotected villages, not one inmate of which survived to relate the experiences of that awful night.

Some months passed; and the first horror of the catastrophe had a little faded, when another berg-fall took place, again followed by lamentable consequences. It occurred in the month of May and in daylight; but a much smaller loss of life was the result, though the destruction of property was even greater than on the previous occasion. Owing to the tremendous force exerted by the falling débris, the waters of the lake, which had never subsided since its formation, instantaneously rose into an enormous wave, and rushed violently up the valley; wrecking houses and farm-buildings, destroying the flourishing orchards and corn-fields, and carrying away a portion of the parish church of a village which had been re-called Alleghe, after the submersion of the first of that name. The organ of this church was forcibly swept to a considerable distance; and a tree borne along on the mighty wave was dashed into an open window of the curé's house, while he was sitting at dinner, the servant who was attending on him being killed on the spot. Many lives were lost during this second great berg-fall, and terrible consternation was created in the minds of the inhabitants of the district, which seemed to have been so specially singled out for misfortune.

Since that time, however, no other serious disaster has befallen them; the huge mountains of the neighbourhood have not again hurled death and ruin on the smiling valley at their feet; and the little lake of Alleghe, the principal memorial of the catastrophe, is only an added beauty to the lovely scenery which surrounds it, and lies there in serene tranquillity, all unconscious of the beating hearts for ever stilled beneath its waters, of the happy homes rendered dark and desolate by its cold cruel wave. More than a hundred years have passed since then; many generations of villagers have lived and died, and the recollection of the great berg-falls of 1771 has faded into a mere tradition of the place; but yet, looking down into the clear depths of the lake, on a day when there is no wind to raise ripples on its surface, the outlines of the submerged villages can be distinctly traced. Roofs and walls of houses can yet be distinguished; it is even said that the belfry of the church is visible, flights of stairs, and many other relics of the past life of the drowned inhabitants.