CONCLUSION.
IT was not yet evening when the three happy people reached Villeneuve, and sat down to their repast. After dinner the miller sat in an easy-chair with his pipe, and took a little nap. The young couple went arm in arm out of the town, then by the carriage road under the rocks so thick with bushes, skirting the deep bluish-green lake. The gloomy Chillon reflected its gray walls and massive towers in the clear water; the little island with the three acacia trees lay still nearer, appearing like a bouquet in the lake.
"It must be delightful out there!" said Babette; she had still the strongest inclination to go there, and that wish could be immediately fulfilled; there lay a boat by the bank, the line that held it was easy to unfasten. They could not see any one from whom to ask permission, and so they took the boat, for Rudy could row well.
The oars caught hold of the water like the fins of a fish, the water that is so pliable and yet so strong, that is all a back to bear, all a mouth to devour, mildly smiling, softness itself, and yet overwhelming and strong to rend asunder. The water foamed in the wake of the boat, in which in a few minutes the couple had gained the island, where they landed. There was not more than room enough on it for two to dance.
Rudy turned Babette round two or three times, and then, hand in hand, they seated themselves on the little bench beneath the overhanging acacias, and gazed into each other's eyes, while all around them was illuminated in the splendor of the setting sun. The pine forests on the mountains put on a lilac hue like heather when in flower, and where the trees ceased and the bare rock came into view it glowed as if the mountain was transparent; the clouds in the heavens were lighted up as if with red fire, the whole lake was like a fresh, blushing rose-leaf. Already, as the shadows lifted themselves up to the snow-clad hills of Savoy, they became bluish, but the topmost peaks shone as if of red lava, and for one moment looked as if these glowing masses had raised themselves from the bowels of the earth and were not yet extinguished. That was an Alpine glow, such as Rudy and Babette could never hope to see the equal of. The snow-covered Dent du Midi had a splendor like the face of the full moon when it is rising.
"So much beauty! so much happiness!" they both said.
"The earth has no more to give me!" said Rudy. "An evening hour like this is a whole lifetime! How often have I felt my good fortune as I feel it now, and thought, 'If all were now ended, how fortunately I should have lived! How blessed is this world!' and the day ended; but a new one began again, and it seemed to me that it was fairer still! Heaven is infinitely good, Babette!"
"I am so happy!" said she.
"Earth has nothing more to give me!" exclaimed Rudy.
And the evening bells chimed from the mountains of Savoy, from the mountains of Switzerland; the dark blue Jura lifted itself towards the west in a golden luster.
"God give thee what is grandest and best!" exclaimed Babette.
"That He will!" said Rudy. "To-morrow I shall have it! to-morrow thou wilt be mine! my own little, charming wife!"
"The boat!" cried Babette at that moment.
The boat, which was to take them back, had broken loose and drifted from the island.
"I will fetch it!" said Rudy, throwing off his coat; and he pulled off his boots, sprang into the lake, and took rapid strokes towards the boat.
Cold and deep was the clear, bluish-green water from the mountain glacier. Rudy looked down below, only one single glance—and he thought he saw a golden ring rolling, and gleaming, and playing—he thought of his lost betrothal ring, and the ring became larger, and expanded into a sparkling circle, and in that shone the clear glacier; interminable deep crevasses yawned around him, and the dripping water sounded like a carillon of bells and gleamed with bluish flames; in an instant he saw what we have to tell in so many words. Young huntsmen and young maidens, men and women, once swallowed up in the crevasses of the glacier, stood here alive, with open eyes and smiling mouth, and deep under them came the sound of church bells from submerged towns; a congregation knelt under the church arches, pieces of ice formed the organ-pipes, mountain torrents played on it. The Ice-Maiden sat on the clear, transparent floor; she raised herself up towards Rudy, kissed his feet, and there ran a deadly coldness through his limbs, an electric shock—ice and fire! one does not know the difference at the first touch.
"Mine! mine!" sounded about him and in him. "I kissed thee when thou wast little! I kissed thee on the mouth! now I kiss thee on the toe and on the heel—thou art mine altogether!"
And he was lost in the clear blue water.
All was still; the church bells ceased to ring, the last notes died away with the splendor on the red clouds. "Mine thou art!" sounded again in the depths; "Mine thou art!" sounded in the heights, from the Infinite.
The icy kiss of Death overcame that which was corruptible; the prelude was over before the drama of life could begin, the discord resolved into harmony.
It is beautiful to fly from love to Love, from earth into the Heaven.
Do you call that a sad story?
Unfortunate Babette! It was a fearful time for her! the boat drifted farther and farther away. No one on shore knew that the bridal pair were on the little island. Night drew on; the clouds descended and it became dark. She stood there alone, despairing, weeping. A furious storm broke over her; lightning illuminated the mountains of Jura, Switzerland, and Savoy, and thunder rolled continuously. The lightning was almost as bright as the sun; one could see each single vine as at midday, and then immediately everything would be shrouded in the thickest darkness. The flashes formed knots, rings, zig-zags; they struck round about the lake, they shone from all sides, while the peals were increased by the echoes. On the land people drew the boats higher up the banks; every living thing sought shelter, and the rain poured down in torrents.
"Wherever are Rudy and Babette in this furious storm?" said the miller.
Babette sat with clasped hands, with her head in her lap speechless with grief.
"In that deep water!" she said within herself. "He is deep down, as under the glacier!"
And she remembered what Rudy had told her of his mother's death, of his own rescue, and how he had been brought up as one dead out of the crevasse in the glacier. "The Ice-Maiden has him again!"
And the lightning flashed as blinding as a ray of the sun on the white snow. Babette started; the lake lifted itself at that instant, like a shining glacier; the Ice-Maiden stood there, majestic, pale blue, shining, and at her feet lay Rudy's corpse. "Mine!" said she; and round about was again darkness and gloom, and rushing water.
"Cruel!" moaned Babette. "Why then should he die, when the happy day was come! O God! enlighten my understanding! shine into my heart! I cannot understand Thy ways, but I bow to Thy power and wisdom!"
And God shone into her heart. A flash of thought, a ray of light, her dream of last night, as if it were real, seemed to shine through her; she called to mind the words which she had spoken: she had wished for the best thing for herself and Rudy.
"Woe is me! was that the seed of sin in my heart? was my dream a future life, whose string must be snapped for my salvation? Miserable me!"
She sat wailing in the gloomy, dark night. In the deep stillness she thought that Rudy's words sounded again, the last he had uttered: "Earth has nothing more to give me!" They had been said in the abundance of happiness, they came back to her in the depth of her grief.
The Ice-Maiden stood there, majestic, pale blue, shining, and at her feet lay Rudy.—.
A couple of years have elapsed. The lake smiles, the banks smile; the vines put forth swelling grapes; steamboats with waving flags hurry past, pleasure-boats with both their sails set fly like white butterflies over the expanse of water; the railway above Chillon has been opened, and leads deep into the Rhone valley. At every station visitors get out, they come with their red guide-books and read to themselves what remarkable things they have to see. They visit Chillon, they see from thence in the lake the little island with the three acacias, and read in the book of a bridal pair who, in the year 1856, sailed thither one evening, of the bridegroom's death and: "next morning the bride's despairing cry was first heard on the shore."
But the guide-books make no mention of Babette's quiet life with her father, not in the mill—strangers live there—but in the pretty house near the railway station, where from the windows she often looks out in the afternoon over the chestnut trees to the snow mountains where Rudy used to disport himself; she sees in the evenings the Alpine glow, the Children of the Sun encamping above and repeating the song of the traveler whose mantle the whirlwind carried away; it took the covering, but not the man himself.
There is a rosy luster on the snow of the mountains, there is a rosy luster in every heart where the thought is: "God lets that which is best come to pass!" but that is not always revealed to us as it was to Babette in her dream.