The Headsman - James Fenimore Cooper
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Maso had now obtained complete command of the Winkelried, as much by the
necessity of the case, as by the unrivalled skill and courage he had
manifested during the fearful minutes of their extreme jeopardy. No sooner
did he succeed in staying his own grief, than he called the people about
him, and issued his orders for the new measures that had become necessary.
All who have ever been subject to their influence know that there is
nothing more uncertain than the winds. Their fickleness has passed into a
proverb; but their inconstancy, as well as their power, from the fanning
air to the destructive tornado, are to be traced to causes that are
sufficiently clear, though hid in their nature from the calculations of
our forethought. The tempest of the night was owing to the simple fact,
that a condensed and chilled column of the mountains had pressed upon the
heated substratum of the lake, and the latter, after a long resistance,
suddenly finding vent for its escape, had been obliged to let in the
cataract from above. As in all extraordinary efforts, whether physical or
moral, reaction would seem to be a consequence of excessive action, the
currents of air, pushed beyond their proper limits, were now setting back
again, like a tide on its reflux. This cause produced the northern gale
that succeeded the hurricane.
The wind that came from off the shores of Vaud was steady and fresh. The
barks of the Leman are not constructed for beating to windward, and it
might even have been questioned, whether the Winkelried would have borne
her canvass against so heavy a breeze. Maso, however, appeared to
understand himself thoroughly, and as he had acquired the influence which
hardihood and skill are sure to obtain over doubt and timidity in
situations of hazard, he was obeyed by all on board with submission, if
not with zeal. No more was heard of the headsman or of his supposed agency
in the storm; and, as he prudently kept himself in the back-ground, so as
not to endanger a revival of the superstition of his enemies, he seemed
entirely forgotten.
The business of getting the anchors occupied a considerable time, for Maso
refused, now there existed no necessity for the sacrifice, to permit a
yarn to be cut; but, released from this hold on the water, the bark
whirled away, and was soon driving before the wind. The mariner was at the
helm, and, causing the head-sail to be loosened, he steered directly for
the rocks of Savoy. This manoeuvre excited disagreeable suspicions in the
minds of several on board, for the lawless character of their pilot had
been more than suspected in the course of their short acquaintance, and
the coast towards which they were furiously rushing known to be
iron-bound, and, in such a gale fatal to all who came rudely upon its
rocks. Half-an-hour removed their apprehensions. When near enough to the
mountains to feel their deadening influence on the gale, the natural
effect of the eddies, formed by their resistance to the currents, he
luffed-to and set his main-sail. Relieved by this wise precaution, the
Winkelried now wore her canvass gallantly, and she dashed along the shore
of Savoy with a foaming beak, shooting past ravine, valley, glen, and
hamlet, as if sailing in air.
In less than an hour, St. Gingoulph, or the village through which the
dividing line between the territories of Switzerland and those of the King
of Sardinia passes, was abeam, and the excellent calculations of the
sagacious Maso became still more apparent. He had foreseen another shift
of wind, as the consequence of all this poise and counterpoise, and he was
here met by the true breeze of the night. The last current came out of the
gorge of the Valais, sullen, strong, and hoarse, bringing him, however,
fairly to windward of his port. The Winkelried was cast in season, and,
when the gale struck her anew, her canvass drew fairly, and she walked out
from beneath the mountains into the broad lake, like a swan obeying its
instinct.
The passage across the width of the Leman, in that horn of the crescent
and in such a breeze, required rather more than an hour. This time was
occupied among the common herd in self-felicitations, and in those vain
boastings that distinguish the vulgar who have escaped an imminent danger
without any particular merit of their own. Among those whose spirits were
better trained and more rebuked, there were attentions to the sufferers
and deep thanksgivings with the touching intercourse of the grateful and
happy. The late scenes, and the fearful fate of the patron and Nicholaus
Wagner, cast a shade upon their joy, but all inwardly felt that they had
been snatched from the jaws of death.
Maso shaped his course by the beacon that still blazed in the grate of old
Roger de Blonay. With his eye riveted on the luff of his sail, his hip
bearing hard against the tiller, and a heart that relieved itself, from
time to time, with bitter sighs, he ruled the bark like a presiding
spirit.
At length the black mass of the cotes of Vaud took more distinct and
regular forms. Here and there, a tower or a tree betrayed its outlines
against the sky, and then the objects on the margin of the lake began to
stand out in gloomy relief from the land. Lights flared along the strand,
and cries reached them, from the shore. A dark shapeless pile stood
directly athwart their watery path, and, at the next moment, it took the
aspect of a ruined castle-like edifice. The canvass flapped and was
handed, the Winkelried rose and set more slowly and with a gentler
movement, and glided into the little, secure, artificial haven of La Tour
de Peil. A forest of latine yards and low masts lay before them, but, by
giving the bark a rank sheer, Maso brought her to her berth, by the side
of another lake craft, with a gentleness of collision that, as the
mariners have it, would not have broken an egg.
A hundred voices greeted the travellers; for their approach had been seen
and watched with intense anxiety. Fifty eager Vevaisans poured upon her
deck, in a noisy crowd, the instant it was possible. Among others, a dark
shaggy object bounded foremost. It leaped wildly forward, and Maso found
himself in the embraces of Nettuno. A little later, when delight and a
more tempered feeling permitted examination, a lock of human hair was
discovered entangled in the teeth of the dog, and the following week the
bodies of Baptiste and the peasant of Berne were found still clenched in
the desperate death-gripe, washed upon the shores of Vaud.
Chapter VIII.
The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!
Long streams of light, o'er glancing waves expand,
Now lads on shore may sigh and maids believe:
Such be our fate when we return to land!
Byron.
The approach of the Winkelried had been seen from Vevey throughout the
afternoon and evening. The arrival of the Baron de Willading and his
daughter was expected by many in the town, the rank and influence of the
former in the great canton rendering him an object of interest to more
than those who felt affection for his person and respect for his upright
qualities. Roger de Blonay had not been his only youthful friend, for the
place contained another, with whom he was intimate by habit, if not from a
community of those principles which are the best cement of friendships.
The officer charged with the especial supervision of the districts or
circles, into which Berne had caused its dependent territory of Vaud to be
divided, was termed a _bailli_, a title that our word bailiff will
scarcely render, except as it may strictly mean a substitute for the
exercise of authority that is the property of another, but which, for the
want of a better term, we may be compelled occasionally to use. The
bailli, or bailiff, of Vevey was Peter Hofmeister, a member of one of
those families of the buergerschaft, or the municipal aristocracy of the
canton, which found its institutions venerable, just, and, and if one
might judge from their language, almost sacred, simply because it had been
in possession of certain exclusive privileges under their authority, that
were not only comfortable in their exercise but fecund in other worldly
advantages. This Peter Hofmeister was, in the main, a hearty,
well-meaning, and somewhat benevolent person, but, living as he did under
the secret consciousness that all was not as it should be, he pushed his
opinions on the subject of vested interests, and on the stability of
temporal matters, a little into extremes, pretty much on the same
principle as that on which the engineer expends the largest portion of his
art in fortifying the weakest point of the citadel, taking care that there
shall be a constant flight of shot, great and small, across the most
accessible of its approaches. By one of the exclusive ordinances of those
times, in which men were glad to get relief from the violence and rapacity
of the baron and the satellite of the prince, ordinances that it was the
fashion of the day to term liberty, the family of Hofmeister had come into
the exercise of a certain charge, or monopoly, that, in truth, had always
constituted its wealth and importance, but of which it was accustomed to
speak as forming its principal claim to the gratitude of the public, for
duties that had been performed not only so well, but for so long a period,
by an unbroken succession of patriots descended from the same stock. They
who judged of the value attached to the possession of this charge, by the
animation with which all attempts to relieve them of the burthen were
repelled, must have been in error; for, to hear their friends descant on
the difficulties of the duties, of the utter impossibility that they
should be properly discharged by any family that had not been in their
exercise just one hundred and seventy-two years and a half, the precise
period of the hard servitude of the Hofmeisters, and the rare merit of
their self-devotion to the common good, it would seem that they were so
many modern Curtii, anxious to leap into the chasm of uncertain and
endless toil, to save the Republic from the ignorance and peculations of
certain interested and selfish knaves, who wished to enjoy the same high
trusts, for a motive so unworthy as that of their own particular
advantage. This subject apart, however, and with a strong reservation in
favor of the supremacy of Berne, on whom his importance depended, a better
or a more philanthropic man than Peter Hofmeister would not have been
easily found. He was a hearty laugher, a hard drinker, a common and
peculiar failing of the age, a great respecter of the law, as was meet in
one so situated, and a bachelor of sixty-eight, a time of life that, by
referring his education to a period more remote by half a century, than
that in which the incidents of our legend took place, was not at all in
favor of any very romantic predilection in behalf of the rest of the human
race. In short, the Herr Hofmeister was a bailiff, much as Balthazar was a
headsman, on account of some particular merit or demerit, (it might now be
difficult to say which,) of one of his ancestors, by the laws of the
canton, and by the opinions of men. The only material difference between
them was in the fact, that the one greatly enjoyed his station, while the
other had but an indifferent relish for his trust.
When Roger de Blonay, by the aid of a good glass, had assured himself that
the bark which lay off St. Saphorin, in the even tide, with yards
a-cock-bill, and sails pendent in their picturesque drapery, contained a
party of gentle travellers who occupied the stern, and saw by the plumes
and robes that a female of condition was among them, he gave an order to
prepare the beacon-fire, and descended to the port, in order to be in
readiness to receive his friend. Here he found the bailiff, pacing the
public promenade, which is washed by the limpid water of the lake, with
the air of a man who had more on his mind than the daily cares of office.
Although the Baron de Blonay was a Vaudois, and looked upon all the
functionaries of his country's conquerors with a species of hereditary
dislike, he was by nature a man of mild and courteous qualities, and the
meeting was, as usual, friendly in the externals, and of seeming
cordiality. Great care was had by both to speak in the second person; on
the part of the Vaudois, that it might be seen he valued himself as, at
least, the equal of the representative of Berne, and, on that of the
bailiff, in order to show that his office made him as good as the head of
the oldest house in all that region.
"Thou expectest to see friends from Genf in yonder bark?" said the Herr
Hofmeister, abruptly.
"And thou?"
"A friend, and one more than a friend;" answered the bailiff, evasively.
"My advices tell me that Melchior de Willading will sojourn among us
during the festival of the Abbaye, and secret notice has been sent that
there will be another here, who wishes to see our merry-making, without
pretension to the honors that he might fairly claim."
"It is not rare for nobles of mark, and even princes, to visit us on these
occasions, under feigned names and without the _eclat_ of their rank, for
the great, when they descend to follies, seldom like to bring their high
condition within their influence."
"The wiser they. I have my own troubles with these accursed fooleries,
for--it may be a weakness, but it is one that is official--I cannot help
imagining that a bailiff cuts but a shabby figure before the people, in
the presence of so many gods and goddesses. To own to thee the truth, I
rejoice that he who cometh, cometh as he doth.--Hast letters of late date
from Berne?"
"None; though report says that there is like to be a change among some of
those who fill the public trusts."
"So much the worse!" growled the bailiff. "Is it to be expected that men
who never did an hour's duty in a charge can acquit themselves like those
who have, it might be said, sucked in practice with their mother's milk?"
"Ay; this is well enough for thee; but others say that even the Erlachs
had a beginning."
"Himmel! Am I a heathen to deny this? As many beginnings as thou wilt,
good Roger, but I like not thy ends. No doubt an Erlach is mortal, like
all of us, and even a created being; but a man is not a charge. Let the
clay die, if thou wilt, but, if thou wouldst have faithful or skilful
servants look to the true successor. But we will have none of this
to-day.--Hast many guests at Blonay?"
"Not one. I look for the company of Melchior de Willading and his
daughter--and yet I like not the time! There are evil signs playing about
the high peaks and in the neighborhood of the Dents since the sun has
set!"
"Thou art ever in a storm up in thy castle there! The Leman was never more
peaceable, and I should take it truly in evil part, were the rebellious
lake to get into one of its fits of sudden anger with so precious a
freight on its bosom."
"I do not think the Genfer See will regard even a bailiff's displeasure!"
rejoined the Baron de Blonay, laughing. "I repeat it; the signs are
suspicious. Let us consult the watermen, for it may be well to send a
light-pulling boat to bring the travellers to land."
Roger de Blonay and the bailiff walked towards the little earthen mole,
that partially protects the roadstead of Vevey, and which is for ever
forming and for ever washing away before the storms of winter, in order to
consult some of those who were believed to be expert in detecting the
symptoms that precede any important changes of the atmosphere. The
opinions were various. Most believed there would be a gust; but, as the
Winkelried was known to be a new and well-built bark, and none could tell
how much beyond her powers she had been loaded by the cupidity of
Baptiste, and as it was generally thought the wind would be as likely to
bring her up to her haven as to be against her, there appeared no
sufficient reason for sending off the boat; especially as it was believed
the bark would be not only drier but safer than a smaller craft, should
they be overtaken by the wind. This indecision, so common in cases of
uncertainty, was the means of exposing Adelheid and her father to all
those fearful risks they had just run.
When the night came on, the people of the town began to understand that
the tempest would be grave for those who were obliged to encounter it,
even in the best bark on the Leman. The darkness added to the danger, for
vessels had often run against the land by miscalculating their distances;
and the lights were shown along the strand, by order of the bailiff, who
manifested an interest so unusual in those on board the Winkelried, as to
draw about them more than the sympathy that would ordinarily be felt for
travellers in distress. Every exertion that the case admitted was made in
their behalf, and, the moment the state of the lake allowed, boats were
sent off, in every probable direction, to their succor. But the Winkelried
was running along the coast of Savoy, ere any ventured forth, and the
search proved fruitless. When the rumor spread, however, that a sail was
to be discerned coming out from under the wide shadow of the opposite
mountains, and that it was steering for La Tour de Peil, a village with a
far safer harbor than that of Vevey, and but an arrow's flight from the
latter town, crowds rushed to the spot. The instant it was known that the
missing party was in her, the travellers were received with cheers of
delight and cries of hearty greeting.
The bailiff and Roger de Blonay hastened forward to receive the Baron de
Willading and his friends, who were carried in a tumultuous and joyful
manner into the old castle that adjoins the port, and from which, in
truth, the latter derives its name. The Bernois noble was too much
affected with the scenes through which he had so lately passed, and with
the strong and ungovernable tenderness of Adelheid, who had wept over him
as a mother sobs over her recovered child, to exchange greetings with him
of Vaud, in the hearty, cordial manner that ordinarily characterized their
meetings. Still their peculiar habits shone through the restraint.
"Thou seest me just rescued from the fishes of thy Leman, dear de Blonay,"
he said, squeezing the other's hand with emotion, as, leaning on his
shoulder, they went into the chateau. "But for yonder brave youth, and as
honest a mariner as ever floated on water, fresh or salt, all that is left
of old Melchior de Willading would, at this moment, be of less value than
the meanest fera in thy lake!"
"God be praised that thou art as we see thee! We feared for thee, and
boats are out at this moment in search of thy bark: but it has been wiser
ordered. This brave young man, who, I see, is both a Swiss and a soldier,
is doubly welcome among us,--in the two characters just named, and as one
that hath done thee and us so great a service."
Sigismund received the compliments which he so well merited with modesty.
The bailiff, however, not content with making the usual felicitations,
whispered in his ear that a service like this, rendered to one of its most
esteemed nobles, would not be forgotten by the Councils on a proper
occasion.
"Thou art happily arrived, Herr Melchior," he then added, aloud; "come as
thou wilt, floating or sailing in air. We have thee among us none the
worse for the accident, and we thank God, as Roger de Blonay has just so
well observed. Our Abbaye is like to be a gallant ceremony, for divers
gentlemen of name are in the town, and I hear of more that are pricking
forward among the mountains from countries beyond the Rhine. Hadst thou no
other companions in the bark but these I see around us?"
"There is another, and I wonder that he is not here! 'Tis a noble Genoese,
that thou hast often heard me name, Sire de Blonay, as one that I love.
Gaetano Grimaldi is a name familiar to thee, or the words of friendship
have been uttered in an idle ear."
"I have heard so much of the Italian that I can almost fancy him an old
and tried acquaintance. When thou first returnedst from the Italian wars,
thy tongue was never weary of recounting his praises: it was Gaetano said
this--Gaetano thought thus--Gaetano did that! Surely he is not of thy
company?"
"He, and no other! A lucky meeting on the quay of Genf brought us together
again after a separation of full thirty years, and, as if Heaven had
reserved its trials for the occasion, we have been made to go through the
late danger in company. I had him in my arms in that fearful moment,
Roger, when the sky, and the mountains, and all of earth, even to that
dear girl, were fading, as I thought for ever, from my sight,--he, that
had already been my partner in so many risks, who had bled for me, watched
for me, ridden for me, and did all other things that love could prompt for
me, was brought by Providence to be my companion in the awful strait
through which I have just passed!"
While the Baron was still speaking, his friend entered with the quiet and
dignified mien he always maintained, when it was not his pleasure to throw
aside the reserve of high station, or when he yielded to the torrents of
feeling that sometimes poured through his southern temperament, in a way
to unsettle the deportment of mere convention. He was presented to Roger
de Blonay and the bailiff, as the person just alluded to, and as the
oldest and most tried of the friends of his introducer. His reception by
the former was natural and warm, while the Herr Hofmeister was so
particular in his professions of pleasure and respect as to excite not
only notice but surprise.
"Thanks, thanks, good Peterchen," said the Baron de Willading, for such
was the familiar diminutive by which the bustling bailiff was usually
addressed by those who could take the liberty; thanks, honest Peterchen;
thy kindness to Gaetano is so much love shown to myself."
"I honor thy friends as thyself, Herr von Willading," returned the
bailiff; "for thou hast a claim to the esteem of the buergerschaft and all
its servants; but the homage paid to the Signor Grimaldi is due on his own
account. We are but poor Swiss, that dwell in the midst of wild mountains,
little favored by the sun if ye will, and less known to the world;--but we
have our manners! A man that hath been intrusted with authority as long as
I were unfit for his trust, did he not tell, as it might be by instinct,
when he has those in his presence that are to be honored. Signore, the
loss of Melchior von Willading before our haven, would have made the lake
unpleasant to us all, for months, not to say years; but, had so great a
calamity arrived as that of your death by means of our waters, I could
have prayed that the mountains might fall into the basin, and bury the
offending Leman under their rocks!"
Melchior de Willading and old Roger de Blonay laughed heartily at
Peterchen's hyperbolical compliments; though it was quite plain that the
worthy bailiff himself fancied he had said a clever thing.
"I thank you, Signore, no less than my friend de Willading," returned the
Genoese, a gleam of humor lighting his eye. "This courteous reception
quite outdoes us of Italy; for I doubt if there be a man south of the
Alps, who would be willing to condemn either of our seas to so
overwhelming a punishment, for a fault so venial, or at least so natural.
I beg, however, that the lake may be pardoned; since, at the worst, it was
but a secondary agent in the affair, and, I doubt not, it would have
treated us as it treats all travellers, had we kept out of its embraces.
The crime must be imputed to the winds, and as they are the offspring of
the hills, I fear it will be found that these very mountains, to which you
look for retribution, will be convicted at last as the true devisers and
abettors of the plot against our lives."
The bailiff chuckled and simpered, like a man pleased equally with his own
wit and with that he had excited in others, and the discourse changed;
though, throughout the night, as indeed was the fact on all other
occasions during his visit, the Signor Grimaldi received from him so
marked and particular attentions, as to create a strong sentiment in favor
of the Italian among those who had been chiefly accustomed to see
Peterchen enact the busy, important, dignified, local functionary.
Attention was now paid to the first wants of the travellers, who had great
need of refreshments after the fatigues and exposure of the day. To obtain
the latter, Roger de Blonay insisted that they should ascend to his
castle, in whose grate the welcoming beacon still blazed. By means of
_chars-a-banc_, the peculiar vehicle of the country, the short distance
was soon overcome, the bailiff, not a little to the surprise of the owner
of the house, insisting on seeing the strangers safely housed within its
walls. At the gate of Blonay, however, Peterchen took his leave, making a
hundred apologies for his absence, on the ground of the extensive duties
that had devolved on his shoulders in consequence of the approaching fete.