THE HOUR WILL COME BY Volume I

PROLOGUE.

ST. VALENTINE'S ON THE HEATH.


The heath or moorland plateau of Mals lies wide--spread, silent, and
deserted where the lofty head of the Grossortler towers up, and
overlooks it in eternal calm. It is five centuries ago--a mere moment
in that world of everlasting snows; the keen autumn wind, as at this
day, is rushing through the grey halms of the charlock, woodrush and
heathgrasses, that have caught a doubtful, golden gleam reflected from
the glaciers which are bathed in the glow of the sinking sun; as at
this day, the gale packs the driving white clouds together in the still
highland valley, as though to rest for the night. They heave and roll
noiselessly, spreading a white, misty sheet over the withered
heathgrass. The mirror-surface of the moorland tarn lies lead-coloured
and dull, wrinkled by the night-breeze, and its icy waters trickle in
tiny rills over the bare plain and down to the valley. All is the same
as it is to this day! Only life is wanting, life warm and busy, which
in these days is stirring in the villages and homesteads that dot the
plain, and that have brought the dead moorland into tilth and
fertility. Profound silence reigns over the immeasurable level,
throughout its length and breadth no living thing stirs; it is as if
this were indeed the neutral space between Heaven and Hell--a vast,
eternal void! Only the monotonous murmur of the Etsch--that cold artery
of the desolate heath--and the roar of the winds that sweep at night
across the plateau; these are the eerie voices of this realm of death.

Woe to the lonely pilgrim who is wandering through the night in this
boundless desert, in storm and snow, in impenetrable darkness; he is
lost in nothingness, owned by neither Heaven nor Hell, and the earth
knows him not! No ear can hear his cry for help, it is lost in vacancy;
the raven and the wolf mark him down, but they tell no one of their
mute prey.

It is true that pitying love has penetrated even to this wilderness and
realm of death, and spreads her arms so far as they may reach; but they
are but human arms, weak and inadequate for the great divine mind that
animates them. Every evening, above the howling of the storm and the
roaring of the highland lake, as dusk creeps on, the Vesper bell rings
softly out like the beat of some metallic heart. Then a dull-red,
flaring blaze is suddenly seen, which parts into wandering storm-blown
flakes of flame that disperse themselves about the moor till they
vanish in the mist and darkness. The shepherd and lay-brethren it is,
who go forth with torches and biers from the Hospice of Saint Valentine
in the moor, which pious faith has erected for the lost traveller here
in the wilderness. Defying the warring elements, they seek in silent
and fearless devotion the strayed, the perishing, and the hungry, and
bring them in to the warm hearth of humanity. Happy is he whom they
find, he is rescued--but the moor is wide, and they are but a forlorn
little handful of men, not all-knowing nor all-seeing.


The sun went down early in angry red; it grows darker and darker. Heavy
clouds are packed over the evening sky, the last glimmer of starlight
is extinguished, all is as dark as though no light survived in Heaven
or earth; for a moment even the howling, shrieking winds are silent,
which nightly carry on their demon-dance round and across the heath;
but from the distance looms a nameless, formless something, a thunder
roll is heard, soft at first like the sound of slow, heavy wheels, then
nearer and nearer--a terror, invisible, intangible but crushing, shakes
the earth to its foundation. Slowly it surges on, like a deep groan of
rage long controlled only to break out all the more fearfully in
raving, annihilating fury. The snow-storm, the first of the year,
sweeps down from the Grossortler over the bare trembling heath--a
mighty, moving mass rolls on before it that breaks incessantly into
powder, and is incessantly renewed--as if the winds had torn the
eternal mantle of snow from the shoulders of the numberless glaciers,
and were flinging it down from the heights. A giant wall reaches from
earth to sky; snow, snow everywhere. Touched by the icy breath, the
shapeless mists over lake and river curdle and turn to snow, the light
evening-clouds form compact masses of snow--whirling pillars that bury
everything in their wild dance; the very air is turned to snow, there
is no tiniest space between sky and earth that is not filled with snow.
The whole moor is overwhelmed in it, and is one vast, white bed, where
the storm and night may work their wild will.