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_LITTLE NOVELS BY
FAVOURITE AUTHORS_
[Illustration]
The Saint of the
Dragon’s Dale
[Illustration]
WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS
[Illustration]
[Illustration: W^{m.} Stearns Davis]
The Saint of the
Dragon’s Dale
_A Fantastic Tale_
BY
WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS
AUTHOR OF “A FRIEND OF CÆSAR,”
“GOD WILLS IT,” ETC.
“_And he wist not that his face shone._”
EXODUS xxxiv. 29.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1903
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published July, 1903.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO
LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS
AN EVER KINDLY
FRIEND AND COUNSELLOR
TO ME
AS TO SO MANY OTHER
SONS OF HARVARD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. JEROME OF THE DRAGON’S DALE 1
II. WITCH MARTHA 14
III. MAID AGNES 26
IV. THE DOVE AT THE DRAGON’S DALE 38
V. JEROME IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL 49
VI. THE HERALD OF THE KAISER 61
VII. FRITZ THE MASTERLESS 74
VIII. GRAF LUDWIG 87
IX. HARUN KNOWS THE WAY 101
X. THE EVENING LIGHT 115
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of William Stearns Davis _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“‘Give him the maid, Franz, and all the
fiends go with her’” 33
“‘Back to Witch Martha; back! Fly fast,
as you love me’” 84
[Illustration]
THE SAINT OF THE DRAGON’S DALE
CHAPTER I
JEROME OF THE DRAGON’S DALE
Patter, patter,--the rain had beaten all day on the brown roofs of
Eisenach. The wind swept in raw gusts across the rippling ocean of
pines and beeches which crowded upon the little town from many a
swelling hill. Under the grey battlements the Hörsel brawled angrily.
At the Marien Gate, Andreas the warder dozed in his box, wrapping his
great cloak tighter. He had searched few incoming wagons for toll that
day. It was very cold, as often chances even in summer in tree-carpeted
Thuringia. Andreas was sinking into another day-dream, when Joram, his
shaggy dog, having opened one eye, opened the other, then started his
master with a bark.
“Hoch! hold!” cried Andreas, rubbing his eyes. “Who passes?”
“Johann of the ‘Crown and Bells.’” And the warder saw the tow-thatched
stripling of the innkeeper tugging a great basket, whilst his buff coat
dripped with rain.
“And whither away?” quoth Andreas, settling back, as Joram ceased
growling.
“The ‘Saint’ in the Dragon’s Dale needs his basket, rain or no
rain--curse him!” And Johann’s broad mouth drew into no merry smile.
Andreas crossed himself as became a pious Christian. “Do not blaspheme
the Saint. Ask his prayers rather. This is a noble time for the gnomes
and pixies to go hunting in the Marienthal for just such blithe rascals
as you. So pray hard and run harder.”
Small need of this. Gnomes and pixies had been much in Johann’s
mind since goodwife Kathe, his mother, had thrust the basket on his
reluctant arm, and haled him by an ear to the inn door. It was nigh
as bad as wandering by night, to thread the forest on a day like this.
As he quitted the gate, from east, west, south, was pressing the green
Thuringerwald,--avenue on avenue of stately beeches, lofty as church
spires, graceful as the piers of some tall cathedral. He could see
their serried, black trunks running away into distance, till his eye
wearied of wandering amid their mazes. A clearing next, fresh chips,
young weeds, a carpet of dank leaves--but the wood-cutters were gone.
Then the path opened enough to give one glimpse to the westward and
southward, toward the leafy peak of the Hainstein; and beyond and
higher, to a proudly built castle,--with a scarlet banner trailing
through the rain,--the Wartburg, one-time fortress of the Landgraf of
Thuringia, now the hold of Baron Ulrich, boldest and wickedest of all
the “ritters” who watched the roads in these evil days which had fallen
upon Germany.
The glimpse of the Wartburg cheered Johann. Man was there--and what
was a “robber-knight” beside a redoubtable pixie? Likewise, what
likelier place for pixies than those glades just before? Johann had not
forgotten the wise tales of old grandame Elsa; and there it was,--the
stone cross, where forty years ago the griping burgomaster Gottfried
had been found lying stiff and cold, with purse untouched, and never a
scar, save a little one behind his ear. “He had gone to meet the Devil,
and the Devil had stolen his soul;” so said Father Georg in church. It
was heresy to doubt it.
Johann was sure it was best to pray at the cross. He plumped on the wet
grass, said two Aves and a Paternoster. At the last “Amen,” whir!--went
something off behind. A gnome? No; only a partridge. He trudged on
happier. Now the glade was narrowing; the trees thickened, the brook
sang over rocks and sands. One could see the slim trout shooting in
the pools. Johann’s stride lengthened. The forest closed all view. He
crossed the stream on stepping-stones, and drew a long breath. “Only
two hundred paces more!” It had ceased raining, but all the trees were
hung with pearls, and shook down showers at every sweeping breeze. The
air was suddenly grown warm. The last hundred paces, Johann seemed
walking into a sheer wall of rock, whence the stream crawled from under
a tiny fissure. What dwelt beyond--dog-men who fed on babes, or only
ordinary and commonplace devils, Johann did not care to guess. Ten
paces from the precipice he halted, crossed himself as a precaution,
laid down the basket, and turned to a sapling whence dangled a rusty
helmet by a leathern thong.
Thrice he beat with a stick, and the metallic booms sent new quakings,
not appeased by a voice which proceeded from the centre of the beetling
rock.
“Who is this that comes to the Dragon’s Dale?”
“I, Johann of the ‘Crown and Bells’;” and Johann’s teeth rattled.
“Have you brought the basket?”
“Surely, holy father; bread and cheese as always on the first of the
month.”
“Christ then abide with you and your good parents. In the helmet you
will find the accustomed payment. Now leave the basket and depart.”
From the helmet Johann took a silver piece,--a strange coin current
amongst the Orient infidels. However, silver was silver; it came from a
holy hermit, and Johann’s chief need was a swift gait home; so home he
flew, his teeth a-chattering.
For long after his going, absolute silence held the glade; then
seemingly out from the precipice emerged a man who walked straight to
the basket and lifted it so easily as to convince a grave crow--the
sole onlooker--that here was a mortal of wondrous strength. The
new-comer moved in long strides which did not belie the mighty
proportions of thigh and limb. Over his broad shoulders, scarcely bowed
with fast and age, hung a brown sheepskin jerkin, sewed with thongs,
descending below the knees and bound with a bit of rope. Feet, neck,
arms, were absolutely bare, hairy, and sinewy. How the face looked one
might not tell, all hidden as the features were behind the unshorn
snow-white hair and beard which veiled almost everything save two
marvellously lustrous blue eyes.
Without a word or look to right or left, he lifted the basket, and
strode directly toward the rock. Not till the wall was arm’s length
away could a stranger have discovered how one boulder thrusting before
another opened a passage, narrow, tortuous, dark, betwixt the masses
of sandstone. The defile was scarce wide enough for two to pass.
Under-foot trickled a shallow stream. The stone walls were mantled
with green moss and myriad ferns and harebells. Often the rocks locked
closer, throwing the gorge into twilight, or opening, disclosed the
grassy hill-slopes fifty feet on high. The solitary went onward,
heedless of gloom, until, after following this uncanny path for nigh
two hundred yards, the rocks sprang apart, and as by art-magic the
long-prisoned sun burst forth, and shot his glory over the greenwood.
Instantly all the beeches’ leafy clusters were glistering with
diamonds, the sheen of the grassy slopes grew dazzling, the brook
flashed on its way, with a rainbow in every ripple, whilst right over
the massy Wartburg hung a true “Bow of the Promise” in full splendour.
The stranger mounted the slope, till castle and hills were clear in
view; then spoke his first word.
“O dear Lord Jesus Christ, if this Thy present world is fair, how fair
must be Thy heavenly world, before which all this shall flee unclean
away!”
The speech was not German, but some strange tongue of the East, alien
indeed to this northern forest; but the hermit only scanned the sky and
valley once, then pressed up the hillside until in a hollow shaded by
immemorial pines, and carpeted by their brown needles, there was a hut
of wicker and of boughs, and from the damp wood before the entrance a
stream of thin smoke crawled upward, whilst at the crunching tread of
the hermit a beast started from the dying fire, growled softly, and
wagged a bushy tail,--a yellow, white-toothed wolf, who raised his
black muzzle to the basket, and mildly sniffed for bread, beseeching
with low whines. But the strange man only spoke two sharp words, in the
same Eastern tongue.
“Down, Harun!” And the wolf slunk back to the fireside to switch his
tail and eye the basket timidly.
The hermit deliberately entered the hut, soon to return with a cake of
coarse black bread. Again the wolf started, but the man rebuked him.
“First, we must thank God.”
The man knelt by the fire, and the beast regarded in silence.
“We thank thee, O Father of all mercies, for food and for another day
of life in which we may prove ourselves repentant of our sins, and more
obedient to Thy will, _sic oramus in nomine nostri delecti Domini, Jesu
Christi: Amen_.”
The “Amen” was answered by a yelp; the wolf rose on his hinder legs.
The man broke the cake into halves scrupulously equal, and cast one
to the beast who caught it with his teeth, growled gently, and began
to devour. His master seemed in no haste to eat. It lacked an hour of
evening. The slant sunshine through the trees streamed in a witching
brightness. The air grew warm. From the pines bird answered to bird.
The man went across the narrow clearing, drew from his girdle a keen
knife, and cut a notch upon a sturdy fir. Many notches were there
already, some long, some short, forming a kind of reckoning. He
scanned them carefully, clearing the moss from some with his fingers.
“Eight years ago, eight years lacking one month,”--he was speaking
in the same uncouth tongue--“this same day I had to quit Fulda for
this place. The Abbot wished to make me esteemed a saint, and so draw
pilgrims to the abbey. About this time I was assailed by the Demon of
Spiritual Pride, and thought myself somewhat righteous. Then might I
have fallen into his clutches and been burned forever, I and the soul
of my Sigismund, but I escaped him, _gloria Tibi, Domine_!”
The wolf had finished the cake, and gave a low whine to attract
attention.
“You may go,” spoke the man, upraising his head, whereat the beast
shambled away into the forest, and his master returned by slow steps to
the fire.
“Eight and thirty years ago to-day? ah! what was it then? Mother of
Christ, I can remember,”--there shot a gleam out of those wild eyes
which made them like bright sparks,--“it was the fête at Naples.
Frederick the Great, the ‘Wonder of the World,’ was there. With the
French Count of Autun, and the Flemish Seigneur of Charleroi, I held
the lists against the best lances of Sicily, of Italy, of Spain. None
unhorsed us, but I did best. They led me to the Emperor; Mathilde
crowned me. That night she and I walked together in the gardens, and
saw the moon upon the shimmering sea. It was that night she said,--”
A convulsive tremor shook his frame. He dashed his hands against his
breast as if to tear his heart forth from its covert. The words were
nigh a cry.
“Oh! all will come back. I cannot banish it. The fiends are strong,
strong! That day I slew the Aragonese, Don Filipo, in his sins. He
forgot to confess ere he rode to the tourney. At the Judgment bar I
must answer for his soul, for twenty more. O dear Lord Christ, I am too
weak! I cannot endure it! I am lost forever!” He passed his hand across
his forehead as if to brush a mist from his eyes. “My head reels. Yes,
I kept from sleep. I ate nothing yesterday. But prayer and fast will
not beat the demons away. I have been to Rome and to Jerusalem. _Cui
bono?_ Would God I dared lie down and die. But die I dare not, for I
must redeem your soul, my Sigismund, my son.”
He looked longingly upon the bit of bread. The fast had been long, even
for that man of iron. Nevertheless, he shook his head.
“Man may not live by bread alone. Let me first reward my evil memories
with the lash that they may fear to return to torture me.”
He hastened inside the hut. A bed of pine boughs and of furze, a coarse
blanket, a water-pot, and above the bed a great silver crucifix and a
brazen plate, whereon some Byzantine had graved a stiff Madonna and
the Blessed Child--this seemed all the furnishing. But from beneath
the bed, he took a short leathern scourge, its three lashes plaited
with round balls of lead,--no toy, though swung by a girl. Slipping
aside the sheepskin, he laid the lash with steady hand upon the naked
shoulders. At the first whistle the red welts leaped out, at the second
the blood, but under his great beard the strange man only smiled
grimly. “It shall be forty stripes save one,” had been his vow, and
the lash whistled on, whilst he uttered two names at every blow, “Jesu!
Sigismund! Sigismund! Jesu!”
Then suddenly the scourge sank. Human feet were sounding on the piney
carpet. Then a voice, not his own, was calling him by name.
“Jerome! Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale! As you love our Lord,--out!”
And to discover this unwonted intruder, Jerome donned his sheepskin,
and issued forth in haste.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]