by a smile.
"But the Lady Abbess," went on Erna, determined to finish the tale she
had begun, "would not allow the gates to be opened. 'Thou mayest throw
him down thy bread, if thou choosest,' she told the little novice; 'but
thou wilt get no more in its place.' So the little novice wrapped the
bread up in the only blanket she had for her bed, and threw it down to
the old pilgrim, and then she had to shut the window and leave him there
in the cold. That very hour the water began to roll into the valley,
though where it came from no one could tell; and it rose, and rose, and
rose. And the wicked nuns ran to the top of their towers, but it was of
no use, for the water rose over those until they were all drowned, and
there was this lake."
"And didn't even the little novice escape?"
"Oh, yes; there came a boat, shining all like gold, and took the little
novice off of the top of the tower; but when the others tried to get
into it, it glided away and left them."
She crossed herself as she finished. Albrecht raised his eyes from the
blue lake to the blue sky above them, and sighed, a sign of sadness Erna
had never seen in him before.
"Why dost thou sigh?" she asked him.
"Because thou hast taught me to," he answered, with the wistful look of
a loving animal in his eyes.
Then he laughed gleefully.
"Should not one sigh for the poor drowned nuns?" he asked.
"Yes," Erna said gravely; "they lost their souls."
"Always their souls," her companion responded impulsively. "Why is it
that it is always the soul of which one speaks?"
"Because," she answered, with the same air she would have worn had his
question been a reasonable one, "the soul is all; it is this which
makes us different from the animals."
"And the nixies," he added; "and the undines, and the kobolds."
"Yes," she said gravely. She was silent a moment, and then added: "I do
not know if it is right, but Father Christopher thinks it is no harm; I
have always pitied the nixies and the kobolds. They are not so bad; and
it is not their fault that they have no souls, and that they cannot be
saved."
"No," he assented soberly, "it is certainly not their fault. Hast thou
never heard it said," he went on, "that if one of them marries a mortal,
he would win a soul?"
"Yes," she replied; "but Father Christopher does not believe that that
is true."
"But if it were," he began, "wouldst thou--"
He broke off suddenly, and sprang up.
"Come," he cried, with his infectious laugh, "thou art making me as
solemn as an owl. Did I talk in this sombre fashion when I came to
Rittenberg?"
She did not answer save by a smile. She was aware that the knight had
changed since he had been at the castle, although she did not realize
what the alteration might mean. She had herself changed too much in the
same time to be able to appreciate the subtile difference between what
he now was and what he had been on his arrival; and she was too well
content with whatever he was to study deeply over the question of the
effect of her influence upon him. She rose from the grassy mound on
which she had been sitting, and soon they were on their homeward way
through the forest.
The day was wasting as they neared the castle, and already in the
shadows of the forest the tree-trunks were black and dim. The way wound
through the solemn pine-wood, rising and falling as it crossed the
hills. Far above them they could see the peaks reddened by the rays of
the late sun, while they rode forward in the dimness of the bridle-path
below. Now and then some sudden turn in the way brought them to the
crest of an elevation from which they could look far over the wide range
of the tree-clad country. Spread before them were the sweeping black
forests of pine, broken here and there with patches of ling and heather,
as the surface of the ocean may be mottled by lighter spaces that mark
where the concealed currents run.
Suddenly, as they turned a corner where the path ran along a rocky
hillside, becoming so narrow that they were close together, Erna laid
her hand on the arm of her companion.
"Look!" she exclaimed, pointing with the other hand.
Far, far before them, bathed in the golden light of the dying sun, lay
the peaks of the Alps. White and pure as crystal the snowy summits rose
toward the sky, while lower the slopes were flushed to rosy pink, or
dyed to strange and lovely hues of gold and crimson and purple. From a
cloud of rainbow colors soared the rosy peaks, fairer than dreams.
Erna checked her horse, and her companion did the same, although he
seemed not fully to comprehend her enthusiasm.
"It is like heaven," she sighed. "Only once before in my whole life have
I seen the Alps like that; they are not often to be seen from here."
Albrecht did not answer, but gazed upon the distant mountains, as if he
were trying to understand why their appearance should affect his
companion so strongly. As they gazed, the hues on the sides of the hills
deepened; the rose and gold of the peaks faded; the white of the summits
seemed to become transparent, as if one could see through them into the
sky beyond; and little by little the sharp outline blended with the
quickly dimming heaven against which they had stood out in relief. The
shadow of the lower world crept upward; and as they stood there the
glorious vision vanished. Only an empty sky where the dimness of night
was growing lay in the distance before them in place of the beauty they
had seen.
"It was like heaven," Erna said again, as she started her palfrey.
"Then," responded her companion, in a tone of deep gravity, "one must
have a soul to appreciate it."
She turned and looked at him questioningly; but with one of those quick
changes of mood which always seemed to her so surprising in so manly a
knight, he burst into a merry laugh, and began in his rich voice to sing
a gay hunting-song.
V
HOW THEY DISCOURSED OF KISSES.
The damsel Elsa was a trim and comely maid, with a bright eye and a
ready tongue, of which the men and youths of the castle had learned to
have a wholesome fear. She went about her affairs singing pleasant
ditties, and one morning she crossed the great hall where Baron Albrecht
was waiting for the countess, with whom he was to ride out, as had
become much their fashion now; and as she went, she sang in her sweet,
clear voice a little love-song that ran in this wise:
"When winter howls across the wold,
And all the gates are fast,
Then is thine heart, shut from the cold,
Safe from the blast,
And safe from whomsoe'er goes past.
"When Spring makes lovely all the land,
And casements open wide,
Beware lest some gay wandering band
Should slip inside,
And steal thine heart, and thee deride!
"When once 'tis gone, to win it back
Full vainly mayst thou try;
Nor golden bribes nor tears, alack!
Lost hearts can buy,
Since who loves once, loves till he die."
Baron Albrecht listened to her singing with a smile on his face.
"Now, by my beard," he said, "a song like that is worth a reward."
And he put his great shapely hand beneath her white chin, and kissed her
full upon her red lips. At that very moment the Countess Erna came into
the hall. Her cheek flushed as the damsel uttered an exclamation and
fled hastily, and she looked at the baron in the evident expectation of
seeing him also covered with confusion. But Albrecht merely smiled, and
smoothed his chestnut beard.
"The damsel sings passing sweetly," he said, unmoved by her glance.
"Is it for that that thou hast kissed her?" demanded Erna, scornfully.
"Truly," replied he.
Erna regarded him with a look in which amazement struggled with
disapprobation. She could not comprehend his strange indifference at
being discovered.
"And hast thou no shame," she demanded, "to be seen trifling with the
girl?"
"Shame?" he echoed. "Why should I have?"
"Nor any fear of my displeasure?"
"Thy displeasure?" he repeated. "Why shouldst thou be displeased?"
She regarded him in silence a moment; and as she did not speak, he
continued:
"Surely thou canst not be jealous of a serving-wench?"
She drew herself up proudly, all the blood of her ancestors aflame in
her clear pale cheek.
"The Von Rittenbergs are jealous neither of serving-wenches nor on
account of strangers," she returned haughtily.
Albrecht looked at her in a perplexity that it was impossible not to
believe genuine.
"Then what is my offence?" he asked. "I did but kiss the maid. I meant
her no harm. Why should not one kiss a smooth cheek if it likes him?"
He spoke humbly, yet with no air either of bravado or of conscious
guilt. She felt that his ignorance was not feigned, yet could hardly
bring herself to believe that he did not understand what her feeling
must be at discovering him in the act she had seen. Moreover, she found
herself strangely at a loss how to reply to his question, if it were in
reality serious. If he did not perceive the impropriety of his conduct,
it was not easy for her to explain it to him. She stood a moment in
silence, regarding him with a penetrating glance under which he showed
no sign of wavering, and then instead of turning away to leave him as
had at first been her intention, she smiled faintly, and with an
expression of doubt still in her eyes.
"One would think, Sir Knight," she said, "that thy father's house must
needs be a rude place if it is there held proper to kiss the damsels
that please one, without hindrance."
"In thy father's castle," he answered slowly, "we have perhaps lived in
a fashion that would seem to thee rude, for that my mother died at my
birth, and there has been no one but men to make the rules of the house;
but why it is wrong to kiss a comely woman if she please thee, is one of
the things that I have never been told there or here."
Erna's tender heart was at once touched by the thought of her
companion's orphanage, her own motherless childhood being still too
fresh in her mind not to render her susceptible to this plea. She took
up her whip from the bench, and turned quickly, that he might not see
the tears that sprang to her eyes whenever one mentioned the loss of a
mother.
"Well," she said, "I will leave it to Father Christopher to deal with
thy transgression."
The change in her tone did not escape his quick ears, and he hastened to
follow her to the courtyard, where the horses were waiting.
Their way that morning led them over hill and dale, until they came at
length to a wide meadow, where the knight was minded to fly his falcon.
A stream ran through the midst of the valley, and along its banks the
grass was as vividly green as the emeralds which sparkled in the hilt of
Albrecht's dagger; while all through it the golden buttercups were set
as thickly as the stars in the sky of a summer's night. Here and there
grew clusters of tall reeds and water grasses gently swaying in the soft
breeze; and as Albrecht took his falcon from the wrist of his squire,
who carried the bird, a splendid white heron rose with smooth, steady
flight from amid the rushes, and went soaring upward. The baron quickly
and deftly pulled the hood from the falcon's head; but just as he was
loosening the jess Erna leaned forward and laid her hand on his arm.
"Let the heron go unharmed," she said. "Why shouldst thou strike him
down?"
"Because," he responded, "thou art to wear his plumes in thy cap after I
am gone, in memory of me."
"After thou art gone?" she repeated softly, drawing back.
He smiled and shook off the hawk, which rose in graceful circles until
it was far overhead, and hung dizzily above the meadow. It sailed to and
fro a moment until its prey, which had discovered it and in dismay was
straining every nerve to quicken its flight, was just beneath it; then
suddenly, with the rapidity of a thunderbolt, it fell straight upon the
beautiful heron. Erna uttered a cry of dismay, and covered her eyes with
her hand.
"It is too cruel!" she exclaimed.
Albrecht struck his hands together in glee.
"It is a brave bird!" he cried. "I would rather lose a gold mine than
that falcon. He is as sure of his quarry as the rain is to fall to the
ground."
Erna did not answer, but she regarded him with the look of one who
strove to understand his pleasure, and to understand is almost to share.
She said nothing while the squire rode off to bring in the game; and
when the noble heron, its glistening throat stained with blood, was
brought to them, she not only strove to restrain the involuntary shudder
which seized her, but she did not remonstrate when her companion
continued the praises of his bird.
"Did one ever see a more rich plumage?" Albrecht demanded. "It will set
off thy cap bravely; and I have always been told that womenkind are fond
of gay attire."
"It is indeed a beautiful bird," Erna responded; "but dost thou know
that there is always something very amusing in the way thou speakest, as
if thou hadst never seen human beings till now."
A faint flush crossed Albrecht's cheek. He looked at the dead heron.
"I never thought of it before," he said; "but it does seem hard that he
should have to be killed just to please me."
Erna flushed in her turn. She thought she had offended him by her
criticism of his manner of speech.
"I beg thy pardon," she began; but he interrupted her.
"Thou hast no need," he said. "Besides, thou art right. I know nothing
of women. I do not even know, it seems, how they should be treated, or
how to please them. Otherwise," he added with his warm smile, "I should
not have offended thee this morning by kissing the damsel who sang so
sweetly."
The countess smiled, and turned toward him with her face full of light.
They had not dismounted, but had halted their horses near the margin of
the brook on the banks of which the heron had been feeding lower down.
"That," she said, "is not a thing to be taught. It is learned from the
air and from the birds."
"Then why has it not been revealed to me? I have been much in the
forest."
"To kill the birds! In good sooth, I know not that one may learn of the
air and the woods who goes as thou goest, with falcon and boar-spear.
But at least," she added, regarding him with a smile, "thou must know
that when one loves--"
She broke off suddenly, and turned away her face, with a flush creeping
up into her cheek.
"Well," Albrecht demanded eagerly, "what then?"
"I was but thinking," she returned, in a voice lower than before, "that
certainly every man knoweth that when one truly loveth another, he will
care for the caress of none save only the loved one."
"I had never thought of that," the knight responded gravely.
"Then of a surety thou hast never known what it is to love."
"By that token, never," he answered, smiling; "albeit it were possible
that the test would not hold; and in any case it were not difficult,
perchance, for thee to teach me."
The Countess Erna looked into his face all flushed and radiant, and
there was that in her eyes which no man could see and fail to
understand; and although the squire waiting hard by might not note that
aught had been said or done out of the ordinary course, none the less
had their hearts spoken each to each from that moment. Erna wheeled her
horse, and began to move toward the entrance of the valley; and as
Albrecht rode beside her, he suddenly leaned forward and caught her
palfrey's rein, so that the beast was almost thrown upon his haunches
with the abruptness of his arrest.
"Do not ride toward the upper ford," he said; "the nix is in an evil
mood to-day, and mayhap might do thee a mischief in her spitefulness."
Erna looked at him with astonishment and alarm.
"And how knowest thou of the moods of the nix?" she demanded.
His eyes fell, and a flush stained his swarthy cheek. Then he seemed to
recover his self-possession.
"It is a knowledge," he replied, "that is learned from the air and from
the birds, but only by those who are in sympathy with the woodland
creatures so that they may comprehend it."
Erna laughed merrily, and turned her palfrey toward the lower ford.
"In sober sooth, thou knowest no more of the nix than do I," she told
him; "but I mind not if I please thy fancy."
But when alone in her chamber she thought of this, she crossed herself
and shivered a little with a not unpleasing awe.
VI
HOW THEY CAME TO KISSES THEMSELVES.
From that day when they rode together to the slaying of the heron by the
stream in the meadow, there was a new bond between the Countess Erna and
the Baron Albrecht. There had been nothing further said between them of
love, even in the impersonal way in which they had then begun to talk of
it, but the revelation of the glance which had then passed from her eyes
to his changed all the old relations. They knew that they loved each
other, and although they were not yet come to the confession in word of
their love, they understood well that they belonged each to the other.
One day the countess sat at her embroidery in the hall, with her guest
near her, and Father Christopher not far away. Without, a wild tempest
of wind and rain shook the castle towers, and swept over forest and
hill. From the casements one looked out upon a sea of mist that rolled
above the tree-tops, beaten and torn by the wind, and lashing the hills
in angry, mimic waves. All the weird voices of the Schwarzwald,
melancholy or fierce, raged and wailed in the troubled air. It was a day
when the unholy powers of the forest held high festival, and it was with
inward shudders that Erna heard afar their hoarse tones, calling and
yelling to one another in the storm.
Sitting at her embroidery frame without her damsels, who were scattered
about the castle upon one mission or another, Erna talked with the baron
and the priest, now and then thinking with dread of the night which was
not far away, and hearing in her fancy already the roaring of the blast
about the towers, the shrill cry of the Wild Huntsman, and the shrieks
of his elfin train. When she looked up at the splendid form of her
guest, however, her fears vanished in a breath, and she smiled that she
should have found it possible to fear while he was at her side. In the
warmth of his glance the tempest and all the dread dwellers in the
forest were forgotten, and she was conscious only of the joy of his
presence.
The knight had been asking concerning the armor of Erna's father, which
hung in the hall; and from this the talk easily drifted to the Great
Emperor, his noble deeds, his splendid army, and the brilliant court
which he had gathered about him.
"How much I should like to see it all," the maiden said dreamily, as she
looked earnestly at Albrecht; "the tourneys, the feasts, the
processions, and all the beautiful court life."
Father Christopher regarded her in some amazement.
"Is it thou," he asked, "who sayest this? Thou who hast always been so
thankful that thou wert spared the temptations and the worldliness of
the court? Didst thou not refuse to go to Mayence when Charlemagne was
there with his train, because thou didst not wish to fill thy mind with
frivolous images?"
"So I did, Father, but mayhap my aunt was not wholly in the wrong when
she called me a fool for my refusal," Erna answered, smiling.
"The court would ill suit me," Albrecht remarked, while the good priest
remained sunk in astonishment at the change which the words of Erna
indicated. "My choice is for the forest, for the hunt and the chase. The
only thing at court that would attract me would be the tourney."
"Would that I might see thee in the lists!" Erna half murmured, leaning
a little toward him.
"Mayhap that thou shalt," he replied. "Stranger things than this have
come to pass. If thou dost, thou wilt see me break a lance in thy behalf
right gladly."
"And thou no longer thinkest," Father Christopher interposed gravely,
"that it is wrong for knights to risk their lives in mere wanton
pastime?"
"Oh, there may be some danger," she returned with a slight air of
impatience, "but why must one be forever troubling to examine too
closely? Is there to be no pleasure in life lest harm should come after
it, forsooth?"
Father Christopher left his seat, to stand for a moment looking at the
countess as if in bewilderment. He did not in truth know what to make of
his mistress in such a mood as this, so different was it from all that
she had ever been before. He seemed minded to speak, and then, as if
reflecting that her words did not after all contain aught which he was
called upon to regard with severity, and perhaps that in any case what
he might wish to say to her would be delivered better privately, he
sighed deeply, and moved away without further speech. Erna looked after
him as he slowly passed down the hall, the edge of his robe here and
there catching upon one of the rushes with which the floor was strewn.
"Poor Father Christopher!" she said with a low, sweet laugh, "I have
grieved him. It is a pity to make him unhappy. I never used to do that."
She regarded her gay-colored embroidery a moment absently, as if she did
not see it; then suddenly she dropped the hand which held her needle and
leaned toward her companion.
"What hast thou done to me?" she demanded. "Hast thou bewitched me, that
all the things that I loved have become dull to me, and all the things
which I wished not for are now in my thoughts with longing?"
A roaring blast shook the castle windows, and it was as if the spirits
of the storm, sweeping up from the bosom of the wild and mighty
Schwarzwald, shouted in mocking laughter outside; but neither Erna nor
Albrecht regarded.
"I have done nothing to thee," the knight answered, in his turn bending
forward; "but what hast thou done to me, that I linger here day after
day, and that I consider now the pain of the beast that dies by my
spear, or of the bird that my falcon strikes?"
"Nothing have I done to thee," Erna answered; but her voice faltered,
and her glance fell.
Albrecht reached out his big brown hand, and took her milk-white fingers
in his.
"Only," he said, "I love thee."
Erna rose to her feet, and cast a swift glance around the hall, as if
she were minded to escape; then she turned toward him, and he sprang to
her to clasp her in his arms. The knight kissed her glowingly upon her
red lips.
"Now thou art mine," he said, "and all the world shall not wrest thee
from me."
He had scarcely spoken when in the darkening afternoon a mighty blast
seemed to throw itself against the tower; a yell of elfin laughter
resounded in the hollow chimney, and the hound which had lain at Erna's
feet crouched flat on the rushes, whining with deadly fear. Frighted,
yet too full of her love to heed the cry of wild sprite or the
fierceness of the tempest, Erna clung closely to the knight, and thus
together did the Lady Adelaide, coming unexpectedly into the hall,
surprise them.
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" she cried.
The lovers started, but although they released each other from the
embrace in which they had been wound, they still stood together, and the
arm of the knight was about Erna's waist. She clung to his hand in
maidenly agitation, not wholly unmixed with the fear which the sudden
vehemence of the tempest had aroused, yet she smiled bravely upon her
aunt, with eyes which shone with the firmness and the joy of the troth
she had just plighted.
The Lady Adelaide, whose nerves were already upset by the storm and by
the weird sounds which were heard about the castle, was doubly
overwhelmed with emotion by the sight before her. It was a shock from
which it was not easy for her to recover, to see her niece in the arms
of any man. She had so long looked upon Countess Erna as cold and devoid
of all warm human passion, that she could scarcely believe the evidence
of her own senses now that she beheld the countess with her lips pressed
to those of a lover. She had so long cherished, moreover, the hope that
by a marriage with Count Stephen Erna might still bear the Von
Rittenberg name, that it could not but be with a keen pang of
disappointment that she saw all these schemes swept away.
Most of all things, however, did Lady Adelaide desire to see her niece
married, and since it could not be to Count Stephen, she was not averse
to the choice that Erna had made. She had been like everybody else in
the castle, and had fallen an easy conquest to the fascination of Baron
Albrecht. His joyous, winning manner, his persuasive presence, had
captivated the ancient dame completely; and now when Erna was prepared
for the gravest disapproval, she met, to her great surprise, only
smiles.
"Be not angry, Lady," the baron said, looking the old duenna frankly in
the face, "but we were plighting our troth."