Albrecht. Even Father Christopher, who so deeply loved her that he had
secretly regarded her as perfection and therefore could conceive of no
possible alteration in her, was not so blind that he failed to
appreciate that she was a different creature from the white, calm
maiden, with unstirred soul, who had welcomed the baron on the morning
when he had ridden with call of bugle and gleam of jewelled armor out of
the gloom of the pine forest below the castle. Whether this change was
one for which to be glad Father Christopher could not determine. His
love for Erna and his loyalty to the Von Rittenbergs rendered it
impossible for him to feel that it was not an improvement that now Erna
should be gay where she had hitherto been calm, that she should be
jocund where she had before been only happy, that she should apparently
have discovered the delights of the eye, of the body, and of the world,
and exchanged her former innocence for a more worldly wisdom; and yet
all this confused him. He could not think it wrong that now the countess
adorned herself with the splendid gems of which her caskets were so well
filled; especially as she had bestowed upon the Madonna in the castle
chapel jewels that would have bought the entire holding as it had been
before Baron von Waldstein's coming. He did not find it in his heart to
reprove or indeed even to blame her newly developed fondness for
hawking, a sport for which her husband had a strong inclination and in
which he had also unusual skill. He could not condemn her gay raiment,
her frequent laughter, her increased attention to the comforts and
luxuries of the castle. There was nothing in all this which was sinful,
there was not even anything which was not eminently fitting to the youth
of the countess, her estate, and her condition.
And yet the mind of the priest was somehow strangely troubled. Perhaps
his inner consciousness apprehended a change in Erna that was so subtile
as not to be tangible to the outward sense. Certain it is that a doubt
so vague that he could not have defined it even to himself, but so real
that it filled him with a shadowy fear of coming evil, weighed upon the
soul of Father Christopher whenever he thought of his mistress and of
the effect which this marriage had wrought upon her character.
When it came, however, to attaching any blame to Baron Albrecht, the
mind of Father Christopher drew back at once. Here he had no doubt in
one way. He could not but feel that if any harm came to Erna through
this marriage it would be from the fact that her husband had been born
in the accursed, soulless race of kobolds; but his sentiment of love, of
respect, almost of reverence for Albrecht was developing so rapidly that
he could not even then attach any blame to the baron personally.
The possibilities of spiritual life, of high aspirations, which had been
opened to Albrecht when upon the kobold had dawned the glorious light of
a soul seemed at first to dazzle him. He walked as a man in a dream, or
as a prophet who hears voices and sees visions. His joyous, sensuous,
wild nature did not, it is true, at once lose its strength. He was the
inciter of the countess to the sports of which under his guidance she
began to be fond, her former dread of giving pain to the defenceless
animals yielding to the delights of the excitement of the chase; he
infused into her a new gayety, an animal zest in life, a sensuous
eagerness to seize upon the joy of the moment and to forget past and
future; he inoculated her, in a word, with the spirit of his being as he
had existed hitherto, of the kobold not yet fully transformed into a
man, although the process of this transformation had begun at the moment
when he had been gifted with a human soul.
As for the Lady Adelaide, she was thoroughly delighted with the change
which had come to Rittenberg. This, she declared, was like the gay times
when Erna's father was still alive, and the castle was the rendezvous of
many bold and merry knights and dames. She began to bring from the
recesses of her memory numberless tales of the old time, and now she was
pleased to find that her grand-niece would listen to histories and
scandals which hitherto she had refused to hear. Lady Adelaide assured
Elsa, in those confidential moments during which that damsel was engaged
in assisting her at her toilet, that the baron had quite made the
countess over, and that the transformation was little short of a
miracle.
"Heaven knows what a prude she was," Lady Adelaide would say, long years
of habitual freedom of intercourse with her damsel having brought her to
a degree of intimacy in her speech with Elsa which was unusual with one
of the latter's station; "she used to blush, God's blood! at the mere
mention of a man; and as for having any witty talk with her, I might as
well have gone to the chapel for a cosey chat with the Virgin on the
altar, Heaven save the mark! Now it is all quite different, and I can
have some real comfort in gossiping with her."
"Yes, doubtless marriage is a wonderful thing," demurely responded Elsa,
who was betrothed to the steward of the castle, and was only waiting to
assure herself that she could not possibly do better before she took the
irrevocable step of marrying him. "It has changed the countess much; and
her husband, too, meseems."
"That is to say, he does not chuck thee under the chin any more, or kiss
thee in the corridors. Well, beshrew me, but 'tis quite as well. Little
does it increase the peace of the family to have the lord of it too fond
of the damsels. Baron Albrecht has improved quite as much as she, to my
thinking. He is not so bold and reckless. I used continually to dread
lest perchance he should do some outlandish thing. He seemed like a mad
creature when the mood was on him, and his tricks frightened me wellnigh
out of my five wits."
"But always was he good-humored," Elsa returned.
"Oh, of a truth; but lawless was he as the wild wind in the pine forest.
It made no difference against whose feelings he hurtled. Now he is so
much more human. Meseems now that Erna is in sooth happily married, and
with Baron Albrecht's wealth there seems to be nothing lacking."
It was certainly true that to all outward appearance the marriage of
Erna and Albrecht was a fortunate one. Every day they seemed to be
brought more and more closely together. The countess lost that reserve
and unworldiness which her aunt had stigmatized as austerity; the baron
gained those spiritual qualities the lack of which had been his only
deficiency. Each found in the other new experiences, fresh fields, an
unexplored region of pleasure. Life at Rittenberg was wellnigh ideal.
The accustomed occupations of the wife were full of novelty and of
attractiveness to the husband. The pair read together in Erna's few but
well-loved books, and when the wildness of the storm-sprites kept them
within doors they found in these and the talk to which what they read
gave rise the means of passing many a happy hour. Here Erna took the
lead, and Albrecht was like her pupil. In the more active, out-of-door
sports and in-door revelry it was to Albrecht that the initiative fell.
Each had much to teach and much to learn, and in teaching and learning
alike were both happy.
All this Father Christopher watched with eagerness born of his love for
the young couple and his desire for their spiritual welfare. Could he
have been sure that this state of things would continue, he would have
been fully contented and happy in regard to them, and he was wholly
unable to explain to himself what possible grounds there could be for
doubting that Albrecht and Erna would still live together in mutual
helpfulness and pleasure. Yet in his mind was the vague form of some
doubt which he could not name but which he could not banish. It might be
that he was accustomed to being confronted by the fact that all
spiritual good is the price of hard struggle, and he unconsciously
waited to see in what form would come the contest in which Albrecht must
sooner or later fight with the powers of darkness for the soul which he
seemed to have won and to enjoy without a battle. He felt, too, that the
powers of the forest, the evil spirits of the waste and the night, would
not yield up Albrecht without a struggle, and his was the attitude of
one who waits for coming conflict.
One summer morning the priest came into the great hall of the castle to
find Albrecht and Erna standing together at the window looking out at
the weather. It had been raining at intervals ever since daybreak, and
great masses of broken cloud were trailing their ragged edges over the
far-spreading forests of pine that covered the mountain slopes. Now and
then the sky would lighten as if the storm were ended, but again it
would lower, and the rain come dashing down, swept by the wind against
the castle windows.
"I am sure that the rain is over," Erna said persuasively, as Father
Christopher came within hearing. "We can get to horse now, and by the
time we are well under way the sun will be shining. Besides, what does
it matter if it does not clear off? We shall not mind that if we can but
get into the open."
"In the first place," returned Albrecht, smiling upon her and then
turning to look out again over hill and valley and up at the stormy sky,
"Meseemeth it is soon to rain very heavily; and in the second place, I
am not sorry that we should be kept at home to-day that we may go on
with those words in the scroll of Saint Cuthbert we were called away
from yesterday."
"But the reading can always be done," was Erna's answer, "and who knows
when we can ride? Besides," she added, a dazzling smile parting her
beautiful lips, "we can read Saint Cuthbert when for very age we cannot
ride."
The priest did not stay to hear how the matter was settled, but went on
his way down the long hall; yet as he went he thought wonderingly of the
strange fact that it should be Erna who urged for pleasure, and Albrecht
who desired that the time be given to pious employment.
XIV
HOW THE PRIEST BECAME TROUBLED.
The days went by, until already the autumn crocuses began to star with
their bright colors the glades among the hills. The time of year had
come when the blood of the huntsman begins to tingle in his veins
because the best sport of the whole twelvemonth is at hand. The sky
mellowed like the winter pears which were showing the first shade of the
tawny and russet hue that should cover their cheeks when the time came
for their gathering.
Now of nights the Wild Huntsman was often heard riding with mad crew of
wood-sprites through the forest; and as the days shortened and the dusk
of twilight gathered earlier than before, it happened that not a few of
the churls and serfs of the castle caught glimpses of vague forms
stealing through the gathering darkness, now on earth and anon in the
air, as if the wood-folk were watching what was in progress at
Rittenberg with the most careful eagerness. Father Christopher, when
these tales came to his hearing, sighed and shook his head. He could
easily comprehend that all the wild soulless folk of the wood, whether
in league with the powers of darkness or not, might well be interested
in the fate of one of their band who from a wood-creature had become
human, and, whether they were plotting to do him harm or no, would long
to watch how he bore his new powers and his gift of immortality. But
withal was Father Christopher troubled in his mind lest these strange
sprites might be other than creatures who looked upon Albrecht with
wonder and longing. He knew how prone are the wood-folk to do mischief;
and as the wild herd will set upon a tame animal though he be of their
kind, so it might well be that the unbaptized crew were eager to do harm
to one who had deserted their ranks.
More than the doings of the creatures of the forest, however, did the
ways at Rittenberg concern the priest. There was day by day a more and
more jocund stir in the castle. The countess seemed to drink in
animation from the air, which was now chill in the morning, and ever did
she become more and more eager in the chase and in all merry-making. The
hounds and the hawks were well looked to in these days; and old Rupert,
the chief huntsman, whose office had become a mere idle name in the
days before the coming of the Baron Albrecht, found himself so busy that
he lay down at night on his hard pallet with all his aged bones an ache.
He was full of pride in the revival of his art, and he began to boast
that the sport was as well followed now as in the days of his former
master, the late count; but he sighed to himself now and then when he
was alone, and shook his head, wondering whether he should be much
longer able to keep up to the pace which was now the custom of the
castle. He began to say to himself more and more frequently that he was,
after all, an old man, and that it was getting to be time for him to
make way for the young fellows he had trained. It made him melancholy
enough to consider this possibility, but it was a great comfort to him
that the revival of venery at Rittenberg gave him a chance to show those
who were to take his place how things should be done, and to prove his
own cunning in the chase before he resigned forever the boar-spear which
was his badge of office.
For there were gay doings at Rittenberg in these autumn days. The doves
that of old had sailed so smoothly and sleepily about the castle towers,
had now no rest, so greatly were they excited by the sound of
hunting-horn by day and of lute by night, the stir of huntsmen in the
courtyard, and the laughter of Erna and her maidens ringing out through
the windows of the great hall.
"All the castle," quoth the Lady Adelaide to Father Christopher, "seems
to have caught the spirit of the baron. Everybody is full of life now,
and Heaven knows we were dull enough before he came. Count Stephen told
me that he felt as if he were in the tower of the Sleeping Beauty when
he was here."
"The sleeper has awakened," the priest responded, with a smile that was
not without some secret shadow. "In truth, the countess and her husband
have become so truly one that it is not possible to say that either is
gayer than the other. They think alike, and they feel in all things the
same."
He spoke reflectively, and even as he spoke there came into his mind a
doubt whether his words were exactly true. He had watched with the
keenest interest and anxiety the growth of the spiritual in Albrecht,
and the gradual humanizing that had been wrought in the kobold by his
marriage. He felt profoundly his own responsibility in regard to both
the baron and Erna, and the beads of his rosary were growing more and
more smooth under his fingers in the days and nights that had sped since
the wedding.
He had watched Erna no less carefully than Albrecht, and he was
beginning to wonder with some sense of fear how far the influence of her
husband was destined to lead her from the condition of innocent and
spiritual calm in which the Baron von Waldstein had found her upon that
spring day when she had first met him in the great hall. There was
nothing in the life of Erna which the priest could look upon with blame,
and yet he was vaguely uneasy when he thought of her. He said to himself
that he was really only unduly affected by the changes which were
natural under the circumstances, and that his charge had only developed;
and yet the more he pondered the less was he satisfied. He found
Albrecht every day more interested in things which concerned the soul
which he had won. Continually he became a deeper student of things
spiritual, and less wholly given up to the pursuit of pleasure. Erna, on
the other hand, seemed each day more intoxicated with the joy of living,
and more absorbed in the delights of the world which belongs to the
senses.
"It is natural that husband and wife should become alike," Lady Adelaide
answered the last remark of Father Christopher's with an air of the
greatest wisdom; "that is, if they are at all in accord. He hath waked
her, and she hath toned him down, and it is an improvement on both
sides. I must say that taking into account the magnificence of the
_Morgengabe_, I do not see that the countess could possibly have done
better. The baron was always delightful, but thou must remember that he
was as wild as a hawk when he came to Rittenberg."
"He has certainly changed much, and that for the better," answered her
companion.
The priest was thinking of how he had stopped a moment to chat with
Rupert, the huntsman, as he crossed the courtyard that morning, and how
Rupert had praised the kindness of the baron to the dogs, telling how in
the boar-hunt yesterday Baron Albrecht had been as tender with Gelert,
the hound that was so badly hurt, as could have been Rupert's own wife,
who was used to tending and nursing hurt dogs. Father Christopher
remembered how in the early days of his coming to the castle Albrecht
had laughed at the bare idea of one's caring for the suffering of an
animal, and that even when his man-at-arms had been ill he had shown not
the slightest comprehension of any reason why one should be affected by
the pain of another.
The priest stood by the window in the hall where he had been talking
with Lady Adelaide for a long time after she had gone, thinking of the
problems which her words suggested. It was too evident that Erna and
Albrecht had greatly influenced each other for even the most careless
observer to overlook it, and no one could tell where this change of
character would end. Out in the courtyard he could see the workmen who
were finishing the preparations for a show of the mummers which was to
take place that morning. Directly after the wedding day Herr von Zimmern
had announced his intention of going to visit his family, and since then
they had had no word from him directly. He had however given them proof
that he did not forget his former lord, since from time to time troupes
of dancers, jugglers, or of mummers arrived at Rittenberg, sent by the
cripple or directed by some hint which had evidently come from him.
Father Christopher was secretly troubled by these evidences of the
continued remembrance of Herr Frederich. The priest had distrusted him
from the first, and since he had been acquainted with Herr von Zimmern's
history he had dreaded him, feeling sure that the time would come when
he would seek revenge for his long captivity and the cruel maiming
inflicted upon him by the kobold king.
Erna welcomed these wandering bands of players with more and more
eagerness, while the priest was confident that in Albrecht he perceived
signs of a growing weariness of their dances, their tricks, and their
clumsy mumming. The present troupe was more numerous than any of its
predecessors, and the preparations were of far more than usual
elaborateness. As the priest looked down into the courtyard the last
touches were being put to the stage; and presently the players, already
in their dresses, began to appear from the quarters which had been
assigned to them upon the side of the court opposite to that from which
the windows of the great hall looked. The household was gathering, and
the Lady Adelaide, with Elsa behind her chair, had taken her seat,
although those of the lord and lady of the castle were still vacant.
Divided in his mind whether to go down and join the company of
spectators or not, the priest was standing irresolutely at the casement
when Albrecht and Erna came together into the hall.
"Come, Father," the countess said gayly, "they say these are the best
mummers that have ever been seen in all the Schwarzwald. They are to
give a wonderful play of the life of Helen of Troy, and after that there
are to be dances."
She was as joyous as a child, her cheeks flushed with eagerness and her
lips parted with laughter. She was a being as far removed as could well
be imagined from the serene, pensive maiden who had watched the Baron
von Waldstein ride out of the pine forest below the castle slope so few
short weeks ago. Her mouth had shaped itself to a new seductiveness, her
eyes had kindled with a new and less heavenly lustre, and her bosom had
swelled into a new fulness. She was more beautiful, and yet the priest
could not repress a sigh as he looked at her, so far from her old state
of innocence and of spirituality did she seem in her rich beauty.
Before the priest had time to answer her invitation to the mummers'
show, the countess's woman, Fastrade, appeared and came down the hall
toward the group.
"I beg pardon, gracious lady," she said, with a little hesitation, "but
the charcoal-burner is below."
"Well?" demanded Erna, a shadow flitting across her bright face.
"He says," Fastrade continued with evident unwillingness, "that his
little daughter is dying, and that she prays the gracious countess to
come with the priest to see her before she dies."
There was a moment's silence in the hall. Both Albrecht and the priest
looked at Erna in evident solicitude in regard to her answer. She
herself seemed to feel their looks as a sort of challenge, and she threw
back her head with an almost defiant gesture as she replied:
"Father Christopher will go, of course, but I could do no good, and just
now I am engaged."
Her husband laid his hand lightly upon her arm, and bent toward her
beseechingly.
"But surely," he said, "since the little maid is dying, thou wilt go.
The mummers can wait. There is time for that afterward, and for this it
would be too late."
The priest did not speak, but he waited with the deepest anxiety for her
answer, since it seemed to him that it would be so significant of
whatever change might really have taken place in her who once would have
let nothing stand between her and a call of mercy. He saw her lips
harden, and a cold light come into her eyes.
"What is the charcoal-burner's daughter," she asked slowly, "that I
should give up my pleasure for her whim, even if she be dying?"
The waiting-woman stared at the countess in amazement, the priest
regarded her with a look of deep sorrow, but in the eyes of Albrecht
Father Christopher saw an expression in which were both remorse and
terror.
XV
HOW COUNT STEPHEN RETURNED.
The bright-hued harvest-crocus had faded in the meadows, and over the
blackly green pine forests had come a colder hue; the ferns in the beech
wood were beginning to look wan and yellow, as if the thought that
autumn was at hand had already dismayed them. The heather was tinged
with russet, and all the skies upon which Erna looked, as one morning
she gazed discontentedly from the casement of her chamber, were filmed
with soft hazes whose faint purple was as intangible as the first shadow
of coming twilight, which one feels rather than sees.
Erna sighed as she leaned half over the stone ledge upon which the sun
lay warmly. The doves were preening themselves almost within reach of
her touch, and she waved her hand impatiently to frighten them away,
since in her untoward mood their soft reiterated coo vexed her ears. She
had learned in these days, during which she had been seeking pleasure as
she had never sought it before, the meaning of ennui. She was restless
with the awakened stir of a hundred desires which demanded continual
gratification. She longed for excitement, for the movement of crowds,
for the delights of the eye and the lusts of the flesh which once would
not have awakened in her heart a throb of interest. She wanted
continually fresh diversions, new sports, strange revels, rich viands,
all the alluring joys of the senses to which she had of old in her
innocence and ignorance been so indifferent.
This morning she had been urging her husband to take her to court.
Charlemagne was at Mayence, and there were echoes of the gay doings
there forward which reached even as far as Rittenberg. The countess
longed to see the brave shows, the rich pageants, the gorgeous raiment;
to sit at the banquets, and to dazzle the eyes of the gallants with her
beauty and her jewels, finer than the queen's own. She had urged upon
Albrecht the propriety of paying his respects in person to his
sovereign; but her entreaties, her arguments, and her protestations had
been alike unavailing. Albrecht was kind in the manner of his refusal,
but he was still persistent in it, and in the end Erna had found herself
utterly powerless to change his determination not to leave Rittenberg.
"They tell strange tales of the court," he said in reply to her
pleading. "There is more license there than it becomes a modest woman to
see, and over-much worldliness as well. Surely it were not well to put
one's self in a place like this needlessly, beloved."
Erna had answered nothing, but she had left him with a feeling almost
like anger in her heart. She knew why he wished to stay at Rittenberg.
It was that he might go on with his tiresome studies with Father
Christopher, to which Albrecht gave more and more time every day. As for
the wickedness of the court, she was a married woman, and with a husband
to protect her, and one moreover of a bearing so knightly as that of Von
Waldstein, it was not to be supposed that she could come to any harm.
She sighed with fresh impatience as she reflected how deeply immersed in
the study of spiritual things her husband had become since their
marriage. She was not, she assured herself, less fond of him than of
old, but it was to the last degree provoking that just as she had
learned to appreciate the delight of life, Albrecht should devote so
much thought to things which she had laid aside as dull.