thicket to find themselves at the head of a little valley carpeted with
turf still green and untouched by the frost, and set around with beech
trees whose leaves were shining with the slanting beams of the sun,
which shot through a break in the hills at their left hand. The whole
vale was illumined with the red light, and into it, just as they came
out of the wood, dashed a superb stag of ten, the dogs already at his
throat; and close upon his track, almost within arm's length, madly rode
Albrecht.
"I thought the baron had been behind," Count Stephen exclaimed in
astonishment.
"His woodcraft is too good," Erna returned. "It is idle to match with
him; he has outridden us. He must have cut across our track at the last
turning. Mother of God!"
Her cry was one of mingled astonishment and of dread. Her husband had
taken advantage of a stumble which the unhappy stag made, the good dog
Gelert being already at the beast's throat, to drive his horse abreast
of the deer, to leap from his saddle, and to seize the fleeing animal by
its mighty horns. The pair on the hillside opposite drew rein
involuntarily, and Erna tried to call out to Albrecht, in the vain hope
that he might free himself from a position of so much danger. Before she
could speak, however, he had thrown all his force into one powerful
effort, and before their eyes had twisted the head of the stag half-way
around. The creature dropped with its neck broken, falling among the
yelping hounds and at the feet of Rupert, the master of the pack, as
suddenly as if an arrow had reached his heart.
"By the wounds of God!" cried Count von Rittenberg, pricking his horse
forward down the hillside; "what a giant is this!"
Erna hastened after, her heart beating, and all her body burning with
the sudden rush of blood that for one breathless instant had seemed to
gather itself into her heart, leaving her cold and lifeless. She had
never seen her husband as in this act he had revealed himself to her,
and she was divided between wonder and a fearful admiration. He had
seemed a creature more than human as he bent the mighty neck of the
great stag, and there was in her proud sense of his prowess not a
little feeling of dread and too of strangeness, as if this hunter were
not only the husband she knew, but some strange being whose true nature
she had never before suspected. As her palfrey carried her across the
narrow valley, she remembered the taunt she had flung at him as they
left the castle, and it flashed through her mind that anger at herself
might have mingled with the excitement of the chase to move him.
The hunt was all about the dead stag by the time Erna reached the spot.
Albrecht came forward to help her dismount. His eyes were shining, his
cheek was flushed, and under the open collar of his hunting-jacket,
pushed back from his throat, his chest rose and fell. He had never
looked handsomer, and as he swung his wife down from her palfrey, she
brushed his hand with a quick kiss. The restless fancies which had been
weaving themselves about her and drawing her nearer as in a net toward
Count Stephen seemed to be snapped and swept aside in an instant, and
her heart was as truly her husband's as on the day when she had wed.
XVIII
HOW HERR VON ZIMMERN CAME AGAIN.
For a night and for a day Erna's love of her husband burned again with
its most ardent flame; but Albrecht, so far from rejoicing as she did in
the mighty feat he had done at the stag-hunt, seemed to be repentant
that his old-time mood should have got the better of him, and when Erna
told the tale of his prowess to her great-aunt the baron hastened to
change the conversation, and that with the air of regretting and being
ashamed of having given way to the impulse of the moment.
So strangely changed was Erna from the maiden who had welcomed Albrecht
to Rittenberg that she could not even understand a feeling so nice, but
only felt with a secret irritation that contempt which any mortal feels
for a prejudice which he has outgrown; and nothing appears more foolish
and contemptible than a scruple that has been outlived. Albrecht and
Erna had changed each other, but the impetus in each case had been so
strong that both were carried beyond the point where their tastes and
desires came together. It was as if two stars had attracted each other,
and then shot past the place where they met, parting again from the
stress of the very force which had drawn them toward one another. Every
day they seemed to have less in common. The glories of the spiritual
drew Albrecht as strongly and as irresistibly as the delights of the
senses attracted Erna, to whom all this was a new world. They had passed
each other, and now they were parting more and yet more widely.
However little he understood the cause of this, Count Stephen was keenly
aware of the fact that Albrecht and Erna were not fully in harmony, and
he neglected no effort which might increase the breach between husband
and wife. He had set himself to win the love of his cousin, and it was
an important part of his game to nourish the growing lack of sympathy
between Von Waldstein and the countess. Nor was the count without a deal
of cleverness in the way he set to work to accomplish his purpose. He
said nothing directly; he made no move openly; but with a thousand
insidious words which in themselves meant little but which together were
a mighty power for evil, he nourished the sparks of discontent in Erna's
mind, and continually kept her attention fixed upon the fact that her
husband was more engrossed in his studies with the priest than with her
wishes and her beauty. He surrounded her with a dangerous and seductive
atmosphere of devotion and of passionate admiration, furnishing her
conscience with a ready excuse, should it take alarm, by claiming the
right to admire her in virtue of his cousinship.
How much of this Albrecht saw or knew, Von Rittenberg could not divine.
Sometimes he had an uncomfortable feeling that the baron was better
aware than appeared of what was going on, but as Albrecht gave no sign
he consoled himself with the belief that his host was too deeply
absorbed in his pious studies to heed whether one made love to Erna or
not.
It was not many days after the stag-hunt that Herr von Zimmern suddenly
appeared at the castle. Whence he came no one knew, but as they sat at
breakfast in the hall he entered, and with no more greeting than if he
had parted from them all on the evening before, he took his place at the
board and ate with the rest.
Count Stephen regarded him closely. There was something in the manner of
this man which attracted his attention, and it had seemed to him that a
shadow crossed the brow of the master of the castle when the new-comer
appeared. Von Rittenberg instinctively felt that here might be an ally.
He understood that Von Zimmern had been a retainer of the baron, and it
seemed to him natural enough to suppose that the man might be in
possession of secrets concerning the former life of Albrecht which,
discreetly poured into the ear of Erna, would aid him in his
dishonorable wooing.
He greeted Von Zimmern with warmth, recalling their meeting at Mayence,
and expressing pleasure at seeing him again. The cunning eyes of Herr
Frederich twinkled upon him as he spoke, and Stephen felt that here was
a man to understand him, and more than before was he sure that in
Albrecht's former tutor he should find one to assist him in his schemes.
He watched for what speech should be between the baron and the other,
and as they left the hall, he saw the master of the castle lay his hand
upon the man's shoulder. Hastily the count approached them, and while he
seemed intent upon searching in his pouch for something which he wanted,
he contrived to overhear what was said between them.
"Herr Frederich," Albrecht said, his voice so even that the listener
could not determine whether he spoke in approval or in disapprobation,
"we had not thought to see thee again at Rittenberg. When I set thee at
liberty, it was to rejoin thy family."
"My family, gracious Sir," the other replied in a voice as passionless
as Albrecht's own, "my family I found not. Only their graves were left
to tell that they had ever been."
The hand of the baron dropped from the shoulder of the cripple, and an
expression of pain contracted his features. He stood an instant in
silence, and then with an evident struggle he held out his hand.
"Regret cannot change the past," he said; "but for the future--"
He seemed suddenly to become conscious that the count was so near him,
and broke off in his speech, going hastily out of the hall. Nor did it
escape the notice of Count Stephen that Von Zimmern looked after him
with an expression of hatred so intense that his whole face was
transformed by it into the likeness of a demon.
The coming of Herr Frederich to Rittenberg seemed to increase the gayety
that already reigned there. He devoted himself to devising fresh
amusements; and although Count Stephen suspected that his jollity was
but feigning, he was the merriest of them all, and provoked them
constantly to laughter and to jesting.
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, when one night he had
made them all shout with laughter over the merry tales which he told as
they sat around the fire in the hall, "thou art a mad wag. One can see
that no care or sorrow ever trouble thine heart."
And Count Stephen saw how Albrecht regarded the story-teller from where
he sat somewhat in the shadow, sighing as if he were aware that under
this gayety there were both pain and bitterness.
From day to day as the time went on, Count Stephen discovered that
without his having asked aid from Herr von Zimmern, the latter was
working for him. There was nothing open, and nothing which by itself
might not have been the result of accident. It was only that Herr
Frederich would engage Albrecht in conversation or lead him away that
Count Stephen might be left alone with Erna; or again he would remark
casually that he had seen the countess sitting by herself, and that her
husband was with Father Christopher; hints which enabled Von Rittenberg
to be with his cousin almost constantly, and much of the time without
witnesses.
As warmly as he dared, the count pressed his suit. He was too determined
to win to risk a rash declaration in words of the passion which really
consumed him. He was a man so accustomed to succeed in such a quest as
this that the difficulty of the present endeavor increased his ardor an
hundred-fold. The looks, half of reproof and half of invitation, which
Erna gave him, the beauty in which she glowed yet more richly every day,
incited him to a madness which was fast reaching a point beyond his
control. He trembled as he approached his cousin, and he felt that she
was aware of his passion; and yet, though he saw her cast down her eyes
when he came and follow him with longing looks when he went, he dared
not speak. He was too well aware that when he spoke he put all to the
test, and that he must lose or gain upon a single cast. He knew his
cousin well enough, and the Von Rittenberg blood, to feel sure that if
she did not listen with yielding favor to his suit, she would no longer
tolerate his presence at the castle; and he feared to put into word that
which he yet told her by look and mien a hundred times each day.
He was not without some fear, too, of Albrecht. Count Stephen was a
brave man, but the baron was one of whom the bravest could not think
lightly, and when it came to a question of wronging him through his
wife, the count was well persuaded that if this thing were ever
discovered, it would be no easy matter to hold against the wronged
husband. Just now Albrecht was greatly engaged in looking after the
state of his thralls and churls, and seeing that they were properly
housed for the coming winter; a business in which he had been encouraged
by Father Christopher, but which the guest declared should be the affair
of the steward and not of the lord of the castle. Also Albrecht set
himself to bringing peace among the dependants of Rittenberg, and so far
as might be justice between man and man, and friendliness. He was
evidently none the less attached to his wife, but every day was Count
Stephen more confident that Erna found herself less in sympathy with her
husband and more nearly drawn to him.
One morning Erna found her cousin sitting alone by the great window of
the hall, and came toward him with a smiling and mischievous face.
"Now," she said, "thou shalt see something wicked. I have only half
looked at it myself, and I doubt it would be wise that I look further;
but thou art not one, I trow, who will wince lightly."
"The wickedness which thou shalt tempt me into," he answered, "I will
gladly bear the penalty of, at least, fair Cousin. What wickedness can
be hidden in that roll of satin?"
"Thou shalt see," she answered, unrolling the embroidered cover, and
bringing to light a parchment scroll. "It has been put away this many a
day, and I only now bethought me of it."
"If it is written wickedness," the count observed, languidly regarding
it, "it is likely to do me small harm. I have never bothered my head to
learn their clerkly nonsense."
"This is in signs that one may understand if he cannot read," Erna
replied, putting into his hand the parchment.
It was the scroll of Ovid which for years she had kept hidden away
because of the worldliness of its pictures. The count regarded the
images wherewith some gross clerk had decorated the works of the heathen
poet, and the smile upon his broad lips deepened into a laugh. He was
surprised that Erna should have shown him a parchment so marked, and he
looked up from one of the pictures to see if she were really aware what
she had given him. She intercepted his glance, and smiling bent forward
to see what the picture might be at which he looked. As her eyes fell
upon it a crimson flush covered her face, and she caught the parchment
from his hands.
"Let me have it," she exclaimed. "I did not know it was like that. I
should have examined it before I showed it to thee. I only thought it
might amuse thee."
As she spoke she turned quickly, hearing footsteps behind her. Albrecht
and Herr von Zimmern had come together into the hall, and were witness
of her confusion.
"Herr Frederich has a plan for repairing the southern tower which he
wishes to tell to thee," Albrecht said to his wife, apparently without
noting her excitement.
He stood there so calm, so noble in his bearing and his appearance, that
even Count Stephen, for the moment deeply concerned lest the scroll of
Ovid should fall into the husband's hands, could not but admire him. He
did not look at the guest, and in his manner toward his wife there was
nothing to denote that he suspected that aught was wrong.
"But perhaps," the voice of Herr von Zimmern suggested, "this is not the
time to talk of such matters. Perhaps we interrupt something. That
scroll may be of importance."
He spoke with a careful appearance of humility; yet the count, watching
him with attention which was quickened by irritation, detected a gleam
of malice in his eye, and from that moment suspected the friendship of
the cripple.
"The scroll is naught of importance," Erna replied haughtily; and for
that time no more was said of the scroll of Ovid.
XIX
HOW ERNA AND ALBRECHT TALKED OF LIFE.
Not entirely had Albrecht and Erna lost the old fashion of reading and
of talking together, although after the coming of Count Stephen and yet
more after Herr von Zimmern had returned to the castle, so greatly was
the time taken up with the chase and with jocund sports and with
feasting, that there was little space in which to carry on the former
studies. One morning when the rain was beating against the castle
casements and the spirits of the storm were shrieking over the forest,
they sat together in a chamber, and talked of the things which now were
of chief interest to the husband.
"I cannot tell how it hath chanced," Albrecht said, "that we read so
little together now."
"In the long winter there will be time enough for that," Erna answered.
"Thou wouldst not have me like a clerk that cannot get his nose clear of
a book. In sooth, I might as well be a nun at once and done with it."
Her husband looked at her in troubled silence a moment.
"Meseemeth, sweetheart," he said wistfully, "that I have made thee like
to that which I was myself when first I came to thee out of the wood."
"And meseemeth, certes," she answered, with a faint touch of scorn in
her tone, "that I have made thee like to that which I was when thou
camest. I was but a dull brooder over pious scrolls, and not in the
least did I know what life meant."
"And what does life mean to thee now?" he asked.
"That thou needest not to ask, for of a surety thou knewest when thou
didst come to Rittenberg."
"But tell me, sweetheart."
"Life means delight; it is to be glad and jocund. To be sad and moping
is to be dead," Erna cried impulsively. "Life is the chase and the dance
and the feast; it is joy. Life is to-day, and not to-morrow; life is to
do, not to wait; it is to rejoice, not to mourn. Callest thou that life
which mews itself up in a cell like the dungeon of a felon, and flickers
out like a candle in the dark? I trow that that is not life; it is only
the poor, pale shadow of it."
"That is life as thou sayest," Albrecht returned, "that rejoices, and
that takes delight in the chase and the feast and the dance; but even
the beasts of the forest and the nixies and the kobolds can share all of
these things. Surely thou dost not count this the whole of life?"
"Not the whole; no. Yet it is all that one can be sure of finding
pleasure in; all that--"
"Nay," Albrecht interrupted softly; "since thou thyself hast taught me
that man has other within him than the sense of the beasts and the
wood-folk in the forest yonder, thou shalt not now belie thyself by
putting thy kind on a level with the brutes. It is to foster the spirit
which he alone of all living beings hath, that man should make his
cumber, rather than to feed upon the delights of the body."
"Beshrew me," cried Erna, "but thou talkest as if I had indeed taken
thee in hand to instruct thee as a master teacheth a pupil."
"It can scarce be," he responded, "that two live together, the more if
they love each the other, without that they do teach and mould each the
other. Thou hast in sooth instructed me in much more than thou knowest,
sweetheart; and I would that I had as well influenced thee as thou hast
me. Of a truth our lives now are that which we have made each other; and
it behooveth us to look to it well that it be the life of the soul
rather than of the body, which engageth us."
"In good sooth," Erna laughed back mockingly, "now thou talkest like a
priest. Father Christopher shall give thee his gown, and thou shalt be
sent to preach to the Huns and the Saxons in the north."
Albrecht cast down his eyes and sighed so heavily that Erna put her hand
upon his arm and added coaxingly:
"Nay, dear heart, thou shalt not be vexed with me. I did but jest. I
feel all that thou sayest, but the joy of life overcomes me. I cannot
see why I should let to-day slip when to-morrow may be I know not what;
when old age will come so soon, and I shall have strength for naught but
to sit in the chimney-corner and think of what I would have done or of
what others may still do."
"Thou art right, sweetheart," Albrecht said, "in that thou wouldst live
to-day; but thou art wrong in that thou thinkest the best joys are in
the sports of mirth and wantonness. Surely thou hast tasted the
pleasures of the spirit within thee, and thou knowest that these are no
less but rather more than those of the body. And for old age and its
coming, since thou canst not tell of to-morrow, thinkest thou that it
were a better preparation for a joyful morrow to live in jollity and in
earthly wise, or to cherish the soul that is within thee to the end that
in after time it shall be a companion to thee?"
Erna tossed up her hands with a wilful gesture of mockery and
determination. Then she sprang to her feet and threw her arms about her
husband's neck and kissed him.
"Come," she cried, "thou wert not wont to be so dull and so clerkly.
Leave these things for Father Christopher. Is not my kiss better than
aught thou canst find in the scroll of Saint Cuthbert? When we are old
we will sit in the ingle together and learn all manner of pious lore for
the good of our souls; but now we are young, and it is wisdom to seize
upon youth while it is ours."
"Truly," he answered; "and yet it were well, too, to consider that the
youth of the spirit should not be disregarded more than the youth of the
body. Of a truth," he went on, his voice dropping, and a new light
coming into his eyes, "what am I, sweetheart, to tell thee what the
spirit is, when thou hast changed me from a wood thing that knew not of
the spirit of man, into that I am; and yet so vast and so holy do these
things of the spirit appear to me that I tremble, and all my heart is
stirred. It is as if one approached the place of a god, is it not,
Erna, only to think upon the possibilities of what is within us. How can
I be content to become once more that which I have been, a creature as
insensible to all this as the wolf that howls in the forest down there,
and only cares for what he shall eat to-day? I am overwhelmed only to
see how great and how noble are the things to which the soul of man may
reach out."
Erna was silent a moment, impressed by his earnestness; then she shook
herself and laughed.
"Hast thou then been a beast in the forest, or one of the
wood-creatures?" she demanded mockingly. "Of what good is all this talk?
Let us go down to the hall and hear Count Stephen sing the ballads he
hath learned at court."
"And it seemeth to me," Albrecht said, detaining her yet a moment
longer, "that thou goest to the forest too much. The creatures of the
wood are on the side of body; and not that only, but they make for evil,
and thou canst not tell how they may lure thee on to do that which is
forbidden."
"Am I not, then, of strength great enough to guard myself from the ill
counsels of the wood-folk?" she asked, smiling upon him. "Methinks that
they can do small harm to Christian folk."
"They can do no harm to him that is in himself armed against them,"
Albrecht answered gravely; "but they are ever in wait for those whose
mind may turn toward them and toward forbidden pleasures."
Erna flushed faintly, and her lips parted as if she would speak in
impatience or anger; then she controlled herself, and replied with a
show of gayety:
"Then it were wise not to forbid me aught, since then there will be no
chance for me to follow after forbidden things."
And so she departed out of the chamber, and sought out Count Stephen
with the petition that he sing to her; a request which he was not slow
to grant.
XX
HOW THEY RODE TO FLY THE FALCON.
The wood was filled with whispers in the autumn afternoon, as if the
trees were telling one another things which were to come to them soon,
gossip leaning toward gossip with confidential mien. The sense of unseen
creatures, presences quick with the keen life of their kind yet not
sharing in human being, was diffused through the air like the scent of
the fallen leaves. The Countess Erna, who rode here to-day, felt a vague
dread, even in the sunlight and with her troop to come to her aid in
case harm threatened her. She had a feeling as if she were watched and
followed by the wood-folk, and had it not been that she was much
engrossed with the consciousness of Count Stephen's presence she might
have turned homeward.
As it was she struck her palfrey sharply with her whip, and went
galloping through the wood, with her cousin close after. On her wrist
was her favorite falcon, his bell tinkling as she rode. The west wind
fanned her cheeks, hot with the flush which had sprung in them at the
soft words Von Rittenberg had been whispering into her ears as they came
through the pine wood below the castle steep. She heard the hoof-beats
of his horse behind her like an echo, which repeated the things he had
been saying, and although she knew beyond peradventure that she should
lose in his esteem by not showing him that she was angry, yet withal so
little had she been in sooth displeased, that she could but illy feign
displeasure.