rode from thicket to thicket, finding in the bosky nooks only the
gathering shadows and the birds and squirrels which fled at his
approach. Though he had not truly expected to find Erna, none the less
was he enraged and disappointed that she was not here. His passion for
his beautiful cousin had taken too strong a hold upon him not to stir
him now with deep feeling as he thought of the possibility of losing
her. He dashed his heavily gloved hand against his brow, and the bosses
of his hawking gauntlet left their imprint upon the flesh.
"God's blood!" he cried, in impotent wrath, "I will not lose her!"
He had hardly spoken when his ear caught the sound of a horse's hoofs
upon the pine-needle-carpeted ground, and the soft thud sent a thrill
through his whole being.
"Who goes there?" he called.
"The devil!" shouted a harsh voice, in reply; and with a burst of hoarse
laughter Herr von Zimmern came riding out of the dusk of the tree
shadows.
Count Stephen stared at him an instant, in mute surprise at his sudden
appearance and the wildness of his manner.
"Whence dost thou come?" he demanded in a moment, regaining his
composure and speaking with a haughtiness which betrayed his vexation.
"Out of the wood," the other answered coolly. "And thou?"
"What is that to thee, sirrah?" retorted the count.
It was so great a relief to have some one upon whom to vent his wrath
that he made not the slightest effort to restrain himself, and his tone
was so insolent that he was astonished that the cripple did not reply in
anger.
"I crave pardon," Herr Frederich said, suddenly changing his manner, as
if it occurred to him that it was not his wish to offend. "I was
astonished to find you alone in the forest when I had thought that haply
one we will not name might be riding with you."
Count Stephen ground his teeth, but he struggled with himself that he
should give answer calmly.
"There is none with me," he said, "and in sooth I do not know by what
right thou dost trouble thyself concerning my affairs. What is it to
thee who may or who may not be abroad with me?"
Herr Frederich laughed mockingly.
"Now, by the True Cross," he returned, "you are indeed in an evil mood.
It was but that I wished you well that I said it was strange to find
you alone, when I had myself bought from the wood-folk a promise that
you should this day have opportunity to be alone with one who is not
here."
"God's blood!" cried the count; "what hast thou to do with the
wood-folk?"
"But since forsooth you are in so shrewish a mind," continued Herr
Frederich, ignoring his words, "we will not speak of it further. Haply I
might have had that to tell which it would have been well for you to
know had you been angry at being left thus alone; but it is of no
account. Fare you well, Sir Count!"
He turned his horse as he spoke, as if he were minded to return into the
gloom of the forest whence he had come. Count Stephen dashed forward,
and caught his rein.
"Not so fast, sirrah!" he said angrily. "If in truth thou hast anything
to say, out with it speedily, or by God's wounds I will slay thee on the
spot. Thou mayst see if I am in the mind to be lightly trifled with."
"Nay," the cripple replied undauntedly; "you do not seem wholly calm and
peaceable in your temper. It may be that it will mend if you can wait
the issue of the errand upon which I am bound, since then it will go
hard but you shall come nigh to the fulfilment of your heart's desire."
The count regarded the other somewhat askance. He doubted himself of
this swart knave, and while he was not over-scrupulous concerning the
means by which he came to the desires of his passions, he had yet a
contempt for the traitor who could thus betray his own master. Moreover,
although he had been indebted to Herr Frederich for many an interview
with the lady of the castle, since the cripple had brought Albrecht into
the hall on the morning when Erna had shown the scroll of Ovid, the
count had shrewdly doubted but the man was a traitor to all, and bound
only to make mischief. Nevertheless, so deeply did the heart of the
count long for the love of Erna that he was ready for anything, short of
the blackest villany, which would bring him nearer to the fruit of his
quest. He bent forward in the dusk of the covert where they had met, and
rested his hands upon the pommel of his saddle.
"Speak on," he said.
"It is not from any love of thee," Herr Frederich began with careless
insolence, suddenly assuming the speech of an equal, "that I wish thee
success in thy quest. If it can but be compassed that--Ah," he cried,
breaking off and with his voice falling into a strain of the most
passionate bitterness, "if I can wound him through his lady, I shall
have it all; it is through his wife that I must reach him; that will
give me my revenge here and hereafter! I can gloat over his soul in
torments through all eternity!"
The count did not speak, but he drew back a little as if such fiendish
hate made even him afeard. He could not compass the reasons for the
bitterness of the other's mind toward Albrecht, and he waited for what
more Herr Frederich might say.
"She is, in sooth, coy now," the other went on. "I saw her flee from
thee through the wood. She has been bred by a priest, and she is afraid
of her own desires. Her blood stirs for thee, but she is yet timid. Have
patience yet a little till I come again. Then we shall see."
He had grown wilder in his air until he seemed but a madman raving; and
Count Stephen, who knew not of the meeting of Albrecht and the cripple
in the wood when Herr Frederich had thrown off all his disguises, was
bewildered by the fashion of his companion's speech.
"When thou comest again," he repeated. "Whither, then, dost thou go?"
His companion bent nearer, as if he feared that in the shadows about
them might be ears which should hear the secret.
"Listen!" he said. "When the _Morgengabe_ was given, the Lady Adelaide
put it into my head that if the Huns could be but told of the richness
of the jewels that were brought to Rittenberg, they would not be long on
their way hither. With me for a guide they will not linger. Ah, ha! My
Lord Baron," he cried, throwing up his arms in a wild frenzy of rage and
excitement, "when the red cock crows on the towers of Rittenberg, and
the wife is fled in the arms of her lover, I will forgive both thee and
thy cursed father!"
The count regarded him in amazement and dismay.
"Art thou mad?" he demanded. "Wilt thou in truth bring down the Huns
upon Rittenberg?"
"Yea; and when they are come, it will not be hard to bear the lady away
whither it pleases you. Who is there at Rittenberg to let the Huns of
their will?"
"I!" cried Count Stephen, with sudden rage. "God's wounds, dost thou
take me for a villain such as thou?"
He flung himself upon Herr Frederich so forcibly that they both went
down among the feet of the horses together. He caught the cripple by the
throat with one hand, while with the other he drew his dagger.
"Take this to the Huns in token!" he exclaimed, dealing the fallen man
stab after stab; "and this, and this!"
The other struggled fiercely for a moment. It was so dark there on the
ground that the count struck at him blindly, and it was only when the
blow had been repeated several times that the cripple was quiet. Count
Stephen held him by the throat in his powerful grasp until he ceased to
struggle; when he rose he became aware that Herr Zimmern's horse had
escaped into the darkening forest. It was only from the chance that as
he leaped from his own steed the rein had been thrown over the broken
limb of a tree by which he was standing that he was not himself left
horseless.
"God's blood!" ejaculated Count Stephen, wiping his dagger on the
doublet of the dead man; "there is one less knave in the world."
He touched the corse contemptuously with his foot, wondering why Herr
Frederich had so bitterly hated Albrecht, and for the moment considering
that, after all, Herr von Zimmern had been his only ally at Rittenberg,
and that it was not wise to have disposed of him thus. Yet when he
reflected that if he had been left alive it would have been simply that
he might have opportunity to bring in the dreaded Huns to devastate the
land, he was satisfied that it had been well to kill the knave and put
an end to his scheming. Count Stephen knew what the Huns were. They had
overrun not a little of the country in the neighborhood of his home; and
as he thought of them he became well pleased with himself for having
slain one who would have helped the heathen.
But even the pleasure of having killed a varlet who would have given the
land to the fire and the spear of the Huns could not for long put Count
Stephen from the thought of Erna. He got upon his horse, and rode slowly
toward the castle, as completely forgetting the dead man behind him as
if he had never existed, and leaving the body to the wolves with as
little compunction as if it had been the carcass of a hound.
He wondered how Erna would receive him, and whether she would have said
anything to her husband of the happening in the forest; and at last he
bethought him of a means by which he might test her feelings.
"I will send her word," he said to himself, "that I wish to take my
leave. Surely, if she forgive me, or if there is hope for me, I shall be
able to tell it when I see her. She cannot be so angry as to refuse to
come; and besides, she would fear that her husband should ask the reason
if she treated me with disdain. She must at least come to bid me
farewell, if not to urge upon me a longer stay; surely she must come."
And with this design in his mind, Count Stephen rode on more briskly,
reaching the castle a little before sunset.
"Gather the men and be ready to ride at once," he commanded his captain,
whom he encountered in the courtyard.
"To-night?" exclaimed the man, staring with astonishment.
"God's blood!" stormed his master in reply, "it is necessary that I give
orders twice? Now, I said; at once!"
And striding on, he left the retainer holding his horse by the bridle
and staring after him open-mouthed.
XXV
HOW FATHER CHRISTOPHER SENT FOR ALBRECHT.
After Albrecht had been left by Erna in the corridor, he stood for a
space as if he had neither the power to go nor yet to stay. He was full
of jealousy and of fear at the thought of what might have befallen in
the wood, and the agitation of his wife showed him that though Herr
Frederich had failed of fulfilling his mission of evil, yet had
something unusual taken place there when the baron had not been present
to see. He had long understood that Count Stephen would fain win the
love of Erna, and mighty had been the struggle in his soul as he
questioned with himself whether in truth it would not be easy for the
knight to gain the love of a woman from one who had been born of the
wild race of wood-folk.
He went sadly and slowly back to his chamber, where the shadows
clustered as thickly as the trees in the forest, and there came to his
mind how the creatures of the wood, angry that one of their race should
have won a human soul, had been eager to give their aid to the schemes
of Herr Frederich; and anew there came over him a sense of the mighty
struggle in which he was engaged. The stinging taunts of the cripple
wounded him afresh, singing themselves over again in his ears as he
stood by his casement in the gathering darkness, looking out over the
mighty stretch of the forest. He recalled the cripple's threat that the
soul of Erna should be so dragged down by his own that they should be
lost together; and the twofold terror of bringing upon her whom he loved
the doom of eternal death overwhelmed him. The serenity which he had on
his knees won in the chapel deserted him, and he cast himself down upon
the rushes in agony of soul.
He hardly knew whether it was moments or hours that he grovelled in the
dust,--nor could he know that apart in her chamber Erna, too, had fallen
into a like abasement,--when the coming of a thrall disturbed him. He
started to his feet, and waited for what message might be come to him.
It had grown so dark that the glimmer of the torch which the servant
carried shone in a golden line beneath the door. Smoothing his
disordered hair with his hand as he went, Albrecht went to the door and
opened it. The glare of the torch blinded him so that for a moment he
could see nothing.
"If the gracious Lord Baron will," the thrall said, "Father Christopher
prays that he come to him with no delay."
Albrecht stood a moment in surprised silence. Then he recovered himself.
"Is Father Christopher in his chamber?" he asked.
"Yea, my Lord Baron," the servant answered.
"Give me thy torch," Albrecht said, taking it, "and I will go at once.
Thou need'st not come."
Not since the morning after his wedding had Albrecht climbed to the
little room high in the western tower; and as he made his way thither he
seemed to be once more on his way to confess to the good old priest the
strange story of his life. As he climbed the winding stair of the tower
his glance fell through a narrow window, and afar he saw the moon rising
over the great forest where the kobolds were gathering for their nightly
sports. All the old life came before him, and for the moment he seemed
to have lost the one without that he had gained the other. He was no
longer either kobold or man. Then, with the fierceness of one who fights
temptation, he shook off these thoughts, and went on until he stood
before Father Christopher.
The priest was walking up and down with his eyes fixed upon the floor.
For a moment he did not pause or look up. Then he paused beside the seat
upon which Albrecht had thrown himself, his kind eyes hardly higher than
those of the other, so tall was the knight in his woodland strength, and
stood looking into the baron's face with a regard penetrating but full
of tenderness.
"The time hath come," he said, "when thou must tell to thy wife
everything that is hid in thy heart."
"Everything?" Albrecht echoed, dismay and wonder in his tone.
"Everything," the priest repeated solemnly. "My son, dost thou remember
that once in this very chamber I said to thee that thou couldst not hope
to save thy soul alone, but that the fate of hers by whom thou didst win
it was bound up with that of thine own? Now is it the hour when thou
must save both hers and thine."
"Truly I would freely give mine that hers be not lost," Albrecht
returned.
"It is in thine hands," Father Christopher went on as if he heard him
not. "She loves thee still."
"Still!" Albrecht echoed in a piercing cry, springing to his feet.
His face was white with the terror of the fear which seemed to lurk
behind the words of the priest. He caught Father Christopher's robe by
the sleeve, and looked at him with terror and appeal in his face.
"Nay," the priest said, putting out his hand, and speaking with mingled
sweetness and reproof, "we are speaking of the gracious countess and thy
wife. Thou hast nothing to fear. It is only that the longings which thou
hast thyself awakened in her are yet strange and not wholly mastered by
her will. It is thou who hast given her these temptations as surely as
she has given thee thy soul. There is never a gift between two;
something is always given in exchange."
Albrecht bowed his head upon his hand. His eyes traced the long shadow
which the torch, thrust into a ring upon the wall, cast along upon the
floor, bare of rushes.
"But how may it be," he asked sadly, "that I, forsooth, can hope to save
either her or yet myself?"
"Because," Father Christopher returned tenderly, laying his hand upon
the bowed head as if inwardly he blessed the strong man before him,
"thou hast the soul of a child and the strength of a knight; and
because," he was fain to add, with a soft voice that was like a caress,
"all that see thee must needs love thee."
"But why," Albrecht asked, "sayest thou that it were well that I tell
all to my wife?"
The priest smiled with an expression which was at once tender and
wistful, and through which yet a gleam of humor played.
"My son," he answered, "I am an old man, and I have in sooth seen much
of the ways of the world, and of the ways of womankind not a little.
Trust me that I rede thee good counsel in this matter. Thy wife is a
woman, and so it is well that thou tell her. It is not always easy to
say why one should do thus or so with a woman, but it may be wise to do
that for which one cannot give a reason. And besides," he added more
soberly, "anon perchance thou wilt thyself perceive a reason for what
thou now doest blindly. Go, my son; and Heaven bless thee in thy
going!"
XXVI
HOW ALBRECHT AND ERNA FORGAVE EACH OTHER.
Erna came from her interview with Father Christopher calmer in mind, but
still full of unrest and disquiet. She feared to see Albrecht, and yet
she had asked the priest to send him to her. She had confessed to Father
Christopher how far she had gone astray, but his assurances that all
would be well, and that she had turned in time from the temptation which
beset her, could not console her without the forgiveness of Albrecht,
and in her secret heart Erna did not lack that keen fear of her lord
which is the necessary foundation of a woman's love. She believed that
Albrecht had observed nothing of her intimacy with Count Stephen, and
she dreaded lest his old imperiousness should break out at the
disclosure which she must make to him.
Fastrade came to summon her to supper, which was already served in the
hall; but Erna sent her away, and waited in the dusk longing and yet
fearing to hear the approaching steps of her husband. When at last she
heard him coming, she could not control the terror which seized her. She
felt that kiss which Count Stephen had pressed upon her lips in the
beech wood burning as if it were a spot of living fire, and she sprang
up with the desire to escape overpowering all other feelings. She met
Albrecht on the threshold of her chamber, and in the darkness she had
touched him before she realized how near he was.
"I must hasten to supper," she said breathlessly. "Fastrade summoned
me."
He put his arm about her and led her back into the chamber. She clung to
him for support, for her strength left her, and she could scarcely
stand.
"Wait yet a little," he said. "First I have that which I must say to
you."
She submitted with a feeling of despair. She thought, with a terrible
throb of pain, of the wedding night when he had first entered that room,
and of all that had befallen since then. She was utterly abashed and
humiliated, and in her own sight she was viler than the vilest. Albrecht
led her to a seat, groping his way in the darkness to the very spot by
the window whence she had first seen him riding out of the pine forest
below like a forest god. She sank down beside him, and for a moment
both of them were silent.
"I have to confess to thee," Albrecht said at length; and the
strangeness of his tone and of his address struck her with so deep an
amazement that for the moment all her own fears were forgotten in
wonder. "If thou canst forgive the wrong I have done thee--"
He broke off and bent forward in the darkness as if he would have kissed
her. Then he drew back.
"Forgive thee?" stammered Erna, confused and amazed. "How hast thou
wronged me?"
"If one should come," Albrecht said, his tone lower than before, "and
should win thee and wed thee when thou knewest not what he was, or how
unworthy, couldst thou forgive him if afterward he loved thee truly and
more than tongue could tell?"
The fear of some horrible revelation came over her. She forgot that she
had shrunk at his coming. The thought that she might have been deceived
drove from her mind all recollection of her own fault. She sat up with
sudden energy.
"Albrecht!" she exclaimed. "What is it that thou hast to tell me? Art
thou not noble?"
"I have not lied to thee," he answered with a touch of bitterness amid
his humility which did not escape her. "My father was indeed lord of the
Neiderwasser valley."
"Then what hast thou to tell me?"
It was some moments before he answered, but then, with a voice full of
passion and pain, he told her all that he had related to Father
Christopher on the morning after the marriage. Erna listened with eyes
wide stretched, as if she would pierce the darkness, her heart beating
so that it seemed to her that it would suffocate her. It seemed a thing
so impossible to understand that she had indeed wed a strange creature
from the forest, and not a man at all, that at first she refused to
believe it.
"If this were true," she said, "surely Father Christopher would have
told me. He would not have suffered me to imperil my soul by such a
union had it indeed been true that thou wert--Oh, Albrecht, thou surely
art human! I should not love thee else."
"And dost thou indeed love me?"
She flung herself forward into his strong arms.
"I have loved thee," she cried, "from the first moment when I saw thee
ride out of the wood below."
"And now?"
"And now," she repeated, "thou tellest me that thou art not a man, but
that thou art a monster of the wood."
"Truly I was a monster, but thou hast made me other. Thou hast given me
a soul, and now I am human as thou art. It was that I might have a soul
that Herr von Zimmern trained me, and only to-day I know that it was
because he wished me ill, and schemed that I should be lost forever."
"And must thou indeed be lost forever?" Erna cried, starting away from
him and then clasping him more closely.
"Nay, sweetheart; thou hast given me a soul, and I have striven that it
be not lost. Thou hast given me a soul, and thou wilt help me that it be
for me all blessedness instead of the ruin that he in his wickedness
meant."
"I?"
The remembrance of all that she had not told him swept over her like a
wave of the sea. She slipped from his side down to his feet, and
crouched there, clasping his knees. She remembered all her old longing
for spiritual greatness and for virtue, and how she had fallen into the
temptations of the lower things. Bitter tears gushed from her eyes, and
a sob choked her voice.
"Oh, it is not for me to help thee!" she cried. "Thou art above me,
kobold though thou hast been. Thou shouldst not confess to me; it is I
who must confess to thee. It is thou who must forgive. Thou canst not
guess why Father Christopher sent thee to me to-night."
"Sweetheart," Albrecht answered, bending over to raise her, "I have seen
all from day to day, and I knew how the count would have ensnared thee;
but I had no fear that in the end thou wouldst understand what danger
lay in him. It is I who am at fault, since it is I from whom thou hast
learned the longings that have made thy temptation. If thou canst
forgive me, and love me still, it may be that in the end we may help
each other, and our souls that are one be together lifted up."
Beneath in the courtyard there was a stir as of horses and of retainers,
and upon the ceiling over their heads there flashed the light of a torch
which some servant carried down below. In the faint reflected light Erna
could almost see the face of her husband, and with a sob of perfect
peace and of swelling aspiration she cast her arms about his neck, and
felt herself gathered into his strong embrace.
As they sat there talking and telling each other all the things which
they had hitherto kept secret, the bustle in the courtyard increased,
and presently came the damsel Elsa to say that the Count Stephen had
determined to take his leave of Rittenberg that night, and prayed the
countess to receive his farewell.
"To-night?" Albrecht repeated in astonishment. "Surely he is jesting."
"So the gracious Lady Adelaide said," returned Elsa, with saucy
demureness, "and she swore it by the body of Saint Fridolin; but still
the noble count declares that he will set out."
"But the darkness, and the danger of missing the way," Erna said; "and
above all the wolves!"
"The Lady Adelaide mentioned them all," the damsel responded, "and
witnessed them all by Saint Fridolin's body; but quoth the knight that
if he could not keep his bones from the wolves he deserved to have them
picked. Only on one charge will he stay."
"And what is that?" demanded Erna; but she saw the look askance which
Elsa gave toward Albrecht, and the blood rushed into her cheek.
"It is that the gracious countess insist upon his staying," Elsa
answered, courtesying so profoundly that the rushlight she carried
wavered and flared.