EYES OF EMERALD
It was a strange little room into which the Lady Ysolinde brought me,
full of quaint, changeful scents, and all ablaze with colors the like of
which I had never seen. For not only were rugs and mats of outlandish
Eastern design scattered over the floor, but there was vividly colored
glass in the small, deeply set windows. Yet that which affected me most
powerfully was a curious, clinging, evanescent odor, which came and went
like a breeze through an open window. I liked it at first, but after a
little it went to my head like a perfumed wine of Greece, such as the men
of Venice sometimes send to our northern lands with their embassies of
merchandise.
Altogether, it was a strange enough apartment for the daughter of a
lawyer in the city of Thorn, within a mile of the bare feudal strengths
of the Red Tower and the Wolfsberg.
All this while Ysolinde had kept my hand, a thing which at once thrilled
and shamed me. For though I had never been what is called "in love" with
the Little Playmate, nor till that day had spoken a word to her my father
might not have heard, yet hitherto she had always been first and sole in
my heart whenever I thought on the things which were to be.
The Lady Ysolinde having brought me to her chamber, bade me sit upon
an oaken folding-stool beside a table on which lay weapons of curious
design--crooked knives and poisoned arrows. Then she went to an
ivory cupboard of the Orient (or, as they are called in Holy Writ,
"an ivory palace"), and opening the beautifully fitting door, she
took from it a small square bottle of red glass which she held
between her and the light.
"It is well," she said, looking long and carefully at it; "it will flow."
And coming to the table and pouring some of a shining black liquid into
the palm of her left hand, she sat down beside me on the stool and gazed
steadily into the little pool of ink.
It was strange to me to sit thus motionless beside a beautiful woman
(for such I then thought her)--so near that I could feel the warmth of
her body strike like sunshine through the silken fineness of her
sea-green gown. I glanced up at her eyes. They were fixed, and, as it
seemed, glazed also. But the emerald in them, usually dark as the
sea-depths, had opal lights in it, and her lips moved like those of a
devotee kneeling in church.
Presently she began to speak.
"Hugo--Hugo Gottfried, son of the Red Axe," she said, in the same hushed
voice as before, most like running water heard murmuring in a deep runnel
underground, "you will live to be a man fortunate, well-beloved. You will
know love--yes, more than one shall love you. But you will love one only.
I see the woman on whom your fate depends, yet not clearly--it may be,
because my desire is so great to see her face. But she is tall and moves
like a queen. She goes clad in white like a bride and her arms are held
out to you.
"But another shall love you, and between them two there is darkness and
hate, from which come bursting clouds of fire, bringing forth lightnings
and angers and deadly jealousies!
"Again I see you, great, honored, and sitting on a high seat. The
woman whose face I cannot distinguish is beside you, clothed in a
robe of purple. And, yes, she wears a crown on her head like the
coronet of a queen."
Ysolinde withdrew her eyes gradually from the ink-pool, as if it were a
pain to look yet a greater to look away. Then with a quick jerk she threw
up her head, and tears were standing in her eyes ready to overflow. But
the wetness made them beautiful, like a pebble of bright colors with the
dew upon it and shone on by the sunshine of the morning.
"You hurt me," she murmured reproachfully, looking at me more like a
child than ever I had seen her. She was very near to me.
"_I_ make you suffer!" cried I, greatly astonished. "How can Hugo
Gottfried have done this thing?"
For it seemed impossible that a poor lad, and one alien by his birth from
the hearts of ordinary folk, should yet have the power to make a great
lady suffer. For a great lady I knew Ysolinde to be even then, when her
father seemed to be no more in the city of Thorn than Master Gerard, the
fount and treasure-house of law and composer-general of quarrels.
But I might have known that he was no true lawyer to be so eager about
that last. For upon the continuance and fostering of differences the
law-men of all nations thrive and eat their bread with honey thereto.
As my father often said, "Better the stroke of the Red Axe than that of
the scrivener's goose-quill. My solution is kindlier, sooner over, hurts
less, and is all the same in the end!"
Ysolinde thought a little before she answered me.
"No man ever made me suffer thus before," she said, "though I have seen
and known many men. I am older than you, Hugo, and have travelled in many
countries, the lands from which these things came. But true love, the
pain and the pleasure of it, have I never known."
She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table, turning thus
to look long and intently at me. I felt oafish and awkward, as Jan Lubber
Fiend might have done before the King. Many things I might have wished to
say and do with that slender figure and lissome waist so near me. But I
knew not how to begin. Yet I think the desire came not so much from love
or passion, but rather from a natural longing to explore those mysteries
concerning which I had read so much after Friar Laurence had done me the
service of teaching me French. But it was well that stupidity was my
friend. For rebounding like a vain, upstart young monkey from my mood of
self-depreciation, I must needs hold it for certain that all was within
my grasp, and that the Lady Ysolinde expected as much of me, which thing
would have wrought my downfall.
"Yon ride soon to Plassenburg, I hear," she said, after she had looked at
me a long time steadily with the emerald eyes shining upon me. Then it
was that I saw clearly that they were not the right emerald in hue so
much as of the shade of the stone aqua-marine, which is one not so rare,
but a better color when it comes to the matter of maiden's eyes.
"It is indeed true, my lady," I replied, disappointed at her words, and
yet somehow infinitely relieved, "that I ride soon to Plassenburg by the
favoring of your father, who has been gracious enough to promise me his
interest with the Prince."
I saw her lip curl a little with scorn--the least tilt of a rose leaf to
which the sun has been unkind.
She seemed about to speak, but presently thinking better of it,
smiled instead.
"It is like my father," she said, after a little; "but since I also go
thither, you shall be of my escort. A sufficient guard accompanies me all
the way to the city, and I dare say the arrangement may serve your
convenience as well as add to the pleasure and safety of my journeying."
"But how will your father do without your company, Lady Ysolinde?" I
asked. For it seemed strange that father and daughter should thus part
without reason in these disturbed times.
She laughed more heartily than I had heard her.
"My father has been used to missing me for months at a time, and,
moreover, is well resigned also. But you do not say that you are rejoiced
to be of a lady's escort in so long a travel."
"Indeed, I am much honored and glad to have so great a favor done to me.
I am but a mannerless, landward youth, to have been bred in the outer
courts of a palace. But that which I do not know you will teach me, and
my faults I shall be eager to amend."
"Pshaw!--psutt!" said Ysolinde, making a little face, "be not so
mock-modest. You do very well. But tell me if you have any sweetheart in
the city to leave behind you."
Now this bold question at once reddened my face and heightened my
confusion.
"Nay, lady," I stammered, conscious that I was blushing furiously, "I am
over-young to have thought much of the things of love. I know no woman in
the city save our old house-keeper Hanne, and the Little Playmate."
The Lady Ysolinde looked up quickly.
"Ah, the Little Playmate!" she said, in a low voice, curiously distinct
from that which she used when she had interpreted her visions to me. "The
Little Playmate! That sounds as though it might be interesting. Who is
the Little Playmate?"
"She is a maid whose folks were slain long ago by the Duke in a foray,
and the little one being left, my father begged her life. And she has
been brought up with me in the Red Tower."
"How old is she now?" The Lady Ysolinde's next question leaped out like
the flash of a dagger from its sheath.
"That," answered I, meditatively, "I know not exactly, because none could
tell how old she was when she came to us."
"Tut," she said, impatiently tossing her head, "do not twist your answers
to me--only wise men and courtiers have the skill to do that and hide it.
As yet you are neither. Is she ten, or is she twenty, or is she mid-way
betwixt the two?"
"I think she may be a matter of seventeen years of age."
"Is she pretty?" was the next question.
"No," said I, not knowing well what to say.
Her face cleared as she heard that, and then, in a little, her eyes being
still bent steadily on me, reading my very heart, it clouded over again.
"You think her not merely pretty, then, but beautiful?" she asked.
I nodded.
"More beautiful than I?"
'Fore God I denied not my love, though I own I have many a time been less
tempted, and yet have lied back and forth like a Frankfort Jew.
"Yes," said I, "I think so."
"You love her, then?" said the Lady Ysolinde, rising quickly to her feet;
"and you told me that you loved none in this city."
"I love her, indeed," I said. "She is my little sister. As you mean love,
I do not love her. But I love her notwithstanding. All my life I have
never thought of doing anything else. And that she is beautiful, all who
have eyes in their head may see."
This appeased her somewhat. I think it must have been looking for my
fortune in the crystal and the ink-pool that made her so eager to know
all that concerned me--which none had ever been so importunate to find
out before.
"I must come and see this Little Playmate of yours," she said. "It is an
ill-done thing that so fair a maid should be shut up in the tower of such
a pagan castle--the Wolfsberg; it is indeed well named. Word has reached
me to-day that the Princess of Plassenburg has need of a bower maiden.
Now the Princess can make her choice from many noble families. But if the
Little Playmate be as beautiful as you say, 'tis high time that she
should not be left immured in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg. True, the
Duke, like a careful man, neither makes nor mells with womankind. 'Tis
his only virtue. But any questing Ritterling or roaring free companion
might bear her off."
"I think not," said I, smiling, "so long as the Red Axe of the Mark has a
polished edge and Gottfried Gottfried can send it sheer through an ox's
neck as he stands chewing the cud."
I hardly think that I ever boasted of my father's prowess before.
And, indeed, I had some skill in the axe-play myself, but only in the
way of sport.
"All one," said Ysolinde. "Your father, like great Caesar and Duke
Casimir, is but mortal, and may stumble across the wooden stump some day
himself and find his neck-bone in twain! None so wise that he can tell
when the Silent Rider shall meet him in the wood, leading by the bridle
the pale horse whose name is Death, and beckoning him to mount and ride."
The Lady Ysolinde paused a while, touching her lips thoughtfully with
her fingers.
"Let your Playmate come," she said. "There is room, I warrant, for her
and you both at Plassenburg. You shall keep each other company when
you have the homesickness, and on the journey she can ride with us
side by side."
Then going to the curtain she summoned the servitor who had first opened
the door for me. He bowed before the girl with infinite respect. She bade
him conduct me upon my way. I will not deny that I had hoped for a
tenderer leave-taking. But all at once she seemed to have slipped back
into the great lady again, and to be desirous of setting me in my own
sphere and station ere I went, lest perchance I should presume overmuch
upon her favors.
Yet not altogether so. For, relenting a little as I turned to leave her,
she stood holding the curtain aside for me to pass, and, as it had been
by accident, in dropping it her fingers rested a moment against my
cheek. Then the heavy curtain of blue fell into its place, and I found
myself following the eminently respectable domestic of Master Gerard
down the stairs.
At the outer door, but before he opened it, the man put a sealed packet
in my hand.
"From Doctor Gerard von Sturm," he said, bowing respectfully, yet with a
certain sense of being a party in a favor conferred.
I thrust the letter into my inner pocket and went out into the street.
The sun was still shining, yet somehow I felt that it must be another
day, another world. The houses seemed hard and dry, the details of the
architecture insufferably mean and insultingly familiar. I longed with
all my heart to get away from Thorn into the new world which had opened
to me--a world of perfumes and flowers and flower-like scents and
Oriental marvels, of low voices, too, and the touching of soft hands
upon cheeks.
In all the world of young men there was no greener or more simple Simon
than I, Hugo Gottfried, as, playing a tune on the pipe of my own conceit,
I marched up the High Street of Thorn to the entrance gate of the
Wolfsberg.
The Little Playmate was standing at the door as I approached, sweet as a
June rose. When she saw me she went into the sitting-room to show that
she had not yet forgiven me. Though I think by this time, as was often
the way with Helene, she had forgotten almost what was the original
matter of my offending.
But I pretended to be careless and heart-free. And so--God forgive
me!--I went whistling up the steps of the Red Tower to my room without
so much as looking within the chamber where my Little Playmate had
withdrawn herself.
Which thing I suffered grievously for or all was done. And an excellent
dispensation of Providence it had been if I had lost my right hand, all
for making that little heart sore, or so much as one tear drop from those
deep gray eyes.