TWO WOMEN--AND A MAN
It was the forenoon of a Sunday, a dull, sleepy time in all countries,
and one difficult to get overpast. I was as usual busy with my
accoutrement, recently bought with the loan of Master Gerard. The Little
Playmate was just returned from the cathedral, and had indeed scarcely
laid her finery aside, when there came a loud knocking at the outer gate
of the Red Tower. Then one of the guard tramped stolidly from the wicket
to the door of our dwelling.
"A lady waits you at the postern," said he, and so tramped his way
unceremoniously back to his post.
I knew without any need of telling that it was the Lady Ysolinde. So I
rose, and hastily setting my fingers through my hair, went to the gate.
There, attended by the respectable servitor, was, as I had expected, the
Lady Ysolinde.
"Good-morrow," she said very courteously to me, and I duly returned her
greeting with a low obeisance of respect and welcome.
She wore a large garment, fashioned like a man's cloak, over her festal
attire--which, with a hood for the head, wholly enveloped her figure and
descended to her feet.
"I have come, as I promised, to see the Little Playmate." These were her
first words as we paced together across the wide upper court under the
wondering eyes of the men of the Duke's body-guard.
"Pray remember, Lady Ysolinde," said I, with much eagerness, "that I
have as yet said nothing of the matter to Helene, and that my father only
knows that I am to ride to Plassenburg in order to exercise myself in the
practice of arms, before becoming his assistant here in the Red Tower and
in the Hall of Judgment across the way."
My visitor nodded a little impatiently. She who knew so many things, of a
surety might be trusted to understand so much without being told.
In the inner doorway Helene met us. And never had it been my fortune to
see the meeting of two such women. The Little Playmate had in her hands
the broidered handkerchiefs, the long Flemish gloves, and the little
illuminated Book of the Hours which I had given her. She had been about
to lay them away together, as is the fashion of women. And when she met
the Lady Ysolinde I declare that she looked almost as tall. Helene was
perhaps an inch or two less in stature than her visitor, but what she
lacked in height she more than made up in the supple erectness of her
carriage and the vivid and extraordinary alertness of all her movements.
"Lady Ysolinde," said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of
women who measure one another, "this is Helene--whom, for love and
kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the 'Little Playmate.'"
The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk's hood
which shrouded the masses of her tawny hair. She put out both hands to
Helene, held her a moment at arm's-length to look into her eyes, even as
she had done with me, but in a different way. Then, drawing her nearer,
she leaned forward and kissed her on the brow and on both cheeks.
Now I am not ordinarily a close observer, and many things, specially
things that pertain to the acts of women, pass by me unnoticed. But I saw
in a moment that there was not, and never could be, more than the
semblance of cordial amity between these two women.
I noted the Little Playmate instinctively quiver like a taken bird
when she was thus embraced. It was, I think, the undying antipathy of
Eve for Lilith, a hatred which is mostly on the side of Eve, the
Mother-Woman--its place being taken by sharper and more dangerous envy
in the breast of Lilith-without-the wall.
There, face to face, stood the two women who were to make my life, ruling
it between them, as it were, striking it out between the impact of their
natures, as underneath the blows of two smiths upon the ringing anvil the
iron, hissing hot, becomes a sword or a ploughshare.
It was impossible to avoid contrasting them.
Helene, of a bodily beauty infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful
with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her
lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple
purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes;
the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more
conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the
impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, compact of
swift delicate graces, half feline, half feminine (if these two be not
the same). All these passed like clouds over the unquiet sea of her
nature, reflecting the changing skies of circumstance, and were fitted to
produce a fascination ever on the verge of repulsion even when it was
strongest. Ysolinde was the more ready of speech, but her words were
touched constantly with dainty malice and clawed with subtlest spite. She
catspawed with men and things, often setting the hidden spur under the
velvet foot deeply into the very cheek which she seemed to caress. Such
as I read them then, and largely as even now I understand them, were the
two women who moulded between them my life's history.
I suppose it is because I am of this Baltic North that I must need think
things round and round, and prose of reasons and explanations--even when
I write concerning beautiful maids--forever dreaming and dividing,
instead of going straight, sword in hand, for their hearts, as is the way
of the folk from the English land over-seas, or, more simply still, lying
about their favors, which, I hear, is mostly the Frenchman's way.
But enough of intolerable theory.
Instinctively the Lady Ysolinde spoke to our maid of the Red Tower in a
manner and tone very different from that which I had ever before heard
her employ, at once more equal and more guarded.
"I was told by Master Hugo Gottfried here (whose acquaintance I made at
my father's house on the day after his foolish boy's prank of the White
Swan) that in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg dwelt one of mine own age,
like myself a maid solitary among men. So to-day I have come to solicit
her acquaintance, and to ask her to be kind to me, who have ever been in
this city and country as a stranger in a strange land."
It was prettily enough said, and our Helene, easily touched, and perhaps
a little ashamed of her first stiffness, put out a hand which the other
quickly and securely clasped. Then those two sat down together. Ysolinde
von Sturm kept her eyes fixed on the Playmate, but our shy and slender
Helene looked steadily past her out over the tumbled red roofs and peaked
gables of the city of Thorn to the gray Wolfmark plains which lay spread
beneath our windows like a picture in a book.
At intervals, as it came near the hour of their mid-day meal, the
blood-hounds howled in the kennels, and by their tone I knew that my
father had left the Hall of Judgment where he had been detained all the
morning. Also I knew very well that the Lady Ysolinde wished me to find
an errand elsewhere, in order that she might talk alone with her
companion. But I saw also the appeal in the eyes of the Playmate, and I
was resolved not to give her the chance.
"Are you never weary in this dull tower?" asked the lawyer's daughter,
still holding the Playmate's hand.
"It is not dull," replied Helene. "I have my work. There are two men as
shiftless and helpless as babes to attend to, and none to help me but
old Hanne."
"Let men attend to themselves," cried Ysolinde; "that is ever my motto.
They ought to be our servants, not we theirs."
It was said smilingly, yet there was bitterness under the words as well.
"But," said Helene, smiling back at her with a fresh directness all her
own, "one of the men saved my life and brought me up as his own daughter,
and the other is--is Hugo, here."
And as she spoke of my father and of me I saw the eyes of the Lady
Ysolinde fixed upon her, as it had been to read her inner soul.
"And, by-the-way," she said, at last, after a long pause, "you have heard
how this same Master Hugo proposes to himself to escape from the
prison-house of this city, for a season to exercise himself in arms, and
so in roving adventure fulfil that which is not granted to a maid, his
'wandering years.' He goes (so my father tells me) to the Court of the
Prince of Plassenburg, with the promise of a company to command. And I am
glad, for I shall ride thither under his escort. Indeed, and in truth, my
home is far more there than here in Thorn. But I would fain have a
companion of my own sex. So I have come to beg of you, Mistress Helene,
that you will accompany me. The Princess, I know, has great need of a
maid of honor near her person, and will gladly welcome a friend of mine
for the post."
The Little Playmate looked up astonished, as well she might, at this
direct assault, which was moreover spoken with a pretty shamefacedness
and the air of asking almost too great a favor. And, indeed, if there was
any patronage in the thing offered, it was at least carefully kept out of
the manner of asking.
"Lady Ysolinde, I cannot accept your too overpowering favor," said
Helene, after a pause, "but your kindness in thinking at all of me will
always warm my heart."
At this critical moment came my father in, looking more than grave and
severe, so that I judged at once that he had been talking to the Duke
Casimir and had found his post of chief adviser both thankless and
difficult. I knew it could be no matter of his office which worried him,
for that day he wore his holiday attire of white Friesland cloth, and the
broad bonnet in which I loved best to see him. There was no mark of his
calling about him anywhere, save a little Red Axe sewed upon his left
breast like a war veteran's decoration.