YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL
The next morning early, as I went about making my dispositions, and
putting men of trust in positions fit for them--for the Prince has given
me the command of all the soldiers within the city--the Lady Ysolinde
came to me upon the terrace.
"Walk with me a while," she said, "in the lower garden. It is a quiet
place, and I would speak with you."
It was a command that I dared not refuse to obey, yet my greatest enemy
would not accuse me that I went lightly or willingly to such a tryst.
The Lady Ysolinde passed on daintily and proudly before me, and I
followed, more like a condemned criminal lamping heavily to the scaffold
than a lad of mettle accompanying a fair lady to a rendezvous of her own
asking under the greenwood-tree.
But I need not have feared. The Princess's mood was mild, and I saw her
in a humor in which I had never seen her before.
She moved before me over the grass, with her head a little turned up to
the skies, as though appealing out of her innocence to the Beings who sat
behind and sorted out the hearts of men and women.
At a great weeping-elm, under which was a seat, she turned. It formed a
wide canopy of shade, grateful and cool. For the breezes stirred under
the leaves, and the river moved beneath with a pleasant, meditative
hush of sound.
"Hugo Gottfried, once you were my friend," she began; "what have I done
that you should be my friend no more? Tell me plainly. I liked you when
as a lad, the son of the Red Axe, you had come to my father's house about
some boyish freak. I have not done ill by you since that day. And now
that you are a leader of men and of rank and honor here in my husband's
country of Plassenburg, I would be your well-wisher still. I am conscious
of no reason for my having forfeited your liking. But that I would know
for certain--and now."
As she threw back her head and let her clear emerald eyes rest upon me, I
never saw woman born of woman look more innocent. Indeed, in these days
of mistrust, it is innocence under suspicion which usually looks most
guilty, knowing what is expected of it.
"Lady Ysolinde," I made answer, "you try me hard and sore. You put me by
force in the wrong. You do me indeed great honor, as you have ever done
all these years. In reverence and high respect I shall ever hold you for
all that you have done--for your kindness to me and to Helene, the orphan
girl who came from our father's roof with me. I know no reason why there
should be any break in our friendship--nor shall there be, if you will
pardon my folly and--"
"Tush!" she said, impetuously; "you speak things empty, vain, the
rattling of knuckle-bones in a bladder--not live words at all. Think you
I have never listened to true men? Do not I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg,
know the sound of words that have the heart behind them? I have heard you
speak such yourself. Do not insult me then with platitudes, nor try to
divert me with the piping of children in the market-place. I will not
dance to them, nor yet, like a foolish kitchen-wench, smile at the
jingling of your trinketry."
"Your Highness--" I began again.
She waved her hand as if putting a light thing away.
"I was a woman to you before you knew that I was a Princess," she said;
"you need not forget that I am a woman still, cursed with the plate-mail
of rank added to the weariness and inaction of a woman's breaking heart."
I grew acutely conscious that I was not distinguishing myself in this
interview. So I dashed again at the wall, and this time, for a moment at
least, overbore interruption.
"Ysolinde, my dear lady," I said to her, "you are the Prince's and my
good master's wife. And if I have stood aloof, it is that I wished that
he should have the companionship which one day I desire to find for
myself--and also that I might always have the right to look straight into
my master's eyes."
"Now you talk like a silly prating priestling," she said. "You are both
mighty careful of your honesty, your virtue, your companionship--your
precious master and you. But you do not think what it is to starve a
woman's heart, to bid her find her level among broiderers of bannerets
and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be
at the digging of us out of the happier pit of oblivion had only made me
a man, I, at least, should neither have been a straitlaced Jackanapes nor
yet a prating, callow-bearded wiseacre."
"And am I either?" said I, weakly enough.
"You are in danger of becoming both," she said, promptly. "Once I saw
better things in you. I thought I had won me a friend, and that for once
I might put my anchor down. My husband neglects me, so much cannot have
escaped your eagle eye. He is twice my age, and he thinks more of you,
more of Councillor Von Dessauer, more of his horse than of me, Ysolinde
of Plassenburg. And I was made to be loved and to love. How much of
either, think you, have I ever known? The true lot of a woman shut to me,
the sweet love of man and woman wiled from me, even the communion of the
spirit forbidden. I might as lief carry a wizened nut-kernel within my
brain-pan as a thinking soul, for all that any one cares. I am a woman of
another age stranded on the shores of a time made only for men. I am the
woman priests talk against, or perhaps rather the witch-woman Lilith on
the outside of Eden's wall. Or I may be the woman of a time yet to come,
when she who is man's mate shall not be only a gay-decked bird to sit on
his wrist, tethered with a leash and called back to her master with a
silver lure."
These things I had never listened to before, nor, indeed, thought of.
Nevertheless, though I could not answer her, I felt in my heart that
she was wrong, and that a woman has always power over men, being
stronger than all ideals, philosophies, kingdoms--aye, even our holy
religion itself.
"After all," I said, piqued a little at her tone, as men are wont to be
at that which they do not understand, "my Lady Ysolinde, wherefore should
you not tell these things to the Prince, your husband, and not to me,
that am neither your husband nor your lover?"
"And if you had been both?" she interjected, a little breathlessly.
"Then, my lady," I replied, stirred by her persistence, "you would have
obeyed me and served me just as you say. Or else I should have broken
your spirit as a man is broken on the wheel."
It was a prideful saying, and one informed with all ignorance and
conceit. Yet the Lady Ysolinde gave a long sigh.
"Ah, that would have been sweet, too," she said. "You are the one man I
should have delighted to call master, to have done your bidding. That had
been a thing different indeed! But you love me not. You love a chit, a
chitterling--a pretty thing that can but peep and mutter, whose
heart's depths I have sounded with my finger-nail, and whose babyish
vanity I have tickled with a straw."
This was enough and too much.
"Madam," said I, "the clear stars are not fouled by throwing filth at
them, nor yet the Lady Helene--whom I do acknowledge that with all my
heart I love--by the speaking of any ill words. You do but wrong
yourself, most noble lady. For your heart tells you other things, both of
the maid I love and of me that am her true servant, and, if I might, your
true friend."
The Princess reached out her hand, looking, not with anger, but rather
wistfully at me, like a mother at a son who goes to his death with
blasphemy on his lips.
"Forgive me," she said, gently. "I would not at the last have you go
forth thinking ill of me. Indeed, you think all too well, and make me do
things that are better than mine intent, because I know that you expect
them of me. I have done many ill and cruel things in my poor life, simply
from idleness and the empty, unsatisfied heart. If you had loved me or
taught me or driven me, I might have tried better things. Perhaps in the
end, for great love's sake, I may yet do one worthy deed that shall blot
out all the rest. Farewell!"
And without another spoken word she moved away, and left me in the green
pleasaunces of the garden, with my heart riven this way and that, scarce
knowing what I did or where I stood.