Ye who have loved, et cetera, as aforesaid, will comprehend the anxiety
with which Otto henceforth consulted his ring. He was continually
adjusting it to his finger in a manner, as he fancied, to render the
anticipated puncture more perceptible when it should come at last. He
would have worn it on all his fingers in succession had the
conformation of his robust hand admitted of its being placed on any but
the slenderest. Thousands of times he could have sworn that he felt the
admonitory sting; thousands of times he turned the trinket round and
round with desperate impatience; but Aurelia’s form remained as
invisible, her thoughts as inscrutable, as before. His great dread was
that he might be pricked in his sleep, on which account he would sit up
watching far into the morn. For, as he reasoned, not without
plausibility, when could he more rationally hope for a place in
Aurelia’s thoughts than at that witching and suggestive period? She
might surely think of him when she had nothing else to do! Had she
really nothing else to do? And Otto grew sick and livid with jealousy.
It of course frequently occurred to him to doubt and deride the virtues
of the ring, and he was several times upon the point of flinging it
away. But the more he pondered upon the appearance and manner of the
stranger, the less able he felt to resist the conviction of his
truthfulness.
At last a most unmistakable puncture! the distinct, though slight, pang
of a miniature wound. A crimson bead of blood rose on Otto’s finger,
swelled to its due proportion, and became a trickling blot.
“She is thinking of me!” cried he rapturously, as if this were an
instance of the most signal and unforeseen condescension. All the weary
expectancy of the last six months was forgotten. He would have railed
at himself had the bliss of the moment allowed him to remember that he
had ever railed at her.
Otto turned his ring once, and Aurelia became visible in an instant.
She was standing before the mercer’s booth in the chief street of the
little town which adjoined her father’s castle. Her gaze was riveted on
a silk mantle, trimmed with costly furs, which depended from a hook
inside the doorway. Her lovely features wore an expression of extreme
dissatisfaction. She was replacing a purse, apparently by no means
weighty, in her embroidered girdle.
Otto turned the ring the second time, and Aurelia’s silvery accents
immediately became audible to the following effect:
“If that fool Otto were here, he would buy it for me.”
She turned away, and walked down the street. Otto uttered a cry like
the shriek of an uprooted mandrake. His hand was upon the ring to turn
it for the third time; but the stranger’s warning occurred to him, and
for a moment he forbore. In that moment the entire vision vanished from
before his eyes.
What boots it to describe Otto’s feelings upon this revelation of
Aurelia’s sentiments? For lovers, description would be needless; to
wiser people, incomprehensible. Suffice it to say, that as his lady
deemed him a fool he appeared bent on proving that she did not deem
amiss.
A long space of time elapsed without any further admonition from the
ring. Perhaps Aurelia had no further occasion for his purse; perhaps
she had found another pursebearer. The latter view of the case appeared
the more plausible to Otto, and it hugely aggravated his torments.
At last the moment came. It was the hour of midnight. Again Otto felt
the sharp puncture, again the ruby drop started from his finger, again
he turned the ring, and again beheld Aurelia. She was in her chamber,
but not alone. Her companion was a youth of Otto’s age. She was in the
act of placing Otto’s brilliant upon his finger. Otto turned his own
ring, and heard her utter, with singular distinctness:
“This ring was given me by the greatest fool I ever knew. Little did he
imagine that it would one day be the means of procuring me liberty, and
bliss in the arms of my Arnold. My venerable grandmother—”
The voice expired upon her lips, for Otto stood before her.
Arnold precipitated himself from the window, carrying the ring with
him. Otto, glaring at his faithless mistress, stood in the middle of
the apartment with his sword unsheathed. Was he about to use it? None
can say; for at this moment the young Baron burst into the room, and,
without the slightest apology for the liberty he was taking, passed his
sword through Otto’s body.
Otto groaned, and fell upon his face. He was dead. The young Baron
ungently reversed the position of the corpse, and scanned its features
with evident surprise and dissatisfaction.
“It is not Arnold, after all!” he muttered. “Who would have thought
it?”
“Thou seest, brother, how unjust were thy suspicions,” observed
Aurelia, with an air of injured but not implacable virtue. “As for this
abominable ravisher——” Her feelings forbade her to proceed.
The brother looked mystified. There was something beyond his
comprehension in the affair; yet he could not but acknowledge that Otto
was the person who had rushed by him as he lay in wait upon the stairs.
He finally determined that it was best to say nothing about the matter:
a resolution the easier of performance as he was not wont to be lavish
of his words at any time. He wiped his sword on his sister’s curtains,
and was about to withdraw, when Aurelia again spoke:
“Ere thou departest, brother, have the goodness to ring the bell, and
desire the menials to remove this carrion from my apartment.”
The young Baron sulkily complied, and retreated growling to his
chamber.
The attendants carried Otto’s body forth. To the honour of her sex be
it recorded, that before this was done Aurelia vouchsafed one glance to
the corpse of her old lover. Her eye fell on the brazen ring. “And he
has actually worn it all this time!” thought she.
“Would have outraged my daughter, would he?” said the old Baron, when
the transaction was reported to him. “Let him be buried in a
concatenation accordingly.”
“What the guy dickens be a concatrenation, Geoffrey?” interrogated
Giles.
“Methinks it is Latin for a ditch,” responded Geoffrey.
This interpretation commending itself to the general judgment of the
retainers, Otto was interred in the shelving bank of the old moat, just
under Aurelia’s window. A rough stone was laid upon the grave. The
magic ring, which no one thought worth appropriating, remained upon the
corpse’s finger. Thou mayest probably find it there, reader, if thou
searchest long enough.
The first visitor to Otto’s humble sepulchre was, after all, Aurelia
herself, who alighted thereon on the following night after letting
herself down from her casement to fly with Arnold. Their escape was
successfully achieved upon a pair of excellent horses, the proceeds of
Otto’s diamond, which had become the property of a Jew.
On the third night an aged monk stood by Otto’s grave, and wept
plentifully. He carried a lantern, a mallet, and a chisel. “He was my
pupil,” sobbed the good old man. “It were meet to contribute what in me
lies to the befitting perpetuation of his memory.”
Setting down the lantern, he commenced work, and with pious toil
engraved on the stone in the Latin of the period:
“HAC MAGNUS STULTUS JACET IN FOSSA SEPULTUS.
MULIER CUI CREDIDIT MORTUUM ILLUM REDDIDIT.”
Here he paused, at the end of his strength and of his Latin.
“Beshrew my old arms and brains!” he sighed.
“Hem!” coughed a deep voice in his vicinity.
The monk looked up. The personage in the dusky cloak and flame-coloured
jerkin was standing over him.
“Good monk,” said the fiend, “what dost thou here?”
“Good fiend,” said the monk, “I am inscribing an epitaph to the memory
of a departed friend. Thou mightest kindly aid me to complete it.”
“Truly,” rejoined the demon, “it would become me to do so, seeing that
I have his soul here in my pocket. Thou wilt not expect me to employ
the language of the Church. Nathless, I see not wherefore the
vernacular may not serve as well.”
And, taking the mallet and chisel, he completed the monk’s inscription
with the supplementary legend:
“SERVED HIM RIGHT.”