XIX
HOW ERNA AND ALBRECHT TALKED OF LIFE
Not entirely had Albrecht and Erna lost the old fashion of reading and of talking together, although after the coming of Count Stephen and yet more after Herr von Zimmern had returned to the castle, so greatly was the time taken up with the chase and with jocund sports and with feasting, that there was little space in which to carry on the former studies. One morning when the rain was beating against the castle casements and the spirits of the storm were shrieking over the forest, they sat together in a chamber, and talked of the things which now were of chief interest to the husband.
"I cannot tell how it hath chanced," Albrecht said, "that we read so little together now."
"In the long winter there will be time enough for that," Erna answered. "Thou wouldst not have me like a clerk that cannot get his nose clear of a book. In sooth, I might as well be a nun at once and done with it."
Her husband looked at her in troubled silence a moment.
"Meseemeth, sweetheart," he said wistfully, "that I have made thee like to that which I was myself when first I came to thee out of the wood."
"And meseemeth, certes," she answered, with a faint touch of scorn in her tone, "that I have made thee like to that which I was when thou camest. I was but a dull brooder over pious scrolls, and not in the least did I know what life meant."
"And what does life mean to thee now?" he asked.
"That thou needest not to ask, for of a surety thou knewest when thou didst come to Rittenberg."
"But tell me, sweetheart."
"Life means delight; it is to be glad and jocund. To be sad and moping is to be dead," Erna cried impulsively. "Life is the chase and the dance and the feast; it is joy. Life is to-day, and not to-morrow; life is to do, not to wait; it is to rejoice, not to mourn. Callest thou that life which mews itself up in a cell like the dungeon of a felon, and flickers out like a candle in the dark? I trow that that is not life; it is only the poor, pale shadow of it."
"That is life as thou sayest," Albrecht returned, "that rejoices, and that takes delight in the chase and the feast and the dance; but even the beasts of the forest and the nixies and the kobolds can share all of these things. Surely thou dost not count this the whole of life?"
"Not the whole; no. Yet it is all that one can be sure of finding pleasure in; all that – "
"Nay," Albrecht interrupted softly; "since thou thyself hast taught me that man has other within him than the sense of the beasts and the wood-folk in the forest yonder, thou shalt not now belie thyself by putting thy kind on a level with the brutes. It is to foster the spirit which he alone of all living beings hath, that man should make his cumber, rather than to feed upon the delights of the body."
"Beshrew me," cried Erna, "but thou talkest as if I had indeed taken thee in hand to instruct thee as a master teacheth a pupil."
"It can scarce be," he responded, "that two live together, the more if they love each the other, without that they do teach and mould each the other. Thou hast in sooth instructed me in much more than thou knowest, sweetheart; and I would that I had as well influenced thee as thou hast me. Of a truth our lives now are that which we have made each other; and it behooveth us to look to it well that it be the life of the soul rather than of the body, which engageth us."
"In good sooth," Erna laughed back mockingly, "now thou talkest like a priest. Father Christopher shall give thee his gown, and thou shalt be sent to preach to the Huns and the Saxons in the north."
Albrecht cast down his eyes and sighed so heavily that Erna put her hand upon his arm and added coaxingly:
"Nay, dear heart, thou shalt not be vexed with me. I did but jest. I feel all that thou sayest, but the joy of life overcomes me. I cannot see why I should let to-day slip when to-morrow may be I know not what; when old age will come so soon, and I shall have strength for naught but to sit in the chimney-corner and think of what I would have done or of what others may still do."
"Thou art right, sweetheart," Albrecht said, "in that thou wouldst live to-day; but thou art wrong in that thou thinkest the best joys are in the sports of mirth and wantonness. Surely thou hast tasted the pleasures of the spirit within thee, and thou knowest that these are no less but rather more than those of the body. And for old age and its coming, since thou canst not tell of to-morrow, thinkest thou that it were a better preparation for a joyful morrow to live in jollity and in earthly wise, or to cherish the soul that is within thee to the end that in after time it shall be a companion to thee?"
Erna tossed up her hands with a wilful gesture of mockery and determination. Then she sprang to her feet and threw her arms about her husband's neck and kissed him.
"Come," she cried, "thou wert not wont to be so dull and so clerkly. Leave these things for Father Christopher. Is not my kiss better than aught thou canst find in the scroll of Saint Cuthbert? When we are old we will sit in the ingle together and learn all manner of pious lore for the good of our souls; but now we are young, and it is wisdom to seize upon youth while it is ours."
"Truly," he answered; "and yet it were well, too, to consider that the youth of the spirit should not be disregarded more than the youth of the body. Of a truth," he went on, his voice dropping, and a new light coming into his eyes, "what am I, sweetheart, to tell thee what the spirit is, when thou hast changed me from a wood thing that knew not of the spirit of man, into that I am; and yet so vast and so holy do these things of the spirit appear to me that I tremble, and all my heart is stirred. It is as if one approached the place of a god, is it not, Erna, only to think upon the possibilities of what is within us. How can I be content to become once more that which I have been, a creature as insensible to all this as the wolf that howls in the forest down there, and only cares for what he shall eat to-day? I am overwhelmed only to see how great and how noble are the things to which the soul of man may reach out."
Erna was silent a moment, impressed by his earnestness; then she shook herself and laughed.
"Hast thou then been a beast in the forest, or one of the wood-creatures?" she demanded mockingly. "Of what good is all this talk? Let us go down to the hall and hear Count Stephen sing the ballads he hath learned at court."
"And it seemeth to me," Albrecht said, detaining her yet a moment longer, "that thou goest to the forest too much. The creatures of the wood are on the side of body; and not that only, but they make for evil, and thou canst not tell how they may lure thee on to do that which is forbidden."
"Am I not, then, of strength great enough to guard myself from the ill counsels of the wood-folk?" she asked, smiling upon him. "Methinks that they can do small harm to Christian folk."
"They can do no harm to him that is in himself armed against them," Albrecht answered gravely; "but they are ever in wait for those whose mind may turn toward them and toward forbidden pleasures."
Erna flushed faintly, and her lips parted as if she would speak in impatience or anger; then she controlled herself, and replied with a show of gayety:
"Then it were wise not to forbid me aught, since then there will be no chance for me to follow after forbidden things."
And so she departed out of the chamber, and sought out Count Stephen with the petition that he sing to her; a request which he was not slow to grant.
XX
HOW THEY RODE TO FLY THE FALCON
The wood was filled with whispers in the autumn afternoon, as if the trees were telling one another things which were to come to them soon, gossip leaning toward gossip with confidential mien. The sense of unseen creatures, presences quick with the keen life of their kind yet not sharing in human being, was diffused through the air like the scent of the fallen leaves. The Countess Erna, who rode here to-day, felt a vague dread, even in the sunlight and with her troop to come to her aid in case harm threatened her. She had a feeling as if she were watched and followed by the wood-folk, and had it not been that she was much engrossed with the consciousness of Count Stephen's presence she might have turned homeward.
As it was she struck her palfrey sharply with her whip, and went galloping through the wood, with her cousin close after. On her wrist was her favorite falcon, his bell tinkling as she rode. The west wind fanned her cheeks, hot with the flush which had sprung in them at the soft words Von Rittenberg had been whispering into her ears as they came through the pine wood below the castle steep. She heard the hoof-beats of his horse behind her like an echo, which repeated the things he had been saying, and although she knew beyond peradventure that she should lose in his esteem by not showing him that she was angry, yet withal so little had she been in sooth displeased, that she could but illy feign displeasure.
As they rode, the mind of the countess was busy with an endeavor to understand her own feelings, as a fly which hath been ensnared by the spider struggles to regain the freedom of his wings. She was herself entangled in a web of circumstance and of passion, and she glowed with a warmth which was at once shame and desire. She was not without some proper indignation against Count Stephen, and yet she desired with a curiosity which was not all unwilling, to learn what more he would dare to whisper in her ear before they came again to the castle from this hunt upon which she had ridden against the wish of her husband. Her blood seemed on fire. She repeated to herself the words in which she had for the first time set at naught the wishes of Albrecht, and with strange inconsistency she was angry that he had not forced her to remain at the castle. She said to herself that when she had declared her defiance of his will that she go not with the count to fly the falcon, her husband should have constrained her to obedience. She could not divine why it was that Albrecht seemed to look upon her as a being higher than himself, and to yield to her will as if it were that of one who had the right to command. He seemed less strong and noble than she had believed him when he failed to bend her pride to his wish.
Erna was a woman, and she did not ask herself what would have been her feelings had she at this moment been a prisoner at home, instead of careering thus across the forest with the soft west wind blowing in her face and a tingling sense of the hoof-beats of Count Stephen's steed just behind her. Though it be not when they are most kindly entreated that women be most just, yet are they not to be constrained into doing justice to those who love them.
Very lovely was the countess to-day, as she rode through the greenwood. She was clad in a robe of green cloth, the color of the new tips of the pine branches in the springtime. Her cap was embroidered with gold, and its tuft of heron's plume was held in its place by a clasp of jewels. Her hawk was a jerfalcon as white as the snow new-fallen, upon which the sun shines ere yet it hath been smirched or sullied; and his hood and jesses were of crimson, of the same hue as her gloves, which were richly enwrought with golden thread in quaint devices. The spotless plumage of the bird against the red of the glove was wondrously fair to see, and wondrously fair was the lady as she carried the falcon against her breast.
Little did it please the temper of Erna that Herr von Zimmern should have taken it upon himself to suppose that she rode to-day because he had been to the trouble of riding in the early morning to the meadow by the lake and bringing word again that the ducks, now on their way southward, were there. She was well assured in her own mind that she had been minded to please no one but herself when she had insisted in setting out despite the wish of Albrecht that she go not. Certainly she had no longing to show friendliness to Herr von Zimmern for his service, since to say sooth the prejudice which she had from his first coming held against the cripple had in no wise softened with time, albeit he had seemed to be devoted to Albrecht and to her; neither had it been her wish, she assured herself, to pleasure Count Stephen, however his earnestness in the matter might seem to give color to such a supposition. She was only of the mind to come, and to show her husband, who each day became more and more wearisomely given to devout matters, that she was not to be ruled by his unreasonable whims and to shut herself up as if she were a nun in a cloister instead of being lady of Rittenberg, the fairest holding in all the country round.
She was not without a secret anger that Albrecht gave no sign of seeing how his guest was striving to steal away the heart of his wife. She set her teeth with vexation that no token indicated that the baron was even aware of the peril in which his happiness stood. She said to herself that there could be little love where one saw only such indifference. Her clear cheek flushed hotly as the thought came that it might after all be indifference rather than blindness which made her husband so calm. She recalled that while he wooed her he had found the kisses of Elsa to his liking, and the doubt whether he were not one of the men whose affection goes as lightly as it comes, pierced her heart. The very suspicion made her hot with rage.
Yet surely Albrecht had declared that the caress of no other woman could evermore be sweet to him; it was only that he was sunk into this mire of religious musing in which Father Christopher encouraged him. She half hated the old priest at the thought. She wondered how far it would be possible for Count Stephen to carry his wooing before the wrath of Albrecht would break out. The question affected her almost as if she already felt the caress of the lover. She became suddenly so keenly conscious of the presence of the count behind her that she glanced back as if in fear. Then she reined in her palfrey so that her damsel Fastrade, who rode discreetly in the rear, might overtake her.
For a time she paced forward demurely, feeling the sidelong glances of the count upon her like a hand, and with difficulty restraining the impulse to look up and meet his burning eyes. She knew well that he watched her as a fowler might watch a bird that is fluttering ever nearer the snare; and every moment it became harder for her to maintain her calm. Suddenly the impulse seized her to dash wildly forward along the woodland way.
"Come, Fastrade!" she called imperatively.
She struck her palfrey sharply, and onward she flew, her damsel following as well as she might. She felt as if she were escaping from danger; the wood seemed full of beings in league with Count Stephen; she even seemed to hear wicked whispers in her ears, so clear that she could have sworn that they were pronounced by unseen lips; some presence tried to hold her back, and only the need of escape made her forget for the moment to be afraid; for a brief time a wild exhilaration thrilled her blood, as if in leaving Count Stephen behind in the beech wood she were overcoming the unseen powers of evil and freeing herself from temptation.
"Ride, Fastrade!" she called backward over her shoulder, conscious in the brief glance behind that the plume of the count was still to be seen as he galloped easily after them. "Ride! faster, faster!"
The falcon fluttered against her breast, almost thrown from her wrist by the swiftness of her pace; her heart fluttered beneath, half in fear and half in a dangerously delicious confusion. The very air, soft and perfumed, languorous and enervating, seemed to melt her resolution and to help to overcome her. She held up her arm, and shook her falcon until he reeled again, tossing his hooded head so that his bell rang right merrily. She broke into wild laughter, and along the green arches of the wood she heard the soft voices of the unseen ones laugh with her; but she no longer felt as if she were combating the powers about her; she did but jest with them and they with her. She trembled without fearing and yet without knowing why.
"On, Fastrade!" she cried still. "Faster, faster!"
Suddenly, as she looked through the beech-tree boles, which here began to grow more sparsely, as the riders approached the meadow where they were to throw off the falcons, Erna saw two figures. Her first thought was that they were creatures of the wood, but in a moment more she saw that it was her husband riding with Herr von Zimmern. The sight sobered her instantly. She reined in her palfrey so abruptly that Fastrade, who had much ado to keep up with her mistress, hardly now escaped dashing against her. Erna could not divine why Albrecht should be here when she supposed him to be at home. Her first fearful thought, which the guiltiness of her mind conjured up, was that he had come to play the spy upon her and the count; but the openness with which he allowed himself to be seen, and the grave courtesy with which he saluted her as she rode by, showed her that this was not the object of his ride. Albrecht did not attempt to join her, but rode into the wood so quickly that neither of Erna's companions saw him, albeit had Fastrade been less occupied with her palfrey, thrown into confusion by the suddenness with which he had been checked, she might have perceived the baron.
Although Erna could not in the least determine why Albrecht was there, the sight of him had instantly subdued her wild mood. She became quiet and thoughtful, and for all the afternoon while they flew their hawks, she watched almost in silence; so that the count jested upon her soberness.
"Didst thou, then, see a ghost in the wood?" he demanded; "or was it that thou hast ridden across the track of the Wild Huntsman? Certain it is that something has come to thee since thou fleddest from me to ride on with thy damsel. Thou art too beautiful to be trusted in the forest without a knight beside thee; sooner or later is a kobold sure to capture thee if thou ridest thus recklessly."
Something in his tone angered the Lady of Rittenberg. Since the hour when she had thoughtlessly put into his hand the scroll of Ovid with its pictures of such wickedness that a modest dame might by no means give them unto the gaze of another, and which she blushed to see when she examined the parchment more closely afterward, it had seemed to Erna that Count Stephen accosted her with a freedom which he had not carried of old. She turned from him now, and bent her regard upon the jess of her falcon, as if she were making sure that it were secure, as the bird rested upon her wrist after having struck down a brace of ducks.
"Nay," the count continued, laughing and speaking in a tone which was of itself like a caress, "and thou takest to being angry with me, Mistress Cousin, I am indeed undone. It is but that the light of thy beauty hath so dazzled thy slave that I know not what I say, and so in sooth may unwitting offend thee."
"Now thou art minded to jest and to mock me," Erna returned, instantly relenting. "I am not angry. Why should I be? Only that it is perhaps not customary for the guest to praise the beauty of his hostess as thou hast of late fallen into the fashion of doing."
"No," the count answered gravely, and with a look into her eyes that she could not meet unabashed; "but then it is not often that the guest so truly and so heartily loveth his hostess."
"It hath a savor as if thou wouldst flout at my poor face," she continued, making her countenance as if she heard not his bold words; "and surely it is not seemly that one should mock his hostess."
"Of a truth, fair cousin," Count Stephen began eagerly, "I —
"Hush!" she cried softly, her manner changing. Then aloud she said, moving nearer to the spot where stood Fastrade: "Have we not a brave quarry to-day? I have never seen the hawks do better."
The day was well worn when the train started to return to the castle, and in the beech wood the shadows were gathering so that one could see but dimly there; and it might be that when Erna turned her head as she rode through a leafy covert and spoke as if to Fastrade, she in truth believed her damsel to be behind her, albeit the ambling of the maiden's palfrey was little enough like to the trampling of the stallion upon which Count Stephen rode, so near that the nose of his steed was all but touching the haunches of Erna's. And yet before she turned the countess hesitated and flushed there in the shadow, and her voice as she spoke the name of her damsel had in it a tremor which could hardly have been there had she in all verity spoken for the ears of Fastrade.
Count Stephen pressed his horse forward so that their steeds were abreast in the narrow way.
"Nay, it is I," he said, so close that as he leaned toward her in the dusk she felt his breath hot upon her cheek.
She reined her palfrey away from him, but it seemed to her as if something unseen thrust itself in her way so that she could not escape. It came upon her that the wood-folk were in league with her cousin, and her terror made her turn again toward Count Stephen, although she shook the reins of her palfrey to urge him forward. But the path was too narrow for two horses to run together in it, and Count Stephen kept his steed close beside her own. Her falcon she had given to Rupert, who rode far behind, and it occurred to her now that had she but kept it with her she might have let it escape and so produced an excitement by means of which to be freed from her entanglement.
"Dearest!" breathed the count at her ear; and the passion of his voice stirred her pulses with fiery dread.
She felt as if she were suffocating; she longed to flee, and yet she longed also to stay. Some resistless fascination seemed to overpower her, and without speaking she rode by her lover's side for the space of a falcon's plunge at his quarry. Then Count Stephen half threw himself from his horse to hers, cast his strong arm about her, and kissed her.
The touch of his lips broke the spell which passion and opportunity had been weaving about her. She tore herself out of his embrace with a vehemence which nearly threw him from his saddle, and struck her palfrey with all her force. Before he recovered his seat she was fleeing down the forest path with all her speed, panting and weeping, and urging her palfrey with voice and with whip toward the castle.