XXVI
HOW ALBRECHT AND ERNA FORGAVE EACH OTHER
Erna came from her interview with Father Christopher calmer in mind, but still full of unrest and disquiet. She feared to see Albrecht, and yet she had asked the priest to send him to her. She had confessed to Father Christopher how far she had gone astray, but his assurances that all would be well, and that she had turned in time from the temptation which beset her, could not console her without the forgiveness of Albrecht, and in her secret heart Erna did not lack that keen fear of her lord which is the necessary foundation of a woman's love. She believed that Albrecht had observed nothing of her intimacy with Count Stephen, and she dreaded lest his old imperiousness should break out at the disclosure which she must make to him.
Fastrade came to summon her to supper, which was already served in the hall; but Erna sent her away, and waited in the dusk longing and yet fearing to hear the approaching steps of her husband. When at last she heard him coming, she could not control the terror which seized her. She felt that kiss which Count Stephen had pressed upon her lips in the beech wood burning as if it were a spot of living fire, and she sprang up with the desire to escape overpowering all other feelings. She met Albrecht on the threshold of her chamber, and in the darkness she had touched him before she realized how near he was.
"I must hasten to supper," she said breathlessly. "Fastrade summoned me."
He put his arm about her and led her back into the chamber. She clung to him for support, for her strength left her, and she could scarcely stand.
"Wait yet a little," he said. "First I have that which I must say to you."
She submitted with a feeling of despair. She thought, with a terrible throb of pain, of the wedding night when he had first entered that room, and of all that had befallen since then. She was utterly abashed and humiliated, and in her own sight she was viler than the vilest. Albrecht led her to a seat, groping his way in the darkness to the very spot by the window whence she had first seen him riding out of the pine forest below like a forest god. She sank down beside him, and for a moment both of them were silent.
"I have to confess to thee," Albrecht said at length; and the strangeness of his tone and of his address struck her with so deep an amazement that for the moment all her own fears were forgotten in wonder. "If thou canst forgive the wrong I have done thee – "
He broke off and bent forward in the darkness as if he would have kissed her. Then he drew back.
"Forgive thee?" stammered Erna, confused and amazed. "How hast thou wronged me?"
"If one should come," Albrecht said, his tone lower than before, "and should win thee and wed thee when thou knewest not what he was, or how unworthy, couldst thou forgive him if afterward he loved thee truly and more than tongue could tell?"
The fear of some horrible revelation came over her. She forgot that she had shrunk at his coming. The thought that she might have been deceived drove from her mind all recollection of her own fault. She sat up with sudden energy.
"Albrecht!" she exclaimed. "What is it that thou hast to tell me? Art thou not noble?"
"I have not lied to thee," he answered with a touch of bitterness amid his humility which did not escape her. "My father was indeed lord of the Neiderwasser valley."
"Then what hast thou to tell me?"
It was some moments before he answered, but then, with a voice full of passion and pain, he told her all that he had related to Father Christopher on the morning after the marriage. Erna listened with eyes wide stretched, as if she would pierce the darkness, her heart beating so that it seemed to her that it would suffocate her. It seemed a thing so impossible to understand that she had indeed wed a strange creature from the forest, and not a man at all, that at first she refused to believe it.
"If this were true," she said, "surely Father Christopher would have told me. He would not have suffered me to imperil my soul by such a union had it indeed been true that thou wert – Oh, Albrecht, thou surely art human! I should not love thee else."
"And dost thou indeed love me?"
She flung herself forward into his strong arms.
"I have loved thee," she cried, "from the first moment when I saw thee ride out of the wood below."
"And now?"
"And now," she repeated, "thou tellest me that thou art not a man, but that thou art a monster of the wood."
"Truly I was a monster, but thou hast made me other. Thou hast given me a soul, and now I am human as thou art. It was that I might have a soul that Herr von Zimmern trained me, and only to-day I know that it was because he wished me ill, and schemed that I should be lost forever."
"And must thou indeed be lost forever?" Erna cried, starting away from him and then clasping him more closely.
"Nay, sweetheart; thou hast given me a soul, and I have striven that it be not lost. Thou hast given me a soul, and thou wilt help me that it be for me all blessedness instead of the ruin that he in his wickedness meant."
"I?"
The remembrance of all that she had not told him swept over her like a wave of the sea. She slipped from his side down to his feet, and crouched there, clasping his knees. She remembered all her old longing for spiritual greatness and for virtue, and how she had fallen into the temptations of the lower things. Bitter tears gushed from her eyes, and a sob choked her voice.
"Oh, it is not for me to help thee!" she cried. "Thou art above me, kobold though thou hast been. Thou shouldst not confess to me; it is I who must confess to thee. It is thou who must forgive. Thou canst not guess why Father Christopher sent thee to me to-night."
"Sweetheart," Albrecht answered, bending over to raise her, "I have seen all from day to day, and I knew how the count would have ensnared thee; but I had no fear that in the end thou wouldst understand what danger lay in him. It is I who am at fault, since it is I from whom thou hast learned the longings that have made thy temptation. If thou canst forgive me, and love me still, it may be that in the end we may help each other, and our souls that are one be together lifted up."
Beneath in the courtyard there was a stir as of horses and of retainers, and upon the ceiling over their heads there flashed the light of a torch which some servant carried down below. In the faint reflected light Erna could almost see the face of her husband, and with a sob of perfect peace and of swelling aspiration she cast her arms about his neck, and felt herself gathered into his strong embrace.
As they sat there talking and telling each other all the things which they had hitherto kept secret, the bustle in the courtyard increased, and presently came the damsel Elsa to say that the Count Stephen had determined to take his leave of Rittenberg that night, and prayed the countess to receive his farewell.
"To-night?" Albrecht repeated in astonishment. "Surely he is jesting."
"So the gracious Lady Adelaide said," returned Elsa, with saucy demureness, "and she swore it by the body of Saint Fridolin; but still the noble count declares that he will set out."
"But the darkness, and the danger of missing the way," Erna said; "and above all the wolves!"
"The Lady Adelaide mentioned them all," the damsel responded, "and witnessed them all by Saint Fridolin's body; but quoth the knight that if he could not keep his bones from the wolves he deserved to have them picked. Only on one charge will he stay."
"And what is that?" demanded Erna; but she saw the look askance which Elsa gave toward Albrecht, and the blood rushed into her cheek.
"It is that the gracious countess insist upon his staying," Elsa answered, courtesying so profoundly that the rushlight she carried wavered and flared.
Erna waved her hand in dismissal, and the damsel with her rushlight took herself out of the chamber. Left together in the darkness, their eyes blinded by having looked on the flame, Albrecht and Erna drew close together, and she clung to him as if he had saved her from some mighty danger.
"Wilt thou that he go or stay?" Albrecht asked, the tenderness in his voice showing her that he did not ask the question from any doubt of her. "Do not dismiss him for fear I shall be troubled if he stay."
She led him to the window where the torches below shone strongly enough for them to see each other's face, and there she looked into his eyes a moment.
"What I desire," she said, "is that he go and leave us alone together as we were before he came. Wilt thou not go down and receive his farewells? I wish not to see him again."
He kissed her with fervor, and yet with something of solemnity in his manner.
"We have forgiven each other," he said, "and now we will help each other."
Then he went down to meet Count Stephen; and Erna, left alone, looked out upon the lights of the courtyard with a sigh and yet with a great peace and joy filling her breast.