XV
HOW COUNT STEPHEN RETURNED
The bright-hued harvest-crocus had faded in the meadows, and over the blackly green pine forests had come a colder hue; the ferns in the beech wood were beginning to look wan and yellow, as if the thought that autumn was at hand had already dismayed them. The heather was tinged with russet, and all the skies upon which Erna looked, as one morning she gazed discontentedly from the casement of her chamber, were filmed with soft hazes whose faint purple was as intangible as the first shadow of coming twilight, which one feels rather than sees.
Erna sighed as she leaned half over the stone ledge upon which the sun lay warmly. The doves were preening themselves almost within reach of her touch, and she waved her hand impatiently to frighten them away, since in her untoward mood their soft reiterated coo vexed her ears. She had learned in these days, during which she had been seeking pleasure as she had never sought it before, the meaning of ennui. She was restless with the awakened stir of a hundred desires which demanded continual gratification. She longed for excitement, for the movement of crowds, for the delights of the eye and the lusts of the flesh which once would not have awakened in her heart a throb of interest. She wanted continually fresh diversions, new sports, strange revels, rich viands, all the alluring joys of the senses to which she had of old in her innocence and ignorance been so indifferent.
This morning she had been urging her husband to take her to court. Charlemagne was at Mayence, and there were echoes of the gay doings there forward which reached even as far as Rittenberg. The countess longed to see the brave shows, the rich pageants, the gorgeous raiment; to sit at the banquets, and to dazzle the eyes of the gallants with her beauty and her jewels, finer than the queen's own. She had urged upon Albrecht the propriety of paying his respects in person to his sovereign; but her entreaties, her arguments, and her protestations had been alike unavailing. Albrecht was kind in the manner of his refusal, but he was still persistent in it, and in the end Erna had found herself utterly powerless to change his determination not to leave Rittenberg.
"They tell strange tales of the court," he said in reply to her pleading. "There is more license there than it becomes a modest woman to see, and over-much worldliness as well. Surely it were not well to put one's self in a place like this needlessly, beloved."
Erna had answered nothing, but she had left him with a feeling almost like anger in her heart. She knew why he wished to stay at Rittenberg. It was that he might go on with his tiresome studies with Father Christopher, to which Albrecht gave more and more time every day. As for the wickedness of the court, she was a married woman, and with a husband to protect her, and one moreover of a bearing so knightly as that of Von Waldstein, it was not to be supposed that she could come to any harm. She sighed with fresh impatience as she reflected how deeply immersed in the study of spiritual things her husband had become since their marriage. She was not, she assured herself, less fond of him than of old, but it was to the last degree provoking that just as she had learned to appreciate the delight of life, Albrecht should devote so much thought to things which she had laid aside as dull.
As she mused in this fashion, looking out of the window as she had looked when Albrecht rode gallantly out of the pine forest at the foot of the castle hill on that day when Erna first saw him, once more she heard the note of a bugle-horn in the valley, and once more a knight rode out of the covert into sight, followed by his men-at-arms. With eager curiosity Erna peered out at the new-comer, and almost instantly her eye caught sight of the pennon of the Von Rittenbergs of Schaffhausen, and understood that the visitor was her cousin, Count Stephen, who was probably on his return from Strasburg, and who had accepted her invitation to repeat his visit to Rittenberg.
For an instant her cheek flushed with vexation, her old dislike of the count reawakening, but instantly her changed taste asserted itself, and she smiled. She watched the train as it rode up to the gate, and then she turned back into her chamber with joyous haste. It came into her mind that she could make an impression upon her guest, and she began straightway to consider how she should array herself to go to meet him. She chose from her jewel-case a string of rubies, and quickly bound it upon her head like a fillet; and as she did so her woman, Fastrade, came to announce to her the arrival of Count von Rittenberg.
The Lady Adelaide reached the great hall before her, and Count Stephen was speaking with the old dame with his back to the stairway by which Erna descended. The countess was already close to him before he perceived her. Then he wheeled suddenly, almost turning his back upon Lady Adelaide in his astonishment at the beauty of the woman before him. Erna did not lose one shade of the look of amazement and admiration which came into his face as he looked at her.
"God's blood!" he cried. "What has come to thee, Cousin? Indeed, this marriage of which they told me at Mayence has made a new creature of thee. I greet thy ladyship, and that I did not send congratulations on thy marriage is no fault of mine, since it was all over before I knew of it."
"It is no matter," replied Erna, giving him her hand and smiling upon him with a pleased sense of companionship which she had never experienced in his presence before; "since thou hast come in person to bring them, we consent to overlook the fact that thou art somewhat tardy. But hast thou been at Mayence as well as to Strasburg? I did not know that was in thy mind."
"It was not when I left here," he answered, regarding her with so undisguised a look of admiration that she blushed under it and turned aside her eyes; "but being in the way of travelling I pushed on to Mayence, and there I saw the court, and there I heard of thy marriage."
"Fain would we hear of the court," Lady Adelaide said, leading the way to a seat in the broad recess of a window. "Sit thee down here, and tell us what thou canst of the doings and the braveries there, while the page brings thee a cup of wine. I hope too, on my soul, that thou hast more wit in speech of woman's apparel than have most of the knights I have known, for we would know of the raiment of the queen and her damsels, and in good sooth it is seldom that a knight is cunning enough to tell anything of that sort rightly, albeit so simple is it that the most foolish kitchen wench that had but seen the royal train ride past could describe it all."
"And therein is it to be seen that a knight's head is not like that of a foolish kitchen wench," laughed Count Stephen, seating himself comfortably among the cushions beside the two ladies.
"But tell me," Erna said, "from whom didst thou hear of the marriage? It is not likely that it is a topic which is greatly discussed at court."
"The court concerns itself with many a matter that is of less moment," replied he, gallantly; "but it was from a certain Herr von Zimmern that I had the tidings. He was at an inn where I lodged, and when he heard my name he made bold to speak to me. He is an ill-favored knave enough, but a shrewd and a witty."
"I like him not," Erna answered.
A brief silence followed this remark. Erna was confused by the fact that the count, whom she had found so little to her taste before, should now seem to her so agreeable. It was impossible for her not to see from his admiring looks that he was pursuing a somewhat similar train of thought in regard to her, and at the reflection she blushed faintly once more, with a thrill of gratified vanity.
"But where," Count Stephen broke the silence to ask, "is the Baron von Waldstein? I am anxious to meet my new relative, and," he added, with a look into the face of Erna, "my successful rival."
"My husband," she replied, vainly trying to appear as if she had not heard the latter part of his remark, "is with Father Christopher. They study together sometimes."
"God's blood!" cried Von Rittenberg, with a burst of laughter, "hast thou then married a clerk, Cousin? Fain would I see this new master of Rittenberg that studies with a priest. If the Huns come, thou mayst have to call upon the younger branch of the family to defend thee," he added, turning to the Lady Adelaide. "At least we can bear swords if we be only the 'Schaffleute.' We are not to be looked for in the cells of priests."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, in angry return. "It is not to outsiders that we have been forced to look for defence in the past, and it were well that thou seest the new lord before thou speakest scorn of him so lightly. Belike it were not so well were he to hear thee!"
"My husband is here to speak for himself," Erna interposed, rising with great dignity as Albrecht, summoned by a page, came into the hall.
The count looked at the superb figure which advanced toward him, and for an instant he stood struck dumb with astonishment.
"God's blood!" he cried out so loudly that Albrecht heard him half-way across the wide hall. "That is not a man; it is a god!"
"It is the lord of our poor castle!" returned Lady Adelaide, sweeping him a sarcastic courtesy. "Accept our thanks that thou hast promised to defend it and him from the Huns when they come."
XVI
HOW THE COUNT TALKED AND SANG
The uncanny wood-folk who hovered about Rittenberg in these days might well have had their fill of minstrelsy and mirth. If life had been jocund before the return of Count Stephen, it may well be understood that it was gayer yet now that he had come. Von Rittenberg had vowed his life to pleasure; and life to him was much what it was to the soulless creatures of the forest, in that it meant to him nothing higher than the delights of the senses. He prolonged his stay at the castle upon the slightest urging, suggesting one amusement after another, and joining with hearty zest in whatever sports were forward.
"It is well that my steed brought me hither," the count said to his cousin one day. "Indeed the beast was wiser than I, for I was minded not to come this way at all, so little did I dream that thou wouldst have been so changed."
"And is it only thy steed, then, that we have to thank for thy visit?" she asked with a smile.
"Only the steed," he returned; "for when I was come to the place where the ways part, I was minded to turn southward, and to ride on homeward without let or stay; and then it was that my horse would not, and resolutely set his head toward your castle. My squire will have it that an old man with a white beard and eyes like fire did catch at the bridle-rein, but I saw naught, and do not regard his foolish fancy."
Erna laughed and made some jest at the knight's unwillingness to come to Rittenberg; but Albrecht, who had been by, turned pale, and when he was next alone with the priest, he said to him:
"Dost thou think, Father, that the folk of the forest can work harm to one who has won an immortal soul?"
"That thou shouldst know better than I, having lived among them," the other answered; "only of this be sure: however much they might harm the body, it is not given them to reach the immortal part. What dost thou fear?"
"I fear naught," Albrecht answered; "but he who is ruler of the kobolds in the forest round about Rittenberg, as was my father in the Neiderwasser valley, is sore incensed by my marriage. He hath had certain speech with Herr Frederich concerning it, and it is he who turned the Count von Rittenberg in this direction when he was minded to ride past. I like it not."
Neither did it make the priest more easy in his mind to learn that the king of the kobolds was become concerned in the affairs of his mistress; but there seemed naught that he might do concerning the matter save to watch for what should come and to pray fervently to the saints for their gracious protection. He could not divine what it could boot to the kobold that Count Stephen should come again to Rittenberg, but none the less he wished the guest gone.
There was little token, however, that the guest was minded to take his departure. He lingered from day to day, and always he became more and more the leader in the life of the castle and in all its gayety. It was a constant source of amazement to Count Stephen that Erna should have so changed, or, as he phrased it to himself, should so have improved during his absence. She was no longer a cold passionless maiden, moving in a world of ideals and pious dreams remote from his ken; she was a beautiful, passionate woman, who stirred his pulses, and who responded with eager readiness to any suggestion of pleasure or sport which he made. He began to feel that he had made a grievous error in refusing the alliance which had been tacitly offered him, and to nourish a sense of injustice toward the man who had robbed him of the possession of this beautiful woman whom now he found so suited to his taste. He did not reason that to Albrecht must be due in no small measure this transformation, and if such a thought had crossed his mind he would not have doubted his own ability to produce the same result had Erna been his wife instead of the baron's.
It was hardly a proof of the vanity of the count that he believed that his cousin, as he continually called her, making of the relationship a pretext for many little familiarities which, albeit they were harmless enough, caused the eyes of Albrecht to glow with jealous rage, felt the attraction which their natures had for each other. She showed her liking by tokens which though they were slight were unmistakable; and Count Stephen, who had had not a little experience in love affairs, smiled to himself as he reflected upon the faint pressure of the hand, the half averted-glance, the almost unheard sigh which he had from time to time won from Erna.
It was quite in keeping with the count's cleverness that he had not failed to perceive that the sympathy between Erna and her husband was becoming fainter. It was evident that every day they found themselves less wholly one. More and more did the baron give himself up to pious studies, while Erna was thus more and more thrown into the company of Von Rittenberg. Count Stephen had secretly a profound contempt for his host, the idea of piety and that of study being alike ridiculous in his mind. He admired Albrecht's skill in hunting, his strength, and his superb figure, but he was never able to look upon the studies which had become the chief interest of Albrecht's daily life as other than a subject for jest and ridicule. It is true that he had learned that Erna resented his jests upon this theme, but he was acute enough to observe that her anger was turned quite as much toward her husband for giving occasion for them as at her guest for daring to make them. He found in the Lady Adelaide an ally, since that worldly old dame liked the ways of Albrecht no more than did Erna; and the fact that the great-aunt was really very fond of Albrecht only made her the more irritated at his course. She joined with Count Stephen, and often the quip which he left half spoken was taken up and put into words by Lady Adelaide, while Erna frowned and bit her lips with vexation.
"Good sooth," he said one morning, as he sat with Erna, who was working a tapestry in which with cunning skill she was depicting those wars of Charlemagne in which her father had led the Swabian guard of which the emperor had been so proud, "thy husband should to court. The king is marvellously well disposed toward learning. Thou knowest he hath forgiven the offence of Eginhard, the clerk, and wed him to the fair Emma, his own daughter."
"And what," asked Lady Adelaide, whose bright old eyes were also watching her needle over the tapestry, "was the offence of Eginhard?"
"It is a fair tale," responded he, laughing. "It made much scandal. This Eginhard is a man that hath hot blood though he be clerkly, and too hath he good trim limbs and a winning eye. That he should dare to raise his glance so high as the daughter of the king might move one to wonder, but it was not so strange that she should smile upon him when he had done so, for he might well stir a maiden's fancy. They were secret in their loves, but not for the fear of the displeasure of even the king, her father, could they restrain the fury of their passion, and one night did Eginhard steal to the chamber of the princess, there to enjoy the fruits of his wooing without more delay, or the form of a priest's blessing."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" exclaimed Lady Adelaide; "and she a king's daughter!"
"The night wasted," continued the count, "without that they found it over-long, I trow; and before they were aware, the dawn began to appear. Then Eginhard would fain have gone the way he came, across the court, but the heavens had betrayed them. The snow had fallen and covered the ground so that he could not step without leaving the trace."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, again; "that was the judgment of Heaven upon her for betraying the honor of the king."
"Even if it were," Count Stephen rejoined, "the Princess Emma is not one to be lightly daunted, even by the judgments of Heaven. She was well aware what would befall her lover if the track of his footsteps were found leading from her window, but she trusted that her royal father, who has not been able to rein in his own blood over well, might be moved to forgive her, if it appeared that the transgression had been hers, and that she had sought her lover's chamber."
"It is ever the woman who sacrifices herself to the man," muttered Lady Adelaide. Erna still listened to the tale in silence, while her cousin watched her with penetrating gaze.
"So the princess took the scribe on her shoulders," the knight went on, making no reply to the dame's interjection, "and carried him across the court to his own window, so that only her tracks would appear in the snow."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" ejaculated Lady Adelaide, for the third time. "Is it thus that they do at court? And what said her father when he was told that she had been with the scribe Eginhard?"
"As fate would have it," the count answered, pulling at the long silky ears of the hound which lay at his side, "the king himself had been that morn troubled in his sleep, and had risen to stand by the window looking out at the newly fallen snow before that the court was astir to besmirch it with their footsteps; and with his own eyes he saw his daughter carry her lover across the place."
"What did he?" asked Erna, raising her eyes from her embroidery for the first time since the tale began.
"Oh, he doubtless cursed for a little, and then he remembered himself, like the wise man that he is, that it were well not to make a bad matter worse, and that love is free and not to be constrained even by the bidding of a king."
He looked into her eyes as he answered thus, and so significant a glance accompanied his last words that hers fell before it. She flushed and once more fixed her attention upon her embroidery, while Count Stephen went on to relate how Charlemagne had told the tale before the whole court to the shaming of the offenders, and had then forgiven them and had them married out of hand.
Then, when he had replied to the questions of Lady Adelaide, who found this gossip a most savory morsel under her tongue, he suddenly caught up a lute that lay near him upon the cushioned window-ledge, and running his fingers across the strings with a swift rattling of tinkling notes, sang not unmusically this song:
"The bird flies jocund through the sky,
And sports in upper air,
Only too soon fluttering to lie,
Caught in the fowler's snare,
The wind constrains the forest tall,
The tempest rules the sea;
The mighty hold the weak in thrall;
And only love is free.
"Nor bonds, nor bars, nor word of hate,
Can love's sweet will control;
Or quench the flame resistless fate
Hath kindled in the soul.
The mind may bow to slavish law,
As kings in chains may be;
Reason to wisdom bend in awe;
Yet still will love be free.
"What's plighted troth or formal vow,
When hearts are turned to fire?
As chaff on tempests blown, I trow,
Such bonds before desire!
Let whosoever come between,
To part my dear and me,
I'd beat down all to reach my queen,
And make our loving free!"
His voice rang out with a strain of passion as he sang these last words. His eyes shone, and he bent forward toward Erna as if he would constrain her to understand the message of his song. And when Erna, rising hastily, dropped her embroidery and hastened out of the hall, there came into his face a look of triumph which it was ill to see. He bent over the hound at his feet to conceal it from Lady Adelaide, who looked after her niece with astonishment.
"Body of Saint Fridolin," quoth the old dame for the hundredth time that morning, "but she is becoming flighty instead of settling down, now that she is married."
Meantime Albrecht sat in the chamber of the priest, learning the wonders of that soul which had been so lately bestowed upon him by Heaven.