Albrecht Part 15

He was not without some fear, too, of Albrecht. Count Stephen was a brave man, but the baron was one of whom the bravest could not think lightly, and when it came to a question of wronging him through his wife, the count was well persuaded that if this thing were ever discovered, it would be no easy matter to hold against the wronged husband. Just now Albrecht was greatly engaged in looking after the state of his thralls and churls, and seeing that they were properly housed for the coming winter; a business in which he had been encouraged by Father Christopher, but which the guest declared should be the affair of the steward and not of the lord of the castle. Also Albrecht set himself to bringing peace among the dependants of Rittenberg, and so far as might be justice between man and man, and friendliness. He was evidently none the less attached to his wife, but every day was Count Stephen more confident that Erna found herself less in sympathy with her husband and more nearly drawn to him.

One morning Erna found her cousin sitting alone by the great window of the hall, and came toward him with a smiling and mischievous face.

"Now," she said, "thou shalt see something wicked. I have only half looked at it myself, and I doubt it would be wise that I look further; but thou art not one, I trow, who will wince lightly."

"The wickedness which thou shalt tempt me into," he answered, "I will gladly bear the penalty of, at least, fair Cousin. What wickedness can be hidden in that roll of satin?"

"Thou shalt see," she answered, unrolling the embroidered cover, and bringing to light a parchment scroll. "It has been put away this many a day, and I only now bethought me of it."

"If it is written wickedness," the count observed, languidly regarding it, "it is likely to do me small harm. I have never bothered my head to learn their clerkly nonsense."

"This is in signs that one may understand if he cannot read," Erna replied, putting into his hand the parchment.

It was the scroll of Ovid which for years she had kept hidden away because of the worldliness of its pictures. The count regarded the images wherewith some gross clerk had decorated the works of the heathen poet, and the smile upon his broad lips deepened into a laugh. He was surprised that Erna should have shown him a parchment so marked, and he looked up from one of the pictures to see if she were really aware what she had given him. She intercepted his glance, and smiling bent forward to see what the picture might be at which he looked. As her eyes fell upon it a crimson flush covered her face, and she caught the parchment from his hands.

"Let me have it," she exclaimed. "I did not know it was like that. I should have examined it before I showed it to thee. I only thought it might amuse thee."

As she spoke she turned quickly, hearing footsteps behind her. Albrecht and Herr von Zimmern had come together into the hall, and were witness of her confusion.

"Herr Frederich has a plan for repairing the southern tower which he wishes to tell to thee," Albrecht said to his wife, apparently without noting her excitement.

He stood there so calm, so n.o.ble in his bearing and his appearance, that even Count Stephen, for the moment deeply concerned lest the scroll of Ovid should fall into the husband's hands, could not but admire him. He did not look at the guest, and in his manner toward his wife there was nothing to denote that he suspected that aught was wrong.

"But perhaps," the voice of Herr von Zimmern suggested, "this is not the time to talk of such matters. Perhaps we interrupt something. That scroll may be of importance."

He spoke with a careful appearance of humility; yet the count, watching him with attention which was quickened by irritation, detected a gleam of malice in his eye, and from that moment suspected the friends.h.i.+p of the cripple.

"The scroll is naught of importance," Erna replied haughtily; and for that time no more was said of the scroll of Ovid.

XIX

HOW ERNA AND ALBRECHT TALKED OF LIFE.

Not entirely had Albrecht and Erna lost the old fas.h.i.+on 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 s.p.a.ce in which to carry on the former studies. One morning when the rain was beating against the castle cas.e.m.e.nts 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 c.u.mber, 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble 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."