Albrecht Part 3

"The Lady Abbess," Erna continued, "was worst of all there; and on her birth-night she made a great feast for all the nuns. They sat and drank wine, and out of doors there was a bitter, bitter storm. And just at midnight there came a knocking at the gate. The Lady Abbess, flushed with wine, told the little novice, who would neither eat nor drink herself, to go and see who was there. So the little novice went, and found an old, old man, all drenched with the rain, and weak with hunger and cold. So she went to the Lady Abbess, and begged that she might be allowed to let the old man in, lest he perish with cold and hunger before morning."

"Why should she care?" the knight asked, as Erna paused and looked over the dark-blue lake as if she could see the scene she described.

"Oh, I told thee that she was not wicked like the rest."

"But would it be wicked not to care for a worthless, broken-down old man that one never saw before?"

The countess smiled upon him.

"When thou askest me questions like that," she responded, "I know that thou art laughing at me or trying to tease me."

A strange look flitted across the face of the baron, but he only replied by a smile.

"But the Lady Abbess," went on Erna, determined to finish the tale she had begun, "would not allow the gates to be opened. 'Thou mayest throw him down thy bread, if thou choosest,' she told the little novice; 'but thou wilt get no more in its place.' So the little novice wrapped the bread up in the only blanket she had for her bed, and threw it down to the old pilgrim, and then she had to shut the window and leave him there in the cold. That very hour the water began to roll into the valley, though where it came from no one could tell; and it rose, and rose, and rose. And the wicked nuns ran to the top of their towers, but it was of no use, for the water rose over those until they were all drowned, and there was this lake."

"And didn't even the little novice escape?"

"Oh, yes; there came a boat, shining all like gold, and took the little novice off of the top of the tower; but when the others tried to get into it, it glided away and left them."

She crossed herself as she finished. Albrecht raised his eyes from the blue lake to the blue sky above them, and sighed, a sign of sadness Erna had never seen in him before.

"Why dost thou sigh?" she asked him.

"Because thou hast taught me to," he answered, with the wistful look of a loving animal in his eyes.

Then he laughed gleefully.

"Should not one sigh for the poor drowned nuns?" he asked.

"Yes," Erna said gravely; "they lost their souls."

"Always their souls," her companion responded impulsively. "Why is it that it is always the soul of which one speaks?"

"Because," she answered, with the same air she would have worn had his question been a reasonable one, "the soul is all; it is this which makes us different from the animals."

"And the nixies," he added; "and the undines, and the kobolds."

"Yes," she said gravely. She was silent a moment, and then added: "I do not know if it is right, but Father Christopher thinks it is no harm; I have always pitied the nixies and the kobolds. They are not so bad; and it is not their fault that they have no souls, and that they cannot be saved."

"No," he a.s.sented soberly, "it is certainly not their fault. Hast thou never heard it said," he went on, "that if one of them marries a mortal, he would win a soul?"

"Yes," she replied; "but Father Christopher does not believe that that is true."

"But if it were," he began, "wouldst thou--"

He broke off suddenly, and sprang up.

"Come," he cried, with his infectious laugh, "thou art making me as solemn as an owl. Did I talk in this sombre fashion when I came to Rittenberg?"

She did not answer save by a smile. She was aware that the knight had changed since he had been at the castle, although she did not realize what the alteration might mean. She had herself changed too much in the same time to be able to appreciate the subtile difference between what he now was and what he had been on his arrival; and she was too well content with whatever he was to study deeply over the question of the effect of her influence upon him. She rose from the gra.s.sy mound on which she had been sitting, and soon they were on their homeward way through the forest.

The day was wasting as they neared the castle, and already in the shadows of the forest the tree-trunks were black and dim. The way wound through the solemn pine-wood, rising and falling as it crossed the hills. Far above them they could see the peaks reddened by the rays of the late sun, while they rode forward in the dimness of the bridle-path below. Now and then some sudden turn in the way brought them to the crest of an elevation from which they could look far over the wide range of the tree-clad country. Spread before them were the sweeping black forests of pine, broken here and there with patches of ling and heather, as the surface of the ocean may be mottled by lighter s.p.a.ces that mark where the concealed currents run.

Suddenly, as they turned a corner where the path ran along a rocky hillside, becoming so narrow that they were close together, Erna laid her hand on the arm of her companion.

"Look!" she exclaimed, pointing with the other hand.

Far, far before them, bathed in the golden light of the dying sun, lay the peaks of the Alps. White and pure as crystal the snowy summits rose toward the sky, while lower the slopes were flushed to rosy pink, or dyed to strange and lovely hues of gold and crimson and purple. From a cloud of rainbow colors soared the rosy peaks, fairer than dreams.

Erna checked her horse, and her companion did the same, although he seemed not fully to comprehend her enthusiasm.

"It is like heaven," she sighed. "Only once before in my whole life have I seen the Alps like that; they are not often to be seen from here."

Albrecht did not answer, but gazed upon the distant mountains, as if he were trying to understand why their appearance should affect his companion so strongly. As they gazed, the hues on the sides of the hills deepened; the rose and gold of the peaks faded; the white of the summits seemed to become transparent, as if one could see through them into the sky beyond; and little by little the sharp outline blended with the quickly dimming heaven against which they had stood out in relief. The shadow of the lower world crept upward; and as they stood there the glorious vision vanished. Only an empty sky where the dimness of night was growing lay in the distance before them in place of the beauty they had seen.

"It was like heaven," Erna said again, as she started her palfrey.

"Then," responded her companion, in a tone of deep gravity, "one must have a soul to appreciate it."

She turned and looked at him questioningly; but with one of those quick changes of mood which always seemed to her so surprising in so manly a knight, he burst into a merry laugh, and began in his rich voice to sing a gay hunting-song.

V

HOW THEY DISCOURSED OF KISSES.

The damsel Elsa was a trim and comely maid, with a bright eye and a ready tongue, of which the men and youths of the castle had learned to have a wholesome fear. She went about her affairs singing pleasant ditties, and one morning she crossed the great hall where Baron Albrecht was waiting for the countess, with whom he was to ride out, as had become much their fashion now; and as she went, she sang in her sweet, clear voice a little love-song that ran in this wise:

"When winter howls across the wold, And all the gates are fast, Then is thine heart, shut from the cold, Safe from the blast, And safe from whomsoe'er goes past.

"When Spring makes lovely all the land, And cas.e.m.e.nts open wide, Beware lest some gay wandering band Should slip inside, And steal thine heart, and thee deride!

"When once 'tis gone, to win it back Full vainly mayst thou try; Nor golden bribes nor tears, alack!

Lost hearts can buy, Since who loves once, loves till he die."

Baron Albrecht listened to her singing with a smile on his face.

"Now, by my beard," he said, "a song like that is worth a reward."

And he put his great shapely hand beneath her white chin, and kissed her full upon her red lips. At that very moment the Countess Erna came into the hall. Her cheek flushed as the damsel uttered an exclamation and fled hastily, and she looked at the baron in the evident expectation of seeing him also covered with confusion. But Albrecht merely smiled, and smoothed his chestnut beard.

"The damsel sings pa.s.sing sweetly," he said, unmoved by her glance.

"Is it for that that thou hast kissed her?" demanded Erna, scornfully.

"Truly," replied he.