Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy Part 27

"She is English," remarked Yolanda, "and loves bright colors."

"Which is the princess?" I asked of Yolanda, feeling that I also was acting my part admirably. To my surprise she answered promptly:--

"She in blue with a falcon on her shoulder. Am I not right, uncle?"

"Yes," responded Castleman. Twonette confirmed the statement.

My air-castles fell noiselessly about my head. My dreams vanished like breath from a cold mirror, and the sphinx-like face of my great riddle rose before me in defiance.

After the cavalcade had pa.s.sed I found myself with Yolanda a dozen paces from the others.

"Fraulein," I said, "I want to confess I thought you were the Princess Mary of Burgundy."

Yolanda laughed softly.

"I was sure you had some such absurd notion. I supposed you had seen her, and had believed she was Yolanda, the burgher girl; that mistake has often been made. You may see this princess at the castle, and I warn you not to be deceived. I have the great honor, it is said, to resemble Her Highness as one pea resembles another. I have been told that she has heard of the low-born maiden that dares to have a face like hers, and she doubtless hates me for it, just as I bear her no good-will for the same reason. When two women greatly resemble each other, there is seldom good feeling between them. Each believes the other is stealing something of her personality, and a woman's vanity prompts her to resent it. If you make the mistake with the princess that you made with me, I warn you it will not be so easily corrected."

My poor riddle! My stony sphinx! My clinging hallucination! Again I should have it with me, stalking at my side by day, lying by me at night, whirling through my brain at all times, and driving me mad with its eternal question, "Who is Yolanda?" The solution of my riddle may be clear to you as I am telling you the story. At least, you may think it is, since I am trying to conceal nothing from you. I relate this history in the order of its happening, and wish, if possible, to place before you the manner in which this question of Yolanda's ident.i.ty puzzled me.

If you will put yourself in my place, you will at once realize how deeply I was affected by this momentous, unanswered, unanswerable question, "Who is Yolanda?" and you will understand why I could not see the solution, however clear you may believe it to be to yourself.

We soon went in to supper and, after the peac.o.c.k, the pheasants, and the pastries were removed, we were served with a most delicious after-dish in sparkling gla.s.s cups. It was frozen orange-water mixed with wine of Burgundy. I had never tasted a dish so palatable. I had dined at the emperor's table in Vienna; I had lived in Italy; I had sojourned in the East, where luxuries are most valued and used, but I had never partaken of a more delicious supper than that which I ate at the house of my rich burgher friend, George Castleman. There might have been a greater showing of plate, though that was not lacking, but there could have been no whiter linen nor more appetizing dishes than those which good Frau Kate gave us that evening.

After the frozen wine had disappeared, a serving-maid brought in a stoneware pan covered with a snowy pastry, made from the whites of eggs and clear sugar. At its entry Yolanda clapped her hands and cried out with childish delight. When the pan was placed before Castleman, she exclaimed:--

"Be careful, uncle! Don't thrust the knife too deep, or you will kill the birds."

Uncle Castleman ran the point of the knife around the outer edge of the crust, and, with a twist of the blade, quickly lifted it from the pan, when out flew a dozen or more wrens. Yolanda's delight knew no bounds.

She sprang from her chair, exclaiming:--

"Catch them! Catch them!" and led the way.

She climbed on chairs, tables, and window shelves, and soon had her hands full of the demure little songsters. Max, too, was pursuing the wrens, and Twonette, losing part of her serenity, actually caught a bird. The sport was infectious, and soon fat old Castleman was puffing like a tired porpoise, and sedate old Karl de Pitti was in the chase.

Frau Katherine grabbed desperately at a bird now and then, but she was too stout to catch one and soon took her chair, laughing and out of breath. Yolanda screamed with laughter, and after she had caught six or seven birds and put them in the cage provided for them, she asked Max to lift her in his arms that she might reach one resting on a beam near the ceiling. Max gladly complied, and Yolanda, having caught the bird, said:--

"Now, Sir Max, open your mouth."

"I have already swallowed one," said Max, laughing, "and I will swallow none other so long as I live."

As Max lowered her to the floor her arm fell about his neck for an instant, and the great strong boy trembled at the touch of this weak girl.

Out to the garden we went again after supper, and when dusk began to fall, Yolanda led Max to a rustic seat in the deep shadow of the vines.

I could not hear their words, but I learned afterward of the conversation.

When I thought Yolanda was the princess, I was joyful because of the marked favor that she showed Max. When I thought she was a burgher girl, I felt like a fussy old hen with a flock of ducks if he were alone with her. She seemed then a bewitching little ogress slowly devouring my handsome Prince Max. That she was fair, entrancing, and lovable beyond any woman I had ever known, only added to my anxiety. Would Max be strong enough to hold out against her wooing? I don't like to apply the word "wooing" to a young girl's conduct, but we all know that woman does her part in the great system of human mating when the persons most interested do the choosing; and it is right that she should. The modesty that prevents a woman from showing her preference is the result of a false philosophy, and flies in the face of nature. Her right to choose is as good as man's.

If Yolanda's wooing was more p.r.o.nounced than is usual with a modest young girl, it must be remembered that her situation was different. She knew that Max had been restrained from wooing her only because of the impa.s.sable gulf that lay between them. Ardor in Max when marriage was impossible would have been an insult to Yolanda. His reticence for conscience' sake and for her sake was the most chivalric flattery he could have paid her. She saw the situation clearly, and, trusting Max implicitly, felt safe in giving rein to her heart. She did not care to hide from him its true condition. On the contrary she wished him to be as sure of her as she was of him, for after all that would be the only satisfaction they would ever know.

I argued: If Yolanda were the princess, betrothed to the Dauphin, the gulf between her and Max was as impa.s.sable as if she were a burgher girl. In neither case could she hope to marry him. Therefore, her girlish wooing was but the outcry of nature and was without boldness.

The paramount instinct of all nature is to flower. Even the frozen Alpine rock sends forth its edelweiss, and the heart of a princess is first the heart of a woman, and must blossom when its spring comes. All the conventions that man can invent will not keep back the flower. All created things, animate and inanimate, have in them an uncontrollable impulse which, in their spring, reverts with a holy retrospect to the great first principle of existence, the love of reproduction.

Yolanda's spring had come, and her heart was a flower with the sacred bloom. Being a woman, she loved it and cuddled it for the sake of the pain it brought, as a mother fondles a wayward child. Max, being a man, struggled against the joy that hurt him and, with a sympathy broad enough for two, feared the pain he might bring to Yolanda. So this unresponsiveness in Max made him doubly attractive to the girl, who was of the sort, whether royal or bourgeois, before whom men usually fall.

"I thought you had left me, Sir Max," she said, drawing him to a seat beside her in the shade.

"I promised you I would not go," he responded, "and I would not willingly break my word to any one, certainly not to you, Fraulein."

"I was angry when I heard you had left the inn," she said, "and I spoke unkindly of you. There has been an ache in my heart ever since that nothing but confession and remission will cure."

"I grant the remission gladly," answered Max. "There was flattery in your anger."

The girl laughed softly and, clasping her hands over her knee, spoke with a sigh.

"I think women have the harder part of life in everything. I again ask you to promise me that you will not leave Peronne within a month."

"I cannot promise you that, Fraulein," answered Max.

"You will some day--soon, perhaps--know my reasons," said Yolanda, "and if they do not prove good I am willing to forfeit your esteem. That is the greatest hostage I can give."

"I cannot promise," answered Max, stubbornly.

"I offer you another inducement, one that will overmatch the small weight of my poor wishes. I promise to bring you to meet this Mary of Burgundy whom you came to woo. I cannot present you, but I will see that Twonette brings about the meeting. I tell you, as I have already told Sir Karl, that it is said I resemble this princess, so you must not mistake her for me."

When Max told me of this offer I wondered if the girl had been testing him, and a light dawned on me concerning her motives.

"I did not come to woo her," answered Max, "though she may have been a part of my reason for coming. I knew that she was affianced to the Dauphin of France. Her beauty and goodness were known to me through letters of my Lord d'Hymbercourt, written to my dear old friend Karl.

Because of certain transactions, of which you do not know and of which I may not speak, I esteemed her for a time above all women, though I had never seen her. I still esteem her, but--but the other is all past now, Fraulein, and I do not wish to meet the princess, though the honor would be far beyond my deserts."

"Why do you not wish to meet her?" asked Yolanda, with an air of pleasure. Max hesitated, then answered bluntly:--

"Because I have met you, Fraulein. You should not lead me to speak such words."

Yolanda touched Max's arm and said frankly:--

"There can be no harm, Max. If you knew all,--if I could tell you all,--you would understand. The words can harm neither of us." She hesitated and, with drooping head, continued: "And they are to me as the sun and the south wind to the flowers and the corn. You already know all that is in my heart, or I would not speak so plainly. In all my life I have known little of the sweet touch of human sympathy and love, and, Max, my poor heart yearns for them until at times I feel like the flowers without the sun and the corn without the rain,--as if I will die for lack of them. I am almost tempted to tell you all."

"Tell me all, Yolanda," entreated Max, "for I, too, have suffered from the same want, though my misfortune comes from being born to a high estate. If you but knew the lonely, corroding misery of those born to a station above the reach of real human sympathy, you would not envy, you would pity them. You would be charitable to their sins, and would thank G.o.d for your lowly lot in life. I will tell you my secret. I am Maximilian of Hapsburg."

"I have known it since the first day I saw you at Basel," answered Yolanda.

"I have felt sure at times that you did," responded Max, "though I cannot think how you learned it. Will you tell me of yourself?"

The girl hung her head and hesitated. Once she lifted her face to speak, but changed her mind.

"Please don't ask me now. I will tell you soon, but not now, not now. Be patient with me. I do pity you. I do, I do. If we could help each other--but we cannot, and there is no use longing for it. I sometimes fear that your att.i.tude is the right one, and that it is best that we should part and meet no more."

The proposition to part and meet no more was good in theory, but Max found that the suggestion to make a fact of it frightened him.

"Let us not speak of that now," he said. "The parting will come soon enough. You will surely deem me cold and unworthy, Fraulein, but you cannot understand. One may not call a man hard and selfish who plucks out his eye for the sake of a G.o.d-imposed duty, or who deliberately thrusts away happiness and accepts a life of misery and heartache because of the chains with which G.o.d bound him at his birth."