Albrecht

"Speak on," he said.

"It is not from any love of thee," Herr Frederich began with careless insolence, suddenly assuming the speech of an equal, "that I wish thee success in thy quest. If it can but be compassed that – Ah," he cried, breaking off and with his voice falling into a strain of the most passionate bitterness, "if I can wound him through his lady, I shall have it all; it is through his wife that I must reach him; that will give me my revenge here and hereafter! I can gloat over his soul in torments through all eternity!"

The count did not speak, but he drew back a little as if such fiendish hate made even him afeard. He could not compass the reasons for the bitterness of the other's mind toward Albrecht, and he waited for what more Herr Frederich might say.

"She is, in sooth, coy now," the other went on. "I saw her flee from thee through the wood. She has been bred by a priest, and she is afraid of her own desires. Her blood stirs for thee, but she is yet timid. Have patience yet a little till I come again. Then we shall see."

He had grown wilder in his air until he seemed but a madman raving; and Count Stephen, who knew not of the meeting of Albrecht and the cripple in the wood when Herr Frederich had thrown off all his disguises, was bewildered by the fashion of his companion's speech.

"When thou comest again," he repeated. "Whither, then, dost thou go?"

His companion bent nearer, as if he feared that in the shadows about them might be ears which should hear the secret.

"Listen!" he said. "When the Morgengabe was given, the Lady Adelaide put it into my head that if the Huns could be but told of the richness of the jewels that were brought to Rittenberg, they would not be long on their way hither. With me for a guide they will not linger. Ah, ha! My Lord Baron," he cried, throwing up his arms in a wild frenzy of rage and excitement, "when the red cock crows on the towers of Rittenberg, and the wife is fled in the arms of her lover, I will forgive both thee and thy cursed father!"

The count regarded him in amazement and dismay.

"Art thou mad?" he demanded. "Wilt thou in truth bring down the Huns upon Rittenberg?"

"Yea; and when they are come, it will not be hard to bear the lady away whither it pleases you. Who is there at Rittenberg to let the Huns of their will?"

"I!" cried Count Stephen, with sudden rage. "God's wounds, dost thou take me for a villain such as thou?"

He flung himself upon Herr Frederich so forcibly that they both went down among the feet of the horses together. He caught the cripple by the throat with one hand, while with the other he drew his dagger.

"Take this to the Huns in token!" he exclaimed, dealing the fallen man stab after stab; "and this, and this!"

The other struggled fiercely for a moment. It was so dark there on the ground that the count struck at him blindly, and it was only when the blow had been repeated several times that the cripple was quiet. Count Stephen held him by the throat in his powerful grasp until he ceased to struggle; when he rose he became aware that Herr Zimmern's horse had escaped into the darkening forest. It was only from the chance that as he leaped from his own steed the rein had been thrown over the broken limb of a tree by which he was standing that he was not himself left horseless.

"God's blood!" ejaculated Count Stephen, wiping his dagger on the doublet of the dead man; "there is one less knave in the world."

He touched the corse contemptuously with his foot, wondering why Herr Frederich had so bitterly hated Albrecht, and for the moment considering that, after all, Herr von Zimmern had been his only ally at Rittenberg, and that it was not wise to have disposed of him thus. Yet when he reflected that if he had been left alive it would have been simply that he might have opportunity to bring in the dreaded Huns to devastate the land, he was satisfied that it had been well to kill the knave and put an end to his scheming. Count Stephen knew what the Huns were. They had overrun not a little of the country in the neighborhood of his home; and as he thought of them he became well pleased with himself for having slain one who would have helped the heathen.

But even the pleasure of having killed a varlet who would have given the land to the fire and the spear of the Huns could not for long put Count Stephen from the thought of Erna. He got upon his horse, and rode slowly toward the castle, as completely forgetting the dead man behind him as if he had never existed, and leaving the body to the wolves with as little compunction as if it had been the carcass of a hound.

He wondered how Erna would receive him, and whether she would have said anything to her husband of the happening in the forest; and at last he bethought him of a means by which he might test her feelings.

"I will send her word," he said to himself, "that I wish to take my leave. Surely, if she forgive me, or if there is hope for me, I shall be able to tell it when I see her. She cannot be so angry as to refuse to come; and besides, she would fear that her husband should ask the reason if she treated me with disdain. She must at least come to bid me farewell, if not to urge upon me a longer stay; surely she must come."

And with this design in his mind, Count Stephen rode on more briskly, reaching the castle a little before sunset.

"Gather the men and be ready to ride at once," he commanded his captain, whom he encountered in the courtyard.

"To-night?" exclaimed the man, staring with astonishment.

"God's blood!" stormed his master in reply, "it is necessary that I give orders twice? Now, I said; at once!"

And striding on, he left the retainer holding his horse by the bridle and staring after him open-mouthed.

XXV

HOW FATHER CHRISTOPHER SENT FOR ALBRECHT

After Albrecht had been left by Erna in the corridor, he stood for a space as if he had neither the power to go nor yet to stay. He was full of jealousy and of fear at the thought of what might have befallen in the wood, and the agitation of his wife showed him that though Herr Frederich had failed of fulfilling his mission of evil, yet had something unusual taken place there when the baron had not been present to see. He had long understood that Count Stephen would fain win the love of Erna, and mighty had been the struggle in his soul as he questioned with himself whether in truth it would not be easy for the knight to gain the love of a woman from one who had been born of the wild race of wood-folk.

He went sadly and slowly back to his chamber, where the shadows clustered as thickly as the trees in the forest, and there came to his mind how the creatures of the wood, angry that one of their race should have won a human soul, had been eager to give their aid to the schemes of Herr Frederich; and anew there came over him a sense of the mighty struggle in which he was engaged. The stinging taunts of the cripple wounded him afresh, singing themselves over again in his ears as he stood by his casement in the gathering darkness, looking out over the mighty stretch of the forest. He recalled the cripple's threat that the soul of Erna should be so dragged down by his own that they should be lost together; and the twofold terror of bringing upon her whom he loved the doom of eternal death overwhelmed him. The serenity which he had on his knees won in the chapel deserted him, and he cast himself down upon the rushes in agony of soul.

He hardly knew whether it was moments or hours that he grovelled in the dust, – nor could he know that apart in her chamber Erna, too, had fallen into a like abasement, – when the coming of a thrall disturbed him. He started to his feet, and waited for what message might be come to him. It had grown so dark that the glimmer of the torch which the servant carried shone in a golden line beneath the door. Smoothing his disordered hair with his hand as he went, Albrecht went to the door and opened it. The glare of the torch blinded him so that for a moment he could see nothing.

"If the gracious Lord Baron will," the thrall said, "Father Christopher prays that he come to him with no delay."

Albrecht stood a moment in surprised silence. Then he recovered himself.

"Is Father Christopher in his chamber?" he asked.

"Yea, my Lord Baron," the servant answered.

"Give me thy torch," Albrecht said, taking it, "and I will go at once. Thou need'st not come."

Not since the morning after his wedding had Albrecht climbed to the little room high in the western tower; and as he made his way thither he seemed to be once more on his way to confess to the good old priest the strange story of his life. As he climbed the winding stair of the tower his glance fell through a narrow window, and afar he saw the moon rising over the great forest where the kobolds were gathering for their nightly sports. All the old life came before him, and for the moment he seemed to have lost the one without that he had gained the other. He was no longer either kobold or man. Then, with the fierceness of one who fights temptation, he shook off these thoughts, and went on until he stood before Father Christopher.

The priest was walking up and down with his eyes fixed upon the floor. For a moment he did not pause or look up. Then he paused beside the seat upon which Albrecht had thrown himself, his kind eyes hardly higher than those of the other, so tall was the knight in his woodland strength, and stood looking into the baron's face with a regard penetrating but full of tenderness.

"The time hath come," he said, "when thou must tell to thy wife everything that is hid in thy heart."

"Everything?" Albrecht echoed, dismay and wonder in his tone.

"Everything," the priest repeated solemnly. "My son, dost thou remember that once in this very chamber I said to thee that thou couldst not hope to save thy soul alone, but that the fate of hers by whom thou didst win it was bound up with that of thine own? Now is it the hour when thou must save both hers and thine."

"Truly I would freely give mine that hers be not lost," Albrecht returned.

"It is in thine hands," Father Christopher went on as if he heard him not. "She loves thee still."

"Still!" Albrecht echoed in a piercing cry, springing to his feet.

His face was white with the terror of the fear which seemed to lurk behind the words of the priest. He caught Father Christopher's robe by the sleeve, and looked at him with terror and appeal in his face.

"Nay," the priest said, putting out his hand, and speaking with mingled sweetness and reproof, "we are speaking of the gracious countess and thy wife. Thou hast nothing to fear. It is only that the longings which thou hast thyself awakened in her are yet strange and not wholly mastered by her will. It is thou who hast given her these temptations as surely as she has given thee thy soul. There is never a gift between two; something is always given in exchange."

Albrecht bowed his head upon his hand. His eyes traced the long shadow which the torch, thrust into a ring upon the wall, cast along upon the floor, bare of rushes.

"But how may it be," he asked sadly, "that I, forsooth, can hope to save either her or yet myself?"

"Because," Father Christopher returned tenderly, laying his hand upon the bowed head as if inwardly he blessed the strong man before him, "thou hast the soul of a child and the strength of a knight; and because," he was fain to add, with a soft voice that was like a caress, "all that see thee must needs love thee."

"But why," Albrecht asked, "sayest thou that it were well that I tell all to my wife?"

The priest smiled with an expression which was at once tender and wistful, and through which yet a gleam of humor played.

"My son," he answered, "I am an old man, and I have in sooth seen much of the ways of the world, and of the ways of womankind not a little. Trust me that I rede thee good counsel in this matter. Thy wife is a woman, and so it is well that thou tell her. It is not always easy to say why one should do thus or so with a woman, but it may be wise to do that for which one cannot give a reason. And besides," he added more soberly, "anon perchance thou wilt thyself perceive a reason for what thou now doest blindly. Go, my son; and Heaven bless thee in thy going!"

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.

THE END