Chapter XXIV: I Play with Fire

Many are the fair cities of Germany, but few I think nobler situate than ancient Quedlinburg, on the eastern verge of the Harzland. They say old King Henry the Fowler founded the town, and his son, the first Otto, transported hither the nuns of Wenthussen, giving them the queenly abbey which dominates the burghers’ houses and the markplatz from its steep, nigh unapproachable, hill. All around below this convent-citadel spreads the rolling farm country, and to south and west open the noble summits of the Harz, at this time sparkling again under their mantle of snow. The twin towers of the abbey church rose from the crest like two slim fingers pointing towards the blue, silent monitors of the way to heaven.

It was a perfect winter’s day. Cold but very still. The smoke from the chimneys mounted upward in straight columns until it faded away, a gray mist in the sun-shot heavens. In the market-place, before the ancient brick Rathaus, donkeys wheezed as they brought in their loads, geese and hens cackled, pigs squealed, housewives and market women upraised shrill voices as they debated the price of eggs or of frozen herring. Every one was too busy to pay attention to a beggar who came stealing out of the horse stalls by the _Weisser Engel_, especially as this same beggar avoided any attention. The beggar was myself.

“Playing with fire?”--I surely knew it. I had told myself it was treason to the Cause a hundred times. But, good God, what stuff was I made of? When, on my return to the Regenstein, I had met a letter telling me to postpone for two weeks my projected mission to the Palatinate, could I sit cooling my heels in lonesome grandeur in my chilly hall of state, with no brisker company than Adolf? Risks I ran, and I candidly confessed them. Discovery would doubtless ruin utterly my influence for the Cause, and yet I felt that Dr. Luther, if consulted, would have bidden me “go in God’s name,” and have only prayed the harder if I seemed thrusting into peril.

As I moved cautiously from the inn, the spirit of adventure rose within me. My disguise was admirable, and I conceived that some slight experience as Harlequin and Pantalone in divers polite comedies and maskings at Rome enabled me to carry the part. I was arrayed as a wandering pilgrim, begging his way from shrine to shrine, and what with very tattered brown mantle and hose, a capacious bag for alms, a heavy staff and a villainous trim on my beard, I think I fairly looked the part. As I went up the street I even paused at an open door where a rosy-cheeked young matron was scrubbing the lintel, and held out my bag, just to gain practise and courage.

“_Panem propter Deum_--bread for God’s sake, gracious mistress,” I whined through my nose, and she looked up at me quickly.

“You are a genuine pilgrim, poor man,” quoth she; “surely your cloak is ragged enough.”

“Genuine, by the Holy Rood, generous lady. Ah! if I could relate to you all my sad travels. In my boyhood I cursed my mother, and she died suddenly ere granting forgiveness. Therefore I took the pilgrim’s vows to save my soul. Fulda, St. Martin’s shrine in Tours in France, St. James of Compostella, St. Thomas of Canterbury; I have visited them all. Now I would fain visit holy Einsiedeln in Switzerland, but the way is long--”

“Ah! my poor friend,” said she, manifestly stirred by my twanging pathos, “I am sure your mother has long since forgiven you up in heaven. You must have been indeed a good son, though a bit hasty of tongue, to proffer such expiation. Well, if to Einsiedeln you must go, you must not go starving. Wait a moment.”

She was gone into the house, and soon came back with two small loaves of bread and a goodly slice of ham, which she placed in my wallet. “Now hasten on, I beg of you,” she enjoined, “my Heinrich has been reading those books of Dr. Luther, and says now that giving to pilgrims is giving to rogues. If he knows, he will be in a temper.”

“Our Lady bless and assoil you,” I whined as I shuffled away, made confident by my success, yet boiling inwardly at the shallowness of an imposture which must have made religion the finest dress for beggary through all wide Germany.

And now I began to go up the slow, steep way to the castle convent. Trude and Adolf had arranged everything, had taught me the custom of the nuns in distributing their alms, and had brought it to pass, by a discreet distribution of groschen to earlier comers, that I should be the only applicant upon that day. At the gate house, before I entered the fortification, the sleepy old porter looked out of his lodge, as I trudged past.

“Go up! go up, you cheese-hunter.[10] Your bag is well filled, I warrant, and you’ve breakfasted better than I; but you’ll meet one of the sisters at the inner grille, and she’ll give you more.”

So he called cynically, and I continued on my way. The cobble paved ascent ended presently. Before me rose the bleak stone wall of the inner convent, where I was unprivileged to enter; but I had been informed what I must do. Turning to the left I saw a small doorway. The inner door was open, but across it was a firm iron lattice duly locked within, and above the lattice hung a little image of St. Christopher bearing Our Lord, also a small bell. I seized the dangling cord and rang. Immediately a very old nun, all bent and furrowed under her black robes and veil, responded.

“Well, fellow,” she demanded, not too amiably.

“_Panem propter Deum_,” I whined at my best. “I am a poor pilgrim, very hungry, and nigh spent.”

“Bah!” she answered tartly from behind the bars, “you look as fat as any of them; but it’s none of my business to sift your silly stories. Wait a bit. This is Sister Ilsa’s task. She can listen all day, and give you the convent bread if she will.”

She slipped on a pair of wooden shoes, and I heard her go clattering away down a long dark corridor. “Sister Ilsa:--” I wonder if, of all the multitude of mendicants who sought alms while the nuns were in Quedlinburg, one had ever emotions and thoughts like mine!

It seemed a century that I waited. Probably it was only a few moments. I was growing very cold, but not with the winter wind. Then a warm rush of blood tingled from crown to heels--another nun was approaching the grille. I could have told that step from a thousand. Overcome for the instant, I felt my strength failing me. I caught an iron bar of the lattice, and leaned there stupidly, dumbly.

Then a voice, ah! what a voice. “Alas! poor man, so overcome by hunger and fatigue you cannot stand upright, be of good cheer. See, here is good bread and beef brawn. And if you are very cold, though I cannot let you in, I will fetch some _aqua vitae_ from the buttery.”

“Come, Graf von Lichtenstein zum Regenstein,” I exhorted myself, as though for a sore ordeal; “play your part as a man!”

By an action of real will, I straightened, looked her fairly in the eye, and with unblushing countenance repeated my story. She thrust the food through the grille, and I began eating it with feigned heartiness, although I rejected her offer of liquors. The act of devouring gave me excuse for eying her without speaking. She was exceedingly pallid; the white coif and the black veil over it added to the effect of marble. There were lines around her lips and below her eyes which I misliked greatly; but to me no luxurious Venetian goddess of Palma Vecchio could have seemed more fair. Her hand touched mine as she reached a piece of meat, and a kind of electric fire sprang through me. I watched shrewdly, to be sure that we were quite alone. The old nun had clearly been glad of a substitute, and the chill day had quenched the usual convent curiosity. All had doubtless sought a genial hearth fire. After my eating had slacked a little, my benefactress began to ply me with questions as to my past pilgrimages and future wandering, and I answered as before, inventing shamelessly. At last she said:--

“I should think God, if He is really so good as we are taught, could forgive you after a little more. Surely you have long since paid out the price for your evil words to your mother.”

“So I trust, holy Lady,” said I, “but I have not told you yet, I think, that I have vowed to spend all my life as a pilgrim; and can vows, even lightly taken, ever be broken?”

I have called her pale, but now she turned ashen. She in turn clutched at the grille. Her lips were opened, but without speech. With the iron lattice between us, but our faces quite close, I spoke softly.

“Do you not know me, Ilsa?”

She sprang back as if smitten by an arrow; from her mouth came a muffled scream; under her black veil her great eyes shone out terribly. I thought her about to flee, but her strength seemed to fail her. She fell on her knees by the lattice, pressing her head against the bars. I knelt and kissed one of her hands as it closed around the iron.

“Walter!” she said; “Walter!” And for some time she seemed able only to repeat my name.

“I knew you were in sorrow, Ilsa,” I said now calmly; rising, and letting her sobbing and panic spend itself, “therefore I have come. And believe me, it is not the Devil, but God who has brought me here.”

She sat upright now, and showed no signs of flight; but twisted and untwisted her hands in a manner piteous. At last she began talking brokenly.

“Oh! what are we to do? Christ help us! What are we to do?” Presently her form straightened. “You have done wrong, Walter, utterly wrong to come here. Do you not see what you have done? After I realized how terrible had been my mistake, how not by praying _for_ you in the distant cloister, but _beside_ you as your loving wife, I might have made you a nobler man, what could I do save to try to crush all memory, all initiative, all ambition? To become as dry and unhuman and cold as these nuns here? And I believed I was gaining the mastery over myself, a little. And now you are here, and all the fires are burning hotter, a thousandfold hotter than ever. Blessed God, but it is hard!”

“Ilsa,” I answered her, “hard it has been for you, but bethink you, somewhat hard it has been for me. After you spurned me, only the grace of God and the monitions of Dr. Luther saved me from turning back to my old life, seven times more wicked than before. And think not your prayers were wholly vain. Let no man boast his soul is reckoned safe; but if man may strive, I have striven to redeem mine. I am not what I was once. I am all German now.” And in as few words as possible I told her of my efforts for my Regenstein folk and in behalf of Dr. Luther. Seeing the thing seemed to interest her I told her of the present state of the Cause, and how all Germany seemed straining on her moorings to Rome, and how Papal power, and all things with it, were like to be swept into the cupboard of the discarded past.

She put her hands to her eyes as I spoke. There came the relief of tears. Presently she was calmer than I.

“Are we in danger of discovery?” I asked.

“I think not. The nuns do not like me overwell. Meeting the beggars is my one permitted diversion. They are quite content to leave me to chatter in the cold with mendicants. We can converse a little longer.” Then she took my right hand firmly in hers. “Now let us reason together bravely and soberly, for we are not a silly wench and a silly hind to pawn our souls for a moment of evil passion, nor am I the first nun to beat out her life like a caught sparrow on the bars of its cage, caught as I was by a hope that was vain, and a life that cannot satisfy.”

“Brave and sober we must be,” I asserted, “and what we do we shall do clear-eyed, and in sight of God and His angels. But tell me once again, for my ears long for it, do you truly love me?”

“Till eternity cease to be, I love you.” And there beneath that cold winter sky, she put her face to the bars of the grille, and I kissed her, the black veil touching my cheek as I did so. Playing with fire indeed!

“Ei!” she cried with a flash of her old-time vivacity, “I have given my lips to a pretty beggar.”

“Now,” I said, very slowly, “come weal, come woe, come separation, come union; few things can truly matter. God is above us. Life is short, eternity long, and convents are not, nor vows in the vast Hereafter.”

She let go my hand. We stood facing one another. A merciful Providence still left us uninterrupted, and by great good fortune there were no windows overlooking the grille. Then I told her how night by night I saw her in my dreams, and ever as my wife. And as I spoke I saw that she was marvelling.

“But Walter,” spoke she, “now these many nights I have dreamed ever the same; it has been always in the Regenstein, the dear Regenstein, which I can see on clear days from the convent windows, and you were always with me, and folk called me ‘wife’ and ‘mother.’ How, how can these things be? God spoke once in dreams, to Samuel, to Peter, to Paul, and are they but fleeting phantoms now?”

“I cannot tell,” I answered. “I could speak from the lore of the pagan Greeks and Latins, but to what profit? Yet know this. I am Graf von Regenstein, and my men will follow me. Say but the word, and I will have you out of Quedlinburg convent by mild means or violent, and hold you safe in the castle against all the thunders of the Church.”

She shook her head. “You are jesting, Walter, I know it. I must come to you only as your honored bride. There is no hope thus. We could not live at peace in all Christendom. Perchance we might flee to the uttermost isles--those isles of the vast blue deep they say the Spaniards found--where golden fruits hang on the trees, and summer never ends. There we might indeed be beyond the reproach of men, but, tell me, would we be beyond the reproach of God?”

I reached through the grille and regained her hand.

“No, Ilsa,” I rejoined, “I would not have you, save to do you honor; and you may trust me. But trusting me, believe me in this: the thing we call the Church and all its power and teachings seem verily to be on the eve of a mighty change. What yesterday was accounted truth, passes for doubtful to-day; it will be rank error to-morrow. I have heard you read Dr. Luther’s books.”

“Yes, yes.”

“You have doubtless read how monastic vows are a denial of baptism, being an insult to God, as if, after He had received us into His Church to redeem us if we are worthy, we now try to bribe Him by an excess of good works?”

“I have; but it is all strange. When fearful vows have been taken, by whom can they be remitted?”

“By God, speaking to us in our hearts.”

“How can I know it is He that speaks, and not the Fiend?”

“I am but an ill theologian, Ilsa,” I said, laughing drearily. “I would you could speak with Dr. Luther. He is the most wonderful man in the world. The flash of his eye, the grip of his hand resolve all doubts. Well,--what shall I say further, for we cannot stand at this grille forever. Shall I bid Gunter give Trude more of Dr. Luther’s books to pass to you? Is it quite safe?”

“The nuns are reading them,” she answered demurely, and then for the first time her old roguish twinkle lit her eye. “I will tell you. I have committed a fearful sin. Perhaps it will never be forgiven. Yet it does not make me miserable. Old Father Anton, the convent chaplain, mayhaps prompted by my aunt, asked me in confession ‘Have you read any books of Luther the Heretic?’ and I answered very boldly, ‘No.’ And so, I learn, answered many other of the younger nuns. Do you think we are making the angels very sad?”

“Ah! Ilsa, Ilsa,” answered I, “the angels will gladly forgive you, and you are making one sinner very glad; for ’tis the first steps in such sweet heresies which lead to greater. Hear, then, what I, who love you more than life, declare. Standing upon this rock, with the blue sky of God above me, I say I will abide true to you till you come to me on this earth as my honored bride, or our souls greet up in heaven. I will not beset your path, I will put on you no shameful entreaty nor violence, but as Jacob served seven years for his bride, and they seemed to him but a few days, so will I serve the Cause for you. For the Cause of Luther, which is God’s, shall triumph, and that triumph shall make you free, and we shall ride into the Regenstein together, wife and husband.”

As I spoke, the sound of the organ, and of women chanting, pealed from the interior of the convent. We heard the noontime hymn to the Virgin Mother.

“Ave Maria, angelorum dea:
Coeli rectrix, Virgo Maria!
Ave maris stella, lucens miseris
Deitatis cella, porta principis!”

“This is the service before the refection,” said Ilsa. “I must go at once, or I shall be missed.”

I knelt on the muddy flags by the grille and she laid her hand on my head.

“And I, Ilsa von Blankenburg,” she spoke a trifle shrilly, token of her inner strain, “do promise that I will ever bear you on my heart, will ever pray for you and for the Cause you say may set us free. Yes, I will even dare to hope also. And do you, Walter, go forth to your knightly battle, for Luther, and righteousness, and God; a warfare nobler than those Crusades against the distant infidel, on which once rode your ancestors and mine. And if the day ever comes when I may join you as your honored bride, I am ready. And if not--then is left to us the fair Hereafter.”

I rose. We kissed again, then joined hands and spoke in concert, “The Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent, one from the other.”

“Sister Ilsa! Sister Ilsa!” called a cracked voice from within; “dismiss that greasy beggar and his tales. Has he bewitched you? The service is half chanted.”

“I come immediately,” she answered.

Without more ado, she gathered her black robe around her and was gone down the dark passage. I was left standing in the bleak roadway.

“Ei! my fine pilgrim,” cried the gate-keeper as I went down, “you were well fed and gossiped by that Sister Ilsa, I warrant.”...

Late that night I had regained the Regenstein. After warming myself at the roaring hearth fire I dismissed my servants, and clambered alone up dizzy stairs and blind ladders to the topmost parapet of the black donjon. Below me lay the vast pile of the sleeping castle, and around spread the snow peaks, their frosted contours sparkling back the innumerable stars. Not a sound of beast nor man, nor even of the wind broke the awesome stillness. For many moments I stood in profound thought, then I prayed, not kneeling, but aloud and lifting up my hands to the great dark dome on high.

“Oh! God,” I prayed, “Thou God who by the stirring of my soul and the word of Martin Luther hast plucked me out of the Italian paganism and mire, who has made a man of me, set to do a man’s part, accept this proffer of my uttermost powers even to do Thy will, not mine. Nevertheless if it be possible, if it be that the Cause shall triumph and men’s souls be redeemed from error and fear, grant that Thy mercy descend on Ilsa von Blankenburg, for her need is great. If pain must be, let it be mine to bear it, not hers. Yet if it be Thy will, let the bondage which withstands our happiness vanish away.”

Then presently I prayed again.

“O Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief!”

Gone was the lore of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Lucretius, and all their peers; gone that accursed confidence in my own wit, wisdom, and abilities; gone everything save a knowledge that I was an insufficient, fallible, sinful man whose only hope was in the help of Heaven. I went down from the tower, and sought my bed. The memorable day ended with a peaceful, refreshing sleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] A name often given greedy begging monks and pilgrims.