Chapter VI: Ilsa of the Harz

I will quote no more letters to Rocca. Truth to tell, by my praises addressed to him of the beauty of the land and by my hints of admiration for the rough virtues of the people, I was but heartening myself up, as do men when they sing lustily ere plunging into the battle. Seldom have I spent three more heartsick, homesick weeks than the first three that crept by at Schloss Regenstein, after the novelty had waned. Some excitement there was on the second day when I had uncovered a deep but dry well, and we found a goodly quantity of bones at the bottom--relics no doubt of obstinate merchants who withheld their proper ransoms. But the tingle of discovery soon passed. My eyes were offended with a thousand uncouth domestic sights, my ears by the constant gutturals of my vassals’ dialect, my nose--enough that good Herr Adolf and his fellow myrmidons had many things to learn,--at least I forced them to remove the great dung heap that was stacked right under my chamber windows. Ah! Marianna--if you would have seen my loyalty and longing for the south rekindle, you should have seen me then!

As a chief misery I had no person of my own condition in life with whom I could exchange a word. A few inquiries developed that the Graf von Blankenburg and his children were visiting some noble kinsmen beyond Halberstadt. There was no other man entitled to coat-armor in the region, nor even any half-learned monk who could fence with me in bad Latin. Heavy rains delayed the coming of my principal baggage from Augsburg, and kept me far from my dear books. Father Joseph, the castle chaplain, was too deaf and doddering to do more than shuffle through his chapel masses,--which I honored by my absence. Even the great boar whereof Adolf promised the hunting, disappeared when we sent out the beaters, and we returned from the chase with two miserable hares, scarce worth the pursuing. To add to my unhappiness Andrea poured out his complaints day and night, consigning Regenstein, Harzland, Germany, and all dwellers therein to instant and eternal perdition, quarrelling with all the maids and varlets in the castle, and making it not the least of their offences that they did not understand his anathemas vociferated in fiercest and most idiomatic Tuscan.

And then came a day after the storms; a day of calm green and golden beauty the like whereof I thought I had never met on sea or land.

A warm sweet air seemed to come sweeping down from the mountains; an air of growing leaves and bursting flowers; an air of talking oaks and great pines sighing like the waves of a wide green ocean. All the Harzland was pushing back the mists, and calling “come out hither!” And as if in answer to the call I felt my spirits rising, my feet stirring almost perforce under me. Many, many times since I have heard that call--the call of the summer forest of the North,--a call no lush and luxuriant Southland wood can find voice to utter! a call of cool streams leaping over cool rocks, while the great sun warms the fragrant ferns above them. And as often as that call comes, a dozen times during springtime and summer, I am become like the bird who has wintered afar in the tropics, but at the bidding of the season must away. So succumbing to the gentle magic of the hour, I found myself alone, happily alone, and happy to be lost in the greenwood, wandering over the hills by Schloss Regenstein.

How long I wandered I do not know. I had my rapier--I feared nothing. I had bread in my wallet--I would not grow hungry. I drank a clear draught from a moss-clustered spring gushing out of the primeval rock. I started a squirrel and sent him scampering away across the upper branches. I followed for a long way into the thickets some calling thrush that lured me onward and onward like a sweet-voiced will-o’-the-wisp. At last I brought myself upon a little path that led upward beside a trickling brook, over ferns and bluebells; with here and there the tracks of some loitering deer. The sun was striking in golden slants through a clearing, and I sat down upon a fallen log to listen to the rustling melody of the greenwood. There I fell naturally into a musing. My gift of sonnet-making came back to me. I was wandering into some imitation of Petrarco in praise of the glories of the forest, when I detected a sound--a human sound. Nothing to alarm, that was certain, though I confess in that strange woodland I clapped a hand instinctively upon my hilt. It was the voice of a woman--as I guessed, of a young girl. Not wishing to have her burst suddenly upon me, I stepped lightly back into a thicket and waited.

The singer was quite out of sight, although her clear crooning music proclaimed that she was close at hand. Nearer she came, and first I saw a pair of white feet and ankles twinkling in and out amid the twigs and grasses,--feet that Messere Raffaello would have rejoiced to get for model. I saw the feet while yet the screen of beech saplings hid her face. Her song was in broad Harz dialect. I caught glimpses of a loose blue frock. Then into the open she passed, and as I stepped from my covert I had a sight of a daintily poised head, two long braids of golden hair, cheeks exceeding red, eyes exceeding blue, and such prettily curved lines of face and throat that they seemed blooming into life from some Vatican canvass. A sight for a moment only. Back went the head like a startled doe’s. The cheeks flashed to scarlet. She drew up with abrupt pride, as well she might, upon seeing a totally strange gentleman step from a covert.

I was half ashamed at my action, but reflected that a Harz peasant maid was not likely to prove timid or prudish.

“Fair greetings, my fine lass,” I said in my best German; “this is truly a pleasant day to go walking in the greenwood.”

She surveyed me very steadily, then to my infinite surprise crossed herself upon the breast.

“I think,” said she, looking at me with great soberness, “that you are the Master Devil. But I warn you, you can do me no hurt, for I am an honest Christian maid, and the blessed St. Anna is my protectress.”

Was ever a good cavalier greeted thus before! I confess it was I who was staggered a little, although I could scarcely keep from laughing.

“My worthy maiden,” said I, “I will not pretend to saintly virtues, but I am not so often known as the Master Devil as the Graf von Regenstein.”

I had expected a mortified smirk and simper at this, when the worthy daughter of some forester or huntsman discovered her mistake. Instead, I saw the golden head and blue frock bend in a graceful and highly decorous courtesy.

“I beg my Lord of Regenstein’s pardon,” she said, with a grave simplicity that disarmed any reply. “If he will persist in wandering in our wood in a dark dress with a blue hat and an eagle’s feather, he will remember that although such costume may be excellent for Italy, it is in exactly such a garb as we are taught is worn by the Master Devil, especially as your lordship has a little black mustache and a smooth chin.”

By this time I had the offending hat off, and was sweeping the feather against my knees, for I was not wholly lacking in wits. “And who may be the gracious lady I have the honor to address?” I asked.

“Ilsa of the Harz; Ilsa von Blankenburg, who claims your Lordship’s service.”

Another courtesy; out went a small white hand, and I bowed low whilst I kissed it. Peasant maiden! All the noble pride and dignity of a Cleopatra was in her bearing when I stood before her, and explained, as I might, my unmannerly intrusion. And then as I strove to find elegant words, suddenly I saw a marvellous change come over her beauty. The dignity all vanished to the winds. Before me was standing an arch, golden-haired, bright-cheeked girl who was laughing in pure music at my confusion.

“Graf von Regenstein,--and I have called you the Master Devil, and adjured you as the fiend! Oh, blessed Mother, was there ever confusion like to that!” Her laughter went on and on, until I fell to laughing too, and then we both laughed,--the best way to cement a friendship.

And after a little, I hardly know how or why, I was walking along that path through the forest, with Gräfin Ilsa chattering at my elbow as freely as to her own brother. She seemed a mere child to me as I looked and listened, yet I could not forget that long flash of noble dignity at our first encounter. And how much she had to tell! Yes, she was the only daughter of the Graf von Blankenburg. They had returned only two days since from Halberstadt. At their schloss they had been filled by the servants with stories of the new lord of Regenstein, of his Italian clothes, Italian servants, and Italian accent. It had rained since their coming, otherwise her father would surely have sent over to offer hospitality. Her brother Moritz I would rejoice to see. He had served in the southern wars and had been clear to Rome, and once had actually seen the Holy Father. Had I also seen the Holy Father? Yes? Several times? And actually conversed with him? Oh! How sinful she had been; how could I, how could the saints, forgive her? To have mistaken a pious Christian gentleman fresh from the Apostolic benison for the author of lies? Of course I could not fail to be an exceeding good man, having lived in the veritable atmosphere of saintliness surrounding the Lord Pope.

If I turned my head at this last, remembering somewhat of my last scenes and pleasures at the Vatican, I did not contradict her, and she soon wandered on. Had I heard of her aunt, the great Abbess Theckla of the nuns of Quedlinburg? No? Well, even a learned Italian like myself could yet hear something to advantage. There was no one in all the world--save the Lord Pope--so holy as Aunt Theckla. Sometimes she prayed all night in winter in a thin shift in the cold church, kneeling on sharp chains. To atone for her own sins? Not at all. It was for the sins of her family,--her brother, his son, and especially for her niece.

But here I had to cry out perforce. “Ah! gracious Gräfin,--you do not mean she prays for sins of _yours_?”

“Why not?” The answer came with a matter-of-fact seriousness truly startling. “Of course I am very sinful. If it were not for Aunt Theckla’s prayers, I should surely go to hell. As it is, I hope the good Lord God will some day let me out of purgatory. Do you think He will?” This question straight in my face, and asked with all the honesty in the world.

_O tempora! O mores!_ How was I, gayest of the gallants of Rome, with my head filled with Plato and Porphyry and Avicenna, and every other doubting misbeliever, to answer this question, levelled at me by a young girl whom I had met not half an hour before? I confess I dared not look her in the face.

“But, noble Lady, do you not by your own pious efforts try to appease the saints?”

“Of course,” came the same calm answer. “I belong to ‘St. Ursula’s Little Ship.’”

“I crave pardon, gracious Gräfin, but I do not understand.”

“I forget,” with a little sigh of impatience. “You are from Italy. I mean the ‘Sodality of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.’ We are all pledged to pray regularly, and say two Credos, five Paternosters, and fifty Ave Marias every day. We fast all we can, and pray to St. Ursula of Cologne. Besides that I wear haircloth all of Lent, and pray still more to St. Anna. You see, she entreats her blessed daughter Mary for us, and makes the Holy Virgin get the Lord Christ to show us mercy. It is clearly explained in a little book I bought at the last Halberstadt fair. But all this, they say, is not enough to satisfy the Lord God. If it were not for Aunt Theckla, I could never sleep, I would be so afraid of hell.”

I think by this time I would have welcomed a bear out of the forest, just to change this flow of personal theology; but I was saved by less drastic means.

“Did I know where she was going?” I had been following her blindly, forgetful of forest or stream, but now I became interested in the path. She would tell me. She was going to visit Dame Hedwig, “a very wise woman.” Surely not a witch? Dame Hedwig had been confessed only last month by Father Augustin. But she gathered all manner of healing herbs in the forest, and Gräfin Ilsa must needs visit her to renew the supply at Schloss Blankenburg. And why had the Graf’s daughter gone this solitary road without escort? Another wonderful laugh rewarded my question. Had she not wandered over the slopes of the Harzland since she was at her nurse’s knee? Did she not know every trout-pool, every pine crest from the Brocken to the wondrous Bodethal? The red deer were her friends. All the peasant folk loved her. What need of a pack of silly serving-men to scamper at her heels?

She led me onward till the leafy path came out upon a more traversed way, which brought us soon into a still more open clearing. Here before us to the westward spread a noble vista of the pine-crowned hills, and in the purple distance, a monarch among the summits, which Lady Ilsa was not slow to tell me, was the famous Brocken. A long tale was soon being poured into my ears of the awful witches who flew every evening on broomsticks from the Witches’ Dancing Ground above the rushing Bode to this weird summit, there to consort the night through with their lord, the Master Devil. “And I thought you had come down by day from the Brocken to visit them,” she was saying sweetly, when we halted before a little thatch-roofed hut, with a great oak tree spreading its ample shade over the cavernous chimney.

Dame Hedwig was before the door, watering her bright array of hollyhocks. Her bent old shape courtesied as she saw the Gräfin, while she looked up at me from under her white cap with shrewd gray eyes of questioning. My new friend made haste to explain who I might be and what was her errand, and Hedwig courtesied again when Ilsa had ceased, and I could feel her keen gaze going all over me.

“Ei: so you are the new ‘Countly Grace,’ the Lord of Regenstein? You the heir of old Graf Sigismund who was lord when I was a girl? How times have changed! And so you are just come from the Welschland?--”

I cannot say I felt complimented at her running commentary as she bustled about her little kitchen, opening bags and boxes, and making up sundry small packages for the lady.

“I am not unworthy of Graf Sigismund and the rest, I trust,” I said a little stiffly, put on the defensive by her cold scrutiny, and somewhat piqued as I saw that the Gräfin regarded her comments with suppressed amusement.

“Unworthy? I said not that to your Lordship. Your Lordship is like an unproved herb among my simples. How can I tell yet whether you can kill or cure? Graf Sigismund had a two-handed sword as long as a man. Your Lordship carries--that.” Her skinny finger pointed contemptuously at my slight rapier.

“Nevertheless, honest Dame,” I said, “weak though my rapier seem, I avow I can hold my own against any master of the greater weapon. It is not a matter of strength, but of skill--thus--and thus--and thus--” And carried away with pride in my martial art, I swept out the glittering blade and flashed it about with rapid feints and passes.

Dame Hedwig showed her sharp teeth testily.

“I don’t question your skill with that bodkin, young Lord. I only know everything from your beardless chin to your flourishings now, and the way you talk with your hands more than with your tongue, prove that you are no German.”

“No German?” I was beginning to lose my temper. “This noble lady here will pardon me if I tell you I demand a civil tongue from my equals and my inferiors. I am hereditary lord of Regenstein, only son of the last Graf. I have ever defended my father’s people and land against the slanders of Italians, and I will not now, on my return to my possessions, be told that I am a stranger and interloper amongst them.”

Hedwig put down the bag of wormwood and walked straight up to me. Her attitude was respectful, but firm. I could see that Ilsa was watching all we did.

“No offence, noble Lord. When you spoke then, I saw your eye light up in a manner worthy of the Grafs your fathers. Regenstein you may be, and German you may become. But you are not yet. Will your Lordship hold out your right hand?”

I complied, half misdoubting her intentions. She opened my fingers and peered, with her sharp nose down into the palm, then dropped it abruptly.

“What do you read, Hedwig?” asked Ilsa, with a very girlish giggle.

“Read? Oh! He has a life line and a wealth line both favorable. He shall have two affairs of the heart, the first sorrowful and broken, the second exceeding joyous.”

Ilsa clapped her own hands, ejaculating, “How excellent!” But Hedwig went on. “Above all a great change shall come into his life. A change altering the whole of his being,--his mode of thought, speech, hope, life, soul--”

“Ah! tell!” commanded the young lady. Hedwig, however, shook her head, and looked up craftily into my face.

“Noble Lord, I cannot tell the rest. But if you are wise, give ear.” She half danced, half glided away from me, all the time keeping my eye, and chanted shrilly:--

“Half of Northland,
Half of Southland,
Never gay
Till all of _one_ land!”

“Do you understand?” she concluded, with a meaning smile.

Before I could decide whether to be pleased or to be angry, a clatter of hoofs sounded outside the cottage. I saw half a dozen mounted serving-men with lances and cross-bows, and at their head a lady in the sweeping white robes of a sovereign abbess, upon a stately black palfrey. Ilsa had sprung to the door as the cortège drew up, making a very wry face the while.

“Aunt Theckla,” she threw out. “I knew she would be vexed if I came to Hedwig’s.”

A nimble young squire had dismounted and approached the door abruptly, though he veiled his cap before the lady.

“Gracious Gräfin,” said he, “I am commanded to say that the reverend abbess your aunt is not pleased at your custom of visiting this woman of doubtful honesty. Having learned for what purpose you left the castle, she has ridden hither to fetch you back to Blankenburg, and your prompt obedience will spare me further mixing in an unpleasant duty.”

Ilsa looked back with another wry face. I stood by the chimney, disliking an introduction to the reverent abbess in such a dubious spot.

“Fare you well,” spoke the Gräfin, as if to Hedwig, “just for a little. I don’t mind the scolding, if my aunt _is_ a saint. I am so glad you were not the Master Devil! We’ll go hunting together after the red deer by the Brocken. _Auf wiedersehen!_”

And with that she was gone. I heard the murmur of a brief, sharp colloquy with the abbess, doubtless accented by the fact that Lady Ilsa had carried forth a neat little packet of Hedwig’s simples under her elbow. I saw the Gräfin clamber upon a pillion behind the squire. A clatter of hoofs--the troop was gone, and the young mistress with it. It was as if a sunbeam had vanished from the cottage. The sun still shone unclouded, but darkened. Inscrutable as she had been in her mode of greeting, her mingling of the serious and the gay, her girlishness, yet her occasional bursts of high womanhood, I felt myself wholly baffled at the impression she had made upon me. I stood in silence while Hedwig glanced cautiously out of the door to be sure her unwelcome guests were gone.

“The abbess is like flint,” she spoke at length; “all white, and pure, and hard--”

I took out a gulden and laid it significantly on the table.

“Hark you, wise dame,” I said civilly; “while I deny I am a foreigner here, I confess I lack your local gossip. Who is this Gräfin von Blankenburg I met by chance in the forest?”

“A moonbeam, a spring rose, a wood dove with an eagle’s heart and will.”

“You have known her, then?”

“Ei! Didn’t I help her into the world the day her mother--God rest her soul--passed from it?”

“Good woman,” I continued, “my folk at the castle do not like to give me an evil opinion of my noble neighbors. Whenever I ask of the Graf of Blankenburg they praise his hunting and let it go at that.”

“Holy St. Elizabeth--well they may!”

“What is he, then?”

She looked slyly at the coin.

“Your Lordship will not reveal _I_ told you tales. The Graf of Blankenburg had his coat of arms burned on the cheek of a castle varlet last year just for telling a few stories about his betters.”

“You are safe, continue.”

“Well, in a word, he is the most drunken, roaring, cruel lord in all Saxony and Brunswick. Two months since he had a peasant’s guts torn out and wound around a tree--and just for barking the trunk thereof. ‘To cover the peeled part,’ said his Lordship, merrily. He forces the peasants to beat the bushes by night to quiet the frogs. He leads his whole trampling hunt across their cornfields. He forces their children to serve in the castle without pay--and woe then to the honest, modest wenches among his foul varlets.”

“Verily,” said I, with a dry shrug, “I have a right courtly neighbor!”

“Pray God, he will not last very long. Graf Moritz, his son, is a very prudent, honorable young lord. But his father will have drunk and gambled away nigh everything. Moritz will get nothing but the stripped acres and the bare castle. Poor young ritter--we all pity him.”

“You seem to have no pity for Lady Ilsa, however?”

“Pity? My heart has broken long since for her. I’ll lament no more. How she has lived through these years and not become even as her sire, the Holy Mother knows! But she will become a saint, and need none of our pity.”

“Become a saint? I really saw no signs of that.”

“Then she did not tell your Lordship? Her aunt is resolved she should join her in the convent. She works upon the Graf’s fears, saying ‘Give your daughter to God, and He will spare your soul.’ As yet he has not consented, but he will give way at last. He fears hell, and well he may.”

“And Lady Ilsa?”

“Will of course yield. She is betwixt the abbess all ice, and her father all vice.”

“Ah!” I let the conversation drop. Hedwig pointed out my way to Regenstein, and I walked back, under the long northern twilight, filled with thought. This then was the destined fate of the baffling creature who had crossed my path this day. The veiling in the church; the shorn hair; the severance from the world; the perpetual fast, vigil, and service; the hardening monotony of years of routine performance; the shadows of old age. Once I tried to contrast Ilsa and my glorious Marianna; the thing was impossible: who can contrast the noontide sun with starlight? Yet the starlight had its beauty. I confess I was not sorry, in my isolation at Regenstein, to think there was a young woman within reach to whom I could pay my addresses. Just how far my addresses should go, whether even they should be entirely honorable, I admit I did not let come into my consideration. But I was determined not to let any ill-repute of the father prevent me from company with the daughter.

The next morning, when Andrea came to shave me, I ordered him to take his razor away.

“I will not be stared at by all the country. I will grow a beard.”

“But Eccellenza?” he began in dismay.

“And furthermore, I will order over a tailor from Halberstadt to have my clothes made in the German fashion.”

He was too agonized now even to protest. As for myself, I leaned upon the casement and gazed forth upon the neighborly battlements of Schloss Blankenburg. Old Hedwig’s words were running in my head:--

“Half of Northland,
Half of Southland,
Never gay
Till all of _one_ land.”

“Perhaps,” I said very carelessly to myself, “Lady Ilsa will never enter the convent.”