"To h.e.l.l with him! I wish he had my job, and I his, of watching the yellow-bird in her new cage, till she"s taken out to-night, and then a jolly b.u.mper to the Baron all round."
The driver wished him a fortunate journey, strongly recommending him to skirt the abbey westward, and go by the Ahr valley, as there was something stirring that way, and mumbling, "Makes five again," as he put the wheels in motion.
"Goshawk!" said his visible companion; "what do you say now?"
"I say, bless that widow!"
"Oh! bring me face to face with this accursed Werner quickly, my G.o.d !"
gasped the youth.
"Tusk! "tis not Werner we want--there"s the Thier speaking. No, no, Schwartz Thier! I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole, before he goes inside it. We"re strangers, and are allowed to miss our way."
Leaving the wain in Farina"s charge, he pushed through a dense growth of shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of shrouded crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round it, as if scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone"sthrow distant, and nearly level with the look-out tower. Sheer from a deep circular basin clothed with wood, and bottomed with gra.s.s and bubbling water, rose a naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly perched, like a spying hawk. The only means of access was by a narrow natural bridge of rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the mainland. One man, well disposed, might have held it against forty.
"Our way"s the best," thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining admission. "A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down again."
While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and scrambled back to Farina.
"The Thier leads now," said he, "and who leads is captain. It seems easier to get out of that than in. There"s a square tower, and a round.
I guess the maiden to be in the round. Now, lad, no crying out--You don"t come in with us; but back you go for the horses, and have them ready and fresh in yon watered meadow under the castle. The path down winds easy."
"Man!" cried Farina, "what do you take me for?--go you for the horses."
"Not for a fool," Guy rejoined, tightening his lip; "but now is your time to prove yourself one."
"With you, or without you, I enter that castle!"
"Oh! if you want to be served up hot for the Baron"s supper-mess, by all means."
"Thunder!" growled Schwartz Thier, "aren"t ye moving?"
The Goshawk beckoned Farina aside.
"Act as I tell you, or I"m for Cologne."
"Traitor!" muttered the youth.
"Swearing this, that if we fail, the Baron shall need a leech sooner than a bride."
"That stroke must be mine!"
The Goshawk griped the muscle of Farina"s arm till the youth was compelled to slacken it with pain.
"Could you drive a knife through a six-inch wood-wall? I doubt this wild boar wants a harder hit than many a best man could give. "Sblood! obey, sirrah. How shall we keep yon fellow true, if he sees we"re at points?"
"I yield," exclaimed Farina with a fall of the chest; "but hear I nothing of you by midnight--Oh! then think not I shall leave another minute to chance. Farewell! haste! Heaven prosper you! You will see her, and die under her eyes. That may be denied to me. What have I done to be refused that last boon?"
"Gone without breakfast and dinner," said Guy in abhorrent tones.
A whistle from the wain, following a noise of the castlegates being flung open, called the Goshawk away, and he slouched his shoulders and strode to do his part, without another word. Farina gazed after him, and dropped into the covert.
THE WATER-LADY
"Bird of lovers! Voice of the pa.s.sion of love! Sweet, deep, disaster- toning nightingale!" sings the old minnesinger; "who that has not loved, hearing thee is touched with the wand of love"s mysteries, and yearneth to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but who, listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears, saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee so far! now shall I never die in thee !"
"For surely," says the minstrel, "Hope is not born of earth, or it were perishable. Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal nightingale! And the difference of this celestial spirit from the smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet stars of everlasting time! And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this shifting sh.o.r.e; in her eyes a shape of beauty floating dimly, that she will not attain this side the water, but broodeth on evermore.
"Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with pa.s.sionate chuckle and sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a priest of the inmost temple, "tis drunken with fair intelligences!"
Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.
Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by the guilty castle that entombed his living beloved. The castle looked itself a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree. The meadow spread like a green courtyard at the castle"s foot. It was of lush deep emerald gra.s.s, softly mixed with grey in the moon"s light, and showing like jasper. Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a mist of colour. All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself. The spring crocus lifted its head in moist midgra.s.ses of the meadow, rejoiced with freshness. The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle with a lover"s arm.
"The moon will tell me," mused Farina; "the moon will signal me the hour!
When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know "tis time to strike."
The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.
It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch. The four long notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of music, gurgling rich with pa.s.sion, came thick and constant from under the tremulous leaves.
At first Farina had been deaf to them. His heart was in the dungeon with Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action.
Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won. The tenderness of his love then mastered him.
"G.o.d will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!" he thought, and with the thought a load fell off his breast.
He paced the meadows, and patted the three pasturing steeds.
Involuntarily his sight grew on the moon. She went so slowly. She seemed not to move at all. A little wing of vapour flew toward her; it whitened, pa.s.sed, and the moon was slower than before. Oh! were the heavens delaying their march to look on this iniquity? Again and again he cried, "Patience, it is not time!" He flung himself on the gra.s.s. The next moment he climbed the heights, and was peering at the ma.s.s of gloom that fronted the sky. It reared such a mailed head of menace, that his heart was seized with a quivering, as though it had been struck. Behind lay scattered some small faint-winkling stars on sapphire fields, and a stain of yellow light was in a breach of one wall.
He descended. What was the Goshawk doing? Was he betrayed? It was surely now time? No; the moon had not yet smitten the face of the castle. He made his way through the hazel-bank among flitting nightmoths, and glanced up to measure the moon"s distance. As he did so, a first touch of silver fell on the h.o.a.ry flint.
"Oh, young bird of heaven in that Devil"s clutch!"
Sounds like the baying of boar-hounds alarmed him. They whined into silence.
He fell back. The meadow breathed peace, and more and more the nightingales volumed their notes. As in a charmed circle of palpitating song, he succ.u.mbed to languor. The brook rolled beside him fresh as an infant, toying with the moonlight. He leaned over it, and thrice waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.
Was it his own face imaged there?
Farina bent close above an eddy of the water. It whirled with a strange tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the moon"s; nor was it a reflection. The agitation increased. Now a wreath of bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended wavering.
He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed roses, appeared. No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen. Her visage had the l.u.s.trous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see. The Lady of the Water smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty.
Then, as he retreated on the meadow gra.s.s, she swam toward him, and taking his hand, pressed it to her. After her touch the youth no longer feared. She curved her finger, and beckoned him on. All that she did was done flowingly. The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she pa.s.sed like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses shivered and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at delicious rare sips of a wine. Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and valley-lily, mingled and fluttered about her. Farina was as a man working the day"s intent in a dream. He could see the heart in her translucent, hanging like a cold dingy ruby. By the purity of his nature he felt that such a presence must have come but to help. It might be Margarita"s guardian fairy!
They pa.s.sed the hazel-bank, and rounded the castlecrag, washed by the brook and, beneath the advancing moon, standing in a ring of brawling silver. The youth with his fervid eyes marked the old weather-stains and scars of long defiance coming into colour. That mystery of wickedness which the towers had worn in the dusk, was dissolved, and he endured no more the almost abashed sensation of competing littleness that made him think there was nought to do, save die, combating single-handed such ma.s.sive power. The moon shone calmly superior, like the prowess of maiden knights; and now the harsh frown of the walls struck resolution to his spirit, and nerved him with hate and the contempt true courage feels when matched against fraud and villany.