At nine I was at the door of the dark, silent house by the Weiss Thor. I sounded the knocker loudly, and with the end of the reverberations I heard a foot come through the long pa.s.sages. The panel behind slid noiselessly in its grooves, and I was conscious that a pair of eyes looked out at me.
"You are the servant of the strange Doctor?" said the voice of the servitor, Sir Respectable.
"That I am, as by this time you may have seen!" answered I, for I was in no mood of mere politeness. I was venturing my life in the house of mine enemy, and, at least, it would be no harm if I put a bold face on the matter.
He opened the door, and again the same curious perfume was wafted down the pa.s.sages--something that I had never felt either in the Wolfsberg nor yet even in the women"s chambers of the Palace of Pla.s.senburg.
At the door of the little room in which she had first received me so long ago, the Lady Ysolinde was waiting for me.
She did not shut the door till Sir Respectable had betaken him down again to his own place. Then quite frankly and undisguisedly she took my hand, like one who had come to the end of make-believe.
"I knew you to-day in your disguise," she said; "it is an excellent one, and might deceive all save a woman who loves. Ah, you start. It might deceive the woman you love, but not the woman that loves you. I am not the Princess to-night; I am Ysolinde, the Woman. I have no restraints, no conventions, no laws, no religions to-night--save the law of a woman"s need and the religion of a woman"s pa.s.sion."
I stood before her, scarce knowing what to say.
"Sit down," she said; "it is a long story, and yet I will not weary you, Hugo--so much I promise you."
I made answer to her, still standing up.
"To-night, my lady, after what you know, you will not be surprised that I can think of only one thing. You know that to-day--"
"I know," she said, cutting me short, as if she did not wish to listen to that which I might say next; "I know--I was present in the Judgment Hall."
"Then, being Master Gerard"s daughter, you knew also the sentence before it was p.r.o.nounced!" I said, bitterly, being certain as that I lived that the paper from which the Duke Otho read had been penned at this very house of the Weiss Thor in which I now sat.
Ysolinde reached a slender hand to me, as was often her wont instead of speech.
"Be patient to-night," she said; "I am trying hard to do that which is best--for myself first, as a woman must in a woman"s affairs. But, as G.o.d sees me, for others also! You are a man, but I pray you think with fairness of the fight I, a lonely, unloved woman, have to fight."
"Will they carry out the terrible sentence?" said I, eagerly. For I judged that she must be in her father"s counsels.
"Be patient," she said; "we will come to that presently."
Ysolinde sat silent a while, and when I would have spoken further she moved her hand a little impatiently aside, in sign that I was not to interrupt. Yet even this was not done in her old imperious manner, but rather sadly and with a certain wistful gentleness which went to my heart.
When she spoke again it was in the same even voice with which she had formerly told my fortune in that very room.
"That which I have to say to you is a thing strange--as it may seem unwomanly. But then, I did not ask G.o.d to make me a woman, and certainly he did not make me as other women. I have never had a true mate, never won the love which G.o.d owes to every man and woman He brings into the world.
"Then I mot you, not by any seeking of mine. Next, equally against my will, I loved you. Nay, do not start to-night. It is as well to put the matter plainly."
"You did not _love_ me," said I; "you were but kind to me, the unworthy son of the Executioner of Thorn. Out of your good heart you did it."
I acknowledge that I spoke like a paltering knave, but in truth knew not what to say.
"I loved you--yes, and I love you!" she said, serenely, as though my words had been the twittering of a bird on the roof. "And I am not ashamed. There was indeed no reason for my folly--no beauty, no desirableness in you. But--I loved you. Pa.s.s! Let it be. We will begin from there. You loved, or thought you loved, a maid--your Little Playmate. Pshaw, you loved her not! Or not as I count love. I was proud, accustomed to command, and, besides, a Prince"s wife. The last, doubtless, should have held me apart. Yet my Princessdom was but as straw bands cast into the fire to bind the flame. As for you, Hugo Gottfried, you were in love with your success, your future, and, most of all, with your confident, insolently dullard self."
She smiled bitterly, and, because the thing she spoke was partly true, I had still nothing to answer her.
"Hugo Gottfried," she said, "try to remember if, when we rode to Pla.s.senburg in the pleasant weather of that old spring, you loved this girl whom now you love?"
"Aye," said I, "loved her then, even as I love her now."
"You lie," she answered, calmly, not like one in anger, but as one who makes a necessary correction, "you loved her not. You were ready to love me--glad, too, that I should love you. And since you knew not then of my rank, it was not done for the sake of any advancement in Pla.s.senburg."
I felt again the great disadvantage I was under in speaking to the Lady Ysolinde. I never had a word to say but she could put three to it. My best speeches sounded empty, selfish, vain beside hers. And so was it ever. By deeds alone could I vanquish her, and perhaps by a certain dogged masculine persistence.
"Princess," I said to her, "you have asked me to meet you here. It is not of the past, nor yet of likings, imaginings, recriminations that I must speak. My love, my sister, my playmate, bound to me by a thousand ancient tendernesses, lies in prison in this city of Thorn, under sentence of a cruel death. Will you help me to release her? I think that with your father, and therefore with you, is the power to open her prison doors!"
"And what is there then for me?" cried the Lady Ysolinde, instantly, bending her head forward, her emerald eyes so great and clear that their shining seemed to cover all her face as a wave covers a rock at flood-tide.
"What for me?" she repeated, in the silence which followed.
"For you," said I, "the gladness to have saved an innocent life."
"Tush!" she cried, with a gesture of extravagant contempt. "You mistake; I am no good-deeds monger, to give my bread and b.u.t.ter to the next beggar-la.s.s. I tell you I am the woman who came first out of the womb of Mother-earth. I will yield only that which is s.n.a.t.c.hed from me. What is mine is more mine than another"s, because I would suffer, dare, sin, defy a world of men and women in order to keep it, to possess it, to have it all alone to myself!"
"But," I answered, "who am I, that so great a lady should love me? What am I to you, Princess, more than another?"
"_That_ I know not!" she answered, swiftly. "Only G.o.d knows that. Perhaps my curse, my punishment. My husband is a far better, truer, n.o.bler man than you, Hugo. I know it; but what of that, when I love him not? Love goes not by the rungs in a ladder, stands not with the most n.o.ble on the highest step, is not bestowed, like the rewards in a child"s school, to the most deserving. I love you, Hugo Gottfried, it is true. But I wish a thousand times that I did not. Nevertheless--I do! Therefore make your reckoning with that, and put aside puling shams and whimpering subterfuges."
This set me all on edge, and I asked a question.
"What, then, do you propose? Where, shall this comedy end?"
"End!" she said--"end! Aye, of course, men must ever look to an end.
Women are content with a continuance. That you should love me and keep on loving me, that is all I want!"
"But," I began, "I love--"
"Ah, do not say it!" she cried, pitifully, clasping her hands with a certain swift appeal in her voice--"do not say it! For G.o.d"s sake, for the sake of innocent blood, do not say that you love me not!"
She paused a moment, and grew more pensive as she looked stilly and solemnly at me.
"I will tell you the end that I see; only be patient and answer not before I have done. I have seen a vision--thrice have I seen it. Karl of Pla.s.senburg, my husband, shall die. I have seen the Black Cloak thrice envelop him. It is the sign. No man hath ever escaped that omen--aye, and if I choose, it shall wrap him about speedily. More, I have seen you sit on the throne of Pla.s.senburg and of the Mark, with a Princess by your side. It is _not_ only my fancy. Even as in the old time I read your present fortune, so, for good or ill, this thing also is coming to you."
She never took her eyes from my face.
"Now listen well and be slow to speak. The Princedom and the power shall both fall to me when my husband dies. There are none other hands capable.
So also is it arranged in his will. Here"--she broke off suddenly, as with a gesture of infinite surrender she thrust out her white hands towards me--"here is my kingdom and me. Take us both, for we are yours--yours--yours!"
I took her hands gently in mine and kissed them.
"Lady, Lady Ysolinde," I said, "you honor me, you overwhelm me, I know not what to say. But think! The Prince is well, full of health and the hope of years. This thought of yours is but a vision, a delusion--how can we speak of the thing that is not?"
"I wait your answer," she said, leaving her hands still in mine, but now, as it were, on sufferance. Then, indeed, I was torn between the love that I had in my heart for my dear and the need of pleasing the Lady Ysolinde--between the truth and my desire to save Helene. Almost it was in my heart to declare that I loved the Lady Ysolinde, and to promise that I should do all she asked. But though, when need hath been, I have lied back and forth in my time, and thought no shame, something stuck in my throat now; and I felt that if I denied my love, who lay prison-bound that night, I should never come within the mercy of G.o.d, but be forever alien and outcast from any commonwealth of honorable men.
"I cannot, Lady Ysolinde," I answered, at last. "The love of the maid hath so grown into my heart that I cannot root it out at a word. It is here, and it fills all my life!"