Part 3
The young man displayed his papers.
“I wish to see Count Griffenfeld,--I would say, your prisoner.”
“The Count! the Count!” muttered the officer in some displeasure. “But, to be sure, this paper is in order; here is the signature of Vice-Chancellor Grummond de Knud. ‘Admit the bearer to visit all the royal prisons at any hour and at any time.’ Grummond de Knud is brother to old General Levin de Knud, who is in command at Throndhjem, and you must know that this old general had the bringing up of my future brother-in-law.”
“Thanks for these family details, Lieutenant. Don’t you think you have told me enough of them?”
“The impertinent fellow is right,” said the lieutenant, biting his lips. “Hullo, there, officer, officer of the tower! Escort this stranger to Schumacker, and do not scold if I have taken down your lamp with three beaks and but one wick. I was curious to examine an article which is doubtless the work of Sciold the Pagan or Havar the giant-killer; and besides it is no longer the fashion to hang anything but crystal chandeliers from the ceiling.”
With these words, as the young man and his escort crossed the deserted donjon garden, the martyr to fashion resumed the thread of the love adventures of the Amazonian Clelia and Horatius the One-eyed.
IV.
_Benvolio._ Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home to-night? _Mercutio._ Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man. SHAKESPEARE: _Romeo and Juliet._
A man and two horses entered the courtyard of the palace of the governor of Throndhjem. The horseman dismounted, shaking his head with a discontented air. He was about to lead the two animals to the stable, when his arm was seized, and a voice cried: “How! You here alone, Poël! And your master,--where is your master?”
It was old General Levin de Knud, who, seeing from his window the young man’s servant and the empty saddle, descended quickly, and fastened upon the groom a gaze which betrayed even more alarm than his question.
“Your Excellency,” said Poël, with a low bow, “my master has left Throndhjem.”
“What! has he been here, and gone again without seeing his general, without greeting his old friend! And how long since?”
“He arrived this evening and left this evening.”
“This evening,--this very evening! But where did he stay? Where has he gone?”
“He stopped at the Spladgest, and has embarked for Munkholm.”
“Ah! I supposed he was at the antipodes. But what is his business at that castle? What took him to the Spladgest? Just like my knight-errant. After all, I am rather to blame, for why did I give him such a bringing up? I wanted him to be free in spite of his rank.”
“Therefore he is no slave to etiquette,” said Poël.
“No; but he is to his own caprice. Well, he will doubtless return. Rest and refresh yourself, Poël. Tell me,” and the general’s face took on an expression of solicitude, “tell me, Poël, have you been doing much running up and down?”
“General, we came here direct from Bergen. My master was melancholy.”
“Melancholy! Why, what can have occurred between him and his father? Is he averse to this marriage?”
“I do not know. But they say that his Serene Highness insists upon it.”
“Insists! You say, Poël, that the viceroy insists upon this match! But why should he insist unless Ordener refused?”
“I don’t know, your Excellency. He seems sad.”
“Sad! Do you know how his father received him?”
“The first time, it was at the camp, near Bergen. His Serene Highness said, ‘I seldom see you, my son.’ ‘So much the better for me, my lord and father,’ replied my master, ‘if you take note of it.’ Then he gave his Grace certain details about his travels in the North, and his Grace said: ‘It is well.’ Next day my master came back from the palace and said: ‘They want me to marry; but I must consult my second father, General Levin.’ I saddled the horses, and here we are.”
“Really, my good Poël,” said the general, in trembling tones, “did he really call me his second father?”
“Yes, your Excellency.”
“Woe to me if this marriage distresses him, for I will sooner incur the king’s displeasure than lend myself to it. And yet, the daughter of the Lord High Chancellor of both kingdoms--By the way, Poël, does Ordener know that his future mother-in-law, Countess d’Ahlefeld, has been here incognito since yesterday, and that the count is expected?”
“I don’t know, General.”
“Oh, yes,” thought the old governor, “he knows it; for why else should he beat a retreat the instant that he arrived?”
Upon this, the general, with a friendly wave of the hand to Poël, and a salute to the sentinel who presented arms to him, returned in anxious mood to the quarters which he had left in anxious mood.
V.
It seemed as if every emotion had stirred his heart, and had also deserted it; nothing remained but the mournful, piercing gaze of a man thoroughly familiar with men, who saw, at a glance, the aim and object of all things.--SCHILLER: _The Visions._
When, after leading the stranger along the winding stairs and lofty halls of the donjon of the Lion of Schleswig, the officer finally threw open the door of the room occupied by the man he sought, the first words that fell upon his ear were once more these: “Has Captain Dispolsen come at last?”
The speaker was an old man, seated with his back to the door, his elbows on a writing-table, his head buried in his hands. He wore a black woollen gown, and above a bed at one end of the room hung a broken escutcheon, around which were grouped the broken collars of the orders of the Elephant and the Dannebrog; a count’s coronet, reversed, was fastened under the shield, and two fragments of a hand of Justice, tied crosswise, completed the strange ornamentation. The old man was Schumacker.
“No, my Lord,” replied the officer; then he said to the stranger, “This is the prisoner;” and leaving them together, he closed the door, without heeding the shrill voice of the old man, who exclaimed: “If it is not the captain, I will see no one.”
At these words the stranger remained by the door; and the prisoner, thinking himself alone,--for he had turned away,--fell back into his silent revery. Suddenly he exclaimed: “The captain has assuredly forsaken and betrayed me! Men,--men are like the icicle which an Arab took for a diamond; he hid it carefully in his wallet, and when he looked for it again he found not even a drop of water.”
“I am no such man,” said the stranger.
Schumacker rose quickly. “Who is here? Who overhears me? Is it some miserable tool of that Guldenlew?”
“Speak no evil of the viceroy, my lord Count.”
“Lord Count! Do you address me thus to flatter me? You have your labor for your pains; I am powerful no longer.”
“He who speaks to you never knew you in your day of power, and is none the less your friend.”
“Because he still hopes to gain something from me; those memories of the unhappy which linger in the minds of men are to be measured by the hopes of future gain.”
“I am the one who should complain, noble Count; for I remember you, and you have forgotten me. I am Ordener.”
A flash of joy lit up the old man’s sad eyes, and a smile which he could not repress parted his white beard, as when a sunbeam breaks through a cloud.
“Ordener! Welcome, traveller Ordener! A thousand prayers for the happiness of the traveller who remembers the prisoner!”
“But,” inquired Ordener, “had you really forgotten me?”
“I had forgotten you,” said Schumacker, resuming his sombre mood, “as we forget the breeze which refreshes us and passes by; we are fortunate if it does not become a whirlwind to destroy us.”
“Count Griffenfeld,” rejoined the young man, “did you not count upon my return?”
“Old Schumacker did not count upon it; but there is a maiden here, who reminded me this very day that it was a year on the 8th of last May, since you went away.”
Ordener started.
“Heavens! Can it be your Ethel, noble Count?”
“Who else?”
“Your daughter, my Lord, has deigned to count the months of my absence! Oh, how many dreary days I have passed! I have traversed Norway from Christiania to Wardhus; but my journeyings always tended back toward Throndhjem.”
“Use your freedom, young man, while you may. But tell me who you are. I would like, Ordener, to know you by some other name. The son of one of my mortal foes is called Ordener.”
“Perhaps, my lord Count, this mortal foe feels greater kindness for you than you for him.”
“You evade my question; but keep your secret. I might learn that the fruit which quenches my thirst is a poison which will destroy me.”
“Count!” cried Ordener, angrily; “Count!” he repeated, in tones of pity and reproach.
“Why should I trust you,” replied Schumacker,--“you who to my very face defend the merciless Guldenlew?”
“The viceroy,” gravely interrupted the young man, “has just ordered that for the future you shall be free and unguarded within the entire precinct of the Lion of Schleswig keep. This news I learned at Bergen, and you will doubtless soon hear it from headquarters.”
“This is a favor for which I dared not hope, and I thought you were the only person to whom I had mentioned my wish. So they lessen the weight of my chains as that of my years increases; and when old age renders me helpless, they will probably tell me, ‘You are free.’”
So saying, the old man smiled bitterly, and added: “And you, young man, do you still cling to your foolish ideas of independence?”
“If I had not those same foolish ideas, I should not be here.”
“How did you come to Throndhjem?”
“Why, on horseback.”
“How did you reach Munkholm?”
“By boat.”
“Poor fool! You think yourself free, and yet you only leave a horse for a boat. It is not your own limbs that carry out your wishes; it is a brute beast, it is material matter; and you call that free will!”
“I force animate beings to obey me.”
“To assume a right to the obedience of certain beings is to give others a right to command you. Independence exists only in isolation.”
“You do not love mankind, noble Count?”
The old man laughed sadly. “I weep that I am a man, and I laugh at him who would console me. You will yet learn, if you do not already know, that misfortune creates suspicion as prosperity does ingratitude. Tell me, since you come from Bergen, what favoring winds blow upon Captain Dispolsen. Some good fortune must have befallen him, that he forgets me.”
Ordener looked grave and embarrassed.
“Dispolsen, my lord Count? I come here to-day to talk to you of him. I know that he possessed your entire confidence.”
“You know?” broke in the prisoner, uneasily. “You are mistaken. No one on earth has my confidence. Dispolsen has, it is true, my papers, and very important papers too. He went to Copenhagen, to the king, for me. I may even confess that I reckoned more surely upon him than upon any one else, for in the days of my prosperity I never did him a service.”
“Well, noble Count, I saw him to-day--”
“Your distress tells me the rest; he is a traitor.”
“He is dead.”
“Dead!”
The prisoner folded his arms and bent his head, then looking up at the young man, said: “I told you some good fortune must have befallen him!”
His eye turned to the wall, where the signs of his former grandeur hung, and he waved his hand, as if to dismiss the witness of a grief which he strove to conquer.
“I do not pity him; ’tis but one man the less. Nor do I pity myself; what have I to lose? But my daughter,--my unfortunate daughter! I shall be the victim of this infernal plot; and what is to become of her, if her father is taken from her?”
He turned quickly to Ordener. “How did he die? Where did you see him?”
“I saw him at the Spladgest. No one knows whether he died by suicide or by the hand of an assassin.”
“That is now all-important. If he was murdered, I know who dealt the blow. Then all is lost. He bore proofs of the conspiracy against me. Those proofs might have saved me and ruined them! Unhappy Ethel!”
“My lord Count,” said Ordener, bowing, “to-morrow I will tell you whether he was murdered.”
Schumacker, without answering, cast on Ordener, as he left the room, a look of quiet despair more terrible than the calm of death.
Ordener found himself in the prisoner’s empty antechamber, not knowing which way to turn. Night was far advanced and the room was dark. He opened a door at haphazard and entered a vast corridor lighted only by the moon, which moved rapidly through pale clouds. Its misty beams fell now and again upon the long, narrow glass windows, and painted on the opposite wall what seemed a procession of ghosts, appearing and disappearing simultaneously in the depths of the passage. The young man slowly crossed himself, and walked toward a light which shone faintly at the end of the corridor.
A door stood ajar; a young girl knelt in a Gothic oratory, at the foot of a bare altar, reciting in low tones litanies to the Virgin,--simple and sublime aspirations, in which the soul that rises toward the Mother of Seven Sorrows asks nothing but her prayers.
The young girl was dressed in black crape and white gauze, as if to show at a glance that her days had hitherto been passed in grief and innocence. Even in this modest attitude she bore the impress of a strange nature. Her eyes and her long hair were black (a very rare beauty in the North); her eyes, raised to heaven, seemed kindled with rapture rather than dimmed by meditation. She seemed a virgin from the shores of Cyprus or the banks of the Tiber, clad in the fanciful disguise of one of Ossian’s characters and prostrate before the wooden cross and stone altar of Christ Jesus.
Ordener started and almost fell, for he recognized the devotee.
She was praying for her father, for the mighty who had fallen, for the old and desolate prisoner; and she recited aloud the psalm of the deliverance out of Egypt. She prayed for another as well, but Ordener did not hear his name. He did not hear it, for she did not utter it; she merely recited the canticle of the Sulamite, the bride who awaits her bridegroom and the return of her beloved.
Ordener stepped back into the gallery; he respected the maiden holding converse with the sky. Prayer is a great mystery, and his heart was involuntarily filled with unknown but profane ecstasy.
The door of the oratory was gently closed. Soon a light borne by a white figure moved toward him through the darkness. He stood still, for he felt one of the strongest emotions of his life; he leaned against the gloomy wall; his body was weak, and his limbs trembled beneath him. In the silence of his entire being the beating of his heart was plainly audible to his own ear.
As the young girl passed, she heard the rustle of a garment, and a quick, sudden gasp, and cried out in terror.
Ordener rushed forward. With one arm he supported her, with the other he vainly tried to grasp the lamp which she had dropped, and which went out.
“It is I,” he said softly.
“It is Ordener!” said the girl; for the last echo of that voice, which she had not heard for a year, still rang in her ear.
And the moon, passing by, revealed the joy of her fair face. Then she repeated, in timid confusion, freeing herself from the young man’s arms, “It is my lord Ordener.”
“Himself, Countess Ethel.”
“Why do you call me countess?”
“Why do you call me my lord?”
The young girl smiled, and was silent. The young man was silent, and sighed. She was first to break the silence.
“How came you here?”
“Pardon me, if my presence disturbs you. I came to see the count, your father.”
“Then,” said Ethel, in a changed tone, “you only came for my father’s sake.”
The young man bent his head, for these words seemed to him unjust.
“I suppose you have been in Throndhjem a long time,” she continued reproachfully, “I suppose you have been here a long time already? Your absence from this castle cannot have seemed long to you.”
Ordener, deeply wounded, made no reply.
“You are right,” said the prisoner, in a voice which trembled with anger and distress; “but,” she added, in a haughty tone, “I hope, my lord Ordener, that you did not overhear my prayers?”
“Countess,” reluctantly replied the young man, “I did hear you.”
“Ah! my lord Ordener, it was far from courteous to listen.”
“I did not listen, noble Countess,” said Ordener in a low voice; “I overheard you accidentally.”
“I prayed for my father,” rejoined the girl, looking steadily at him, as if expecting an answer to this very simple statement.
Ordener was silent.
“I also prayed,” she continued uneasily, and apparently anxious as to the effect which her words might produce upon him, “I also prayed for some one who bears your name, for the son of the viceroy, Count Guldenlew. For we should pray for every one, even our persecutors.”
And she blushed, for she thought she was lying; but she was offended with the young man, and she fancied that she had mentioned him in her prayer; she had only named him in her heart.
“Ordener Guldenlew is very unfortunate, noble lady, if you reckon him among the number of your persecutors; and yet he is very fortunate to possess a place in your prayers.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethel, troubled and alarmed by his cold manner, “no, I did not pray for him. I do not know what I did, nor what I do. As for the viceroy’s son, I detest him; I do not know him. Do not look at me so sternly; have I offended you? Can you not forgive a poor prisoner,--you who spend your days in the society of some fair and noble lady, free and happy like yourself?”
“I, Countess!” exclaimed Ordener.
Ethel burst into tears; the young man flung himself at her feet.
“Did you not tell me,” she continued, smiling through her tears, “that your absence seemed to you short?”
“Who, I, Countess?”
“Do not call me countess,” said she, gently; “I am no longer a countess to any one, and far less to you.”
The young man sprang up, and could not help clasping her to his heart in convulsive delight.
“Oh, my adored Ethel, call me your own Ordener! Tell me,”--and his ardent glances rested on her eyes wet with tears,--“tell me, do you love me still?”
The young girl’s answer went unheard, for Ordener, carried away by his emotions, snatched from her lips with her reply that first favor, that sacred kiss, which in the sight of God suffices to make two lovers man and wife.
Both were speechless, because the moment was one of those solemn ones, so rare and so brief in this world, when the soul seems to feel something of celestial bliss. These instants when two souls thus converse in a language understood by no other are not to be described; then all that is human is hushed, and the two immaterial beings become mysteriously united for life in this world and eternity in the next.
Ethel slowly withdrew from Ordener’s arms, and by the light of the moon each gazed into the other’s face with ecstasy; only, the young man’s eye of fire flashed with masculine pride and leonine courage, while the maiden’s downcast face was marked by that modesty and angelic shame which in a virgin beauty are always blended with all the joys of love.
“Were you trying to avoid me just now,” she said at last, “here in this corridor, my Ordener?”
“Not to avoid you. I was like the unfortunate blind man who is restored to sight after the lapse of long years, and who turns away from the light’s first radiance.”
“Your comparison is more applicable to me, for during your absence my only pleasure has been the presence of a wretched man, my father. I spent my weary days in trying to comfort him, and,” she added, looking down, “in hoping for your coming. I read the fables of the Edda to my father, and when he doubted all men, I read him the Gospel, that at least he might not doubt Heaven; then I talked to him of you, and he was silent, which shows that he loves you. But when I had spent my evenings in vainly watching the arrival of travellers by various roads, and the ships which anchored in the harbor, he shook his head with a bitter smile, and I wept. This prison, where my whole past life has been spent, grew hateful to me; and yet my father, who until you came was all-sufficient for my wants, was still here; but you were not here, and I longed for that liberty which I had never known.”
There was a charm which no tongue can express, in the maiden’s eyes, in the simplicity of her love, and the sweet hesitation of her confession. Ordener listened with the dreamy delight of a being who has been removed from the world of reality to enjoy an ideal world.
“And I,” said he, “no longer desire that liberty which you do not share!”
“What, Ordener!” quickly exclaimed Ethel, “will you leave us no more?”
These words recalled the young man to all that he had forgotten.
“My Ethel, I must leave you this very night. I will see you again to-morrow, and to-morrow I must leave you again, to remain until I may return never more to leave you.”
“Alas!” mournfully broke in the girl, “must you leave me again?”
“I repeat, my beloved Ethel, that I will come back soon to wrest you from this prison or bury myself in it with you.”
“A prisoner with him!” she said softly. “Ah! do not deceive me. Must I only hope for such happiness?”
“What oath do you require? What would you have me do?” cried Ordener; “tell me, Ethel, are you not my wife?” And in a transport of affection he pressed her to his heart.
“I am yours,” she whispered.
The two pure and noble hearts throbbed rapturously together, and were but purer and nobler for the embrace.
At this moment a violent burst of laughter was heard close by. A man wrapped in a cloak opened a dark lantern which he had concealed, and the light suddenly revealed Ethel’s alarmed, confused face and Ordener’s proud but astonished features.
“Courage, my pretty pair! Courage! It strikes me that after so short a walk in the regions of Romance you can scarcely have followed all the windings of the stream of Sentiment, but that you must have taken a short-cut to reach the village of Kisses so quickly.”
Our readers have doubtless recognized the lieutenant, who so cordially admired Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Roused from his reading of “Clelia” by the midnight bell, which the two lovers had failed to hear, he started on his nightly rounds. As he passed the end of the eastern corridor, he caught a few words, and saw what seemed two ghosts moving in the gallery by the light of the moon. Being naturally bold and curious, he hid his lantern under his cloak, and advanced on tiptoe to the two phantoms, so disagreeably awakened from their ecstasy by his sudden burst of laughter.
Ethel made a movement to escape from Ordener; then, returning to his side as if instinctively, and to ask his protection, she hid her burning blushes on her lover’s breast.
He raised his head with all the dignity of a king.
“Woe,” said he, “woe to him who has frightened and distressed you, Ethel!”
“Yes, indeed,” said the lieutenant; “woe befall me if I am so unfortunate as to alarm so sensitive a lady!”
“Sir Lieutenant,” haughtily exclaimed Ordener, “I command you to be silent!”
“Sir Insolent,” replied the officer, “I command you to be silent!”
“Do you hear me?” returned Ordener in tones of thunder. “Buy pardon by your silence.”
“_Tibi tua_,” responded the lieutenant; “take your own advice,--buy pardon by your silence!”
“Silence!” cried Ordener in a voice which made the windows shake; and seating the trembling girl in one of the old arm-chairs in the corridor, he grasped the officer rudely by the arm.
“Oh, clown!” said the lieutenant, half laughing, half angry; “don’t you see that the doublet which you are so mercilessly crushing is made of the finest Abingdon velvet?”
Ordener looked him full in the face.
“Lieutenant, my patience is not so long as my sword.”
“I understand you, my fine fellow,” said the lieutenant with a sardonic smile. “You want me to do you the honor to fight with you. But do you know who I am? No, no, if you please! ‘Prince with prince; clown with clown,’ as the fair Leander has it.”