CHAPTER XXXVI
YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL
The next morning early, as I went about making my dispositions, and putting men of trust in positions fit for them—for the Prince has given me the command of all the soldiers within the city—the Lady Ysolinde came to me upon the terrace.
"Walk with me a while," she said, "in the lower garden. It is a quiet place, and I would speak with you."
It was a command that I dared not refuse to obey, yet my greatest enemy would not accuse me that I went lightly or willingly to such a tryst.
The Lady Ysolinde passed on daintily and proudly before me, and I followed, more like a condemned criminal lamping heavily to the scaffold than a lad of mettle accompanying a fair lady to a rendezvous of her own asking under the greenwood-tree.
But I need not have feared. The Princess's mood was mild, and I saw her in a humor in which I had never seen her before.
She moved before me over the grass, with her head a little turned up to the skies, as though appealing out of her innocence to the Beings who sat behind and sorted out the hearts of men and women.
At a great weeping-elm, under which was a seat, she turned. It formed a wide canopy of shade, grateful and cool. For the breezes stirred under the leaves, and the river moved beneath with a pleasant, meditative hush of sound.
"Hugo Gottfried, once you were my friend," she began; "what have I done that you should be my friend no more? Tell me plainly. I liked you when as a lad, the son of the Red Axe, you had come to my father's house about some boyish freak. I have not done ill by you since that day. And now that you are a leader of men and of rank and honor here in my husband's country of Plassenburg, I would be your well-wisher still. I am conscious of no reason for my having forfeited your liking. But that I would know for certain—and now."
As she threw back her head and let her clear emerald eyes rest upon me, I never saw woman born of woman look more innocent. Indeed, in these days of mistrust, it is innocence under suspicion which usually looks most guilty, knowing what is expected of it.
"Lady Ysolinde," I made answer, "you try me hard and sore. You put me by force in the wrong. You do me indeed great honor, as you have ever done all these years. In reverence and high respect I shall ever hold you for all that you have done—for your kindness to me and to Helene, the orphan girl who came from our father's roof with me. I know no reason why there should be any break in our friendship—nor shall there be, if you will pardon my folly and—"
"Tush!" she said, impetuously; "you speak things empty, vain, the rattling of knuckle-bones in a bladder—not live words at all. Think you I have never listened to true men? Do not I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, know the sound of words that have the heart behind them? I have heard you speak such yourself. Do not insult me then with platitudes, nor try to divert me with the piping of children in the market-place. I will not dance to them, nor yet, like a foolish kitchen-wench, smile at the jingling of your trinketry."
"Your Highness—" I began again.
She waved her hand as if putting a light thing away.
"I was a woman to you before you knew that I was a Princess," she said; "you need not forget that I am a woman still, cursed with the plate-mail of rank added to the weariness and inaction of a woman's breaking heart."
I grew acutely conscious that I was not distinguishing myself in this interview. So I dashed again at the wall, and this time, for a moment at least, overbore interruption.
"Ysolinde, my dear lady," I said to her, "you are the Prince's and my good master's wife. And if I have stood aloof, it is that I wished that he should have the companionship which one day I desire to find for myself—and also that I might always have the right to look straight into my master's eyes."
"Now you talk like a silly prating priestling," she said. "You are both mighty careful of your honesty, your virtue, your companionship—your precious master and you. But you do not think what it is to starve a woman's heart, to bid her find her level among broiderers of bannerets and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be at the digging of us out of the happier pit of oblivion had only made me a man, I, at least, should neither have been a straitlaced Jackanapes nor yet a prating, callow-bearded wiseacre."
"And am I either?" said I, weakly enough.
"You are in danger of becoming both," she said, promptly. "Once I saw better things in you. I thought I had won me a friend, and that for once I might put my anchor down. My husband neglects me, so much cannot have escaped your eagle eye. He is twice my age, and he thinks more of you, more of Councillor Von Dessauer, more of his horse than of me, Ysolinde of Plassenburg. And I was made to be loved and to love. How much of either, think you, have I ever known? The true lot of a woman shut to me, the sweet love of man and woman wiled from me, even the communion of the spirit forbidden. I might as lief carry a wizened nut-kernel within my brain-pan as a thinking soul, for all that any one cares. I am a woman of another age stranded on the shores of a time made only for men. I am the woman priests talk against, or perhaps rather the witch-woman Lilith on the outside of Eden's wall. Or I may be the woman of a time yet to come, when she who is man's mate shall not be only a gay-decked bird to sit on his wrist, tethered with a leash and called back to her master with a silver lure."
These things I had never listened to before, nor, indeed, thought of. Nevertheless, though I could not answer her, I felt in my heart that she was wrong, and that a woman has always power over men, being stronger than all ideals, philosophies, kingdoms—aye, even our holy religion itself.
"After all," I said, piqued a little at her tone, as men are wont to be at that which they do not understand, "my Lady Ysolinde, wherefore should you not tell these things to the Prince, your husband, and not to me, that am neither your husband nor your lover?"
"And if you had been both?" she interjected, a little breathlessly.
"Then, my lady," I replied, stirred by her persistence, "you would have obeyed me and served me just as you say. Or else I should have broken your spirit as a man is broken on the wheel."
It was a prideful saying, and one informed with all ignorance and conceit. Yet the Lady Ysolinde gave a long sigh.
"Ah, that would have been sweet, too," she said. "You are the one man I should have delighted to call master, to have done your bidding. That had been a thing different indeed! But you love me not. You love a chit, a chitterling—a pretty thing that can but peep and mutter, whose heart's depths I have sounded with my finger-nail, and whose babyish vanity I have tickled with a straw."
This was enough and too much.
"Madam," said I, "the clear stars are not fouled by throwing filth at them, nor yet the Lady Helene—whom I do acknowledge that with all my heart I love—by the speaking of any ill words. You do but wrong yourself, most noble lady. For your heart tells you other things, both of the maid I love and of me that am her true servant, and, if I might, your true friend."
The Princess reached out her hand, looking, not with anger, but rather wistfully at me, like a mother at a son who goes to his death with blasphemy on his lips.
"Forgive me," she said, gently. "I would not at the last have you go forth thinking ill of me. Indeed, you think all too well, and make me do things that are better than mine intent, because I know that you expect them of me. I have done many ill and cruel things in my poor life, simply from idleness and the empty, unsatisfied heart. If you had loved me or taught me or driven me, I might have tried better things. Perhaps in the end, for great love's sake, I may yet do one worthy deed that shall blot out all the rest. Farewell!"
And without another spoken word she moved away, and left me in the green pleasaunces of the garden, with my heart riven this way and that, scarce knowing what I did or where I stood.