By his side sat his long-lost but well-beloved wife, who now, in the garments of her rank and station, freed from grief, anxiety, and apprehension, had recovered from the grasp of time a great portion of that beauty for which she had once been famous. Her eyes were turned upon the face which she had so constantly loved, her hand rested near his, as if ready to touch it, and assure herself that he was there indeed; and the half opened lips, when he spoke, showed how she drank in his words, and how musical to her ear was the voice which she had once deemed stilled in death.
Near them were another pair, in the first fruition of life's brightest hopes, Ferdinand and Adelaide. His face was all brightness; his joy was at its full; care and sorrow had no hold upon his heart; from his own bosom spread forth a light that brightened all things; and the world, and every object it contained, seemed instinct with joy, and lustrous with happiness. Man's nature is not more susceptible of pleasurable emotions than woman's, and, indeed, perhaps the finer delights, the more delicate enjoyments which she feels, are to him unknown; yet, as an equivalent, those very fine movements of the spirit, which are the source of so much delight, are often the cause of shadowy afflictions. Man can enjoy to the full, woman seldom, without some vague sensation of a different character,--it may be melancholy, it may be regret, it may be fear--mingling even with the cup of joy, perhaps to diminish, perhaps to heighten the flavour,--which I know not.
The lady's face full of satisfaction, her beautiful eyes beamed with joy; but yet--oh, that there should ever be but yet--those eyes would sometimes turn thoughtfully towards the ground, and a shade would come over that angelic face; it could not be called a cloud, it was so light, so evanescent. Perhaps the reader may divine, without explanation, the cause of that vague shadow, or, at all events, a word will give him a clue. Her father was not there; and memories of his fate and his loneliness would interweave themselves with the warp of thought, and chequer with darker figures the bright web of her own happiness.
One more figure completed the group,--it was that of good Father George, now prior of his order; the abbacy he had declined; although, since the events we have lately narrated, the worthy but weak Lord Abbot had died--it was whispered from a surfeit, of a very nice but dangerous animal, called in the language of the country "Nine-eyes," which has slain almost as many great men as the sword. The good monk hardly looked as fresh and well as when first we beheld him, for he had lately passed through some scenes of great excitement; and it is a curious fact, that men of advanced life, who generally are less susceptible of strong emotions, suffer more severely than others when they do feel them. Nevertheless, during the meal he had been more gay than usual, and now he was prolonging the conversation aloud with the Count, while, from time to time, Ferdinand and Adelaide spoke together in low tones, of things which referred only to themselves.
"Ah! my good lord," said the Prior, "if the verse-maker Ovid had lived in these days, he might have added more than one book to his Metamorphoses, and, in this very place, might have found matter for many a long and ponderous verse. We have all, indeed, undergone transformation--you from a jester to a count; I from a poor monk to a rich prior; and you, my good youth, from a stripling to a married man. Nor amongst the least is the change of this old hall. Why, not two months ago, that is when last I saw it, it was all dark and mouldy, the stone-work peeling away, the rafters rotting and inclined to fall, with nought in it but the old banners and the great chair of state. Men were afraid to tread it for fear of spectres, and the whistling wind, the bats, and the dust, were its only tenants. Now it looks as gay and as sunshiny as a bridal banquet-chamber, with its gay garlands and festive flowers, and all fears seem laid aside in its new freshness.
"Nay, not quite all fears," answered the Count; "and I believe they never will be; for there is nothing so enduring as traditional terror. From time to time, some of the men will look around over the left shoulder, whenever the name of ghost or apparition is mentioned; and often have I seen a merry tale interrupted in the midst, by one man being seized with fears and infecting all the rest. But I do not much mind that. At present, their terror does not go to an inconvenient length; and with the passing days it will wear down to a calm and wholesome superstition, which may have its advantages. Doubtless, too, those who know all the secrets of the place, will whisper, amongst the rest, the causes of all they have seen, and if they do, the marvellous will suffer greatly, though doubtless, in winnowing truth from falsehood, some part of the chaff still stays with the corn."
"What were the causes, my dear lord?" asked Adelaide, fixing her eyes upon him; "I am well nigh as ignorant as the others; and though, as Ferdinand can tell you, I am not much given to fear--"
"When love is in the case, dear child," said the Count, interrupting her, with a smile. "But come, as a reward for that dear love, I will tell you all."
"It has been well rewarded already," she said, looking at her husband; "but yet I would fain know, and we will take the history as a pure grace. I guess at some things, and I know others, but still there is much that is dark and misty; and I have often heard, my dear lord and uncle, that woman's curiosity will not rest satisfied till all has been discovered. I see amongst us here in the hall at meal-time, many a scarred and weather-beaten face that I know not; but all their eyes seem to turn to you as if you were a saint, so that they must have known you long; and I hear them talk of distant lands and strange adventures, and therefore I deem they must have been your companions in the Holy Land."
"My good friends and fellow-soldiers of the Cross, my dear child," replied the old Count. "With a noble train of such as these, now more than twenty years ago, I left my home to fight, in company with other lords of this and distant lands, for the deliverance of Christ's sepulchre. We were bound by a vow to give our banners to the wind upon the shores of Syria or Africa before a certain day; but in the fair city of Venice, the starlight daughter of the blue Adriatic, of which the heathen Venus was but an imperfect type, I met with one who made me long to break my oath--" and he laid his hand upon his wife's. "When she became a soldier's bride, however, she felt for a soldier's renown, and sadly, yet unmurmuringly, parted from me, that I might fulfil the promise I had made. I went, dear child, leaving some faithful friends and followers to guard her hither, after our first child's birth; and then comes a time, on the events of which I will not dwell. You have already heard too much, perchance. Suffice it that I was wronged, and that the wrong has been forgiven. When I was captured by the Saracens, some of my brave companions fell, some were taken with me, some escaped to a castle of the Knights Hospitallers on the African shore. There I had left a certain sum of treasure; but my sword had plagued the infidels too sorely for them to let me go, without enormous ransom. The Order of St. John and my comrades who had escaped, trafficked eagerly with my captors to liberate me; but it was in vain; and in those distant lands some years were consumed in these fruitless endeavours. While they went on, I was permitted to see several of my friends; and a plan struck me, for using their services to gain the freedom of my companions in misfortune. At my desire, they bound themselves to serve the Order of St. John in arms, a certain number of years, upon condition that at the end of each man's time the Order should redeem from slavery one of their comrades of equal rank, they still retaining their homage to me. Thus, in the course of the last four or five years, all of my train who survived had been set free, the one part from the bondage of the infidel, the other from their engagements to the Order; and as each man thus obtained liberty, I sent him back hither with a sum of money, to watch over and guard my child; for I knew that he still lived, although I had wept for his mother as in the grave. To each I furnished a knowledge of the secrets of this place,--for it has secrets, as you will soon hear,--and bade them address themselves either to my reverend friend, Father Francis, or to my old henchman, good Franz Creussen, for farther information and directions. My own liberation seemed hopeless; not a ray of light broke in upon the darkness of my fate; till some good soul in England, where there are kind hearts and wealthy men, left a large sum to the Knights of St. John, for the purpose of ransoming the prisoners of the Cross. Still, the sum demanded for me was very large: there were many who were suffering as severely as myself: the Knights did not think it just to redeem any one man at such a price; and I might have lingered still in Saracen bonds, had not my noble friend, Frederick of Leiningen, come over to war in behalf of the Order; and, when he heard of my state, gave up all the recompense that was his due from the Hospitallers, to make up the amount of my ransom, with what the Grand Master had already offered to give. When the news first reached me that I was free, I cannot tell you--for I am not a learned man, like my good brother--all the strange thoughts and considerations that came into my mind. I fancied, if I came back in my true character, supported by Count Frederick's power, and the sixty or seventy good warriors I had sent back, I should have to punish the guilty, as well as to reward the honest, and perhaps to war for my inheritance against my own blood. I am not a harsh or cruel man, my child, and the thought frightened me. I therefore bethought me to take some disguise; but what to choose I knew not. If I came back with shield and spear, as a follower of Count Frederick's, I felt sure my brother would recognise me at once in a garb which I had so often worn before his eyes. So I fell upon a jester's habit; for I had ever been fond of a smart speech and a gay joke, and in my young days could cope in his own coin with any fool of the imperial court. The dress was sent me before I joined my friend, that his followers might not know me in any other character; and I came hither in that garb, as you know.--But now, to turn back to the fate of those I had sent over before: three or four perished by the way, the rest arrived in safety. The first, immediately on their return to their native land, visited the cell of Father George, and from him received instructions how to act.--I know not, my reverend friend," and he turned to the good monk, "whether I read your intentions rightly; but it has always seemed to me that your design was to collect the men together in one body, to be ready for all emergencies; and that, foreseeing or hoping I should myself in time return, you wished by superstitious impressions to prepare my brother's mind for that event, and induce him to yield to me, willingly and cheerfully, all that he had wrongly assumed."