“Hush,” murmured the nun gently, “stranger things have happened. All may yet be well.” And to divert the dying maid’s attention from her grief she recited tales of lovers who had been reunited after many difficulties.
But Ida refused to be pacified.
“Alas!” she said, “I am betrothed, yet I must die unwed.”
“Heaven forbid!” cried the pious nun in alarm. “For then must thou join in the dance of death.”
It was a popular belief in that district that a betrothed maiden who died before her wedding was celebrated must, after her death, dance on a spot in the centre of the island whereon no grass or herb ever grew—that is, unless in the interval she took the veil. Every night at twelve o’clock a band of such hapless maidens may be seen dancing in the moonlight, doomed to continue their nocturnal revels till they meet with a lover. And woe betide the knight who ventures within their reach! They dance round and round him and with him till he falls dead, whereupon the youngest maid claims him for her lover. Henceforth she rests quietly in her grave and joins no more in the ghostly frolic.
This weird tradition Ida now heard from the lips of the nun, who herself claimed to have witnessed the scenes she described.
“I beseech thee,” said the sister, “do but join our convent, and all will yet be well.”
“I die,” murmured Ida, heeding not the words of her companion. “Gerbert—we shall meet again!”
Gerbert, her lover, heard the sad news in his dwelling-place on the shores of Lake Constance, and returned to Oberwörth with all speed. A week had elapsed ere he arrived, and Ida’s body was already interred in the vaults of the convent.
It was a night of storm and darkness. No boatman would venture on the Rhine, but Gerbert, anxious to pay the last respects to the body of his beloved, was not to be deterred. With his own hands he unmoored a vessel and sailed across to Oberwörth. Having landed at that part of the island furthest from the convent, he was obliged to pass the haunted spot on his way thither. The circular patch of barren earth was said to be a spot accursed, by reason of sacrilege and suicide committed there. But such things were far from the thoughts of the distraught knight.