CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTIAN'S ELSA
It was about this time, and after we had made our quarrel up, that Helene began to call me "Great Brother." After all, there is manifest virtue in a name, and the Little Playmate seemed to find great comfort in thus addressing me.
And after that I had called her "Little Sister" once or twice she was greatly assured and treated me quite differently, having ascertained that between young men and women there is the utmost safety in such a relationship.
And as all ways were alike to me, I was willing enough. For indeed I loved her and none other, and so did all the days of my life. Though I know that my actions and conceits were not always conformable to the true love that was in my heart, neither wholly worthy of my dear maid.
But, then, what would you? Nineteen and the follies of one's youth! The mercy of God rather than any virtue in me kept these from being not only infinitely more numerous, but infinitely worse. Yet I had better confess them, such as they are, in this place. For it was some such nothings as those which follow that first brought Helene and me into one way of thinking, though by paths very devious indeed.
To begin with the earliest. There was a maid who dwelt in the Tower of the Wolfsberg opposite, called the Tower of the Captain of the Guard. And the maid's name was Elsa, or, as she was ordinarily called, "Christian's Elsa." She was a comely maid enough, and greatly taken notice of. And when I went to my window to con over my task for Friar Laurence, there at the opposite window would be—strange that it should always he so—Christian's Elsa. She was a little girl, short and plump, but with merry eyes and so bright a stain upon either cheek that it seemed as if she had been eating raspberry conserve, and had wiped her fingers upon the smiling plumpness there.
At any rate, as sure as ever I betook me to the window, there would be
Christian's Elsa, busy with her needles.
And to tell truth I misliked it not greatly. Why, indeed, should I? For there is surely no harm in looking across twenty yards of space at a maid, and as little in the maid looking at you—that is, if neither of you come any nearer. Besides, it is much pleasanter to look at a pretty lass than at a vacant wall and twenty yards of uneven cobble-stones.
Now the girl was harmless enough—a red and white maid, plump as a partridge in the end of harvest. She was forever humming at songs, singing little choruses, and inventing of new melodies, all tunefully and prettily enough. And she would bring her dulcimer to the window and play them over, nodding her head to the instrument as she sang.