Ekkehard Volume Ii Part 18

Dame Hadwig bent down once more, beside the sarcophagus, on which she would gladly have placed another, to hide her from Ekkehard's view. She had no longer any wish to be alone with him. Her heart beat calmly now.

He went to the door, about to go, when suddenly he looked back once more. The everlasting lamp was softly rocking to and fro, over Dame Hadwig's head. Ekkehard's eye pierced the twilight this time, and with one bound,--quicker than that which in later days St. Bernard had made, when the madonna had beckoned to him, in the cathedral at Speier--he stood before the d.u.c.h.ess. He cast a long and penetrating look at her.

Rising from the ground, and seizing the edge of the stone sarcophagus with her right hand, she confronted him, whilst the everlasting lamp over her head, was still gently swinging to and fro, on its silken cord.

"Thrice blessed are the dead, for one prays for them," said Ekkehard, interrupting the silence.

Dame Hadwig made no reply.

"Will you pray for me also, when I am dead?" continued he. "Oh no, you must not pray for me! ... but you must let a goblet be made out of my skull, and when you take another monk away from the monastery of St.

Gallus, you must offer him the welcome draught in it,--and give him my greeting!--You can put your own lips to it also; it will not crack. But you must then wear the head-band with the rose in it." ...

"Ekkehard!" said the d.u.c.h.ess, "you are trespa.s.sing!"

He put his right hand up to his forehead.

"Ah yes!" said he in a soft, mournful voice, "ah yes!... the Rhine is trespa.s.sing also. They have stopped its course with gigantic rocks, but it has gnawed them all through, and is now rus.h.i.+ng and roaring onwards; carrying everything before it, in its glorious newly won liberty!...

And G.o.d must be trespa.s.sing also methinks; for he has allowed the Rhine to be, and the Hohentwiel and the d.u.c.h.ess of Suabia, and the tonsure on my head."

The d.u.c.h.ess began to s.h.i.+ver. Such an outbreak of long repressed feeling, she had not expected. But, it was too late,--her heart remained untouched.

"You are ill," she said.

"Ill?" asked he, "it is merely a requital. More than a year ago, at Whitsuntide, when there was as yet no Hohentwiel for me, I carried the coffin of St. Gallus in solemn procession out of the cloister, and a woman threw herself on the ground before me. 'Get up,' cried I, but she remained prostrate in the dust. 'Walk over me with thy relic, oh priest, so that I may recover,' cried she, and my foot stepped over her. That woman suffered from the heartache. Now 'tis reversed." ...

Tears interrupted his voice. He could not go on. Then, he threw himself at Dame Hadwig's feet, clasping the hem of her garment. His whole frame was convulsed with trembling.

Dame Hadwig was touched; touched against her will; as if from the hem of her garment, a feeling of unutterable woe thrilled her, up to her very heart.

"Get up," said she, "and try to think of other things. You still owe us a story. You will soon have conquered this weakness."

Then Ekkehard laughed through his tears.

"A story!" cried he, "yes, a story! But it must not be told. Come, let us act the story! From the height of yonder tower one can see so far into the distance, and so deep into the valley below,--so sweet and deep, and tempting. What right has the ducal castle to hold us back?

n.o.body who wishes to get down into the depth below, need count more than three, ... and we should flutter and glide softly into the arms of Death, awaiting us down there. Then, I should be no longer a monk, and I might wind my arms around you,--and he who sleeps here in the ground below," striking Sir Burkhard's tombstone with his clenched hand; "shall not prevent me! If he, the old man should come, I would not let you go, and we will float up to the tower again, and sit where we sat before, and we will read the aened to the end, and you must wear the rose under your head-band, as if nothing whatever had happened. The gate we will keep well locked against the Duke, and we will laugh at all evil backbiting tongues, and folks will say, when sitting at their fire-places of a winter's evening: 'that is a pretty tale of the faithful Ekkehard, who slew the Emperor Ermenrich for hanging the Harlungen brothers, and who afterwards sat for many hundred years before Dame Venus's mountain, with his white staff in his hands, and he meant to sit there until the day of judgment, to warn off all pilgrims coming to the mountain. But at last he grew tired of this, and ran away and became a monk at St. Gall, and he fell down an abyss and was killed, and he is sitting now beside a proud, pale woman, reading Virgil to her. And at midnight may be heard the words: 'If thou commandest, oh Queen, to renew the unspeakable sorrow.' 'And then she must kiss him, whether she will or not, for death makes up for the pleasures denied us in life.'"

He had uttered all this with a wild, wandering look in his face; and now his voice failed with low weeping. Dame Hadwig had stood immovably all this time. It was as if a gleam of pity were lighting up her cold eye, as she now bent down her head towards him.

"Ekkehard," said she, "you must not speak of death. This is madness. We both live, you and I!"

He did not stir. Then she lightly laid her hand on his burning forehead. This touch sent a wild thrill through his brains. He sprang up.

"You are right!" cried he. "We both live, you and I!"

A dizzy darkness clouded his eyes as he stepped forwards, and winding his arms round her proud form, he fiercely pressed her to his bosom, his kiss burning on her lip. Her resisting words died away, unheard.

Raising her high up towards the altar, as if she were an offering he was about to make, he cried out to the dark and solemn looking picture, "why dost thou hold out thy gold glittering fingers so quietly, instead of blessing us?"

The d.u.c.h.ess had started like a wounded deer. One moment, and all the pa.s.sion of her hurt pride lent her strength, to push the frenzied man back, and to free herself at least partly from his embrace. He had still got one arm round her waist, when the church-door was suddenly opened, and a flaring streak of daylight broke through the darkness,--they were no longer alone.

Rudimann, the cellarer from the Reichenau, stepped over the threshold, whilst other figures became visible in the background of the courtyard.

The d.u.c.h.ess had waxed pale with shame and anger. A tress of her long dark hair had become loosened and was streaming down her back.

"I beg your pardon," said the man from the Reichenau, with grinning politeness. "My eyes have beheld nothing."

Then, Dame Hadwig, ridding herself entirely from Ekkehard's hold, cried out: "Yes, I say!--yes you _have_ seen a madman, who has forgotten himself and G.o.d, ... I should be sorry for your eyes if they had beheld nothing, for I would have had them torn out!"

It was with an indescribably cold hauteur, that she p.r.o.nounced these words.

Then Rudimann began to understand the strange scene.

"I had forgotten," said he in a cutting tone, "that the man who stands there, is one of those, to whom wise men have applied the words of St.

Hieronymus, when he says, that their manners were more befitting dandies and bridegrooms, than the elect of the Lord."

Ekkehard stood there, leaning against a pillar, with arms stretched out in the air, like Odysseus when he wanted to embrace the shadow of his mother. Rudimann's words roused him from his dreams.

"Who dares to come between her and me?" cried he threateningly. But Rudimann, patting him on the shoulder with an insolent familiarity, said: "Calm yourself, my good friend; we have only come to deliver a note into your hands. St. Gallus can no longer allow the wisest of all his disciples, to remain out in this s.h.i.+lly-shallying world. You are called home!--And don't forget the stick with which you are wont to illtreat your confraters, who like to s.n.a.t.c.h a kiss at vintage-time, you chaste censor," he added in a low whisper.

Ekkehard stepped back. Wild longings, the pain of separation, burning pa.s.sionate love, and cutting, taunting words,--all these overwhelmed him at once. He made a few steps towards the d.u.c.h.ess; but the chapel was already filling. The Abbot of Reichenau had come himself to witness Ekkehard's departure.

"It will be a difficult task, to get him away," he had said to the cellarer. It was easy enough now. Monks and lay-brothers came in after him.

"Sacrilege," Rudimann called out to them. "He has laid his wanton hand on his mistress, even before the altar!"

Then Ekkehard could not restrain himself any longer. To have the most sacred secret of his heart profaned by insolent coa.r.s.eness,--a pearl thrown before swine, ... he tore down the everlasting lamp, and swung the heavy vessel over his head. The light went out, and the moment after, a hollow groan was heard, and the cellarer lay with bleeding head on the stone-flags. The lamp lay beside him. Then there followed a fierce struggle, fighting, confusion ... all was coming to an end with Ekkehard. They had got the better of him, and tearing off the cord which served him as a belt, they tied his hands together.

There he stood, the handsome youthful figure; now the very picture of woe, resembling the broken-winged eagle. His eyes sent one mournful, troubled and appealing look at the d.u.c.h.ess,--who turned her head away.

"Do that which you think right," said she to the Abbot, sweeping proudly through the ranks of the lookers on.

A cloud of smoke met her outside, whilst the voices of loud, noisy merriment were heard from the castle-gate, outside of which a great bonfire, made up of resinous pine-branches, was burning. The servants of the castle danced around it, throwing flowers into the flames, and at that moment, Audifax putting his arm round the companion of his adventures, had jumped with her through the flames, uttering a loud cry of delight.

"Where does all this smoke come from?" asked Dame Hadwig of Praxedis, who was coming towards her.

"Solstice! Midsummer-day!" said the Greek maid.

It was a dreary, uncomfortable evening. The d.u.c.h.ess had locked herself up in her bed-room, refusing admittance to everyone.

Ekkehard meanwhile, had been dragged into a dungeon, by the order of the Abbot. In the same tower, in the airy upper storey of which was his chamber, there was a damp, dark vault, the floor of which had fragments of old tombstones lying about; they had been brought there, when the castle-chapel had been renovated. A bundle of straw had been thrown in for him, and a monk was sitting outside to guard the entrance.

Burkhard, the cloister-pupil, ran up and down, wailing and wringing his hands. He could not understand the fate which had befallen his uncle.

The servants were all putting their heads together, eagerly whispering, and gossiping, as if the hundred-tongued Rumour had been sitting on the roof, spreading her falsehoods about. "He tried to murder the d.u.c.h.ess,"

said one. "He has practised the Devil's own arts, with that big book of his," said another. "To-day is St. John's day, when the Devil has no power, and so he could not help him."