Late in the noon a horseman, in the
livery of the Kaiser’s body-guard, rode dry
and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser
was at Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated
knights, barons, counts, and princes, to assemble
and prepare for his coming, on a certain bare space
of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to
swell the train of his triumphal entry into the ancient
city of his empire.
Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish
mare, and a pack-horse beside him, shortly afterward
left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and trotted
up to Gottlieb’s door.
‘Tent-pitching is now my trade,’
said he, as Gottlieb came down to him. ’My
lord is with the Kaiser. I must say farewell for
the nonce. Is the young lady visible?’
‘Nor young, nor old, good friend,’
replied Gottlieb, with a countenance somewhat ruffled.
’I dined alone for lack of your company.
Secret missives came, I hear, to each of them, and
both are gadding. Now what think you of this,
after the scene of yesterday? Lisbeth too!’
’Preaches from the old text,
Master Groschen; “Never reckon on womankind
for a wise act.” But farewell! and tell
Mistress Margarita that I take it ill of her not giving
me her maiden hand to salute before parting. My
gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth. I shall soon
be sitting with you over that prime vintage of yours,
or fortune’s dead against me.’
So, with a wring of the hand, Guy
put the spur to his round-flanked beast, and was quickly
out of Cologne on the rough roadway.
He was neither the first nor the last
of the men-at-arms hastening to obey the Kaiser’s
mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine
knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours
livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line
of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting
for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till
the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail’s
pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough
to keep his two horses from being jammed with the
mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the
heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he had
repeatedly ejaculated, that ’the first night’s
camping would be a drencher.’ In the West
a black bank of cloud was blotting out the sun before
his time. Northeast shone bare fields of blue
lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes
of crimson vapour. The furrows were growing purple-dark,
and gradually a low moaning obscurity enwrapped the
whole line, and mufed the noise of hoof, oath, and
waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.
Guy felt very much like a chopped
worm, as he wriggled his way onward in the dusk, impelled
from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main
body. Frequent and deep counsel he took with a
trusty flask suspended at his belt. It was no
pleasant reflection that the rain would be down before
he could build up anything like shelter for horse and
man. Still sadder the necessity of selecting
his post on strange ground, and in darkness.
He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently
rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy
beams through an east-hill orchard.
‘My lord calls her Goddess,’
said Guy, wistfully. ’The title’s
outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners
but she may have it to-night, an she ’ll just
keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye a matter
of two hours.’
She rose with a boding lustre.
Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned down ladders,
pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest
seat on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.
‘My mind’s made up!’
quoth Guy to the listening part of himself. ’Out
of this I’ll get.’
By the clearer ray he had discerned
a narrow track running a white parallel with the general
route. At the expense of dislocating a mile of
the cavalcade, he struck into it. A dyke had to
be taken, some heavy fallows crossed, and the way
was straight before him. He began to sneer at
the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made
the fellows he had left shine so poorly in comparison
with the Goshawk, but a sight of two cavaliers in
advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them
he tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks
of the heel, that made her fling out and show more
mettle than speed.
The objects of this fiery chase did
not at first awake to a sense of being pursued.
Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly
inattentive to the world outside their meditations.
But the Goshawk was not to be denied, and by dint
of alternately roaring at them and upbraiding his
two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger
of the cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly:
without effect it seemed, for he had to repeat the
warning. Guy was close up with them, when the
youth exclaimed:
’Father! holy father! ‘Tis Sathanas
in person!’
The other rose and pointed trembling
to a dark point in the distance as he vociferated:
‘Not here! not here; but yonder!’
Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and
cried:
‘Stay! halt a second! Have you forgotten
the Goshawk?’
‘Never!’ came the reply, ‘and forget
not Farina!’
Spur and fleeter steeds carried them
out of hearing ere Guy could throw in another syllable.
Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk
now rated his assistant with indignation.
’Thou weak one! nothing less
than fool! to betray thy name on such an adventure
as this to soul save the saints!’
Farina tossed back his locks, and
held his forehead to the moon. All the Monk’s
ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet
word of his beloved, which made music in his ears
whenever annoyance sounded.
‘And herein,’ say the
old writers, ’are lovers, who love truly, truly
recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love,
for which they suffer, is ever present to ward away
suffering not sprung of love: but the disloyal,
who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over
to whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without
consolation or comfort of their mistress, Love; whom
sacrificing not all to, they know not to delight in.’
The soul of a lover lives through
every member of him in the joy of a moonlight ride.
Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from
the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving
things. A true lover is not one of those melancholy
flies that shoot and maze over muddy stagnant pools.
He must be up in the great air. He must strike
all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture.
In his wide arms he embraces the whole form of beauty.
Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his desires.
Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed
in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting
glory; while the Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and
silent beside him. So, crowning them in the sky,
one half was all love and light; one, blackness and
fell purpose.