Part 47 (1/2)

And then to their feet sprang Boris and Jorian, who were judges of men.

”To Prince Henry the Lion--_hoch!_” they cried. ”Drink it deep to his memory!”

And with tankard and wreathed wine-cup they quaffed to the great dead.

Standing up, they drank--his daughter also--all save Theresa von Lynar.

She sat unmoved, as if the toast had been her own and in a moment more she must rise to give them thanks. For the look on her face said, ”After all, what is there so strange in that? Was he not Henry the Lion--and mine?”

For there is no joy like that which you may see on a woman's face when a great deed is told of the man she loves.

The Kernsberg soldiers who had been trained to serve at table, had stopped and stood fixed, their duties in complete oblivion during the tale, but now they resumed them and the simple feast continued.

Meanwhile it had been growing wilder and wilder without, and the shrill lament of the wind was distinctly heard in the wide chimney-top. Now and then in a lull, broad splashes of rain fell solidly into the red embers with a sound like musket b.a.l.l.s ”spatting” on a wall.

Then Theresa von Lynar looked up.

”Where is Max Ulrich?” she said; ”why does he delay?”

”My lady,” one of the men of Kernsberg answered, saluting; ”he is gone across the Haff in the boat, and has not yet returned.”

”I will go and look for him--nay, do not rise, my lord. I would go forth alone!”

So, s.n.a.t.c.hing a cloak from the p.r.o.ng of an antler in the hall, Theresa went out into the irregular hooting of the storm. It was not yet the deepest gloaming, but dull grey clouds like hunted cattle scoured across the sky, and the rising thunder of the waves on the s.h.i.+ngle prophesied a night of storm. Theresa stood a long time bare-headed, enjoying the thresh of the broad drops as they struck against her face and cooled her throbbing eyes. Then she pulled the hood of the cloak over her head.

The dead was conquering the quick within her.

”I have known a _man_!” she said; ”what need I more with life now? The man I loved is dead. I thank G.o.d that I served him--aye, as his dog served him. And shall I grow disobedient now? No, not that my son might sit on the throne of the Kaiser!”

Theresa stood upon the inner curve of the Haff at the place where Max Ulrich was wont to pull his boat ash.o.r.e. The wind was behind her, and though the waves increased as the distance widened from the pebbly bank on which she stood, the water at her feet was only ruffled and pitted with little dimples under the shocks of the wind. Theresa looked long southward under her hand, but for the moment could see nothing.

Then she settled herself to keep watch, with the storm riding slack-rein overhead. Towards the mainland the whoop and roar with which it a.s.saulted the pine forests deafened her ears. But her face was younger than we have ever seen it, for Werner's story had moved her strongly.

Once more she was by a great man's side. She moved her hand swiftly, first out of the shelter of the cloak as if seeking furtively to nestle it in another's, and then, as the raindrops plashed cold upon it, she drew it slowly back to her again.

And though Theresa von Lynar was yet in the prime of her glorious beauty, one could see what she must have been in the days of her girlhood. And as memory caused her eyes to grow misty, and the smile of love and trust eternal came upon her lips, twenty years were shorn away; and the woman's face which had looked anxiously across the darkening Haff changed to that of the girl who from the gate of Castle Lynar had watched for the coming of Duke Henry.

She was gazing steadfastly southward, but it was not for Max the Wordless that she waited. Towards Kernsberg, where he whose sleep she had so often watched, rested all alone, she looked and kissed a hand.

”Dear,” she murmured, ”you have not forgotten Theresa! You know she keeps troth! Aye, and will keep it till G.o.d grows kind, and your true wife can follow--to tell you how well she hath kept her charge!”

Awhile she was silent, and then she went on in the low even voice of self-communing.

”What to me is it to become a princess? Did not he, for whose words alone I cared, call me his queen? And I was his queen. In the black blank day of my uttermost need he made me his wife. And I am his wife.

What want I more with dignities?”

Theresa von Lynar was silent awhile and then she added--

”Yet the young d.u.c.h.ess, his daughter, means well. She has her father's spirit. And my son--why should my vow bind him? Let him be Duke, if so the Fates direct and Providence allow. But for me, I will not stir finger or utter word to help him. There shall be neither anger nor sadness in my husband's eyes when I tell him how I have observed the bond!”

Again she kissed a hand towards the dead man who lay so deep under the ponderous marble at Kernsberg. Then with a gracious gesture, lingeringly and with the misty eyes of loving womanhood, she said her lonely farewells.