On the Night of the Seventh Moon

ONE

Now that I have reached the mature age of twenty-seven I look back on that fantastic adventure of my youth and can almost convince myself that it did not happen as I believed it did then. Yet sometimes even now I awake in the night because, in my dreams, I have heard a voice calling me, and that voice is the voice of my child. But here I am, a spinster of this parish-at least those who know me think of me as such-though deep within me I believe myself to be a wife even as I ask: Did I suffer some mental aberration? Was it really true as they tried to convince me that I, a romantic and rather feckless girl, had been betrayed as many had been before and because I could not face this fact, had fabricated a wild story which none but myself could believe.

Because it is of the greatest importance to me to understand what really happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon, I have decided to set out in detail the events as I remember them, in the hope that by so doing, the truth will emerge.

Schwester Maria, the kindest of the nuns, used to shake her head over me.

“Helena, my child,” she would say, ‘you will have to be very careful. It is not good to be as reckless and passionate as you are. “

Schwester Gudrun, less benevolent, would narrow her eyes and nod significantly as she regarded me.

“One day, Helena Trant, you will go too far,” was her comment.

I was sent to the Damenstift to be educated when I was fourteen years old and had been there for four years. During that time I had been home to England only once, which was when my mother had died. My two aunts had then come to look after my father and I disliked them from the first because they were so different from my mother. Aunt Caroline was the more unpleasant of the two. The only thing she appeared to enjoy was pointing out the shortcomings of others.

We lived in Oxford in the shadow of the college in which my father had once been a student until circumstances-brought on by his own reckless, passionate conduct-had forced him to give up. Perhaps I took after him; I was sure I did, for our adventures were not dissimilar in a way; though his were never anything but respectable.

He was the only son and his parents had determined that he should go to the university. Sacrifices had been made by his family-a fact which Aunt Caroline could never forget nor forgive, for during his student days he had, in the company of another student, taken a walking holiday through the Black Forest and there he had met and fallen in love with a beautiful maiden, and after that, nothing would satisfy them but marriage. It was like something out of the fairy tales which had their origin in that part of the world. She was of noble blood the country abounded in small dukedoms and principalities and of course the marriage was frowned on from both sides. Her family did not wish her to marry a penniless English student; his had scraped to educate him for a respectable career and it was hoped that he would make that career within the university, for in spite of his romantic nature he was something of a scholar and his tutors had high hopes for him. But for both, the world was well lost for love; so they married and my father gave up the university and looked around for a means of supporting a wife.

He had made a friend of old Thomas Trebling who owned the small but lively little bookshop just off the High Street, and Thomas gave him employment and rooms over the shop. The young married couple defied all the evil prophecies of sarcastic Aunt Caroline and Cassandra-like Aunt Matilda and were blissfully happy. Poverty was not the only handicap; my mother was delicate. She had in fact when my father met her been staying at one of her family’s hunting lodges in the forest for her health’s sake. She was consumptive.

“There must be no children,” announced Aunt Matilda, who considered herself an authority on disease. And of course I con founded them all by making my existence felt almost as soon as they were married and appearing exactly ten months afterwards.

It must have been considered tiresome of them to prove everyone wrong, but this they did; and their happiness continued until my mother’s death. I know that the aunts disapproved of fate which, instead of punishing such irresponsibility, seemed to reward it.

Crusty Old Thomas Trebling who could scarcely say a polite word to anyone even his customers became a fairy godfather to them. He even conveniently died and left them not only the shop but the little house next door, which he had occupied until then; so that by the time I was six years old, my father had his own bookshop, which if it was not exactly a flourishing concern provided an adequate living; and he lived a very happy life with a wife whom he continued to adore and who reciprocated that rare brand of devotion, and a daughter whose high spirits it was not always easy to curb, but whom they both loved in a remote kind of way because they were too absorbed in each other to have excessive affection to spare for her. My father was no business man but he had a love of books, particularly those of an antiquarian nature, so he was interested in his business; he had many friends at the university and in our small dining room there were often intimate little dinner parties when the talk was often learned and on occasions witty.

The aunts came now and then. My mother called them the greyhounds because she said they sniffed about the place looking to see if it had been properly cleaned, and on the first occasion I remember seeing them at the age of three, I burst into tears protesting that they weren’`t really greyhounds but only two old women, which was very difficult to explain and did not endear me to them. Aunt Caroline never forgave my mother, which was characteristic of her; but she didn’`t forgive me either, which was perhaps less reasonable.

So my childhood was passed in that exciting city which was home to me.

I can remember walking by the river and my father’s telling me how the Romans had come and built a city there, and how the Danes had later burned it down. I found it exciting to see the people scurrying through the streets, scholars in scarlet gowns and the students in their white ties, and hearing how the Proctors prowled the streets at night preceded by their bulldogs. Clinging to his hand, I would go with him southwards down the Cornmarket right into the very heart of the city. Sometimes the three of us went on a picnic into the meadows; but I always preferred to be with one or the other alone for then I could have the attention I could never capture when the three of us were together. When we were by ourselves my father would talk to me of Oxford and take me out to show me Tom Tower, the great bell and the spire of the Cathedral, which he proudly told me was one of the oldest in England.

With my mother it was different. She would talk of pine forests and the little schloss where she had spent her childhood. She told me of Christmases and how they had gone into the forest to get their own trees with which they would decorate the house; and how in the Rittersaal, the Hall of the Knights, which was found in almost every schloss large or small, the dancers came on Christmas Eve and when they had danced, sang carols. I loved to hear my mother sing Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht; and her old home in the forest seemed to me an enchanted place. I wondered that she never felt homesick and when I asked her once and saw the smile on her face I knew how deep was the love she bore my father. I believe that it was then that I convinced myself that one day there would be someone in my life who would be to me as my father was to her. I thought that this deep, unquestioning, unshakable devotion was for everyone to enjoy. Perhaps that was why I was such an easy victim. My excuse is that, knowing my parents’ story, I expected to find a similar enchantment in the forest and believed that other men were as tender and good as my father. But my lover was not like hers. I should have recognized that. Tempestuous, irresistible, overwhelming, yes. Tender, self-sacrificing-no.

My happy childhood was overshadowed only by the visits of aunts and later the need to go away to school. Then followed holidays and a return to the exciting city which never seemed to change-indeed, said my father, it had been the same for hundreds of years; that was its charm. What I remember from that time is the wonderful sense of security I felt. It had never occurred to me that anything could change. I should always take walks with my father and listen to his accounts of the days when he had been a student; and it was such a joy to listen because although he spoke of them with pride there was no regret. I loved to listen to him as he talked reverently of his days at Balliol; I felt I was as familiar with the college as he was; and I could clearly understand his absorption in the life as he planned to spend the rest of his days there. He would proudly tell me of the famous people who had studied there. My mother talked of her childhood and sang Lieder to me, fitting her own words to melodies from Schubert and Schumann which I loved. She made little sketches of the forest and they seemed to have a fairy-tale quality which has always haunted me; she would tell me stories of trolls and woodcutters and some of the old legends which had been handed down from pre-Christian days when people believed in the gods of the North such as Odin the All-Father, Thor with his hammer, and the beautiful Goddess Freya after whom Friday was named. I was enthralled by these stories.

Sometimes she would tell me about the Damenstift in the pine forest where she had been educated by nuns; she talked sometimes in German so that I became moderately conversant with that language, although never quite bilingual.

It was her dearest wish that I should be educated at that convent where she herself had been so happy.

“You will love it there,” she told me, ‘high up in the pine-clad mountains. The air will make you strong and healthy; in the summer mornings you will eat breakfast out of doors fresh milk and rye bread. It tastes good. The nuns will be kind to you. They will teach you to be happy and work hard. It is what I have always wanted for you. “

As my father always wanted what she wanted, I went to the Damenstift, and when I had recovered from my homesickness I began to enjoy it. I was soon under the spell of the forest, though I had in fact been so before I had set eyes on it; and as I was at that time the sort of girl who has few inhibitions I was able to accept the new life and my companions with no great difficulty. My mother had prepared me, so nothing seemed very strange. There were girls from all over Europe.

Six of them were English, including myself; there were just over a dozen French, and the rest were from the various little German states of which we were in the midst.

We mingled well. We spoke English and French as well as German; the simple life was good for us all; the discipline was intended to be stem, but of course there were those indulgent nuns who could be wheedled and we were quick to find them.

I was soon happy in the convent and I spent two contented years, passing even the vacations there, because it was too far and too expensive to return home. There were always six or seven of us who did this and some of the happiest times were when the others had left and we decorated the hall with firs from the forest and sang our carols, or decorated the chapel for Easter, or took picnics in the forest during the summer.

I had come to accept this new life; Oxford with its towers and spires seemed far away until that day when I heard that my mother was dangerously ill and I was to go home. Fortunately it was in the summer and Mr. and Mrs. Greville, friends of my father, who were travelling in Europe, collected me and took me home. My mother was dead when I arrived.

What a change I found. My father had aged by ten years; he was vague as though he could not drag himself away from a blissful past to face an intolerable present. The aunts had descended upon the household. At great self-sacrifice. Aunt Caroline told me, they had given up their comfortable cottage in Somerset to come and look after us. I was sixteen years old, time to stop wasting my time on a lot of foreign languages and habits which would be of no use to me; I should make myself useful in the home. They could find plenty for me to do there. Young girls should be able to cook and sew, keep a still room and perform other domestic tasks which she doubted were taught at outlandish foreign convents.

But Father roused himself from his apathy. It had been her wish that I should complete my education at the Damenstift and should stay there until I was eighteen years old.

So I went back and I often thought that if the aunts had had their way that strange adventure would never have taken place.

It happened two years after my mother’s death. I had forgotten so much of life in Oxford and only rarely did I think of walking down the Cornmarket to Folly Bridge and St. Aldate’s, of the castellated walls of colleges; of the hollow silence of the Cathedral and the fascination of the Murder of St. Thomas a Becket in stained glass in the east window. But the reality was the convent life, the secrets shared with girls as we lay in our cell-like dormitory where a thick stone buttress divided one cell from another.

And so there came that early autumn after which nothing would be the same again.

I was nearly eighteen perhaps young for my years. I was frivolous yet in a way dreamily romantic. I have no one but myself to blame for what happened.

The most gentle of the sisters was Maria. She should have been a mother of children; perhaps she would have been overindulgent, but how happy she would have been and would they! But she was a virgin nun and had to content herself with us.

She understood me more than any of the others. She knew that I did not wish to be wayward; I was high-spirited; I was impulsive; my sin was thoughtlessness rather than wilfulness. I know she had constantly explained this to the Mutter.

It was October-and we were enjoying an Indian summer, for the autumn was long coming that year. It was a pity to waste the golden days, said Schwester Maria, and she was going to choose twelve girls whose conduct warranted the privilege to accompany her on a picnic. We could take the wagonette and go up to the plateau; and there we would make a fire and boil a part of water and make coffee and Schwester Gretchen had said she would bake a few of her spiced cakes as a special treat.

She chose me to be among the favoured twelve rather in the hope that I might mend my ways than because of past good conduct, I was sure; but whatever the reason I was in the party on that fateful day. Schwester Maria drove the wagonette as I had seen her so many times before, looking like a big black crow in her flapping black robes, sitting there holding in the horse with a masterly touch which was surprising.

Poor old horse, he would have known the road blindfolded, so it did not really need very much skill to lead him there. During his lifetime, he must have taken the wagonette full of girls up to the plateau many times.

So we arrived; we made the fire (so useful for the girls to learn these things); we boiled the water, made the coffee and ate the spiced cakes. We washed the cups in the nearby stream and packed them away; we wandered around until Schwester Maria clapped her hands to call us to her. We were leaving in half an hour, she told us, and we must all assemble at that time. We knew what this meant. Schwester Maria was going to lean against the tree under which she was sitting and for half an hour take a well-earned nap.

And so she did while we wandered off, and the feeling of excitement which being in the pine forests always gave me began to creep over me.

In such a setting Hansel and Gretel were lost and came upon their gingerbread house; in such a wood the lost. babes had wandered to lie down and sleep and be covered by the leaves. Along the river, although we could not see them here, castles would appear to hang on the edge of the hillside-castles such as the one in which the Beauty slept for one hundred years before she was awakened by the kiss of a Prince.

This was the forest of enchantment, of wood cutters, trolls, princes in disguise and princesses who must be rescued, of giants and dwarfs; it was the fairy-tale land.

I had wandered away from the others; no one was in sight. I must watch the time. Pinned to my blouse was a little watch with blue enamel decorations which had been my mother’s. It would not be fair to be late and upset dear kind Schwester Maria.

Then I started to brood on what I had found when I last returned home; the aunts in possession and my father grown indifferent to what went on around him; and it occurred to me that I would have to go back soon, for girls did not stay after nineteen at the Damenstift.

The mist comes suddenly in the mountainous forests. We were very high above sea level. When we went into the little town of Liechtenkinn which was the nearest to the Damen stift we went downhill all the way.

And as I sat thinking of home and wondering vaguely about the future the mist descended and when I got to my feet I could only see a few yards ahead of me. I looked at my watch. It was time to be going.

Schwester Maria would already be rousing from her slumbers, clapping her hands and peering about for the girls. I had climbed a little and the mist might be less thick where she was resting, but in any case the fact that it was there would alarm her and she would certainly decide that we must leave at once.

I started off in what I thought was the direction in which I had come; but I must have been wrong, for I could not find the road. I was not unduly alarmed. I had five minutes or sc to spare and I had not wandered very far. But my concern grew when I still could not find the way. I believed I could be wandering round in circles but I kept assuring myself that soon I would come upon the clearing where we had had our picnic. I would hear the voices of the girls. But there was no sound in the mist.

I called out: “Cooee!” as we did when we wished to attract each other’s attention. There was no response.

I did not know which way to turn and I knew enough of the forest to realize that one could be deceived by direction in a mist such as this one. A horrible panic came to me. It might thicken. It might not lift all night If so how could I find my way back to the clearing. I called again. There was no answer.

I looked at my watch. I was five minutes overdue. I pictured Schwester Maria fussing.

“Helena Trant again!” she would say.

“Of course she didn’`t mean it. She was just not thinking.

How right she was. I must find my way back. I could not worry poor Schwester Maria.

I started off again, calling: “Coo-ee. It’s Helena. Here!”

But no answer came out of the implacable grey mist. The mountain and forests are beautiful but they are also cruel, which is why there is always a hint of cruelty in the fairy tales of the forest. The wicked witch is for ever waiting to spring, the spell-bound trees are waiting to turn into the dragons they become when darkness falls.

But I was not really frightened although I knew I was lost. The wise thing was to stay where I was and call. So I did.

I looked at my watch. Half an hour had passed. I was frantic. But at least they would be searching for me.

I waited. I called. I abandoned my decision to remain where I was and began to walk frantically in several directions. An hour had passed since the time for our rendezvous.

It must have been half an hour after that. I had called until I was hoarse; and then I was alert, for the sound of a displaced stone rolling and the crackle of undergrowth indicated that someone was near.

“Cooee!” I called with relief.

“I’m here.”

He loomed up out of the mist like a hero of the forest on his big white horse. I went towards him. He sat for one second regarding me, then he said in English: “It was you who called. So you’re lost.”

I was too relieved to be surprised that he spoke in English. I began to talk quickly: “Have you seen the wagonette? And Schwester Maria and the girls? I must find them quickly.”

He smiled slowly.

“You’re from the Damenstift.”

“Why, yes, of course.”

He leaped down from his horse. He was tall, broad and immediately I was aware of what I could only describe then as authority. I was delighted. I wanted someone who could get me back to Schwester Maria with all speed and he gave an impression of invincibility.

“I’m lost,” I said.

“There was a picnic.”

“And you strayed away from the fold.” His eyes gleamed.

They were very bright topaz colour, I thought, but perhaps that was the strange light due to the mist. His mouth, which was firm and full, turned up at the corners; he had not taken his eyes from me and I was a little embarrassed by his scrutiny.

“Sheep who stray from the fold deserve to be lost,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose so, but I didn’`t exactly stray far. But for the mist I should have found them easily.”

“One must always expect mist at these heights,” he reproved.

“Well, yes, of course, but will you take me back to them? I’m sure they are still searching for me.”

“If you can tell me where they are, most certainly. But if you knew that important fact you would not need my help.”

“Couldn’'t we try and find them? They can’t be far.”

“How could we find anyone in this mist?”

“It’s more than an hour since I was supposed to be there.”

“Depend upon it. They`’ve gone back to the Damenstift.”

I looked at the horse.

“It’s five miles. Could you take me there?”

I was rather startled to be promptly lifted up and set sideways on the horse. He leaped into the saddle.

“Go on, Schlem,” he said in German.

The horse walked cautiously forward while the stranger kept one arm about me; he held the reins with the other. I could feel my heart beating very fast. I was so excited I had stopped worrying about Schwester Maria.

I said: “Anyone could get lost in the mist.”

“Anyone,” he agreed.

“You were lost, I suppose?” I asked.

“In a manner,” he said.

“Schlem -‘ he patted the horse ‘would always take me back.”

“You’re not English,” I said suddenly.

“I am betrayed,” he replied.

“Tell me what did it’ ” Your accent. It’s very faint, but there. “

“I was educated at Oxford.”

“How exciting! My home is there.”

“I believe I have risen somewhat in your estimation. Am I right?”

“Well, I hadn’`t started to make an estimation yet.”

“How wise of you. One never should on a very short acquaintance.”

“I’m Helena Trant, studying at the Damenstift near Liechtenkinn.”

I waited for him to introduce himself, but all he said was:

How interesting. “

I laughed.

“When you loomed out of the mist I thought you were Siegfried or somebody like that.”

“You are very complimentary.”

“It was the horse. Schlem. He’s magnificent. And you looked so tall and commanding seated up there, just as he must have looked Siegfried, I mean.

“You are well acquainted with our heroes?”

“Well, my mother comes from these parts. As a matter of fact, she was at the same Damenstift. That’s why I’m there.”

“How very fortunate.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because if your mother had not gone to this particular Damenstift you would not have come and you would never have been lost in the mist and I should never have had the pleasure of rescuing you.”

I laughed.

“So it is a pleasure?”

“It’s a great pleasure.”

“The horse keeps going. Where is he taking us?”

“He knows his way.”

“What! To the Damenstift! ” I doubt he has ever been there. But he will take us to some shelter where we can make plans. “

I was contented. I suppose it was that air of authority which gave me the impression that whatever the proposition it would not be too difficult for him to solve it.

“You haven’t told me your name,” I said.

“You`’ve already named me,” he said.

“Siegfried.”

I burst out laughing.

“Is it really? Well, that is a coincidence.

Fancy my hitting on the name. I suppose you are real. You’re not a chimera or something? You’re not suddenly going to disappear. “

“Wait and see,” he said. He held me tightly against him, which aroused in me a strange emotion which I had never felt before and which should, of course, have been a warning.

We had been climbing a little and the horse suddenly changed direction. A house loomed out of the mist.

“Here we are,” said Siegfried.

He dismounted and lifted me down.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is not the Damenstift.”

“Never mind. We’ll find shelter here. The mist is chilling.”

He shouted: “Hansi’ and a man came running out from stables which I discerned at the side of the house. He did not seem in the least surprised to see me; calmly he took the reins which Siegfried threw at him and led the horse away.

Siegfried then slipped his arm through mine and drew me towards the stone steps which led up to the portico. We were facing a heavy iron-studded door which he pushed open and we stepped into a hall with a big fire roaring away in the grate; there were skins of animals in the form of rugs, over the polished boards of the floor.

“This is your home?” I asked.

“It’s my hunting lodge.”

A woman came into the hall.

“Master!” she cried and I saw the dismay in her face as she looked at me.

He spoke to her in rapid German explaining that he had found one of the young ladies from the Damenstift lost in the forest.

The woman seemed even more disturbed.

“Mein Gott! Mem Gott!’ she kept muttering.

“Don’t fret so. Garde,” he complained.

“Get us some food. The child is chilled. Find her a wrap or something so that she can get her damp clothes off.”

I spoke to her in her own language and she replied in a scolding voice, “We should get you back to the Damenstift soon.”

“We might let them know I’m safe,” I temporized, for I had no desire for my adventure to end so quickly.

“The mist is too thick,” said Siegfried.

“Wait awhile. As soon as we can get her back we will.”

The woman looked at him reproachfully and I wondered what that meant.

She bustled me up a wooden staircase into a room with a big white bed and a great many cupboards. She opened one of these and took from it a blue velvet robe lined with fur. I exclaimed with pleasure at the sight of it.

“Take off your blouse,” she said. Tt’s damp. Then you can wrap this round you. “

I did so and when I glanced at myself in the mirror I seemed transformed. The blue velvet was so magnificent. I had never seen anything like it.

Could I wash my hands and face, I asked. She looked at me almost fearfully. Then she nodded. After a while she came back with hot water. / “Come down when you’re ready,” she said.

I heard a clock strike seven. Seven o’clock! What would be happening back at the Damenstift. I felt sick with anxiety at the thought but even that could not curb the wild excitement which was possessing me.

I washed thoughtfully. My cheeks were pink; my eyes bright. I undid the plaits which Mutter insisted were worn and my hair fell about my shoulders; it was thick, dark and straight. Then I wrapped the blue velvet robe about me and fervently wished the girls in the convent could see me now.

There was a knock at the door and the woman entered. She gasped when she saw me. She seemed as though she were going to say something but refrained from doing so. It was a little mysterious, but so exciting.

She took me down the stairs to a small room where a table was set.

There was wine and cold chicken with fruit and cheeses and a big crusty co burg loaf.

Siegfried was standing by the fire.

His eyes sparkled as he looked at me. I was delighted. I knew it meant that the robe suited me as indeed it must suit anyone; and of course my hair was more becoming loose than in plaits.

“You like the transformation?” I said. I always talked too much when excited. I went on exuberantly: I look a more fitting companion for Siegfried now, than with my plaits and school blouse. “

“A very fitting companion,” he said.

“Are you hungry?”

Starving. “

“Then let us waste no time.”

He led me to a chair and very courteously held it while I sat down. I was unused to such attentions. He filled my glass with wine.

“I shall wait on you tonight,” he said.

I wondered what he meant for a moment and then I said:

“Oh, servants.”

They would be a little redundant on such an occasion. “

“And hardly necessary when we can help ourselves.”

“This wine,” he said, ‘is from our Moselle valley. “

“We don’t have wine at the Damenstift only water.”

“How abstemious.”

“And what they would say if they could see me sitting here now with my hair loose, I can’t imagine.”

“So it is forbidden to wear it so?”

“It’s supposed to be sinful or something.”

He was still standing behind me and suddenly gathered my hair up in his hands and pulled it so that my head was jerked back and I looked full into his face. He leaned over me and I wondered what was going to happen next.

“You do strange things,” I said.

“Why do you pull my hair?”

He smiled and, releasing it, went to the chair opposite me and sat down.

“I suppose they consider it would arouse temptation in un scrupulous people. That’s how they would reason. And quite rightly.”

“Hair, you mean?”

He nodded.

“You should keep it plaited except when you are completely sure of your companions.”

“I hadn’`t thought of that.”

“No. You are somewhat thoughtless, you know. You wandered from the fold. Don’t you know that in the forest there are wild boars and equally wild barons? One could rob you of your life; the other of your virtue. Now tell me, which would you consider of the most value?”

“The nuns would say one’s virtue of course.”

“But I wanted your opinion.”

“As I have never lost either it is hard for me to decide.”

The nuns haven’t either presumably, but they came to a decision. “

“But they are so much older than I. Are you telling me that you are one of the wild barons? How could you be? You’re Siegfried. No one with a name like that could ever rob maidens of their virtue. All they do is save them from wild boars or wild barons perhaps.”

“You are not very sure of that. I sense you have a few mis givings.

Have you? “

“Well, a few. But then if I hadn’`t this wouldn’`t be an adventure, would it? If it was another nun who had found me it would be rather dull.”

“But surely you should feel no misgivings with Siegfried.”

“If it were really he, no.”

“So you are doubting me’ ” I think you may be rather different from what you seem. “

“In what way?”

“That remains to be discovered.”

He was amused and said: “Allow me to serve you some of this meat.”

He did so and I took a piece of rye bread which was hot and crusty and delicious. There was a mixture of spicy pickle and a kind of sauerkraut such as I had never tasted before. This was something more than the usual layers of white cabbage and spice seeds; it was quite delicious.

I ate ravenously for a while and he watched me with all the pleasure of a good host.

“So you were hungry,” he said.

I frowned.

“Yes, and you’re thinking that I really ought to be worrying about what’s happened at the Damenstift, not enjoying this.”

“No. I’m glad you can live in the moment.”

“You mean I should forget about going back and facing them at all?”

“Yes. I mean just that. It’s the way we live. We have met in the mist; you are here; we can talk together while the mist lasts. Let us not think beyond that. “

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Because quite frankly I find it very depressing to contemplate all the fuss there’ll be when I get back.”

“Then you see I am right.” He lifted his glass.

“Tonight,” he said.

“The devil take tomorrow.”

I drank with him. The wine warmed my throat and I felt the colour flushing my cheeks.

“Although,” I said severely, ‘it is not a philosophy of which the nuns would approve. “

“The nuns are for tomorrow. We mustn’`t let them intrude tonight.”

“I can’t help thinking of poor Schwester Maria. Mutter will scold her.

“You shouldn’`t have taken that Helena Trant,” she will say.

“There is always trouble where she is” “

“And is there?” he asked.

“It seems to work out that way.”

He laughed.

“But you are different from the others. I’m sure of that.

You were telling me that your mother was here. “

“It was a beautiful story; and now it has become a sad one. They met in the forest and they fell in love and lived happily ever after until she died, that is. There was great opposition to the marriage but they overcame it, and it all turned out so right. But she is dead now and Father is alone.”

“He has you when you are not far away at the Damenstift or roaming the forest in the mist.”

I grimaced.

“They were always lovers rather than parents. Lovers don’t want intruders and even children can be that.”

“The conversation is growing a little sad,” he said, ‘and this is a time for gaiety. “

“What! With me lost and the nuns frantic and wondering how they are going to break the news to my father that I am lost in the forest.”

“You’ll be back with them before they have time to send the message.”

“But I hardly think we should be gay when they will be so worried.”

“If we can do no good by worrying we should be gay. That’s wisdom.”

“I suppose you are very wise, Siegfried.”

“Well, Siegfried was, wasn’`t he?”

“I’m not so sure. It could all have worked out so much better with Brynhild if he had been a little more clever.”

“I suppose your mother told you the legends of our forests.”

“She talked about it when we were together sometimes. I loved the stories of Thor and his hammer. Do you know the one where he went to sleep with his hammer beside him and one of the giants came and stole it and they said that they would only give it back if the Goddess Freya became the bride of the Prince of the Giants? So Thor dressed up as the Goddess and when they laid the hammer on his lap, he grasped it, threw off his disguise and slew them all. So he came back to the land of the gods with his hammer.”

He laughed with me.

“It was not strictly honest, I must say,” I went on.

“And those giants must have been rather blind to have mistaken Thor for a beautiful goddess.”

“Disguises can deceive.”

“Surely not to that extent.”

“Do have some more of this. It’s Hildegarde’s very special sauerkraut.

Do you like it? “

“Delicious,” I said.

“I’m delighted that you have such a good appetite.”

“Tell me about yourself. I’ve told you about me.”

He spread his hands.

“You know that I was in the forest hunting boar.”

“Yes, but is this your home?”

“It’s my shooting lodge.”

“So you don’t actually live here?”

“When I am hunting in this area I do.”

“But where is your home?”

“Some miles from here.”

“What do you do?”

“I help look after my father’s lands.”

“He’s a sort of landowner with an estate to look after. I know.”

He asked me about myself and I was soon telling him of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Matilda.

“The ogresses,” he called them. He was amused about the greyhound story.

He talked about the forest and I knew that it fascinated him as it did me. He agreed that there was an enchantment about it which comes through so clearly in the fairy stories. From my childhood I had been aware of the forest through my mother’s accounts of it and he had lived near it; so it was agreeable to be with someone who understood my feelings as he so clearly did.

He was interested that I could recount stories of the gods and heroes who, long, long ago, legend had it, lived in the forests when the lands of the north were one and the gods ruled in the days before Christ was born and brought Christianity to the world; then the heroes of the north lived and died-men like Siegfried, Balder and Beowulf, and one could often believe that these spirits still existed in the heart of the forest. His conversation fascinated me. He told me the story of Balder the beautiful who was so good that his mother the Goddess Frigg made every beast and plant of the forest take an oath not to harm him. There was one exception the evergreen plant with the yellow-green flowers and white berries. The mistletoe was hurt and angry because the gods had condemned it to be a parasite and Loke the mischievous god had known this, and had thrown the twig of this parasite sharp as an arrow at Balder. It pierced his heart and killed him. The lamentation of the gods was great.

I sat drinking in his words, glowing with the excitement of the adventure, a little light-headed from unaccustomed wine and more excited than I had ever been in my life.

“Loke was the God of Mischief,” he told me.

“The All-Father often had occasion to punish him, for Odin was good and it was only when his wrath was roused that he was terrible. Have you visited the Odenwald?

No? Then you must one day. It’s Odin’s Forest and in this country we have this Lokenwald which is said to be Loke’s Forest. And here in this neighbourhood only we celebrate the Night of the Seventh Moon when mischief is abroad and is routed with the coming of dawn. It’s an excuse for one of our local celebrations. You’re getting sleepy. “

“No. no. I don’t want to be. I’m enjoying it all too much.”

“You have ceased to fret about tomorrow, I’m glad to notice.”

“Now you have reminded me.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s change the subject quickly. Did you know your Queen quite recently visited our forest?”

“Yes, of course. I believe the forest enchanted her, but this is the home of her husband. She loves the Prince as my father loved my mother.”

“How can you know-you who are so young and inexperienced?”

“There are things one knows instinctively.”

“About devotion?”

“Love,” I said.

“The great love of Tristan and Iseult, of Abelard and Heloise, of Siegfried and Brynhild.”

“Legends,” he said.

“Real life may not be like that.”

“And my parents,” I continued, ignoring him, ‘and the Queen and her Consort. “

“We should consider ourselves honoured that your great Queen married one of our German princes.”

“I believe she felt herself honoured.”

“Not by his position, by the man.”

“Well, there are so many German princes and dukes and little kingdoms.”

“One day there will be one mighty Empire. The Prussians are determined on that.” He went on: “But let us talk of more intimate matters.”

“I have the wishbone,” I cried.

“Now we can wish.”

I was delighted that he had not heard of the custom, so I explained it to him.

“You each take an end by your little finger and pull. You wish and the one with the larger portion gets the wish.”

“Shall we try it?”

We did.

“Now wish,” I said. And I thought, I want this to go on and on. But that was a stupid wish. Of course it could not go on and on.

The night had to pass. I had to go back to the convent. At least I could wish that we met again. So that was what I wished.

He had the larger piece.

“It’s mine,” he cried triumphantly. Then he reached across the table and took my hands; his eyes were very brilliant, almost tawny in the candle light.

“Do you know what I have wished?” he asked.

“Don’t tell me,” I cried.

“If you do it won’t come true.”

He bent his head suddenly and kissed my hands-not lightly but fiercely and I thought he was never going to release them.

“It must come true,” he said.

I said: “I can tell you what I wished because I lost, so mine doesn’`t count.”

“Please tell me then,” he said.

“I wished that we should meet again and we should sit at this table and talk and talk and I should wear a blue velvet robe and have my hair loose.”

He said: “Lenchen, little Lenchen very softly.

Lenchen? ” I said.

“Who is that?”

“It is my name for you. Helena is too cold, too remote. For me you are Lenchen, my little Lenchen.”

“I like it,” I said.

“I like it very much.”

There were apples and nuts on the table. He peeled an apple for me and cracked some nuts. The candles flickered; he watched me from across the table.

And suddenly he said: “You have grown up tonight, Lenchen.”

“I feel grown up,” I said.

“Not a schoolgirl any more.”

“You will never be a schoolgirl again after tonight.”

“I shall have to go back to the Damenslift and be one.”

“A Damenstift does not make a schoolgirl. It is an experience. You are sleepy.”

“It’s the wine,” I said.

“It is time you retired.”

“I wonder if it is still misty.”

“If it were, would you be reassured?”

“Well, then of course they would know I could not get back and it would be stupid to worry because there wouldn’`t be anything I could do about it.”

He went to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtain. He peered out.

“It is worse than ever,” he said.

“Can you see it then?”

“Since you came down in your blue robe I have seen nothing but you.”

The excitement was almost unbearable, but I laughed rather foolishly and said: “Surely that’s an exaggeration. When you were pouring the wine and serving the chicken you saw that.”

“Precise, pedantic Lenchen,” he commented. He rose:

“Come, I will take you to your room. I can see the time has come.”

He took my hand and led me to the door.

To my surprise Hildegarde was there. She was fussing with a candle.

“I will show the young lady the way. Master,” she said.

I heard him laugh and mutter something about her being an interfering old woman from whom he endured too much.

But he let me go with her. She led the way to the room in which I had changed, where a fire was now burning in the grate.

“The nights are chilly with the mist about,” she said.

She set down the candle and lighted those in their sconces over the dressing-table.

“Keep the windows closed against the mist,” she said.

I saw that a white nightdress was laid out on the bed and I wondered vaguely why they had such a thing because I did not believe the pretty silk garments belonged to Hildegarde.

She looked at me earnestly. Then she drew me to the door and showed me the bolt.

“Bolt it when I have gone,” she said.

“It is not always safe here in the heart of the forest.”

I nodded.

“Make sure,” she said. I shall be uneasy and unable to sleep if you don’t. “

“I promise,” I said.

“Good night. Sleep well. In the morning the mist will have cleared and you will be taken back.”

She went out and listened while I bolted the door.

“Good night,” she called.

I stood leaning against it, the excitement making my heart pound. Then I heard a footstep on the wooden staircase.

Hildegarde spoke.

“No, Master, I’ll not have it. You may turn me out.

You may have me flogged but I’ll not have it. “

“You interfering old witch,” he said, but he said it indulgently.

“A young English girl a schoolgirl from the Damenstift.

I’ll not have it.”

“You’ll not have it. Garde?”

“No, I’ll not have it. Your women if you must, but not a young and innocent girl from the Damenstift.”

“You’re worried about the old nuns.”

“No, about innocence.”

There was silence. I was afraid and yet expectant. I wanted to run away from this place and yet I wanted to stay. I understood. He was one of the wicked barons. He was no Siegfried. He had not told me his real name. This was his hunting lodge. Perhaps his home was one of the castles I had seen high above the river.

“Your women if you must,” she had said. So he brought women here and, finding me in the mist, he had brought me here to be one of them.

I was trembling.

Suppose Hildegarde had not been there. In the fairy tales the wicked giants kept the Princess captive until she was rescued and emerged unscathed. But this was not a castle, it was a hunting lodge; and he was not a giant, he was a virile man.

I took off the velvet robe and looked more like myself. I undressed and put on the silken nightdress. It was soft and clinging, so different from the flannelette we wore at the Damenstift. I lay down and could not sleep; and after a while I thought I heard a step on the stair. I rose and went to the door and stood there listening. That was why I saw the handle slowly turn. If Hildegarde had not insisted on my locking the door it would have opened then.

I stared at it in fascination; I listened. I could hear breathing. A voice-his voice-whispered: “Lenchen Lenchen are you there?”

I stood there bewildered, my heart thumping so that I was afraid he must hear. I was fighting an inexplicable impulse to draw the bolt.

But I did not. I kept hearing Hildegarde’s voice: “Your women if you must...

” And I knew that I dared not unlock the door.

I stood there trembling until I heard his footsteps die away. Then I went back to bed. I tried to sleep but it was a long time before I did.

I awoke to a hammering on my door and Hildegarde calling “Good morning.”

I opened my eyes and saw the sunshine streaming into the room.

I unbolted the door to find Hildegarde there; with a tray on which was coffee and rye bread.

“Eat this and dress immediately,” she commanded.

“We must get you back to the Damenstift without delay.”

The adventure was over. The bright morning had dispelled it. Now the music had to be faced.

I drank the hot coffee and swallowed the bread; I washed and dressed and in little more than half an hour I went down stairs.

Hildegarde was wearing cloak and bonnet and outside was a trap drawn by a strawberry roan.

“We must go at once,” she said.

“I sent Hans off as soon as it was light with a message to say that you were safe.”

“How good you are!” I said, and I thought of what I had heard last night and how she had saved me though I am not sure that I had wanted to be saved from the wicked Sieg fried.

“You are very young,” she said severely, ‘and should take great care not to get lost again. “

I nodded and we went out to the trap.

“It is almost eight miles,” she said, ‘so quite far to go. But Hans will have explained. “

I looked around for Siegfried but he was not there. I felt angry. He might have come to say goodbye.

I got into the trap rather lingeringly but Hildegarde was brisk. I gazed back at the house-it was the first time I had seen it clearly.

It was of grey stone with latticed windows-smaller than I had imagined it. I had seen similar houses before and had heard them referred to as shooting lodges.

Hildegarde whipped up the horses and we took to the road. Progress was slow, for the way was often steep and the road sometimes rough. She did not speak much but when she did I gathered that she was anxious for me not to talk about my adventure. She managed to convey discreetly that I should not talk of Siegfried. Hans had delivered a message. The implication would be that Hildegarde’s husband had found me in the mist and taken me home. They had looked after me until I could be taken back. I understood what she was implying. She did not want the nuns to know that a wicked baron had found me and had taken me to his shooting lodge for the purpose of seducing me. There! I had faced the true facts, for it was really obvious that that had been Siegfried’s intention. But Hildegarde had saved me.

She clearly adored him while disapproving of him. I could understand that too, and I agreed that it would be wiser to tell my adventures from a slightly different angle.

So we reached the Damenstift. What a fuss there was! Schwester Maria had clearly spent the night weeping.

Schwester Gudrun was silently triumphant.

“I told you that it was no use expecting good behaviour from Helena Trant.” Hildegarde was warmly thanked and blessings showered upon her and I was seated for a long time in Mutter’s sanctum but I scarcely heard what she said. So many impressions crowded into my mind that there was no room for anything else. Myself in the blue robe; the way his eyes had glowed when we pulled the wishbone and the sound of his voice vibrating and passionate outside my bedroom door.

“Lenchen, little Lenchen.”

I continued to think of him. I would never forget him, I was sure. I thought: one day I shall go out and find him waiting there.

But nothing like that happened at all.

Three barren weeks followed, lightened only by the hope that I should see him and made wretched by the depressing fact that I did not, and then news came from home. My father was seriously ill. I must go home at once. And before I could leave came the information that he was dead.

I must leave the Damenstift altogether. I must go home at once. Mr. and Mrs. Greville who had brought me home on that other occasion had kindly offered to come and fetch me and take me back.

In Oxford Aunt Caroline and Aunt Matilda were waiting for me.

TWO

Back in England it was the beginning of December with Christmas almost upon us; in the butchers’ shops there were sprigs of holly round the trays of faggots, and oranges in the mouths of pigs who managed to look jaunty even though they were dead. At dusk the stall-holders in the market were showing their goods under the flare of naphtha lights and from the windows of some shops hung cotton wool threaded on string to look like falling snow. The hot-chestnut seller stood at the street corner with his glowing brazier and I remembered how my mother could never resist buying a bag or two and how they used to warm our hands as we carried them home. She liked best, though, to bake our own under the grate on Christmas night. She had made Christmas for us because she liked to celebrate it as it was celebrated in the home of her childhood. She used to tell us how there would be a tree for every member of the family lighted with candles and a big one in the centre of the Rittersaal with presents for everyone. Christmas had been celebrated for years and years in her home, she used to say. We in England had also decorated fir trees when the custom had been brought from Germany by the Queen’s mother and later strengthened by Her Majesty’s strong association with her husband’s land.

I had looked forward to Christmases but now this one held no charm for me. I missed my parents far more than I had thought possible. It was true I had been away from them for four years, but I had always been aware that they were there in the little house next to the bookshop which was my home.

Everything was changed now. That vague untidiness which had been homely was lacking. Aunt Caroline would have everything shining as she said ‘like a new pin’. In my unhappy mood I demanded to know why there should be such a desirability about a new pin, which was what Aunt Caroline called ‘being funny’. Mrs. Green, who had been our housekeeper for years, had packed her bags and left.

“Good riddance,” said Aunt Caroline. We only had young Ellen to do the rough work.

“Very well,” said Aunt Caroline, ‘we have three pairs of hands in the house. Why should we want more? “

Something had to be done about the shop, too. Obviously it could not be carried on in the same manner since my father’s death. The conclusion was reached that it would have to be sold and in due course a Mr. Clees came along with his middle-aged daughter Amelia and bought it. These negotiations went on for some time and it emerged that the shop and its stock would not yield so very much once my father’s debts had been paid.

“He had no head, your father,” said Aunt Caroline scorn fully.

“He had a head all right,” replied Aunt Matilda, ‘but it was always in the clouds. “

“And this is the result. Debts. I never saw such debts. And when you think of that wine cellar of his and the wine bills. What he did with it all, I can’t imagine.”

“He liked to entertain his friends from the university and they liked to come,” I explained.

“I don’t wonder at it, with all the wine he was fool enough to give them.”

Aunt Caroline saw everything in that way. People did things for what they got, never for any other reason. I think she had come to look after my father to make sure of her place in heaven. She suspected the motives of everyone.

“And what is he going to get out of that?” was a favourite comment. Or What good does she think that will do her? ” Aunt Matilda was of a softer nature. She was obsessed with her own state of health, and the more irregular it was, the better pleased she seemed to be. She could also be quite happy discussing other people’s ailments and brightened at the mention, of them; but nothing pleased her so much as her own. Her heart was often ‘playing her up’. It ‘jumped’; it ‘fluttered’; it rarely achieved the required number of beats per minute for which she was constantly testing it. She frequently had a touch of heartburn or there was a numb freezing feeling all round it. In a fit of exasperation I once said: ” You have a most accommodating heart. Aunt Matilda. ” And for a moment she thought that was a new kind of disease and was quite cheered.

So between the self-righteous virtue of Aunt Caroline and the hypochondriacal fancies of Aunt Matilda I was far from content.

I wanted the old security and love which I had taken for granted; but it was more than that. Since my adventure in the mist I would never be the same again. I thought constantly of that encounter, which seemed to be growing more and more unreal in my mind as time passed but was none the less vivid for that. I went over every detail that had happened: his face in the candle light, those gleaming eyes, that grip on my hand; the feel of his fingers on my hair. I thought of the door handle slowly turning and I wondered what would have happened if Hildegarde had not warned me to bolt it.

Sometimes when I awoke in my room I would imagine I was in the hunting lodge, and was bitterly disappointed when I looked round my room and saw the wallpaper with the blue roses, the white ewer and basin, the straight wooden chair and the text on the wall which said “Forget yourself and live for others’, and which had been put there by Aunt Caroline. The picture which had always been there still remained. A goldenhaired child in a flowing white dress was dancing along a narrow cliff path beside which was a long drop on to the rocks below. Beside the child was an angel. The title was The Guardian Angel. The girl’s flowing dress was not unlike the nightdress I had worn in the hunting lodge; and although I did not possess the pretty features of the child and my hair was not golden, and Hildegarde did not resemble the angel in the least, I associated the picture with us both. She had been my guardian angel, for I had been ready to plunge to disaster ably assisted by my wicked baron who had dressed himself up in the guise of Siegfried to deceive me. It was like one of the forest fairy tales. I would never forget him. I wanted to see him again. If I had a wishbone again, my wish-in spite of my guardian angel-would still be: Let me see him again.

That was the main cause of my discontent. There was a quality about him which no one else had. It fascinated me so much that I was ready to face any danger to experience it again.

So how could I settle down to this dreary existence? Mr. Clees had come next door with Miss Amelia Clees. They were pleasant and kind and I often went into the bookshop to see them. Miss Clees knew a great deal about books and it was for her sake that Mr. Clees had bought the shop.

“So that I shall have a means of livelihood when he is gone,” she told me. Sometimes they came to dine with us and Aunt Matilda was quite interested in Mr. Clees because he had confided to her that he had only one kidney.

That Christmas Day was dreary. The Clees had not yet taken possession of the shop and I had to spend the time with Aunts Caroline and Matilda. There were no trees, and our presents to each other had to be useful. There were no roasted chestnuts, no ghost stories round the fire, no legends of the forest, no stories of my father’s undergraduate days; nothing but an account of the good deeds Aunt Caroline used to perform for the poor in her Somerset village and from Aunt Matilda the effects of too rich feeding on the digestive organs.

I realized that the reason they were more intimate with each other than they were with anyone else was that they never listened to each other and they carried on a conversation independently of each other.

I would listen idly.

“We did what we could for them but it’s no use helping people like that.”

“Congestion of the liver. She went all yellow.”

“The father was constantly drunk. I told her that the child must not go about in torn garments.

“We’ve got no pins, ma’am,” she said.

“Pins,” I cried.

“Pins! What is wrong with a needle and thread?”

“The doctor gave her up. It had led to congestion of the lungs. She lay like a corpse.”

And so on, happily pursuing their individual lines of thought.

I was amused and then exasperated; I would take my mother’s book called Gods and Heroes of the Northlands and read of those fantastic adventures of Thor and Odin and Siegfried, Beowulf and the rest of them. And I fancied I was there with that unmistakable scent of the fir and pine trees, the rushing of little mountain streams and the sudden descent of the mist.

“It’s time you took your nose out of that book and did something useful,” commented Aunt Caroline.

“Bending over books will send you into a decline,” Aunt Matilda told me.

“It stops the expansion of the chest.”

My great solace at that time was the Grevilles. They could talk of the pine forests. They had a feeling for them. They had spent a holiday there some years ago and often went back to visit them. It was they who had brought me back and forth from the Damenstift, for they had been great friends of my parents. Their son Anthony was studying for the church. He was such a good son, the delight of his parents, who were so proud of him. They were very kind and sorry for me. I spent Boxing Day with them and it was a relief to escape from the aunts.

They tried to make it gay for me and there were little individual Christmas trees just as my mother had arranged them.

Anthony was there, and when he spoke his parents listened in a hushed silence which amused me while it endeared me to them. We played guessing games, and games with paper and pencil, but Anthony was so much more learned than the rest of us that we came nowhere.

It was quite pleasant and Anthony walked home with me and said rather shyly that he hoped I would visit his parents’ home whenever I wished to.

“Is that what you would like?” I asked.

He assured me that he would.

“Then they would want it too,” I said, ‘because they always want what you do. “

He smiled. He had a quick understanding and was very pleasant, but not in the least exciting to be with and it was n. o. s. m. impossible for me now to avoid comparing any man with Siegfried. If Anthony had found a girl in the mist he would have taken her straight back to where she belonged, and if he could not, to his mother; and she would have no need to utter warnings and to take on the role of guardian angel.

I would be pleased to go to the Grevilles and see them and their son; but the desire to be again in that hunting lodge sitting opposite my wicked baron was so intense that it was sometimes like a physical pain.

There were more visits to the Grevilles. The Clees came to the shop and I heard that I had fifteen hundred pounds clear when all debts were paid.

“A nest egg,” said Aunt Caroline; and invested wisely it would give me a small income which would enable me to live like a lady. I would continue under their care and they would teach me how to become a good housewife, an art in which it was obvious to them I was by no means accomplished. I was disturbed. I saw myself growing like the aunts; learning how to run a house, speaking to Ellen so that she cringed, making rows of jams, preserves and jellies and lining them up in chronological order with labels on them denoting that they were blackberry jelly, raspberry jam or orange marmalade of the 1859, 1860 variety and so on through the century, while I grew’ into a good housewife with banisters which held not a speck of dust and tables in which I could see my reflection, making my own beeswax and turpentine, salting my own pork, gathering my black currants for jelly and brooding over the quality of my ginger wine.

And somewhere in the world Siegfried would be pursuing his adventures and if we met again after many rows of jars in my still room he would not know me but I should always know him.

Escape was at the Grevilles’ house where I was always welcome, and sometimes Anthony was there to talk about the past, for he was as enamoured of the past as I was of the pine forests; I found it interesting to learn what the Queen’s marriage had meant to the country, how the Consort had ousted Lord Melbourne, what he had done for the country-of the great Exhibition in Hyde Park which Anthony described so vividly that I could see the Crystal Palace and the little Queen so proud beside her husband. He talked of the war in the Crimea and the great Palmerston and how our country was growing into a mighty Empire.

I should have been very unhappy during that period but for the Grevilles.

But Anthony was not always there and I found it tiring to hear an account of his virtues, which his parents never failed to give me; and I was restless and unhappy and felt sometimes as though I were in limbo, waiting . for what I was not sure.

I told Mrs. Greville that I wanted to do something.

“Young girls really have plenty to do in the house,” she said.

“They learn how to be good wives when they marry.”

“It seems very little,” I replied.

“Oh no, being a housewife is one of the important jobs in the world . for a woman.”

I didn’`t take to it. My jam burned the pans; the labels came off.

Aunt Caroline tut-tutted.

“This is what comes of going to outlandish schools.”

“Outlandish’ was a favourite word, to be applied to anything of which she did not approve.

My father had made that ‘outlandish’ marriage. I had ‘outlandish’ notions about doing something in life.

“What could you do? Go and be a governess to children? Miss Grace, the vicar’s daughter in our old home, went as a companion when her father died.”

“She went into a decline soon after,” added Aunt Matilda grimly.

To that Lady Ogilvy. She was the one who stopped giving soup to the poor because she said they gave it to the pigs as soon as her back was turned. “

“I knew what was wrong with her long before,” put in Aunt Matilda.

“She was that transparent colour. You can tell.

“You’ll go into a decline, my girl,” I said to myself.

“And it won’t be very long before you do either.”

I was thoughtful. I didn’`t fancy looking after children or being a companion to some fratchetty old lady who might well be worse than Aunt Caroline and Aunt Matilda; at least the incongruity of their conversation and the predictability of their views gave me a little amusement.

I was drifting. It was as though I were waiting. Life was dull; my high spirits were taking a waspish turn because I was frustrated. I provoked the aunts; I refused to learn what Aunt Caroline was so desperate to teach; I was flippant over the ailments of the body. Yes, I was frustrated. I yearned for something and I was not sure what. I felt that but for that adventure in the forest I might have felt differently. If Siegfried had not robbed me of my virtue (as he had put it), he had robbed me of my peace of mind. I felt that I had glimpsed something which I would not have known existed if he had not shown me; and now I could never clearly be content again.

When the Clees came in the spring life was more tolerable. They were as serious as Anthony Greville. I went into the shop quite a bit and grew very friendly with them. The aunts quite liked them too. I was nearly nineteen-not yet of age; the aunts were my guardians; and life seemed to promise me very little.

And then the Gleibergs appeared in Oxford.

I was helping Aunt Caroline make strawberry jam when they arrived.

There was a knock on the door and Aunt Caroline cried: “Who on earth is that, of this hour of the morning?”

It was about eleven o’clock and I was surprised afterwards that I had no premonition of how important this meeting was going to prove.

Aunt Caroline stood, her head on one side listening to the voices in the hall, to make sure that Ellen was making the necessary enquiries as to the visitors’ identity in the correct manner.

She came into the kitchen. oh Mum . “

“Madam,” corrected Aunt Caroline.

“Madam, they say they’re your cousins so I put them in the drawing-room.”

“Cousins!” cried Aunt Caroline indignantly.

“What cousins? We have no cousins.”

Aunt Matilda came into the kitchen. Unexpected callers were an event and she had seen them arrive.

“Cousins!” repeated Aunt Caroline, “They say they’re our cousins!”

“Our only cousin was Albert. He died of liver,” said Aunt Matilda.

“He drank. We never beard what became of his wife. She was as fond of the liquor as he was. Sometimes it affects the heart and she was always a funny colour.”

“Why not go and see them?” I said.

“You’ll probably find they’re some long-lost relations who have suffered all the diseases that flesh-is heir to.”

Aunt Caroline gave me that look which meant that I was showing signs of my outlandish education; Aunt Matilda, who was more simple, never tried to analyse the workings of my mind; although she kept a close watch on my physical condition.

I followed them into the drawing-room because after all, if the cousins were theirs they were probably some relation to me also.

I was unprepared for the visitors. They looked foreign.

“Outlandish’ I knew Aunt Caroline was thinking.

They were a man and a woman. The woman was of middle height and carried herself well; the man, of the same height, was inclined to rotundity. She wore a black gown and elegant bonnet on her fair hair.

The man clicked his heels and bowed as we entered.

They were both looking at me and the woman said in English : “This must be Helena.” And my heart began to beat fast with excitement because I recognized her accent; I had heard it many times while I was in the Damenstift.

I went forward expectantly and she took my hands in hers and looked earnestly into my face.

“You have a look of your mother,” she said.

She turned to the man: “It is so, don’t you agree, Ernst?”

“I think I see it,” he replied rather slowly.

Aunt Caroline said: “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.”

They’sat.

“We are here for a short visit,” said the woman in rather laborious English.

“Three weeks or so. We came to London. My husband has seen a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Aunt Matilda’s eyes glistened.

“It’s a complaint of the heart. So he came to London and I thought while we are in England we must go to Oxford and see Lili. We have called at the bookshop and they tell us this sad news. We did not know, you see, that she was dead. But at least we can see Helena.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Caroline coldly, ‘so you’re relations of Helena’s mother. “

“Would it be the valves?” asked Aunt Matilda.

“I knew somebody who was born with valve trouble.”

Nobody was listening to her. In fact I doubted the visitors knew what she was talking about.

“Soon after her marriage when she came to England,” said the woman, ‘we began to lose touch. There were a few letters and then-nothing more. I knew there was a daughter, Helena. ” She smiled at me.

“I felt we couldn’'t be so near and not look you up.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said.

“Where do you live? Near my mother’s old home? She talked about it a good deal.”

“Did she ever mention me?”

“Tell me your name.”

“Ilse, Ilse Gleiberg now, but not then of course.”

“Ilse,” I said.

“There were some cousins, I know.”

“There were several of us. Oh dear, it seems so long ago. And then everything changed when she married and went away. People should never really lose touch.”

“Whereabouts do you live?”

“We have just taken a little summer place temporarily. It’s in the Lokenwald.”

“The Lokenwald!” There was a lilt in my voice. Aunt Caroline would notice it and think it unbecoming. Aunt Matilda would be aware of my high colour and think I was developing heart disease. I wanted to laugh; I was suddenly so lighthearted.

“I was educated at a Damenstift near Liechtenkinn.”

“Really well that’s quite close to the Lokenwald.”

“Loke’s forest!” I said gaily.

“Ah, you know something of our old legends.”

Aunt Caroline was restive. These people seemed to forget that she was the mistress of the house, because they were so excited to have discovered me.

To turn the attention from me Aunt Caroline suggested that the visitors might like a glass of her elderberry wine. They accepted and Aunt Caroline summoned Ellen and then, afraid that she would not dust the glasses or in some way not carry out the order to her liking, went off to superintend the ceremony. Aunt Matilda cornered Ernst Gleiberg and talked to him about hearts, but his English was not as good as his wife’s, which didn’`t worry Aunt Matilda who never needed replies, only an audience.

Meanwhile I turned to Ilse, more excited than I had been since I came home. She was about the age my mother would have been and she talked of life at the Damenstift and the games they had played in the little schloss where they had lived and how my mother’s family had visited hers and how they had ridden their ponies in the forest.

I felt a deep sense of nostalgia.

The wine was brought-last year’s brew which Aunt Caroline reckoned would be ready for the drinking, and the fresh wine biscuits which she had baked the day before. She glanced significantly at me to make sure that I was realizing how important it was to be prepared with wine and biscuits for unexpected visitors.

Ilse then turned her attention to Aunt Caroline, praised the wine, which pleased her, and asked for a recipe for the biscuits.

So altogether the three of us were pleased with the visit.

That was a beginning. They had taken lodgings in the town and the aunts and myself were soon invited to dine with them. This was exciting and the aunts enjoyed it, although Aunt Caroline did think they had some outlandish ways.

I enjoyed most the times when I could be alone with them. I talked constantly about my mother and how she had met my father when he was on his walking tour. They were very interested. I told them about the Damenstift and the different nuns; in fact I realized that I talked a great deal about myself far more than they did about their lives.

They did, though, bring back to me very vividly the enchantment of the forest; and I could sense the change in myself. I was more like the girl I had been before I came back to find my life so sadly changed. Not a word did I say of my adventure in the mist but I was thinking of it; and the night after that first day of their arrival I dreamed of it all so vividly that it was like living it again.

The days passed all too quickly and not one of them without a meeting with the Gleibergs. I told them how very sad I was that they would soon be leaving; Ilse said she would miss me too. It was Ilse to whom I had grown so close-identifying her with my mother. She began to tell me stories of their childhood together, all the little jaunts and customs which my mother had mentioned; and little incidents concerning Lili, as she called her, of which I had never heard before.

About a week before they were due to leave she said to me: “How I wish you could come back with us for a visit.”

The joy in my face seemed to startle her.

“Would you really like it so much?” she asked, well pleased.

“More than anything on earth,” I said vehemently.

“Perhaps it could be arranged.”

“The aunts, I began.

She put her head on one side and lifted her shoulders; a gesture she used frequently.

“I could pay my fare,” I said eagerly.

“I have some money.”

“That would not be necessary. You would be our guest, of course.”

She put her finger to her lips as though something had occurred to her.

“Ernst, she said.

“I am concerned about his health. If I could have a travelling companion it was an idea.

I broached it to the aunts during luncheon.

“Cousin Ilse is worried about Ernst,” I told them.

“I don’t wonder at it. Hearts are funny things,” said Aunt Matilda.

“It’s travelling. She says it’s a burden for one.”

“She might have thought of that before she left her home,” said Aunt Caroline, who thought every adversity which befell others was their own fault and only those which came to her due to unavoidable ill fortune.

“She brought him to see a doctor.”

“The best of them are here,” said Aunt Matilda proudly.

“I remember Mrs. Corsair’s going up to London to see a specialist. I won’t mention what ailed her, but...

” She looked significantly at me.

“Cousin Ilse would like someone to help her on the journey. She suggested I go.”

“You!”

“Well, it would be such a help and in view of Cousin Ernst’s complaint”

“Hearts are very funny things,” from Aunt Matilda.

“Unreliable more so than lungs, though you can’t be sure of lungs either.”

“Well, I’ve no doubt it would be a help to her but why should you go tramping out to outlandish places?”

“Perhaps because I’d like to. I’d like to be of use to her. After all, she is my mother’s cousin.”

“That’s what comes of marrying foreigners,” said Aunt Caroline.

“Someone who understands hearts would be very useful now,” said Aunt Matilda speculatively. Good heavens, I thought. She’s not suggesting she should go?

She was. Her love of disease would carry her even to such lengths.

Aunt Caroline was horrified and this was fortunate, for I was sure that because of this veiled suggestion of her sister’s she viewed my departure with less dismay.

“How would you get back?” demanded Aunt Caroline triumphantly.

“By train, by sea.”

“Alone! A young girl travelling alone!”

“People do. And it’s not as though it’s my first visit. The Grevilles might be coming out again. I could wait for them and travel back with them perhaps.”

“It all seems very outlandish to me,” said Aunt Caroline.

But I was determined to go; and I think that Aunt Caroline realized that I had my mother’s determination ‘stubbornness,” she called it-and once I had made up my mind I would go. Aunt Matilda was in a way on my side because she was certain that when you travelled with a ‘heart’ more than one pair of hands would be needed if things went wrong. So it happened that at the end of the month of June when the Gleibergs left England I was with them.

THREE

I was in a state of exultation. Some strange transformation had come to me on that night in the hunting lodge and I would never be quite the same again. I sometimes believed that I had supped with the gods or one of them at least. He belonged in Asgarth with Odin and Thor; he would be as bold and brave and as wicked and ruthless as any of them.

He had taken possession of my mind so that I was like the knight-at-arms who had met the belle dame sans merci.

“Alone and palely loitering’ I would wander the earth ever more until I found him.

How foolish one could be! Yet on the other hand if I could retrace my steps in some ways, if I could prove to myself that what I had met on that night was not a god but a man who was not very scrupulous and might have submitted me to that to which I am sure people like my aunts would think death preferable, I believed I might throw off this spell which now bound me. I would return to Oxford and learn to be a good housewife. I might be a spinster who looked after the aunts for the rest of their lives; or I might marry and have a family and bring them up to be respectable citizens. My daughters should never be sent to a Damenstift in the pine forests for fear one day they should be lost in the mist and captured by a wicked baron, for who could be sure that the good angel in the guise of a Hildegarde would always be there?

We travelled through the familiar country and as I smelt the pines my spirits rose. At length we came to the little station of Lokenburg. A trap took us and our luggage to their house.

How excited I was to be in Lokenburg-a typical south German town.

There were a few new houses which had been recently built on the outskirts in the Altstadt. It seemed to have come right out of a fairy tale-with its arcaded streets and look of the middle ages.

“It’s beautiful!” I cried, gazing at the high roofs and gabled houses, with little domes capping the turrets and the window-boxes on the window-ledges overflowing with flowers. There was the market-place with a pond in the centre and in which a fountain played; and from the shops hung iron signs creaking in the wind with the quaint pictures on them indicating the various trades.

“You must visit our Pfarrkirche,” Ilse told me, pointing out the church.

“The Processional Cross is locked away but it will be brought out to show you, I dare say.”

“It’s so exciting to be back,” I told her.

“We’re just in time for the Night of the Seventh Moon,” she said.

I could hear his voice then distinctly.

The Seventh Moon,” I cried, ‘when Loke, the God of Mischief is abroad and routed by the All-Father Odin.”

Ilse laughed delightedly.

“Your mother made you aware of our legends, I see,” she said.

“This, though, is rather a local one.”

We had passed through the centre of the town and had reached its outskirts. The house was a mile or so from the Altstadt. We turned in at a drive, where the fir trees which lined it were thick and rather stubby and pulled up before a porch.

The house was about the same size as the hunting lodge and not unlike it; there was the hall, on the walls of which hung spears and guns, and a wood-staircase led to a landing on which were the bedrooms. I was taken to mine, and hot water was brought; I washed and went down to a meal of sausages, sauerkraut and rye bread which Ilse and I took alone. Ernst was resting. The journey had been so exhausting for him. Ilse explained. I was probably a little tired too, more so than I realized.

I had never felt less so.

Ilse smiled indulgently. She was delighted by my pleasure. I wondered what she would think if she knew its true source and that my excitement was due to the fact that I was hoping to meet Siegfried again.

That afternoon we went in the trap for a trip into the forest and I was enchanted by the mist of blue gentians and pink orchids. I wanted to gather them but Ilse said they would soon die if I did. So I left them.

I slept little that night. I was so excited. I couldn’'t get out of my mind the belief that I was going to see him again. He would come hunting and we would meet in the forest. We must. It couldn’'t possibly happen that we never met again and I could not stay here for ever, so it had to happen soon.

I looked eagerly about me during the ride but we saw hardly anyone-only an old woman collecting sticks for firewood and a cow-herd with his cows whose bells about their necks tinkled melodiously as they walked.

The next day I went into the market, which was being decorated with flags because this was the night of the full moon the seventh of the year; the night of festivities when the god Loke was supposed to be abroad.

“You’ll see the girls in their red skirts and white embroidered blouses and yellow tasselled aprons,” Ilse told me.

“Some of the men will be masked; they may be dressed as gods in doublet and hose and light capes; they’ll be masked and wear horns on their heads. You`’ve probably seen the pictures of the gods in your mother’s books. They’ll dance and play tricks. The idea being that none will know which represents Loke and which the All-Father. You must see it. We’ll go into the market-square as soon as the moon rises.”

I had not seen Ernst all day. He was very self-effacing and so quiet that one could almost believe he was not there.

“He has changed a great deal since his illness,” explained Ilse.

“He suffers a great deal more than he admits.”

So Ernst stayed in his room and Ilse and I were together most of the time. We talked a great deal! more than she. I suppose Aunt Caroline was right when she said I’talked too much; Ilse was the perfect listener, and I did not notice that she was not so much exchanging chatter as being an audience for me.

And so came the evening of that second day-the prelude to the Night of the Seventh Moon. We had eaten what she called the English high tea as it was too early for dinner and she did not wish us to be out too late when the excitement was supposed to warm up and the fun might get too fierce.

After this high tea she came to my room, her face grave.

“I can’t allow Ernst to go out,” she said.

“He’s not well enough.”

“So there’ll be just the two of us.”

‘. I hardly think we ought to go. “

“Not go!”

“Well, on occasions like these two women on their own.

“Oh, but we must go.”

She hesitated.

“Well, we must not stay late. We’ll slip out to the market-square and we’ll see the start of it. What a pity we haven’t a house on the square. Then you could watch from a window. Ernst will be very anxious. He won’t rest till we’re back.”

“Isn’t there some man who could escort us? If we need one.”

She shook her head.

“This is not really our home. We have just taken this house for a holiday. We have been here before but we don’t really have friends in the neighbourhood. You understand?

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, we’ll go early and not upset Ernst.”

So that was how we came to be standing in the square with the revellers all about us. It was about eight o’clock in the evening.

Overhead hung the great moon-the seventh moon of the year and there seemed to be something mystical about it. It was a strange scene; naphtha flares burned from iron jets lighting the faces of the people.

There were crowds in the square; people were signing and calling to each other. I caught sight of a man masked, with the homed headdress which Ilse had described, and I recognized it at once from pictures my mother had shown me. Then I saw another and another.

Ilse squeezed my hand.

“What do you think of it?”

Wonderful,” I said.

“Keep close. The crowd’s thickening and they may become overexcited.”

“It’s early yet,” I told her.

I saw a girl seized by one of the horn-headed men and go dancing off with him.

“The excitement grows. You’ll see.”

“What happens if the sky is overcast and there’s no moon?”

“Some say that Loke is sulking and won’t come out, others that he’s playing one of his mischievous tricks and then one has to be especially careful.”

A group of fiddlers arrived, started to play and the dancing began.

I don’t know quite how it happened; it was the way these things do happen in crowds, I supposed. One minute I was standing there by Use’s side watching the laughing and dancing swirl of people and the next there was chaos.

It began with a sudden splash. Someone had been thrown into the pond; there was a rush towards it and in the melee Ilse was no longer beside me.

I was firmly gripped by the hand and I felt an arm about my waist. A voice which made my heart hammer said in my ear:

“Lenchen!” I turned and looked up into that face; I saw the masked eyes and the laughing mouth. I could never be mistaken.

“Siegfried,” I whispered.

“Himself,” he answered.

“Come out of the crowd.”

He kept his grip on me and we were soon on the edge of it. He took my chin in his hands.

“Still the same Lenchen.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Celebrating the Night of the Seventh Moon,” he said.

“But this is an even more important occasion. The return, of Lenchen.”

He was drawing me farther and farther away from the crowd and we were in a small street in which there were only a few revellers.

I said: “Where are you taking me?”

“Let’s go back to the lodge,” he said.

“There’ll be supper waiting there. You shall wrap yourself in a blue velvet robe and loosen your hair.”

I must find Ilse. “

Who? “

“My cousin who brought me here. She will be worried.”

“You are so precious that there must always be those to worry about you. First it is nuns and now this Ilse.”

“I must find her at once.”

“Do you think you will in that crowd?”

“Of course.” I tried to withdraw my hand, but he would not release me.

“We will go back and if it is possible to find her, we will.”

“Come then. She was anxious. She thought we might not be able to come because her husband wasn’`t well enough. She must have visualized something like this.”

“Well, she did lose you and I found you. Surely I should have some reward for that?”

“Reward?” I repeated; he laughed and put an arm about me.

I said primly: “How shall I introduce you to Ilse?”

“When the time comes I’ll introduce myself.”

There seems to me a great mystery about you. First you appear as Siegfried and now as Odin, or is it Loke? “

“That is what you have to find out. It’s part of the game.”

He had some sort of magic which put a spell on me; he was already making me stop worrying about Ilse. But I remembered how anxious she had been about our coming; and now she would be very worried indeed.

We had reached the square; the dancing seemed to have become more frenzied; and there was no sign of Ilse. Someone trod on my heel and my shoe came off. I stopped and stooped. He was just behind me. I told him what had happened.

“I’ll get it.”

He stooped but it wasn’`t there; and the crowd was so great that we were jostled along.

“Now,” he said, ‘you have lost both a cousin and a shoe. ” His eyes gleamed suddenly.

“What next will you lose?”

I said quickly: “I must go back to the house.”

“Allow me to escort you.”

“You, you have come for the excitement of all this. I don’t want to take you away from it.”

“That would be quite impossible. The excitement of this night is where you are.”

I was really frightened. I must get away. Common sense urged me to.

“I must get back.”

“If that is what you really want then you must. Come with me.”

I limped along beside him.

“How far is the house?” he asked.

“It’s about a mile from the centre of the town.”

“I dare say the road is bad. None of the roads are good in these parts. Something should be done about it. I have a horse in the inn yard there. You shall ride with me as you did on another occasion.”

I assured myself that it would be very difficult walking minus a shoe so I went with him to the inn yard and there was the horse; he placed me on it as he had done on that other occasion and we started off.

He didn’`t speak as we went along; he held me firmly against him and my excitement was almost unendurable. I felt I was living in a dream but I suddenly suspected that we were not going towards the house.

I pulled away from him.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll know soon.”

“You said you were going to take me back to Ilse.”

“I said no such thing.”

“You said if that was what I wanted.”

“Exactly, but it’s not what you want. You don’t want me to take you back and say ” Here is your cousin, just as you left her apart from the loss of one shoe of course. “

“Put me down,” I commanded.

“Here! We’re in the forest. You’d be lost. It’s not the night for young ladies to be about alone.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Surprises are almost more amusing than the expected.”

“You are taking me away somewhere.”

“We are not very far from my hunting lodge.”

“No,” I said firmly.

“No.”

“No? But you really did enjoy your last visit.”

“I want to go straight back to my cousin’s house. How dare you try to take me away against my will.”

“Be truthful, Lenchen. It’s not against your will. Remember the wishbone? You wished that we should meet again, didn’`t you?”

“Not, not like this.”

How else? “

“This is so irregular.”

“You are talking like those aunts of yours.”

“How could you know? You`’ve never met them.”

“My dear little Lenchen, you told me so much on that night. Do you remember? You sat there with the blue velvet robe about you and you talked and talked.

You were so disappointed when we said good night. “

And you didn’`t even come to say goodbye. “

“But it was not goodbye.”

“How could you know that?”

“I did know it. I was determined that we should meet again. It would have been such a tragedy if we had not.”

“You are talking to lull me to security. I want to go back. I must go back to my cousin.”

He stopped the horse; and suddenly he kissed me; it was the strangest kiss I had ever received. But then who had ever kissed me before?

Father on the forehead; mother on both cheeks; a peck once on my return from Aunt Caroline; Aunt Matilda did not kiss at all; she had heard that it was not a practice to be unnecessarily indulged in as it was a means of passing on germs. But this kiss seemed to drain me of all resistance; it made me feel exalted and expectant all at once. It was cruel and yet tender; it was passionate and caressing.

I drew away and said shakily, “Take me back at once.”

“You should not have been turned out on the Night of the Seventh Moon,” he said; and he laughed rather cruelly, I thought; his eyes gleamed through the mask and the horns made him look like a Viking raider.

I said angrily: “Whom do you represent tonight?”

“Just myself,” he replied.

“You seem to have the impression that you are some invader who can seize women and carry them off and behave as you like.”

“And don’t you think I can?” He put his face close to mine, laughing.

“No,” I cried fiercely.

“Not with me. Perhaps with some but not with me.”

“Lenchen,” he said, ‘do you swear that that is not what you want? “

“I don’t understand you.”

“Swear by the moon, by the seventh moon, that your great est wish is for me to take you back to your cousin’s house.”

“But of course you must...

He brought his face closer to mine.

“It is dangerous to swear by the seventh moon.”

“Do you think I’m afraid of fairy stories or of you?”

“You are more afraid of yourself, I think.”

“Will you please say clearly ^what you mean.”

“Lenchen, I have thought of you constantly since that night when we supped together and it ended there.”

“How could you possibly think it could end any other way?”

“Easily-and so did you.”

“I.. I do not indulge in such adventures, I assure you.”

“The assurance is unnecessary. I know it.”

But of course you cannot say the same. Such adventures are commonplace with you. “

“There has never been an adventure like that one. You made it unique and now here we are again. Lenchen, stay with me. Don’t ask me to take you back to your cousin’s house.”

“I must. She will be frantic with anxiety.”

“Is that the reason the only reason?”

“No. I want to go back because...

“Because you have been brought up by the nuns, but if I were your husband you would be very happy riding off alone with me.”

I was silent.

“It’s true, Lenchen,” he cried.

“They have instilled these ideas into you. You have chosen the path of respectability or at least it has been chosen for you; and no matter what ecstasy, what joy, what pleasure I could give you, it would always be incomplete unless you were my wife.”

“You are talking nonsense,” I said.

“Please take me home.”

“It could have been so perfect,” he said.

“I know that, and it must not be less than perfect. Lenchen,” he went on sadly, ‘there has never been such a night as that when we met. I dreamed of it; every time the mist fell I wanted to ride out and look for you. It was absurd, wasn’`t it? But you want to go home so I will take you. “

He turned the horse and we rode in silence. I was held tightly against him and I was happy. I knew now that I loved him. He had excited me as no other person ever had or I was sure ever could; but when he turned the horse towards the village I loved him because although I was inexperienced I was conscious of an almost uncontrollable desire which he held in check by tenderness for me and which seemed to me the very essence of romance and that was what told me that I loved him.

I could hear the shouts of revellers as we approached the town; I saw the glow from the flares; one or two people passed us couples mostly, on their way to the forest. We did not go right into the Altstadt but skirted it and I directed him to my cousin’s house.

He sprang out of the saddle and lifted me down; as he did so for a few seconds he held me in his arms and kissed me tenderly this time.

“Good night, little Lenchen.”

I felt an impulse to tell him that we must meet again, that it was because I was worried about Ilse that I wanted to go in. But it wasn’`t only that. I did not know who he was; I did / know, though, that it was not unusual for him to take a woman to the hunting lodge; I knew that the silk nightdress and the blue velvet robe had probably been put there for one of them, and that he had intended that I should provide him with the same brief amusement as others had.

But my guardian angel had saved me and now I had saved myself unwillingly, reluctantly, it was true, but I knew that I was right.

He did not suggest another meeting. He let me go; and before I reached the porch I heard his horse’s hoofs on the road.

Ilse dashed out of the house.

“Helena! Whatever has happened?”

I told her the story. I had lost her. I had lost my shoe. One of the revellers had brought me home.

“I’ve been beside myself,” she cried.

“I couldn’'t think what to do for the best. I roamed about looking for you, then I thought I had better come back here and get a search-party together.”

“It’s all right now. Ilse. I was worried about you. I came back as soon as I could.”

“You must be exhausted.”

Exhausted! I was exhilarated and depressed, exultant and frustrated.

My feelings were in a whirl.

She looked at me oddly.

“Go to bed,” she said, ‘and I’ll bring you up some hot milk. It’ll make you sleep. “

Nothing could make me sleep that night.

I lay there going over it all. The words he had said; the implications; he had wanted to take me to the hunting lodge. I wondered if Hildegarde was there.

And then as I went over every detail I said to myself: I’ve lost him now. This is the second time. I shall never see him again.

One thing I knew was that all my life I should be haunted by him. I should never forget him.

I slept late next morning for I had only dozed fitfully throughout the night until dawn and then fallen into a deep slumber.

The sun was streaming into my room when I awoke and a great sadness descended on me. He had gone; he had explained as clearly as he could that since I could not be his companion of a night or so it was better that we should part.

I dressed lethargically and took breakfast on the little terrace at the back of the house but I had little appetite. I said I would go for a walk into the town during the morning and perhaps do a little shopping for Ilse.

When I returned to the house Ilse came to the door. There was a strange look on her face, as near to excitement as I had ever seen her.

She said, “There is a visitor to see you.”

“A visitor?”

“Count Lokenberg.”

I stared at her.

“Who on earth is that?”

“Go and see.” And she drew me towards the sitting-room, opened the door and pushed me forward. She shut the door on us so that we were alone, which seemed a strange thing for her to do. At home I should not have been left alone with a man-and here the codes of behaviour were as strict as those at home-perhaps more so.

But already I had seen him. He looked incongruous in this little room; he filled it with his presence.

“I’ve discarded my headdress,” he said.

“I hope you recognize me without it.”

“You Count Lokenberg! What are you doing here?”

“I am sure Aunt Caroline would be shocked at your manner of greeting a visitor, and you usually set such store on not shocking her.”

I felt the colour rising in my cheeks and I knew my eyes were sparkling, I was so happy.

“I can’t think where Ilse is,” I stammered.

“Obeying orders.” He took my hands.

“Lenchen,” he said, “I’ve been thinking of you all night. And you, have you been thinking of me?”

“Almost all night,” I admitted.

“I did not sleep till dawn.”

“You wanted to come with me, didn’`t you? You were calling out for me to abduct you and carry you away to the lodge. Confess it.”

“If it could have happened and then not have happened and could have been a sort of dream . “

“Impossible, my darling. But you were frightened, and that was the last thing I wanted. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything . but you must be equally eager and willing. It’s no use otherwise.

You must want to come to me as much as I want you to. “

“Is that one of your conditions?”

He nodded.

I said: “You didn’`t tell me who you were.”

“Siegfried sounded so much more to your taste.”

“And then Odin or Loke. And all the time you are this count.”

“A hero or a god is more impressive than a count.”

“But a count is more real.”

“And you prefer reality.”

“If there is going to be any permanency there must be reality.”

“My practical Lenchen, you know I’m obsessed by you.”

“Are you?”

“Your smile is radiant. You know I am as you are with me. I make no conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“You understand, Lenchen. If we had made our vows before a priest you would not have said ” Go back”. You would have said ” Go on”; and your eagerness would have equalled my own. Confess it. You don’t hide your feelings one bit. I know what you are thinking all the time. It’s there in your face your lovely young face. I know every detail.

I have dreamed of it every night and seen it every day since I found you in the forest. I love you, Lenchen, and you love me, and love like ours must be fulfilled. That is why we shall make our vows before the priest and then you will have no fears. You will be free to love. You will not see Aunt Caroline in your mind’s eye raising shocked hands; there will be no worrying about nuns or your cousin . nothing but us and that’s how I wish it to be. “

“You are asking me to marry you?”

“And what do you say?”

I did not have to answer. As I said, I betrayed myself.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“How can it be tomorrow? People don’t marry like that.”

Here they could, he told me. He would arrange it. If he commanded a priest to marry him that priest would obey him. It would be a simple ceremony. The priest would come into the house, either this or the hunting lodge. It had been done before. I could safely leave everything to him.

I was bemused. I could not get rid of the idea that I was in the company of a supernatural being. Perhaps that’s how it always is when one is in love. The loved one is unique, of course, but more than that, perfect. Everything had changed; the whole world seemed to be mad with joy; the birds sang more joyously; the grass was greener, the flowers more beautiful; the sun shone with a new warmth; and the moon, honey-coloured, lying a little on its side still almost full, wise and benign to lovers-seemed to be laughing because Helena Trant loved Count Lokenberg and all difficulties were to be swept aside by the priest before whom they were to make their vows to love and cherish until death parted them.

“But how is it possible?” I asked Ilse and Ernst when he dined with us that night.

“Surely marriages cannot be arranged like that?”

“Ours is a simple ceremony,” explained Ilse.

“It is often performed in the house of the bride or the bridegroom, if that is more convenient. The Count is a man of great power in these parts.”

A man of great power! I was fully aware of that. Ilse spoke his name with reverence.

“It seems so sudden,” I said, without any real protest and not really wanting to enquire too deeply into the ethics of the matter because I only wanted to be assured that the marriage could take place.

Ilse brought up hot milk when I was in bed; she seemed to think it necessary to cos set me a little. All I wanted was to be alone to think of this wonderful thing which had happened to me.

A message came from the Count in the early morning. The marriage was to be celebrated at the hunting lodge. He had the priest waiting there. Ilse and Ernst were to drive me over. It was a three hours’ drive but they made no difficulty about it; they seemed somewhat overawed by him. His name was not Siegfried but Maximilian, in fact. I had laughed when he told me.

“It sounds like one of the Holy Roman Emperors.”

’”” hy shouldn’`t it? ” he demanded.

“That’s what it is. Don’t you think I’m worthy to be named after such people? “

“It suits you admirably,” I told him.

“I could never call you Max. It doesn’`t fit you. Maximilian, you see, is rather like Siegfried in a way. It suggests a leader.”

“Maximilian!” I said his name to myself a hundred times that day. I kept telling Ilse that I seemed to be living in a dream; I was afraid that I would wake up to discover that I had imagined everything. Ilse laughed at me.

“You are bemused,” she said.

Then I told her how I had been lost in the mist and how Maximilian seemed like some sort of god, quite unreal, but I didn’`t go into details about that night in the forest and how the handle of my door had turned and the presence of Hildegarde had made all the difference.

I packed my case and we set out for the hunting lodge. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when we reached it. There was a grove of firs quite near which I remembered vaguely noticing on the morning when Hildegarde had taken me back to the Damenstift. We came to the two stone posts on either side of the gate; and as we drove through them Fsaw Maximilian on the steps under the porch.

He came towards us hurriedly: and my heart leaped with joy at the sight of him, as I believed it always would at the sight of him for the rest of my life.

“I expected you half an hour before,” he said reproachfully.

Ilse replied meekly that we had left in good time.

He took my hand and his eyes gleamed as they swept over me; I was so happy because of his impatience.

What happened next was like a dream, which made it easy afterwards for me to wonder whether that was what it really had been.

The hall had been arranged to look rather like a chapel and waiting there was a man whose black garb proclaimed him to be a priest.

“There is no point in delay,” said Maximilian.

I said I would like to comb my hair and change my dress before I was married.

Maximilian looked at me in tender exasperation but I was allowed my own way and soon Hildegarde was taking me up to the room I remembered so well where I had spent that night so long ago.

I said: “Hildegarde, how good it is to see you again.”

She smiled but she did not appear to be very happy about our meeting. She had a habit of shaking her head so that she looked like some prophet of evil. At least that was the impression I had. I was too excited to think much about her, though. There I was in that room with the window looking out on the pine trees, and it seemed filled with a faintly resinous odour which I never failed to associate with that room in the hunting lodge, and that feeling of almost unbearable excitement which I experienced on that other occasion and which I was to find could only be inspired by one man in the whole of life.

Alone I washed and took a dress from my bag. It was slightly crumpled, but it was my best dress; it was of a green silky material with a monk’s collar of velvet of a slightly darker shade of green. Not exactly a wedding dress but more fitting for the occasion than the blouse and skirt in which I had travelled.

I looked into the cupboard and there was the blue velvet robe which I had worn that night.

I went downstairs where they were waiting for me.

Maximilian took my hand and led me to the priest who was standing before a table which had an embroidered cloth on it and candles in tall alabaster sticks.

The service was in German and brief. Maximilian swore to love and cherish me as I did him and he placed on my finger a plain gold ring which was just a little too big for it.

The service was over. I was the wife of Maximilian, Count Lokenberg.

It was evening and we supped as we had on that other occasion; but how different was this. I wore the blue velvet robe and my hair loose and I can say without reservation that I have never known such complete happiness as I did on that night. I could revel in my happiness with no fears that I would be missed. Everything seemed right and natural and it did not occur to me that there could be anything strange about this until afterwards.

We talked; we touched hands across the table; his eyes never left me; they seemed to scorch me with the intensity of their passion. I was bewildered and ignorant but I knew that I was on the threshold of the greatest adventure of my life.

Together we mounted the stairs to the bridal chamber which had been prepared for us.

I shall never forget it; nor any moment of that night It was the memory of this which afterwards, I believed, helped me retain my sanity; an inexperienced girl could not have imagined such a night; how could she have imagined Maximilian the lover if she had never experienced loving before?

When I awoke to find him beside me I lay very still for a long time thinking of this wonderful thing that had happened to me, and tears slowly started to fall down my cheeks.

He awoke to see them.

I told him they were tears of happiness and wonder because I had never known there could be anything in the world like marriage to him.

He kissed them away and we lay quietly for a while; then we were gay again.

What can I say of those days? Summer days in which so much happened and which seemed so brief. He said he would teach me to ride, for I had never done anything but amble about on a pony. Riding was not one of the accomplishments the nuns had thought necessary to teach. I was a good pupil, being determined to excel at everything in his eyes. In the afternoons we walked in the forest; we lay under the trees in a close embrace; he talked of his love for me and I of mine for him; that subject seemed to absorb us both.

But I must know more, I told him. The honeymoon would be over. I would go to his home. I wanted to know what would be expected of me there.

“I am the only one who is allowed to expect anything of you,” he parried.

“Of course. Sir Count. Yet presumably you have a family.”

“I have a family,” he said.

“And what of them?”

“They will need to be prepared for you.”

“Had they intended you to marry someone of their choice?”

“But of course. That is the way with families.”

“And they will not be pleased that you have married a girl you found in the mist.”

“It is only important that I should be pleased and I am.”

“Thank you,” I said flippantly.

“I’m glad I give satisfaction.”

“Complete and utter satisfaction.”

“So you do not regret?”

He held me hungrily against him then and his embrace was as painful as I had found it before, but there was always an ecstasy in the pain.

“I shall never regret.”

“But I must prepare myself for your family.”

“When the time is ripe you’ll meet them.”

“It is not ripe yet?”

“Hardly. They know nothing about you.”

“Whom do we have to placate?”

“Too many to enumerate.”

“So it is a large family and your father is an ogre. Or is it your mother?”

“She would be an ogress, wouldn’`t she? The feminine, you know.”

“How meticulous you have become.”

“Now that I have an English wife I must master the language.”

“You are already a master.”

“In some respects, yes. In language not entirely.”

I began to discover that whenever I tried to talk of his family the talk took a flippant turn. He did not wish to talk of it and for those first few days, which I wanted to be perfect, I did not insist.

I knew that he came of a noble family; his father, whom he mentioned briefly, would probably have wished to arrange a marriage for him after the manner of noble families, and it would be a shock for him to learn that we were married. Naturally we would have to wait until he had warned them and the time, as Maximilian said, was ripe.

So we joked and laughed and made love and that was enough for me.

He told me stories of the forest in which the legends of the past played a great part. I learned more of the mischievous tricks of Loke and the amazing exploits of Thor with his hammer. There was only Hildegarde to wait on us and cook for us and Hans to manage the horses apart from those two we were alone in our enchanted world.

On the second day I went into one of the rooms and opening the cupboard found a lot of clothes; I knew that the white silk nightdress which I had been given on my first visit to the lodge had come from this store.

Why, I asked myself, were they kept here?

I asked Hildegarde to whom the clothes belonged and she shrugged her shoulders and pretended not to understand my German, which was absurd because I was fluent.

That night when we lay together in the big bed I said:

“Whose are the clothes in the blue room cupboards?”

He took a piece of my hair and wound it round his finger.

“Do you want them?” he said.

“Want them? They must belong to someone else.”

He laughed.

“Someone I knew kept them here,” he said.

“Because she came often?”

“It saved carrying them to and fro.”

“A friend of yours .. s’ ” A friend, yes. “

“A great friend?”

“I don’t have friends like that now.”

“You mean of course that she was your mistress.”

“My darling, that is over now. I have started a new life.”

“But why are her clothes here?”

“Because someone forgot to take them away.”

“I wish they had not been here. I shall be afraid to open cupboards for fear of what I shall find.”

“I was first Siegfried the hero,” he said.

“After that I was the mischievous Loke, followed by Odin, and now it seems I have become Bluebeard. I believe he had a wife who looked where it would have been better if she had not. I’ve always forgotten what happened to the meddlesome lady but I believe it was something regrettable from her point of view.”

“Are you telling me not to ask questions?”

“It is always better not to when you have a good idea that the answer is not very pleasant.”

“There have been many women, I believe. You waylaid them in the forest and brought them here.”

“That only happened once and I did not waylay. I found my own true love.”

“But many have come here.”

“It’s a convenient meeting-place.”

“And you have told them that you would love them for ever.”

“Without any real conviction.”

“And on this occasion?”

“With the utmost conviction because if it were not so I would be the most unhappy instead of the happiest man alive.”

“So there have been others, countless others.”

“There have been no others.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You don’t let me finish. There have been no others like you. There will never be another like you. Women have been here, yes. Not one but several and it has been . agreeable. But there is only one Lenchen.”

“That is why you married me.”

He kissed me fervently.

“One day,” he said earnestly, ‘you will understand how much I love you.

“

“I know so little.”

“What do you need to know but that I love you?”

“In our everyday life there is more than that.”

“There is never more than that.”

“But I have to prepare myself for our life together. Am I really a countess now? It seems rather a grand thing to be.”

“We are a small country,” he said.

“Do not imagine that we compete with your great one’ ” But a count is a count and a countess a countess. “

“Some are great, others are small. Remember this is a country with many principalities and little dukedoms. Why, there are many people with high-sounding titles which don’t count for very much. There are some dukedoms which consist of the big house, and a village street or two and that is. the sole domain. In the not very distant days some of our estates were so small and so poor that if there were five or six brothers they would each have had only a pittance. They used to draw lots or rather straws. The father would hold the straws in his hand one was a short one, the others all of the same length. The son who drew the short one inherited everything.”

“Have you many brothers?”

“I am an only son.”

“Then they will be particularly eager for you to marry whom they choose for you.”

“They will in time be enchanted with my choice.”

“I wish I could be sure of it.”

“You have only to rely on me now and for ever.”

When I was about to ask more questions he kissed me again and again. I wondered whether it was to silence me. ‘

Three days had passed and the blissful existence continued. I had a strange feeling that I must cling to each moment, savour and treasure it so that I could re-live it in the years to come. Was it a premonition? Did I really have it? Or was it all part of a fantastic dream?

Those summer days were full of excitement and pleasure; the sun shone perpetually; we spent the afternoon in the forest and hardly ever saw anyone. Each evening we supped together and I wore the blue robe which he told me he had bought on impulse.

“To give to one of your friends whom you brought to the lodge?” I asked.

“I never gave it to anyone. It hung in the cupboard waiting for you.”

“You speak as though you knew you were going to find me in the mist.”

He leaned across the table then and said: “Doesn’`t everyone dream of the day the only one in the world will come?”

It was the sort of answer he could make so convincingly. He was indeed the perfect lover; he could capture the mood one needed at any particular time. At first he had been tender and gentle, almost as though he withheld a passion which he was aware might alarm me. My experiences in those three days and nights were many and varied and each was more revealing and exciting than what had gone before.

It was small wonder that I preferred to forget the realities of life.

Just for a while I wanted to live in this enchantment.

Early on the morning of the fourth day after my marriage we were awakened at dawn by the sounds of horses’ hoofs and voices below.

Maximilian went down and I lay listening, waiting for his return.

When he did come, I knew that something was wrong. I rose and he took my hands in his and kissed me.

“Bad news, Lenchen,” he said.

“I have to go to my father.”

“Is he ill?”

“He’s in trouble. I’ll have to leave in an hour at the latest.”

“Where?” I cried.

“Where shall you go?”

“Everything will be all right,” he said.

“There’s not time tor explanations now. I’ll have to get ready.”

I ran round getting his things together; I put the blue velvet robe over my nightdress, for I had begun to use it as a dressing-gown, and went to call Hildegarde.

She was preparing coffee and the smell of it filled the kitchen.

Maximilian, dressed and ready for a journey, was clearly very unhappy.

“It’s unbearable, Lenchen, to leave you like this during our honeymoon.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

He took my hands and gazed into my face.

“If only that were possible!”

“Why not?”

He just shook his head and held me close to him.

“Stay here, my darling, until I come back. It will be the very first moment that is possible.”

“I shall be so unhappy without you.”

“As I shall be without you. Oh Lenchen, there are no regrets none at all. There never will be. I know it.”

Questions were on my lips.

“I know nothing. Where is your father?

Where are you going? How shall I be able to write to you? ” There was so much I wanted to know. But he was telling me how much he loved me, how important I was to him, how once we had met it was clear to him that the rest of our lives must be lived together.

He said, “My darling, I’ll be back with you very soon.”

“Where can I write you?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“I’ll come back. Just wait here for me to come.

That’s all, Lenchen. “

Then he was gone and I was alone.

How desolate the lodge seemed. It was quiet, almost eerie. I did not know how to pass the time. I went from room to room. There was the first one in which I had spent that uneasy night. I touched the door handle and thought of his standing outside, wanting me to have left it unlocked. Then I went to that other room in which were another woman’s clothes and wondered what she was like; and I thought of all the women whom he had loved or professed to love. They would be beautiful, gay, experienced and clever, probably; I was wildly jealous, and deeply aware of my own inadequacies. But I was the one whom he had married.

I would have to learn a great deal. Countess Lokenberg! Could that grand-sounding title really be mine? I turned the ring on my finger and thought of the paper which I kept carefully in my bag which said that on the 20th July of the year 1860 Helena Trant had married Maximilian, Count Lokenberg, and the witnesses to their union were Ernst and Ilse Gleiberg.

There was the day to be lived through. How desolate the house was; how lonely was I!

I went into the forest. I walked down to the grove of pine trees; I sat down under one of them and thought of all that had happened to me.

I wondered what the aunts would say when they heard that I had become the wife of a German count. What would the Grevilles say, and the Clees? It all seemed so fantastic when one considered those people. It was the sort of thing that could have happened only in an enchanted forest.

When I went back to the lodge to my surprise Ilse and Ernst had arrived.

“The Count called on us on his way,” they explained.

“He had suddenly made up his mind that he did not want you to stay at the lodge while he was away. He said it was too lonely. He wants you to come back to us. He’ll come straight to us on his return.”

I was only too pleased. I put my things together and in the late afternoon we left. It was a relief in a way to get away from the lodge in which I had known such happiness; it would be easier to wait in the company of Ilse.

It was dark when we reached the house.

Ilse said I must be tired out and she insisted on my going straight to bed.

She came to me with the inevitable hot milk.

I drank it and was very quickly in a deep slumber.

And when I awoke of course the forest idyll was over and the nightmare had begun.