CHAPTER EIGHT

GOLDMUND had long been a wanderer, seldom sleeping twice in the same place, everywhere desired and appeased by women, tanned by the sun, made thin by trudging and spare diet. Many women had left him at daybreak, many had gone in tears, yet often he thought:

'Why is it that none ever stays with me? Why, if they love me so that they break their marriage vows to still their need of me for a night, must they all go running back to their husbands, from whom mostly they fear to be whipped?'

None had truly begged him not to leave her, and not one to take her along with him: none, for the sake of love, had yet seemed ready to share his joys, and the need of a vagrant's life. Nor indeed did he ever long to propose it to them, or urge the thought on any of his loves, and, when he examined his own heart, he found that his freedom was very dear to him, and did not remember a single mistress so sweet he could not forget her with the next. Yet it seemed a little sad and puzzling that love should be so fleeting in every place, both his love and the love they bore him, and no sooner kindled than it died. Was there nothing more? Was it always and everywhere the same? Or did all the fault lie in him: was he, perhaps, fashioned in such a sort that, though a woman might hanker for his beauty, she could wish to stay with him no longer than a brief, wordless space on hay or moss? Was it because he loved as a vagrant and they, secure in their homes, were scared by the thought of homeless life? Or was the lack all his, a defect of beauty, for which, though women craved as for a doll, pressing it hard, they then ran back to their husbands, even though a whipping awaited them? He could not tell.

But he never tired of learning from women. True he was more drawn towards young maids, those maids too young to have a husband, and in these he might have lost himself for longing. But such maids were mostly out of his reach, the protected, the cherished, the shy. Yet from women also he could learn: each left him something of herself, a way of kissing, a gesture, the fashion in which she defended herself or gave. Goldmund would play at any game with them, as eager and pliable as a child, ready to give himself up to every enticement. His beauty alone would never have sufficed to draw them so easily: it was his way of making himself their baby, open in his mind, curious and innocent in his greed, his perfect readiness to comply with whatever a woman asked of him. He, without himself having known it, was, with each love in turn, what she had dreamed of, the sure fulfilment of all her hidden longing; tender and patient with the one, eager and full of fire with the next, as fresh and innocent, at times, as a boy at the end of his virginity; at others all art, and all design. He was ready to play or fight, to sigh or laugh, to be very bashful, or shameless. He did not to which a woman was unwilling, nothing she herself had not first coaxed him to. It was this that many, of quick perceptions, could see or feel in him at once, and so they made of him their darling.

Thus he learned much. Not only, within a short space of time, had they shown him many ways and arts of love, making him the master of wide experience. He had also learnt to perceive the multiplicity of women: his ear was attuned to every voice, and with many its sound was enough to let him know to a hair her needs and amorous limitations. He observed, each time with more delight, the endless ways in which heads spring from shoulders, a forehead ends in piled up tresses, a kneecap moves beneath a gown. He had learned to feel in the dark, with stroking fingers, the many sorts of women's hair, to distinguish one skin from another. Even then he had begun to perceive that perhaps this refinement of his senses was the true, hidden purpose of all his wanderings; that in this might lie his deepest thought, driving him on from love to love, so that his faculty of distinguishing and perceiving might grow ever finer and more multiple, and ever profounder for its use. Such may have been his deep intent, that he should get to master women and love in all their thousand modes and differences, as some musicians become the masters of three or four instruments, or of many. But what might be the purpose of all this, and whither it was leading him, he knew not.

Though able enough to learn Latin and logic, for neither had he any surpassing gift: but for love, and the game of loving, he was gifted. Here he could learn without pains, forgetting nothing, and every lesson sorted itself forever in his mind.

One day, when already he had been a year, or two years, on the roads, Goldmund came to the castle of a rich knight, with two young daughters. It was late autumn, soon there would be frost after sundown, and last winter had given him a rough taste of it. His mind was a little troubled by the thought of these coming months of frost, as he asked for food and shelter at the castle, since winter has no tenderness for vagrants. Here he was well received, and when the knight had learnt that this vagabond had studied, and could read Latin and Greek, he sent for him to come up from the servants' table, and treated him almost as his equal. His daughters sat with drooping eyes; the elder eighteen, her sister scarce sixteen; Lydia and Julia.

Next day Goldmund wanted to go further. He saw no hope of gaining love from either of these fine, yellow-haired maids, and there seemed no other woman in the castle for whose sake he would have cared to remain. But the knight, when their fast was broken, came to him, and led him aside, into a room furnished to suit a special purpose. The old man spoke modestly to the young one of his love of scholarship and books, showed him a box with the rolls of parchment he had assembled, and a desk he had specially caused to be built for his reading, with pens and sheets of the finest paper. This pious knight, as Goldmund later discovered, had been a scholar from his youth, but had turned, forgetting his scholarship, to the life of the world, and to the wars, till once he had received God's bidding, in sickness, to forget his sinful past, and set out on pilgrimage. He had trudged to Rome, and even to Constantinople, returning to find his father dead, and an empty house, in which he had settled, taken, and since lost, a wife, brought up his daughters, and now, in the beginning of his old age, set himself down to the task of writing a true account of all that he had seen on his journeys. Of this he had even contrived the first beginnings, but, as he admitted to the vagrant, his Latin had in it many gaps, and hindered him in all he strove to relate. He ordered Goldmund new clothes and long hospitality, in exchange for correcting what he had written. He must copy the beginning out afresh, and be of service for the remainder.

It was autumn, and Goldmund knew what winter means to a vagabond. A new suit of clothes was not to be scorned. But what pleased his youth above all else was the thought of housing so long with the two young daughters, and, without another thought, he consented. In a few days the housekeeper was ordered to open her wardrobe: in it lay a length of fine brown cloth, and from this they made a dress and cap for him. The knight himself had wanted a black gown, cut as near a scholar's gown as might be, but of that his guest would hear nothing, and knew how to make him alter his mind: so that now he had fine new clothes on his back, half=page, half-huntsman, and of a colour sorting with his complexion.

With Latin, too, it all went smoothly. Together they read over what had been written, and not only did Goldmund set to rights all the many wrong words and mistaken case-endings of his master, but here and there would build up into fine rolling periods the short clumsy phrases of the knight, in solid construction, with clear consecutio temporum. The old man was overjoyed, and praised unstintingly. Each day they would spend at least two hours at work together.

In this castle (which in truth was more of a farm, strengthened with certain fortifications) Goldmund found much to pass the time. He went out with the others on every hunt, and learned to shoot crossbow from Heinrich, the huntsman, made friends with all the dogs in the place, and could ride a horse whenever he wanted it. He was seldom alone, either talking with a dog or a nag, or with Heinrich, or Lea, the porter's wife, a fat old dame, with a man's voice and a love of jesting; or else with the shepherd and the kennel-keeper. With the miller's wife who lived beyond the gates he easily might have had his way, but from her he held aloof, playing the innocent.

He rejoiced in the sight of the two young maids, of whom the younger was the fairer, and yet so coy and hard to please that she scarce would say a word to Goldmund. With both he was very courtly and reserved, yet both were ever aware of his proximity. The younger drew away, defiant from shyness. Lydia, her elder, adopted a strange demeanour with Goldmund, half of respect and half of mockery, as though he were some curious monster of learning: she would ask many eager questions of their way of life in cloisters, yet always with the hint of a jest in them, and the scorn of a high-bred lady, sure of herself. He bent himself to every fancy, respecting Lydia as his liege, Julia as a holy little nun, and whenever, in his tales and talk of the cloister, he could manage to lure on these two maids to sit longer than was their custom after supper, or when Lydia, in courtyard or garden, said a passing word and mocked him a little, he felt some advancement had been made.

Autumn leaves clung late that year to the branches of the tall ash in the courtyard, and for long there were roses in the garden. Then, one day, came a visit; a neighbouring knight, with his dame and a squire attending them. The mildness of the season had lured them out on this unaccustomed jaunt, so far from home, and now they rode to the castle, craving hospitality for the night. They were welcomed; Goldmund's bed was shifted at once from the guest-room to the room where he did his scrivening, and his bed made ready for the newcomers. Some hens were slaughtered and a messenger sent for fish to the mill. Goldmund rejoiced in all this bustle and feasting, and could feel at once how eagerly the strange lady eyed him. Yet scarcely, by her voice and manner, had she shown how he pleased and roused her longing than he saw too, with rising excitement, that Lydia's whole demeanour to him had changed, how still and reserved she had become, how closely she watched him with the guest. When, at their festal supper, the lady's foot beneath the table began to find a way to Goldmund's, it was not her sport alone that delighted him, but much more the silent anger and constraint with which Lydia sat, watching them both, with curious and glittering eyes. At last he could let his knife fall under the board, and so, in bending to pick it up, stroke the feet and legs of his new paramour: he rose again, and saw how Lydia paled, how she bit her lip, as he told his stories of the cloister, though he felt the strange lady to be less eager for them than for the voice and accent of the narrator. The others also sat listening: the knight, his patron, with great benevolence, the other with a wooden face, though even he took fire from the young man's words. Never had Lydia heard such eloquence: he had flowered, desire trembled in the air, his eyes shone, in his voice was all delight: he begged for love. This the three women felt, each in her fashion: little Julia in panicked defence against him, the knight's wife radiant with pleasure, Lydia with pain in her heart; pain made of the deepest longing, her frail effort to shield herself against it, sharp jealousy narrowing up her face and smouldering behind her eyes. Goldmund felt all these emanations, the secret answers to his striving. They flowed back into him; love thoughts darted like birds about his head, birds that came to his hand and fluttered off again, fighting and pecking at each other. Julia after supper withdrew (it had long been dusk) with her rushlight in an iron sconce, as cold and quiet as a religious. The others sat an hour longer, the knights discussing the emperor and the bishops, while Lydia, with flaming cheeks, listened to all the merry, trivial talk spun out between Goldmund and the lady. Beneath its shimmering words they had cast a skein of intermingled glances and accents; little gestures running between them, heavy with love. Lydia breathed this air in greedily, shuddering as she knew, or felt, how Goldmund's knee, under the table, brushed against the knees of the dame. Each touch ran through her like a blade. Later she could not sleep, but lay with a beating heart half the night, sure she had heard them together, completing, in her mind, what was forbidden them, seeing them lie clasped, hearing their kisses, fearing, even though she wished it done, that soon the stranger knight would surprise them, and stab this caitiff Goldmund to the heart.

Next day the sky was overcast; a damp wind sighed, yet the guests, refusing all persuasions, seemed very impatient to set off again. Lydia stood watching them mount; she pressed their hands and wished them God's speed, all the while scarce knowing that she did it, since every sense was in her eyes, as she saw Goldmund's hand at the lady's foot, helping her to climb her palfrey: the hand gripped the foot, broad and firm, and for an instant it closed on the lady's shoe.

The guests had ridden away: Goldmund had to be off to his scrivening. Within half an hour he could hear the imperious voice of Lydia, calling to the grooms in the courtyard, the clatter of hoofs as they led her pony from the stall. His master went across to the window, and looked out with a smile, shaking his head. Together they watched Lydia ride off. That day their Latin seemed to rust, and they made less progress than before, since the scholar was at pains to keep his mind on it. His master, with a friendly smile, dismissed him earlier than usual.

Unseen by any in the castle, Goldmund led his horse into the courtyard, and rode into the teeth of an autumn wind, over brown moorland, faster and faster. He felt his horse grow warm beneath him, and its warmth firing his own blood. Over heath and moor, stubble and fallow land, grown about with shave-grass and sedge, he rode into the grey, fresh morning, past clumps of alders, through dark pine woods, and out again, on to brown, empty heath. On the brow of a hill far off, sharp against the pale, cloudy sky, he saw the little shape of Lydia, set high on her slowly cantering palfrey. He spurred on to reach her, but the instant she knew herself pursued, she whipped up and galloped away from him. At times she vanished, then he could see her again, her hair in the wind. He galloped after, like a hunter, his heart leapt as he urged his horse, with little soft words of encouragement, happily noting the country as he rode, the alders, the slanting fields, the maple-clumps, and the muddy brinks of pools, yet never losing sight of his quarry.

When Lydia knew he was upon her she ceased her flight, and let her palfrey walk. She would not turn to her pursuer. Proud, to all seeming unaware of him, she went on as though alone, and nothing had happened. He drove his horse to come up with her, and the two beasts walked peacefully together, though both they and their riders glowed with the chase.

'Lydia,' he said to her gently.

She would not answer.

'Lydia.'

Still she sat dumb.

'How fair to see you riding in the distance; your hair was like gold lightning behind you. Oh, you were beautiful. It's a fine thought that you should fly before me: this has shown me first that you can love me a little. I did not know, and even last night I was still in doubt. Only now, as you were trying to escape me, have I suddenly begun to understand. My sweet, my beauty, you must be weary! Shall we rest ourselves?'

He swung to earth and caught her bridle, so that she should not run from him again: her face was pale as snow as she looked down at him, and as he lifted her down she started to weep. There she sat, struggling with sobs, valiantly, until she had mastered them:

'Oh,' she began, 'why are you wicked?' It was hard for her to bring out her words.

'Am I so wicked?'

'You are a lecher, Goldmund. Let me forget the words you have just said: they were shameless words, and it does not beseem you to say such things to me. How did you ever think that I could love you? Let us forget them. But shall I ever forget what I saw last night?'

'Last night? What did you see then?'

'Oh, don't feign so, and lie to me! All that you did last night was shameless and cruel, before my very eyes, with that woman. Goldmund, have you no shame? Why, you even stroked her leg under the table – my father's table – before me! And now when she is gone you come hunting me. In very truth you cannot know what shame is.'

Goldmund was already sorry that he had spoken before helping her from the saddle. What a fool he had been not to keep his mouth shut; words were not needed in love.

He said no more, but knelt beside her and, since she looked so fair and sorrowful, soon found himself sharing her grief. Even he felt a little to be pitied. Yet, in spite of all she had said against him, he could see the love in her eyes. Even the grief on her trembling lips was love; her eyes he could believe more than her words. But she had been expecting his answer. Now, since none came, Lydia drooped her lip still further, her eyes bright with tears, gazed, and repeated:

'Have you no shame, then?'

'Forgive me,' he answered her humbly, 'these are matters none should ever speak of. It was all my fault, so forgive me. You ask me if I have no shame. Yes, to be sure, I can feel shame: but I love, I love you, and love knows nothing of it. Don't be angry.'

She seemed scarcely to hear him. There she sat, pulling a sad face, staring away into the distance as though she had been all alone. This he had never known before: it all came from words.

Gently he laid his face against her knee, and at once her touch was as a salve to him. Yet still he was a little restless and sad, and she too seemed sadder than ever, sitting still, holding her tongue, and gazing far away beyond him. What heaviness now, and what discomfort! But her knee felt friendly to his cheek, and did not seem to long to thrust him off: his face, with closed eyes, lay against it. Slowly he drew its long, fine shape into himself, thinking with trembling pleasure how worthily this young and delicate knee completed and set off the firm, beautiful arch of her fingernails. He nestled close up against it, letting his cheek and lips talk in their fashion: at last he could feel her hand, like a soft, shy bird, alight on his hair. 'Lovely hand,' he felt. How fearfully, like a child, she stroked him! He had often studied her hands, and wondered at them, till he knew them almost as his own, with their long fingers, tapering down to the swelling, rosy hills of the nails. And now these tapering, gentle fingers spoke shyly and gently to his hair, their words soft, greedy, children's words; they were words of love. Gratefully he nestled up his head and, with his cheek and neck, rubbed her palm. At last she spoke:

'Get up, please, now,' she said, 'we must go home.'

He obeyed at once: they stood up, mounted their horses, and rode.

Goldmund's heart was full of happiness. How beautiful Lydia was, how clear and tender, like a child. He had not so much as kissed her cheeks, and yet he felt so peaceful and satisfied. They rode hard, and only in the courtyard, almost at the castle door, did she turn, with a little start, to say to him: 'We should not have come back together. How mad we are.' Not until the very last minute, as already the stable-boys came running, could she whisper, in quick, burning words: 'Tell me, did you sleep last night with that woman?'

He shook his head several times, and fell to patting down his horse. That afternoon, when her father had gone out riding, the lovers came together in the workroom:

'Was that the truth?' she asked at once, and he, without further speech, knew what she had asked him.

'Then why did you play that horrible game to make her love you?'

'It was for you,' he said; 'believe me I would rather ten thousand times have had your foot to stroke than hers. Yours never came to me under the table to ask me whether I could love.'

'And do you really love me, Goldmund?'

'Oh yes.'

'But what is to come of it?'

'How can I tell you, Lydia? What do we care. I can only be happy that I love you, and what will come of it never troubles me. My heart leaps up to see you ride, to hear your voice, and feel your fingers in my hair. I shall be full of joy when I can kiss you.'

'Goldmund, a man may only kiss his bride. And did you never think of that, then?'

'No, I never thought of that. Why should I? You know as well as I that you can never be my bride.'

'So that is it; and since you can never be my goodman, and stay forever at my side, it was very wicked of you to speak of love to me. Did you really think you could entice me?'

'I thought of nothing, Lydia, but you only. I think much less than you suppose. And I ask nothing, except that one day you should kiss me. We talk to much; lovers should never talk. I think you do not love me, Lydia.'

'This morning you said the opposite.'

'And you did the opposite then.'

'I? What do you mean?'

'First you rode off as you saw me coming, and then I thought that you loved me. When you began to sob and weep I thought that you were weeping for love. My head lay on your knee, you stroked it, and I thought that was love. But now you will do nothing kind to me.'

'I am not that wanton whose feet you stroked beneath the table. You seem only to know such women as that.'

'No, God be praised, you are far more beautiful, and finer.'

'That was not what I meant.'

'No, but it is so. Do you know how beautiful you are?'

'I have my looking-glass.'

'Did you ever look and see your forehead in it, Lydia? And your shoulders and your little fingernails; and then your knees? And have you seen how all these things belong to each other, how all has the same long, beautiful shape? Have you seen it?'

'How you talk, Goldmund! No, I have never seen it before; but, now that you tell me, I can see it. Listen, you are a lecher, and now you come to make me vain?'

'I wish I could make you very vain. But why should I want so much to make you vain? You are beautiful, and I want you to see your beauty. You force me to tell it you in words, but I could say it a thousand times better. With speech I have nothing to give you. With speech I learn nothing from you, nor you from me.'

'What could I ever learn from you, then?'

'I from you, Lydia, you from me. Yet you refuse, you only want to love one man, the man who is to be your husband. He will laugh when he sees that you have learned nothing, not even to kiss.'

'So, master-scholar, you would give me lessons in kissing?'

He smiled, although these words did not please him; yet behind the malapert false ring in them, he could feel the sudden longing in her maidenhead, and her struggle to keep off her desire.

Nor would he answer her again. He smiled, holding her restless eyes with his, and while, although she resisted, she submitted to the enchantment within her, he bent his face down slowly until their lips met. Then he pressed her mouth very softly, and it answered him with the kiss of a little maid, parting, as though in agonized astonishment, when his lips refused to let her go. Gently enticing he followed her lips as they moved back, until, with hesitation, they met again, and he taught the enchanted, without forcing her, to give and return kisses, until, exhausted, she leaned her head against his shoulder. He let it rest there happily, savouring the long yellow hair, whispering little words of comfort to her, remembering how he, an innocent scholar, had been taught this secret once, by Lisa the gipsy. How dark Lisa's hair had been, how brown her skin, how the sun had burned them, as the fading John's Wort gave out its scent! But now, from what a distance the picture shone on him! Everything withered so soon, almost as soon as it had blossomed: Lydia slowly stood upright again; her face had changed, her eyes were wide and serious lover's eyes.

'Goldmund, let me go,' she said. 'Oh you, my love, I have stayed too long with you.'

Each day they found their secret hour together, and Goldmund gave himself up to his new love. This maiden's love danced in his heart and soothed him. Often she had only one thought; to keep his hands in hers for an hour together, look in his eyes, and leave him with the kiss of a child. At others she would kiss and kiss, yet, even then, he might not touch her body. One day, blushing very deep, with a mighty struggle against herself, to give him a great joy, she showed him her breasts: shyly she unlaced her bodice, to let him see the small white fruit encased within it: when he had knelt and kissed she put it carefully away again, her cheeks, and all her neck, still crimson. They would talk, but after a new fashion, not as they had done on the first day, inventing many names to call each other. She told him of her childhood, her dreams and games. Often too she would say that her love was wicked, since she and Goldmund never could be wed. She would speak of it in a low, submissive voice, and set this secret grief on her love like a gaud, or as though she had been wearing a black veil.

For the first time Goldmund knew himself beloved, and not only desired, by a woman.

Once Lydia said:

'You are so brave and look so merry. But deep in your eyes there is no merriment. There there is only sadness, as though your eyes could see that there is no happiness, and nothing loved, or lovely stays with us long. You have the most beautiful eyes any man could have, and the saddest. I think it must be that you are homeless. You came to me out of the woods, and one day you will go back to them again, to sleep on moss, and wander the roads. Where is your real home, then? When you go I shall have a father and sister, I shall have my turret-room with its window, at which I can sit and remember you: but I shall not have a home any more.'

He let her speak, and often smiled at her, although at times her words made him sad. Nor would he ever comfort her with words, only with little gentle strokings, holding her hands against his heart, humming soft magic in her ears, as nurses comfort babes when they cry. Once Lydia said: 'I would very much like to know what will become of you, Goldmund; and I often think of it. You will have no easy life, and not such a life as other men. Oh, how I wish you may be happy! I often think you should be a poet, whose head is full of dreams and histories, and who knows how to speak them in beautiful words. Or else you will wander through the world, and every woman you meet will love you, yet all the while you will be alone. Better go back to your cloister, to the friend of whom you tell me so much. I will pray for you, that you need not die alone in the forest.'

She could say such things in deepest earnest, with eyes that seemed not to see the world around her. But often they would be merry together, riding over the brown, autumn heath, she telling him riddles to make him laugh, or pelting him with sticks and acorns.

One night Goldmund lay waiting for sleep, his heart weighed down with a new, poignant heaviness: it beat full and heavy, pregnant with love, heavy with restlessness and sorrow. He could hear November winds creak in the rood; he had long been used to lying a while before he slept, but now sleep refused to come to him. Softly, as his habit was at night, he whispered a chaunt to the Blessed Mary:

Tota pulchra es, Maria,

Et macula originalis non est in te,

Tu, lætitia Israel,

Tu, advocata peccatorum.

This chaunt sank into his mind like a sweet music: but out there he could still hear the wind, as it told of restlessness and wanderings, of winter forests, and all the rough adventures of vagabonds. He thought of Lydia, then of Narziss and of his mother: his restless heart was brimful of its grief.

Then he sat up with a start, and stared incredulous. The door had opened, and through the dark, in a long white shift, came Lydia, noiselessly moving across the flags, with bare feet, to reach his bed. She had closed the door very quietly, and now came over to sit beside him.

'Lydia,' he whispered, 'my white flower, my little doe. Lydia, how do you come to me?'

'I have come,' she said, 'for a minute only. I only wanted to see how my Goldmund lies in his bed, my Goldheart.'

She stretched herself out beside him, and they lay still, their hearts beating hard. She let him kiss, let his marvelling hands go where they would about her, but more than this she still refused him. In a little while she put his hands gently away, kissed him on his eyes, stood up without a word, and stole off again. The door creaked; the wind clamoured and pressed upon the roof, all was bewitched and full of mystery, of secrecy, sadness, threat and promise. Goldmund did not know what he thought, or what he should do. After a short, restless sleep he awoke again, to find his pillow wet with tears.

In a few days the tender ghost came back to him, to lie at his side for a while, just as before. She whispered to him, held in his arms; she had much to say, and to lament. He listened tenderly, she lying with his left arm about her, while, with the right, he stroked her knee.

'Little Goldmund,' she said, pressed close to his cheek, in a tiny voice: 'it is so sad I cannot give myself. This little secret, our little happiness, will not last. Already Julia suspects, and soon she will force me to tell it her: or else my father will get wind of it. Should he find me here in your bed, oh little Goldmund, it would go ill with me. Your Lydia would have to stand and weep, look up at trees, and watch her little Goldheart dangling, and soon the wind would be sighing through him. Oh, run, my love – run at once; it were better not to let my father catch you, and tie you up, and string you to a tree. I have seen one hung already; a thief. I could never see you hang, little Goldmund, so run far away now, and forget me. Oh, you must never die, my Goldheart, birds must never eat your blue eyes. Oh, no, my dear, you must go from me; and what shall I ever do when you are gone!'

'Come with me, Lydia.'

'That would be very fine,' she smiled, 'oh, it would be fine and merry to run off with you into the world. But I cannot do it. I could never sleep in the wood, and lie in fields with straws in my hair. I could never do it, and never shame my father. No, don't talk; these are only fancies. I can't do it: I could no more do it than eat off a dirty platter, and sleep in rags that crawled with lice. Oh no, we two are born to sorrow, and everything fine and beautiful is forbidden us. Goldmund, my poor little love, I shall end by seeing you hanged. And then I shall be locked up and sent to a cloister. My sweet, you must run far off, and sleep again with gipsies and peasants' wives. Ah, go! go! before they take you and bind you. We can never be happy; never.'

He stroked her knee very cunningly, and gently he touched her maidenhead.

'Little flower. We could be so happy.'

'No,' she said, 'no, you must not! That is forbidden me. You, little gipsy, perhaps could never understand. But I am a wicked maid, and have done wrong. I bring shame on my whole house. Yet somewhere in my soul, though I do it, I am still as proud as I ever was, and into my pride there must be no breaking. You must leave me that, or I will not come again and lay beside you.'

Never had he refused a command, a wish, or any hint of a wish from her. He himself was amazed by her great power on him. Yet he suffered, his senses were unappeased, and his heart would often struggle against this bondage. Sometimes he strove to shake it off, and then, with many fine words, he would pay his court to little Julia, though in any case it had now become most necessary to keep her in the dark as much as possible.

Yet the very strength of this enchantment in which both the sisters held his senses had made him aware, to his amazement, of the difference between desire and love. First he had coveted both equally, had longed for both, but found Julia the sweeter of the two, the maid it would be pleasanter to lie with: he had courted both without distinction, ever keeping both in his mind's eye.

Now Lydia had him in her power: he loved her so that he could even renounce full possession of her. Her soul had grown familiar and beloved, in its childish gentleness and melancholy it seemed to him a part of his own. He was often surprised and overjoyed to see how her body expressed her essence. She would say or do a thing after her fashion, utter a judgement or a wish, and her words, with the form of her soul in them, seemed set in the very mould that informed her fingers and her eyes. The instants, like a revelation of the laws and basic forms by which her essence, both soul and body, had been devised, often aroused the longing in Goldmund to seize and retain some beauty of this design. He strove, on many sheets of paper, which, after, he would fully hide, to retrace in pen the outline of her head, her knees, her hands, the arch of her eyebrows, as he remembered them.

Julia had become a danger. Well aware at heart of the air of love her sister breathed, though all her senses drew her to this paradise, her stubborn mind refused to give them leave. She treated Goldmund with strained hostility and coldness, though her eyes, at unguarded moments of curiosity, would stray and linger about his body. With Lydia she was often very tender: sometimes she would creep into bed beside her, hinting to her of love and carnal knowledge, all greed and silent curiosity, prying capriciously at this longed-for, and forbidden, secret thing. Then almost shrewishly she would hint that she knew Lydia's secret and despised her for it. This lovely, capricious child, a delight and hindrance, darted upon the short joy of the lovers, spying them out in greedy fantasy, pretending at times that she knew nothing, at others making them see in her a danger. She had ceased to be a child, and become a power. Lydia suffered more from her than Goldmund, who only saw Julia at supper. Nor could it escape Lydia's knowledge that Goldmund was alive to Julia's beauty, since she often saw his eyes appraise her. She could not speak, it was all too hard, too dangerous. Julia must not be crossed and her anger roused. Alas, any day or hour might bring the discovery of their loves, the end of this hard-won, fearful happiness; perhaps a terrible end.

Goldmund would often wonder why he had not long since run off again. It was hard to live as now he lived, his love requited yet with no hope in it, either of a blessed and lasting happiness or the short fulfilment which, till then, had never been withheld from his desires: and all the while in mortal danger. Oh, why did he stay to bear all this; all these smothered longings and blind constraints! Were not such fine feelings and scruples proper to safe, legitimate, rich men, men living snug in their warm houses? Had not vagrants the right to stand aside from all such courtesies and laugh at them? He had this right, and was a fool to seek a kind of home in this castle, and pay for it with so much pain and disquiet.

And yet he lingered on and suffered willingly, finding a kind of happiness in his pain. It was hard and senseless to love in such a fashion, set about with traps and full of obstacles, yet it was glorious. The dark, sad beauty of this love, its craziness and hopelessness, had glory in them: each heavy sleepless night of unstilled longing had its beauty: his days were all as full of rare delight as the tremblings of desire on Lydia's mouth, the lost surrender in her voice, as she spoke to him of her love and fears. In a few weeks sorrow had entered her face, whose lines it gave him such pleasure to trace with a pen that, as he did it, this alone seemed of significance, and he felt that in these few weeks he had changed and grown older by many years; less cunning yet more deeply experienced; not happier, yet much richer in soul. He had ceased to be a boy any more.

In her lost gentle voice Lydia said to him:

'You should not be sad for my sake, Goldmund. I would only make you happy and see you merry. Forgive me that I taint your heart with my grief. Each night I have the strangest dream. Always I seem to be straying in a wilderness, so dark and huge I could never tell you of it, and I go on and on through it, seeking you. You are never there. I know I have lost you, and so I must go on forever to find you. Then when I wake I think: “Oh, how good to know he is still with me, that I may see him still for a few more weeks or days; it is all one to me since I have him.”'

One morning, soon after daybreak, Goldmund woke and lay awhile thinking. The images of a dream surrounded him, but without any sequence or meaning in them. He had dreamt of Narziss and of his mother, and still saw their shapes clearly before him. When he had shaken of these lingering figments he perceived a strange new light in the room, glittering with another sort of clarity through the little round window, set deep in its wall. He jumped out of bed and ran to look out: the window-moulding, courtyard, stable roof, and then the whole wide countryside beyond, shimmered blue-white before his eyes, the first snow of the year spread over them. This contrast with his heart's hot restlessness of the still, surrendered world, made him uneasy. How quietly, how touchingly and devoutly, did moor and forest, hill and ploughland, give themselves up to sun or wind, rain, snow or drought. With what fair and gentle pain ashes and maples bent under their white winter's burden. Could men never grow as patient as these, never learn the secret of their tranquillity. He wandered forth, abstracted, into the courtyard, wading in snow, filling his hands with it; went across to the garden and peered through the high privet-hedge at rosebushes, laden with whiteness.

For breakfast they ate a meal broth, all chattering of the first fall of snow. All, even the maids, had already been out in it. This year the snow was late, Christmas was near. The knight told of lands in the South were no snow fell.

But what made this first day of winter unforgettable in Goldmund's life did not take place till late that night. Lydia and Julia had quarrelled, though of this Goldmund knew nothing. When all was still and dark in the house, Lydia crept as usual to his bed, stretched herself out in silence at his side, close up to him, to feel his heartbeats. She was sad, full of fears for Julia's treachery, yet could not bring herself to tell her lover, and cloud his mind with her grief. She lay still, close to his heart; from time to time he whispered and caressed her, running his fingers through her hair. Suddenly – they had not been long together – her body shuddered from head to foot, and she sat bolt upright with open eyes. Goldmund himself grew scared as he watched the chamber door pushed open by inches, and a shape, which first his terror did not recognize, creep across the stones to his bed. Not till it was close up beside them did he see, with pounding heart, that it was Julia. She let a cloak, flung round her shift, slip to the ground. With a moan, as though she had been stabbed, Lydia sank back and clung to Goldmund. Then Julia, with joy and malice, though her words trembled as she spoke them:

'I will not lie all alone in my bed,' she whispered. 'Either you take me into yours and let us three lie close together, or I go now to rouse my father.'

'Well, come then,' Goldmund answered, and flung back the coverlet, 'or your feet will freeze to the stones.'

She crept in; he found it hard to make a place for her, since Lydia lay like death, her head in the pillow. Then the three lay side by side, Goldmund with a maid on either hand, and for a moment he could not banish the thought of how, not so very long since, this would have seemed his heart's desire. With reverence and fear, yet a secret joy, he felt Julia's hip against his side.

'I had to see for myself,' she began again, 'how soft and downy is this bed of yours, to which my sister creeps so eagerly.'

Goldmund, to still her, gently brushed his cheek against her hair, his cunning hand stroking along her hip and knees, as men please cats; he felt her magic steal into his senses, reverenced her yet would brook no resistances. Yet all the while he strove to comfort Lydia, whispering little love-sounds in her ears, and slowly brought her to such a point that at last she raised her head and turned to him. Noiselessly he kissed her eyes and mouth, though his hand, as he did it, subdued her sister, and the strange peril of these moments rose to an unbearable pitch in his mind. It was his left hand taught him the truth, as it learned the quiet, the expectant beauty of Julia's body, so that now he could feel for the first time, not only all the bitter delight and hopelessness of this love that held him bound to Lydia, but also how much foolishness there was in it. He should, so now he began to think, as he gave his lips to one, his hand to the other, either force a surrender from Lydia, or leave them both, and go his way. To love her as he did, yet renounce her, had been too meaningless and unjust.

'My heart,' she sighed in Lydia's ear. 'We suffer with no reason. How happy we might be, all three together. Let us do what our blood demands of us.'

As she shuddered at this and drew away from him, his desire leapt up to meet the other, and his hand began to give her such delight that she answered it in a long trembling sigh. When Lydia heard this it pinched her heart, as though some poison had been dropped in it. She raised herself up, flung back the coverlets, started to her feet, and cried aloud:

'Let us go, Julia.'

Julia trembled: the sudden shrillness of this cry, loud enough to bring ruin on them all, had waked her to their danger, and she rose quietly. But Goldmund, deceived and wounded in all his senses, had clasped her quickly as she rose, kissed her two breasts, and whispered burning words.

'Tomorrow, Julia, tomorrow.'

Lydia stood barefoot in her shift, her toes pinched with cold on the bare flags. She caught up Julia's cloak and flung it about her: in a motion of such humbleness and pain as, even in the dark, her sister could feel, and which moved her heart, making them friends again. Together they stole off on tiptoe. Goldmund lay, at odds with himself, scarce daring a breath till the house was still as a grave.

So these three were flung back from this strange unnatural contact into sad meditations and loneliness, since even the two maids, lying together, could not bring themselves to speak a word, and each lay there without sleep, defiant and speechless. A spirit of strife and ill-luck, some demon of solitude, misrule, and the dire confusion of souls, seemed to have been let loose upon the house. Goldmund could get no sleep until long after midnight, not Julia until close on daybreak: Lydia lay watching, full of grief, till the pale day came stealing across the snow. At once she rose, put on her gown, knelt long before her little wooden crucifix, prayed till she heard her father's step on the stairs. She went out to him and begged him to hear her. Without having made any effort to sunder two emotions in her mind, jealousy, and her care for Julia's maidenhead, she had resolved to bring it all to an end. Goldmund and Julia were still sleeping when already the knight had heard from Lydia whatever she thought good to tell him. Of Julia's share she did not speak.

When Goldmund, at the appointed hour, attended his master in the workroom, he found the knight, as a rule clad in his frieze gown and slippers, and busy with their writing for the day, with his sword girdled on, in a leather jerkin; and he knew at once what this would mean for him.

'Put on your cap,' the knight commanded, 'I have a little way to walk with you.'

Goldmund took his cap from the nail, and followed his lord down the stairs, out over the courtyard, to the gates. Their feet crunched the lightly frozen snow: the morning red was still faint in the sky. The knight went on in silence, the young man at his heels turning back, now and then, to look up at the castle, the little window of his chamber, the snowy inclines of roofs and gables, till all had been blotted into the distance. Never again would he see that window or those roofs, never again his workroom or his sleeping place, never again the knight's two maids. He had long since accustomed his mind to the thought of this sudden separation, yet now his heart was full of anguish, and the parting seemed a bitter sorrow.

For an hour they walked on thus, the knight leading, both in silence, and Goldmund began to consider his own fate. The knight was armed, perhaps he would strike him down, and yet somehow he did not fear it. The danger was small: he need only take to his heels, and there was an old man, with his sword, helpless. No, he was in no danger for his life. But this silent walk behind the ceremonious old man, this dumb submission to be led, had grown more painful with every step. The knight halted at last.

'And now,' he thundered, 'you will go alone, always in this direction, and lead your vagabond's life as before. If I ever see you near my house again I will have you shot to death with arrows. I want no vengeance. I should have been wiser than to let so young a man come near my daughters. But if ever you dare return, that is the end of you! Go now, and may God pardon your sin.'

The red gleam had faded out of the sky; no sun came up; thin lingering snowflakes swirled about him.