Robert Shaler was the first to break the silence.
“There is but one request I have to make,” he said, as he knocked the
ashes from his cigar.
“What is it, Robert? One request is very moderate indeed; isn’t that
so, Emily?”
As she spoke Katrina’s friend turned to Mrs. Shaler with a smile.
“It is that you and mother will promise not to spend the whole time in
the Elizabethan Gallery, but will allow me to see just one other room.”
In the young man’s gray eyes was the suspicion of a twinkle, even in
spite of the earnestness of his wish.
“And what room do you want to see, my son?”
“I want to see the one in which Martin Luther stayed.”
At this Katrina gave a little start. She recalled what her mother
had told her only the night before about Martin Luther having been a
prisoner at the Wartburg. How much she, too, would love to see that
room!
“Yes, Robert, we must surely see it,” said Katrina’s friend. “No
pilgrim to the Wartburg would ever be satisfied to go away without a
visit to that room where the great Reformer accomplished some of his
grandest work for mankind.” And as she spoke, the lady, under some
sudden impulse, laid her white hand upon the little silver cross she
wore.
“There is a question I have sometimes asked myself,” said Robert
Shaler, “and have never been able to answer to my satisfaction; so I
will put it to you and mother. Which of all the influences brought to
bear on Luther’s life seems to you to have been the strongest? In other
words, which did the most in directing him toward the path he chose?”
“I should say,” Mrs. Shaler answered, “that it was the fact of his
being born of such good and honest parents as were Hans and Margaret
Luther. No,” she added, after a moment of reflection, “it must have
been when his dear friend Alexis, as they walked one day in the woods
together, and were overtaken by a storm, was struck by a bolt of
lightning and fell dead beside him. It was a bitter grief to Martin
Luther, and the event is said by some to have changed the whole current
of his life.”
“It seems to me,” said Katrina’s friend in her gentle, yet forceful
way, and again her hand sought the little silver cross,--“it seems to
me that it might be traced to the day when, in searching through the
library of his university, Luther found a Bible, opened it, and, for
the first time, read the Book of Samuel. In those days, my dear,” she
said in explanation to Katrina, “even students were permitted to read
only certain portions of the Scriptures. This story of how the boy
Samuel had been taken to the Temple by his mother, and dedicated to the
service of the Lord, impressed him very deeply. Then there took root
within his own ardent nature a purpose that was steadfast--to know the
way of life from God’s sacred Word itself. And was not this, after all,
the message that he left us?”
Katrina had been listening with keen attention; she remembered what
Fritz had told her about the Cotta house at Eisenach. As their talk
of the previous evening all came back to her--how she had wondered if
it had not been the Widow Cotta’s kindness that had helped to make
Luther great, Katrina made up her mind to ask the question now. But
even though her heart beat faster at the very thought of speaking, the
little girl was about to do so when the lady took up the thread again
and continued in her same sweet tone.
“To be sure, outside influences must affect one very deeply, but it
seems to me that the true greatness of a soul must come from within
that soul itself.”
As she spoke the lady looked down at Katrina, and saw the puzzled look
in the childish face.
“Take this flower, for example,” and, saying this, she held up one of
the fragrant crimson roses. “It is true beyond all question that the
plant which bore this needed moisture, air, and sunshine, as well as
the soil in which it grew--each at its very best,--but even back of all
this does there not stand the fact that this exquisite flowering of the
plant is the fulfilment of its own deep inner nature? Have you ever
thought that it is through no outside influence that the rose becomes
the rose, and the lily becomes the lily? Under such help a rose may be
a better rose, or a lily a better lily; but each develops out of its
own peculiar inner nature.”
Katrina tried hard to understand all that the lady said; and even
though she could not then grasp it fully, she was later to come into a
complete possession of its meaning. At that moment there was the sound
of footsteps, and, looking down, Katrina saw her father coming toward
them.
“Fritz could not come;” was Rudolf’s answer to her eager question.
“My friend,” he said, in explanation to the others, and with evident
distress, “was found to have been more seriously injured than the
doctors thought at first. He is suffering intensely, and Fritz will not
leave his father’s bedside.”
“But you must come, anyway, Katrina,” said Mrs. Shaler, after they had
all expressed their sympathy. “Another time you and Fritz can have your
visit to the castle.”
“No,” Katrina said, “I told Fritz I would go with him, and I must keep
my promise.”
“You are right, my child,” said Katrina’s friend, stooping to kiss her
brow, before she turned toward the entrance with the others. “A promise
is a very sacred thing.”