The entombment of the magnificent coffin of Frau Maria Ortlieb under the
pavement of the family chapel was over. The little group of sympathising
friends had left the church. Only the widower and his daughters
remained, and when he knew that he could no longer be seen by the few
who still lingered in the house of God, he clasped the two girls to his
heart with a suppressed sob.
Never had he experienced such deep sorrow, such anguish of soul. He
had not even been permitted to take leave of his beloved companion with
unmixed grief; fierce resentment had mingled with his trouble.
To remain alone in the house with his daughters after the burial and
answer their questions seemed to him impossible.
The meeting of the Council, which would soon begin, served as a pretence
for leaving them. Eva was to blame for what he had just suffered; but he
knew everything concerning the rumours about the inexperienced girl and
Heinz Schorlin, and there fore was aware that her fault was trivial. To
censure her seemed as difficult as to discuss calmly with her and the
sensible Els what could be done under existing circumstances; besides,
he was firmly convinced that Eva had nothing left except to take,
without delay, the veil for which she had longed from childhood. His
sister, the Abbess Kunigunde, was keeping the door of the convent open.
She had promised the girl to await her at home. In taking leave of his
daughters, he begged them not to wait for him, because the Council were
to decide the fate of the Eysvogel business, and the session might last
a long while.
Then his Els gazed at him with a look of such earnest entreaty that he
nodded, and in a tone of the warmest compassion began: “I shall be more
than glad to aid your Wolff, my dear girl, but he himself told you how
the case stands. What would it avail if I beggared myself and you for
the Eysvogels and their tottering house? I must remain hard now, in
order later to smooth the path for Wolff and you, Els. If Berthold
Vorchtel would make up his mind to join me, it might be different,
but he summoned the Council as a complainant, and if he is the one
to overthrow the reeling structure, who can blame him? We shall see.
Whatever I can reasonably do for the unfortunate family shall be
accomplished, my girl.”
Then he kissed his older daughter on the forehead, hastily gave the
younger the same caress, and left the chapel. But Els detained him,
whispering: “Whatever wrong was inflicted upon us yesterday, do not
let it prejudice you, father. It was meant neither for her whose peace
nothing can now disturb, nor for you. We alone----”
“You certainly,” Herr Ernst interrupted bitterly, “were made to feel how
far superior in virtue they considered themselves to you, who are better
and purer than all of them. But keep up Eva’s courage. I have been
talking with your Uncle Pfinzing and your Aunt Christine. You yourself
took them into your confidence, and we will consult together how the
serpent’s head is to be crushed.”
He turned away as he spoke, but Els went back to her sister, and after a
brief prayer they left the church with bowed heads.
The sedan-chairs were waiting outside. Each was to be borne home
separately, but both preferred, spite of the bright summer weather, to
draw the curtains, that unseen they might weep, and ask themselves
how such wrongs could have been inflicted upon the dead woman and
themselves.
The respect of high and low for the Ortlieb family had been most
brilliantly displayed when the body of the son, slain in battle, had
been interred in the chapel of his race. And their mother? How many had
held her dear! to how many she had been kind, loving, and friendly! How
great a sympathy the whole city had shown during her illness, and how
many of all classes had attended the mass for her soul! And the burial
which had just taken place?
True, on her father’s account all the members of the Council were
present, but scarcely half the wives had appeared. Their daughters--Els
had counted them--numbered only nine, and but three were included among
her friends. The others had probably come out of curiosity. And the
common people, the artisans, the lower classes, who in countless numbers
had accompanied her brother’s coffin to its resting place, and during
the mass for the dead had crowded the spacious nave of St. Sebald’s?
There had been now only a scanty group. The nuns from the convent were
present, down to the most humble lay Sister; but they were under great
obligations to her mother, and their abbess was her father’s sister.
There were few other women except the old crones from the hospitals and
nurseries, who were never absent when there was an opportunity to weep
or to backbite. In going through the nave of the church into the chapel
the sisters had passed a group of younger lads and maidens, who had
nudged one another in so disrespectful a way, whispering all sorts of
things, that Els had tried to draw Eva past them as swiftly as possible.
Her wish to keep her more sensitive sister from noticing the
disagreeable gestures and insulting words of the cruel youths and girls
was gratified. True, Eva also felt with keen indignation that far too
little honour was paid to her beloved dead; that the blinded people
believed the slanderers who repeated even worse things of her Els than
of herself, and made their poor mother, who had lived and suffered like
a saint, atone for what they imagined were the sins of her daughters;
but the jeers and scorn which had obtruded themselves upon her father
and sister from more than one quarter, in many a form, had entirely
escaped her notice. She had accustomed herself from childhood to
indulge in reflections and emotions apart from the demands of the world.
Whatever occupied her mind or soul absorbed her completely; here she had
been wholly engrossed in this silent intercourse with the departed,
and a single glance at the group assembled in the church had showed her
everything which she desired to know of her surroundings.
Heinz had gone to the field the day before yesterday. Her silent
colloquy concerned him also. How difficult he made it for her to
maintain the resolution which she had formed during the mass for the
dead, since he remained aloof, without giving even the slightest token
of remembrance. True, an inward voice constantly repeated that he could
not part from her any more easily than she from him; but her maidenly
pride rebelled against the neglect with which he grieved her. The
defiant desire to punish him for departing without a word of farewell
urged her back to the convent. She had spent many hours there daily, and
in its atmosphere of peace felt better and happier than in her father’s
house or any other spot which she visited. The close association with
her aunt, the abbess, was renewed. True, she had not urged Eva to a
definite statement by so much as a single word, yet she had made her
feel plainly how deeply it would wound her if her pupil should resolve
to disappoint the hopes which she herself had fostered. If Eva refused
to take the veil, would not her kind friend be justified in charging her
with unequalled ingratitude? and whose opinion did she value even half
as much, if she excepted her lover’s, whose approval was more to her
than that of all the rest of the world?
He was better than she, and who could tell what important motive kept
him away? Countless worldly wishes had blended with the devotion which
she felt in the convent; and had not the abbess herself taught her to
obey, without regard to individuals or their opinion, the demands of her
own nature, which were in harmony with the will of the Most High? and
how loudly every voice within commanded her to be loyal to her love!
She had made her decision, but offended pride, the memory of the happy,
peaceful hours in the convent and, above all, the fear of grieving
the beloved guide of her childhood, withheld her from the firm and
irrevocable statement to which her nature, averse to hesitation and
delay, impelled her.
The nearer the sedan-chair came to the Ortlieb mansion the faster her
heart beat, for that very day, probably within the next few hours, the
abbess would compel her to choose between her father’s house and the
convent.
She was panting for breath and deadly pale when, just after Els’s
arrival, she stepped from the chair. It had become intensely hot.
Within the vaulted corridor with its solid, impenetrable walls, a
cooler atmosphere received her, and she hoped to find in her own chamber
fresher, purer air, and--at least for the next few hours--undisturbed
peace.
But what was the meaning of this scene? At her entrance, the
conversation which Els had evidently just commenced with several other
women at the door of the office suddenly ceased. It must be due to
consideration for her; for she had not failed to notice the significant
glance with which her sister looked at her and then removed her finger
from her lips.
The abbess, who had been concealed by a wall of chests piled one above
another, now came forward and laid her hand upon the shoulder of a
little elderly woman, who must have been disputing vehemently with the
old housekeeper, Martsche, for she was flushed with excitement, and the
housekeeper’s chin still quivered.
Usually Eva paid little heed to the quarrels of the servants, but this
one appeared to have some connection with herself, and the cause could
be no trivial one, since Aunt Kunigunde took part in it.
But she had no sooner approached the other women than the abbess drew
her aside and asked her a few unimportant questions. They were probably
intended to keep her away from the disputants. But Eva knew the little
woman, and wished to learn what offence had been given modest, humble
Widow Vorkler. Her husband had been employed by the Ortlieb firm as a
carrier, who had driven his team of six horses to Milan faithfully until
killed in the Tyrol during an attack by robber knights in the lawless
period before the coronation of the Emperor Rudolph.
With the aid of Herr Ernst Ortlieb, the widow had then set up a little
shop for the sale of wax candles, images of the saints, rosaries,
and modest confirmation gifts, by which means she gained an honest
livelihood for her seven children and herself. Her oldest son, who on
account of hip disease was not fit for hard work, helped her, and the
youngest was Ortel, who had carried Eva’s basket on the day of her
dead mother’s consecration. Her daughter Metz was also in the Ortlieb’s
service as assistant to the chief cook.
When Frau Vorkler had come to see her children, she had scarcely
been able to find words which sufficiently expressed her grateful
appreciation, but to-day she seemed like a different person.
The brief colloquy between the abbess and Eva already appeared to her
too long, and when the former bade her finish her business later with
Els and old Martsche, she angrily declared that, with all due reverence
for the Lady Abbess, she must inform Jungfrau Eva also what compelled
her, a virtuous woman with a grateful heart, to take her children from
the service of the employer for whom her husband had sacrificed his
life.
Els, who was eager to conceal the woman’s insulting errand from Eva,
tried to silence Frau Vorkler, but she defiantly persisted, and with
redoubled zeal protested that speak she must or her heart would break.
Then she declared that she had been proud to place her children in so
godly a household, but now everything was changed, and though it grieved
her to the soul, she must insist upon taking Metz and Ortel from its
service. She lived by the piety of people who bought candles for the
dear saints and rosaries for praying; but even the most devout had eyes
everywhere, and if it were known that her young children were serving in
a house where such things happened, as alas! were reported through the
whole city concerning the daughters of this family----
Here old Martsche with honest indignation interrupted the excited woman;
but Fran Vorkler would not be silenced, and asked what a poor girl like
her Metz possessed except her good name. How quickly suspicion would
rest on a lass whose respectability was questioned! People had begun to
do so ever since the Ortlieb sisters were called the “beautiful” instead
of the pious and virtuous Es. This showed how such notice of the face
and figure benefited Christian maidens. Yesterday and to-day she had
given a three-farthing candle to her saint as a thank offering that this
horror had not reached their mother’s ears. The dead woman had been a
truly devout and noble lady, and her soul would be grateful to her for
impressing upon the minds of her motherless daughters that the path
which they had recklessly entered----
This was too much for Ortel, who, concealed behind a heap of sacks, had
listened to the discussion, and clasping his hands beseechingly, he
now went up to his mother and entreated her to beware of repeating
the slanders of evil-minded people who had dared to cast stones at the
gracious maidens, who were as pure and innocent as their saint herself.
Poor Ortel! His kind young eyes streaming with tears might have softened
a rock; but the enraged candle-dealer misinterpreted his honest emotion,
and he certainly would not have been allowed to go on so far had not
rage and amazement kept her silent. But Frau Vorkler never lost the use
of her tongue long, and what a flood of abuse of the degenerate children
of the time, who forgot the respect and gratitude due to their own
mother, she began to pour forth! But when faithful Endres, who had grown
grey in the Ortlieb service, and under whose orders Ortel was placed to
help in unpacking, commanded her to be silent or leave the house, and
told her son, instead of following her, to stay with his old employer,
Frau Vorkler proceeded to lament over the corruption of the whole world,
and did not fail to deal a few side-thrusts at the two daughters of the
house.
But here also she made little progress, for the abbess led Eva up the
stairs, and the two old family servants, Martsche representing the
guiding mind and Endres the rude strength, made common cause. The latter
upheld Ortel in his refusal to leave the house, and the former declared
that Metz must remain the usual time after giving notice. She would not
help Frau Vorkler to force the poor child into an unequal, miserable
marriage with the old miser to whom she wanted to give her.
This remark was aimed at the master-tailor Seubolt, the guardian of the
Vorkler children, who, though forty years her senior, wanted to make
pretty Metz his wife, and who had also promised the widow to obtain for
his future brother-in-law Ortel an excellent place in the stables of the
German order of military monks. Not outraged morality, but the guardian
and suitor in one person, had induced the candle-dealer to take her
children from their good places in the Ortlieb household. The widow’s
fear of having her real motive detected spared the necessity of using
force. But whilst slowly retiring backwards, crab fashion, she shrieked
at her antagonists the threat that her children’s guardian, no less a
personage than master-tailor Nickel Seubolt, was a man who would help
her gain her just rights and snatch the endangered souls of Ortel and
her poor young Metz from temporal and eternal destruction in this Sodom
and Gomorrah----
The rest of the burden which oppressed her soul she was forced to
confide to the street. Endres closed the heavy door of the house behind
her with a strength and celerity marvellous in a man of his years.
Ortel was terribly agitated. Soon after his mother’s departure he went
with his sister to the woodhouse, where both wept bitterly; for Metz
had given her heart to a young carrier who was expected to return from
a trip to Frankfort the first of July, and would rather have thrown
herself into the Pegnitz than married the rich old tailor to whom she
knew her mother had promised her pretty daughter; whilst her brother,
like many youths of his station, thought that the place of driver of a
six-horse wain was the most delightful calling in the world, and both
were warmly attached to their employer and the family whom they served.
And yet both felt that it was a heavy sin to refuse to obey their
mother.