THE YOUNG FREIHERR
ERMENTRUDE VON ADLERSTEIN slept with her forefathers in the vaults of the
hermitage chapel, and Christina Sorel’s work was done.
Surely it was time for her to return home, though she should be more
sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever have believed
possible. She entreated her father to take her home, but she received a
sharp answer that she did not know what she was talking of: the
Schlangenwald Reitern were besetting all the roads; and moreover the Ulm
burghers had taken the capture of the Constance wine in such dudgeon that
for a retainer of Adlerstein to show himself in the streets would be an
absolute asking for the wheel.
But was there any hope for her? Could he not take her to some nunnery
midway, and let her write to her uncle to fetch her from thence?
He swore at woman’s pertinacity, but allowed at last that if the plan,
talked of by the Barons, of going to make their submission to the Emperor
at Linz, with a view to which all violence at the ford had ceased, should
hold good, it might be possible thus to drop her on their way.
With this Christina must needs content herself. Poor child, not only had
Ermentrude’s death deprived her of the sole object of her residence at
Schloss Adlerstein, but it had infinitely increased the difficulties of
her position. No one interfered with her possession of the upper room
and its turrets; and it was only at meal times that she was obliged to
mingle with the other inhabitants, who, for the most part, absolutely
overlooked the little shrinking pale maiden but with one exception, and
that the most perplexing of all. She had been on terms with Freiherr
Eberhard that were not so easily broken off as if she had been an old
woman of Ursel’s age. All through his sister’s decline she had been his
comforter, assistant, director, living in intercourse and sympathy that
ought surely to cease when she was no longer his sister’s attendant, yet
which must be more than ever missed in the full freshness of the stroke.
Even on the earliest day of bereavement, a sudden thought of Hausfrau
Johanna flashed upon Christina, and reminded her of the guard she must
keep over herself if she would return to Ulm the same modest girl whom
her aunt could acquit of all indiscretion. Her cheeks flamed, as she sat
alone, with the very thought, and the next time she heard the well-known
tread on the stair, she fled hastily into her own turret chamber, and
shut the door. Her heart beat fast. She could hear Sir Eberhard moving
about the room, and listened to his heavy sigh as he threw himself into
the large chair. Presently he called her by name, and she felt it
needful to open her door and answer, respectfully,
“What would you, my lord?”
“What would I? A little peace, and heed to her who is gone. To see my
father and mother one would think that a partridge had but flown away. I
have seen my father more sorrowful when his dog had fallen over the
abyss.”
“Mayhap there is more sorrow for a brute that cannot live again,” said
Christina. “Our bird has her nest by an Altar that is lovelier and
brighter than even our Dome Kirk will ever be.”
“Sit down, Christina,” he said, dragging a chair nearer the hearth. “My
heart is sore, and I cannot bear the din below. Tell me where my bird is
flown.”
“Ah! sir; pardon me. I must to the kitchen,” said Christina, crossing
her hands over her breast, to still her trembling heart, for she was very
sorry for his grief, but moving resolutely.
“Must? And wherefore? Thou hast nought to do there; speak truth! Why
not stay with me?” and his great light eyes opened wide.
“A burgher maid may not sit down with a noble baron.”
“The devil! Has my mother been plaguing thee, child?”
“No, my lord,” said Christina, “she reeks not of me; but”—steadying her
voice with great difficulty—“it behoves me the more to be discreet.”
“And you would not have me come here!” he said, with a wistful tone of
reproach.
“I have no power to forbid you; but if you do, I must betake me to Ursel
in the kitchen,” said Christina, very low, trembling and half choked.
“Among the rude wenches there!” he cried, starting up. “Nay, nay, that
shall not be! Rather will I go.”
“But this is very cruel of thee, maiden,” he added, lingering, “when I
give thee my knightly word that all should be as when she whom we both
loved was here,” and his voice shook.
“It could not so be, my lord,” returned Christina with drooping, blushing
face; “it would not be maidenly in me. Oh, my lord, you are kind and
generous, make it not hard for me to do what other maidens less lonely
have friends to do for them!”
“Kind and generous?” said Eberhard, leaning over the back of the chair as
if trying to begin a fresh score. “This from you, who told me once I was
no true knight!”
“I shall call you a true knight with all my heart,” cried Christina, the
tears rushing into her eyes, “if you will respect my weakness and
loneliness.”
He stood up again, as if to move away; then paused, and, twisting his
gold chain, said, “And how am I ever to be what the happy one bade me, if
you will not show me how?”
“My error would never show you the right,” said Christina, with a strong
effort at firmness, and retreating at once through the door of the
staircase, whence she made her way to the kitchen, and with great
difficulty found an excuse for her presence there.
It had been a hard struggle with her compassion and gratitude, and, poor
little Christina felt with dismay, with something more than these. Else
why was it that, even while principle and better sense summoned her back
to Ulm, she experienced a deadly weariness of the city-pent air, of the
grave, heavy roll of the river, nay, even of the quiet, well-regulated
household? Why did such a marriage as she had thought her natural
destiny, with some worthy, kind-hearted brother of the guild, become so
hateful to her that she could only aspire to a convent life? This same
burgomaster would be an estimable man, no doubt, and those around her
were ruffians, but she felt utterly contemptuous and impatient of him.
And why was the interchange of greetings, the few words at meals, worth
all the rest of the day besides to her? Her own heart was the traitor,
and to her own sensations the poor little thing had, in spirit at least,
transgressed all Aunt Johanna’s precepts against young Barons. She wept
apart, and resolved, and prayed, cruelly ashamed of every start of joy or
pain that the sight of Eberhard cost her. From almost the first he had
sat next her at the single table that accommodated the whole household at
meals, and the custom continued, though on some days he treated her with
sullen silence, which she blamed herself for not rejoicing in, sometimes
he spoke a few friendly words; but he observed, better than she could
have dared to expect, her test of his true knighthood, and never again
forced himself into her apartment, though now and then he came to the
door with flowers, with mountain strawberries, and once with two young
doves. “Take them, Christina,” he said, “they are very like yourself;”
and he always delayed so long that she was forced to be resolute, and
shut the door on him at last.
Once, when there was to be a mass at the chapel, Hugh Sorel, between a
smile and a growl, informed his daughter that he would take her thereto.
She gladly prepared, and, bent on making herself agreeable to her father,
did not once press on him the necessity of her return to Ulm. To her
amazement and pleasure, the young Baron was at church, and when on the
way home, he walked beside her mule, she could see no need of sending him
away.
He had been in no school of the conventionalities of life, and, when he
saw that Hugh Sorel’s presence had obtained him this favour, he wistfully
asked, “Christina, if I bring your father with me, will you not let me
in?”
“Entreat me not, my lord,” she answered, with fluttering breath.
She felt the more that she was right in this decision, when she
encountered her father’s broad grin of surprise and diversion, at seeing
the young Baron help her to dismount. It was a look of receiving an idea
both new, comical, and flattering, but by no means the look of a father
who would resent the indignity of attentions to his daughter from a man
whose rank formed an insuperable barrier to marriage.
The effect was a new, urgent, and most piteous entreaty, that he would
find means of sending her home. It brought upon her the hearing put into
words what her own feelings had long shrunk from confessing to herself.
“Ah! Why, what now? What, is the young Baron after thee? Ha! ha!
petticoats are few enough up here, but he must have been ill off ere he
took to a little ghost like thee! I saw he was moping and doleful, but I
thought it was all for his sister.”
“And so it is, father.”
“Tell me that, when he watches every turn of that dark eye of thine—the
only good thing thou took’st of mine! Thou art a witch, Stina.”
“Hush, oh hush, for pity’s sake, father, and let me go home!”
“What, thou likest him not? Thy mind is all for the mincing goldsmith
opposite, as I ever told thee.”
“My mind is—is to return to my uncle and aunt the true-hearted maiden
they parted with,” said Christina, with clasped hands. “And oh, father,
as you were the son of a true and faithful mother, be a father to me now!
Jeer not your motherless child, but protect her and help her.”
Hugh Sorel was touched by this appeal, and he likewise recollected how
much it was for his own interest that his brother should be satisfied
with the care he took of his daughter. He became convinced that the
sooner she was out of the castle the better, and at length bethought him
that, among the merchants who frequented the Midsummer Fair at the
Blessed Friedmund’s Wake, a safe escort might be found to convey her back
to Ulm.
If the truth were known, Hugh Sorel was not devoid of a certain feeling
akin to contempt, both for his young master’s taste, and for his
forbearance in not having pushed matters further with a being so
helpless, meek, and timid as Christina, more especially as such slackness
had not been his wont in other cases where his fancy had been caught.
But Sorel did not understand that it was not physical beauty that here
had been the attraction, though to some persons, the sweet, pensive eyes,
the delicate, pure skin, the slight, tender form, might seem to exceed in
loveliness the fully developed animal comeliness chiefly esteemed at
Adlerstein. It was rather the strangeness of the power and purity of
this timid, fragile creature, that had struck the young noble. With all
their brutal manners reverence for a lofty female nature had been in the
German character ever since their Velleda prophesied to them, and this
reverence in Eberhard bowed at the feet of the pure gentle maiden, so
strong yet so weak, so wistful and entreating even in her resolution,
refined as a white flower on a heap of refuse, wise and dexterous beyond
his slow and dull conception, and the first being in whom he had ever
seen piety or goodness; and likewise with a tender, loving spirit of
consolation such as he had both beheld and tasted by his sister’s
deathbed.
There was almost a fear mingled with his reverence. If he had been more
familiar with the saints, he would thus have regarded the holy virgin
martyrs, nay, even Our Lady herself; and he durst not push her so hard as
to offend her, and excite the anger or the grief that he alike dreaded.
He was wretched and forlorn without the resources he had found in his
sister’s room; the new and better cravings of his higher nature had been
excited only to remain unsupplied and disappointed; and the affectionate
heart in the freshness of its sorrow yearned for the comfort that such
conversation had supplied: but the impression that had been made on him
was still such, that he knew that to use rough means of pressing his
wishes would no more lead to his real gratification than it would to
appropriate a snow-bell by crushing it in his gauntlet.
And it was on feeble little Christina, yielding in heart, though not in
will, that it depended to preserve this reverence, and return unscathed
from this castle, more perilous now than ever.