THE CHOICE IN LIFE
“FRIEDEL, wake!”
“Is it day?” said Friedel, slowly wakening, and crossing himself as he
opened his eyes. “Surely the sun is not up—?”
“We must be before the sun!” said Ebbo, who was on his feet, beginning to
dress himself. “Hush, and come! Do not wake the mother. It must be ere
she or aught else be astir! Thy prayers—I tell thee this is a work as
good as prayer.”
Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger in the
pearl mussel shell of holy water over their bed, and crossed his own brow
and his brother’s; then, carrying their shoes, they crossed their
mother’s chamber, and crept down stairs. Ebbo muttered to his brother,
“Stand thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her asleep;” and
then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the wooden partition that
shut off his grandmother’s box-bedstead from the rest of the hall. She
lay asleep with open mouth, snoring loudly, and on her pillow lay the
bunch of castle keys, that was always carried to her at night. It was a
moment of peril when Ebbo touched it; but he had nerved himself to be
both steady and dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and then,
without entering the hall, descended into a passage lit by a rough
opening cut in the rock. Friedel, who began to comprehend, followed him
close and joyfully, and at the first door he fitted in, and with some
difficulty turned, a key, and pushed open the door of a vault, where
morning light, streaming through the grated window, showed two captives,
who had started to their feet, and now stood regarding the pair in the
doorway as if they thought their dreams were multiplying the young Baron
who had led the attack.
“_Signori_—” began the principal of the two; but Ebbo spoke.
“Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the absence of my
mother, the lady of the castle. If you will follow me, I will restore
all that is within my reach, and put you on your way.”
The merchant’s knowledge of German was small, but the purport of the
words was plain, and he gladly left the damp, chilly vault. Ebbo pointed
to the bales that strewed the hall. “Take all that can be carried,” he
said. “Here is your sword, and your purse,” he said, for these had been
given to him in the moment of victory. “I will bring out your horse and
lead you to the pass.”
“Give him food,” whispered Friedel; but the merchant was too anxious to
have any appetite. Only he faltered in broken German a proposal to pay
his respects to the Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so much.
“No! _Dormit in lecto_,” said Ebbo, with a sudden inspiration caught
from the Latinized sound of some of the Italian words, but colouring
desperately as he spoke.
The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood that his
property was restored, and made all speed to gather it together, and
transport it to the stable. One or two of his beasts of burden had been
lost in the fray, and there were more packages than could well be carried
by the merchant, his servant, and his horse. Ebbo gave the aid of the
old white mare—now very white indeed—and in truth the boys pitied the
merchant’s fine young bay for being put to base trading uses, and were
rather shocked to hear that it had been taken in payment for a knight’s
branched velvet gown, and would be sold again at Ulm.
“What a poor coxcomb of a knight!” said they to one another, as they
patted the creature’s neck with such fervent admiration that the merchant
longed to present it to them, when he saw that the old white mare was the
sole steed they possessed, and watched their tender guidance both of her
and of the bay up the rocky path so familiar to them.
“But ah, _signorini miei_, I am an _infelice infelicissimo_, ever
persecuted by _le Fate_.”
“By whom? A count like Schlangenwald?” asked Ebbo.
“_Das Schicksal_,” whispered Friedel.
“Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive among the Moors,
having lost all, my ships and all I had, and being forced to row their
galleys, _gli scomunicati_.”
“Galleys!” exclaimed Ebbo; “there are some pictured in our _World History
before Carthage_. Would that I could see one!”
“The _signorino_ would soon have seen his fill, were he between the
decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to row
for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to lash us,
or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting.”
“The dogs! Do they thus use Christian men?” cried Friedel.
“_Sì_, _sì—ja wohl_. There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a
Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt _la lingua loro_.”
“Our tongue!—from whom?” asked one twin of the other.
“A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of _sue eccellenze_.”
“_Deutscher_!” cried both boys, turning in horror, “our Germans so
treated by the pagan villains?”
“Yea, truly, _signorini miei_. This fellow-captive of mine was a
_cavaliere_ in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his
enemies, and he mourned piteously for _la sposa sua_—his bride, as they
say here. A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck,
I grieved to leave him there when the good _confraternità_ at Genoa paid
my ransom. Having learnt to speak _il Tedesco_, and being no longer able
to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas! till
this moment fortune has still been adverse. My mules died of the toil of
crossing the mountains; and, when with reduced baggage I came to the
river beneath there—when my horses fell and my servants fled, and the
peasants came down with their hayforks—I thought myself in hands no
better than those of the Moors themselves.”
“It was wrongly done,” said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though
blushing. “I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the bank,
but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow.”
The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock’s Pass,
within sight of the convent. “There,” said Ebbo, “will they give you
harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your goods.
We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to touch your bales; so
I will unload old Schimmel.”
“Ah, _signorino_, if I might offer any token of gratitude—”
“Nay,” said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, “make me not a spoiler.”
“If the _signorini_ should ever come to Genoa,” continued the trader,
“and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house
would be at their feet.”
“Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!” said Ebbo. “But come,
Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle to make
matters safe.”
“May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he may
commend it to the saints?” asked the merchant.
“I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr Friedmund,
my brother. Farewell, sir.”
“Strange,” muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn down
the pass, “strange how like one barbarous name is to another. Eberardo!
That was what we called _il Tedesco_, and, when he once told me his
family name, it ended in _stino_; but all these foreign names sound
alike. Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should wake, and be
beyond the control of the _signorino_.”
“Ah!” sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the
temptation, “small use in being a baron if one is to be no better
mounted!”
“Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though,” said
Friedel.
“Nay, my mother’s eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him.
Otherwise—Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel! Thou shouldst know
better. How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old
enough to be his grandmother?”
“Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot,” said Friedel. “Oh,
Ebbo, what a brother thou art! How happy the mother will be!”
“Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur? I am sick of being mewed
up here within these walls of rock! No sport, not even with falling on a
traveller. I am worse off than ever were my forefathers!”
“But how is it? I cannot understand,” asked Friedel. “What has changed
thy mind?”
“Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame. Listen,
Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad
preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked
stakes in the stream, it was past man’s endurance to be baulked of the
fray. Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?”
“Long since. No doubt I thrust in vexatiously.”
“Not so,” said Ebbo; “and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes were
most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current; but the
fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think then, or I
should have seemed to fear them! I can tell you we made them run! But I
never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the dungeon, and
use him worse than a dog. I wot that he was my captive, and none of
hers. And then came the mother; and oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were
slaying her when she saw the spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and
reason, the old lady came swooping down in full malice and spite, and
actually came to blows. She struck the motherling—struck her on the
face, Friedel!”
“I fear me it has so been before,” said Friedel, sadly.
“Never will it be so again,” said Ebbo, standing still. “I took the old
hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough! My father’s
wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather’s, and I myself am
lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me and beat
my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last of it, and may
learn who is master, and who is mistress!”
“Oh, Ebbo! I would I had seen it! But was not she outrageous? Was not
the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at once?”
“Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not with
me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought else.
But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the grandmother in
her place, and the mother in hers.”
“If the mother _will_ be kept,” said Friedel. “I fear me she will only
plead to be left to the grandame’s treatment, as before.”
“Never, Friedel! I will never see her so used again. I released this
man solely to show that she is to rule here.—Yes, I know all about
freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring the
League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those
branches in the stream. Did I not go over it last night till my brain
was dizzy? But still, it is but living and dying like our fathers, and I
hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool to go back from what one
has once begun.”
“No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun wrong,” said Friedel.
“But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the gentle mother—and
I know the mother wept over her beads half the night. She _shall_ find
she has had her own way for once this morning.”
Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, “Let me tell thee what I
saw yesterday, Ebbo.”
“So,” answered the other brother.
“I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I climbed up to the tarn.
There is something always healing in that spot, is it not so, Ebbo? When
the grandmother has been raving” (hitherto Friedel’s worst grievance) “it
is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the stillness there, when the
sky seems to have come down into the deep blue water, and all is so
still, so wondrous still and calm. I wonder if, when we see the great
Dome Kirk itself, it will give one’s spirit wings, as does the gazing up
from the Ptarmigan’s Pool.”
“Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to tell me of?”
“No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this sight. I had
scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan, and I sat down to look
down on the other side of the gorge. It was clear where I sat, but the
ravine was filled with clouds, and upon them—”
“The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy patron?”
“_Our_ patron,” said Friedel; “I saw him, a giant form in gown and hood,
traced in grey shadow upon the dazzling white cloud; and oh, Ebbo! he was
struggling with a thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing a club. He
strove to withhold it; his gestures threatened and warned! I watched
like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the guardian spirit of our race
striving for thee with the enemy.”
“How did it end?”
“The cloud darkened, and swallowed them; nor should I have known the
issue, if suddenly, on the very cloud where the strife had been, there
had not beamed forth a rainbow—not a common rainbow, Ebbo, but a perfect
ring, a soft-glancing, many-tinted crown of victory. Then I knew the
saint had won, and that thou wouldst win.”
“I! What, not thyself—his own namesake?”
“I thought, Ebbo, if the fight went very hard—nay, if for a time the
grandame led thee her way—that belike I might serve thee best by giving
up all, and praying for thee in the hermit’s cave, or as a monk.”
“Thou!—thou, my other self! Aid me by burrowing in a hole like a rat!
What foolery wilt say next? No, no, Friedel, strike by my side, and I
will strike with thee; pray by my side, and I will pray with thee; but if
thou takest none of the strokes, then will I none of the prayers!”
“Ebbo, thou knowest not what thou sayest.”
“No one knows better! See, Friedel, wouldst thou have me all that the
old Adlersteinen were, and worse too? then wilt thou leave me and hide
thine head in some priestly cowl. Maybe thou thinkest to pray my soul
into safety at the last moment as a favour to thine own abundant
sanctity; but I tell thee, Friedel, that’s no manly way to salvation. If
thou follow’st that track, I’ll take care to get past the border-line
within which prayer can help.”
Friedel crossed himself, and uttered an imploring exclamation of horror
at these wild words.
“Stay,” said Ebbo; “I said not I meant any such thing—so long as thou
wilt be with me. My purpose is to be a good man and true, a guard to the
weak, a defence against the Turk, a good lord to my vassals, and, if it
may not be otherwise, I will take my oath to the Kaiser, and keep it. Is
that enough for thee, Friedel, or wouldst thou see me a monk at once?”
“Oh, Ebbo, this is what we ever planned. I only dreamed of the other
when—when thou didst seem to be on the other track.”
“Well, what can I do more than turn back? I’ll get absolution on Sunday,
and tell Father Norbert that I will do any penance he pleases; and warn
Jobst that, if he sets any more traps in the river, I will drown him
there next! Only get this priestly fancy away, Friedel, once and for
ever!”
“Never, never could I think of what would sever us,” cried Friedel,
“save—when—” he added, hesitating, unwilling to harp on the former
string. Ebbo broke in imperiously,
“Friedmund von Adlerstein, give me thy solemn word that I never again
hear of this freak of turning priest or hermit. What! art slow to speak?
Thinkest me too bad for thee?”
“No, Ebbo. Heaven knows thou art stronger, more resolute than I. I am
more likely to be too bad for thee. But so long as we can be true,
faithful God-fearing Junkern together, Heaven forbid that we should
part!”
“It is our bond!” said Ebbo; “nought shall part us.”
“Nought but death,” said Friedmund, solemnly.
“For my part,” said Ebbo, with perfect seriousness, “I do not believe
that one of us can live or die without the other. But, hark! there’s an
outcry at the castle! They have found out that they are locked in! Ha!
ho! hilloa, Hatto, how like you playing prisoner?”
Ebbo would have amused himself with the dismay of his garrison a little
longer, had not Friedel reminded him that their mother might be suffering
for their delay, and this suggestion made him march in hastily. He found
her standing drooping under the pitiless storm which Frau Kunigunde was
pouring out at the highest pitch of her cracked, trembling voice, one
hand uplifted and clenched, the other grasping the back of a chair, while
her whole frame shook with rage too mighty for her strength.
“Grandame,” said Ebbo, striding up to the scene of action, “cease.
Remember my words yestereve.”
“She has stolen the keys! She has tampered with the servants! She has
released the prisoner—thy prisoner, Ebbo! She has cheated us as she did
with Wildschloss! False burgherinn! I trow she wanted another suitor!
Bane—pest of Adlerstein!”
Friedmund threw a supporting arm round his mother, but Ebbo confronted
the old lady. “Grandmother,” he said, “I freed the captive. I stole the
keys—I and Friedel! No one else knew my purpose. He was my captive, and
I released him because he was foully taken. I have chosen my lot in
life,” he added; and, standing in the middle of the hall, he took off his
cap, and spoke gravely:—“I will not be a treacherous robber-outlaw, but,
so help me God, a faithful, loyal, godly nobleman.”
His mother and Friedel breathed an “Amen” with all their hearts; and he
continued,
“And thou, grandame, peace! Such reverence shalt thou have as befits my
father’s mother; but henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of
this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr
von Adlerstein.”
[Picture: “‘Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this
castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr von
Adlerstein’”—Page 126]
That last day’s work had made a great step in Ebbo’s life, and there he
stood, grave and firm, ready for the assault; for, in effect, he and all
besides expected that the old lady would fly at him or at his mother like
a wild cat, as she would assuredly have done in a like case a year
earlier; but she took them all by surprise by collapsing into her chair
and sobbing piteously. Ebbo, much distressed, tried to make her
understand that she was to have all care and honour; but she muttered
something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust herself with
weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and thenceforth she lived
in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her deposition.
Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some slight
stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman again; her vigour
had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or rocking herself in her
chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or scolding and fretting like a
shadow of her old violence. Nothing pleased her but the attentions of
her grandsons, and happily she soon ceased to know them apart, and gave
Ebbo credit for all that was done for her by Friedel, whose separate
existence she seemed to have forgotten.
As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the approach of
her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make suggestions for her
comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though the reins of government fast
dropped from the aged hands, they were but gradually and cautiously
assumed by the younger Baroness.
Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she had found in
the castle, and their successors, though dull and uncouth, were meek and
manageable; the men of the castle had all, except Mätz, been always
devoted to the Frau Christina; and Mätz, to her great relief, ran away so
soon as he found that decency and honesty were to be the rule. Old
Hatto, humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were the whole male
establishment, and had at least the merit of attachment to herself and
her sons; and in time there was a shade of greater civilization about the
castle, though impeded both by dire poverty and the doggedness of the old
retainers. At least the court was cleared of the swine, and, within
doors, the table was spread with dainty linen out of the parcels from
Ulm, and the meals served with orderliness that annoyed the boys at
first, but soon became a subject of pride and pleasure.
Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities. After the
winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her up
from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she accepted
Christina’s care with nothing worse than a snarl, and gradually seemed to
forget the identity of her nurse with the interloping burgher girl.
Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her nature, least of all towards
her own sex, and she did little but grumble, fret, and revile her
attendant; but she soon depended so much on Christina’s care, that it was
hardly possible to leave her. At her best and strongest, her talk was
maundering abuse of her son’s low-born wife; but at times her wanderings
showed black gulfs of iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the
gentle listener tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of
hearing. And thus did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of
persecution.
The old lady’s first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was the
Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the frost at
the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons fetched over the
pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger monk, to the dying
woman.
“Are we in time, mother?” asked Ebbo, from the door of the upper chamber,
where the Adlersteins began and ended life, shaking the snow from his
mufflings. Ruddy with exertion in the sharp wind, what a contrast he was
to all within the room!
“Who is that?” said a thin, feeble voice.
“It is Ebbo. It is the Baron,” said Christina. “Come in, Ebbo. She is
somewhat revived.”
“Will she be able to speak to the priest?” asked Ebbo.
“Priest!” feebly screamed the old woman. “No priest for me! My lord
died unshriven, unassoilzied. Where he is, there will I be. Let a
priest approach me at his peril!”
Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though life lasted
many hours longer. The priests did their office; for, impenitent as the
life and frantic as the words had been, the opinions of the time deemed
that their rites might yet give the departing soul a chance, though the
body was unconscious.
When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and drifting, so that
it was impossible to leave the castle, and the two monks were kept there
for a full fortnight, during which Christmas solemnities were observed in
the chapel, for the first time since the days of Friedmund the Good. The
corpse of Kunigunde, preserved—we must say the word—salted, was placed in
a coffin, and laid in that chapel to await the melting of the snows, when
the vault at the Hermitage could be opened. And this could not be
effected till Easter had nearly come round again, and it was within a
week of their sixteenth birthday that the two young Barons stood together
at the coffin’s head, serious indeed, but more with the thought of life
than of death.