BACK TO THE DOVECOTE
FOR the first time in her residence at Adlerstein, now full half her
life, the Freiherrinn Christina ventured to send a messenger to Ulm,
namely, a lay brother of the convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook to
convey to Master Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the death
of her mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same tidings to the
Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and godfather of her
sons.
She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her letters, and was
amazed when, at the end of three, two stout serving-men were guided by
Jobst up the pass; but her heart warmed to their flat caps and round
jerkins, they looked so like home. They bore a letter of invitation to
her and her sons to come at once to her uncle’s house. The King of the
Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the city early in the
summer, and there could be no better opportunity of presenting the young
Barons to their sovereign. Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss would
meet them there for the purpose, and would obtain their admission to the
League, in which all Swabian nobles had bound themselves to put down
robbery and oppression, and outside which there was nothing but outlawry
and danger.
“So must it be?” said Ebbo, between his teeth, as he leant moodily
against the wall, while his mother was gone to attend to the fare to be
set before the messengers.
“What! art not glad to take wing at last?” exclaimed Friedel, cut short
in an exclamation of delight.
“Take wing, forsooth! To be guest of a greasy burgher, and call cousin
with him! Fear not, Friedel; I’ll not vex the motherling. Heaven knows
she has had pain, grief, and subjection enough in her lifetime, and I
would not hinder her visit to her home; but I would she could go alone,
nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city folk, and listen to
their endearments. I charge thee, Friedel, do as I do; be not too
familiar with them. Could we but sprain an ankle over the crag—”
“Nay, she would stay to nurse us,” said Friedel, laughing; “besides, thou
art needed for the matter of homage.”
“Look, Friedel,” said Ebbo, sinking his voice, “I shall not lightly yield
my freedom to king or Kaiser. Maybe, there is no help for it; but it
irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein to whom the
title of Freiherr is not a mockery. Why dost bend thy brow, brother?
What art thinking of?”
“Only a saying in my mother’s book, that well-ordered service is true
freedom,” said Friedel. “And methinks there will be freedom in rushing
at last into the great far-off!”—the boy’s eye expanded and glistened
with eagerness. “Here are we prisoners—to ourselves, if you like—but
prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one, hearing scarce an
echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from all the wonders that
pass. And the world has a history going on still, like the _Chronicle_.
Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of life, with lance and sword, and
seeing the Kaiser—the Kaiser of the holy Roman Empire!”
“With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the cost
of liberty!”
However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother’s joy, save by the one
warning—“Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything. I
will not bend to the yoke ere I have seen and judged for myself.”
The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation to the
mother, even while she dreaded the proud spirit, and whispered, “God
direct thee, my son.”
Certainly Ebbo, hitherto the most impetuous and least thoughtful of the
two lads, had a gravity and seriousness about him, that, but for his
naturally sweet temper, would have seemed sullen. His aspirations for
adventure had hitherto been more vehement than Friedel’s; but, when the
time seemed at hand, his regrets at what he might have to yield
overpowered his hopes of the future. The fierce haughtiness of the old
Adlersteins could not brook the descent from the crag, even while the
keen, clear burgher wit that Ebbo inherited from the other side of the
house taught him that the position was untenable, and that his isolated
glory was but a poor mean thing after all. And the struggle made him sad
and moody.
Friedel, less proud, and with nothing to yield, was open to blithe
anticipations of what his fancy pictured as the home of all the beauty,
sacred or romantic, that he had glimpsed at through his mother.
Religion, poetry, learning, art, refinement, had all come to him through
her; and though he had a soul that dreamt and soared in the lonely
grandeur of the mountain heights, it craved further aliment for its
yearnings for completeness and perfection. Long ago had Friedel come to
the verge of such attainments as he could work out of his present
materials, and keen had been his ardour for the means of progress, though
only the mountain tarn had ever been witness to the full outpouring of
the longings with which he gazed upon the dim, distant city like a land
of enchantment.
The journey was to be at once, so as to profit by the escort of Master
Sorel’s men. Means of transport were scanty, but Ebbo did not choose
that the messengers should report the need, and bring back a bevy of
animals at the burgher’s expense; so the mother was mounted on the old
white mare, and her sons and Heinz trusted to their feet. By setting out
early on a May morning, the journey could be performed ere night, and the
twilight would find them in the domains of the free city, where their
small numbers would be of no importance. As to their appearance, the
mother wore a black woollen gown and mantle, and a black silk hood tied
under her chin, and sitting loosely round the stiff frame of her white
cap—a nun-like garb, save for the soft brown hair, parted over her brow,
and more visible than she sometimes thought correct, but her sons would
not let her wear it out of sight.
The brothers had piece by piece surveyed the solitary suit of armour
remaining in the castle; but, though it might serve for defence, it could
not be made fit for display, and they must needs be contented with blue
cloth, spun, woven, dyed, fashioned, and sewn at home, chiefly by their
mother, and by her embroidered on the breast with the white eagle of
Adlerstein. Short blue cloaks and caps of the same, with an eagle plume
in each, and leggings neatly fashioned of deerskin, completed their
equipments. Ebbo wore his father’s sword, Friedel had merely a dagger
and crossbow. There was not a gold chain, not a brooch, not an approach
to an ornament among the three, except the medal that had always
distinguished Ebbo, and the coral rosary at Christina’s girdle. Her own
trinkets had gone in masses for the souls of her father and husband; and
though a few costly jewels had been found in Frau Kunigunde’s hoards, the
mode of their acquisition was so doubtful, that it had seemed fittest to
bestow them in alms and masses for the good of her soul.
“What ornament, what glory could any one desire better than two such
sons?” thought Christina, as for the first time for eighteen years she
crossed the wild ravine where her father had led her, a trembling little
captive, longing for wings like a dove’s to flutter home again. Who
would then have predicted that she should descend after so long and weary
a time, and with a gallant boy on either side of her, eager to aid her
every step, and reassure her at each giddy pass, all joy and hope before
her and them? Yet she was not without some dread and misgiving, as she
watched her elder son, always attentive to her, but unwontedly silent,
with a stern gravity on his young brow, a proud sadness on his lip. And
when he had come to the Debateable Ford, and was about to pass the
boundaries of his own lands, he turned and gazed back on the castle and
mountain with a silent but passionate ardour, as though he felt himself
doing them a wrong by perilling their independence.
The sun had lately set, and the moon was silvering the Danube, when the
travellers came full in view of the imperial free city, girt in with
mighty walls and towers—the vine-clad hill dominated by its crowning
church; the irregular outlines of the unfinished spire of the cathedral
traced in mysterious dark lacework against the pearly sky; the lofty
steeple-like gate-tower majestically guarding the bridge. Christina
clasped her hands in thankfulness, as at the familiar face of a friend;
Friedel glowed like a minstrel introduced to his fair dame, long wooed at
a distance; Ebbo could not but exclaim, “Yea, truly, a great city is a
solemn and a glorious sight!”
The gates were closed, and the serving-men had to parley at the barbican
ere the heavy door was opened to admit the party to the bridge, between
deep battlemented stone walls, with here and there loopholes, showing the
shimmering of the river beneath. The slow, tired tread of the old mare
sounded hollow; the river rushed below with the full swell of evening
loudness; a deep-toned convent-bell tolled gravely through the stillness,
while, between its reverberations, clear, distinct notes of joyous music
were borne on the summer wind, and a nightingale sung in one of the
gardens that bordered the banks.
“Mother, it is all that I dreamt!” breathlessly murmured Friedel, as they
halted under the dark arch of the great gateway tower.
Not however in Friedel’s dreams had been the hearty voice that proceeded
from the lighted guard-room in the thickness of the gateway.
“Freiherrinn von Adlerstein! Is it she? Then must I greet my old
playmate!” And the captain of the watch appeared among upraised lanterns
and torches that showed a broad, smooth, plump face beneath a plain steel
helmet.
“Welcome, gracious lady, welcome to your old city. What! do you not
remember Lippus Grundt, your poor Valentine?”
“Master Philip Grundt!” exclaimed Christina, amazed at the breadth of
visage and person; “and how fares it with my good Regina?”
“Excellent well, good lady. She manages her trade and house as well as
the good man Bartoläus Fleischer himself. Blithe will she be to show you
her goodly ten, as I shall my eight,” he continued, walking by her side;
“and Barbara—you remember Barbara Schmidt, lady—”
“My dear Barbara?—That do I indeed! Is she your wife?”
“Ay, truly, lady,” he answered, in an odd sort of apologetic tone; “you
see, you returned not, and the housefathers, they would have it so—and
Barbara is a good housewife.”
“Truly do I rejoice!” said Christina, wishing she could convey to him how
welcome he had been to marry any one he liked, as far as she was
concerned—he, in whom her fears of mincing goldsmiths had always taken
form—then signing with her hand, “I have my sons likewise to show her.”
“Ah, on foot!” muttered Grundt, as a not well-conceived apology for not
having saluted the young gentlemen. “I greet you well, sirs,” with a
bow, most haughtily returned by Ebbo, who was heartily wishing himself on
his mountain. “Two lusty, well-grown Junkern indeed, to whom my Martin
will be proud to show the humours of Ulm. A fair good night, lady! You
will find the old folks right cheery.”
Well did Christina know the turn down the street, darkened by the
overhanging brows of the tall houses, but each lower window laughing with
the glow of light within that threw out the heavy mullions and the
circles and diamonds of the latticework, and here and there the brilliant
tints of stained glass sparkled like jewels in the upper panes, pictured
with Scripture scene, patron saint, or trade emblem. The familiar porch
was reached, the familiar knock resounded on the iron-studded door.
Friedel lifted his mother from her horse, and felt that she was quivering
from head to foot, and at the same moment the light streamed from the
open door on the white horse, and the two young faces, one eager, the
other with knit brows and uneasy eyes. A kind of echo pervaded the
house, “She is come! she is come!” and as one in a dream Christina
entered, crossed the well-known hall, looked up to her uncle and aunt on
the stairs, perceived little change on their countenances, and sank upon
her knees, with bowed head and clasped hands.
“My child! my dear child!” exclaimed her uncle, raising her with one
hand, and crossing her brow in benediction with the other. “Art thou
indeed returned?” and he embraced her tenderly.
“Welcome, fair niece!” said Hausfrau Johanna, more formally. “I am right
glad to greet you here.”
“Dear, dear mother!” cried Christina, courting her fond embrace by
gestures of the most eager affection, “how have I longed for this moment!
and, above all, to show you my boys! Herr Uncle, let me present my
sons—my Eberhard, my Friedmund. O Housemother, are not my twins
well-grown lads?” And she stood with a hand on each, proud that their
heads were so far above her own, and looking still so slight and girlish
in figure that she might better have been their sister than their mother.
The cloud that the sudden light had revealed on Ebbo’s brow had cleared
away, and he made an inclination neither awkward nor ungracious in its
free mountain dignity and grace, but not devoid of mountain rusticity and
shy pride, and far less cordial than was Friedel’s manner. Both were
infinitely relieved to detect nothing of the greasy burgher, and were
greatly struck with the fine venerable head before them; indeed, Friedel
would, like his mother, have knelt to ask a blessing, had he not been
under command not to outrun his brother’s advances towards her kindred.
“Welcome, fair Junkern!” said Master Gottfried; “welcome both for your
mother’s sake and your own! These thy sons, my little one?” he added,
smiling. “Art sure I neither dream nor see double! Come to the gallery,
and let me see thee better.”
And, ceremoniously giving his hand, he proceeded to lead his niece up the
stairs, while Ebbo, labouring under ignorance of city forms and
uncertainty of what befitted his dignity, presented his hand to his aunt
with an air that half-amused, half-offended the shrewd dame.
“All is as if I had left you but yesterday!” exclaimed Christina.
“Uncle, have you pardoned me? You bade me return when my work was done.”
“I should have known better, child. Such return is not to be sought on
this side the grave. Thy work has been more than I then thought of.”
“Ah! and now will you deem it begun—not done!” softly said Christina,
though with too much heartfelt exultation greatly to doubt that all the
world must be satisfied with two such boys, if only Ebbo would be his
true self.
The luxury of the house, the wainscoted and tapestried walls, the
polished furniture, the lamps and candles, the damask linen, the rich
array of silver, pewter, and brightly-coloured glass, were a great
contrast to the bare walls and scant necessaries of Schloss Adlerstein;
but Ebbo was resolved not to expose himself by admiration, and did his
best to stifle Friedel’s exclamations of surprise and delight. Were not
these citizens to suppose that everything was tenfold more costly at the
baronial castle? And truly the boy deserved credit for the consideration
for his mother, which made him merely reserved, while he felt like a wild
eagle in a poultry-yard. It was no small proof of his affection to
forbear more interference with his mother’s happiness than was the
inevitable effect of that intuition which made her aware that he was
chafing and ill at ease. For his sake, she allowed herself to be placed
in the seat of honour, though she longed, as of old, to nestle at her
uncle’s feet, and be again his child; but, even while she felt each
acceptance of a token of respect as almost an injury to them, every look
and tone was showing how much the same Christina she had returned.
In truth, though her life had been mournful and oppressed, it had not
been such as to age her early. It had been all submission, without wear
and tear of mind, and too simple in its trials for care and moiling; so
the fresh, lily-like sweetness of her maiden bloom was almost intact,
and, much as she had undergone, her once frail health had been so braced
by the mountain breezes, that, though delicacy remained, sickliness was
gone from her appearance. There was still the exquisite purity and
tender modesty of expression, but with greater sweetness in the pensive
brown eyes.
“Ah, little one!” said her uncle, after duly contemplating her; “the
change is all for the better! Thou art grown a wondrously fair dame.
There will scarce be a lovelier in the Kaiserly train.”
Ebbo almost pardoned his great-uncle for being his great-uncle.
“When she is arrayed as becomes the Frau Freiherrinn,” said the housewife
aunt, looking with concern at the coarse texture of her black sleeve. “I
long to see our own lady ruffle it in her new gear. I am glad that the
lofty pointed cap has passed out; the coif becomes my child far better,
and I see our tastes still accord as to fashion.”
“Fashion scarce came above the Debateable Ford,” said Christina, smiling.
“I fear my boys look as if they came out of the _Weltgeschichte_, for I
could only shape their garments after my remembrance of the gallants of
eighteen years ago.”
“Their garments are your own shaping!” exclaimed the aunt, now in an
accent of real, not conventional respect.
“Spinning and weaving, shaping and sewing,” said Friedel, coming near to
let the housewife examine the texture.
“Close woven, even threaded, smooth tinted! Ah, Stina, thou didst learn
something! Thou wert not quite spoilt by the housefather’s books and
carvings.”
“I cannot tell whose teachings have served me best, or been the most
precious to me,” said Christina, with clasped hands, looking from one to
another with earnest love.
“Thou art a good child. Ah! little one, forgive me; you look so like our
child that I cannot bear in mind that you are the Frau Freiherrinn.”
“Nay, I should deem myself in disgrace with you, did you keep me at a
distance, and not _thou_ me, as your little Stina,” she fondly answered,
half regretting her fond eager movement, as Ebbo seemed to shrink
together with a gesture perceived by her uncle.
“It is my young lord there who would not forgive the freedom,” he said,
good-humouredly, though gravely.
“Not so,” Ebbo forced himself to say; “not so, if it makes my mother
happy.”
He held up his head rather as if he thought it a fool’s paradise, but
Master Gottfried answered: “The noble Freiherr is, from all I have heard,
too good a son to grudge his mother’s duteous love even to burgher
kindred.”
There was something in the old man’s frank, dignified tone of grave
reproof that at once impressed Ebbo with a sense of the true superiority
of that wise and venerable old age to his own petulant baronial
self-assertion. He had both head and heart to feel the burgher’s
victory, and with a deep blush, though not without dignity, he answered,
“Truly, sir, my mother has ever taught us to look up to you as her
kindest and best—”
He was going to say “friend,” but a look into the grand benignity of the
countenance completed the conquest, and he turned it into “father.”
Friedel at the same instant bent his knee, exclaiming, “It is true what
Ebbo says! We have both longed for this day. Bless us, honoured uncle,
as you have blessed my mother.”
For in truth there was in the soul of the boy, who had never had any but
women to look up to, a strange yearning towards reverence, which was
called into action with inexpressible force by the very aspect and tone
of such a sage elder and counsellor as Master Gottfried Sorel, and he
took advantage of the first opening permitted by his brother. And the
sympathy always so strong between the two quickened the like feeling in
Ebbo, so that the same movement drew him on his knee beside Friedel in
oblivion or renunciation of all lordly pride towards a kinsman such as he
had here encountered.
“Truly and heartily, my fair youths,” said Master Gottfried, with the
same kind dignity, “do I pray the good God to bless you, and render you
faithful and loving sons, not only to your mother, but to your
fatherland.”
He was unable to distinguish between the two exactly similar forms that
knelt before him, yet there was something in the quivering of Friedel’s
head, which made him press it with a shade more of tenderness than the
other. And in truth tears were welling into the eyes veiled by the
fingers that Friedel clasped over his face, for such a blessing was
strange and sweet to him.
Their mother was ready to weep for joy. There was now no drawback to her
bliss, since her son and her uncle had accepted one another; and she
repaired to her own beloved old chamber a happier being than she had been
since she had left its wainscoted walls.
Nay, as she gazed out at the familiar outlines of roof and tower, and
felt herself truly at home, then knelt by the little undisturbed altar of
her devotions, with the cross above and her own patron saint below in
carved wood, and the flowers which the good aunt had ever kept as a
freshly renewed offering, she felt that she was happier, more fully
thankful and blissful than even in the girlish calm of her untroubled
life. Her prayer that she might come again in peace had been more than
fulfilled; nay, when she had seen her boys kneel meekly to receive her
uncle’s blessing, it was in some sort to her as if the work was done, as
if the millstone had been borne up for her, and had borne her and her
dear ones with it.
But there was much to come. She knew full well that, even though her
sons’ first step had been in the right direction, it was in a path beset
with difficulties; and how would her proud Ebbo meet them?