Charlotte M. Yonge

“ Ebbo looked at Sir Kasimir, who owned that he should have brought them from Ulm, but that he had forgotten.
“Jewels are not plenty with us,” said Ebbo, with a glow of amusement and confusion dawning on his cheek, such as reassured the little maid that she beheld one of the two beautiful young knights. “Must we borrow?”
Christina looked at the ring she had first seen lying on her own Eberhard’s palm, and felt as if to let it be used would sever the renewed hope she scarcely yet durst entertain; and at the same moment Maximilian glanced at his own fingers, and muttered, “None but this! Unlucky!” ”

“ And Kunigunde laid an ungentle grasp upon Friedmund, who was clinging to his mother, hiding his face in her gown. He struggled against the clutch, and would not look up or be detached.
“Fie, poor little coward!” taunted the old lady; “never heed him, Ebbo, my brave Baron!”
Cut to the heart, Christina took refuge in her room, and gathered her Friedel to her bosom, as he sobbed out, “Oh, mother, the poor little wolf! Oh, mother, are you weeping too? The grandmother should not so speak to the sweetest, dearest motherling,” he added, throwing his arms round her neck. ”

“ Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude had sunk to sleep. She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to detect lights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of her uncle and aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids spinning and the prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, most probably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it with the rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs, she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whose bed she was to share. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ His features had grown like his father’s, but he looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone. He stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of repose to his wife’s tendance, she found that he had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old festering scars on his ankles. ”

“ A burgher maid is not for such as you.”
“None but a burgher maid will I wed,” returned Sir Eberhard, with all the settled resolution of habits of command. “See, Christina, thou art sweeter and better than any lady in the land; thou canst make me what she—the blessed one who lies there—would have me. I love thee as never knight loved lady. I love thee so that I have not spoken a word to offend thee when my heart was bursting; and”—as he saw her irrepressible tears—“I think thou lovest me a little.” ”

“ Here—the black velvet cloak.”
“Alas, Ebbo! it makes thee look more of a corpse than a bridegroom. Thou wilt scare thy poor little spouse. Ah! it was not thus I had fancied myself decking thee for thy wedding.”
“Poor little one!” said Ebbo. “If, as your uncle says, mourning is the seed of joy, this bridal should prove a gladsome one! But let her prove a loving child to you, and honour my Friedel’s memory, then shall I love her well. Do not fear, motherling; with the roots of hatred and jealousy taken out of the heart, even sorrow is such peace that it is almost joy.” ”

“ Christina tried to murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out on the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church with a flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the fires of heaven were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both exclaimed, “The Needfire alight already!” And she recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill around Ulm. Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people gathering thicker and thicker on the slope. ”

“ Yet, after all, I do not know that any noble training has produced a more high-minded loving youth,” he added, half relenting as he looked at the gallant, earnest face, full of defiance indeed, but with a certain wistful appealing glance at “the motherling,” softening the liquid lustrous dark eye. “Get thee gone, boy, I would not quarrel with you; and it may be, as Friedel says, that we are best out of one another’s way. You are used to lord it, and I can scarce make excuses for you.”
“Then,” said Ebbo, scarce appeased, “I take home my mother, and you, sir, cease to favour Kasimir’s suit.” ”

“ See, Friedel, I had gone to seek thee at the chapel, and meeting Father Norbert, I bent my knee, that I might take his farewell blessing. I had the substance, thou the shadow, thou dreamer!”
Friedel was as much mortified for the moment as his gentle nature could be. Then he resumed his sweet smile, saying, “Be it so! I have oft read that men are too prone to take visions and special providences to themselves, and now I have proved the truth of the saying.”
“And,” said Ebbo, “thou seest thy purpose is as baseless as thy vision?” ”

“ It was over early for pain and sorrow to have taught that lesson, thought the mother, as with tender tears she gave place to the priest, who was to begin the solemnities of the day by shriving the young Baron. It was Father Norbert, who had in this very chamber baptized the brothers, while their grandmother was plotting the destruction of their godfather, even while he gave Friedmund his name of peace,—Father Norbert, who had from the very first encouraged the drooping, heart-stricken, solitary Christina not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good. ”

“ Obedience first to the father, then to the husband, was the first requisite; love might shift for itself; and the fair widow of Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer perplexity, knew not whether her strong repugnance to this marriage and warm sympathy with her son Ebbo were not an act of rebellion. Yet each moment did her husband rise before her mind more vividly, with his rugged looks, his warm, tender heart, his dawnings of comprehension, his generous forbearance and reverential love—the love of her youth—to be equalled by no other. ”

“ The taunt seemed justified, and her cheeks burned with absolute shame “My husband! my loving Eberhard! left with none but me to love thee, unknown to thine own sons! I cannot, I will not give my heart away from thee! Thy little bride shall be faithful to thee, whatever betide. When we meet beyond the grave I will have been thine only, nor have set any before thy sons. Heaven forgive me if I be undutiful to my uncle; but thou must be preferred before even him! Hark!” and she started as if at Eberhard’s foot-step; then smiled, recollecting that Ebbo had his father’s tread. ”

“ Soon the turn round to the side of the mountain was made, and the road became a mere track worn out on the turf on the hillside, with an abyss beneath, close to the edge of which the mule, of course, walked.
When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine was like an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream that formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it. The ravine itself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing shallower as it ascended higher; but here, where Christina beheld it, it was extremely deep, and savagely desolate and bare. ”

“ She had never seen any one beyond the walls of the nunnery; and, when her father took her from the lay sister’s arms, and carried her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green, slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson, with gold medal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in silver-broidered black, and the two Junkern stood near in the shining mail in which they were going to the tilt yard, she turned her head in terror, struggled with her scarce known father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel. ”

“ And the more angry and vehement thou art, the more will he deem himself doing thee a service by overruling thee.”
“Come home, mother. Let Heinz lead our horses to the door in the dawn, and when we are back in free Adlerstein it will be plain who is master.”
“Such a flitting would scarce prove our wisdom,” said Christina, “to run away with thy mother like a lover in a ballad. Nay, let me first deal gently with thine uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so that I may show him the vanity of his suit. Then will we back to Adlerstein without leaving wounds to requite kindness.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nor did Eberhard look on the submission with the sullen rage and grief that his father felt in bringing himself to such a declension from the pride of his ancestors. What the young Baron heard up stairs was awakening in him a sense of the poorness and narrowness of his present life. Ermentrude never spared him what interested her; and, partly from her lips, partly through her appeals to her attendant, he had learnt that life had better things to offer than independence on these bare rocks, and that homage might open the way to higher and worthier exploits than preying upon overturned waggons. ”

“ Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how this could be; and had he not replied that the Church did not teach these miracles as matters of faith, but that she might there discern in figure how meek Christian holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed the rudest natures. This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit to live or die!—might it be her part to do some good work by her, and infuse some Christian hope, some godly fear? Could it be for this that the saints had led her hither? ”

“ On horseback must their worships fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called myself a mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed that I should esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all fours, then cast they my burgher blood in my teeth. Never saw I the Kaisar so enraged; he swore that all the common sense in the empire was in the burgher blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest order in Europe to show how he esteemed it. ”

“ Then how it would have fared with me and the helpless little ones I know not, but for thy noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and ready helper of all in trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at Rome, and who had been able, from all her heights of learning and accomplishment, to value my Thekla’s golden soul in its simplicity. Even then, when too late, came one of the Kaisar’s kindest letters, recalling me,—a letter whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own blood six weeks before! ”

“ Christina could not be restrained from springing from her mule, and kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face hidden in her hands, that her father might not see her tears.
“The good God bless thee, my child,” said Gottfried, who seldom invoked the saints; “bless thee, and bring thee back in His own good time. Thou hast been a good child to us; be so to thine own father. ”

“ He has never tried to mount the Eagle’s Ladder! Why, man, Adlerstein might be held against five hundred men by sister Johanna with her rock and spindle! ’Tis a free barony, Master Gottfried, I tell thee—has never sworn allegiance to Kaiser or Duke of Swabia either! Freiherr Eberhard is as much a king on his own rock as Kaiser Fritz ever was of the Romans, and more too, for I never could find out that they thought much of our king at Rome; and, as to gainsaying our old Freiherr, one might as well leap over the abyss at once. ”

“ The accomplished courtier and polished man of the world might be his superior, but she loathed the superiority, since it was to her husband. Might not his one chosen dove keep heart-whole for him to the last? She recollected that coarsest, cruellest reproach of all that her mother-in-law had been wont to fling at her,—that she, the recent widow, the new-made mother of Eberhard’s babes, in her grief, her terror, and her weakness had sought to captivate this suitor by her blandishments. ”

“ Many a man drew has last breath with his last stroke, and was at the first leisure moment hurled into the waves. It was the description that had so deeply moved Friedel long ago, and Christina wept over it, as she looked at the bowed form once so proud and free, and thought of the unhealed scars. But there, her husband added, he had been chained next to a holy friar of German blood, like himself a captive of the great Styrian raid; and, while some blasphemed in their misery, or wildly chid their patron saints, this good man strove to show that all was to work out good ”