Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 20

After our meal we began to tell stories, but our grandmother positively forbade our mentioning the name of any of the forest sprites, or of any evil or questionable creature whatever.

In the night I could not sleep. All was so strange and grand around us, and it did seem to me that there were wailings and sighings and distant moanings among the pines, not quite to be accounted for by the wind. I grew rather uneasy, and at length lifted my head to see if any one else was awake.

Opposite me sat Eva, her face lifted to the stars, her hands clasped, and her lips moving as if in prayer. I felt her like a guardian angel, and instinctively drew nearer to her.

"Eva," I whispered at last, "do you not think there are rather strange and unaccountable noises around us? I wonder if it can be true that strange creatures haunt the forests?"

"I think there are always spirits around us, Cousin Else," she replied, "good and evil spirits prowling around us, or ministering to us. I suppose in the solitude we feel them nearer, and perhaps they are."

I was not at all rea.s.sured.

"Eva," I said, "I wish you would say some prayers; I feel afraid I may not think of the right ones. But are you really not at all afraid?"

"Why should I be?" she said softly; "G.o.d is nearer us always than all the spirits, good or evil,--nearer and greater than all. And he is the Supreme Goodness. I like the solitude, Cousin Else, because it seems to lift me above all the creatures to the One who is all and in all. And I like the wild forests," she continued, as if to herself, "because G.o.d is the only owner there, and I can feel more unreservedly, that we, and the creatures, and all we most call our own, are His, and only His. In the cities, the houses are called after the names of men, and each street and house is divided into little plots, of each of which some one says, 'It is mine.' But here all is visibly only G.o.d's, undivided, common to all. There is but one table, and that is His; the creatures live as free pensioners on His bounty."

"Is it then sin to call anything our own?" I asked.

"My book says it was this selfishness that was the cause of Adam's fall," she replied. "Some say it was because Adam ate the apple that he was lost, or fell; but my book says it was 'because of his claiming something for his own; and because of his saying, I, mine, me, and the like.'"

"That is very difficult to understand." I said, "Am I not to say, _My_ mother, _my_ father, _my_ Fritz? Ought I to love every one the same because all are equally G.o.d's? If property is sin, then why is stealing sin? Eva, this religion is quite above and beyond me. It seems to me in this way it would be almost as wrong to give thanks for what we have, as to covet what we have not, because we ought not to think we have anything. It perplexes me extremely."

I lay down again, resolved not to think any more about it. Fritz and I proved once, a long time ago, how useless it is for me, at least, to attempt to get beyond the Ten Commandments. But trying to comprehend what Eva said so bewildered me, that my thoughts soon wandered beyond my control altogether. I heard no more of Eva or the winds, but fell into a sound slumber, and dreamt that Eva and an angel were talking beside me all night in Latin, which I felt I ought to understand, but of course could not.

The next day we had not been long on our journey when, at a narrow part of the road, in a deep valley, a company of hors.e.m.e.n suddenly dashed down from a castle which towered on our right, and barred our further progress with serried lances.

"Do you belong to Erfurt?" asked the leader, turning our horses' heads, and pus.h.i.+ng Christopher aside with the b.u.t.t end of his gun.

"No," said Christopher, "to Eisenach."

"Give way, men," shouted the knight to his followers; "we have no quarrel with Eisenach. This is not what we are waiting for."

The cavaliers made a pa.s.sage for us, but a young knight who seemed to lead them rode on beside us for a time.

"Did you pa.s.s any merchandise on your road?" he asked of Christopher, using the form of address he would have to a peasant.

"We are not likely to pa.s.s anything," replied Christopher, not very courteously, "laden as we are."

"What is your lading?" asked the knight.

"All our worldly goods," replied Christopher, curtly.

"What is your name, friend, and where are you bound?"

"Cotta," answered Christopher. "My father is the director of the Elector's printing press at the new University of Wittemberg."

"Cotta!" rejoined the knight more respectfully, "a good burgher name;"

and saying this he rode back to the wagon, and saluting our father, surveyed us all with a cool freedom, as if his notice honoured us, until his eye lighted on Eva, who was sitting with her arm round Thekla, soothing the frightened child, and helping her to arrange some violets Christopher had gathered a few minutes before. His voice lowered when he saw her, and he said,--

"This is no burgher maiden, surely? May I ask your name, fair Fraulein?"

he said, doffing his hat and addressing Eva.

She made no reply, but continued arranging her flowers, without changing feature or colour, except her lip curled and quivered slightly.

"The Fraulein is absorbed with her bouquet; would that we were nearer our Schloss, that I might offer her flowers more worthy of her handling."

"Are you addressing me?" said Eva at length, raising her large eyes, and fixing them on him with her gravest expression; "I am no Fraulein, I am a burgher maiden; but if I were a queen, any of G.o.d's flowers would be fair enough for me. And to a true knight," she added, "a peasant maiden is as sacred as a queen."

No one ever could trifle with that earnest expression of Eva's face. It was his turn to be abashed. His effrontery failed him altogether, and he murmured, "I have merited the rebuke. These flowers are too fair, at least for me. If you would bestow one on me, I would keep it sacredly as a gift of my mother's or as the relics of a saint."

"You can gather them anywhere in the forest," said Eva; but little Thekla filled both her little hands with violets, and gave them to him.

"You may have them all if you like," she said; "Christopher can gather us plenty more."

He took them carefully from the child's hand, and, bowing low, rejoined his men who were in front. He then returned, said a few words to Christopher, and with his troop retired to some distance behind us, and followed us till we were close to Erfurt, when he spurred on to my father's side, and saying rapidly, "You will be safe now, and need no further convoy," once more bowed respectfully to us, and rejoining his men, we soon lost the echo of their horse-hoofs, as they galloped back through the forest.

"What did the knight say to you, Christopher?" I asked, when we dismounted at Erfurt that evening.

"He said that part of the forest was dangerous at present, because of a feud between the knights and the burghers, and if we would allow him, he would be our escort until we came in sight of Erfurt."

"That, at least, was courteous of him," I said.

"Such courtesy as a burgher may expect of a knight," rejoined Christopher, uncompromisingly; "to insult us without provocation, and then, as a favour, exempt us from their own illegal oppressions! But women are always fascinated with what men on horseback do."

"No one is fascinated with any one," I replied. For it always provokes me exceedingly when that boy talks in that way about women. And our grandmother interposed,--"Don't dispute, children; if your grandfather had not been unfortunate, you would have been of the knights' order yourselves, therefore it is not for you to run down the n.o.bles."

"I should never have been a knight," persisted Christopher, "or a priest or a robber." But it was consolatory to my grandmother and me to consider how exalted our position would have been, had it not been for certain little unfortunate hindrances. Our grandmother never admitted my father into the pedigree.

At Leipsic we left the children, while our grandmother, our mother, Eva, and I went on foot to see Aunt Agnes at the convent of Nimptschen, whither she had been transferred, some years before, from Eisenach.

We only saw her through the convent grating. But it seemed to me as if the voice, and manner, and face were entirely unchanged since that last interview when she terrified me as a child by asking me to become a sister, and abandon Fritz.

Only the voice sounded to me even more like a m.u.f.fled bell used only for funerals, especially when she said, in reference to Fritz's entering the cloister, "Praise to G.o.d, and the blessed Virgin, and all the saints. At last, then, He has heard my unworthy prayers; one at least is saved!"

A cold shudder pa.s.sed over me at her words. Had she then, indeed, all these years been praying that our happiness should be ruined and our home desolated? And had G.o.d heard her? Was the fatal spell, which my mother feared was binding us, after all nothing else than Aunt Agnes's terrible prayers?

Her face looked as lifeless as ever, in the folds of white linen which bound it into a regular oval. Her voice was metallic and lifeless; the touch of her hand was impa.s.sive and cold as marble when we took leave of her. My mother wept, and said, "Dear Agnes, perhaps we may never meet again on earth."

"Perhaps not," was the reply.

"You will not forget us, sister?" said the mother.

"I never forget you," was the reply, in the same deep, low, firm, irresponsive voice, which seemed as if it had never vibrated to anything more human than an organ playing Gregorian chants.

And the words echo in my heart to this instant, like a knell.

She never forgets us.

Nightly in her vigils, daily in church and cell, she watches over us, and prays G.o.d not to let us be too happy.