Saint Michael

"Extremely! What a handsome head! and admirably painted too. An Eberstein of course?"

The old gentleman looked half flattered, half displeased, as he replied, slowly, "Yes, an Eberstein. You do not recognize him, then?"

Hans started; he glanced first at the portrait, and then at the shrunken figure before him, with its wrinkled features and weary eyes. "It cannot–is it your own portrait, Herr Baron?"

"It is mine, and thirty years ago it was said to be extremely like. I take no offence at your not recognizing it; I am but an old ruin, like my Ebersburg."

The words sounded so infinitely sad that Hans made haste to try to console the old man. "But I distinctly recognize the features now," he said. "There was something familiar to me in them from the first, but I took the picture for a likeness of one of your sons."

"I have no sons," Eberstein rejoined, sadly; "my race perishes with me, for my first marriage was childless, and my second brought me only a daughter. I cannot imagine where Gerlinda is. I must call her." He thereupon arose with difficulty, and hobbled to the closed door of the next apartment.

"Gerlinda von Eberstein,–ugh!" Hans said to himself. "It sounds like a drawbridge and portcullis. A mediæval châtelaine, I suppose; and as the father is over seventy the daughter must be at least forty; at all events I need not be shy about presenting myself before her in this costume."

He looked towards the door, although with a very moderate degree of curiosity, but he suddenly arose as if electrified, for what appeared upon the threshold in no wise answered his expectations.

There stood before him a very young girl in a plain, gray stuff gown, her dark hair simply parted, and braided at the back of her head. The child-like face was rather pale, but, if not regularly beautiful, was exquisitely lovely. The eyes were cast down, and were veiled by dark, drooping lashes. The Freiherr must have married for the second time very late in life, for his daughter was at the most but sixteen years old.

"Hans, Freiherr von Wehlau Wehlenberg of Forschungstein, my daughter Gerlinda;" the lord of the castle made the introduction with all due solemnity. Hans was so surprised that he bowed low twice, which salutation the young girl returned by an extremely stiff inclination, something between a courtesy and a nod. Then, with eyes still downcast, she took her place at the table, where a cold supper was set forth, and the very frugal meal began.

The old Freiherr was loquacious, and talked incessantly with the guest, who had won his heart by admiring the portrait, but Fräulein Gerlinda was very taciturn. She fulfilled quietly and attentively all her duties as hostess, but maintained a perfectly stiff wooden demeanor, and met with a persistent silence all Hans Wehlau's attempts to converse with her. Her father replied in her stead to the young man's remarks, and her face was as immovable as if she heard not a word.

"The poor child seems to be deaf and dumb," Hans said to himself. "It is a pity, for her face is lovely. I wish she would lift her eyes for a moment."

He made a last attempt to induce her to speak by asking her directly how long she had lived upon the Ebersburg, and whether it was not very lonely here in winter, but her father again replied in her stead: "We live here all the year round, and my daughter has been used to this solitude from her earliest childhood. I have given my consent, however, to her shortly spending a few days at Steinrück, at the urgent invitation of the Countess, who is her godmother. You are acquainted with the Countess Steinrück?"

"I have that honour."

"An old family, but full two hundred years younger than mine," the old man remarked, with much complacency. "The founder of their race is first spoken of in the Crusades; unfortunately, there is a blot on their scutcheon, a mésalliance of the worst description, dating about thirty years ago; until then the family records were stainless."

"Ancient as the Crusades, and to be overtaken by such a misfortune in the nineteenth century!" Hans exclaimed, with an indignant expression that won him a nod of approval from his host.

"A misfortune indeed! You are perfectly right, and seem to have a lively appreciation of rank and position which it pleases me extremely to see. Yes, Count Michael has recovered from the blow. I never could have done so; it would have crushed me to the earth, for my escutcheon is stainless, absolutely stainless!"

He began a long heraldic dissertation upon the aforesaid escutcheon, in which he played with the centuries and with the comparatively modern race of Steinrücks as if they were but babies in arms. Hans paid very little attention; he was racking his brain with conjectures as to whether Fräulein Gerlinda von Eberstein were really a deaf-mute or not; and so absorbed was he that the Freiherr at last noticed his absent manner, and asked him if he were listening.

"Of course; so stainless a pedigree cannot but excite my admiration. The Eberstein-Ortenaus, then–"

"Have borne that double name since the fourteenth century," the Freiherr completed the young man's sentence. "Gerlinda, child, tell our guest how it occurred."

Fräulein Gerlinda clasped her hands upon the table, without raising her eyes, and, with a face as expressionless as ever, she suddenly, to the guest's dismay, began to speak, or rather to rattle off after the manner of a child repeating a lesson learned by rote: "In the year thirteen hundred and seventy a feud arose between Kunrad von Eberstein and Balduin von Ortenau, because the hand of Hildegund of Ortenau had been refused to the Knight Kunrad of Eberstein, and the Ebersburg, as well as the fortress of Ortenau, was sacked several times, until, in the year thirteen hundred and seventy-one, the Knight Balduin was taken prisoner by the Ebersteiners and thrown into the castle dungeon, where at last he consented to the union of Hildegund with Kunrad, which union was celebrated with great pomp in the year thirteen hundred and seventy-two, and in consequence, in the year thirteen hundred and eighty-six, upon the death of the Knight Balduin, the fortress of Ortenau and the lands belonging to it came into the possession of the lords of Eberstein, who since then have borne the name of Eberstein-Ortenau."

"Wonderful!" said Hans, who was really thunderstruck at this performance of the supposed deaf-mute. He could not understand where she got the breath for her long speech; he had lost his with simply listening.

"Yes, my Gerlinda is well versed in the history of our house," said the Freiherr, triumphantly. "She remembers it even better than I do, for my memory is beginning to fail me. Yesterday she corrected me in a date, when I was speaking of the enfeoffment of Udo von Eberstein. You remember, my child?"

As if the hitherto motionless pendulum of a clock had been set going by this question, Fräulein Gerlinda started off again and told a much longer story, this time from the fifteenth century, about a certain Eberstein who in a certain battle had saved the Emperor's life and had been by him endowed with a certain castle. All the hard names and the numerous dates fell from her lips with the greatest fluency and certainty, but with a monotony of intonation that reminded one of the clapper of a mill, the more so as her speech came to a pause as suddenly as it began. Hans involuntarily pushed back his chair a little, the whole scene partook of the supernatural. The Freiherr, however, who received this as an expression of admiration, seemed inclined to initiate him still further into the chronicles of his race, when the old clock in the corner struck the hour of nine.

"Nine o'clock already," said Eberstein, as he rose from his chair. "We live very regularly, Herr von Wehlau, and are wont to retire at this hour, a custom which I doubt not your fatiguing ramble in the forest will make grateful to you. I wish you a calm and refreshing night in the Ebersburg."

"That was terrible!" said Hans, with a sigh, when he found himself alone in his sleeping-room in the old castle. "That old man of the tenth century, and that little châtelaine whom I took for deaf and dumb, and who chatters out the old chronicles like a magpie, have nearly turned my brain. I am completely mediæval, and have become extremely exclusive since I have been Hans Wehlau Wehlenberg of the Forschungstein."

Thereupon he went to bed, and dreamed that the old Freiherr was going through all Northern Germany with a lantern to find the Forschungstein, and that Fräulein Gerlinda, disguised as a magpie, was fluttering beside him, chattering incessantly about Kunrad von Eberstein and Hildegund von Ortenau; and when they could not find the Forschungstein, they seated themselves in the branches of their genealogical tree and ascended with it up, up and away into the tenth century, and a very imposing spectacle it was.

When Hans waked the next morning the sun was shining brightly into his room, and his clothes were sufficiently dry to be donned. It was still very early, and no one seemed to be stirring in the house: so he resolved to inspect by daylight the house, which he had reached in darkness and storm. He issued from his room into the long corridor, which was lit by a narrow window, and without much difficulty succeeded in finding the winding staircase with the worn steps, by which he descended into the front hall and thence into the open air.

Undoubtedly the Ebersburg had formerly been a strong and stately castle, perhaps destroyed and rebuilt several times in the course of centuries. Now it was but a ruin. The greater part of it had fallen to decay, and all that was left of the once solid masonry seemed tottering to its fall. In the castle court-yard the grass grew luxuriantly, and an entire generation of bushes and small trees had sprung up, making the place an actual thicket. From the roof of the old watch-tower, which was still apparently in repair, green grasses were nodding, and rooks were flying in and out of the window openings. Fragments of masonry were lying about, with here and there remains of the ancient apartments.

The only wing still standing, that which was now inhabited by the Freiherr, presented a dreary aspect. The ruins were at least picturesque, but the attempts to patch up this part of the castle only brought into stronger relief the decay of the building. The crumbling masonry had been coarsely whitewashed, the missing doors and windows had been replaced in the rudest fashion, and where the rooms were not used boards had been nailed over the apertures. The magnificent old balcony had been supplied with a thatched roof, and the broad stone steps of the entrance hall had been replaced by wooden ones.

Hans Wehlau's artist's eye was outraged by this sight, and he turned again to the ruins, forcing his way through the green thicket in the court-yard, and at last, through an opening in the wall that might once have been a gate-way, he emerged upon the former castle terrace. Here, however, his wanderings were stayed, for from the lower story of the watch-tower, apparently used as a stable, there issued a joyous bleating, and immediately afterwards a goat came leaping through the door-way into the open air, followed by Fräulein Gerlinda, dressed, in spite of the earliness of the hour, in the gray dress of the evening before, and carrying carefully in both hands a small wooden milk-vessel filled to the brim.

This unexpected encounter astonished both the young people. Gerlinda stood as if rooted to the spot, and the guest could not but divine that Fräulein von Eberstein, with her long line of ancestry dating from the tenth century, had milked the goat with her own high-born hands that there might be milk for breakfast. Her evident dismay embarrassed Hans too, so that he could not utter any fitting phrase, but bowed in silence. Fortunately, the goat comprehended the annoying nature of the situation, and put an end to it by merrily leaping up upon the stranger and then rubbing so affectionately against her young mistress that the vessel in her hands was shaken and part of the milk was spilled.

This was a happy interruption of the pause of embarrassment; Hans made haste to take the milk, which Gerlinda allowed him to do, saying gently, by way of excuse, "Muckerl is so glad to get out into the air."

"Thank heaven she can utter something besides mediæval chronicles!" thought Hans, enchanted with her remark. He expressed his pleasure in Muckerl's liveliness, asked exact information as to her age and state of health, and meanwhile placed the milk in safety by setting the vessel down upon a projection of the wall, for Muckerl was scanning him with a highly critical air, and seemed rather inclined to repeat her charge at him; the next moment, however, thinking better of it, she turned her attention to the luxuriant grass that covered the ground.

The view from the Ebersburg was not an extensive one; the castle lay secluded in a deep hollow of the valley, and the mountains rising on all sides were thickly wooded, but the old ruin nestled among delicious green, the tree-tops rustled gently in the morning air, and the birds twittered among them.

The morning sun lay broad upon the ancient castle terrace. Here all around, to be sure, were ruin and decay, but vigorous, luxuriant life was striving compassionately to conceal the desolation. There were broad breaches in the wall bounding the terrace, but wild shrubs and bushes grew there, forming a living breastwork; the huge watch-tower, where the rooks were flying in and out of the windows, was wreathed round with thick dark-green ivy; amid the gray fragments of stone lying about were nestling tender mosses, and vigorous wild vines were trailing everywhere. Upon every stone, from every crack in the walls, hardy plants were springing and thrusting themselves forth, while over everything brooded the deep, dreamy stillness of early morning.

In the midst of these relics of vanished splendour the last scion of the Ebersteins, in her gray Cinderella costume, stood leaning against the wall. All the primness and stiffness of the previous evening had vanished; the young girl was evidently confused at finding herself alone with the stranger guest, and looked up at him with the expression of a frightened child. Thus for the first time he could see her eyes,–a pair of beautiful brown eyes, soft and shy as those of a gazelle; they were in perfect harmony with the lovely face.

The silence lasted some time; Hans was so taken up with gazing into the eyes that were at last unveiled for him that he forgot to resume the conversation, and when he did so at last, it was in a purely mechanical way, as he involuntarily continued the subject of the previous evening.

"I have just been inspecting the Ebersburg," he began. "It must once have been a stately pile, which could give its enemies enough to do, and at the time of the feud, when Kunrad von Ortenau and Hildegund von Eberstein–no, I have transposed their names."

His mention of the names was unfortunate; as soon as Fräulein Gerlinda heard of the middle ages she became as prim and stiff as an image of wood; her long eyelashes drooped, as did her head, and she began in the old monotone, "Kunrad von Eberstein and Hildegund von Ortenau, in the year of our Lord–"

"Yes, yes, Fräulein Gerlinda, I remember all about it;" Hans interrupted her in dismay. "Through your kindness I am thoroughly well informed as to the chronicles of your family. I merely meant to remark that a residence in this old mountain stronghold must be very monotonous. You make a great sacrifice to your father in staying here. A young lady longs to be abroad in the world, to enjoy life."

Gerlinda shook her head in dissent, and suddenly opened her mouth to say, with all the infallible wisdom of a philosopher of seventy, "The world and life are worth nothing!"

"Nothing?" asked the young man, surprised. "Where did you learn to be so sure of that?"

"My papa says so," Gerlinda replied, with much solemnity. Evidently her father's utterances were those of an oracle to her. "The world grows worse with each century, and now shows abundant signs of final annihilation, since the nobility no longer receive the homage due them."

Her eyes were again stubbornly downcast, and she spoke in a tone that vividly recalled to her hearer his dream. His lips twitched oddly, but he contrived to say, quite seriously, "Yes, the nobility. But there are some other men beside them in the world."

Fräulein Gerlinda looked surprised; she seemed to mistrust this fact and apparently reflected profoundly, remarking at last, as the result of her reflections, "Yes, of course,–the peasants."

"True. And we cannot utterly dispute the existence of even other classes of human beings. Literary men, for instance, artists, in whose ranks I belong–"

Fräulein Gerlinda opened wide her brown eyes and repeated, "Among the artists?"

"Absolutely," Hans said to himself, quite forgetting his elevated rank, "she thinks me a mediæval specimen too;" and he added, aloud, "Assuredly, Fräulein Gerlinda, I occupy myself with art, and flatter myself that I have attained a degree of proficiency in it."

The young lady seemed to think such an occupation very derogatory. Fortunately, she recalled the fact that a certain Eberstein, in a certain century, had taken up with astrology, and that partly explained Herr Wehlau Wehlenberg's extraordinary tastes, but she nevertheless felt herself called upon to repeat to him a saying of her father's: "My papa says that a man of an ancient, noble line ought to make no concessions to the present; it is beneath his dignity."

"That is the Herr Baron's opinion," said Hans, with a shrug. "He seems to have been so entirely secluded from the world that he has lost all sympathy with it; others of his rank, however, feel very differently. Look, for example, at the Counts von Steinrück, whose family is just as old as yours."

"Two hundred years younger," Gerlinda interrupted him, indignantly.

"Quite right; full two hundred years. I remember their ancestors are first met with in the Crusades, while yours date from the eighth century."

"From the tenth."

"Certainly, from the tenth! It was a slip of the tongue; I meant, of course, from the tenth century. But to return to the Steinrücks: Count Michael is a general in command; his son was, I think, attached to our embassy in Paris; his grandson has some official position. They are all men of the present, and would hardly coincide with your father in opinion; and you, too, will differ from him when you have seen something of life and the world."

"I do not want to see anything of them," Gerlinda said, softly and timidly. "I am afraid of them."

Hans smiled; he drew a step nearer, and bent down towards the girl; his voice sounded sweet and tender, as if he were speaking to a child. "That is very natural; you live here in such seclusion, in a fairy world, long since faded from reality, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-tale. But some time the day will come when the hawthorn hedges will part asunder, and the green walls open, a day when you will awaken from your enchanted sleep; and believe me, Fräulein Gerlinda, your eyes will open then not upon the dust and mould of centuries, but upon the warm, golden sunshine that floods our present age, in spite of all its conflicts and trials. Ah, you will learn to love it all."

Gerlinda listened in silence, but a faint, happy smile playing about her lips betrayed her knowledge of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. She slowly raised her eyes, only for an instant, and dropped them hastily; that which shone upon her in the young man's gaze might perhaps be a ray of the light he had promised her; she suddenly flushed crimson and turned hastily away.

Muckerl certainly was a very intelligent goat, for she had quietly continued to browse, only glancing gravely now and then towards the pair, and appearing on the whole quite satisfied with the course of the conversation. But the matter now must have begun to look grave to her, for she suddenly left her breakfast and ran to her young mistress, beside whom she placed herself, as if on guard.

"I believe–I ought to go back to the castle," said Gerlinda, scarcely audibly.

"Already?" asked Hans, who had not observed that half an hour had been consumed in talk.

They set out together, Hans carrying the milk, Fräulein Gerlinda beside him, and Muckerl following, gravely nodding her head from time to time. The affair evidently had a suspicious look to her,–why had the two suddenly fallen silent?

An hour later Hans stood at the foot of the Ebersburg. He had taken leave of the Freiherr and of his daughter without laying aside his incognito, for fear of causing the old gentleman unnecessary annoyance. What mattered it that the Freiherr should continue to regard him as a 'mediæval specimen'? The adventure was at an end; it was not likely that he should ever again see the Ebersburg.

He glanced up once more at the gray pile, taking a last look at the sunny castle-terrace, and the much-lauded present to which he was now returning seemed terribly prosaic compared with the fairy-tale that he had dreamed up there in the midst of the green waving forest, in those ancient ruin? where all around was blooming fair and fresh, with the little Dornröschen who had retired to her solitude, and was dreaming of the knight who was to break through the hedge and waken the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss from her magic slumber. The young fellow suppressed a sigh, and said, half aloud, as he turned away, "After all, it is a pity that I am not really Hans Wehlau Wehlenberg of the Forschungstein."

A gay company was assembled at Steinrück, in thorough enjoyment of the hunting season, and of the long sunny autumn days. No one was invited to make a long visit, however, save Gerlinda von Eberstein, who had arrived some days since; but each day new guests made their appearance and others departed. Hertha and Raoul Steinrück usually formed the centre of this brilliant society. It had long been known that the two were destined for each other, and that the announcement of the betrothal would probably soon take place; therefore when the general issued invitations for a large entertainment every one knew that it would be the occasion for this public announcement.

The evening was at hand, and the entire castle was filled with the activity wont to precede some important festivity. Servants were running to and fro, here and there decorations were being completed, and the reception-rooms were already a blaze of light.

The family, with the exception of Gerlinda and Hertha, had just entered these rooms. Count Steinrück, with the widowed Countess on his arm, looked unusually cheerful: to-day was to bring him the fulfilment of his dearest wish; the betrothal of the last two scions of his house was to be celebrated at their ancestral castle, and thus the prosperity of his line was assured,–all the Steinrück possessions would be united under one master.

Hortense, who followed him leaning on her son's arm, also looked proudly content. In her rich and tasteful toilette, and by the artificial light, she looked very beautiful, and far outshone her cousin; that pale, delicate woman was indeed cast into the shade. Raoul was gay and good-humoured; a cloud now and then darkened his brow for a moment, but it quickly vanished, and he lavished the tenderest attentions upon his mother.

"We limited the invitations as much as possible," said Hortense, as she looked through the lighted apartments, "and yet there will scarcely be room for our guests. That is the worst of these old mountain castles, that have no large ball-room and no extended suite of rooms; it is impossible to give an entertainment in them!"

"They were not built for any such purpose," said the general, quietly. "They were intended for a home within, and for protection and defence without. They certainly do not conform to modern requirements, least of all to yours, Hortense; you never loved Steinrück."

"In that respect I perfectly agree with mamma," Raoul interposed. "What delights me here is the hunting in these mountain forests. The castle itself, with its dim, confined rooms, its endless, echoing corridors, and its steep, dark staircases, always seems to me like a prison. I breathe a sigh of relief when I escape from it."

"You seem entirely to forget that this ancient pile is the cradle of your race, and as such should be dear and sacred to you even if it lay in ruins," said the general, with some acerbity.