The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge (e novels for free .txt) 📖

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?

CHAPTER XIII
THE EAGLETS IN THE CITY

After having once accepted Master Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him and Dame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now and then led to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easily excused in one so new to the world and afraid of compromising his rank.  In general he could afford to enjoy himself with a zest as hearty as that of the simpler-minded Friedel.

They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the household were coming forth for the morning devotions at the cathedral; and the streets were stirring into activity, and becoming so peopled that the boys supposed that it was a great fair day.  They had never seen so many people together even at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several days before they ceased to exclaim at every passenger as a new curiosity.

The Dome Kirk awed and hushed them.  They had looked to it so long that perhaps no sublunary thing could have realized their expectations, and Friedel avowed that he did not know what he thought of it.  It was not such as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he was, he added that he could not think, he could only feel, that there was something ineffable in it; yet he was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled, and the hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those of the ice crystals on the mountains.  However after his eye had become trained, the deep influence of its dim solemn majesty, and of the echoes of its organ tones, and chants of high praise or earnest prayer, began to enchain his spirit; and, if ever he were missing, he was sure to be found among the mysteries of the cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, who felt the spell of the same grave fascination, since whatever was true of the one brother was generally true of the other.  They were essentially alike, though some phases of character and taste were more developed in the one or the other.

Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge of the names and numbers of his books.  They instantly, almost resentfully, missed the Cicero’s Offices that he had parted with, and joyfully hailed his new acquisitions, often sitting with heads together over the same book, reading like active-minded youths who were used to out-of-door life and exercise in superabundant measure, and to study as a valued recreation, with only food enough for the intellect to awaken instead of satisfying it.

They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling student, then attending the schools of Ulm—a meek, timid lad who, for love of learning and desire of the priesthood, had endured frightful tyranny from the Bacchanten or elder scholars, and, having at length attained that rank, had so little heart to retaliate on the juniors that his contemporaries despised him, and led him a cruel life until he obtained food and shelter from Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost of lessons to the young Barons.  Poor Bastien!