Barbara Blomberg Part 63

Then, for the first time since their meeting, the familiar, pleasant "Wawerl" greeted her, and with tearful eyes she clasped his outstretched hands.

Wolf had just told her that his time was short; but now he willingly allowed himself to be persuaded to put down his sword and hat, and when Frau Lamperi brought in some refreshments, he recognised her, and asked her several pleasant questions.

It seemed as though Barbara's change of mood had overthrown the barrier which her stern refusal had raised between them. Calm and cheerful as in former days he sat before her, listening while, in obedience to his invitation, she told him, with many a palliation and evasion, about her married life and the children. She made her story short, in order at last to hear some further particulars concerning the welfare of her distant son.

What Wolf related of the outward appearance of her John, to whose new name, Geronimo, she gradually became accustomed, Barbara could complete from her vivid recollection of this rare child. He had remained strong and healthy, and the violinist Ma.s.si, his good wife, and their daughter loved the little fellow and cared for him as if he were their own son and brother.

The musician, it is true, lived plainly enough, but there was no want of anything in the modest country house with the gay little flower garden.

Nor did the boy lack playmates, though they were only the children of the farmers and townspeople of Leganes. Clad but little better than they, he shared their merry, often rough games. Geronimo called the violinist and his wife father and mother.

Then Barbara desired a more minute description of his dress, and when Wolf, laughing, confessed that he wore a cap only when he went to church, and on hot summer days he had even met him barefoot, she clasped her hands in astonishment and dismay. Not until her friend a.s.sured her that among the thin, dark-haired Spaniards, with their close-cropped heads and flashing black eyes, he, with his fluttering golden curls and free, graceful movements, looked like a white swan among dark-plumaged ducks, did she raise her head with a contented expression, and the sunny glance peculiar to her again reminded her friend of the Emperor's son.

His lofty brow, Wolf said, he had inherited from his father, and his mind was certainly bright; but what could be predicted with any certainty concerning the intellectual powers of a boy scarcely seven years old? The pastor Bautista Bela was training him to piety. The sacristan Francisco Fernandez ought to have begun to teach him to read a year ago; but until now Geronimo had always run away, and when he, Wolf, asked the worthy old man, at Dona Magdalena's request, whether he would undertake to instruct him in the rudiments of Latin, as well as in reading and writing, he shook his head doubtfully.

Here a smile hovered around the speaker's lips, and, as if some amusing recollection rose in his mind, he went on gaily: "He's a queer old fellow, and when I repeated my question, he put his finger against his nose, saying: 'Whoever supposes I could teach a young romper like that anything but keeping quiet, is mistaken. Why? Because I know nothing myself.' Then the old man reflected, and added, 'But--I shall not even succeed in keeping this one quiet, because he is so much swifter than I."

"And is the Emperor Charles satisfied with such a teacher for his son?"

asked Barbara indignantly.

"Ma.s.si had described the sacristan to Don Luis as a learned man,"

replied Wolf. "But I have now told his Majesty of a better one."

"Then you have talked to the Emperor?" asked Barbara, blushing.

Her friend nodded a.s.sent, and said mournfully: "My heart still aches when I recall the meeting. O Wawerl! what a man he was when, like a fool, I persuaded him in Ratisbon to hear you sing, and how he looked yesterday!"

"Tell me," she here interrupted earnestly, raising her hands beseechingly.

"It can scarcely be described," Wolf answered, as if under the spell of a painful memory. "He could hardly hold himself up, even in the arm-chair in which he sat. The lower part of his face seems withered, and the upper-even the beautiful lofty brow--is furrowed by deep wrinkles. At every third word his breath fails. One of his diseases, Dr.

Mathys says, would be enough to kill any other man, and he has more than there are fingers on the hand. Besides, even now he will not take advice, but eats and drinks whatever suits his taste."

Barbara shook her head angrily; but Wolf, noticing it, said: "He is the sovereign, and who would venture to withhold anything on which his will is set? But his desires are shrivelling like his face and his body."

"Is the man of the 'More, farther,' also learning to be content?" asked Barbara anxiously. Wolf rose, answering firmly: "No, certainly not! His eyes still sparkle as brightly in his haggard face as if he had by no means given up the old motto. True, Don Luis declares that rest is the one thing for which he longs, and you will see that he knows how to obtain it; but what he means by it only contains fresh conflicts and struggles. His 'Plus ultra' had rendered him the greatest of living men; now he desires to become the least of the least, because the Lord promises to make the last the first. I was received by the regent like a friend. She confided to me that he often repeats the Saviour's words, 'Go, sell all that thou halt, and follow me.' He is determined to cast aside throne, sceptre, and purple, power and splendour, and Don Luis believes that he will know how to gratify this desire, like every other.

What a resolution! But there are special motives concealed beneath it.

Nothing but death can bring repose to this restless spirit, and if he finds the quiet for which he longs, what tasks he will set himself! Don Philip promises, as an obedient son, to continue to wield the sceptre according to the policy of the father who intrusts it to him."

"And then?" asked Barbara eagerly.

"Then will begin the life in the imitation of Christ, which hovers before him."

"Here in the Brabant palace?" interposed Barbara incredulously.

"Here, where his neighbours, the brilliant n.o.bles, enjoy life in noisy magnificence; here, among the amba.s.sadors, the thousand rumours from the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain; here, where the battle against the heretical and liberty-loving yearnings of the citizens never ceases--how can he hope to find peace and composure here?"

"He is far from it," Wolf eagerly interrupted. "'Farewell till we meet again at no distant day upon Spanish soil!' were the parting words of my gracious mistress. Will you promise secrecy?"

Barbara held out her hand with a significant glance; but Wolf, in a lower tone, continued: "He expects to find in Spain the peaceful spot for which he longs. There he will commend himself to the mercy of G.o.d, and prepare for the true life which death is to him. There he expects to be free from time-killing business, and to grant his mind that which he has long desired and a thousand duties forced him to withhold. There, in quiet leisure, he hopes to strive for knowledge and to penetrate deeply into all the new things which were discovered, invented, created, and improved during his reign, and of which he was permitted to learn far too little thoroughly. He will endeavour to gain a better understanding of what stirs, fires, angers, and divides the theologians. He desires to pursue in detail the vast new discoveries of the astronomers, which even amid the pressure of duties he had explained to him. His inquisitive mind seeks to know the new discoveries of navigation, the distant countries which it brought to view. He hopes to search into the plans and works of the architects of fortifications and makers of maps and, by no means least, he is anxious to become thoroughly familiar with the inventions of mechanicians, which have so long aroused his interest."

"He liked to talk to me about these things, and the power of the human intellect, which now shows the true course of the sun and stars,"

Barbara interrupted with eager a.s.sent. "He often showed me the ingenious wheelwork of his Nuremberg clocks. Once--I still hear the words--he compared the most delicate with the thousandfold more sublime works of G.o.d, the vast, ceaseless machinery of the universe, where there is no misplaced spring, no inaccurately adjusted cog in the wheels. Oh, that glorious intellect! What hours were those when he condescended to point out to a poor girl like me the eternal chronometers above our heads, repeat their names, and show the connection between the planets and the course of earthly events and human lives! O Wolf! how glorious it was! How my modest mind increased in strength! And when I listened breathlessly, and he saw how I bowed in mute admiration before his greatness and called me his dear child, his attentive pupil, and pressed his lips to my burning brow, can I ever forget that?"

She sobbed aloud as she spoke and, overwhelmed by the grief which mastered her, covered her face with her hands.

Wolf said nothing. Another had robbed him of the woman he loved, and the greatest anguish of his life was not yet wholly conquered; but in this hour he felt that he had no right to be angry with Barbara, for it was to the greatest of great men that he had been forced to yield. He need not feel it a disgrace to have succ.u.mbed to him.

"Wawerl!" he again exclaimed, "in spite of the pleasant peace which I have found, I could envy you; for once, at least, the sun of love shone with full radiance into your soul. Your experience proves how bright and long is the afterglow if it is only real. This light, I believe, can never be extinguished, no matter how dense is the gloom which shadows life's pathway."

"Yes, indeed, Wolf," she replied dully, with a sorrowful shake of the head. "The gloomy night of which you speak has come, and it will last on and on with unvarying darkness, from year to year, perhaps until the end. What you call light is the remembrance of a single brief month of May. Does it possess the power to render me happy? No, my friend, a thousand times no! It only saves me from despair. But, in spite of everything"--and here her eyes sparkled radiantly--"in spite of all this, I would not change places with any one on earth; for, however dark clouds may conceal the sun, when in quiet hours it once breaks through them, Wolf, how brilliant everything grows around me!"

While speaking, she pa.s.sed her hand across her brow and, as though seized with shame for her frank confession, exclaimed: "But we will let this subject drop. Only you must know one thing more. I shall never be wholly impoverished. What the past gave me was too rich and great; what I expect from the future is too precious for that. It is growing up in distant Spain and, if Heaven accepted the great sacrifice which I once made for the boy whom you call Geronimo, if he receives what I besought for him at that time and on every returning day, then, Wolf, I shall bear the burden of my woe like a light garland of rose leaves. Nay, more. Charles will regain his youth sooner than--be it in love or hate--he will ever forget me. This child guarantees that. It is and will always remain a bridge between us. He, too, can not forget the son, and if he does----"

"No, Barbara, no," interrupted Wolf, carried away by her pa.s.sionate warmth. "The Emperor Charles is constantly thinking of his fair-haired boy. No one has told me so; but if he seeks in Spain the rest for which he longs, the thought of Geronimo--I am sure of that--is not the least powerful cause which draws him thither."

"Do you really think so?" asked Barbara with feverish anxiety.

"Yes," he answered firmly. "This very morning he commanded Don Luis to take the child from Leganes to Villagarcia and commit the education of Geronimo to his wife, that he may find him what he expects and desires."

Here he paused, and Barbara inquired uneasily, "And did he say nothing of Geronimo's mother--of me?"

Wolf shook his head with silent compa.s.sion, and then reluctantly admitted: "I ventured to mention you, but, with one of those looks which no one can resist--you know them--he ordered me to be silent."

Barbara's cheeks flamed with resentment and shame, but she only said, smiling bitterly: "Grief is grief, and this new sorrow does not change the old one. He knows best that I am something more than the poor officer's wife in the Saint-Gory quarter; but I look down, with just pride, on all the others who believe me to be nothing else. Now and always, even long after I am dead, the world will be obliged to recognise the claim which elevates me far above the throng: I am the mother of an Emperor's son!"

She had uttered these words with uplifted head; but Wolf gazed in wondering admiration into the beautiful face, radiant with proud self-satisfaction.

He wished to leave her with this image before his soul, and therefore hurriedly extended his hand and said farewell, after promising to fulfil her entreaty never to come to Brussels without showing by a visit that he remembered her.

CHAPTER XIV.

Pyramus Kogel, on his return, saw nothing of the deep impression which Wolf's visit had made upon Barbara. She merely mentioned it, and carelessly said that the friend of her youth had been delighted with the children.

The news that reached her ears about what was happening in the world awakened her interest, it is true, but she took no trouble to ask for tidings. When, the following year, her husband informed her that the Emperor's only son was about to conclude a second marriage, with Mary Tudor, of England, and Charles was to commit to Philip the sovereignty of the Netherlands, Spain, Naples, and Milan, she received it as if she had already known it.

What she learned through the neighbours of the increasing number of executions of obdurate heretics she deemed the wise measures of a devout and conscientious government.

To the children Barbara was a careful mother. She rarely went to visit the Dubois couple. Frau Traut either could not or was not allowed to tell her anything about her child, except that he was thriving under the maternal care of Dona Magdalena, to whom he had been confided.

The next winter, during which Charles reached his fifty-fourth year, his health failed so noticeably that the physicians despaired of his recovery. The Brabant palace was constantly besieged by people of all cla.s.ses inquiring about the condition of the still honoured and by many deeply beloved monarch, and Barbara almost daily asked for news of him.

She usually entered the palace clad in black and closely veiled, for she had many acquaintances among the attendants.

Adrian was inaccessible, because his master could not spare him a single hour, but she saw his subst.i.tute, Ogier Bodart, who had served the Emperor in Ratisbon. From him she learned how the sufferer pa.s.sed the night, how the day promised, and whether the physician's opinion awakened hope or fear. He even told her that his Majesty was occupying himself with his last will, the payment of his debts, the arrangement of the succession, and the choice of his burial place.

All this occupied Barbara's mind so deeply, and the long waiting to see Bodart often robbed her of so much time, that her housewifely and maternal duties suffered, yet her patient husband endured it a long while indulgently. But once, when he summoned up courage and cautiously blamed her, she quietly admitted that he was right, but added that she had never concealed from him the tie which bound her to the Emperor Charles, and now that Death was stretching his hand toward him, she must be permitted to obtain news of his welfare.

The strong man silenced his dissatisfaction, and placed no obstacles in her way. He was grateful for the maternal solicitude which she showed the children.