Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 62

Elizabeth, or indeed far better?"

Aunt Agnes looked up quickly--

"And you mean to say she is not better now! You imagine that spinning meditations all day long is more Christian work for a woman than training these little ones for G.o.d, and helping them to fight their first battles with the devil!"

"Perhaps not, Aunt Agnes," I said, "but then, you see, I know nothing of the inside of a convent."

"_I do_," said Aunt Agnes emphatically, "and also the inside of a nun's heart. And I know what wretched work we make of it when we try to take our education out of our Heavenly Father's hands into our own. Do you think," she continued, "Eva did not learn more in the long nights when she watched over her sick child than she could have learned in a thousand self-imposed vigils before any shrine? And to-night, when she kneels with Heinz, as she will, and says with him, 'Pray G.o.d forgive little Heinz for being a naughty boy to-day,' and lays him on his pillow, and as she watches him fall asleep, asks G.o.d to bless and train the wilful little one, and then asks for pardon herself, do you not think she learns more of what 'forgiveness' means and 'Our Father' than from a year's study of the Theologia Teutsch?"

I smiled and said, "Dear Aunt Agnes, if Fritz wants to hear Eva's praises well sung, I will tell him to suggest to you whether it might not have been a higher vocation for her to remain a nun!"

"Ah! child," said Aunt Agnes, with a little mingling of the old sternness, and the new tenderness in her voice, "if you had learned what I have from those lips, and in this house, you could not, even in jest, bear to hear a syllable of reflection on either."

Indeed, even Aunt Agnes cannot honour this dear home more than I do.

Open to every peasant who has a sorrow or a wrong to tell, it is also linked with the castle; and linked to both, not by any cla.s.s privileges, but because here peasants and n.o.bles alike are welcomed as men and women, and as Christian brothers and sisters.

Now and then we pay a visit to the castle, where our n.o.ble sister Chriemhild is enthroned. But my tastes have always been burgher like, and the parsonage suits me much better than the castle. Besides, I cannot help feeling some little awe of Dame Hermentrud, especially when my two boys are with me, they being apt to indulge in a burgher freedom in their demeanour. The furniture and arrangements of the castle are a generation behind our own at Wittemberg, and I cannot at all make the boys comprehend the majesty of the Gersdorf ancestry, nor the necessary inferiority of people who live in streets to those who live in isolated rock fortresses. So that I am reduced to the Bible law of "honour to grey hairs" to enforce due respect to Dame Hermentrud.

Little Fritz wants to know what the Gersdorf ancestry are renowned for.

"Was it for learning?" he asked.

I thought not, as it is only this generation who have learned to read, and the old knight even is suspected of having strong reasons for preferring listening to Ulrich's reading to using a book for himself.

"Was it then for courage?"

"Certainly, the Gersdorfs had always been brave."

"With whom, then, had they fought?"

"At the time of the Crusades, I believed, against the infidels."

"And since then?"

I did not feel sure, but looking at the ruined castle of Bernstein and the neighbouring height, I was afraid it was against their neighbours.

And so, after much cross questioning, the distinctions of the Gersdorf family seemed to be chiefly reduced to their having been Gersdorfs, and having lived at Gersdorf for a great many hundred years.

Then Fritz desired to know in what way his cousins, the Gersdorfs of this generation, are to distinguish themselves? This question also was a perplexity to me, as I know it often is to Chriemhild. They must not on any account be merchants; and now that in the Evangelical Church the great abbeys are suppressed, and some of the bishoprics are to be secularized, it is hardly deemed consistent with Gersdorf dignity that they should become clergymen. The eldest will have the castle. One of them may study civil law. For the others nothing seems open but the idling dependent life of pages and military attendants in the castles of some of the greater n.o.bles.

If the past is the inheritance of the knights, it seems to me the future is far more likely to be the possession of the active burgher families.

I cannot but feel thankful for the lot which opens to our boys honourable spheres of action in the great cities of the empire. There seems no room for expansion in the life of those petty n.o.bles. While the patrician families of the cities are sailing on the broad current of the times, encouraging art, advancing learning, themselves sharing all the thought and progress of the time, these knightly families in the country remain isolated in their grim castles ruling over a few peasants, and fettered to a narrow local circle, while the great current of the age sweeps by them.

Gottfried says, narrow and ill-used privileges always end in ruining those who bigotedly cling to them. The exclusiveness which begins by shutting others out, commonly ends in shutting the exclusive in. The lordly fortress becomes the narrow prison.

All these thoughts pa.s.sed through my mind as I left the rush-strewn floor of the hall where Dame Hermentrud had received me and my boys, with a lofty condescension, while, in the course of the interview, I had heard her secretly remarking to Chriemhild how unlike the cousins were; "It was quite singular how entirely the Gersdorf children were unlike the Cottas!"

But it was not until I entered Eva's lowly home, that I detected the bitter root of wounded pride from which my deep social speculations sprang. I had been avenging myself on the Schonberg-Gersdorf past by means of the Cotta-Reichenbach future. Yes; Fritz and Eva's lowly home is n.o.bler than Chriemhild's, and richer than ours; richer and n.o.bler just in as far as it is more lowly and more Christian!

And I learned my lesson after this manner.

"Dame Hermentrud is very proud," I said to Eva, as I returned from the castle and sat down beside her in the porch, where she was sewing; "and I really cannot see on what ground."

Eva made no reply, but a little amused smile played about her mouth, which for the moment rather aggravated me.

"Do you mean to say she is _not_ proud, Eva?" I continued controversially.

"I did not mean to say that any one was not proud," said Eva.

"Did you mean then to imply that she has anything to be proud of?"

"There are all the ghosts of all the Gersdorfs," said Eva; "and there is the high ancestral privilege of wearing velvet and pearls, which you and I dare not a.s.sume."

"Surely," said I, "the privilege of possessing Lucas Cranach's pictures, and Albrecht Durer's carvings, is better than that."

"Perhaps it is," said Eva demurely; "perhaps wealth is as firm ground for pride to build on as ancestral rank. Those who have neither, like Fritz and I, may be the most candid judges."

I laughed, and felt a cloud pa.s.s from my heart. Eva had dared to call the sprite which vexed me by his right name, and like any other gnome or cobold, he vanished instantly.

Thank G.o.d our Eva is Cousin Eva again, instead of Sister Ave; that her single heart is here among us to flash the light on our consciences just by shining, instead of being hidden under a saintly canopy in the shrine of some distant convent.

_July_, 1527.

Fritz is at home. It was delightful to see what a festival his return was, not only in the home, but in the village--the children running to the doors to receive a smile, the mothers stopping in their work to welcome him. The day after his return was Sunday. As usual, the children of the village were a.s.sembled at five o'clock in the morning to church.

Among them were our boys, and Chriemhild's, and Eva's twins, Heinz and Agnes--rosy, merry children of the forest as they are. All, however, looked as good and sweet as if they had been children of Eden, as they tripped that morning after each other over the village green, their bright little forms pa.s.sing in and out of the shadow of the great beech-tree which stands opposite the church.

The little company all stood together in the church before the altar, while Fritz stood on the step and taught them. At first they sang a hymn, the elder boys in Latin, and then all together in German; and then Fritz heard them say Luther's Catechism. How sweetly the lisping, childish voices answered his deep, manly voice; like the rustling of the countless summer leaves outside, or the fall of the countless tiny cascades of the village stream in the still summer morning.

"My dear child, what art thou?" he said.

Answer from the score of little hushed, yet ringing voices--

"I am a Christian."

"How dost thou know that?"

"Because I am baptized, and believe on my dear Lord Jesus Christ."

"What is it needful that a Christian should know for his salvation?"

Answer--"The Catechism."

And afterwards, in the part concerning the Christian faith, the sweet voices repeated the Creed in German.

"I believe in G.o.d the Father Almighty."

And Fritz's voice asked gently--

"What does that mean?"