Part 2

Katrina, in the meantime, had finished setting the table, which, though simple with its service of quaint blue china, was made attractive by a vase filled with crimson roses. She had gathered them that afternoon from a bush growing near the castle gates. So now, after Frieda had placed the dainty meal upon the table, they all stood for a moment, their heads bowed, while Rudolf asked a blessing on the food.

V.

As the three sat at table, Rudolf talked to his wife and Katrina about some of the happenings of the day. It was his custom to say little in regard to the castle, or the visitors who came there. For, as has been said before, both he and Frieda thought it better that their child should know the more practical things of life, so the romance of the castle was hidden from her.

This evening seemed to be an exception, though, and Rudolf talked more freely than he had ever done before, while Katrina asked him many questions. She wanted to hear more about the beautiful lady who had stopped and spoken to her of Saint Elizabeth.

“The very first place the lady wished to see,” her father said, in answer to her eager questions, “was the Elizabethan Gallery, and she spent a long time gazing at the pictures. But,” he continued in a low tone, while it was evident that his feelings were greatly stirred, “it was when she stood before the painting in which the holy Elizabeth gives bread to the hungry poor that I noticed the same thing you spoke of, little daughter,--a strange, beautiful light seemed to be shining from the lady’s face.”

Rudolf paused as the scene in the Elizabethan Gallery rose again before him; then as he was about to resume his story, all three were startled by some one knocking at the door. In answer to the summons to enter, Fritz, all white and trembling, came into the room.

“What is it, my boy?” Frieda and Rudolf both exclaimed; for they saw instantly that he was the bearer of bad tidings.

“There’s been an awful wreck between here and Nüremberg. I heard the news as soon as I got down to Eisenach. The town is all excitement, for they say many have been killed or badly injured. Oh, my poor, poor father!”

With that Fritz could say no more, but sank into a chair. Frieda poured out a glass of water and held it to his lips; then wetting her handkerchief, she gently bathed his aching temples, while little Katrina walked over to where he sat, and took her playmate by the hand.

“But,” said Rudolf, reassuringly, “thou art by no means certain thy father has been injured; so take courage! Still, even if thou shouldst find that he has suffered with the others, thou must be very brave and help him bear it. But come, _bübchen_, let us not tarry. I’ll go down with thee right away.”

As the two hurried down the mountain road they could see the city lights far below them. The houses themselves were invisible, having melted into the gray of the long German twilight.

On drawing near the town, Fritz, spurred by his great anxiety, broke into a run, and Rudolf had not the heart to check him. In the streets they found much confusion; people were hurrying to and fro. The most of them, however, were making their way to the station, and it was there that Fritz, followed by Rudolf, turned his steps. Suddenly he caught sight of one of his young friends and called to him.

“Do you know who was hurt, Heinrich?”

The boy stopped for a moment and stared at Fritz.

“Why, haven’t you heard that Count von Scholtz and his Excellency the Mayor have been badly knocked up, maybe killed? There have been other, too, they say.”

“Who were the others?” Fritz exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” Heinrich answered. “Those were the most important ones; I haven’t heard who the others were.”

But already Fritz had hurried on; and it was but a moment now, until he and Rudolf had reached the station, where a crowd had gathered.

To Fritz the moments of their waiting seemed hours long. But at last some one gave the signal that the train was coming, and all listened with keen attention, while they crowded even closer to the gates.

Presently a succession of low whistles could be plainly heard; then a few moments later the relief train, with its weight of human suffering, steamed slowly into view. Fritz felt his breath coming in quick gasps. Those were anxious moments that he had to wait.

“Take heart, my boy,” Rudolf whispered.

By this time the injured were being lifted carefully from the different coaches, and laid upon the waiting cots. But in the uncertain light shed by the station lamps, it was hard to distinguish any one, the lights flickered so and cast long shadows across the ground.

Suddenly, a murmur went up from the crowd as a stretcher, borne by four men, was carried by.

“There’s Count von Scholtz!” many persons were heard to say. But Fritz gave no heed to this. He was gazing at a tall figure just behind the cot on which lay the injured nobleman, and with a cry of “Father!” would have broken through the line of guards, who stood ready to check the surging crowd, but they held him back. So he and Rudolf could only wait.

Now the cot bearing the Count von Scholtz was lifted to an ambulance; but before the doors were closed, one of the attendants, wearing the Geneva cross upon his arm, turned and whispered something to Conrad Albrecht. The toymaker, in response, went and stood upon the iron step while the injured man evidently spoke to him, for Fritz saw that his father made some reply. Then the ambulance doors were shut, and the wheels began to grate slowly on the road.

Conrad Albrecht began to make his way through the crowd, and as he came forward it could now be plainly seen that both hands were wrapped in linen bandages,--those useful hands, which for many years had furnished happiness to little children far and near; for few were so skilled as he in making toys. And to see those helpless hands smote Fritz and Rudolf to the heart.

VI.

The next morning Katrina, in a blue cotton frock, her golden hair curled prettily, stood at the entrance to the castle. She was waiting there to see the lady who had spoken to her of Saint Elizabeth. Her father said the lady had told him she would come. In the child’s hands was a bunch of crimson roses gathered from the bush just outside the gates.

Katrina had not been there long when she heard the sound of wheels, and, looking down, she saw a carriage in which were two ladies and a gentleman, being driven slowly up the Wartburg hill. One of the ladies was she for whom Katrina had stood waiting, and the little girl felt her heart beat faster and faster, as she saw the three visitors step from the carriage and make their way up toward the castle.

“Ah, you are here again, my dear,” the lady said, as she came upon Katrina standing at the gate. “I am very glad to see you, but we shall not be satisfied to-day to leave you outside; you must come into the castle with us.”

But at that moment Katrina’s thoughts were upon her roses, and the purpose for which they had been gathered.

“These are for you, _gnadige frau_,” Katrina said, her voice trembling with a sudden childish fear, and she held out her lovely crimson offering toward the lady.

“The roses of Saint Elizabeth!” the lady murmured, as she took them in her hand. “How beautiful they are, and how good you are, my child, to give them to me.”

Again Katrina caught the name “Saint Elizabeth”; but why the lady should have called them “the roses of Saint Elizabeth” Katrina did not understand.

“You must come with me to the Elizabethan Gallery,” the lady went on to say. “I want to show you the pictures there. You will see these same beautiful crimson roses and learn a lesson from them.”

“Won’t you please tell me what the lesson is?” asked Katrina, very softly.

The lady looked into the great searching eyes and answered: “They will teach you that under the power of love, or goodness, even the simplest, homeliest thing may be transformed, that is to say changed, into a thing of beauty. This picture of which I speak represents Elizabeth on her errands of mercy. She is carrying a basket of food to the poor of Eisenach when her husband meets her on the way. He wishes to know what she carries in her basket, and lifts the top to see. On looking in he beholds, not bread, with which she had started on her way, but exquisite and fragrant crimson roses,--such roses, my dear, as these.”

With this the speaker stooped and kissed Katrina on the forehead; while at the same moment the child caught sight of a small, silver Maltese cross shining on the lady’s breast.

“Now, Katrina, we must not keep the others waiting. Come with me; I want my good friends over here to know such a dear little castle maiden.” Whereupon the lady led the way to where her two companions stood. Both Mrs. Shaler and her son, when Katrina was introduced, and made them a quaint and pretty curtsy, showed much pleasure; while the former whispered something about the dear, old-fashioned child. To the little girl’s delight, she found that all three of her new acquaintances spoke her own language well. They had spent several years in Germany, and Mr. Robert Shaler had only lately taken a degree at Leipsic.

“You will go with us, won’t you, dear? Your father will be willing, I am sure.” The lady, as she spoke, looked questioningly toward Rudolf, who, with a bunch of keys swinging in his hand, had just come out to meet them and show them through the castle.

“But Fritz!” the child protested as her father, having given his consent, selected one of the keys, with which he unlocked the iron gates.

“Who is Fritz?” the lady asked.

“He’s my comrade,” replied Katrina; “and he has waited a long, long time to see the castle. He’s had so many chances; but he said he wouldn’t go inside until I could see it with him. What would he think if I should go without him!”

“Then, if you and Fritz have agreed to go together, you must surely carry out your promise; so we will take him with us.”

“But Fritz isn’t here,” and there was a look of distress in the child’s usually sunny face. “He lives down there in Eisenach.”

At this point Robert Shaler offered a suggestion; he would go in the carriage and bring Fritz back with him.

“If it wouldn’t put you to any inconvenience,” Rudolf said, “I might drive down and get the lad myself. I would like to ask how his father is; he was injured yesterday in a wreck. Here, Hans, take my place,” and Rudolf, the visitors having assented readily to his wish, handed the bunch of keys to a young assistant who had come in answer to his signal.

“But,” said Katrina’s friend, “we prefer to wait until you return with Fritz; for we must all go in together. Katrina shall have her wish.”

“We can entertain ourselves out here in the courtyard,” Mrs. Shaler said, after Rudolf had driven off; “there is almost as much to interest one outside as inside these ancient strongholds.”

Then after looking at the old drawbridge, and other relics of that feudal past, they all sat down upon the outer wall to enjoy the beautiful panorama far below them.

VII.

Robert Shaler was the first to break the silence.

“There is but one request I have to make,” he said, as he knocked the ashes from his cigar.

“What is it, Robert? One request is very moderate indeed; isn’t that so, Emily?”

As she spoke Katrina’s friend turned to Mrs. Shaler with a smile.

“It is that you and mother will promise not to spend the whole time in the Elizabethan Gallery, but will allow me to see just one other room.” In the young man’s gray eyes was the suspicion of a twinkle, even in spite of the earnestness of his wish.

“And what room do you want to see, my son?”

“I want to see the one in which Martin Luther stayed.”

At this Katrina gave a little start. She recalled what her mother had told her only the night before about Martin Luther having been a prisoner at the Wartburg. How much she, too, would love to see that room!

“Yes, Robert, we must surely see it,” said Katrina’s friend. “No pilgrim to the Wartburg would ever be satisfied to go away without a visit to that room where the great Reformer accomplished some of his grandest work for mankind.” And as she spoke, the lady, under some sudden impulse, laid her white hand upon the little silver cross she wore.

“There is a question I have sometimes asked myself,” said Robert Shaler, “and have never been able to answer to my satisfaction; so I will put it to you and mother. Which of all the influences brought to bear on Luther’s life seems to you to have been the strongest? In other words, which did the most in directing him toward the path he chose?”

“I should say,” Mrs. Shaler answered, “that it was the fact of his being born of such good and honest parents as were Hans and Margaret Luther. No,” she added, after a moment of reflection, “it must have been when his dear friend Alexis, as they walked one day in the woods together, and were overtaken by a storm, was struck by a bolt of lightning and fell dead beside him. It was a bitter grief to Martin Luther, and the event is said by some to have changed the whole current of his life.”

“It seems to me,” said Katrina’s friend in her gentle, yet forceful way, and again her hand sought the little silver cross,--“it seems to me that it might be traced to the day when, in searching through the library of his university, Luther found a Bible, opened it, and, for the first time, read the Book of Samuel. In those days, my dear,” she said in explanation to Katrina, “even students were permitted to read only certain portions of the Scriptures. This story of how the boy Samuel had been taken to the Temple by his mother, and dedicated to the service of the Lord, impressed him very deeply. Then there took root within his own ardent nature a purpose that was steadfast--to know the way of life from God’s sacred Word itself. And was not this, after all, the message that he left us?”

Katrina had been listening with keen attention; she remembered what Fritz had told her about the Cotta house at Eisenach. As their talk of the previous evening all came back to her--how she had wondered if it had not been the Widow Cotta’s kindness that had helped to make Luther great, Katrina made up her mind to ask the question now. But even though her heart beat faster at the very thought of speaking, the little girl was about to do so when the lady took up the thread again and continued in her same sweet tone.

“To be sure, outside influences must affect one very deeply, but it seems to me that the true greatness of a soul must come from within that soul itself.”

As she spoke the lady looked down at Katrina, and saw the puzzled look in the childish face.

“Take this flower, for example,” and, saying this, she held up one of the fragrant crimson roses. “It is true beyond all question that the plant which bore this needed moisture, air, and sunshine, as well as the soil in which it grew--each at its very best,--but even back of all this does there not stand the fact that this exquisite flowering of the plant is the fulfilment of its own deep inner nature? Have you ever thought that it is through no outside influence that the rose becomes the rose, and the lily becomes the lily? Under such help a rose may be a better rose, or a lily a better lily; but each develops out of its own peculiar inner nature.”

Katrina tried hard to understand all that the lady said; and even though she could not then grasp it fully, she was later to come into a complete possession of its meaning. At that moment there was the sound of footsteps, and, looking down, Katrina saw her father coming toward them.

“Fritz could not come;” was Rudolf’s answer to her eager question.

“My friend,” he said, in explanation to the others, and with evident distress, “was found to have been more seriously injured than the doctors thought at first. He is suffering intensely, and Fritz will not leave his father’s bedside.”

“But you must come, anyway, Katrina,” said Mrs. Shaler, after they had all expressed their sympathy. “Another time you and Fritz can have your visit to the castle.”

“No,” Katrina said, “I told Fritz I would go with him, and I must keep my promise.”

“You are right, my child,” said Katrina’s friend, stooping to kiss her brow, before she turned toward the entrance with the others. “A promise is a very sacred thing.”

VIII.

Katrina watched the little party as they went in at the great door leading to the entrance hall. And her friend, just before she disappeared from view, having turned, had seen Katrina standing out there in the sunshine of the court and had waved a farewell to the child. Then the door closed with a heavy sound and the little one realized she was all alone. A strange lump rose in her throat and her blue eyes filled with tears; but she knew that to have kept her promise was the right thing to have done, so, throwing back her head, she laughed away the desire to cry.

Some impulse seemed to turn her steps down toward the castle gates. She walked across the court, past the bench where she and Fritz had sat together, on beyond the Knight’s House with its memories of Martin Luther, until she reached the rosebush--the same bush from which she had gathered the crimson blossoms for the lady.

In her disappointment--for it was indeed a disappointment not to see, after all, the castle of her dreams--Katrina felt a longing for friendly sympathy, and something seemed to tell her that she would find it here. So, after choosing a shady spot, the child sat down in the soft grass, the breath of roses all about her, and some of the velvet petals touching her cheek like a gentle caress.

“I’ll love you more than I ever did before,” Katrina whispered, as she bent even closer to the blossoms. “The lady called you ‘the roses of Saint Elizabeth,’ and she told me that in the castle I would see a picture of Saint Elizabeth carrying roses just like you to the poor, sick people. My dear _mütterchen_ told me about her, too; she said she was so beautiful and good, and that she lived in this same castle where we are living now. Oh,” Katrina added with a sigh, “if I only knew more about her I’d be so glad!”

“Little friend,” whispered a low, sweet voice close to Katrina’s ear, “I can tell you a great deal about Elizabeth, and I am glad that you wish to know her story.”

Katrina, startled and surprised, looked all about her; but not a person could she see.

“Oh,” she said as the thought came to her, “it must be the same voice that spoke to Fritz and me last evening.”

Yet, even as she said it, Katrina could not but feel that they were not the same. That voice had been deep and full and rich; this was as soft and as sweet as the tenderest notes of a harp.

“You do not know, my little friend, that it is the Breath, or Spirit of the Rose that is speaking to you. Now hearken, and I will tell you something about Saint Elizabeth, and her life of loving service.

“Once upon a time,” the Rose began, “there lived here at the Wartburg a Landgrave by the name of Herman. Now Herman, who was a good man, ruled his people well, and they loved him very dearly. Known far and wide as a patron of learning and the arts, especially of music, wise men, poets, and musicians were frequent visitors at his court. It was from some of these he had learned that to King Andrew of Hungary and his wife, Queen Gertrude, had been given a little daughter, and her birth had brought great blessings in its train. For, as was told of her, in the year she was born, wars in her country had ceased, the harvests were never so bountiful, and all evil seemed in great measure to disappear from the land. Not only was she good, but so unusual was her beauty that all rejoiced at sight of her.

“On hearing these things about the little girl it is said that Herman exclaimed: ‘Would to God that this fair child might become the wife of my son Ludwig!’

“In a short time,” the Rose continued, “Herman sent ambassadors to the King of Hungary to ask for the little princess for his son, and it is said that King Andrew received them royally. All were laden with gifts, and when they returned, bringing the little princess, it required over a dozen wagons to convey the priceless treasures which King Andrew sent to the Landgrave and his wife Sophia. There were beautiful jewels and richly embroidered stuffs from the Orient, besides many other things of value. On the tiny Elizabeth her father had bestowed a cradle and a bath of pure silver, most strangely and beautifully wrought; also robes of finest texture exquisitely embroidered in gold, and several noble women of the court to serve as her attendants.

“On her arrival at the Wartburg, the little princess met with great rejoicing, and on the following day was betrothed to Prince Ludwig with solemn ceremony. From the first moment the two children seemed to love each other, and every one predicted for them a happy and blessed marriage. Even as a tiny child Elizabeth gave strong evidence of her goodness, charity, and compassion for the suffering. To the little children round about, she gave away food and clothes and toys--the poor of Eisenach soon became her special care.

“Two years after Ludwig was created a knight down there in St. George’s Church, he and Elizabeth were married. Three days of feasting followed their wedding, then the young couple went to make a visit at the court of Elizabeth’s father in Hungary. Ludwig was then in his twentieth year and Elizabeth was just fifteen. He was tall and fair; while she possessed the richer, darker beauty of her race and country.

“Her life, even then, was one of pure unselfishness, and she seemed to have no fancy for the glitter of the court. She preferred to live in the simplest manner possible, and, often exchanging her apparel for that of the plainest sort, would go on her errands of mercy among the sick and the poor.

“One day, however, when Ludwig was entertaining some royal guests, he requested Elizabeth to attire herself ‘as became his wife and the lady of his love.’ So she, obedient to his wish, called her maids about her, and let them clothe her in her royal robes--‘her tunic of green and gold tissue, her tiara confining her dark tresses, and over her shoulders her embroidered mantle lined with ermine.’

“Arrayed in this rich apparel, Elizabeth was about to cross one of the open courts when she beheld prostrate on the pavement a wretched beggar, shivering with cold and weakened by disease and hunger. She paused, and, obedient to her divine impulse which had ever gone out to the suffering, she removed from her shoulders her royal mantle and laid it upon the shivering beggar. Then she retired to her own apartment, wondering how she could excuse herself to her husband. At that moment Ludwig himself came in, and throwing herself into his arms, Elizabeth confessed what she had done.

“While her husband stood irresolute,” the Rose went on to say, “for he did not know whether to praise or blame her for the deed, her maid Gunta came into the chamber, the royal mantle on her arm.

“‘Madam,’ she said, ‘in passing the wardrobe I found this hanging in its place. Why has your Highness disarrayed yourself?’ And once more she clasped the royal mantle on the shoulders of her mistress.

“Then Ludwig and Elizabeth went forth, their hearts overflowing with gratitude and wonder. And when Elizabeth appeared before the guests, they arose and stood amazed at her beauty, which had never been so dazzling, ‘for a glory that was more than human seemed to play around her form and the jewels on her mantle sparkled with a celestial light.’