A Garden of Girls; Or, Famous Schoolgirls of Former Days

by Mrs. Thomas Concannon

Joyfully, then, she went forth to meet her. Outside on the gallery torches burned. The great courtyard was full of light and movement, the stamping of horses, the shouting of orders, snatches of laughter and song. She heard a whisper from Ludwig: “May I be your escort, Lady Mother?” and answered with a pressure of the hand. A groom brought her horse, and Ludwig lifted her from the mounting-stone at the bottom of the staircase, on to the bench-like seat, which, for the ladies of the thirteenth century, took the place of a saddle. Her husband and Hermann were already mounted; Ludwig, as his mother’s chosen squire, was at her horse’s head. So they rode, with a long train of knights, and ladies, and squires, and pages, behind them, out of the great court into the Vorburg, and then through the triple gates of the entrance tower, out over the lowered drawbridge, and so to the narrow and dangerous path which led to the plain below. So narrow was the path that they could but ride in single file with a torch-bearer beside each rider to light the way for them. In the depths below them, Eisenach lay, a great blazing jewel in the dark valley. All sorts of summer-night scents came to them from the sloping woods on either side. There was no darkness in the sky, only a deep blue, cut by exquisite star-forms. In the west was a thin curve of a very young moon. Landgraf Hermann began to hum a “Lied” of Walther’s, the “Praise of Summer”—“Swie wol der heide ir manicvaltiu varwe stât,” “How well the painted heath becomes its wealth of summer bloom”—and presently a boy’s soprano took it up, and to wood, and heath, and meadow were being revealed their own sweet loveliness, under the tender light of a poet’s longing, wistful yet passionless, like that of the thin young moon herself!

So those rode down from the Wartburg, who went forth from it to meet the King’s Daughter.

The gates of Eisenach opened to their trumpeter, and through the torch-lit streets they rode to the inn beside Saint George’s Gate, where Michael Hellgreff had had Klingsohr to guest, what time he saw the Star hang low in the mystic East. On their way, they passed groups of burghers and their dames, all in their Sunday best, sitting on benches under the overhanging stories of their gabled, wooden houses, who left off gossiping to cheer their Sovereigns and the handsome young bridegroom. Under the linden on the green, country lads and lasses, in the fine clothes which raised Neidhart’s bile, were dancing a merry “Springtanz,” to the infinite delight of the Court Pages and the dainty scorn of the Court Ladies. They shouted their “Heil” as the Ducal pair passed, but never lost a step. The market-place was almost impassable, so dense were the throngs that crowded round the roasting ox, and the fountain that played wine.

There were two people in the ducal procession who were not sorry to leave the uproar of the streets, and seek the quiet of Master Hellgreff’s garden. These were the Landgräfin and her second son. As for the Landgraf and Hermann, they and the Knights, and Squires, and Pages were out in the street again directly, and the ladies showed so evident a desire to follow them, and see all the gay doings, that the Landgräfin summoned back the Squires and put her ladies in their charge, and sent them forth.

But Ludwig and his mother had their own joy, sitting in the scented, dark garden, into which the gay noises of the streets came, robbed of their harshness, with the stars shining down on them, and the young moon over the woods, while they waited for the trumpet to sound at the gate.

It came at last, and Duchess Sophia hastened to the door of the inn, to be joined there by her Lord and Hermann, as had been agreed. As the Ducal tableau arranged itself, there was a moment’s silence, as if a whole people were holding its breath in expectation. It was broken by the noise of wheels, and a carriage passed through the towered gate, and stopped before the Hellgreff Inn. Two Knights, who rode on either side of it, dismounted, amid the frantic cheers of the by-standers, and knelt to kiss in turn the hand of the Landgraf and the Landgräfin. Then they turned to the carriage, wherein a lady was standing up, with a little sleeping girl in her arms. But the Landgräfin could wait no longer. Over the muddy street she went, in defiance of all etiquette, and took the little maid, warm and lovely with sleep, from the hands of Frau Bertha, and carried her to her Lord.

Then the joy of the people got beyond all bounds. And it was their shouts of welcome that made the little four-year-old bride open her eyes at last—on her German home.

Part II.—On the Wartburg.

It was astonishing how soon she really seemed to make it her home. Kind Duchess Sophia, who had watched the whole first night by the little bride’s silver cradle, in the Inn at Eisenach, looked carefully, in the days that followed their return to the Wartburg, for a sign of home-sickness. But, except that the child’s great dark eyes would sometimes fill with tears when they rested on Frau Bertha, she could find none. Little princesses are early schooled to stoicism, and before the tiny Hungarian’s “Königstochter,” left her father and mother, she had received lessons which, young as she was, she was not too young to understand.

So, after a time, she became, to all intents and purposes, a little German girl, as much one of the family as Agnes, or Heinrich, or Conrad, who shared the Kinderstube with her. She was more in awe of Hermann than anybody else; for Hermann had realised that, instead of its adding to his “manliness,” it made him rather ridiculous to be the “Bräutigam” of a mere baby like that—and his behaviour showed it. For Ludwig, on the contrary, she developed a shy friendship, which went straight to the boy’s chivalrous heart, and made her, in a manner, dearer to him than his blood-sister Agnes. For the rest, the little maid did not often see either Hermann or Ludwig, who were most of the day with their governor serving the first grade of their apprenticeship to the great profession of knighthood.