“Tell your master,” she said to the servant who answered it, “that I wish to see him again before I leave.” And soon down the winding stairway she watched a young man come with the same steady pace which might have been heard overhead for a half-hour past.
No need to ask the relationship between the two. Black, waving hair, broad brow, set lips, firm chin, the perfect contour of the handsome face—all these were the son’s heritage of remarkable beauty from his queenly mother; but the headstrong pride and excessive love which shone from her eyes as he came in sight met eyes very different from them. Large and black indeed they were, but their intense look, however deep the passion it bespoke, told of an unearthly passion and a fire that is divine.
“Ah! Heinrich love,” his mother said, “once more, come with me.”
“Nay, little mother,” he answered—the caressing diminutive sounding strangely as addressed to her in her pomp of attire and stately presence—“you said I need not go; that you did not care for me at the baron’s.”
“Not so, Heinrich. I care for you everywhere, everywhere. I am lost without you, love of my soul. But I know you hate it, and, if you must stay from any place, better that than some others. There are no maidens there I care for, my son.”
She watched the calm forehead contract as she spoke. “There! as ever,” she exclaimed. “Wilt never hear woman mentioned without a frown? You are no monk yet, child, at your twentieth year; nor ever shall be, if I can help it. It is enough for me, surely, to have given two sons to the priesthood, without yielding up my last one, my hope and my pride.”
Heinrich made no answer, for the sound of the carriage-wheels was heard, and he offered his mother his hand, led her down the steps, and placed her in the coach. She drew him towards her, and kissed him passionately. “Farewell, my dearest,” she said. “I count the minutes till we meet again.” And she never ceased to watch him as long as the mansion was visible.
He was a sight of which many a mother might have been proud, as he stood there bare headed, the winter sun lighting his face, the winter wind lifting his dark locks, the fresh bloom of youth enhancing his peculiar beauty. His mother sighed deeply as the coach turned a corner which hid him from her view—a sigh often repeated during the course of her journey.
It was a full hour before she was out of her own domains, though the horses sped swiftly over the frozen ground. All those broad acres, all that noble woodland, all those peasant homes, were hers; and for miles behind her the land stretching north and west belonged with it, for she had married the owner of the next estate, and, widowed, held it for her son. But at her death all these possessions must be divided among distant unknown kinsmen, if Heinrich persisted in the desire, which had been his from early boyhood, to become a monk. His mother’s whole heart was set against it. Her aim in life was to find for him a wife whom he would love, and whom he would bring to their home; she longed to hold before her death her son’s son on her knee.