CHAPTER IX
A HERO CARRIES WATER IN THE SUN
With all which adventuring and bepraisement back and forth, as those whoknow nineteen will readily be assured, I went home no little elated. Forhad I not come without dishonor through a new and remarkable experience,and even defied the Mystery of the White Wolf, at perhaps more risk tomyself than at the time I had imagined. For, as I found afterwards, therewere those among the company at the Swan that night of sterner mould andmore serious make than Michael Texel.
But, at all events, home to the Red Tower I strode, whistling, and in avery cocksure humor.
The little Helene was going about her house duties silently and distantlywhen I came down from my turret room on the forenoon of the morrow. Shedid not come forward to be kissed, as had been her wont every morningever since I carried her, a little forlorn maid, up to mine own bed thatchill winter's night.
"A good-morrow, Little Playmate!" I bade her, gayly. For my heart wassinging a good tune, well pleased with itself and willing to be at amitywith every one else--counting indeed, as is the wont of brisk hearts, agloomy face little less than a personal insult.
But the maid did not answer, neither indeed did she seem to have heardme.
"I bade you fair good-morning, Helene," said I, again, stopping in mywalk across to my breakfast platter.
But still she was silent, casting sand upon the tiled floor and sweepingit up with great vigor, all her fair body swaying and yielding to thegrace, of movement at every stroke. Strange, it seemed she was now justabout the age when I developed those nodosities of knee and elbow whichtroubled me so sore, but yet there was nothing of the kind about her,only delicate slimness and featly rounded grace.
I went over to her, and would have set my palm affectionately on hershoulder. But she escaped, just as a bird does when you try to put yourhand upon it. It does not seem to fly off. It simply is not there whenyour hand reaches the place.
"Let be," she said, looking upon me haughtily. "By what right do you seekto touch me, sir?"
"Sweetheart," said I, following her, and much astonished, "because I havealways done it and you never objected before."
"When I was a child, and when you loved me as a child, it was well. Butnow, when I am neither a child nor yet do you love me, I would have youcease to treat me as you have done."
"You are indeed no longer a child, but the fairest of sweet maids," Imade answer. "I will do nothing you do not wish me to do. For, hearken tome, Helene, my heart is bound up in you, as indeed you know. But as tothe second word of accusation--that I do not love you anymore--"
"You do not--you cannot!" she interrupted, "or you would not go out withMichael Texel all night to drinking-places, and worse, keeping yourfather and those that _do_ love awake, hurting their hearts here" (sheput her hand on her side), "and all for what--that you may drink andrevel and run into danger with your true friends?"
"Sweetheart," I began--penitently.
The Little Playmate made a gesture of infinite impatience.
"Do not call me that," she said; "you have no right. I am not yoursweetheart. You have no heart at all to love any one with, or you wouldnot behave as you have done lately. You are naught but a silly, selfishboy, that cares for nothing but his own applause and thinks that he hasnothing to do but to come home when his high mightiness is ready and findus all on our knees before him, saying: 'Put your foot, great sir, on ournecks--so shall we be happy and honored.'"
Now this was so perilously near the truth that I was mightily incensed,and I felt that I did well to be angry.
"Girl," I said, grandly, "you do not know what you say. I have beenabroad all night on the service of the State, and I have discovered amost dangerous conspiracy at the peril of my life!"
For I thought it was as well to put the best face on the matter; and,besides, I have never been able, all the days of me, to hide my lightunder a bushel, as the clerks prate about.
But I was not yet done with my adventuring of this eventful day. And inspite of my father setting me, like a misbehaving bairn, to the drudgeryof the water-carrying, there was more in life for me that day than merelyhauling upon a handle. For that is a thing which galls an aspiring youthworse than any other labor, being so terribly monotonous.
As for me, I did not take kindly to it at all--not even though I couldsee mine own image deep in the pails of water as they came up brimmingand cool out of the fern-grown dripping darkness of the well. Aye, andthough the image given back to me was (I say it only of that time) alikely enough picture of a lad with short, crisped locks that curledwhenever they were wet, cheeks like apples, and skin that hath alwaysbeen a trouble to me. For I thought it unmanly and like a girl's. Andthat same skin of mine is, perhaps, the reason why all my days I nevercould abide your buttermilk-and-roses girls, having a supply about meenough to serve a dozen, and therefore thinking but little of theirstock-in-trade.
Now in the Wolfmark this is the common kind of beauty--not that beauty ofany kind is over-common. For our maids--especially those of thecountry--look too much as if they had been made out of wooden pillowssuch as laborers use to lay their heads on of nights--one large bolsterset on the top of two other little ones, and all three well wadded withticking and feathers. But I hope no one will go back to the Wolfmark andtell the maids that Hugo Gottfried said this of them, or of a surety myleft ear will tingle with the running of their tongues if there be anytruth in the old saw.
It was three of the clock and the sun was very fierce on the dusty,unslaked yard of the Wolfsberg, glaring down upon us like the mouth of awide smelter's oven. Fat Fritz, the porter, in his arm-chair of a cell,had well-nigh dissolved into lard and running out at his own door. ThePlaymate's window was open, and I caught the waft of a fan to and fro. Ijudged therefore that my lady knew well that I was working out there inthe heat, and was glad of it--being a spiteful pretty minx.
Then I began to wonder who had given her that fan, for it was not like myfather to do it, and she knew no other. "Ah!" I said to myself, as athought struck me, "could it possibly be Michael Texel? He is rich, andHelene may have known him before. The cunning, dark-eyed littlevagabond--to take my introduction yester-even as if she had never seteyes on the fellow before, while here it is as clear as daylight that hehad all the time been giving her presents--fans and such like."
So I raved within me, half because I believed it, and half because sheseemed so comfortable up there, with her feet on a stool and a cool jugof curds at her elbow, while I sweated and labored in the sun.
Very decidedly it must be Texel; devil fly up with him and scratch himamong the gargoyles of the minster!
The fan wagged on. It looked distractingly cool within. But then myfather--filial obedience was very distinctly a duty, and, also, GottfriedGottfried, though kind, was a man not to be disobeyed--even at nineteen,and after defying the White Wolf.
It was, as I have said, about three by the sundial on the wall, the archof which cast a shadow like jet on the scale, that my father came outthrough the narrow door from the Judgment Hall, opening it with his ownkey. For he had the right of entrance and outgoing of every door in thepalace, not even excepting the bedchamber of Duke Casimir.
"Hugo," he said, "come hither, lad. I did not mean to keep you so long atwork in the sun. You must have filled all the cisterns in the place bythis time!"
I thanked him sincerely, but did not pursue the subject. For, indeed, Ihad not worked quite so hard as in his haste my father had supposed frommy appearance.
"Go within," he said; "don quickly your saint's-day dress, and betakeyourself down to the house of Master Gerard von Sturm, the citychamberlain, and tell him all that he asks of you--readily and truly."
"But, father," said I, "suppose he asks of me that which might condemnone who has trusted me, what am I to say?"
"Tut, boy," said my father, impatiently, "you mean young Michael Texel.Fear not for him. He was the first to inform. He was at Master vonSturm's by eight this morning, elbowing half
a dozen others, all burningand shining lights of the famous Society of the White Wolf. You are thehero of the day down there, it seems."
"And lo! here I am flouted by a stripling girl, and set to carry waterby the hour in the broiling sun!" I said within myself. I possessed,however, though without doubt a manifest hero, far too much of theunheroic quality of discretion to say this aloud to my father.
"I thank you, sir," I said, respectfully. "I will go at once and put onmy finest coat and my shoes of silk."
My father smiled.
"You need not be particular as to the silk shoes. 'Tis to see Master vonSturm, not to court pretty Mistress Ysolinde, that I asked you to visitthe lawyer's house by the Weiss Thor."
But I was not sorry to be able to proclaim my destination as loud as Idared without causing suspicion.
"Hanne," I cried down the turret stairs, "I pray you bring me the silkenshoes with the ribbon bows of silk. I am going down to Master von Sturm'shouse; also my gold chain and bonnet of blue velvet with the goldenfeather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting."
I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop. A light foot wentpattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower.
Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.
"Mistress Helene," I said to myself, "you will find that poor Hugo, whomyou flouted and despised, can yet pay his debts!"
So I put on the fine clothes which I wore on festal days and salliedforth. Now, though the lower orders still hated my father and all thatcame out of the Red Tower, or indeed, for the matter of that, out of theWolfsberg, with hardly concealed malice--yet there were many in the city,specially among those of the upper classes, who began to think well of mydetermination to try another way of life than that to which I had beenborn. For I made no secret of the matter to Michael Texel and such of hiscomrades as joined us in our gatherings.
Indeed, now, when I come to think of it, it seems to me that my fatherwas the only person of my acquaintance who did not suspect that I wasresolved never to wear either the black robe of Inquisition or thecrimson of Final Judgment.
Yet it wore round to within two years, and indeed rather less, of thetime for my initiation into the mysteries of the Red Axe, and still Iremained at home, an idle boy, playing at single-stick and fence withthe men-at-arms, drinking beer in the evening with my bosom cronies, andin the well-grounded opinion of all honest people, likely enough to cometo no good.
But I, Hugo Gottfried, had my eyes and my books open, and knew that I wasbut biding my time.
So it came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of theWolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thorto call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm.So great was the fame of Master Gerard that he was often called in tosettle the mercantile quarrels of the burghers among themselves, and waseven chosen as arbiter between those of other towns. For, thoughaccounted severe, he had universally the name of a just and wise man, whowould not rob the litigants of all their valuables and then decide infavor of neither, as was too often the way with the "justice" of thegreat nobles.
As for Duke Casimir of the Wolfmark, no man or woman went near him on anyplea whatsoever, save that of asking mercy or favor. And unless my fatherchanced to be at hand, mostly they asked in vain. For, as I now knew, hehad to keep up the common bruit of himself throughout the country as acruel, fearless, and implacable tyrant. Besides, his fears were soconstant and so great, perhaps also so well-founded, that often he darednot be merciful.
The Red Axe Page 9