CHAPTER XLVII
THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP
How I stumbled down the stairs and found myself outside the house inthe Weiss Thor I do not know. Whether the servitor, Sir Respectable,showed me out or not has quite passed from me. I only remember that Icame upon myself waiting outside the gate of Bishop Peter's palaceringing at a bell which sounded ghostly enough, tinkling like a crackedkettle behind the door.
The lattice clicked and a face peeped out.
"Get hence, night-raker!" cried a voice. "Wherefore do you come here sountimeously, profaning the holy quiet of our minster-close?"
"There was no very holy calm in the kitchen t'other night, PeterSwinehead!" said I, my wits coming mechanically back to me at thefamiliar sound.
"Ha, Sir Blackamoor, 'tis you; surely your chafts have grown strangelywhite, or else are my eyes serving me foully in the torchlight."
Instinctively I covered as much of my face as I could with mycloak's cape, for indeed I had washed it ere I went forth to see theLady Ysolinde.
"'Tis that you have slipped too much of the Rhenish down thy gullet, oldcomrade," said I, slapping Peter on the back and getting before him sothat he might remark nothing more.
At that, being well pleased with my calling him comrade, he lighted mecordially to my chamber, and there left me to the sleepless meditation ofthe night.
The next day was one of great quietness in the city of Thorn. An uneasy,sultry pause of silence brooded over the lower town. Men's heads showed amoment at door and window, looked furtively up and down the street, andthen vanished again within. Plots were being hatched and plans laid inThorn; yet, while there was the lowering silence in the city, up aloftthe Wolfsberg hummed gayly like a hive. Once I went up that way to see ifI could win any news of my father. But this day the door into the RedTower stood closed, nor would any within open for all my knocking. Soperforce I had to return unsatisfied. Several times I went to the WeissThor to spy the horizon round for the troops of Plassenburg. But only thegray plain of the Mark stretched itself out so far as the eye couldpenetrate--hardly a reeking chimney to be seen, or any token of thepleasant rustic life of man, such as in my youth I remembered to havelooked down upon from the Red Tower. Beneath me the city of Thorn laygrimly quiescent, like a beast of prey which has eaten all its neighbors,and must now die of starvation because there are no more to devour.
The day passed on feet that crept like those of a tortoise, as the sullenminutes dragged by, leaden-clogged and tardy. But the evening came atlast. And with it, knocking at the door of the Bishop's quadrangle andinterrupting my long talk with Dessauer, lo! a messenger, hot-foot fromthe castle.
"To the learned Doctor and his servant, Gottfried Gottfried, being indeath's utmost extremities, sends greeting, and desires greatly to havespeech with them."
Thus ran my father's message in that testing hour where he had seenso many! Yet I was but little surprised. There was no wonder in thefact save the wonder that it should all seem so natural. Dessauerrose quickly.
"I will go with you," he said; "it will be safer. For at least I cankeep the door while you speak with your father."
So, without further word, we followed the messenger up the long, narrow,wooden-gabled street, and heard the folk muttering gloomily in thedarkness within, or talking softly in the dull russet glow of theirhearth-fires. For there were but few lighted candles in Thorn thatnight. And I wondered how near or how far from us tho men of Plassenburgmight be encamping, and thrilled to think that at any moment a spy mightride in to warn Duke Otho of the spy within his city, or the nearapproach of his foe.
But so far all was quiet at the Red Tower. The wicket-gate in the angleof the wall was open, and we passed in without difficulty. As I mountedthe stairs I heard the key turn behind us. Obviously, therefore, we wereexpected. The gate of the Red Tower had been left open for our entrance;and so soon as the birds were in the snare, it was shut, and the sillygoslings trapped.
Nevertheless we climbed up and up the dark stairs till we came tothe door of my father's garret. I pushed it open without knocking,and entered.
"The most learned the Doctor Schmidt," I announced, lest there should besome stranger in the room. And indeed my precaution was necessary enough.For, from my father's bed-head, disengaging himself reluctantly, like adisturbed vulture napping up from the side of a dying steer, FriarLaurence rose out of the darkness, and, folding his robe about him,stalked to the door without a word or nod to either of us. I stoodholding the edge of it till I had watched him well down the stairs. ThenDessauer relieved me at the stair-head as I went to approach my father.
I saw a change in him, very startling, indeed, to see. "In the uttermostextremity" he was, indeed, as he had written. A ghastly pallor overspreadhis face; his eyes were wild, his breathing came both quick and hard.The fire cast nickering lights over his face and on the outlines of hislank figure under the scarlet mantle which had been cast over him. Onecorner of it was cast aside, as if for air or coolness, and I could see athing which gave me a cold chill in the marrow of my spine.
My father still wore the dress which he only donned when some poor soulwas about to die and pay the forfeit.
At first Gottfried took no notice of me whatever, but lay looking at theceiling, his lips muttering something steadily, though what the wordswere I could not hear.
"Father," I said at last, bending over him gently, "I have come to seeyou."
He turned to me, as if suddenly and regretfully summoned back from veryfar away. It was a movement I had seen in many dying men. He looked atme, a strange, luminous comprehension growing up gradually in his eyes.
"Hugo," he said, "you have come home at last! The Little Playmate hascome home, too. We three will make a merry party in the old Red Tower. Wehave not been all together for so long. Lord Christ, but I have been aman much alone! Hugo, why did you leave me so long? Ah, well, I do notblame you, my son. You have been pushing your fortunes, doubtless, andyou have--so they tell me--become a great man in Plassenburg. And thelittle maid is a lady of honor, and very fair to see. But now you twohave come to the old garret, like birds homing to the nest."
"Yes, father," I said to him, "we have both come home to you, the LittlePlaymate and I. And now you will give us your blessing!"
"The Little Playmate--say rather the Little Princess," he cried,cheerfully, as, with the air of one who brings good tidings, he sat up inbed. Then he pointed to a chair on which a pillow had carelessly beenflung. "Little Maid," he said, looking at the cushion as if it had beenHelene, "I am glad you have come back to be wedded to my boy. That waslike you. I ever wished it, indeed. But I never expected to see mychildren thus happy. Yet I always knew you and Hugo were made for eachother. You are at your sewing, little maid. Well, 'tis natural. I mind mewhen my own love sat making dainties of just such delicate and wreathedwhiteness."
He paused, and then, his countenance suddenly changing, he lookedfearfully and fixedly at the chair.
"But, little maid, my own Helene," he cried, in a loud, gasping, alarmedtone, "what is this, best beloved? Why, you are sewing at a shroud?Surely such funeral-trappings become not bridals. A shroud--and there isblood upon it! Put it down--_put it down,_ I pray you!"
The red flames on the fire crackled suddenly up about the back log andcast dancing shadows on his face.
"Lie down and rest, dear father," I said softly to him, "the LittlePlaymate is not here--I, Hugo, your son, am alone beside you."
"Hugo," he said, instantly appeased, and passing a lean arm about me, "mygood son, my brave boy! You will be kind to the little Princess. Sheloves you. There is no man so beloved as you in all the city of Thorn.Many would have loved her besides Otho. Ah, but I threw him out of thewindow there. I threw a Grand Duke out of a window! Ha! ha! it was thebravest jest!"
He laughed a little at intervals, as at a tale that will bear infiniterepetition. "I, Gottfried Gottfried, threw a proximate reigning Princeout of the window! How Casimir laughed! The thing pleased him well. An
dthe little maid, do you remember her, Hugo? How she would teach me--me,the Red Axe of Thorn--how to dance that first night, and how totteringlyshe carried the Red Axe? The little one took heart that night. She willhave a happy future, I know; so blessed, far away from this dark anddamned place of the Wolfsberg. I am glad she is not here to see me die.That is a sight for men, not for fair young loving women."
"Hush, my father," I said, touching his dank brow; "you are not going todie. You will yet live to be strong and well, a man among men."
For one tells these things to dying men. And they smile and pass us by,amused at our childish ignorance, as you and I shall one day smile uponthose others. And even thus did my father.
"Nay, Hugo, I am sped," he answered. "This night ends all. The door Ihave oped for so many is opening from within for me. God's mercy be on asinful man! Ere the light of to-morrow's dawn the Duke's Justicer mustface the Tribunal that has no assessor and no court of appeal."
He threw back the cloak which served him as a mantle, and crying, "Giveme your hand, Hugo!" Gottfried Gottfried staggered to his feet.
"I will die standing up," he said, bending his brows and gazing about himuncertainly. He pointed to the walls of the garret. The fire wasflickering low, but still making the place light enough to see easily.There beside the bed was the Red Axe, with its shining edge undimmed,leaning against the block. There across it was the crimson mask which wasnever more to bind his eyes as he did the office of final dread.
"Do you see them, son Hugo?" he cried, leaning heavily on my shoulder andpointing with his finger; "they are gibbering at me, mowing,processioning by, and pointing mockingly at me. Do you hear themlaughing? That horrid one there with his head under his arm? Laughing asif there were no God! But I am not afraid. Mercy of Jesu! Hath GodHimself no Justicer, that He should punish me because I have fulfilled mycharge? I have all my life been merciful, ever giving the blow of mercyfirst, and the drop of stupefaction before the Extreme Question. Hence,fiends! Shapes inhuman, torment me not! For in my day I was merciful toyou and never struck twice. I _will_ die standing up. The devil shall notfright me--no, nor all his angels!
"God Himself shall not fright me! I appeal to His judgment throne! Gethence, false accusing spirits! I stand at Caesar's judgment-seat. Give methe axe, boy--I will cut down the evil, I will spare the good. Here isthe Red Axe, my son. Take it! Strike with it strong and well. Strike,strike, and spare not!"
Totteringly he handed me the axe, and, clasping his hands, he stoodlooking up.
"God! God!" he cried in a great voice. "I see my Judge face to face; I amnot afraid! But I will die standing up!"
And in this manner, even as I tell it, died Gottfried Gottfried, a strongman, standing up and not afraid. And these arms received him, as, beingdead, he fell headlong.
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