SINCE the frail and lonely little barque Giovana was destined to drift aimlessly upon a foreign shore, it was well at least that the winds and waves bore her into a safe harbor. The town of Frankfurt was in the strong hands of the conquering Swedes, who had recently taken it from the Imperialists, and who kept it, if not quiet from the fear of evil, at least safe from its actual occurrence. The Frau Rittmeisterin, as Jeanie's protector was called by her German friends, had relatives in Frankfurt, who gladly received her into their family, and made Jeanie also welcome for her sake. The young Scotch girl soon learned to respect and to like the gray-haired professor, the head of the household; the busy, kindly Hausfrau,' flitting to and fro between her kitchen, her storeroom, and her parlor; and the daughters of the house, all older than herself, comely, friendly maidens, whose honest blue eyes looked at her with frank and half wondering admiration, as if she was a creature from another world. She made ceaseless efforts to acquire their language and to learn their homely household industries, that she might aid them in the labors that were at once their duty and their pleasure.
But at the same time she realized with ever-growing uneasiness her own isolated and dependent position. Her uncle honestly meant to defray her expenses out of his pay, as Captain Stuart of course did those of his wife. But, from causes not far to seek, it happened that during her entire stay at Frankfurt not one groschen reached her from him. Although her kindly entertainers made as light as possible of this circumstance, which they thought natural enough, still in secret she endured not a little keen mortification and wearing anxiety.
Other things awakened thoughts yet more sorrowful. The journey from Wolgast (where they landed) to Frankfurt on the Oder had been made through a desolate, war wasted country. There was no mistaking the terrible signs of misery which met her eyes on every side, as she sat on her pillion behind the Frau Rittmeisterin, secure from harm, in the midst of a well-guarded company of cavaliers, merchants, and ladies. Ruined villages, deserted houses, miserable, famine-stricken wretches crawling timidly out of their hiding-places to beg for food, were everywhere to be seen. Scarcely could they halt for the night at any spot round which some fearful story of blood or rapine did not cling.
“Not much more to be got here,” said the soldiers who formed their escort. “But this is luckless Pomerania, swept clean twice over by the tide of war. There yonder, to the south, lie the rich lands where we shall reap our harvest.” Meanwhile Giovana thought, with a silent shudder of pain, “And is this God's world, that He made and loved, and sent His Son to die for?”
After her arrival in Frankfurt, her growing acquaintance with the German tongue did not tend to make her happier. She soon knew enough to gather something of the stories the Schubarts and their friends talked over as they sat in the garden on summer evenings. In these talks the name of Magdeburg was of frequent occurrence; and whenever it was uttered men's faces grew dark with rage and women's white with fear. “Kaiserlichen” was a word often spoken, and with a visible passion of hate and dread. She soon knew that it meant Imperialists, and began to understand how the emperor's motley, undisciplined hordes, under leaders who for the most part knew neither law nor mercy, left their traces over all the land in “blood and fire and vapor of smoke.” “Katholiken”―she needed no explanation of that term—was often used interchangeably with “Kaiserlichen”; and the young disciple of Knox found no difficulty in believing that all these crimes had been perpetrated in the outraged name of religion; that barbarism was but the tool of fanaticism; and that Germany was doomed to become a seething mass of misery and ruin, because the Kaiser Ferdinand, the pupil of the Jesuits, would not tolerate within its bounds any faith save theirs and his own.
Happening one day to find herself alone with the quiet, usually silent Herr Professor, she ventured to say to him, “I should like to know how the war began, and whose doing it was. Everyone, both here and in Scotland, has the cry upon his lips, ‘For the Protestant religion and the liberties of Germany!' But still―I do not quite understand.”
Herr Schubart, who was a teacher by nature as well as by calling, took the well-beloved pipe from his mouth, laid it down beside him, and, with a look of mild satisfaction in his dreamy blue eyes, prepared for that delight of a scholar, a monologue delivered to a willing and attentive listener.
“You are to know, Fraulein,” he said, “that this memorable conflict, which has lasted now for twelve years, began in the kingdom of Bohemia. Do you understand me?”
“Right well, Herr Professor,” said Jeanie, who found his slow, deliberate accents far easier to follow than the more rapid utterances of her female friends.
“Good. For the causes thereof we must go, however, much farther back, even to the Peace of Augsburg, which Maurice of Saxony won at the sword's point from Kaiser Karl the Fifth in the year 1555―just six-and-seventy years ago. That peace was but a daubing of the wall with untempered mortar. It left unsettled sundry important points, sure to become seeds of future discord. It made no adequate provision for the safety of Protestants who lived under Catholic lords or princes; it stipulated that the Protestants should retain such bishoprics and benefices as they already held, but an article was inserted in it (though never fairly agreed to by both parties), that if any prelate or spiritual lord should in future embrace Protestantism, he should be deprived of all his benefices. Moreover, the treaty only took account of Lutherans; the Calvinists (who are very numerous), with the Zuinglians and other sectaries, were left without legal protection. So, as time passed on, causes of discontent grew and multiplied. There was no lack of wrongs and misdoings on either side. Catholic princes oppressed and banished their Protestant subjects, prelates who became Protestants kept their benefices, and Protestant chapters elected bishops of their own faith to the vacant sees.
“Both parties brought their complaints to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1608; and as the Protestants especially could get no redress―they being the weaker party, and the kaiser and the courts of law against them, ‘so that on the side of their oppressors was power’―they banded together to defend each other. This was the beginning of the renowned Evangelical Union. A year afterward, their opponents also formed the Catholic League, under the Elector. of Bavaria. The two stood facing each other with swords yet undrawn, but with hands on the hilt and eyes full of menace, till the battle-cry from Bohemia gave the signal for furious onslaught.”
“How was that?”
“You know that in Bohemia the Protestants are very numerous—called Hussites, United Brethren, Utraquists (as taking the Lord's Supper in both kinds). They had won for themselves a measure of religious liberty, and obtained from the Kaiser Rudolf a charter called the ‘Letter of Majesty,’ conceding them the right of worship, of retaining their churches and of building new ones when necessary. But the Jesuits and their tool, Ferdinand of Gratz, could not leave them in peace.”
“Is that the Ferdinand who is kaiser now?”
“The same. Mathias, who succeeded Rudolf on the imperial throne, ventured to designate his cousin Ferdinand as his own successor on that of Bohemia. From this man, the pupil and the slave of the Jesuits, and already in his own domains a bitter persecutor, the Protestants knew they could expect no mercy. The destruction of two churches, which they were building, confirmed their worst fears. They remonstrated; but their representatives were arrested, and they were told that all had been done by the emperor's orders. Upon this the Protestant deputies entered the royal castle of Prague, and taking by the shoulders the two imperial councilors who had drawn up the imperial answer to their complaints, they dragged them to the window, and flung them down into the courtyard below, sending their secretary after them to keep them company. So began the great War.”
“I am sorry we Protestants were the first to shed blood.”
“Spare your sorrow. Martinitz, Slawata, and Secretary Fabritius sustained no hurt from their fall of five and forty feet, save that Slawata's shoulder was somewhat bruised. It was not they who were the sufferers, but the poor folk throughout the land―haply we and our children among them. Immediately all. Bohemia was in flames, and the conflagration spread throughout Germany. The Bohemians chose the Elector Palatine Frederick as their king, instead of the hated Ferdinand.”
“I know my father fought for King Frederick.”
“The Winter King, as he was called in mockery, had but a brief tenure of power. He was overthrown at the battle of Prague in 1620, and the Bohemian insurrection was quenched in blood.
“In Germany, too, the arms of the kaiser and of the League were crowned with victory. Tilly, the able general of the League, drove the luckless Frederick from his hereditary estates; and a still greater military genius, Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, completed for the kaiser the subjugation of Germany. The King of Denmark interfered on behalf of the crushed and disheartened Protestants; but he could not prevail against Wallenstein. The emperor's triumph was complete, and he used it unmercifully and unscrupulously. We of the Protestant faith lay in the dust at his feet—when, as in the days of old, God ‘raised us up a saviour, which delivered us out of the hands of them who spoiled us.’”
“The King of Sweden?”
“Ay―and God bless him! Since he set foot upon our shores, on the 29th of June last year, things have worn another aspect. Hope has revived, though it be still hope checkered with fear. Sadly checkered indeed―or was there not last May the ‘Blood Bath’ of Magdeburg, at which all the world stood horror-stricken? However, that has brought down the curse of God upon Tilly and his hordes. No gleam of prosperity has visited them since.”
Here, in consequence of the entrance of some other members of the family, the conversation dropped for the present; but it left much matter for thought with Jeanie.
A short time afterward, she volunteered to do some errands in the town for her friends, feeling very proud of having, as she thought, attained sufficient proficiency in their language. She had to go to a bookseller's shop, to purchase some writing-paper for Professor Schubart. It was easy to ask for “Papier,” and the not very intelligent apprentice who served the shop placed some before her. But it was not the right kind; the sheets should be much larger, for in fact the worthy Herr Professor was writing a book. She tried to explain, but her stock of German was soon exhausted, and the apprentice was not only dull, but impatient, with a possibility of insolence. Happily there was another customer in the shop―a tall, slender lady, dressed in black, who was rather listlessly turning over a collection of Luther's works. Noticing Jeanie's embarrassment, she said a few quiet words to the apprentice, who immediately laid before her a specimen of each of the kinds of paper the shop contained. Jeanie thanked her new friend with a smiling “reverence,” and having easily made her selection paid for her purchase, a task not quite so simple, since gulden, silber groschen, and good groschen were still somewhat perplexing. Meanwhile the dark-robed lady had left the shop, but a purse, evidently hers, lay unnoticed on the floor. Jeanie caught it up, and without reflection started in pursuit, for she saw the tall figure not many yards before her. The lady walked quickly, yet there was no hurry in her movements, only a kind of rapid stateliness. Up one street, down another, nearly all the length of a third, did Jeanie follow her; and was almost out of breath by the time she saw her pause at the door of a substantial, well-built house, in one of the principal streets. As it was impossible to overtake her before she entered, Jeanie now slackened her pace and took breath, so that a few minutes elapsed before she also applied for admittance.
“The lady in black, she has lost something, has she not?” said she to the neat maiden who opened the door.
“Ah! das Fraulein Gertrud!” exclaimed the other, and invited her to enter.
She was led into a pleasant family room, where a lady who was presiding over the evening meal of three little children spoke to her with politeness, but in German quite too rapid for her imperfect comprehension. However, she made known her errand by showing the purse, and in a few minutes Fraulein Gertrud herself came in. In the shop Jeanie had scarcely looked at her face, only noticing her tall, slight figure and her mourning dress. Now, as she received her few quietly uttered words of thanks, she regarded her attentively, and with a kind of admiration, not unmixed with awe. A living face so still and colorless had she never seen before. The features were beautiful as a sculptor's dream, but cold as the marble in which he tells it to the world. Yet there was no want of intelligence there, only of animation and emotion, Evidently the past had written on that face records of anguish which could never be effaced—but now anguish itself had faded, as utterly and completely as joy and hope and love. Jeanie, of course, did not see all this, but she saw quite enough to attract, to perplex, and to baffle her. There was a curious mixture of likeness and unlikeness in the two faces before her. The young mother, who was tranquilly supplying her boys with butterbrod,' bore the same sort of resemblance to the stately lady in black that the living face from which the sculptor had caught his first faint hint might bear to his finished work―what it lost in ideal beauty it gained in warmth and color and softness of expression. Yet Jeanie felt a far greater interest in her first friend, and actually thrilled with pleasure when she spoke to her with a certain lofty kindness, and took her hand for a moment as they parted.
When she returned home, she told her little adventure. The Schubarts in full chorus exclaimed, “Ah! das Fraulein Gertrud!” exactly as the serving-maiden had done.
“And who is the Fraulein Gertrud?” asked Jeanie, with interest.
“Das Fraulein von Savelburg, though indeed if all had their due, she ought to be ‘die Edelfrau’ ―a countess of the Empire in her own right. It is her fancy, however, to be called simply Fraulein Gertrud, like anyone else, so we all do it. She has come from Bohemia; ―they are exiles, she and her cousin, the Frau Doctorin, whom you saw with the little children. An old cavalier, their grandfather, brought them here ten years ago, and died, leaving them friendless among strangers. But the good Dr. Heimskirk married the little one, who might have been his daughter, and the great lady has lived with them ever since.”
“Savelburg!” Jeanie repeated. “I think I have heard that name before.”
“You may have heard her spoken of since you came here. She is cold and proud, and has made no friends among us. But we pity her for her sorrows, which have been great.”
At that moment the Frau Rittmeisterin entered the room quickly, an expression of joy in her face and an open letter in her hand.
“From my husband,” she said. “Thank the dear God, he is safe and well, nor is he at present exposed to any danger. He is still near Stettin with the marquis. Indeed, he laments that the general is not more enterprising and more desirous of leading his fine little army to glory and victory. He fears nothing important will be accomplished before the winter sets in, and then, with the good blessing of God, he hopes to visit me here. But what do you think of that foolish fellow, Graham of Denniscraig? He has actually quarreled with the marquis upon some frivolous pretext, thrown up his commission, and volunteered into the Swedish service.”
The Frau Rittmeisterin was not aware of the presence of. Jeanie, who had seated herself in the deep embrasure of a window; and no one was quick enough to interrupt her, until the young girl herself leant forward, looking greatly distressed. “Oh, Dame Elizabeth, is it true?” she asked, in her native tongue.
“Mein liebes kind,―my dear child,―I did not know you were present, or I would not have told it after such a fashion. But it is, unhappily, too true. And what is worse, perhaps, your uncle has taken with him that poor bairn Hugh, to the ruin of his prospects for life.”
“It may be that Hugh would not leave him.”
“Clashes and clavers!” said Dame Elizabeth unceremoniously. “A bairn of twelve years must do what his elders tell him, since he has not wit enough for his own guidance. Of course your uncle is responsible for him. But, in truth, my bairn, I fear Master Charles is one of those Reubens of whom we see too many in these wars, who being unstable as water shall not excel.”
“Indeed, Dame Elizabeth,” pleaded Jeanie tearfully, “indeed he means well.”
Poor child! it was so often her task to find excuses for her elders. But why should the pale face of the dark-robed lady come before her at that moment, and seem to be looking unutterable scorn at her uncle's vacillation and weakness of purpose?
Dame Elizabeth pitied her distress, and soothed her kindly, assuring her that under no circumstances would she abandon her, and adding that the Schubarts were quite willing to give her a home as long as she desired. She was quieted, and in a manner comforted. But from that day her anxieties for the two most dear to her grew more intense and wearing. They were now no longer “on the edge of the storm,” but in the very midst of it. They had passed “from the safe glad rear to the awful van,” and stood now, so far as she knew, in the forefront of the hottest conflict. All around her were watching with breathless eagerness the movements of the Swedish army, on whose fortunes hung the last hope of Protestantism and liberty. In sympathy with all around, she watched and waited, but with the added earnestness of agonizing personal hope and fear.
Soon the glad tidings of the victory of Gustavus Adolphus at Leipzig thrilled every Protestant heart throughout the length and breadth of the land. Women wept with joy, men gave thanks to the God of battles with voices trembling with emotion. This splendid and decisive triumph of the arms of Protestantism meant for them not merely civil liberty and freedom of worship, but security from the nameless horrors that had made the fair city of Magdeburg a heap of smoldering ruins, reducing in one awful day her thirty thousand prosperous inhabitants to three hundred terror-stricken fugitives. Well indeed might those rejoice whom the Lord had saved, and delivered out of the hand of such enemies! well indeed might every bell in Frankfurt send forth a joyful peal, and the walls of every church re-echo with songs of praise!