“Farewell, Otto,” said the good old Abbot, as he stooped and kissed the boy’s cheek.
“Farewell,” answered Otto, in his simple, quiet way, and it brought a pang3 to the old man’s heart that the child should seem to grieve so little at the leave-taking.
“Farewell, Otto,” said the brethren that stood about, “farewell, farewell.”
Then poor brother John came forward and took the boy’s hand, and looked up into his face as he sat upon his horse. “We will meet again,” said he, with his strange, vacant smile, “but maybe it will be in Paradise, and there perhaps they will let us lie in the father’s belfry, and look down upon the angels in the court-yard below.”
“Aye,” answered Otto, with an answering smile.
“Forward,” cried the Baron, in a deep voice, and with a clash of hoofs4 and jingle5 of armor they were gone, and the great wooden gates were shut to behind them.
Down the steep winding6 pathway they rode, and out into the great wide world beyond, upon which Otto and brother John had gazed so often from the wooden belfry of the White Cross on the hill.
“Hast been taught to ride a horse by the priests up yonder on Michaelsburg?” asked the Baron, when they had reached the level road.
“Nay,” said Otto; “we had no horse to ride, but only to bring in the harvest or the grapes from the further vineyards to the vintage.”
“Prut,” said the Baron, “methought the abbot would have had enough of the blood of old days in his veins7 to have taught thee what is fitting for a knight8 to know; art not afeared?”
“Nay,” said Otto, with a smile, “I am not afeared.”
“There at least thou showest thyself a Vuelph,” said the grim Baron. But perhaps Otto’s thought of fear and Baron Conrad’s thought of fear were two very different matters.
The afternoon had passed by the time they had reached the end of their journey. Up the steep, stony9 path they rode to the drawbridge and the great gaping10 gateway11 of Drachenhausen, where wall and tower and battlement looked darker and more forbidding than ever in the gray twilight12 of the coming night. Little Otto looked up with great, wondering, awe-struck eyes at this grim new home of his.
The next moment they clattered13 over the drawbridge that spanned the narrow black gulph between the roadway and the wall, and the next were past the echoing arch of the great gateway and in the gray gloaming of the paved court-yard within.
Otto looked around upon the many faces gathered there to catch the first sight of the little baron; hard, rugged14 faces, seamed and weather-beaten; very different from those of the gentle brethren among whom he had lived, and it seemed strange to him that there was none there whom he should know.
As he climbed the steep, stony steps to the door of the Baron’s house, old Ursela came running down to meet him. She flung her withered15 arms around him and hugged him close to her. “My little child,” she cried, and then fell to sobbing16 as though her heart would break.
“Here is someone knoweth me,” thought the little boy.
His new home was all very strange and wonderful to Otto; the armors, the trophies17, the flags, the long galleries with their ranges of rooms, the great hall below with its vaulted18 roof and its great fireplace of grotesquely19 carved stone, and all the strange people with their lives and thoughts so different from what he had been used to know.
And it was a wonderful thing to explore all the strange places in the dark old castle; places where it seemed to Otto no one could have ever been before.
Once he wandered down a long, dark passageway below the hall, pushed open a narrow, iron-bound oaken door, and found himself all at once in a strange new land; the gray light, coming in through a range of tall, narrow windows, fell upon a row of silent, motionless figures carven in stone, knights20 and ladies in strange armor and dress; each lying upon his or her stony couch with clasped hands, and gazing with fixed21, motionless, stony eyeballs up into the gloomy, vaulted arch above them. There lay, in a cold, silent row, all of the Vuelphs who had died since the ancient castle had been built.
It was the chapel22 into which Otto had made his way, now long since fallen out of use excepting as a burial place of the race.
At another time he clambered up into the loft23 under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering24 things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten books, that had belonged to some old chaplain of the castle in days gone by. They were not precious and beautiful volumes, such as the Father Abbot had showed him, but all the same they had their quaint25 painted pictures of the blessed saints and angels.
Again, at another time, going into the court-yard, Otto had found the door of Melchior’s tower standing26 invitingly27 open, for old Hilda, Schwartz Carl’s wife, had come down below upon some business or other.
Then upon the shaky wooden steps Otto ran without waiting for a second thought, for he had often gazed at those curious buildings hanging so far up in the air, and had wondered what they were like. Round and round and up and up Otto climbed, until his head spun28. At last he reached a landing-stage, and gazing over the edge and down, beheld29 the stone pavement far, far below, lit by a faint glimmer30 of light that entered through the arched doorway31. Otto clutched tight hold of the wooden rail, he had no thought that he had climbed so far.
Upon the other side of the landing was a window that pierced the thick stone walls of the tower; out of the window he looked, and then drew suddenly back again with a gasp32, for it was through the outer wall he peered, and down, down below in the dizzy depths he saw the hard gray rocks, where the black swine, looking no larger than ants in the distance, fed upon the refuse thrown out over the walls of the castle. There lay the moving tree-tops like a billowy green sea, and the coarse thatched roofs of the peasant cottages, round which crawled the little children like tiny human specks33.
Then Otto turned and crept down the stairs, frightened at the height to which he had climbed.
At the doorway he met Mother Hilda. “Bless us,” she cried, starting back and crossing herself, and then, seeing who it was, ducked him a courtesy with as pleasant a smile as her forbidding face, with its little deep-set eyes, was able to put upon itself.
Old Ursela seemed nearer to the boy than anyone else about the castle, excepting it was his father, and it was a newfound delight to Otto to sit beside her and listen to her quaint stories, so different from the monkish34 tales that he had heard and read at the monastery.
But one day it was a tale of a different sort that she told him, and one that opened his eyes to what he had never dreamed of before.
The mellow35 sunlight fell through the window upon old Ursela, as she sat in the warmth with her distaff in her hands while Otto lay close to her feet upon a bear skin, silently thinking over the strange story of a brave knight and a fiery36 dragon that she had just told him. Suddenly Ursela broke the silence.
“Little one,” said she, “thou art wondrously37 like thy own dear mother; didst ever hear how she died?”
“Nay,” said Otto, “but tell me, Ursela, how it was.”
“Tis strange,” said the old woman, “that no one should have told thee in all this time.” And then, in her own fashion she related to him the story of how his father had set forth38 upon that expedition in spite of all that Otto’s mother had said, beseeching39 him to abide40 at home; how he had been foully41 wounded, and how the poor lady had died from her fright and grief.
Otto listened with eyes that grew wider and wider, though not all with wonder; he no longer lay upon the bear skin, but sat up with his hands clasped. For a moment or two after the old woman had ended her story, he sat staring silently at her. Then he cried out, in a sharp voice, “And is this truth that you tell me, Ursela? and did my father seek to rob the towns people of their goods?”
Old Ursela laughed. “Aye,” said she, “that he did and many times. Ah! me, those day’s are all gone now.” And she fetched a deep sigh. “Then we lived in plenty and had both silks and linens42 and velvets besides in the store closets and were able to buy good wines and live in plenty upon the best. Now we dress in frieze43 and live upon what we can get and sometimes that is little enough, with nothing better than sour beer to drink. But there is one comfort in it all, and that is that our good Baron paid back the score he owed the Trutz-Drachen people not only for that, but for all that they had done from the very first.”
Thereupon she went on to tell Otto how Baron Conrad had fulfilled the pledge of revenge that he had made Abbot Otto, how he had watched day after day until one time he had caught the Trutz-Drachen folk, with Baron Frederick at their head, in a narrow defile44 back of the Kaiserburg; of the fierce fight that was there fought; of how the Roderburgs at last fled, leaving Baron Frederick behind them wounded; of how he had kneeled before the Baron Conrad, asking for mercy, and of how Baron Conrad had answered, “Aye, thou shalt have such mercy as thou deservest,” and had therewith raised his great two-handed sword and laid his kneeling enemy dead at one blow.
Poor little Otto had never dreamed that such cruelty and wickedness could be. He listened to the old woman’s story with gaping horror, and when the last came and she told him, with a smack45 of her lips, how his father had killed his enemy with his own hand, he gave a gasping46 cry and sprang to his feet. Just then the door at the other end of the chamber47 was noisily opened, and Baron Conrad himself strode into the room. Otto turned his head, and seeing who it was, gave another cry, loud and quavering, and ran to his father and caught him by the hand.
“Oh, father!” he cried, “oh, father! Is it true that thou hast killed a man with thy own hand?”
“Aye,” said the Baron, grimly, “it is true enough, and I think me I have killed many more than one. But what of that, Otto? Thou must get out of those foolish notions that the old monks48 have taught thee. Here in the world it is different from what it is at St. Michaelsburg; here a man must either slay49 or be slain50.”
But poor little Otto, with his face hidden in his father’s robe, cried as though his heart would break. “Oh, father!” he said, again and again, “it cannot be—it cannot be that thou who art so kind to me should have killed a man with thine own hands.” Then: “I wish that I were back in the monastery again; I am afraid out here in the great wide world; perhaps somebody may kill me, for I am only a weak little boy and could not save my own life if they chose to take it from me.”
Baron Conrad looked down upon Otto all this while, drawing his bushy eyebrows51 together. Once he reached out his hand as though to stroke the boy’s hair, but drew it back again.
Turning angrily upon the old woman, “Ursela,” said he, “thou must tell the child no more such stories as these; he knowest not at all of such things as yet. Keep thy tongue busy with the old woman’s tales that he loves to hear thee tell, and leave it with me to teach him what becometh a true knight and a Vuelph.”
That night the father and son sat together beside the roaring fire in the great ball. “Tell me, Otto,” said the Baron, “dost thou hate me for having done what Ursela told thee today that I did?”
Otto looked for a while into his father’s face. “I know not,” said he at last, in his quaint, quiet voice, “but methinks that I do not hate thee for it.”
The Baron drew his bushy brows together until his eyes twinkled out of the depths beneath them, then of a sudden he broke into a great loud laugh, smiting52 his horny palm with a smack upon his thigh53.
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1
monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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jingle
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| n.叮当声，韵律简单的诗句；v.使叮当作响，叮当响，押韵 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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8
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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11
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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13
clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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trophies
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| n.（为竞赛获胜者颁发的）奖品( trophy的名词复数 )；奖杯；（尤指狩猎或战争中获得的）纪念品；（用于比赛或赛跑名称）奖 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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loft
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| n.阁楼，顶楼 | |
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mouldering
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| v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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invitingly
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| adv. 动人地 | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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monkish
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| adj.僧侣的，修道士的，禁欲的 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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wondrously
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| adv.惊奇地，非常，极其 | |
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38
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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40
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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foully
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| ad.卑鄙地 | |
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42
linens
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| n.亚麻布( linen的名词复数 )；家庭日用织品 | |
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43
frieze
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| n.(墙上的)横饰带，雕带 | |
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44
defile
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| v.弄污，弄脏；n.(山间)小道 | |
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45
smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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46
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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47
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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49
slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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50
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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51
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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52
smiting
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的现在分词 ) | |
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53
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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