The Burgomaster's Wife — Complete. Georg Ebers
had not lost a single word uttered by the organist, and the blood left his ruddy cheeks as he was forced to see this man, whose appearance had especially won his young heart, turn his back upon his father as if he were a dishonorable man to be avoided.
The words, with which Janus Dousa had left him the day before, returned to his mind with great force, and when the baron again seated himself opposite him, the boy raised his eyes and said hesitatingly, but with touching earnestness and sincere anxiety:
“Father, what does that mean? Father—are they so wholly wrong, if they would rather be Hollanders than Spaniards?”
Wibisma looked at his son with surprise and displeasure, and because he felt his own firmness wavering, and a blustering word often does good service where there is lack of possibility or inclination to contend against reasons, he exclaimed more angrily than he had spoken to his son for years:
“Are you, too, beginning to relish the bait with which Orange lures simpletons? Another word of that kind, and I’ll show you how malapert lads are treated. Here, landlord, what’s the meaning of that nonsense on yonder tree?”
“The people, my lord, the Leyden fools are to blame for the mischief, not I. They decked the tree out in that ridiculous way, when the troops stationed in the city during the siege retired. I keep this house as a tenant of old Herr Van der Does, and dare not have any opinions of my own, for people must live, but, as truly as I hope for salvation, I’m loyal to King Philip.”
“Until the Leyden burghers come out here again,” replied Wibisma bitterly. “Did you keep this inn during the siege?”
“Yes, my lord, the Spaniards had no cause to complain of me, and if a poor man’s services are not too insignificant for you, they are at your disposal.”
“Ah! ha!” muttered the baron, gazing attentively at the landlord’s disagreeable face, whose little eyes glittered very craftily, then turning to Nicolas, said:
“Go and watch the blackbirds in the window yonder a little while, my son, I have something to say to the host.”
The youth instantly obeyed and as, instead of looking at the birds, he gazed after the two enthusiastic supporters of Holland’s liberty, who were riding along the road leading to Delft, remembered the simile of fetters that drag men down, and saw rising before his mental vision the glitter of the gold chain King Philip had sent his father, Nicolas involuntarily glanced towards him as he stood whispering eagerly with the landlord. Now he even laid his hand on his shoulder. Was it right for him to hold intercourse with a man whom he must despise at heart? Or was he—he shuddered, for the word “traitor,” which one of the school-boys had shouted in his ears during the quarrel before the church, returned to his memory.
When the rain grew less violent, the travellers left the inn. The baron allowed the hideous landlord to kiss his hand at parting, but Nicolas would not suffer him to touch his.
Few words were exchanged between father and son during the remainder of their ride to the Hague, but the musician and the fencing-master were less silent on the way to Delft.
Wilhelm had modestly, as beseemed the younger man, suggested that his companion had expressed his hostile feelings towards the nobleman too openly.
“True, perfectly true,” replied Allertssohn, whom his friends called “Allerts.” “Very true! Temper oh! temper! You don’t suspect, Herr Wilhelm—But we’ll let it pass.”
“No, speak, Meister.”
“You’ll think no better of me, if I do.”
“Then let us talk of something else.”
“No, Wilhelm. I needn’t be ashamed, no one will take me for a coward.”
The musician laughed, exclaiming: “You a coward! How many Spaniards has your Brescian sword killed?”
“Wounded, wounded, sir, far oftener than killed,” replied the other. “If the devil challenges me I shall ask: Foils, sir, or Spanish swords? But there’s one person I do fear, and that’s my best and at the same time my worst friend, a Netherlander, like yourself, the man who rides here beside you. Yes, when rage seizes upon me, when my beard begins to tremble, my small share of sense flies away as fast as your doves when you let them go. You don’t know me, Wilhelm.”
“Don’t I? How often must one see you in command and visit you in the fencing-room?”
“Pooh, pooh—there I’m as quiet as the water in yonder ditch—but when anything goes against the grain, when—how shall I explain it to you, without similes?”
“Go on.”
“For instance, when I am obliged to see a sycophant treated as if he were Sir Upright—”
“So that vexes you greatly?”
“Vexes? No! Then I grow as savage as a tiger, and I ought not to be so, I ought not. Roland, my foreman, probably likes—”
“Meister, Meister, your beard is beginning to tremble already!”
“What did the Glippers think, when their aristocratic cloaks—”
“The landlord took yours and mine from the fire entirely on his own responsibility.”
“I don’t care! The crook-legged ape did it to honor the Spanish sycophant. It enraged me, it was intolerable.”
“You didn’t keep your wrath to yourself, and I was surprised to see how patiently the baron bore your insults.”
“That’s just it, that’s it!” cried the fencing-master, while his beard began to twitch violently. “That’s what drove me out of the tavern, that’s why I took to my heels. That—that—Roland, my fore man.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Don’t you, don’t you? How should you; but I’ll explain. When you’re as old as I am, young man, you’ll experience it too. There are few perfectly sound trees in the forest, few horses without a blemish, few swords without a stain, and scarcely a man who has passed his fortieth year that has not a worm in his breast. Some gnaw slightly, others torture with sharp fangs, and mine—mine.—Do you want to cast a glance in here?”
The fencing-master struck his broad chest as he uttered these words and, without waiting for his companion’s reply, continued:
“You know me and my life, Herr Wilhelm. What do I do, what do I practise? Only chivalrous work.
“My life is based upon the sword. Do you know a better blade or surer hand than mine? Do my soldiers obey me? Have I spared my blood in fighting before the red walls and towers yonder? No, by my fore man Roland, no, no, a thousand times no.”
“Who denies it, Meister Allerts? But tell me, what do you mean by your cry: Roland, my fore man?”
“Another time, Wilhelm; you mustn’t interrupt me now. Hear my story about where the worm hides in me. So once more: What I do, the calling I follow, is knightly work, yet when a Wibisma, who learned how to use his sword from my father, treats me ill and stirs up my bile, if I should presume to challenge him, as would be my just right, what would he do? Laugh and ask: ‘What will the passado cost, Fencing-master Allerts? Have you polished rapiers?’ Perhaps he wouldn’t even answer at all, and we saw just now how he acts. His glance slipped past me like an eel, and he had wax in his ears. Whether I reproach, or a cur yelps at him, is all the same to his lordship. If only a Renneberg or Brederode had been in my place just now, how quickly Wibisma’s sword would have flown from its sheath, for he understands how to fight and is no coward. But I—I? Nobody would willingly allow himself to be struck in the face, yet so surely as my father was a brave man, even the worst insult could be more easily borne, than the feeling of being held in too slight esteem to be able to offer an affront. You see, Wilhelm, when the Glipper looked past me—”
“Your beard lost its