Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 25

But they had neither ears nor eyes. What they found to say concerning events heated their heads to the temperature of balloon furnaces, and Leibgeber blew a fanfare of mere satiric insults out of the reverse end of Fame's trumpet at every female Bayreuthian he met taking her evening walk. He announced it as his opinion that women were the unsafest s.h.i.+ps in winch a man could embark on the great open ocean of life--slaves.h.i.+ps in fact, or bucentaurs (or shuttles[65] which the Devil weaves his nets and gins with)--and the more so that, like other s.h.i.+ps of war, they are so often and so scrupulously washed, sheathed on the outside with poisonous copper, and have about the same amount of bunting and tarry tackle (ribbons) flying about them. Heinrich had gone to Nathalie's, indulging the (highly improbable) antic.i.p.ation that she would at once unhesitatingly accept and act upon his friend's deposition of evidence in his capacity of an eye- and ear-witness concerning Rosa's canonical _impedimenta_ (or ecclesiastical marriage disabilities), and it was his disappointment on this score which was so gnawing upon his mind.

But just as Firmian was discussing and expatiating upon the Venner's lisping and indistinct mode of speaking (his words seemed to curl about the top of his tongue with no power of expression in them), Heinrich cried out, "Hallo! there the dirt-fly goes!" It was the Venner, floundering as a pike does in the net he has been brought to market in.

As the woodp.e.c.k.e.r (naturalists call most gaudy-plumaged birds woodp.e.c.k.e.rs) winged his flight closer by them, they saw, as he pa.s.sed them, that his face was a-glow with anger. Doubtless the cement which had attached him to Nathalie was broken and dissolved.

The two friends waited a little while longer in the shady walk, hoping that they might meet her; but at length they made their way back to town, meeting, as they went, a maid of hers, who was taking the following letter to Leibgeber:--

"You and your friend were, alas! quite right, and all is now at an end.

Please to let me rest, and reflect for a time in solitude over the ruins of my little future. When people's lips are wounded and st.i.tched, they are not allowed to talk, although it is not my lips but my heart that bleeds, and that for your s.e.x. Ah! I blush when I think of all the letters I have written, which it has been such happiness to me to write--and, alas! under such a delusion!--yet I have no real reason to do so after all. You have yourself said that innocent pleasures should give us as little cause to be ashamed as blackberries, although, when the enjoyment is past, there may be a black stain on the lips. But, at all events, I thank you from my heart. As I must have been disenchanted one day, it was kind that it was not done by the wicked sorcerer himself, but by you and your most honest and truthful friend, to whom please to offer my very kind regards and remembrances.

"Yours,

"A. Nathalie."

Heinrich had expected the letter to be one of invitation, "for" (said he) "her empty heart must feel a cold void, like a finger with its nail cut too short." Firmian, whom matrimony had taught, and furnished with barometer scales and meteorological tables for observance of women, knew enough to be of opinion that a woman must, in the very hour when she had dismissed one lover (on purely moral grounds) be a little over-cool towards the person who has persuaded her thereto, even were he her _second_ lover. And (I take leave here to add, myself) for the very same reasons she will exceed in warmth towards this second immediately afterwards.

"Ah! poor Nathalie!" Firmian wished unceasingly "May the flowers and blossoms be court-plaister for the wounds of your heart; may the soft aether of spring be a milk-cure for your oppressed panting bosom." It seemed unspeakably sad to him that an innocent creature like this should be thus tried and punished, as though she were guilty, and be compelled to draw the purifying air of her life from poison plants, and not from wholesome ones.

The next day all Siebenkaes did was to write a letter (in which he signed himself Leibgeber), informing the Count von Vaduz that he was unwell and as grey and yellow as a Swiss cheese. Heinrich had left him no peace until he did this. "The count," said he, "is accustomed, in my person, to a fine, blooming, st.u.r.dy Inspector; but, if he is properly prepared for the thing by a letter, he will really believe you to be me. Luckily we are neither of us men who would be asked to unb.u.t.ton in any custom-house; n.o.body would fancy there was anything inside _our_ waistcoats but skin and bone."[66]

On the Thursday Siebenkaes, standing at the hotel-door, saw the Venner, in an Electoral habit, with a full-dress parade head, and a whole Barth's vineyard in his face, driving to the Hermitage between two young ladies. When he carried this news upstairs, Leibgeber swore--(and also cursed)--to the effect that the scoundrel wasn't worthy of the society of any young lady, unless her head was a Golgotha and her heart a _gorge_ (or _cul_) _de Paris_. He was quite bent on going to see Nathalie then and there, and telling her the news, but Firmian prevented him by main force.

On the Friday she herself wrote to Heinrich as follows:--

"I have mustered up courage to revoke my prohibition, and beg that you and your friend will come to-morrow to beautiful Fantaisie, when (it being Sat.u.r.day) it will lie depopulated. I keep my arms about Nature and Friends.h.i.+p; there is no room in them for anything besides. Do you know, I dreamt last night that I saw you both in one coffin there was a white b.u.t.terfly fluttering above you, and it grew larger and larger till its wings were like great white shrouds; and then it covered you both over and hid you with them, and there was no motion beneath. My dear, dear friend arrives the day after to-morrow--and to-morrow, _you_. And then, I must bid you all adieu.

"N. A."

The Sat.u.r.day in question occupies the whole of the next chapter, and I can form some sort of idea of the reader's eagerness to be at it from _my own_; and all the better, seeing that _I_ have read (to say nothing about writing) the said chapter already, which he has not.

CHAPTER XIV.

A LOVER'S DISMISSAL--FANTAISIE--THE CHILD WITH THE BOUQUET--THE EDEN OF THE NIGHT, AND THE ANGEL AT THE GATE OF PARADISE.

It was not the deeper blue of the sky (which, on the Sat.u.r.day, was as rich and pure as in winter, or by night)--nor the thought of actually standing in the very presence of the sorrowing soul whom he had driven from Paradise with the Sodom apple of the serpent (Venner)--nor his own feeble health--nor memories of his own domestic life;--it was none of these matters taken singly, but the combination of all these semitones and minor intervals together which attuned our Firmian to a melting _maestoso_, and gave to his looks and thoughts (for his afternoon visit) much such a kind and degree of tenderness as he expected he should find in Nathalie's.

What he did find was precisely the reverse. In and about Nathalie there reigned such a n.o.ble _cold_, serene gladsomeness as you may find upon the loftiest mountain peaks; the cloud and the storm are _beneath_, while around there rests a purer, colder air, but a deeper blue, too, and a paler sunlight.

It cannot, of course, surprise me that you are on the tenter-hooks of anxiety to hear the account she is going to give of her rupture with Everard. But her account of it was so brief--it might have been written round a Prussian dollar--so that I must supplement it with mine, which I have taken from Rosa's own written record of it. The fact is, the Venner, five years afterwards, wrote a very pa.s.sable novel (if we may credit the praise bestowed upon it in the 'Universal German Library'), into which he artfully built the whole of the rupture with Nathalie--(that severance between soul and body); at all events, this is the conclusion to which sundry hints of Nathalie's would point us.

The said novel, accordingly, is my fountain of Vaucluse. Emasculate intelligences, such as Rosa's, can only reproduce _experiences_; their poetic _f[oe]tuses_ are nothing but adopted children of the actual.

To be brief, what took place was as follows. Scarce were Firmian and Heinrich gone out among the trees, when the Venner brought up his reserve of vengeance, and asked Nathalie, in a tetchy manner, how it was that she could tolerate visitors of such a poor and plebeian sort.

The haste and the coldness of the departed pair had already set Nathalie on fire, and this address made her blaze forth in a flame upon her yellow-silken questioner. "A question such as that," she answered, "is very little short of an insult;" and she immediately added one of her own--for she was too warm and too proud to dissemble in the slightest, or to hold other than the straightest course with him. "You call at Mr. Siebenkaes's pretty often yourself, do you not?" "Oh!" said this empty braggart, "I call on his _wife_ (to speak the simple truth); _he_ is merely my pretext." "Really," said she, making her syllables last as long as her look of scorn. Meyern, amazed at this behaviour, so very unlike the tone of the antecedent epistolary correspondence (he gave the twin cronies the credit of it)--Meyern, whom her beauty, his own money, and her poverty and dependence upon Blaise (to say nothing of his position of betrothed bridegroom), had now inspired with the utmost audacity--Meyern, this brave and courageous lion, undertook, without a moment's hesitation, a task which n.o.body else would have ventured upon, namely, that of humiliating and bringing to her proper senses this irate Aphrodite, by reading to her the catalogue of his Cicisbean appointments, and, in general terms, unfolding before her the long perspective of the hundreds of gynaec[oe]a and jointure-houses open to him. "It is such an easy matter to wors.h.i.+p false G.o.ddesses and open their temple doors, that I am charmed to be restored to the wors.h.i.+p of the true feminine G.o.dhead, through my Babylonish captivity to you."

All her crushed heart sighed forth, "Ah! then it is all true--he is a wicked wretch, and I am miserable indeed." But she kept silence, outwardly, and went and looked out of the window, in anger. Her soul was one of those whose seats are the knight's upper dais of womankind; it was ever eager to do rare, heroic acts of self-devotion and self-sacrifice; indeed, a fondness for remarkable and out-of-the-way greatness was the only littleness about it. And now, when the Venner tried to make amends for his braggadocio by a sudden jump into a light and sportive tone (a tone which, in minor warfares with the ordinary fair s.e.x, heals breaches much quicker and better than a more serious one)--and proposed a walk in the pretty park to her, as being a spot better adapted for a reconciliation--this n.o.ble soul of hers spread wide its pure white pinions and soared away from out the foul heart of this crooked pike with his silver scales for ever! And she drew near to him and said (all a-glow, but dry-eyed wholly), "Mr. von Meyern, I have quite decided--we are parted for ever. We have never known each other, and our acquaintance is at an end. I will send you back your letters to-morrow, and you will have the goodness to return mine to me." Had he employed a more serious tone, he might have kept hold of this strong soul for some days--perhaps weeks--longer. Without looking at him anymore, she opened a casket and began arranging letters. He tried, in a hundred speeches, to flatter and pacify her; she answered never a word. His heart boiled within him, for he gave the two advocates the blame for all this. At length he thought he would humble this deaf mute (as well as make her alter her determination), by saying, as he now did, "I don't know what your uncle in Kuhschnappel will say to all this. _He_ appears to me to set a much greater value upon my sentiments towards you than you do yourself; indeed, he seems to consider our marriage as essential to your happiness as I think it to mine." This was a burden heavier than her back, so sore bent down by Fate, could bear. She shut up the casket hurriedly, sat down, and rested her bewildered head upon her trembling arms, shedding burning tears, which her hands strove in vain to hide. A reproach of our poverty uttered by lips we have loved, darts like red-hot iron into the heart, and scorches it dry with fire. Rosa, whose vengeance, now wreaked, gave place to the most eager love, (in hopes that her feelings were of the same selfish type as his own), threw himself on his knees before her, crying, "Oh! forget it all! What are we breaking with one another _for_, if we come really to think about it? Your precious tear-drops wash it all away. I mingle mine with them in rich abundance."

She arose with haughty port, leaving him on his knees. "My tears," she said, "have not the smallest reference to anything connected with you.

I _am_ poor, and I would not be rich. After the base, ign.o.ble insult you have put upon me, you shall not stay and see me weep. Have the goodness to leave the room." So that he retired; and--when one considers the weight of the sacks he had to carry--sacks of every kind (including one full of muzzles)--he really did it in a surprisingly brisk and lively manner, holding his head pretty high. His command of his temper and his apparent good humour strike one the more (for I may give him what praise he deserves), that he retained them and took them home with him, and this on an afternoon when, with the two finest and longest levers in all his collection he had utterly failed in touching the smallest point in Nathalie's heart, or the auricles thereof. One of these levers was his old one, which he had tried upon Lenette--that of gradually twisting himself in, corkscrew fas.h.i.+on, in spiral serpentine lines of petty advances, approaches, attentions and illusions; but Nathalie was neither weak nor light enough to be penetrated thus. The other lever was one from which something might really have _been_ expected in the way of effect--though it actually _had_ less than even the first. It consisted in showing his old scars (like an old warrior), and rejuvenating them into wounds; in this manner he bared his suffering heart, pierced by so many a false love, and which (like a dollar with a hole in it), had hung as a votive offering upon so many a shrine. His soul put on Court mourning (of sorrow) of all degrees, whole and half, in hopes of being, like a widow, more enchanting in black. The friend of a Leibgeber, however, could be softened by manly sorrows only--the womanly sort could but harden her.

Meanwhile (as we have said), he left, his _fiancee_ without any pity for her self-sacrifice indeed, and equally without the slightest indignation at her refusal of him. He merely thought, "She may go to the devil;" and he could scarce sufficiently congratulate himself that he had so easily escaped the incalculable annoyance of having to endure life with a creature of the kind from one year's end to another, and to pay her the necessary respect throughout an infernal, long matrimonial life. On the other hand, his bile was mightily stirred against Leibgeber, but more particularly against. Siebenkaes (whom he suspected of being the real judge of his Divorce Court), and he laid the foundation of several gall-stones in his gall-bladder, and of a slight bilious yellow tint in his eyes, with hating the advocate, which he could not do enough.

We return to the Sat.u.r.day. Nathalie derived her calmness and serenity partly from her own strength of mind, but also in good measure from the pair of horses (and of rose maidens) with whom Rosa had been seen driving to the Hermitage. A woman's jealousy is always a day or two older than her love. Moreover, I know of no excellence, no weakness, shortcoming, virtue, womanliness, _manliness_, in a woman which does not tend rather to enkindle than to appease jealousy.

Not only Siebenkaes, but even Leibgeber (anxious to breathe some warmth upon her freezing soul, all stripped of its warm plumage), was this afternoon serious and cordial, not (as he usually did) dressing his rewards and punishments up in irony. Perhaps, too, her gratifying (and flattering) readiness to obey him tamed him down to some extent.

Firmian had, in addition to the reasons above set forth, the more powerful ones--that the English lady was expected home the next day but one, and her coming would put a stop to all this garden pleasure, or interfere with it at all events--that he who knew well, from his own experience, what the wounds of a lost love were, had a boundless compa.s.sion for hers, and would gladly have given his own heart's blood to make up for the loss of hers--moreover, accustomed all his life to bare, mean and empty rooms, he felt a keen enjoyment in being in the richly-furnished, bright and tasteful chamber he was now in, and naturally carried over a portion of this to the account of their inhabitant and hermit.

The maid-servant, whom we have seen this week already, came in just then, with tears in her eyes, faltering out that she was going to confession, and hoped she had done nothing to displease her, &c., &c.

"Anything to displease me?" cried Nathalie; "most certainly not--and I know I can say the same in your mistress's name;" and went out of the room with her and kissed her, unseen, like some good genius. How beautiful are pity and kindness to distress, in a soul which has just risen up in might to resist oppression.

Leibgeber took a volume of 'Tristram Shandy' from the English lady's library, and lay down with it on the lawn under the nearest tree, with the view of making over to his friend the undivided fruition of this anise, marchpane and honeycomb of an afternoon of talk, which to him was merely so much every-day household fare. Moreover, all that day when he made any sign of jesting, Nathalie's eyes would implore him, "Please do not, for just this one day. Do not take pains to point out every pock-pit which Fate has left upon my inner soul to him--spare me for this once." And lastly (which was his princ.i.p.al reason), it would be much easier for Firmian to tell this sensitive Nathalie (now upon one-eighth pay) all his project of making her his appanaged widow, his heiress in jest--to tell it to her wrapped in a triple shroud, written in distorted characters.

Siebenkaes looked upon this undertaking as a sort of day's work at fortification making, a journey across the Alps--round the globe--into the grotto of Antiparos, a discovery of the longitude; he had not the slightest notion how even to _begin_ to set about it. Indeed, he had previously told Leibgeber that, if his death were but a real one, n.o.body would be more ready to talk to her about it, but that for a sham death, he really could not sadden her; so that she would have to consent, altogether by some chance, and unconditionally, to become his widow. "And is my death a thing so very improbable after all?" he said.

"Of course it is," answered Leibgeber. "If it were not, what would become of our death in jest. The lady will e'en have to make the best of it." It would appear that he dealt with women's hearts in a fas.h.i.+on somewhat colder and harder than Siebenkaes, in whose opinion (hermit connoisseur as he was of rarities in the shape of strong female souls) a delicate, suffering one like this could not be too tenderly treated.

However, I do not set up to judge between the two friends.

When Leibgeber had gone out with Yorick, Siebenkaes went and stood before a fresco representing the said Yorick, and poor Maria with her flute and her goat. For the chambers of the great are picture-bibles, and an _orbis pictus_,--they sit, eat and walk in picture exhibitions, which makes it all the harder a matter for them that two, at least, of the greatest expanses in nature--the sky and the sea--cannot be painted over for them. Nathalie went up to him, and at once cried out, "What is there to see in that to-day? Away from it!" She was just as open and unconstrained in her manner with him as he could not manage to be with her. She displayed the warmth and beauty of her soul in that wherein we (unconsciously) un_veil_, or un_mask_ (as the case may be), ourselves more completely than in anything--namely, her mode of bestowing praise.

The illuminated triumphal arch which she erected over the head of her English lady-friend, elevated her own soul so that she stood at that gate of honour as conqueror, in laurel wreath, and glittering collar of the Order of Goodness and Worth. Her praises were the double chorus and echo of the other's excellence; she was so warm and so earnest! Ah!

maidens, fairer are ye a thousand times when ye twine bridal-wreaths and laurel garlands for your companions than when ye plait them crowns of straw, and bend them collars of iron.

She told him how fond she was of British men and women, both in and out of print, although she had never seen any until the previous winter.

"Unless," she said, with a smile, "our friend outside may be considered one."

Leibgeber, out on his gra.s.s mattress, raised his head and saw the couple looking down at him with faces of regard; and the s.h.i.+mmer of love shone forth in three pairs of eyes. One single moment of time thus clasped three sister souls together in one tender embrace.

The maid coming back from confession about this juncture in her white dress--('twas heavy-wing _cases_ rather than light b.u.t.terfly wings to her)--with a trifle of pretty-tinted ribbon about it here and there; Firmian looked at this absolved one for a minute or two, and then took up her black and gold hymn-book, which she had laid down in her haste, finding inside it a whole pattern-card of silks, besides peac.o.c.k's feathers. Nathalie, who saw a satirical expression dawning on his face, drove it away in an instant. "Your s.e.x attaches just as much value to adornment as ours. Look at your Court dresses, the Coronation robes at Frankfort, and uniforms and official costumes of all kinds. Then, the peac.o.c.k was the bird of the old knights and poets, and if you make vows upon his feathers, or wear garlands of them, _we_ may surely wear them, or at all events _mark_ (if not reward) songs with them." Every now and then a barely polite expression of astonishment at what she knew escaped the advocate in spite of himself. He turned over the leaves of the festival hymns, and came upon gilt figures of Our Lady, and found a picture wherein were two parti-coloured blotches (supposed to represent two lovers), and a phosph.o.r.escent heart, which the male blotch was offering to the female with the words:

"And is to thee my fond love all unknown!

How my heart burns is here full plainly shown"

--the whole surrounded by a tracery of leafwork. Firmian loved family and society miniature pictures when (as in this case) they were exceedingly poor as works of art. Nathalie saw and read this; she took the book in haste, snapped the clasp to, and then, when she had done so, said, "You have no objection, have you?"

Courage towards women is not inborn, but acquired. Firmian had had familiar experience of very few; wherefore this natural awe made him look upon every feminine body--particularly if of any standing in society--as a kind of sacred Ark of the Covenant whereon no finger might be laid; (for though it is proper to rise superior to considerations of rank where men are concerned, it is otherwise with women), and upon every female foot as that on which a Queen of Spain stands, and every female finger as a Franklin point emitting electric sparks. If in love with him, I might have likened her to an electrified person, _feeling_ all the sparks and mock pains she emitted. At the same time, nothing could be more natural than that his reverent timidity should diminish as time went on, and that at length, (at a moment when she was looking the other way) he should take courage to deftly s.n.a.t.c.h hold of the end of one of the ribbons in her hair between his fingers--and she never be aware of it. It may have been by way of preliminary studies towards the execution of this feat that he had previously once or twice tried the effect of taking up into his hands things which had been a good deal in hers--such as her English scissors, a broken pincus.h.i.+on, and a pencil-case.

Taking heart of grace hereupon, he thought he would venture to take up a bunch of wax grapes (which he imagined to be made of stone, like those upon b.u.t.ter-boats). He gripped them, accordingly, in his fist as in a wine-press, crushed two or three of them to pieces, and then proffered as many pet.i.tions for mercy and pardon as if he had knocked over and broken the porcelain PaG.o.da of Nanking. "There's no harm done," she said, laughing. "We all find plenty such berries in life--with fine ripe skins--no intoxicating juice--and as easily broken--or easier."

He was in terrible dread lest this glorious, many-tinted rainbow of happiness of his should melt away into evening dew, and it disconcerted him that he no longer saw Leibgeber reading upon the flowery turf.

Outside, the world was brightened into a land of the sun--every tree was a rich, firm-rooted joy-flower--the valley a condensed universe, ringing with music of the spheres. Nevertheless he had not the courage to proffer his arm to this Venus for a stroll through the sun, _i. e_.

the sunny Fantaisie; the Venner's fate, and the fact that there was a late harvest of a few visitors still walking about the gardens, rendered him bashful and mute. Of a sudden Leibgeber knocked at the window with the agate-head of his stick, crying, "Come over to dinner.

My stick-head is the Vienna lantern.[67] We are sure not to get home before midnight." He had ordered a dinner in the cafe. Presently he cried out, "There is a pretty child here asking for you." Siebenkaes hurried out, and found it was the very child into whose hand he had pressed his flowers on the evening when, after the great feast-eve at the Hermitage, he had been soaring along on the wings of fancy through the village of Johannis. "Where is your wife, sir?" asked the child; "the lady who took me out of the water the day before yesterday? I have some beautiful flowers here that my G.o.dpapa sent me to give her. Mother will come and give her best thanks, too, as soon as she can, but just now she's in bed very unwell."

Nathalie, who had heard what the child said, came down, and said, with a blush, "Is it I, darling? Give me your flowers, then." The child, recognising her, kissed her hand, the hem of her dress, and, lastly, her lips, and would have recommenced this round of kisses, when Nathalie, in turning the flowers over, came upon three silken counterfeits amidst its living forget-me-nots and red and white roses.