Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 30

She started round, crying "Oh good gracious! is it you?" He had clasped her in his arms, before she got these words out, and rested on her kiss, saying, "Good evening, good evening, and how are you, and how have you been?"

His lips stifled the answers. But suddenly she pushed him back and struggled out of his arms, while two other arms clasped him swiftly, and a ba.s.s voice said, "Here am I as well; you are welcome back, praise and thanks be to G.o.d." It was the Schulrath.

Poor, fevered human creatures that we are! driven back and repulsed asunder by our own lackings, and those of others, yet continually drawn together again by never-ceasing longings, in whom one hope of finding love falls away to dust after another, whose wishes come to nothing but _memories_. Our feeble hearts are at all events glowing and right full of love in that hour when we _come back_ and meet again; and in that other hour when we part, disconsolate,--as every star seems milder, larger, and lovelier when it is rising, than when it is overhead. But to souls which _always_ love, and are _never_ angry, these two twilights (when the morning star of meeting, and the evening star of parting s.h.i.+ne) are too sad to bear for to _them_ they seem like _nights_.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE b.u.t.tERFLY ROSA IN THE FORM OF MINING CATERPILLAR--THORN-CROWNS, AND THISTLE-HEADS OF JEALOUSY.

The last chapter was as brief as our delusions. It was one itself, alas! poor Firmian. After the first stormy mutual catechisings, and particularly, after the giving and receiving of all the mutual news, he saw more and more clearly that Lenette's invisible church, in which Stiefel filled the part of soul's bridegroom, was become very much of a _visible_ one. It was as if the earthquake of the recent happiness had rent in twain the veil of the Holy of Holies, the inmost sanctuary, wherein Stiefel's head fluttered by way of cherub. But, to speak the truth, I am telling a lie here, because it was Lenette's special _object_ to _show_ and _display_ a _particular_ liking for the Schulrath, who, in his delight thereat, went fluttering on from Arcadia to Otaheite, and from thence to Eldorado, and from thence to Walhalla, which was a certain indication, that, up to this point, his good fortune, during Firmian's absence, had been _less_. He related that, "Rosa had broken with the Heimlicher; that the Venner, whom the latter had wanted to utilise as a spinning machine, had turned into an engine of war against him. The cause of all this had been the niece in Bayreuth, whose engagement the Venner had broken off, because he had caught her being kissed by a gentleman there."

Firmian grew red as fire, and cried "Miserable c.o.c.kroach! It was _she_ who broke off her engagement with that wretched lying scoundrel, not _he_ who broke off his with her. Ah! Herr Schulrath, be that poor lady's true knight and champion, and run this wretched abortion of a lie through and through wherever you came across it. From whom did you get hold of this evil weed?" Stiefel pointed calmly to Lenette, saying, "From _her_!" "And where did _you_ get hold of it?" Firmian cried to her in amazement. "Mr. Von Meyern," she answered, with her face all glowing red, "was here calling, and told it me himself." "But I was fetched immediately," Stiefel interrupted, "and I skilfully sent him about his business." Stiefel then asked for a correct version of what had happened. Firmian thereupon, timidly, and with many changes of tone, made a highly favourable report of the rose-maiden and her conduct of the matter ("rose-maiden" in a threefold sense, on account of the roses in her cheeks, of her victorious virtue, and the green rosebuds she had given to him). But on Lenette's account he awarded her a _proxima accessit_ only, not the gold medal. He had to bind the Venner, by way of sacrificial ram, to the horns of the altar in place of Nathalie, or, at all events, harness him by way of saddle-horse to her triumphal car, and relate without disguise how Leibgeber had been the person who broke off the engagement, and, as it were, dragged her back by the sleeve, as she was making the first step into the Minotaur's cave--by means of his satiric sketches of Meyern.

"But it was _you_, of course," said Lenette, _without_ any tone of interrogation, "who told Leibgeber all about him, to begin with."

"Yes," said he.

We of the human race give to words of one syllable, to "Yes," and "No,"

at all events, more intonations, and shades of intonations, than the Chinese themselves. The yes in question was a rapid, toneless, cold yes, being merely meant for a "What then," or "Suppose I did." She interrupted a digressive speech of Stiefel's with a point-blank, target, bull's-eye question:

"_When_ had you been with her V"

At last Firmian, with his battle-telescope, saw hostile movements of all kinds going on in her heart; he made a playful diversion, and said, "Herr Schulrath, _when_ did you come to see Lenette?"

"Three times every week at least, and, very often, oftener than that; always about this time of the evening," he answered.

"_Very_ well," said Firmian, in a kindly and playful fas.h.i.+on. "I'm not going to be jealous, but be good enough to remark--and my Lenette will please to do so too--that _I_ was with Nathalie, _along with Leibgeber, twice_ in all; once in the afternoon, once in the evening, walking about the grounds of Fantaisie.

"Well, Lenette?"

She parted her cherry lips, and her eyes were like Volta's electric condensers.

Stiefel went away, and Lenette (from a countenance on which there seemed _two_ fires burning, the fire of anger and a lovelier fire) flashed after him a spark of eye love, calculated to blow up the whole powder-mill of a jealous husband. The married pair were scarce alone, when, by way of propitiating her, he asked her if that confounded Venner had been plaguing her again; and then the firework which had been fixed ready on the scaffold of her face, went hissing off.

"Oh! of course _you_ can't endure him. You are jealous of him, on account of this beautiful, _learned_, INTELLECTUAL, Nathalie of yours.

Do you suppose I don't know quite well about you and her going about a whole night among the trees--and hugging and kissing! A pretty story!

Ah fie! I never would have believed it of you. No wonder Mr. Meyern said 'Good morning' to her, learning and all. Oh yes! you'll excuse yourself, no doubt."

"I should have talked to you about all that most innocent affair,"

answered Firmian, tranquilly, "while Stiefel was here, if I had not seen quite well that you knew of it. Am _I_ annoyed because _he_ kissed _you_ while I was away?"

This irritated her still more; firstly, because it was impossible that Firmian could know of a certainty that it was true--(and it _was_!),--and secondly, because she thought "You can forgive it very easily now that you care more for another woman than you do for me."

But then, for the self-same reason (inasmuch as _she_ cared more for another man than she did for _him_), _she_, of course, ought to have found no difficulty in forgiving him too. But, as usual, instead of answering his question, she put one herself: "Did _I_ ever give anybody silk forget-me-nots, as _somebody_ did to _somebody_? Thank goodness!

mine are still in my drawer."

Here _two_ hearts contended within him--a _tender_ heart which was pierced by this unintentional a.s.sociation of forget-me-nots so dissimilar--and a _man's_ heart, which was powerfully stirred and stung by this detestable defensive and offensive alliance with the fellow who, as was evident now, had sent the innocent child, whom Nathalie had rescued, to Fantaisie by way of a stalking-horse, behind which to conceal and mask himself, and the toils he had spun. As Siebenkaes now, with an outburst of anger, converted his judgment-seat into a stool of repentance for the Venner, whom he stigmatised as a canker-worm of feminine buds, a sparrowhawk, a housebreaker as regarded matrimonial treasures, and a crimp, trepanner, and soul-stealer of mated souls--vowing with the utmost warmth that it was Nathalie who had scornfully sent Rosa to the right-about, not Rosa who had rejected her: and as, of course, he interdicted her in the most peremptory terms from everything in the nature of dissemination or repet.i.tion of the Venner's lying demi-romance, he turned his unfortunate wife into a sour, pungent, Erfurt radish, from head to foot.

Let us not fix our eyes too long, or too magisterially, upon this heat-rash or purulent fever of poor Lenette's. For my part, I am going to leave _her_ alone, but make an onslaught on her entire s.e.x at once.

I shall be doing so, I trust, when I a.s.sert that women never paint with more caustic colours (Swift's black art is but weak water-colour in comparison) than when they have to portray the bodily unlovelinesses of other women. Further, that the prettied of faces roughens and bristles into an ugly one, when it expresses anger with the feminine recruiting officer more than pity for the deserter. To speak accurately: Every woman is jealous of all other women, because--not, perhaps, her own husband (or lover, as the case may be), but--all other men are attracted by them, and are consequently not true to _her_. Therefore every woman takes the same vow concerning these vice-queens of this earth that Hannibal took concerning the Romans, and keeps it just as religiously. For which reason every woman has the power which Fordyce says all animal bodies possess--that of making all others cold; and, indeed, every woman must of necessity be an enemy and persecutor of a s.e.x which consists entirely of rivals. And it is probable that many--for instance, nuns in their convents, and Moravians--call each other sisters, or sister-souls, with the view of giving some sort of expression to the nature of their sentiments for each other; since sisters are just the very people who quarrel the most. This is why Madame Bouillon's _parties quarrees_ consisted of three men and only one woman. It may be that it led St. Athanasius, Basilius, Scotus, and other teachers of the Church to entertain the belief that, with the single exception of the Virgin Mary, all women would rise as men at the Day of Judgment, in order that there may be no anger, or envy, or bickerings in heaven. There is but one queen who is beloved, nourished and cherished by many thousands of her own s.e.x--the queen-bee of the workers (who are of the feminine gender, according to the most recent observations).

I shall close this chapter with a sort of preliminary word for Lenette.

The foul fiend Rosa, by way of giving like for like (or rather _worse_ for like) had emptied whole basketsful of the seed of evil-weeds into Lenette's open heart, and unpacked compliments, to commence with, and news of her husband; then, afterwards, disparaging matter. She had believed him all the more readily because it was a clever, learned, and intellectual woman whom he was nigrifying, breaking with, and offering up as a sacrifice. What she most hated in Nathalie _was_ her cleverness, her learning, and intellectualness; for it was the want of those that had brought _herself_ to such shame. Like many women, she thought that the _heads_ of Venuses were not "the true article" (as some connoisseurs think is the case with the Venus de Medici). What provoked her most of all was that Firmian should take another woman's part more than his own wife's--nay, at his own wife's expense; and that Nathalie, in her _conceit_ and _pride_, had got ready a _sack_ to give such a nice, _rich_ gentleman, instead of weaving a _net_ to hold him with. She was also very much annoyed that her husband had _admitted_ everything, as she considered his candour was only lordly indifference as to what she might feel on the subject.

What did Firmian do? He forgave. His two reasons for doing so were good ones--"Bayreuth" and "the grave." The former had parted him from her so long; the latter was soon to part him from her for ever. A _third_ reason might perhaps be this: Lenette, as regarded his love for Nathalie, was _not_ so very utterly the reverse of right.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AFTER SUMMER OF MARRIAGE--PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH.

Although Sunday was come, and the Vicar's eyes were no more open than his congregation's (because, like many of the clergy, he kept his physical eyes shut while preaching), my hero went to him to get his certificate of birth, because this was wanted for the Brandenburg Widows' Fund.

Leibgeber had charged himself with the rest. Enough of the subject--for I don't care to say more about it than I can help; because some years ago--long after all Siebenkaes's pecuniary affairs had been settled up to the last farthing, and his debt to the Fund duly paid--the 'Imperial Gazette' publicly accused me of bringing discredit upon Integrity and Widows' Funds by the last book of this story of mine, and considered it to be its (the 'Gazette's') duty to take me pretty severely to task on the subject, according to its measure of ability. But are the advocate and I the same person? Does not everybody know that my proceedings as regards my married life in general, and the Prussian Widows' Fund in particular, have been quite unlike those of Siebenkaes in every respect, and that to this very hour I have never departed this life, either in jest or in earnest, in all these years during which I have regularly paid a considerable annual contribution to the inst.i.tution in question?

Nay, do I not mean--(and I need have no hesitation in saying so)--to go on paying my yearly _quotum_ for as many more years as I can--so that, when I die, the fund may have got more out of me than out of any other contributor?

These are my views on the subject; but I must do Siebenkaes the simple justice to state (to his credit) that the views by which he was actuated differed very, very little from my own. The only thing was, that, in Bayreuth, he had immolated his own truthful heart to the stormy urgency of his friend, Leibgeber, which had imbued and intoxicated him, in a moment of enthusiasm, with that cosmopolitan spirit of his which, in the boundless soul-transmigrations which, in the course of his never ending journeyings he pa.s.sed through, had come to look upon life too much as a mere game at cards, and stage-play--as a Chicken-hazard, and Opera Buffa and Seria combined. And as, besides, he knew Leibgeber's pecuniary circ.u.mstances, and his contempt for money (and his own into the bargain), he had undertaken a _role_ which was anything but well suited to him, and as to which he had as little foreseen the torture of difficulty which it would cost him to act it, as the penitential sermon which was to be preached from Gotha concerning it.

At the same time it was a great piece of good luck that it was _only_ Becker's 'Gazette' that found out about Nathalie's straw-widowhood, and not Lenette! Heavens, if the _latter_, with her silk "Forget-me" (for the "not" had altogether disappeared from it), in her hand, had got wind of Firmian's adoptive marriage! I neither desire to judge the fair s.e.x, nor to be judged by them. But at this point I would fain put to all my lady readers (and most particularly to _one_ of them), two rather weighty and important questions.

"Would _you_ not bend down from your judge's seat, and hand my hero, if not a _flower_-wreath, an _oak_-wreath, at all events, for his good and kind behaviour to this feminine couple? Or (inasmuch as there are four female hands playing a duet sonata on his heart), a bouquet for his b.u.t.ton-hole at the very least?" Dearest lady readers, you could not possibly have given a better verdict--although my surprise at it is not so great as my gratification. My second question n.o.body shall put to you but yourselves. Let each of you ask herself, "Suppose _you_ had this fourth book of my story put into your hands, and _were_ Lenette her very self, and consequently knew to a hair all about the whole business from beginning to end; what would you _think_ of your husband Siebenkaes' proceedings? What would you _do_?"

I will answer the question for you: "Weep, storm,[80] chide, be very angry, not speak a word, break things, &c." So terribly does selfishness falsify, corrupt and degrade the most delicate moral feelings, coercing them into the giving of two totally diverse verdicts upon one and the same case. Whenever I am wavering, or in any hesitation, concerning the worth of a character, or conclusion, I always find it helps me to come to a decision in a moment if I represent it to my mind's-eye as coming wet from the press in a novel or biography. If it seems right _then_, it is certain to _be_ right.

It was far better, and more becoming, for Graces to dwell hidden in the Satyrs of old, and in Socrates, than to reverse the process, so that Satyrs should dwell hidden within Graces. The Satyr who _possessed_ Lenette b.u.t.ted about him in all directions with horns of very consider able sharpness. Her unreciprocated anger began to take the shape of sneering banter, for her husband's present meekness and gentleness were so strikingly in contrast with his former Job's-disputations, that she came to the conclusion that his heart was frozen altogether. In old times he had wanted to be served by mutes (like a Sultan), until his satirical f[oe]tus, his book, should be brought to the light of day by help of the Roonhuysian lever and Caesarian operation of the penknife; even as Zacharias was dumb until the child ceased to be so, and was born, and cried simultaneously with him. Formerly, their married life had been like most other people's; for the majority of wedded pairs are like those twin-daughters,[81] grown together as to their backs, but continually quarrelling (though they could never look each other in the face), and always trying to go towards opposite quarters of the globe, till the one succeeded in forcing the other in the direction in which she wanted to go. Now, on the contrary, Firmian allowed all Lenette's discords to jar on as long as they pleased, without the slightest trace of irritation. A soft, peaceful light now fell upon all her angles, upon her works of supererogation in was.h.i.+ng, on the water-sproutlings of her tongue; and the tint of the shadow which her heart (made of dark earth, like everybody else's) cast, as a matter of course, was very much lost in the blue of heaven, as shadows cast in starlight are (according to Mariette) as blue as the sky overhead. And was there not always a grand, blue, starry sky spread out above his soul, in the shape of death? Every morning, every evening, he said to himself, "Why should I not go on always forgiving everything! We have such a very little while to be together now." Every opportunity of forgiving did something to sweeten the bitterness of his voluntary farewell; and, as those who are going away, or going to die, are eager to pardon,--the deep, warm spring and fount of love in his heart was never chilled from morning till night. He was fain to pa.s.s along the brief, dark, alley of weeping willows, which led from his home to his empty grave (a _full_ one, alas! as regarded his love), leaning only on beloved arms; and to rest on the mossy banks by its side, between his friend and his wife, with a beloved hand in each of his own. Thus it is that death not only beautifies our bodies when the soul has fled (as Lavater points out), but even in life the thought of death gives new beauty to our lineaments, and new strength to the heart, as rosemary both winds as a garland about the dead, and revives the fainting by its cordial essence.

"There is nothing surprising to me in this," quoth the reader.

"Everybody in Firmian's position would have felt just as he did; at all events, _I_ should." But, dear reader, _are_ we not _all_ in Firmian's position? Does the nearness or the remoteness of our everlasting good-bye make any difference? Ah! inasmuch as, here below, we are nothing but images, delusively firm, and red of colour, standing on the edges of our holes, into which (like the ancient princes) we totter, crumbling to dust, when the unknown hand gives the mouldering images a shake--why do we not say (like Firmian), "Why should I not forgive? We have so short a time to be together." We should have four better fast-days, and prayer- and penitence-days, than we usually have if we had but four days of bitter, hopeless sickness to go through, one after the other, every year; because we should look down from our sick bed (that ice-region of life beside the crater) with loftier and sublimer glance upon the pleasure-gardens and pleasure-forests of life as they shrunk and shrivelled away; because _there_ our wretched racecourses would seem shorter, and only the _people_ larger, and we should _there_ love nothing but _hearts_, magnify and detect no other faults but our own, and because we leave our sick beds with better resolutions than we take to them with. For the first day of convalescence of the body, after its winter of sickness, is the blossoming time of a lovelier soul, which issues forth as if transfigured from the earth's cold crust into a mild warm Eden; longing to press all things to her breast (feeble yet, and short of breath)--mankind, and flowers, and spring breezes, and every other bosom which has sighed for her upon her bed of pain. Like all the newly risen from death, she longs to love _all things_ throughout an eternity; and the whole heart is a warm and dewy spring-time, rich in buds, beneath a youthful sun.

_How_ Firmian would have loved his Lenette, had she not constrained him to be always pardoning, instead of petting and caressing her! Ah! she would have rendered his approaching death a terribly difficult task for him if she had been like what she was in their honeymoon days!

But their byegone Paradise was now yielding a harvest of ripe _Grains_ of Paradise (the old name for peppercorns). Lenette piled fuel on the fire of her h.e.l.l's ante-chamber of jealousy, brewing there, for him, the draught of the coming heaven of Vaduz. A jealous woman can be cured by no kind of speech or treatment; she is like the kettledrums, which are the most difficult of all instruments to tune, and the quickest to get out of tune when tuned. A loving, tender look was, to Lenette, a blister; for he had looked at Nathalie with one like it. If he seemed happy and glad, it was evident he was thinking of the past. If he looked _un_happy and sad, he was thinking of the past too, but with longing. He had to consider his face in the light of an open warrant of caption, or billposter and placard, of the thoughts which were behind it. In short, her husband merely served her as fiddle rosin to roughen her horse-hair with, in order to bow her _viole d'amour_ with it from morning till night. He dare not allow himself more than an occasional word about Bayreuth, scarce so much as the name of it; for if he did, she knew whom he was thinking of. Nay, he could not say anything at all strong in disparagement of Kuhschnappel without raising a suspicion that he was comparing it with Bayreuth, and thinking the latter much the better place (for reasons well known to _her_). Wherefore (and whether in earnest, or from consideration for her, 1 really do not know) he restricted his laudations of Bayreuth merely to the _buildings_ there, not venturing to extend them to their inhabitants.

There was only one object of praise concerning the praising, whereof he ignored every idea of difficulty and miscomprehension, and this was Leibgeber, his friend. But--thanks to Rosa's calumnies, and the fact of his having aided and abetted in affairs at Fantaisie--it so chanced that Leibgeber had come to be more unendurable by her now than he had been in the old days, by reason of his indecorous conduct, and his great dog. She knew, moreover, that Stiefel had several times expressed grave disapproval of him and his doings.

"My dear Henry will be here very soon now, Lenette," said Firmian.

"And that horrible brute with him, I suppose, of course?" she asked.

"I do think," he answered, "you might like my friend a little better than you do; if not because he is so very like myself, at any rate, on account of the faithfulness of his friends.h.i.+p. If you did, you wouldn't be so terribly set against his dog; you used not to mind mine when I had one. He _must_ have _some_ faithful creature to follow him about on his everlasting journeys; through thick and thin, through good times and bad, as Saufinder does. And he looks upon _me_ as just such another faithful creature, and is every bit as fond of me. But for that matter, the whole faithful trio of us are not likely to trouble Kuhschnappel very long."

Meanwhile, no amount of love enabled him to gain his _suit_ for love.

It here strikes me that this was only a most natural matter, and that the recent warm proximity of the Schulrath had raised Lenette's temperature (of love) to such a point that _her husband's_ felt like a blast of cold wind by comparison. The jealousy of hatred proceeds just like the jealousy of love. There is but one sign for the cypher of nothing and the circle of infinity.