Complete Short Works of George Meredith Part 6

'Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high baronry, will her father give her!'

The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as elders a.s.sume when young men talk of conquering the world for their mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

'Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you're a boy of pluck: I serve in the Kaiser's army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be here in three days. If you 're of that mind then, I doubt little you may get posted well: but, look again! there's a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--'S life! there's a tall fellow joining those two lurkers.'

'Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?'

'Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I pa.s.sed a year's apprentices.h.i.+p:

"I learnt to watch the rats and mice At play, with never a candle-end.

They play'd so well; they sang so nice; They dubb'd me comrade; called me friend!"

So says the ballad of our red-beard king's captivity. All evil has a good:

"When our toes and chins are up, Poison plants make sweetest cup"

as the old wives mumble to us when we're sick. Heigho! would I were in the little island well home again, though that were just their song of welcome to me, as I am a Christian.'

'Tell me your name, friend,' said Farina.

'Guy's my name, young man: Goshawk's my t.i.tle. Guy the Goshawk! so they called me in my merry land. The cap sticks when it no longer fits.

Then I drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a feather. Now, what would be my nickname?

"A change so sad, and a change so bad, Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing: Change is a curse, for it's all for the worse: Age creeps up, and youth is flying!"

and so on, with the old song. But here am I, and yonder's a game that wants harrying; so we'll just begin to nose about them a bit.'

He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of the moonlight. The two figures and the taller one were evidently observing them; for they also changed their position and pa.s.sed behind an angle of the Cathedral.

'Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the city,' said the stranger, holding out his hand.

Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the stranger's hand.

'Good! that's how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me show him the enemy's posts. Forward, this way!'

He turned from the Cathedral, and both slid along close under the eaves and front hangings of the houses. Neither spoke. Farina felt that he was in the hands of a skilful captain, and only regretted the want of a weapon to make harvest of the intended surprise; for he judged clearly that those were fellows of Werner's band on the look-out. They wound down numberless intersections of narrow streets with irregular-built houses standing or leaning wry-faced in row, here a quaint-beamed cottage, there almost a mansion with gilt arms, brackets, and devices.

Oil-lamps unlit hung at intervals by the corners, near a pale Christ on crucifix. Across the pa.s.sages they hung alight. The pa.s.sages and alleys were too dusky and close for the moon in her brightest ardour to penetrate; down the streets a slender lane of white beams could steal: 'In all conscience,' as the good citizens of Cologne declared, 'enough for those heathen hounds and sons of the sinful who are abroad when G.o.d's own blessed lamp is out.' So, when there was a moon, the expense of oil was saved to the Cologne treasury, thereby satisfying the virtuous.

After incessant doubling here and there, listening to footfalls, and themselves eluding a chase which their suspicious movements aroused, they came upon the Rhine. A full flood of moonlight burnished the knightly river in glittering scales, and plates, and rings, as headlong it rolled seaward on from under crag and banner of old chivalry and rapine. Both greeted the scene with a burst of pleasure. The grey mist of flats on the south side glimmered delightful to their sight, coming from that drowsy crowd and press of habitations; but the solemn glory of the river, delaying not, heedless, impa.s.sioned-pouring on in some sublime conference between it and heaven to the great marriage of waters, deeply shook Farina's enamoured heart. The youth could not restrain his tears, as if a magic wand had touched him. He trembled with love; and that delicate bliss which maiden hope first showers upon us like a silver rain when she has taken the shape of some young beauty and plighted us her fair fleeting hand, tenderly embraced him.

As they were emerging into the s.p.a.ces of the moon, a cheer from the stranger arrested Farina.

'Seest thou? on the wharf there! that is the very one, the tallest of the three. Lakin! but we shall have him.'

Wrapt in a long cloak, with low pointed cap and feather, stood the person indicated. He appeared to be meditating on the flow of the water, unaware of hostile presences, or quite regardless of them. There was a majesty in his height and air, which made the advance of the two upon him more wary and respectful than their first impulse had counselled.

They could not read his features, which were mantled behind voluminous folds: all save a pair of very strange eyes, that, even as they gazed directly downward, seemed charged with restless fiery liquid.

The two were close behind him: Guy the Goshawk prepared for one of those fatal pounces on the foe that had won him his t.i.tle. He consulted Farina mutely, who Nodded readiness; but the instant after, a cry of anguish escaped from the youth:

'Lost! gone! lost! Where is it? where! the arrow! The Silver Arrow! My Margarita!'

Ere the echoes of his voice had ceased lamenting into the distance, they found themselves alone on the wharf.

THE LILIES OF THE VALLEY

'He opened like a bat!' said the stranger.

'His shadow was red!' said Farina.

'He was off like an arrow!' said the stranger.

'Oh! pledge of my young love, how could I lose thee!' exclaimed the youth, and his eyes were misted with tears.

Guy the Goshawk shook his brown locks gravely.

'Bring me a man, and I 'll stand up against him, whoever he be, like a man; but this fellow has an ill scent and foreign ways about him, that he has! His eye boils all down my backbone and tingles at my finger-tips. Jesu, save us!'

'Save us!' repeated Farina, with the echo of a deadened soul.

They made the sign of the Cross, and purified the place with holy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

'I 've seen him at last; grant it be for the last time! That's my prayer, in the name of the Virgin and Trinity,' said Guy. 'And now let's retrace our steps: perchance we shall hunt up that bauble of yours, but I'm not fit for mortal work this night longer.'

Burdened by their black encounter, the two pa.s.sed again behind the Cathedral. Farina's hungry glances devoured each footmark of their track. Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees, and groped for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony, drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy in his breast. At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid him, and ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his religious lore inspire. By-and-by they reached the head of the street where Margarita dwelt. The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if touched with a warning of dawn. Chill sighs from the open land pa.s.sed through the s.p.a.ces of the city. On certain coloured gables and wood-crossed fronts, the white light lingered; but mostly the houses were veiled in dusk, and Gottlieb's house was confused in the twilight with those of his neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness and the old grandeur of its timbered bulk. They determined to take up their position there again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his shoulders, and Guy nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.

On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.

The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.

'I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!' and he stamped resolve with his staff.

Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.

'How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of life!' he said.

Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with his comrade's aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and redescended.

'There,' he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, 'that chases him out of the nostril sooner than aught else, the breath of a fresh la.s.s-like flower! I was tormented till now by the reek of the d.a.m.ned rising from under me. This is heaven's own incense, I think!'

And Guy inhaled the flowers and spake prettily to them.

'They have a melancholy sweetness, friend,' said Farina. 'I think of whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me.

Do not you?'

'Nay, nor hope to till my wits are clean gone,' was the Goshawk's reply.

'To my mind, 'tis an honest flower, and could I do good service by the young maiden who there set it, I should be rendering back good service done; for if that flower has not battled the devil in my nose this night, and beaten him, my head's a medlar!'