The Serapion Brethren Volume Ii Part 8

"Tussmann," said the Goldsmith, "I cannot understand that ridiculous shyness of yours. What do you mean by it? Don't be an a.s.s. What you want is a drop of something pretty strong. I should say a tumbler of hot punch, else we shall be having you laid up with a feverish cold.

Come on!"

Tussmann kept on lamenting as to his greenness, and his Salvator Rosa face; but the Goldsmith paid not the slightest attention to him, merely hurrying him along with him at a rapid rate.

When they got into the brightly lighted coffee-room, Tussmann hid his face in his handkerchief, as there were still some people there.

"What's the matter with you, Tussmann?" the Goldsmith asked. "Why do you keep hiding that good-looking face of yours, eh?"

"Oh, dearest Herr Professor, you know all about this awful face of mine," Tussmann answered. "You know how that terrible, pa.s.sionate painter young gentleman went and daubed it all over with green paint?"

"Nonsense," said the Goldsmith, taking the Clerk of the Privy Chancery by the shoulders and placing him right in front of the big mirror at the top of the room, while he threw a strong light on to him from a branched candlestick which he had taken up. Tussmann forced himself--much against the grain--to look. He could not restrain a loud cry of "Gracious heavens!"

For not only had the terrible green tint of his face disappeared, but he had a much more beautiful complexion than he ever had had in his life, and was looking several years younger. In the excess of his delight he jumped up and down with both feet together, and cried, in a voice of sweet emotion--"Oh, just Heaven! what do I see? what do I contemplate? Most honoured Herr Professor, I have no doubt that it is to you that I am indebted for this great happiness!--to you alone! Ah!

now I feel little doubt that Miss Albertine Bosswinkel--for whose dear sake I was so very nearly jumping into the frog-pond--won't make much difficulty about accepting me. Really, dearest Professor, you have rescued me from the very profoundest depths of misery. There is no doubt that I did feel a certain sense of relief and well-being when you were so kind as to pa.s.s that snow-white handkerchief of yours over my face. You really were my benefactor, were you not?"

"I won't deny, Tussmann," the Goldsmith answered, "that I wiped the green colour away from your face; and, from that, you may gather that I am not by any means so much your enemy as you have supposed me to be.

What I can't bear to think of is this ridiculous notion of yours (which you have allowed the Commissionsrath to put in your head) that you are going to go and marry a splendid young creature, bursting with life and love. It is this, I say, which I can't bear to think about. And even now--though you have scarcely got clear of the little trick which has been played on you--you see, you go and begin at once to think about this marriage again. I feel inclined to take away your appet.i.te for it in a very effectual style; and I could do so if I chose, without the slightest difficulty. However, I don't want to go so far as that. But what my advice to you would be is--that you should keep as quiet, and as much out of the way as ever you can till Sunday next, at twelve o'clock at noon, and then you will see more into things. If you dare to go and see Albertine before that time, I will make you go on dancing in her presence till your breath and senses abandon you. Then I will transform you into the very greenest of frogs, and chuck you into the basin of the Thiergarten, or into the River Spree itself, where you'll go on croaking till the end of your days. Good-bye! I have something to do in town which obliges me to get back there as quickly as possible.

You won't be able to follow me, or keep up with me. Good-bye!"

The Goldsmith was right in saying that it would not be possible for Tussmann, or anybody else, to keep up with him, for he was off through the door and out of sight, as if he had Schlemihl's seven-leagued boots on.

Perhaps this was why, the next minute after he had disappeared from Tussmann, he appeared suddenly, like a ghost, in the Commissionsrath's room, and bade him good evening in a rough tone.

The Commissionsrath was very frightened, but he pulled himself together, and asked the Goldsmith, with some warmth, what he meant by coming in at that time of the night, adding that he wished he would take himself off, and not bother him any more with any of those conjuring tricks of his, as he presumed he was about to do.

"Ah!" said the Goldsmith very calmly, "that is how people are, particularly Commissionsraths. Just the very people who come to them, wis.h.i.+ng to do them a service, into whose arms they ought to throw themselves with a confident heart--just those are the people whom they want to kick out of the door. My good Herr Commissionsrath, you are a poor unfortunate man, a real object of pity and commiseration. I have come here--I have _hastened_ here--at this late hour of the night, to consult with you as to how this terrible blow which is hanging over you may be averted--if averted it can be--and you----"

"Oh, G.o.d," the Commissionsrath cried, "another bankruptcy in Hamburg, I suppose, or in Bremen, or London, to ruin me out and out! That was all that was wanted. Oh, I'm a ruined man!"

"No," the Goldsmith said, "it's an affair of a different kind altogether; you say that you won't allow young Edmund Lehsen to marry Albertine, do you not?"

"What's the good of talking about such a piece of absurdity?" the Commissionsrath replied. "I to give my daughter to this beggar of a penciller."

"Well," said the Goldsmith, "he has painted a couple of magnificent portraits of you and her."

"Oh, oh," cried Bosswinkel, "a fine piece of business it would be to hand over my daughter for a couple of daubs on canvas; I've sent the trash back to him."

"If you don't let Edmund have your daughter," the Goldsmith continued, "he will have his revenge."

"Pretty story!" answered Bosswinkel. "What revenge is this little bit of a beggar, who dribbles paints on to canvas, and hasn't a farthing to bless himself with, going to take upon Commissionsrath Melchior Bosswinkel, I should like to know?"

"I'll tell you that in a moment," said the Goldsmith. "Edmund is going to alter your portrait in a way which you thoroughly deserve. The kindly, smiling face he is going to turn into a sour, grumpy one, with lowering brow, bleary eyes, and hanging lips. He will deepen the wrinkles on the brow and cheeks, and he won't omit to indicate, in proper colour, those grey hairs which the powder is intended to hide.

Before you, instead of the pleasant news about the lottery prize, he will write, very legibly, the most unpleasant purport of the letter which came to you the day before yesterday, telling you that Campbell and Co. of London had stopped payment, addressed on the envelope to the 'Bankrupt Commissionsrath,' &c., &c. From the torn pockets of your waistcoat he will show ducats, thalers, and treasury bills falling, to indicate the losses you have had, and this picture will be put in the window of the picture dealer next door to the bank in Hunter Street."

"The demon, the blackguard," the Commissionsrath cried; "he shan't do that, I'll send for the police, I'll appeal to the courts for an interim interdict!"

The Goldsmith said, with much tranquillity, "As soon as even fifty people have seen this picture, that is to say, after it has been in the window for a brief quarter of an hour, the tale will be all over the town, with every description of addition and exaggeration. Every thing in the least degree ridiculous which has ever been said about you, or is being said now, will be brought up again, dressed in fresh and more brilliant colours. Every one you meet will laugh in your face, and, what is the worst of all, everybody will talk about your losses in the Campbell bankruptcy, so your credit will be gone."

"Oh, Lord," said Bosswinkel, "but he must let me have the picture back, the scoundrel? Ay; that he must, the first thing in the morning."

"And if he were to agree to do so," the Goldsmith said, ("of which I have great doubts) how much the better would you be? He's making a copper etching of you, as I have just described you. He'll have several hundred copies thrown off, touch them up himself _con amore_, and send them all over the world--to Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, London even."

"Stop, stop," Bosswinkel cried; "go, as fast as you can, to this terrible fellow; offer him fifty, yes, offer him a hundred thalers if he will let this business about my portrait remain in _statu quo_."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Goldsmith; "you forget that Lehsen doesn't care a fiddlestick about money. His people are well off. His grand-aunt, Miss Lehsen, who lives in Broad Street, is going to leave him all her money, 12,000 at the very least."

"What," the Commissionsrath cried, pale with the suddenness of his amazement, "12,000. I tell you what it is. I believe Albertine is crazy about young Lehsen, and I'm not a bad-hearted fellow. I am an affectionate father; can't bear crying, and all that sort of thing.

When she sets her heart on a thing, I can't refuse her. Besides, I like the fellow; he's a first-rate painter, you know; and where Art is concerned I'm a perfect gaby. There are a great many capital points about Lehsen. 12,000. I'll tell you what it is, Leonhard, just out of mere goodheartedness, I shall let this nice young fellow have my daughter."

"Hm!" said the Goldsmith, "there's something queer, too, which I want to speak to you about. I was at the Thiergarten just before I came here, and I found your old friend and schoolfellow, Tussmann, going to jump into the water because Albertine wouldn't have anything to say to him. I had the greatest difficulty in preventing him from doing it; and it was only by telling him that you would be quite certain to keep your word, and make her marry him, that I did succeed in preventing him.

Now, if this is not so, if she doesn't marry him, and if you give her to young Lehsen, there cannot be a doubt that the Clerk of the Privy Chancery will carry out his idea of jumping into that basin. Think what a sensation the suicide of a person of Tussmann's 'respectability' will create. Everybody will consider that you, and no other, are responsible for his death. You will be looked upon with horror and contempt. n.o.body will ask you to dinner, and if you go to a cafe to see what's in the papers, you will be shown to the door, or kicked downstairs; and more than that, Tussmann bears the very highest character in his profession.

All his superiors have a very high opinion of him; the Government departments think him a most valuable official. If you are supposed to be answerable for his death, you know that you need never expect to find a single member of the Privy Legation, or of the Upper Chamber of Finance, in when you go to see them. None of the offices which your business affairs require you to be _en rapport_ with will have a word to say to you. Your t.i.tle of Commissionsrath will be taken from you, blow will follow upon blow, your credit will be gone, your income will fall away, things will go from bad to worse, till at last, in poverty, misery and contempt, you will--"

"For G.o.d's sake stop!" cried the Commissionsrath, "you are putting me to a regular martyrdom. Who would have thought that Tussmann would have been such a goose at his time of life? But you are quite right; whatever happens, I must keep my word to him, or I'm a ruined man. Yes, it is so ordained, Tussmann must marry Albertine."

"You're forgetting all about Baron Dummerl," said the Goldsmith, "and Mana.s.seh's terrible curse. In him, if you reject Baron Benjie, you have the most fearful enemy. He will oppose you in all your speculations; will stick at no means of injuring your credit, take every possible opportunity of doing you an ill turn, and never rest till he has brought you to shame and disgrace; till the D[=a]-l[ve]s, which he laid upon you along with his curse, has actually taken up its abode in your house; so that, you see, whatever you do with Albertine, to whichsoever of her wooers you give her, you get into trouble, and that is why I said at the beginning, that you are a poor, unfortunate man, an object of pity and commiseration."

Bosswinkel ran up and down the room like a lunatic, crying over and over again, "It's all over with me; I am a miserable man, a ruined Commissionsrath. O Lord, if I only could get the girl off my shoulders; the devil take the whole lot of them, Lehsen, and Benjie, and my old Tussmann into the bargain."

"Now," said the Goldsmith, "there is one way of getting out of all this mess."

"What is it?" said Bosswinkel; "I'll adopt it, whatever it is."

Leonhard said, "Did you ever see the play of 'The Merchant of Venice'?"

"That's the piece," answered Bosswinkel, "where Devrient plays a b.l.o.o.d.y-minded Jew of the name of Shylock, who wants a pound of a merchant's flesh. Of course I've seen it, but what has that to do with the matter?"

"You will remember," the Goldsmith said, "that there is a certain wealthy young lady in it of the name of Portia, whose father so arranged matters in his will that her hand is made a species of prize in a kind of lottery. Three caskets are set out, of which her wooers have each to choose one, and open it. The one who finds Portia's portrait in the casket which he chooses obtains her hand. Now do you, Commissionsrath, as a living father, do what her dead father did. Tell the three wooers that, inasmuch as one of them is exactly the same to you as another, they must allow chance to decide between them. Set up three caskets for them to choose amongst, and let the one who finds her portrait in his casket be her husband."

"What an extraordinary idea," said the Commissionsrath; "and even if I were to go in for it, do you suppose, dear Mr. Leonhard, that I should be one bit better off? When chance did decide the matter, I should still have to deal with the rage and hatred of the unsuccessful two."

"Wait a moment," the Goldsmith said; "it is just there that the important part of the business lies. I promise that I will order and arrange the affair of the caskets so that it shall turn out happily and satisfactorily for all parties. The two who make mistakes shall find in their caskets, not a scornful dismissal, like the Princes of Morocco and Arragon, but something which shall so greatly please and delight them that they will think no more of marrying Albertine, but will look upon you as the author of unhoped, undreamt of happiness to them."

"Oh, can it be possible!" the Commissionsrath cried.

"Not only is it possible," the Goldsmith answered, "but it will, it must happen, exactly as I have said it will; I give you my word for it."

The Commissionsrath made no further objection, and they arranged that the Goldsmith's plan should be put in execution on the next Sunday at noon. Leonhard undertook to provide the three caskets, all ready.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE CHOOSING OF THE CASKETS, AND THE CONCLUSION OF THE TALE.

As may be imagined, Albertine got into a condition of the most utter despair when her father told her about the wretched lottery in which her hand was to be the prize, and all her prayers and tears were powerless to turn him from this idea, when he had once got it fairly into his head. Then, besides this, Lehsen seemed indifferent and indolent, in a way that n.o.body who really loved could be, not making any attempt to see her privately, or even to send her a message.

On the Sat.u.r.day night before the fateful Sunday she was sitting alone in her room, as the twilight was deepening into night, her mind full of the misfortune which was threatening her. She was calculating whether or not it would be better to come to a speedy determination to fly from her father's roof, rather than wait till the most fearful destiny conceivable should accomplish itself, that of marrying either the pedantic old Tussmann, or the insufferable Baron Benjie, and then she remembered the mysterious Goldsmith, and the strange, supernatural way in which he had prevented the Baron from touching her. She felt quite sure that he had been on Edmund's side then; wherefore a hope began to dawn in her heart that it must be on him that she should rely for help at this crisis of her affairs. Above all things she wished that she only could just have a little talk with him then and there; and was quite sure that she shouldn't be at all frightened, really, if he were to appear to her suddenly, in some strange, spectral sort of manner.