Withered Leaves Volume Iii Part 18

CHAPTER X.

THE WEDDING DAY.

Brightly dawned the day, but the morning sun disappeared early beneath the glowing clouds, with which the whole sky was soon overcast.

A cold, feeble rain pattered down; a few wedding guests ventured into the park, but the chilly disagreeable weather soon drove them back.

Blanden was busied with arrangements in the Castle; this time his master of the kitchen and cellar had not been granted leave of absence; he had to show the wonders of the Castle to Olga, his stately mistress.

Dr. Kuhl was only allowed to devote himself to the nymphs of the lake.

Ccilie looked strictly after him, lest he wished to lay his homage at the feet of the Castle fairies. There were the most charming little town girls present, whom such a Don Juan by profession could wind up like a watch, so that their hearts ticked in a race with the throbs of his. Iduna, the late head scholar, was there, a fresh child of Nature with developed appreciation of manly beauty. Her first love had been an unhappy one, but with that elixir within her, she saw a Doctor Sperner in every man. She had cast an eye upon Kuhl, and was little gratified that Salomon became her cicerone, exhibiting all the apartments of the Castle full of historical a.s.sociations.

"In this dining-hall, my Frulein, certainly no one ever danced before, but you must not think that everything was conducted in a very holy manner. Yes, at the time of Winrich of Kniprode, these gentlemen had to be called to order. There were Grand Masters at the Marienburg, whose glance extended to the remotest corners of the land. But later ensued a period of decay. They certainly still sometimes fought bravely, it was their trade, and it was immaterial to them whether they held a prayer-book or a sword in their hands--they understood their letters very well, and scratched whole alphabets into their enemies' faces. I a.s.sume that this Castle has also often been besieged by the Poles--from the Dantziger there the knights no doubt have triumphantly repelled the attack of the others; courage upon the whole, my Frulein, is a very ordinary virtue practised partly at the word of command, partly under compulsion. I do not think much of it. All the world is brave, even the oxen in the meadows, which stand before their enemies and rush at one another with their horns."

"But I should think," said Iduna, before whose mind stood Theodor Krner's picture in all its glory, "it is one of the n.o.blest virtues, the fruit of glorious enthusiasm," and she added a few pa.s.sages, which she had retained in her memory from her most successful theme upon the Lieutenant of Hussars.

"Enthusiasm is all very fine," said Salomon, "but who has time for it before a battle! Men must clean their weapons, count their cartridges, eat a morsel of commissariat bread. I speak of to-day, because the Knights of the Order did not know that nutritious food, and when once the troops start, they must listen exactly to the commander's order, march, halt, load, fire! Enthusiasm--it is only to be found amongst warlike poets. In battle people are as excited as in a boxing match; they hit out on all sides, they know it is a matter of life or death, they may lose their collars, they see nothing, think nothing, only try to save their own skins. There is nothing more stupid than a soldier in a battle."

"You describe it so vividly," said Iduna, "that one might believe you had been present yourself."

"Not at a battle, but often at a fight. Besides, where is there any battle now? We live in everlasting peace. No, no my Frulein! I have merely cast a few glances into the human mind, and if one will discover the truth, one must always a.s.sume the contrary of that which poetry a.s.serts. Poetry is merely a beautiful falsehood. But, as I said, the brethren of the Order might be brave even at the time of their decay, but they led a merry life; I wager that they drank as bravely in this dining-hall, as at any drinking party of Lithuanians or Masurens, and that the gaily painted Madonna, with her radiant colours in the window panes, was not the only representative of womanhood, but that also many a high born knight's young lady--"

"No, never, Herr Salomon," said Iduna, promptly.

The youth was about to spare the maiden's blushes by pa.s.sing suddenly to the event of the day, when the other ladies and girls declared that it was time to dress, and Iduna was not sorry to leave the highly educated student, who shed the radiance of enlightened human understanding into every corner, in which any illusion still lingered fondly. He knew that few, like himself, stood upon the height of nineteenth century reason.

Beate would not be debarred from dressing her friend for the ceremony.

She looked beautiful in her veil and white satin robe, but was ghastly pale. Beate advised her to have recourse to artificial aid, but Giulia very decidedly rejected every reminiscence of her past.

There she appeared, really like a marble bride; on beholding her, Kuhl remembered how he had once called her so, when Blanden told him of his adventures on the Lago Maggiore. At first sight her beauty gave an impression of pride and coldness, but any one looking more closely recognised the softening influence of internal suffering which overshadowed her features.

They were a handsome pair; there was no dissentient voice in the unenvious a.s.sembly. Blanden had quite recovered from his duel, he looked n.o.ble and grand, the dreaminess in his features possessed a charm of its own, such gentleness, such benignity lay in it, and when he opened his eyes widely they told of superior intellectual spirit.

All the ladies appeared in brilliant toilets; both the brides elect, Ccilie and Olga, with Beate, were the bridesmaids. The unheard of event that Dr. Kuhl had donned a frockcoat, betokened that Ccilie had already made progress in taming the rebel. As for him, he contemplated himself in the pier-gla.s.ses, shrugging his shoulders and saying to Wegen he felt like a bear at a fair, whom the bear-leader had dressed up in a red jacket; however, he must perform his antics and dance to the drum. And so saying, he stretched about and strained his Herculean arms in the unwontedly fine material.

The procession was arranged and moved through the dining-hall into the festively decorated and flower bedecked chapel. There, behind the altar, upon which Giulia had once placed an enchanted souvenir, stood the minister. She thought of the two Italian island churches, of the one in which she had stood before the altar as to-day; in the other where she had confessed to a forbidden love, and before the sacred word and sacred act she was overcome with a full consciousness of her sinful temerity.

As in a vision, her whole life pa.s.sed before her, she did not listen to the words of the Bible. The "Yes" in the church of San Giulio rang in her ears--the echo of the chapel seemed to strengthen it--at first it sounded like the crash of scorn, and still louder, more grave, more solemn, the thunder of the judgment day--her knees tottered. Everything was bathed in dreamy light--she was herself, and yet was not--she was there and here.

Did not the lake of Orta roar outside?

No, it was the storm which had risen, sweeping through the tops of the pines, and stirring up the waves of the northern water mirror.

Fancy often erects a bridge of dreams from one summit of life to another, and deep below in oblivion lie all its other paths.

Giulia was absorbed in a vision, in a self-delusion; the pictures of the past and present became mixed up, but the confusion was agonising; her hand trembled in Blanden's.

Then the rings were exchanged, Giulia looked into his luminous eyes, he bent over her with an expression of most ardent love. The shadows disappeared, she felt the full consciousness of the bliss of the present, and in a voice not trembling with anguish of conscience, but with all the warmth of intense devotion, she spoke the word of consent.

When Blanden led her to dinner he asked about the diadem; he had hoped that she would adorn herself with it on that day--when again should so good an opportunity be offered of letting the proud family heritage of the Blandens' s.h.i.+ne in all its glory? And when it shone above the flowing bridal veil, the sanction of the family, the blessing of the long row of female ancestors, of that house would at the same time rest upon the brow of her who entered that line: she was received into the sanctuary of the n.o.ble women who for centuries had held their sway over this home. Giulia blushed deeply, and with deceitful words pleaded modesty and humility as her excuse, but Blanden felt that he was rebuffed, painfully disappointed that she had scorned to adorn herself with his costly gift; it was like a note of discord in the harmony of the entertainment, and he could not suppress a sensation of anxious misgiving.

The grand wedding dinner pa.s.sed off very cheerfully. Giulia possessed the lightheadedness of an actress; in glad emotions she forgot everything which at other times might depress her, she imbibed forgetfulness and courage with the sparkling froth of the champagne.

Then, when her countenance brightened, a slight colour suffused it as she smiled and joked, and gave herself up to a genial actress' mood, which owes its birth to a rich treasury of recollections; then only her beauty, which until now had but inspired cold admiration, warmed all hearts, and Blanden was deemed fortunate to have won so beautiful a wife.

There was no lack of toasts and verses. Schner made use of a few ideas which he had once mustered in Neukuhren at Eva's betrothal. A true poet always goes economically to work, because when once he has stamped an idea with the immortal impress of his genius, it must not be lost again, and it would be most blameworthy even to make a feeble copy.

Salomon retired to the domain of satire, he compared the new Knights of St. John with those of the old Order, and ridiculed the celibacy of the latter in verses imitative of Heine.

Dr. Kuhl, it is true, proposed no toasts, but he was in a wild mood, which inspired his betrothed with some slight alarm, he spoke of his gallows-wit, and said he had courage to mention the rope, even in the house of a man who had been hanged; he was enjoying himself immensely at the wedding, but this fact did not upset his theories that marriage festivities were a public nuisance; however, as he had at last lost all his characteristics and fallen a victim to his own good nature, and another person's amiability, well, he could not help it; he, too, must let himself be married, but he should only permit two witnesses, selected from the midst of the sovereign people, to be present, who afterwards would disappear in the night of that plebeian universality where all cows are black; his marriage dinner he and Ccilie should eat alone, or at the utmost invite his Caro who, on that day, should receive a specially good dish of meat and bones. Well, he had somehow got into the good-for-nothing frock-coat, and he only wished that all the seams would burst. The whole life of peris.h.i.+ng humanity consisted in most abject concessions; he, too, now moved on that degrading course, and had already fallen far from that height upon which he had formerly stood in proud self-glorification, and he looked upon himself as an apostate, and with his better self, which still occasionally rose from out the slough, he looked upon his present self, planted up to its neck in a bog of social prejudices, with an indescribable feeling of pity and contempt.

"Thank G.o.d," said Wegen to Olga, "that you have not fallen into the hands of this wicked hector, who seems to look upon his engagement as an act of suicide. How differently I appreciate you."

Smiling meaningly, Olga pressed her lover's hand, but Kuhl had overheard the last words.

"Dear friend and brother-in-law," said he, "I herewith p.r.o.nounce you to be the greatest hypocrite at this round table. The theory of common love, for which the century is not yet ripe, permits many variations--and one of these variations you have performed, and all the world performs them with us. Enter upon an engagement to-day, give it up soon, and a week or so later fall in love and engage yourself again, and you are one of the most moral citizens in the world, and no one will a.s.sail your good name. But, if only you feel that affection a week sooner, before the old one is given up, then you are a Don Juan.

Everything then depends upon time, just as in hiring anything, a week const.i.tutes the whole difference between virtue and vice. Well, if we have not sinned, dear brother-in-law _in spe_, at least we have nothing with which to reproach ourselves! I have loved two sisters, but so have you also--your good health, my friend!"

Wegen coloured at this address, which, to him, appeared intensely heartless. Olga laughed, but Ccilie had long since compressed her lips and prepared herself for an armed reprimand.

The clergyman opposite, an enlightened man, had listened to Kuhl's defiant speech with a smiling countenance. He quietly took part in the conversation.

"The affections of the human heart are very peculiar, and who, indeed, excepting the Lord, who searches heart and mind, can say that he has fathomed that organ? Such affection may be transient or deep, yet it seems to me that it, too, is subject to mutability and change. But this free-booter's love must cease at that point where human society rises unanimously, striving to attain its grandest ends. We will grant dual love to Herr Dr. Kuhl. Let every one manage it as best he can. I know, indeed, that the heart, like the ocean, can have but one ebb and flow, and that this tide is only produced by the mysterious attraction of one orb, not merely in regular course--as is the case with the ocean tide--but also in wild pa.s.sionate upheavings, as in that of the glowing liquid emotion of the earth, the earthquake, which clever men also ascribe to the influence of the moon's powers of attraction; but although dual love may be a whim of the heart, bigamy is very different."

Although Blanden was talking to her at the moment, Giulia became attentive, and listened eagerly to the words of her other neighbour.

"Bigamy," said the clergyman, "is a mockery of the ordinances which Church and State have laid down for the support of society, and the purity and security of families; hence the severe punishment which has always been decreed to that crime. It may appear too severe to those who are free spirits to such an extent, as also in this case only to perceive the maintenance of immaterial forms, but whosoever tries to shake them tries to shake the bases of society."

Giulia's heart beat more quickly. The cheering influence of the champagne had lost its power, gloomy clouds overspread her brow.

"We have," said the clergyman, "only lately had such a case in our village. A depraved woman, who came from the other side of the Polish frontier, had a legal husband there; here, however, she commenced a fresh love affair, and was married again. The matter came to light, and the woman who had taken the payment of the double marriage expenses very lightly, was sentenced to several years' imprisonment."

Giulia became pale, the champagne gla.s.s fell from her hand, and was dashed to pieces on the table.

Blanden was startled. He had not listened to the clergyman's discourse, having been talking very animatedly himself to Giulia, but what he said to her was pleasant, bright and cheerful--what had come to her?

"I was abstracted, and awkward; forgive me!" said she, in an unsteady voice.

"It is possible," Dr. Kuhl's powerful voice sounded across the table, "that by bigamy people may wish to live in clover, but that does not prevent a man wasting his substance in dual love."

Blanden now noticed the subject under discussion. He became depressed and thoughtful, and did not know why. What could have agitated Giulia so much? Was her heart not quite free?

They rose from the table in good spirits. Evening was already closing in.

On that day, too, Blanden showed his usual care for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his dependents by going into the great barn at the farm, where the floor had been swept and garnished for a dance.

The village band had already commenced its noisy tum-tum, beer flowed from the mighty barrels which Olkewicz had sent there.