Well, at this point, gentlemen, I leave a blank and pass on to the
wedding day.
My father--in--law, who always landed on his feet like a cat, had
decided to exploit my popularity for his own ends, and he utilised the
celebration of my wedding for renewing his connection with all the
people who had long been avoiding him.
He dived deep into his pocket and arranged a prodigious feast, at
which, as he expressed it, champagne was to flow in rivulets along the
table.
No need to tell you that the whole hullabaloo was a nuisance to me; but
that's just the trouble about being a bridegroom. He is a ridiculous
figure whose organs of will have been peeled out of his cranium for the
time being.
On the morning of the great day I was sitting in my study--very
cross--the whole house stinking of paint--when the door opened and
Lothar came in.
In high feather apparently--had on top boots--threw himself on my neck.
Hurrah! Dear old uncle! Travelled all night to be here on time; won the
prize the day before at the steeplechase; rode like the devil; didn't
break his neck anyhow; drank like a fish. Still he was fresh; ready to
dance like a top; brought some surprises along--very fiery kind; I was
to give him twenty-five men to drill immediately--and so forth.
It came out in a stream while his black eyebrows kept jerking up and
down and his eyes glowed from under them like burning coals.
"That is youth," I reflected and suppressed a sigh. I should have liked
to borrow those eyes of his for twenty-four hours and everything else
that went with them.
"You don't ask about my bride?" I ventured.
He laughed very loud. "Uncle, uncle, uncle! A pretty business! You
marrying? You marrying? And I sending off the sky rockets! Hurrah!"
And still laughing he ran out of the room.
I finished my cigar, much depressed. Afterwards, I thought, I would go
on a round of inspection through the renovated rooms.
In front of the bedroom door my sister caught me just as she was having
her luggage carried away.
"No admission here," she said. "This is to be a surprise to both of
you."
Both of us?
Silly!
About eleven o'clock I started dressing. My coat cut into my shoulders.
My boots pinched me on the balls of my feet. For thirty years I had
been suffering from gout--a sequel to the Puetz punches. My shirt bosom
stiff as a board, necktie too short, everything awful.
About two o'clock I drove to the bride's home, where the wedding was to
be celebrated.
And now, gentlemen, comes a dream, or rather a nightmare, with all the
sensations of choking, of being strangled, of sinking into a pit.
And yet full of happy moments, when I thought, "Everything will be all
right. You have your good heart and your fine intentions. You will
spread a carpet for her to tread on. She will walk the earth like a
queen and never notice her chains."
While one coach after another came rolling into the courtyard and a
gallery of strange faces crowded at the windows, I ran about the garden
like one possessed, spattering my new fine patent leathers with mud,
and letting the tears run freely down my cheeks.
But that pleasure was cut short. They were calling out for me
everywhere.
I went into the house. The old man, beside himself with glee at seeing
as his guests all his old adversaries, men he had had tilts with, or
had insulted, or cheated, was running from one to the other, pressing
everybody's hand and swearing eternal friendship.
I wanted to say "How do you do" to a couple of friends but I was pushed
with a great halloo into a room where they said my bride was awaiting
me.
There she stood.
In white silk--bridal veil like a lighted cloud around her--myrtle
wreath black and spiny on her hair--like a crown of thorns.
I had to shut my eyes for a second, she was so beautiful.
Stretching her hands out toward me she said:
"Are you satisfied?" And she looked at me gently with an expression of
self-surrender; and her face with the smile it wore seemed like a
marble mask.
Then I was overcome with happiness and a sense of guilt. I felt like
dropping down on my knees and begging to be forgiven for having dared
to want her for myself. But I was ashamed to. Her mother was standing
behind her and her bridesmaids and other stupid things were also there.
I mumbled something that I myself did not understand, and because I did
not know what else to say, I walked up and down in front of her and
kept buttoning and unbuttoning my gloves.
My mother-in-law, who herself did not know what to say, smoothed down
the folds of Iolanthe's veil and looked at me from the corner of her
eye half reproachfully, half encouragingly.
At every turn I ran into a mirror, and--willy-nilly--I had to see
myself--my bald forehead, my lobster-coloured cheeks with the heavy
folds running into my chin, and the wart under the left corner of my
mouth. I saw my collar, which was much too tight--even the widest
girthed collar had not been wide enough--and I saw my grubby red neck
bulging over my collar all around like a wreath.
I saw all that, and at each turn I was shaken with a mixed feeling of
madness and honesty, that I ought to cry out to her, "Have pity on
yourself! There is time yet. Let me go."
You must remember there were no such things as civil weddings at that
time yet.
I should never have brought myself to the point of saying it even if I
had kept walking to and fro for a thousand years. Nevertheless, when
the old man came sidling in, watchful as a weasel, to say, "Come along,
the pastor is waiting!" I felt injured, as though some deep-laid plan
of mine had been thwarted.
I offered Iolanthe my arm. The folding doors were pulled open.
Faces! Faces! Endless masses of faces! As if glued to one another. And
all of them leered at me as if to say:
"Hanckel, you are making an ass of yourself."
An avenue formed itself between them, and we walked down the avenue
while I kept thinking in the deathlike silence, "Strange that nobody
bursts out laughing."
So we reached the altar, which the old man had constructed with awful
skill of a large packing box covered with red bunting. And quite an
exhibition of flowers and candles on it, with a crucifix in the middle,
as at a funeral.
The pastor was standing in front of us. He put on his solemn
ministerial air and stroked back the wide sleeves of his vestment like
a sleight-of-hand man about to begin his tricks.
First a hymn--five stanzas--then the sermon.
I have not the slightest idea what the pastor said, for suddenly a
perverse thought entered my brain and became a fixed idea not to be
shaken off.
She will say, "No!"
And the nearer we drew to the decisive moment the more the anguish of
that thought throttled me. Finally I had not the least doubt in the
world that she would say "No."
Gentlemen, she said "Yes."
I heaved a sigh of relief, like a criminal who has just heard the
verdict "Not guilty."
And now the strangest thing of all.
Scarcely had the word crossed her lips and the fear of humiliation been
lifted from my soul than I began to wish, "Oh, if only she had said
'No'."
After the Amen there were congratulations without end. I shook one hand
after another with genuine fervour. "Thank you" here, "Thank you"
there. I was grateful from the bottom of my heart to every fellow there
because in anticipation of the excellent food and drink to follow he
bestowed his polite congratulations upon me.
Only one person was missing--Lothar.
He stood in the back row looking quite sallow, as though he were hungry
or felt bored.
"There he is, Iolanthe," I said and caught hold of him. "Lothar
Puetz--Puetz's only son--my own boy. Shake hands with him. Call him
Lothar!" She still hesitated, so I placed her hand in his and thought
to myself, "Thank God he is here. He will help us over many a difficult
hour."
Please don't smile, gentlemen. You think that in the course of my
married life a love relation slowly developed between the two young
people. Not a bit of it.
Just a little patience. Something very different is going to come.
Well, to proceed. We went to table.
Everything according to form and in abundance. Flowers, silverware,
baumkuchen.
To begin with, a little glass of sherry to warm up your stomach. The
sherry was good but the glass was small and I could not see any more
sherry about.
"Now you must be very gallant and tender to her," I said to myself and
looked at her sidewise. Her elbow was grazing my arm and I could feel
how she was trembling.
"She's hungry," I thought, for I had not eaten a thing myself yet.
Her eyes were fixed on the candelabra in front of her. Their silvery
sheen in the course of the years had faded and wrinkled like the skin
of an old woman.
Her profile! God, how beautiful!
And that was to belong to me.
Nonsense!
And I tossed off a tumblerful of thin Rhine wine, which gurgled in my
empty stomach like bubbles in a duck puddle.
"This is not the way to muster up tenderness," I thought, looking
around longingly for the sherry.
Then I pulled myself together. "Please eat something," I said,
satisfied that I had done something marvellous.
She nodded and lifted her spoon to her mouth.
After the soup came some excellent fish, Rhine salmon if I am not
mistaken, and the sauce had the proper admixture of brandy, lemon juice
and capers. Delicious, in short.
Then came venison. Pretty good even if a little too fresh still. Well,
on this point opinions differ.
"Do eat something," I said again, pursing my lips so that people should
think that what I was whispering was a compliment or something
sentimental.
No, that sort of thing didn't get me any farther.
Already I had disposed of the second bottle of the thin Rhine wine and
began to swell like a balloon.
I looked around for Lothar, who had inherited from his father a scent
for everything drinkable, but he had been seated somewhere downstairs.
Then I was saved by a toast, which gave me a chance to stand up. On my
rounds I discovered a small but select company of sherry bottles which
the old man had hidden behind a curtain.
I picked up two of them quickly and started to pour courage into me. It
was a slow process but it succeeded. I can stand a good deal, you know,
gentlemen.
After the venison came a salmi of partridges. Two successive dishes of
game are not quite the right thing, but they were mighty tasty.
At just about this point something like a wall of mist loosened itself
from the ceiling and descended slowly--slowly.
Now I was tossing gallantries right and left. I tell you, gentlemen, I
was going it.
I called my bride "enchantress" and "charming sprite," and told a
rather broad hunting story, and explained to my neighbours of what use
the experiences are that a bachelor of today acquires before marrying.
To be brief, gentlemen, I was irresistible.
But the wall of mist kept sinking deeper and deeper. It was like in
mountain regions, where first the highest summits disappear and then
little by little the mountain side, one ledge after another.
First the lights in the candelabra got reddish halos round them. They
looked like small suns in a vapoury atmosphere with rainbow rays
radiating from them. Then gradually everybody sitting behind the
candelabra talking and rattling forks disappeared from sight and sound.
Only at intervals did a white shirt bosom or a bit of a woman's arm
gleam from the "purple darkness"--isn't that what Schiller calls it?
Oh, yes! Something else struck me.
My father--in--law was running around with two bottles of champagne,
and whenever he saw an entirely empty glass, he would say, "Please do
have some more. Why don't you drink?"
"You old fraud!" I said when he bobbed up back of me, and I pinched his
leg, "is that what you call letting it flow in rivulets?"
You see, gentlemen, my condition was growing dangerous. And all of a
sudden I felt my heart expanding. I had to talk. I simply had to talk.
So I struck my glass madly for silence.
"For heaven's sake--keep quiet!" my bride--I beg your pardon, my
wife--whispered in my ear.
But even if it cost me my life I had to talk.
What I said was reported to me afterwards, and if my authorities tell
the truth, it was something like the following:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer young. But I do not regret that
at all, for maturity also hath its joys. And if anybody were to assert
that youth can be happy only when wedded to youth, I would say, 'An
infamous lie! I myself am proof of the contrary. For I am no longer
young, but I am going to make my young wife happy because my wife is an
angel--and I have a loving heart--yea, I swear I have a loving heart,
and whoever says that here underneath my waistcoat--there beats no
loving heart--to him--I would like to lay bare my heart----'"
At this point, according to reports, my words were choked by tears, and
in the middle of my abject outpourings I was hustled from the room.
* * * * *
When I awoke I was lying on a couch much too short for me, with all
kinds of fur collars and caps and woollen wraps thrown over me. My neck
was strained, my legs numb.
I looked around.
On a console under a mirror a single candle was burning. Brushes,
combs, and boxes of pins lay beside it. On the walls hung a mass of
cloaks, hats and all that sort of thing.
Oho, the ladies' dressing room!
Slowly I became conscious of what had happened. I looked at the clock.
Nearly two. Somewhere, as though at a great distance, the playing of a
piano and the scraping and sliding of dancing feet in time with the
music.
_My_ wedding!
I combed my hair, arranged my necktie, and heartily wished I might lie
right down in my lovely hard camp bed and pull the covers over my ears,
instead of--brr!
Well, there was nothing to be done about it. So I started for the
reception rooms, though without any real feeling of shame, as I was
still too sleepy and drowsy to comprehend the state I was in fully.
At first nobody noticed me.
In the rooms where the gentlemen were sitting the smoke was so thick
that at only a few feet away all you could discern was merely the vague
outlines of human bodies. A very steep game of cards was under way, and
my father-in-law was relieving his guests of their money so neatly that
had he had three more daughters to marry off he would have become a
rich man.
He called it "making wedding expenses."
I glanced in at the room where the dancing was going on. The dowagers
were fighting off sleep, the young people were hopping about
mechanically, while the pianist opened his eyes only when he struck a
wrong note. My sister was holding a glass of lemonade on her lap and
was inspecting the lemon seeds. It was a doleful sight.
Iolanthe nowhere to be seen.
I returned to the card tables and tapped the old man on his shoulder as
he was scooping up the stake he had just won and was stuffing it into
his pocket.
He turned on me savagely.
"Well, you drunkard, you!"
"Where is Iolanthe?"
"I don't know. Go find her." And he went on playing.
The other gentlemen looked embarrassed, but acted as though nothing had
happened. "Won't you try your luck, young Benedict?" they clamoured.
So I made off with all haste, for I knew my weakness. Had I taken a
hand, there would have been another scandal.
I sneaked around outside the dancing hall. I did not feel equal to
meeting the glances of the dowagers.
In the corridor a tin kitchen lamp was smoking, from the pantries came
the rattle of plates and the giggling of half-drunken kitchen maids.
Awful!
I knocked on the door of Iolanthe's room.
No answer. Knocked again. Everything quiet. So I went in.
And what did I see?
My mother-in-law sitting on the edge of the bed and my wife kneeling
beside her dressed already in her black travelling gown, her head in
her mother's lap, and both women crying. It was enough to move a stone
to pity.
Oh, gentlemen, how I felt!
I should have liked to rush to my carriage, call "To the station" to
the coachman, and take the first train out of the place--to America, or
any place where embezzling cashiers and prodigal sons go to and
disappear.
But that wouldn't do.
"Iolanthe," I said humbly and contritely.
Both the women screamed. My wife clasped her mother's knees, while the
mother put protecting arms around her.
"I won't annoy you, Iolanthe; I only ask your forgiveness because, out
of love for you, I was so reckless."
A long silence--broken only by her sobbing.
Then her mother spoke.
"He is right, child. You must get up. It's time for you to be going."
Iolanthe rose slowly, her cheeks wet, her eyes red as fire, her body
still shaken with sobs. "Give him your hand. It can't be helped."
Very pleasant remark--"It can't be helped."
And Iolanthe gave me her hand, and I raised it reverently to my lips.
"George, have you seen my husband?" asked my mother-in-law.
"Yes."
"Please call him. Iolanthe wants to say good-bye."
I went back to the card room.
"Father!"
"Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-one."
"Father!"
"Thirty-three--what do you want?"
"We want to say good-bye."
"Well--go--and God bless you--and be happy!--thirty-six----"
"Don't you want to see Iolanthe?"
"Thirty-nine--won!--out with the cash!--who's still got the courage for
another? George, won't you take a little flyer with us?"
I got out of the room.
I told the ladies as considerately as I could that the Baron would not
come. They merely looked at each other and then led the way through the
smoky corridor to the back steps, where the carriage was waiting.
The wind was whistling in our ears and a few scattering raindrops
struck our faces. The two women clung to each other without saying
anything as though they would never let each other go.
Now the old man, who had evidently thought better of it, came running
out with a great hullabaloo, and behind him the maids, whom he had
summoned, with lamps and candles.
He threw himself between mother and daughter and let loose.
"My dear child, if the blessing of a loving father----"
She shook him off--just like a wet dog. With a jump into the
carriage--I behind--off!