THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY, WITH ALL ITS PLEASURES--THE ARRIVAL AT HOME.
Firmian took his departure. He was sorry to leave the hotel, which had
been a royal "Sans Souci" and "mon repos" to him, and turn his face
away from its comfortable chambers towards his own bare comfortless
rooms. To him who had never known any of the comforts--the soft
_paddings_, so to speak, of this hard life of ours--who had never had
any other Jack but the boot-jack, it had been an enormous pleasure and
enjoyment to have the power of ringing that leading actor, John the
waiter, up from his _coulisses_ with such facility, and that too with
plates and glasses in his hand, out of which said actor enjoyed
nothing, only Siebenkæs and the public so doing. Just at the door of
the hotel, he made to Mr. Feldmann, the landlord, the following
eulogistic address, which shall be made him once more in print by me,
by way of an additional blazon to his coat of arms, the moment it gets
through the press. "There is only one thing which your guests have to
desire, that they have not got, and that is the most important of all
things--time. May your sun reach the sign of the crab, and remain in
it." Several Bayreuthians who were standing by thought this was a
miserable satire.
Henry went with Firmian some thirty paces beyond the Reformation
church, as far as the church-yard, and tore himself away from him with
less difficulty than usual, for he expected to see him again in a few
weeks' time--on his death-bed. He would not go as far as Fantaisie with
him, wishing to allow him to sink, in silence and undisturbed, and lose
himself in the enjoyment of the magic echoes of the spirit-harmonies of
that night of bliss wherewith all the garden would be vocal.
Alone, then, Firmian entered into the valley as into some holy temple,
all sacredness and awe. Every thicket seemed, to his eyes, glorified
with super-earthly light, the stream, a stream flowing out of Arcadia,
and the whole valley a Vale of Tempè, transported thither and unveiled
to view. And when he came to the dear and holy spot where Nathalie had
prayed him to "think of that night," it seemed to him that the sun was
shedding a heavenlier brightness; and that the hum of bees in the
blossoms was music of spirit-voices wafted on the air, and that he must
needs prostrate himself and press his heart upon the dewy sward. Upon
this trembling sound-board he once more retraced the old path by which
he had walked with Nathalie, and, now in a rose espalier, now from some
streamlet, now from the balcony, now from some leafy nook or trembling
stem, string after string, breaking from silence, gave forth once more
its old lovely tone. His enraptured heart swelled, even to pain; a
moist transparent shimmer was over his eyes, and dissolved into a great
tear-drop. His eyes, drunken with weeping, distinguished nothing save
the brightness of the morning and the whiteness of the flowers; details
were hid by the flowery vail of dreaming, in whose lily perfume his
soul sank down, soothed to a restful sleep. It was as if hitherto, in
the enjoyment of being with his Leibgeber he had only felt half the
real strength of his love for Nathalie; with such a new might and
breeze of heaven did that love come breathing upon him in this solitude
with ethereal tire. A world all youth burst into blossom in his heart.
Of a sudden the bells of Bayreuth came ringing into this world,
striking for him the hour of his farewell to it; and there fell on him
that anxious sadness with which we linger, too long, beside a place
where we have been happy, when the time has come when we must say
Adieu. He went upon his way.
What a brightness fell upon all the hills and meadows, with the thought
of Nathalie, and that imperishable kiss! The green world, which had
been but a series of pictures for him, as he came, was now all speech
and language. There was a light-magnet of happiness all day long in the
dimmest corner of his being; and when, in the thick of distractions,
conversations and the like, _en route_, he cast a sudden glance into
himself, he found a continual sense of blissfulness within him.
How often he turned back to the Bayreuth hills, beyond which he had
lived real days of youth, for the first time in his existence! Behind
him Nathalie was journeying on towards the east, and breezes from that
quarter--airs which had breathed gently around the distant, lonely
one--came wafting back to him, and he drunk the æther-stream like the
breath of one beloved.
The hills sunk low on the horizon; his paradise was whelmed in the blue
of heaven. His west and Nathalie's east flowed asunder, and parted
wider, faster and faster as the moments sped. One beautiful plain
receded, flying behind him, after another; and he hastened past the
flower-decked limbs of Spring as she lay outstretched on earth,
alternating between looking and enjoying, as in early days gone by.
Thus he came at evening to the village in the valley by the Jaxt, where
on his journey to Bayreuth, he had passed in review, with tears, his
loveless days; but he came with a new heart, full to the brim with love
and happiness; and tears flowed this time too. Here where, amid the
melting magic lights of evening, he had asked himself, "What womanly
soul has ever loved _you_ as your old dreams have so often pictured to
your heart you _might_ be loved by one," and had given himself so sad
an answer; here he could think on that Bayreuth night, and say, "Yes!
Nathalie has loved me!" And then the old sorrow rose again, but
glorified, from the dead. He had made to her a vow of invisibility here
on earth; he was now journeying on towards his own death; he was to
die, and never see her more. She was gone before him--had _died_ first,
as it were; she had merely taken away with her into the long, dim,
coming years of her life the grief of having loved and lost, _twice_.
"And I look into my own life here, and weep, away from her," he said,
wearily, and closed his eyes undried.
Another world altogether opened upon him in the morning--not a new
world by any means--the old, old familiar one. Just as if the
concentric magic circles which surrounded Nathalie and Leibgeber
reached no further than the little Valley of Longing on the Jaxt, and
could include nothing beyond it. Every step towards home translated the
poetry which had come into his life to poetic prose. The Imperial
market-town (that frigid zone of his life) was nearer to him; his
torrid zone, over which the faded petals of his ephemeral joy-flowers
were fluttering still, was far away behind him.
But, on the other hand, the pictured imagery of his domestic life kept
growing clearer and brighter, taking the form of a picture-bible, while
the paintings of his month of bliss died away into a dark picture
gallery. I think the weather, which was rainy, had some connection with
this.
Towards the end of the week the weather, as well as penitents and
churchgoers, puts on other shirts and clothes.
It was Saturday, and cloudy. Damp weather affects the walls of our
brains as it does the walls of our rooms; the paperings of both imbibe
the moisture, and get curled up into clouds, until the next dry day
smooths both out again. Under a blue sky, I long for eagles' pinions;
under a cloudy one, I only want a goose's wing to write with. In the
former case we are eager to be off and out, into the wide world; in the
latter, all we want is to sit comfortably down in our arm-chair. In
short, clouds, when they drop, make us domestic, citizenish, and
hungry, while blue skies make us thirsty, and citizens _of the world_.
These clouds of this Saturday formed a kind of palisade about the Eden
of Bayreuth. Every big drop which fell on the leaves made him think
longingly of the wifely, wedded heart, which was his lawful property
(and which he was soon to lose), and of his poor little lodging. At
last when the ice-floes of the rugged-clouds melted into grey foam,
and the setting sun was drawn like a sluice, out of this suspended
mill-pond, and it poured down in consequence, Kuhschnappel came in
sight.
Discordant, jarring fancies clanged in contention within him. The
commonplace, narrow-minded, provincial town, seemed, when contrasted
with freer and more liberal places and societies, so crowded and
crushed together, so official in style, and full of Troglodytes--with
doggrel, and table-verses by way of poetry--that he felt it would be a
satisfaction to drag out his green trellis-bed into the market-place in
broad daylight, and go to sleep beneath the very windows of the local
"quality," without minding a brass-farthing what the upper council
might think, or the lower council either. The nearer he came to the
stage he was to die upon, the more difficult did this first rôle of his
(and last but one) appear to him.
_Away_ from home we are bold and daring: we resolve, and undertake;
_at_ home, we pause and hesitate, and delay.
Yes, and the smoke and smells of the mean streets gnawed into him,
matters which, of themselves unaided, so sorely affect and depress us
that there are very few indeed who can raise their heads wholly beyond
these effluvia. For in man there nestles an accursed tendency towards
still-sitting ease and comfort; like a big dog he lets himself be poked
and pinched a thousand times before he takes the trouble to get up,
rather than growl. Once fairly on his legs, however, he is not in a
hurry to lie down again. The first heroic deed (like the first earned
dollar, according to Rousseau) costs more than the next thousand. The
prospect of the long, difficult, tedious and risky financial and
surgical operation of a stage death stung our Siebenkæs on the domestic
bolster.
But the nearer he drew to the gallows-hill (that mouse-tower of his
old, narrow life), the quicker and the clearer did the thoughts of the
heart-oppressing stamping-mills of past days, and of his approaching
salvation, vibrate in alternation in his mind. He kept thinking that he
would have to suffer care, anxiety, and struggle of all sorts, as of
old, because he kept losing sight of the open sky of his future, just
as we go on suffering the pain and fear of a painful dream for some
time after we have awakened from it.
But when he saw the house where dwelt his Lenette, whose voice he had
not heard for so many a day, the pain all vanished from his heart, the
trouble from his eyes, nothing being left in them but affection and its
warmest tears.
"Ah! am I not going to tear myself, so soon, from her for ever, and
make her shed tears of delusion, and wound her with the terrible wounds
of a funeral and mourning? and then, poor darling soul, we shall see
each other no more!" he thought.
He quickened his pace. He squeezed close past the shop windows of his
co-commandant, Meerbitzer, with his head thrown back, and his eyes
fixed upon the up-stairs windows. Meerbitzer was in the house,
splitting the Sunday wood; and Firmian signed to him not to give note
of his presence by any sort of sentry-challenge. The old associate czar
signed back to him, with outstretched fingers, that Lenette was alone
in the room up-stairs. The old familiar ripieno voices of the house,
the querulous scolding of the book-binder's wife, the damper-pedal
effect of the eternal prayer and curser, Fecht, met him like so much
sweet provender, as he climbed the stairs. The waning moon of his
movable pewter property shone silvery and glorious upon him from the
kitchen, everything fresh from its font of regeneration; a copper
fish-kettle, which poisoned no vinegar as long as it was unmended,
glowed upon him through the kitchen smoke like the sun in a November
fog. He opened the door of the sitting-room gently; he saw no one in
it, but heard Lenette making the bed in the bed-room. With a whole iron
foundry hammering in his breast, he made a long, noiseless stride into
the room, which was all in apple-pie order, with its Sunday shirt of
white sand on already (upon which the bed-making river goddess and
water nymph had expended all her aquatic arts in the production, of a
highly-finished masterpiece). Ah! everything was so full of rest and
peace, so tranquilly reposing after the whirl and turmoil of the week.
The rain stars had risen upon everything, except his ink bottle, which
was quite dry.
His writing-table was, so to speak, _manned_ by two or three large
heads, which, being cap-blocks, had on their Sunday bonnets, already,
which would be transferred from them in their capacity of _Curatores
Sexus_, next morning, to the heads of the ladies of the members of
council.
He pushed the bed-room door wider open, and there, after this long
separation, he saw his dear wife, standing with her back to him.
Just then he fancied he recognised Stiefel's fulling-mill steps coming
up stairs; and, that he might pass his first minute on her heart unseen
by a stranger eye, he said twice, softly, "Lenette!"
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 bass voice said, "Here am I as well; you are welcome back, praise
and thanks be to God." 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 shine) are too sad to bear for to _them_ they seem like
_nights_.