AFTER SUMMER OF MARRIAGE--PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH.
Although Sunday was come, and the Vicar's eyes were no more open than
his congregation's (because, like many of the clergy, he kept his
physical eyes shut while preaching), my hero went to him to get his
certificate of birth, because this was wanted for the Brandenburg
Widows' Fund.
Leibgeber had charged himself with the rest. Enough of the subject--for
I don't care to say more about it than I can help; because some years
ago--long after all Siebenkæs's pecuniary affairs had been settled up
to the last farthing, and his debt to the Fund duly paid--the 'Imperial
Gazette' publicly accused me of bringing discredit upon Integrity and
Widows' Funds by the last book of this story of mine, and considered it
to be its (the 'Gazette's') duty to take me pretty severely to task on
the subject, according to its measure of ability. But are the advocate
and I the same person? Does not everybody know that my proceedings as
regards my married life in general, and the Prussian Widows' Fund in
particular, have been quite unlike those of Siebenkæs in every respect,
and that to this very hour I have never departed this life, either in
jest or in earnest, in all these years during which I have regularly
paid a considerable annual contribution to the institution in question?
Nay, do I not mean--(and I need have no hesitation in saying so)--to go
on paying my yearly _quotum_ for as many more years as I can--so that,
when I die, the fund may have got more out of me than out of any other
contributor?
These are my views on the subject; but I must do Siebenkæs the simple
justice to state (to his credit) that the views by which he was
actuated differed very, very little from my own. The only thing was,
that, in Bayreuth, he had immolated his own truthful heart to the
stormy urgency of his friend, Leibgeber, which had imbued and
intoxicated him, in a moment of enthusiasm, with that cosmopolitan
spirit of his which, in the boundless soul-transmigrations which, in
the course of his never ending journeyings he passed through, had come
to look upon life too much as a mere game at cards, and stage-play--as
a Chicken-hazard, and Opera Buffa and Seria combined. And as, besides,
he knew Leibgeber's pecuniary circumstances, and his contempt for money
(and his own into the bargain), he had undertaken a _rôle_ which was
anything but well suited to him, and as to which he had as little
foreseen the torture of difficulty which it would cost him to act it,
as the penitential sermon which was to be preached from Gotha
concerning it.
At the same time it was a great piece of good luck that it was _only_
Becker's 'Gazette' that found out about Nathalie's straw-widowhood, and
not Lenette! Heavens, if the _latter_, with her silk "Forget-me" (for
the "not" had altogether disappeared from it), in her hand, had got
wind of Firmian's adoptive marriage! I neither desire to judge the fair
sex, nor to be judged by them. But at this point I would fain put to
all my lady readers (and most particularly to _one_ of them), two
rather weighty and important questions.
"Would _you_ not bend down from your judge's seat, and hand my hero, if
not a _flower_-wreath, an _oak_-wreath, at all events, for his good and
kind behaviour to this feminine couple? Or (inasmuch as there are four
female hands playing a duet sonata on his heart), a bouquet for his
button-hole at the very least?" Dearest lady readers, you could not
possibly have given a better verdict--although my surprise at it is not
so great as my gratification. My second question nobody shall put to
you but yourselves. Let each of you ask herself, "Suppose _you_ had
this fourth book of my story put into your hands, and _were_ Lenette
her very self, and consequently knew to a hair all about the whole
business from beginning to end; what would you _think_ of your husband
Siebenkæs' proceedings? What would you _do_?"
I will answer the question for you: "Weep, storm,[80] chide, be very
angry, not speak a word, break things, &c." So terribly does
selfishness falsify, corrupt and degrade the most delicate moral
feelings, coercing them into the giving of two totally diverse verdicts
upon one and the same case. Whenever I am wavering, or in any
hesitation, concerning the worth of a character, or conclusion, I
always find it helps me to come to a decision in a moment if I
represent it to my mind's-eye as coming wet from the press in a novel
or biography. If it seems right _then_, it is certain to _be_ right.
It was far better, and more becoming, for Graces to dwell hidden in the
Satyrs of old, and in Socrates, than to reverse the process, so that
Satyrs should dwell hidden within Graces. The Satyr who _possessed_
Lenette butted about him in all directions with horns of very considerable
sharpness. Her unreciprocated anger began to take the shape of
sneering banter, for her husband's present meekness and gentleness were
so strikingly in contrast with his former Job's-disputations, that she
came to the conclusion that his heart was frozen altogether. In old
times he had wanted to be served by mutes (like a Sultan), until his
satirical fœtus, his book, should be brought to the light of day by
help of the Roonhuysian lever and Cæsarian operation of the penknife;
even as Zacharias was dumb until the child ceased to be so, and was
born, and cried simultaneously with him. Formerly, their married life
had been like most other people's; for the majority of wedded pairs are
like those twin-daughters,[81] grown together as to their backs, but
continually quarrelling (though they could never look each other in the
face), and always trying to go towards opposite quarters of the globe,
till the one succeeded in forcing the other in the direction in which
she wanted to go. Now, on the contrary, Firmian allowed all Lenette's
discords to jar on as long as they pleased, without the slightest trace
of irritation. A soft, peaceful light now fell upon all her angles,
upon her works of supererogation in washing, on the water-sproutlings
of her tongue; and the tint of the shadow which her heart (made of dark
earth, like everybody else's) cast, as a matter of course, was very
much lost in the blue of heaven, as shadows cast in starlight are
(according to Mariette) as blue as the sky overhead. And was there not
always a grand, blue, starry sky spread out above his soul, in the
shape of death? Every morning, every evening, he said to himself, "Why
should I not go on always forgiving everything! We have such a very
little while to be together now." Every opportunity of forgiving did
something to sweeten the bitterness of his voluntary farewell; and, as
those who are going away, or going to die, are eager to pardon,--the
deep, warm spring and fount of love in his heart was never chilled from
morning till night. He was fain to pass along the brief, dark, alley of
weeping willows, which led from his home to his empty grave (a _full_
one, alas! as regarded his love), leaning only on beloved arms; and to
rest on the mossy banks by its side, between his friend and his wife,
with a beloved hand in each of his own. Thus it is that death not only
beautifies our bodies when the soul has fled (as Lavater points out),
but even in life the thought of death gives new beauty to our
lineaments, and new strength to the heart, as rosemary both winds as a
garland about the dead, and revives the fainting by its cordial
essence.
"There is nothing surprising to me in this," quoth the reader.
"Everybody in Firmian's position would have felt just as he did; at all
events, _I_ should." But, dear reader, _are_ we not _all_ in Firmian's
position? Does the nearness or the remoteness of our everlasting
good-bye make any difference? Ah! inasmuch as, here below, we are
nothing but images, delusively firm, and red of colour, standing on the
edges of our holes, into which (like the ancient princes) we totter,
crumbling to dust, when the unknown hand gives the mouldering images a
shake--why do we not say (like Firmian), "Why should I not forgive? We
have so short a time to be together." We should have four better
fast-days, and prayer- and penitence-days, than we usually have if we
had but four days of bitter, hopeless sickness to go through, one after
the other, every year; because we should look down from our sick bed
(that ice-region of life beside the crater) with loftier and sublimer
glance upon the pleasure-gardens and pleasure-forests of life as they
shrunk and shrivelled away; because _there_ our wretched racecourses
would seem shorter, and only the _people_ larger, and we should _there_
love nothing but _hearts_, magnify and detect no other faults but our
own, and because we leave our sick beds with better resolutions than we
take to them with. For the first day of convalescence of the body,
after its winter of sickness, is the blossoming time of a lovelier
soul, which issues forth as if transfigured from the earth's cold crust
into a mild warm Eden; longing to press all things to her breast
(feeble yet, and short of breath)--mankind, and flowers, and spring
breezes, and every other bosom which has sighed for her upon her bed of
pain. Like all the newly risen from death, she longs to love _all
things_ throughout an eternity; and the whole heart is a warm and dewy
spring-time, rich in buds, beneath a youthful sun.
_How_ Firmian would have loved his Lenette, had she not constrained him
to be always pardoning, instead of petting and caressing her! Ah! she
would have rendered his approaching death a terribly difficult task for
him if she had been like what she was in their honeymoon days!
But their byegone Paradise was now yielding a harvest of ripe _Grains_
of Paradise (the old name for peppercorns). Lenette piled fuel on the
fire of her hell's ante-chamber of jealousy, brewing there, for him,
the draught of the coming heaven of Vaduz. A jealous woman can be cured
by no kind of speech or treatment; she is like the kettledrums, which
are the most difficult of all instruments to tune, and the quickest to
get out of tune when tuned. A loving, tender look was, to Lenette, a
blister; for he had looked at Nathalie with one like it. If he seemed
happy and glad, it was evident he was thinking of the past. If he
looked _un_happy and sad, he was thinking of the past too, but with
longing. He had to consider his face in the light of an open warrant of
caption, or billposter and placard, of the thoughts which were behind
it. In short, her husband merely served her as fiddle rosin to roughen
her horse-hair with, in order to bow her _viole d'amour_ with it from
morning till night. He dare not allow himself more than an occasional
word about Bayreuth, scarce so much as the name of it; for if he did,
she knew whom he was thinking of. Nay, he could not say anything at all
strong in disparagement of Kuhschnappel without raising a suspicion
that he was comparing it with Bayreuth, and thinking the latter much
the better place (for reasons well known to _her_). Wherefore (and
whether in earnest, or from consideration for her, I really do not
know) he restricted his laudations of Bayreuth merely to the
_buildings_ there, not venturing to extend them to their inhabitants.
There was only one object of praise concerning the praising, whereof he
ignored every idea of difficulty and miscomprehension, and this was
Leibgeber, his friend. But--thanks to Rosa's calumnies, and the fact of
his having aided and abetted in affairs at Fantaisie--it so chanced
that Leibgeber had come to be more unendurable by her now than he had
been in the old days, by reason of his indecorous conduct, and his
great dog. She knew, moreover, that Stiefel had several times expressed
grave disapproval of him and his doings.
"My dear Henry will be here very soon now, Lenette," said Firmian.
"And that horrible brute with him, I suppose, of course?" she asked.
"I do think," he answered, "you might like my friend a little better
than you do; if not because he is so very like myself, at any rate, on
account of the faithfulness of his friendship. If you did, you wouldn't
be so terribly set against his dog; you used not to mind mine when I
had one. He _must_ have _some_ faithful creature to follow him about on
his everlasting journeys; through thick and thin, through good times
and bad, as Saufinder does. And he looks upon _me_ as just such another
faithful creature, and is every bit as fond of me. But for that matter,
the whole faithful trio of us are not likely to trouble Kuhschnappel
very long."
Meanwhile, no amount of love enabled him to gain his _suit_ for love.
It here strikes me that this was only a most natural matter, and that
the recent warm proximity of the Schulrath had raised Lenette's
temperature (of love) to such a point that _her husband's_ felt like a
blast of cold wind by comparison. The jealousy of hatred proceeds just
like the jealousy of love. There is but one sign for the cypher of
nothing and the circle of infinity.
The time had arrived when Siebenkæs had to pave the way, and give a
colour to, his sham death, by a feigned sickness of some sort; but this
voluntary bending over the grave, and drooping towards it, gave his
conscience a pretext for trying to win back Lenette's embittered heart.
Thus it is that deceived, and deceiving, man always magnifies and
elevates his false shows, his cheateries, and deceptions either into
_less_ ones than they really are, or into beneficently intended ones.
The Greek and Roman lawgivers invented dreams and prophecies, which
contained the ground-plans and elevations of their projects, as well as
the building-conditions, and building-materials of them. For instance,
Alcibiades lied forth a prophecy of the conquest of Sicily. Firmian
imitated this process, with alterations suitable to the circumstances
of his case. He often said, in Stiefel's presence (for Stiefel took a
deep and tender interest in everything, and, consequently, so did
_she_), that he should soon be going away for ever--that he should soon
be playing in a game at hide-and-seek, and hide himself so effectually
that no friendly eye should be able to find him again--that he would
soon slip behind the bed-curtain of the coffin-pall, and vanish. He
told them a dream (which, perhaps, was no invention). He said, "The
Schulrath and Lenette were looking at a room in which a scythe was
moving of its own accord;[82] then, in a while, Firmian's _clothes_
were walking about in the room, empty, without any _body_ in them. 'He
must have _other_ clothes on,' they both said. Then all at once the
churchyard passed along the street, with a fresh grave in it, no grass
on it as yet. But a voice cried, 'Seek him not there; it is over and
past now.' And a second (softer) voice cried, Rest--rest--thou art worn
and weary. And a third said, 'Weep not, if ye love him.' But a fourth
cried out, in terrible tones, 'Jest--jest--all human life and death.'"
Firmian was the first to shed tears; his friend was the next, and his
angry spouse wept, _with the latter_.
But now he looked with eager longing for the coming of Leibgeber, whose
hand would lead him quicker and more pleasantly through the dark
foreground, and the hot, reeking, sultry, breathless, fore_hell_ of his
artificial death. For he himself was now too feeble and too tender to
pass through them alone.
And upon one particular, unusually lovely, August evening he was so,
more than ever before. There played and rested on his face that
glorified and celestial bliss of self-devotion--that tearless
depth of emotion and smiling gentleness, which sometimes come to us
when pain and sorrow are--_weary_ for the time, rather than over and
past--something like the blue sky when the brightness of the rainbow
falls in light athwart its radiant beauty. He resolved to bid good-bye,
in solitude, that day to all the beautiful country which lay around the
town.
The face of Nature was veiled (but not for his eyes, for his soul
only), in a thin, soft mist, which went hovering before the breeze in
ever-changing wreaths, like the tender vapouriness--not amounting to a
shrouding--which Berghem's and Wouvermanns' pencils have cast upon
their landscapes. As though to say farewell, he went and touched, and
gazed upon, every leafy tree beneath whose branches he had been wont to
read--each little darkling brooklet, purling on its way beneath its
thickets of forest-roots, laved bare of earth by its ripples--each
rocky crag, all green and sweet of scent with moss and flowers--each
stair-way of rising hillocks which, in the days gone by, he had climbed
to see the sun set (or gone down to watch his risings) many times
instead of once--and every spot where wide creation had brought tears
of rapture from his happy heart. But everywhere--amid the long harvest
corn-ears, amid Creation's oft-repeated tale in Nature's brooding-oven
with all its swarming life, in the seed-nursery of the ripe and
endless garden--a hollow, broken voice cried out, in long-drawn tones
which mingled with, and sounded clear above, the bright, rejoicing,
trumpet-clang of Nature's 'Alexander's Feast,' "What are these dead
men's bones that move about amid this life of mine, defiling all my
blossoms?" And to him it seemed as if, from out the glory of the red
West sky, a something sang to him, "Wandering skeleton! with strings of
nerves clasped in thy bony hand, thou playest not on thyself. The
breath of endless life is breathing on the Æolian harp, which answers
back in music, and thou art played _upon_." But soon this mournful
error fell away from him, and he thought thus: "I am both playing and
answering back in music. I both _think_ and _am thought_. It is not the
green bark that holds _my_ Dryad, my _spiritus rector_ (the soul). The
latter holds the former. The life of the body depends as intimately on
the life of the soul, as that of the latter on that of the former. Life
and force are at work, with power, everywhere. The grave hillock and
the mouldering body are each a _world_ of powers at work. We _change_
our stage, but do not _retire_ from it."
When he got home, he found the following letter from Leibgeber for
him:--
"I am on _my_ way; set out on _yours_.--L."