"After his fashion," replied Emilius very gravely; "as if he were
making game of love and of himself, with a dozen women at a time, and,
if you would believe his words, raving after every one of them: but
ere a week passes over his head, they are all spunged out of it, and
not even a blot is left behind."
They parted in the crowd, and Emilius walkt toward the remote
apartment, from which, long before he reacht it, he caught his
friend's loud recitative.
"Ah, so you are here too!" exclaimed Roderick, as he entered: "you
have just hit the right moment; I am at the very passage where we were
interrupted the other day: sit down, and you may hear the remainder."
"I am not in a humour for it now," said Emilius: "besides the time and
place do not seem to me exactly suited to such an employment."
"And why not?" answered Roderick. "Time and place are made for us, not
we for time and place. Is not good poetry just as good at one hour as
at another? Is not it right to read it? and can that which is right
ever become wrong? Or would you rather dance? There is a lack of men;
and you need only jump about for a few hours, at the mere risk of
tiring your legs, to lay strong siege to the hearts of as many
grateful beauties as you choose."
"Good night!" cried the other with his hand on the door; "I am going
home."
Roderick called out to him: "Only one word! I shall set off tomorrow
at daybreak with my friend here, to spend a few days in the country,
but will look in upon you to say goodbye before we start. Should you
be asleep, as is most likely, you need not take the trouble of waking;
for, before a week is out, I shall be back again.--The strangest being
upon earth!" he continued, turning to his neighbour; "so moping and
fretful, such a splitter of thoughts, that he turns all his pleasures
sour; or rather there is no such thing as pleasure for him. Instead of
walking about with his fellow creatures in broad daylight and enjoying
himself, he gets down to the bottom of the well of his fancies, in the
hope of now and then catching a glimpse of a star. Everything must be
in the superlative for him: everything must be pure, and majestic, and
etherial, and celestial: his heart must be always throbbing and
heaving, even when he is standing before a puppet show. He never
laughs or cries, but can only smile and weep; and forsooth there is
mighty little difference between his weeping and his smiling. When
anything, be it what it may, falls short of his anticipations and
preconceptions, which are always flying up out of reach and sight, he
puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless
world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that
under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul
glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that
Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary
things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never
fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn
his back on the whole motley scene in desponding contempt."
"He must be atrabilious then?" askt his hearer.
"Not that exactly," answered Roderick: "he has only been spoilt by the
indulgence of his overfond parents and by his own. He has accustomed
himself to let his heart ebb and flow as regularly as the sea; and if
this motion is ever at a stop, he cries out _a miracle!_ and would
offer a prize to the philosopher who should give a satisfactory
explanation of so marvellous a phenomenon. He is the best fellow under
the sun; but all my painstaking to break him of this perverseness has
been utterly vain and thrown away; and if I would not earn scurvy
thanks for my goodwill, I must even let him follow his own devices."
"Might not a physician do him good?" remarkt Anderson.
"It is one of his whims," replied Roderick, "to entertain a supreme
contempt for the whole medical art. He will have it that every disease
is something different and distinct in every particular patient, that
there is no arranging it under any class, and that it is absurd to
think of healing it by attending to ancient practice, and still more
so by what is called theory: he would much rather apply to an old
woman, and make use of sympathetic cures. In like manner he despises
all foresight in other matters, and everything like regularity,
moderation, and common sense: the last above all he holds in special
abhorrence, as the antipode and arch-enemy to all enthusiasm. While
yet a child he framed for himself an ideal of a noble character; and
his constant aim is to make himself what he considers such, that is to
say, a being who shews his superiority to all earthly things by his
scorn for riches. Merely to avoid being suspected of stinginess, or of
giving unwillingly, or of caring about money, he flings it right and
left by handfuls; with all his large fortune he is for ever poor and
distrest, and is the bubble of all such as are not gifted with
precisely the same sort of magnanimity which for himself he is
determined to attain to. To be his friend is the task of all tasks:
for he is so touchy, you need only cough, or eat with your knife, or
not sip your drink as delicately as a cow, or even pick your teeth, to
offend him mortally."
"Was he never in love?" askt his country friend.
"Whom should he love? whom could he love?" answered Roderick. "He
despises all the daughters of earth; and if he had a favorite, and
were ever to suspect that she had not an angelical contempt for dress,
or liked dancing at times as well as star-gazing, it would break his
heart: still more tremendous would it be, if she were ever so unlucky
as to sneeze."
Meanwhile Emilius was again standing among the crowd: but on a sudden
he was seized by that heart-burning, that shivering, which had already
so often come over him in the midst of a multitude in a like state of
excitement. It drove him out of the ballroom, out of the house, and
along the desolate streets; nor did he recover and regain the quiet
possession of his senses, till he reacht his lonely chamber. The night
light was already burning; he sent his servant to bed: everything over
the way was silent and dark, and he sat down to pour forth the
feelings which the ball had aroused, in verse.
Within the heart 'tis still;
Sleep each wild thought encages:
Now stirs a wicked will,
Would see how madness rages,
And cries: Wild spirit awake!
Loud cymbals catch the cry,
And back its echoes shake;
And, shouting peals of laughter,
The trumpet rushes after,
And cries: Wild spirit awake!
Amid them flute-tones fly,
Like arrows, keen and numberless;
And with bloodhound yell
Pipes the onset swell;
And violins and violoncellos,
Creaking, clattering,
Shrieking, shattering;
And horns whence thunder bellows;
To leave the victim slumberless,
And drag forth prisoned madness,
And cruelly murder all quiet and innocent gladness.
What will be the end of this commotion?
Where the shore to this turmoiling ocean?
What seeks the tossing throng,
As it wheels and whirls along?
On! on! the lustres
Like hellstars bicker:
Let us twine in closer clusters,
On! on! ever closer and quicker!
How the silly things throb, throb amain!
Hence all quiet!
Hither riot!
Peal more proudly,
Squeal more loudly,
Ye cymbals, ye trumpets! bedull all pain,
Till it laugh again.
Thou beckonest to me, beauty's daughter;
Smiles ripple o'er thy lips,
And o'er thine eye's blue water;
O let me breathe on thee,
Ere parted hence we flee,
Ere aught that light eclipse!
I know that beauty's flowers soon wither:
Those lips, within whose rosy cells
Thy spirit warbles its sweet spells,
Death's clammy kiss ere long will press together.
I know, that face so fair and full
Is but a masquerading skull:
But hail to thee skull so fair and so fresh!
Why should I weep and whine and wail,
That what blooms now must soon grow pale,
And that worms must batten on that sweet flesh?
Let me laugh but today and tomorrow,
And what care I for sorrow,
While thus on the waves of the dance by
each other we sail?
Now thou art mine,
And I am thine:
And what though pain and trouble wait
To seize thee at the gate,
And sob, and tear, and groan, and sigh,
Stand ranged in state
On thee to fly,
Blithely let us look and cheerily
On death that grins so drearily!
What would grief with us, or anguish?
They are foes that we know how to vanquish.
I press thine answering fingers,
Thy look upon me lingers,
Or the fringe of thy garment will waft me
a kiss:
Thou rollest on in light;
I fall back into night;
Even despair is bliss.
From this delight,
From this wild revel's surge
Perchance there may emerge
Foul jealousy, and scorn, and envious spite.
But this is our glory and pride;
When thee I despise,
I turn but my eyes,
And the fair one beside thee will welcome
my gaze,
And she is my bride!
O happy, happy maze!
Or shall it be her neighbour?
Whose eyes, like a sabre,
Flash and pierce,
Their glance is so fierce.
Thus jumping and prancing,
All together go dancing
Adown life's giddy cave;
Nor living, nor loving,
But dizzily roving
Through dreams to a grave.
There below 'tis yet worse:
Earth's flowers and its clay
Roof a gloomier day,
Hide a still deeper curse.
Ring then, ye cymbals, enliven this dream!
Ye horns shout a fiercer, more vulture-like scream!
And frisk caper skip prance dance yourselves
out of breath!
For your life is all art,
Love has given you no heart:
So hurrah till you plunge into bottomless
death.
He had ended, and was standing by the window. Then she came into the
opposite chamber, lovely, as he had never yet seen her: her brown hair
floated freely, and played in wanton ringlets about the whitest of
necks; she was but lightly clad, and seemed as if she meant to finish
some little household matters at this late hour of the night before
she went to bed: for she placed two candles in two corners of the
room, set the green cloth on the table to rights, and withdrew again.
Emilius was still sunk in his sweet dreams, and gazing on the image
which his beloved had left in his mind, when to his horrour the
frightful, the scarlet old woman walkt through the chamber: the gold
on her head and breast glared ghastlily as it threw back the light.
She had vanisht again. Was he to believe his eyes? Was it not some
delusive phantom of the night that his own feverish imagination had
conjured up before him?
But no! she returned, still more hideous than before, with a long grey
and black mane flying wildly and haggardly about her breast and back.
The beauteous maiden followed her, pale, stiff; her lovely bosom was
all bared, but her whole form was like a marble statue.
Betwixt them they led the sweet little child, crying and clinging
imploringly to the fair maiden, who lookt not down upon it. The child
lifted up and claspt its little beseeching hands, and stroakt the pale
neck and cheeks of the marble beauty. But she held it fast by the
hair, and in the other hand a silver basin.
Then the old woman growled, and pulled out a long knife, and drew it
across the white neck of the child. Here something crawled forth from
behind that they seemed not to perceive, or it must have struck them
with the same thrilling terrour as Emilius. A serpent curled its
loathsome neck, scale after scale, lengthening and still lengthening,
out of the darkness, and stoopt down over the child, whose lifeless
limbs hung from the old woman's arms: its black tongue lickt up the
spirting red blood, and a green sparkling eye shot over into the eye,
and brain, and heart of Emilius, who instantly dropt on the ground.
He was senseless when found by Roderick some hours after.
* * * * *
A party of friends were sitting on the brightest summer morning in a
green arbour, assembled at an excellent breakfast. Laughter and jests
passed round; and many a time did the glasses kiss with a merry health
to the young couple, and a wish that they might be the happiest of the
happy. The bride and bridegroom were not present; she being still
engaged in dressing, while the young husband was sauntering by himself
down an avenue some way off, musing upon his happiness.
"What a pity it is," said Anderson, "that we are to have no music! All
our ladies are beclouded at the thought, and never in their whole
lives longed for a dance so much as today, when it is quite out of the
question: it is far too painful to his feelings."
"I can tell you a secret though," exclaimed a young officer, "that we
are to have a dance after all; and a rare riotous and madcap one it
will be. Everything is already arranged; the musicians are come
secretly and quartered out of sight. Roderick has managed the whole
business; for he says one ought not to let him always have his own
way, or to humour his strange caprices overmuch, especially on such a
day as this."
"Besides," observed another young man, "he is already become much more
tractable and sociable than he used to be; so that I think he himself
will not be sorry at the alteration. Indeed the whole wedding has been
brought about all on the sudden, and has taken everybody by surprise."
"His whole history," resumed Anderson, "is just as extraordinary as
his character. You must all remember how, being on his travels last
autumn, he arrived in our city, and spent the winter there, living
like a melancholy man almost entirely in his own room, and never
visiting our theatre or taking part in any other amusement. He all but
quarrelled with Roderick, his most intimate friend, for trying to
divert him, and refusing to pamper all his moping fantasies. In fact
this overstrained irritability and moroseness must have been a disease
that was gathering in his body: for you know he was attackt four
months ago by such a violent nervous fever, that his life was for a
long time despaired of. After his frenzy had raved itself out, and he
returned to his senses, he had almost entirely lost his memory:
nothing but his childhood and early youth kept its hold on his mind;
and he was totally unable to recollect anything that had happened
during his journey, or immediately before his illness. He had to begin
his acquaintance afresh with all his friends, even with Roderick; and
it is only by little and little that his thoughts have grown lighter,
and that the past with all that had befallen him has come back, though
still in dim colours, into his memory. He had been removed into his
uncle's house, that better care might be taken of him; and he was just
like a child, letting them do whatever they chose with him. The first
time he went out to enjoy the warmth of the spring in the park, he saw
a girl sitting pensively by the roadside. She lookt up; her eye met
his; and seized with an inexplicable yearning he stopt the carriage,
got out, sat down by her, took hold of her hands, and burst into a
flood of tears. His friends were again alarmed for his intellects: but
he grew calm, cheerful, and conversable, got introduced to the girl's
parents, and at his very first visit askt for her hand, which, with
her parents consent, she granted him. Since that time he has been
happy, and a new life has sprung up within him: day after day he has
become healthier and more contented. A week ago he paid me a visit at
this country house, and was above measure delighted with it; indeed so
much so that he would not rest till he had made me sell it to him. I
might easily have turned his passionate desire to my own advantage,
and his loss; for when he once sets his heart on a thing, he will have
it, and that too forthwith. He immediately let it be got ready, sent
furniture that he may spend the summer months here; and thus it has
come to pass that we are all met for his wedding in my old garden."
The house was large, and in a very lovely country. One side of it
lookt on a river and some woody hills beyond; shrubs and trees of
various kinds were scattered about the lawn; and immediately before
the windows lay a flower garden sweetening the air. The orange and
lemon trees were ranged in a large open hall, from which small doors
led to the store rooms, cellars, and pantries. On the other side a
meadow spread out its green floor, opening immediately into the park.
The two long wings of the house formed a spacious court; and broad
open galleries, borne by three rows of pillars standing one above the
other, ran round it, connecting all the rooms in the house, and giving
it a singular and interesting character: for figures were perpetually
moving along these arcades, some engaged in one employment, some in
another; new forms kept stepping forth between the pillars and out of
the various rooms, which anon vanisht and then reappeared above or
below, to be lost behind one of the doors: parties too would often
assemble there for tea or for some game; and thus from below the whole
had the look of a theatre, before which everybody was glad to stop
awhile, with a foreboding that something strange or pleasing was sure
to meet his eyes ere long.
The party of young people were just rising, when the bride came in her
full dress through the garden walking toward them. She was clad in
violet-coloured velvet: a sparkling necklace lay cradled on her
glittering neck; the costly lace just allowed her white swelling bosom
to glimmer through; and her wreath of myrtle and white roses gave her
brown hair a still more beautiful tint.
She greeted them all graciously, and the young men were astonisht at
her surpassing beauty. She had been gathering flowers in the garden,
and was going back into the house to see after the arrangements for
dinner.
The tables had been set out in the lower open gallery, and shone
dazzlingly with their white coverings and their load of sparkling
crystal: rich clusters of many-coloured flowers rose from the graceful
necks of alabaster vases; green garlands, starred with white blossoms,
twined round the columns: and it was a lovely sight to behold the
bride gliding along with gentle motion between the tables and the
pillars, amid the light of the flowers, overlooking the whole with a
searching glance, and then vanishing; and reappearing a moment after
above, to pass into her chamber.
"She is the loveliest, most enchanting creature I ever saw!" cried
Anderson: "our friend is indeed a happy man."
"Her very paleness," added the officer, "hightens her beauty. Her
hazel eyes only sparkle the more intensely above those white cheeks
and beneath those dark locks; and the singular, almost burning redness
of her lips gives her face a truly magical appearance."
"The air of silent melancholy that surrounds her," said Anderson,
"sheds a noble majesty over her."
The bridegroom joined them, and askt after Roderick: he had been
missing for some time, and they could not conceive what he was about.
All set off in search of him.
"He is down in the hall," said at length a young man whom they
happened to ask, "in the midst of the coachmen, footmen, and grooms,
shewing off tricks at cards, which make them stare till their wits
ache."
They walkt in, and interrupted the boisterous admiration of the
servants, without however disturbing Roderick, who quietly went on
conjuring. When he had finisht, he returned with the others into the
garden, and said: "I do it only to strengthen the fellows in their
faith: these puzzles give a hard blow to their groomships'
free-thinking inclinations, and help to make 'em true believers."
"I see," said the bridegroom, "my all-sufficing friend, among his
other talents, does not think that of a mountebank beneath his
cultivation."
"We live in strange times," replied the other; "who knows whether
mountebanks may not come to rule the roast in their turn? One ought to
despise nothing nowadays: the veriest straw of a talent may be that
which is to break the camel's back."
When the two friends found themselves alone, Emilius again turned down
the dark avenue and said: "Why am I in such a gloomy mood on this the
happiest day of my life? But I assure you, Roderick, though you will
not believe me, I am not made for moving about amid such a mob of
human beings,--for this parade of heartless courtesy,--for keeping my
attention on the _qui vive_ to every letter of the alphabet, so that
neither A nor Z may complain of being treated with disrespect,--for
making low bows to her tenth cousin, and shaking hands warmly with my
twentieth,--for this formal reverence to her parents,--for handing a
flower from my nosegay of compliments to every lady that crosses the
room,--for waiting to receive the tide of new-comers as wave after
wave rushes over me, and then turning to give orders that their
servants and horses may each have a full trough and pail set before
them."
"That is a watch that goes of its own accord;" answered Roderick.
"Only look at your house! it was just built for such an occasion: and
your head-butler, with his right hand taking up at the same time that
his left hand is setting down, and one leg running north while the
other seems to be making for south, was begotten and born for the very
purpose of putting confusion in order. He would set my brains to
rights if he could get at 'em: were the whole city to come, he would
find room for all; and he'll make your hospitality the proverb of
fifty miles round. Leave all such matters to him, and to your lovely
bride; and where will you find so sweet a lightener of this world's
cares?"
"This morning before sunrise," said Emilius, "I was walking through
the wood; my thoughts were solemnly tuned; I felt to the bottom of my
soul that my life is now taking a determinate cast, that it is become
a serious thing, and that this passion has created me a home and a
calling. In passing by that arbour yonder I heard sounds: it was my
beloved in close conversation. 'Has not it turned out now as I told
you?' said a strange voice; 'just as I knew it would turn out? You
have got your wish; so cheer up and be merry.' I did not like to go in
to them: as I came back I walkt nearer to the arbour; they had both
left it. But I have been musing and musing ever since, what can these
words mean?"
Roderick answered: "Perhaps she may have been in love with you this
long time without your knowing it: this should make you all the
happier."
A late nightingale now lifted up her song, and seemed to be wishing
the lover health and bliss. Emilius sank still deeper in thought.
"Come with me to clear up your spirits," said Roderick, "down to the
village, where you will find another couple; for you must not fancy
that yours is the only wedding on which today's sun is to shine. A
young clown, finding his time lag heavily in the house with an ugly
old maid, for want of something better to do did what makes the booby
think himself bound in honour to turn her into his wife. They must
both be drest out by this time; so don't let us miss the sight; for
doubtless it will be overpoweringly interesting."
The melancholy man let himself be dragged along by his merry talkative
friend, and they soon got to the cottage. The procession was just
sallying forth on its way to church. The young countryman was in his
usual linen frock; all his finery consisted in a pair of leather
breeches, which he had polisht till they shone like a field of
dandelions: he had a very simple look, and was a good deal ashamed.
The bride was tanned by the sun, and had only a few farewell leaves of
youth still hanging about her: she was coarsely and poorly but cleanly
drest: some red and blue silk ribbons, already somewhat faded,
flaunted from her stomacher; but what chiefly disfigured her was, that
her hair, after being stiffened with lard, flour, and pins, had been
swept back from her forehead and piled up at the top of her head in a
mound, on the summit of which lay the bridal chaplet. She smiled, and
seemed glad at heart, but was bashful and downcast.
Next came the aged parents: her father too was only a labourer on the
farm; and the hovel, the furniture, the clothing, all bore witness
that their poverty was extreme. A dirty squinting musician followed
the train, grinning and screaming and scratching his fiddle, which was
patcht up of wood and pasteboard, and instead of strings had three
bits of packthread.
The procession halted when his honour, their new master, came up to
them. Some mischief-loving servants, lads and girls, tittered and
laught, and jeered the bridal couple, especially the ladies' maids,
who thought themselves far handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely
better drest, and wondered how people could be so vulgar.
A shudder came over Emilius: he lookt round for Roderick; but the
latter as usual had already run away. An impertinent fop, with a head
pilloried in a high starcht neckcloth, a footman to one of the
visitors, eager to shew off his wit, shoved up to Emilius, giggling,
and cried: "There your honour, what says your honour to this grand
couple? They can neither of 'em guess where they are to find bread for
tomorrow; and yet they mean to give a ball this afternoon, and that
famous performer is already engaged."
"No bread!" said Emilius; "can such things be?"
"Their wretchedness," continued the chatterbox, "is notorious to the
whole neighbourhood; but the fellow says he bears the creature the
same goodwill, though she has nothing to boast of but her charms. Ay
verily, as the song says, love can make black white! The brace of
beggars have not even a bed, and must pass their wedding-night on the
straw: they have just been round to every cottage, begging a pint of
small beer, with which they mean to get royally drunk: a brave treat
for a wedding, your honour!"
Everybody around burst out a-laughing, and the unhappy despised pair
hung down their heads. Emilius pusht the coxcomb indignantly away, and
cried: "Here, take this!" tossing a hundred ducats, which he had
received that morning, into the hands of the amazed bridegroom.
The betrothed couple and their parents wept aloud, threw themselves
clumsily on their knees, and kist his hands and the skirts of his
coat.
He struggled to break loose from them. "Let that keep hunger out of
doors as long as you can make it last!" he exclaimed, quite stunned by
his feelings.
"Oh!" they all screamed, "oh your honour! we shall be rich and happy
till the day of our deaths, and longer too, if we live longer."
He did not know how he got away, but he found himself alone, and
hastened with tremulous steps into the wood. There he sought out the
thickest loneliest spot, and threw himself down on a grassy knoll, no
longer keeping in the bursting flood of his tears.
"I am sick of life!" he cried: "I cannot be gay and happy; I will not.
Make haste to receive me, dear kind mother earth, and shelter me with
thy cool refreshing arms from the wild beasts that trample on thee and
call themselves men. Oh God in heaven! how have I deserved that I
should lie upon down, and be clothed in silk, that the grape should
pour forth her precious heart's blood for me, and that all should
throng around me with offerings of homage and love! This poor wretch
is better and worthier than I; and misery is his nurse, and mockery
and venomous scorn alone wish him joy on his wedding. Every delicacy
that is placed before me, every draught out of my costly goblets, the
soft luxury of my bed, my wearing gold and rich garments, will seem to
me like so many sins, now that my eyes have seen how the world hunts
down many thousand thousand miserable beings, who are hungering after
the dry bread I throw away, and who never know what a good meal is. Oh
now I can fully enter into your feelings, ye holy saints, whom the
world scorns and scoffs at, ye who did scatter your all, even down to
your very raiment, among the poor, and did gird your loins with
sackcloth, and did resolve as beggars to undergo the gibes and the
kicks wherewith brutal insolence and swilling voluptuousness drive the
needy from their doors, that by so doing you might thoroughly purge
yourselves from the foul sin of wealth."
The world with all its inhabitants floated in a mist before his eyes:
he resolved to look upon the destitute as his brethren, and to depart
from the communion of the happy.
They had been waiting a long time for him in the hall, that the
ceremony might be performed; the bride had grown uneasy; her parents
had gone in search of him through the garden and park: at length he
returned, lighter for having wept away his agitation; and the solemn
knot was tied.
The company then walkt from the hall on the ground floor to the open
gallery, to sit down to dinner. The bride and bridegroom led the way,
and the rest followed in their train. Roderick offered his arm to a
young girl who was lively and talkative.
"Why does a bride always cry, and look so serious and sad during the
ceremony?" said she, as they mounted the stairs.
"Because it is the first time that she ever thoroughly feels what a
momentous and mysterious thing life is:" answered Roderick.
"But our bride," continued the girl, "in her gravity goes far beyond
all I have ever yet seen. Indeed there is always something melancholy
about her, and one can never catch her in a downright merry laugh."
"This does the more honour to her heart," replied Roderick, himself
more serious than usual. "You don't know perhaps that the bride a few
years ago took a lovely little orphan girl into her house, to educate
her. All her time was devoted to this child, and the gentle creature's
love was her sweetest reward. When the girl was seven years old, she
was lost on a walk about the town; and in spite of all the pains that
have been used, nobody has ever found out what became of her. Our
noble-minded hostess has taken this misfortune so much to heart, that
she has been a prey ever since to silent grief, and nothing can win
her mind away from longing after her little playfellow."
"A most interesting adventure indeed!" said the young lady. "One might
see a whole romance in three volumes growing out of this seed. It will
be a strange sight, and it will not be for nothing, when this lost
star reappears. What a pretty poem it would make! Don't you think so,
sir?"
The party took their seats: the bride and bridegroom were in the
centre, looking out on the gay landscape. Everybody talkt and drank
healths, and all was mirth and good humour: the bride's parents were
perfectly happy: the bridegroom alone was reserved and thoughtful, ate
but little, and took no part in the conversation.
He started on hearing musical sounds roll down through the air from
above, but grew calm again when he found they were only the soft notes
of some bugles, travelling along with a pleasant murmur over the
shrubs and through the park, and dying away on the distant hills.
Roderick had placed the musicians in the gallery overhead, and Emilius
was satisfied with this arrangement.
Toward the end of the dinner he called the butler, and, turning to
his bride, said: "My love, let poverty also have a share of our
superfluities."
He then ordered him to send a number of bottles of wine, and abundance
of pastry as well as other dishes, to the poor couple, that with them
too this might be a day of rejoicing, to which in aftertimes they
might look back with pleasure.
"See my friend," exclaimed Roderick, "how beautifully all things in
this world hang together! My idle trick of busying myself in other
folks' concerns, and chattering about whatever comes uppermost, though
you will never give over finding fault with it, has at all events been
the cause of this good deed."
Several persons began making pretty speeches to their host on his kind
and charitable heart; and Roderick's neighbour lispt about the
sweetness of romantic compassion and sentimental magnanimity.
"O say no more!" cried Emilius indignantly: "this is no good action;
it is no action at all; it is nothing. When swallows and linnets feed
on the crumbs that are thrown away from the waste of this meal, and
carry them to their young in their nest, shall not I remember a poor
brother, who needs my help? If I might follow my heart, ye would laugh
and jeer at me, just as ye have laught and jeered at many others, who
have gone forth into the wilderness that they might hear no more of
this world and its generosity."
Everybody was silent; and Roderick, perceiving from his friend's
glowing eyes how vehemently he was displeased, was afraid that in his
present irritation he might forget himself still further, and tried to
give the conversation a rapid turn on other subjects.
But Emilius was become restless and absent; his eyes wandered, more
especially toward the upper gallery, where the servants who lived in
the top story were engaged in a variety of occupations.
"Who is that ugly old woman?" he at length askt, "that is so busy up
there, and is coming back again every moment in her grey cloak?"
"She is one of my servants," said his bride; "she is to overlook and
manage my chambermaids and other girls."
"How can you endure to have anything so hideous perpetually at your
elbow?" replied Emilius.
"Let her alone," answered the young lady: "God meant the ugly to live
as well as the handsome; and she is such a good honest creature, she
may be of great use to us."
On rising from table everybody gathered round the bridegroom, again
wisht him joy, and urgently begged him to let them have a ball. The
bride too said, breathing a gentle kiss on his forehead: "You will not
deny your wife's first request, my beloved; we have all been
delighting in the hope of this. It is so long since I danced last; and
you have never yet seen me dance. Have you no curiosity how I shall
acquit myself in this new character? my mother tells me I look better
than at any other time."
"I never saw you in such gay spirits before," said Emilius. "I will
not throw a damp over your mirth; do as you please: only don't let
anybody ask me to make a laughing stock of myself by trying to cut
clumsy capers."
"Oh, if you are a bad dancer," she answered laughing, "you may feel
quite safe; we shall all readily consent to your sitting still." The
bride then retired to put on her ball dress.
"She does not know," whispered Emilius to Roderick, as he withdrew,
"that there is a secret door by which I can get from the next room
into hers: I will surprise her while she is dressing."
When Emilius had left them, and many of the ladies were also gone to
make such changes in their attire as were requisite for the ball,
Roderick took the young men aside and led the way to his own room.
"It is wearing toward evening," he said, "and will soon be dark; so
make haste all of you and mask yourselves, that we may render this
night glorious in the annals of merriment and madness. Give your
fancies free range in choosing your characters; the wilder and uglier
the better. Try every combination of shaggy mane, and squinting eye,
and mouth gaping like a volcano; pile mountains atop of your
shoulders, or plump yourselves out into Falstaffs; and as a whet to
your inventions I promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that
would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such an
out-of-the-way event in ones life; the bride and bridegroom are so
suddenly plunged, by a sort of magic, head over heels into a new
unaccustomed element, that it is impossible to throw too much madness
and folly into this festival, in order to keep pace with the whirlpool
that is bearing a brace of human beings from the state where they were
two to the state where they become one, and that all things round
about may be fitting accompaniments for the dizzy dream on the wings
of which they are floating toward a new life. So let us rave away the
night, making all sail before the breeze; and a fig for such as look
twice on the dull sour faces that, would bid you behave rationally and
soberly."
"Don't be afraid," said the young officer; "we have brought a large
chest full of masks and mad carnival dresses from town with us, such
as would make even you stare."
"But see here," returned Roderick, "what a gem I have got from my
tailor, who was on the point of cutting up this peerless treasure into
strips. He had bought it of an old crone who must doubtless have worn
it on gala-days, when she went to Lucifer's drawing room on the
Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice with its gold tassels and
fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from
Beelzebub or his imps! it will give me a right worshipful air. To
match these choice morsels I have this green velvet petticoat, with
its saffron lining, and this mask which would melt even Medusa to a
grin. Thus accoutred I mean to lead the chorus of anti-graces, myself
their mother-queen, to the bedroom. Make the best speed you can, and
we will then go in solemn procession to fetch the bride."
The bugles were still playing: the company were strolling about the
garden, or sitting before the house. The sun had gone down behind
thick murky clouds, and the country was lying in the grey dusk, when a
parting gleam suddenly burst athwart the cloudy veil, and flooded
every spot around, but above all the building, its galleries and
pillars and wreaths of flowers, as it were with red blood.
At this moment the parents of the bride and the other visitors saw a
train of the most grotesque figures move toward the upper corridor.
Roderick led the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by
humpbacks, bulging paunches, cumbrous wigs, Scaramouches, Punches,
shrivelled Pantaloons, curtsying women embankt by enormous hoops, and
overcanopied with a yard of horsehair, powder, and pomatum, and by
every disgusting shape that can be imagined, as if a nightmair had
been unrolling her stores. They jumpt, and twirled, and tottered, and
stumbled, and straddled, and strutted, and swaggered along the
gallery, and then vanisht behind one of the doors. But few of the
beholders had been able to laugh, so utterly were they astounded by
the strange sight.
Suddenly a piercing shriek burst from one of the rooms, and forth into
the bloodred glow of the sunset rusht the pale bride, in a short white
frock, about which wreaths of flowers were dangling, with her lovely
bosom all naked, and her rich locks streaming through the air. As
though mad, with rolling eyes and wrencht face, she darted along the
gallery, and blinded by terrour could find neither door nor staircase;
and immediately after dasht Emilius in chase of her, with the
sparkling Turkish dagger in his high-uplifted hand.
Now she was at the end of the passage ... she could go no further ...
he reacht her. His maskt friends and the grey old woman were running
after him. But in his fury he had already pierced her bosom, and cut
across her white neck; her blood spouted forth into the radiance of
the setting sun.
The old woman had claspt her arms round him to tear him back; he
struggled fiercely, hurled himself along with her over the railing,
and they both fell almost lifeless at the feet of the relations who
had been staring in dumb horrour at the bloody scene.
Above, and in the court, or hurrying down the steps or along the
galleries, were seen the hideous masks, standing or running about, in
various clusters, like fiends of hell.
Roderick took his dying friend in his arms. He had found him in his
wife's room, playing with the dagger. She was almost drest when he
entered. At the sight of the detested red bodice his memory had
rekindled; the horrid vision of that night had risen up before his
eyes; and gnashing his teeth he had darted after his trembling, flying
bride, to avenge that murder and all those devilish doings.
The old woman, ere she died, confest the crime that had been
perpetrated; and the gladness and mirth of the whole house were
suddenly changed into sorrow and lamentation and dismay.