Complete Short Works of George Meredith. George Meredith

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СКАЧАТЬ shall be arranged on the spot,’ said the Kaiser.

      A word from Kaiser Heinrich sealed Gottlieb’s compliance.

      Said he: ‘Gracious Kaiser and master! though such a youth could of himself never have aspired to the possession of a Groschen, yet when the Kaiser pleads for him, objection is as the rock of Moses, and streams consent. Truly he has done Cologne good service, and if Margarita, my daughter, can be persuaded—’

      The Kaiser addressed her with his blazing brows.

      Margarita blushed a ready autumn of rosy-ripe acquiescence.

      ‘A marriage registered yonder!’ said the Kaiser, pointing upward.

      ‘I am thine, murmured Margarita, as Farina drew near her.

      ‘Seal it! seal it!’ quoth the Kaiser, in hearty good humour; ‘take no consent from man or maid without a seal.’

      Farina tossed the contents of a flask in air, and saluted his beloved on the lips.

      This scene took place near the charred round of earth where the Foulest descended to his kingdom below.

      Men now pervaded Cologne with flasks, purifying the atmosphere. It became possible to breathe freely.

      ‘We Germans,’ said Kaiser Heinrich, when he was again surrounded by his courtiers, ‘may go wrong if we always follow Pfalzgraf Nase; but this time we have been well led.’ Whereat there was obsequious laughter.

      The Pfalzgraf pleaded a susceptible nostril.

      ‘Thou art, I fear, but a timid mortal,’ said the Kaiser.

      ‘Never have I been found so on the German Field, Imperial Majesty!’ returned the Pfalzgraf. ‘I take glory to myself that this Nether reek overcomes me.’

      ‘Even that we must combat, you see!’ exclaimed Kaiser Heinrich; ‘but come all to a marriage this night, and take brides as soon as you will, all of you. Increase, and give us loyal subjects in plenty. I count prosperity by the number of marriages in my empire!’

      The White Rose Club were invited by Gottlieb to the wedding, and took it in vast wrath until they saw the Kaiser, and such excellent stout German fare present, when immediately a battle raged as to who should do the event most honour, and was in dispute till dawn: Dietrich Schill being the man, he having consumed wurst the length of his arm, and wine sufficient to have floated a St. Goar salmon; which was long proudly chronicled in his family, and is now unearthed from among the ancient honourable records of Cologne.

      The Goshawk was Farina’s bridesman, and a very spiriting bridesman was he! Aunt Lisbeth sat in a corner, faintly smiling.

      ‘Child!’ said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting, ‘your courage amazes me. Do you think? Do you know? Poor, sweet bird, delivered over hand and foot!’

      ‘I love him! I love him, aunty! that’s all I know,’ said Margarita: ‘love, love, love him!’

      ‘Heaven help you!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.

      ‘Pray with me,’ said Margarita.

      The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different prayers, but to the same end. That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle, and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita’s heart, and shrieked.

      ‘Child! it gallops!’ she cried.

      ‘‘Tis happiness,’ said Margarita, standing in her hair.

      ‘May it last only!’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

      ‘It will, aunty! I am humble: I am true’; and the fair girl gathered the frill of her nightgown.

      ‘Look not in the glass,’ said Lisbeth; ‘not to-night! Look, if you can, to-morrow.’

      She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her, leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.

      CONCLUSION

      The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne. He entered the Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony. For three successive centuries the towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.

      The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina. The youth awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own, displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and left of him. In a week, they were doubled. A month quadrupled them. They increased.

      ‘Fame and Fortune,’ mused Farina, ‘come from man and the world: Love is from heaven. We may be worthy, and lose the first. We lose not love unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? Look for him who walks under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet bride, leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness. There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect. Least of all, the creatures of the Damned! By this I may be known.’

      Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old friends, and drink some of Gottlieb’s oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid by false Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance, in the music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one hand Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both bent lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer light.

      THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER

By George Meredith

      CHAPTER I

      An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common, with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually within a stone’s-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life. It may be seen that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to kindle the General’s enthusiasm. He would have taken the first he saw, had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house. Fortune, under Elizabeth Ople’s guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of the comforts. The place he fell upon is only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly followed them by terming it bijou. In time, when his own imagination, instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, ‘a gentlemanly residence.’ For it was, he declared, a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling two sentry-boxes forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat bent, in the other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to discoverable stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a meadow if magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a strip of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world was impossible. Comfort, СКАЧАТЬ