Complete Short Works of George Meredith. George Meredith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Then she blushed, drew the silver arrow from the gathered gold-shot braids above her neck, held it out to him, and was gone.

      Farina clutched the treasure, and reeled into the street. Half a dozen neighbours were grouped by the door.

      ‘What ‘s the matter in Master Groschen’s house now?’ one asked, as he plunged into the midst of them.

      ‘Matter?’ quoth the joy-drunken youth, catching at the word, and mused off into raptures; ‘There never was such happiness! ‘Tis paradise within, exile without. But what exile! A star ever in the heavens to lighten the road and cheer the path of the banished one’; and he loosened his vest and hugged the cold shaft on his breast.

      ‘What are you talking and capering at, fellow?’ exclaimed another: ‘Can’t you answer about those shrieks, like a Christian, you that have just come out of the house? Why, there’s shrieking now! It ‘s a woman. Thousand thunders! it sounds like the Frau Lisbeth’s voice. What can be happening to her?’

      ‘Perhaps she’s on fire,’ was coolly suggested between two or three.

      ‘Pity to see the old house burnt,’ remarked one.

      ‘House! The woman, man! the woman!’

      ‘Ah!’ replied the other, an ancient inhabitant of Cologne, shaking his head, ‘the house is oldest!’

      Farina, now recovering his senses, heard shrieks that he recognized as possible in the case of Aunt Lisbeth dreading the wickedness of an opposing sex, and alarmed by the inrush of old Gottlieb’s numerous guests. To confirm him, she soon appeared, and hung herself halfway out of one of the upper windows, calling desperately to St. Ursula for aid. He thanked the old lady in his heart for giving him a pretext to enter Paradise again; but before even love could speed him, Frau Lisbeth was seized and dragged remorselessly out of sight, and he and the rosy room darkened together.

      Farina twice strode off to the Rhine-stream; as many times he returned. It was hard to be away from her. It was harder to be near and not close. His heart flamed into jealousy of the stranger. Everything threatened to overturn his slight but lofty structure of bliss so suddenly shot into the heavens. He had but to remember that his hand was on the silver arrow, and a radiance broke upon his countenance, and a calm fell upon his breast. ‘It was a plight of her troth to me,’ mused the youth. ‘She loves me! She would not trust her frank heart to speak. Oh, generous young girl! what am I to dare hope for such a prize? for I never can be worthy. And she is one who, giving her heart, gives it all. Do I not know her? How lovely she looked thanking the stranger! The blue of her eyes, the warm-lighted blue, seemed to grow full on the closing lids, like heaven’s gratitude. Her beauty is wonderful. What wonder, then, if he loves her? I should think him a squire in his degree. There are squires of high birth and low.’

      So mused Farina with his arms folded and his legs crossed in the shadow of Margarita’s chamber. Gradually he fell into a kind of hazy doze. The houses became branded with silver arrows. All up the Cathedral stone was a glitter, and dance, and quiver of them. In the sky mazed confusion of arrowy flights and falls. Farina beheld himself in the service of the Emperor watching these signs, and expecting on the morrow to win glory and a name for Margarita. Glory and the name now won, old Gottlieb was just on the point of paternally blessing them, when a rude pat aroused him from the delicious moon-dream.

      ‘Hero by day! house-guard by night! That tells a tale,’ said a cheerful voice.

      The moon was shining down the Cathedral square and street, and Farina saw the stranger standing solid and ruddy before him. He was at first prompted to resent such familiar handling, but the stranger’s face was of that bland honest nature which, like the sun, wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness.

      ‘You are right,’ replied Farina; ‘so it is!’

      ‘Pretty wines inside there, and a rare young maiden. She has a throat like a nightingale, and more ballads at command than a piper’s wallet. Now, if I hadn’t a wife at home.’

      ‘You’re married?’ cried Farina, seizing the stranger’s hand.

      ‘Surely; and my lass can say something for herself on the score of brave looks, as well as the best of your German maids here, trust me.’

      Farina repressed an inclination to perform a few of those antics which violent joy excites, and after rushing away and back, determined to give his secret to the stranger.

      ‘Look,’ said he in a whisper, that opens the private doors of a confidence.

      But the stranger repeated the same word still more earnestly, and brought Farina’s eyes on a couple of dark figures moving under the Cathedral.

      ‘Some lamb’s at stake when the wolves are prowling,’ he added: ‘‘Tis now two hours to the midnight. I doubt if our day’s work be over till we hear the chime, friend.’

      ‘What interest do you take in the people of this house that you watch over them thus?’ asked Farina.

      The stranger muffled a laugh in his beard.

      ‘An odd question, good sooth. Why, in the first place, we like well whatso we have done good work for. That goes for something. In the second, I’ve broken bread in this house. Put down that in the reckoning. In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum total’s at your service, young sir.’

      Farina marked him closely. There was not a spot on his face for guile to lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on. He caught the stranger’s hand.

      ‘You called me friend just now. Make me your friend. Look, I was going to say: I love this maiden! I would die for her. I have loved her long. This night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain. I am poor. She is rich. I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser with this she has given me! Look, it is what our German girls slide in their back-hair, this silver arrow!’

      ‘A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!’ exclaimed the stranger.

      ‘Then, I was going to say—tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high baronry, will her father give her!’

      The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

      ‘Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you’re a boy of pluck: I serve in the Kaiser’s army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be here in three days. If you ‘re of that mind then, I doubt little you may get posted well: but, look again! there’s a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you may win your spurs this night even; who knows?—‘S life! there’s a tall fellow joining those two lurkers.’

      ‘Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?’

      ‘Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year’s apprenticeship:

             “I learnt to watch the rats and mice

               At play, with never a candle-end.

              They play’d so well; they sang so nice;

               They dubb’d me comrade; called me friend!”

      So says the ballad of our red-beard king’s captivity. All evil has a good:

             СКАЧАТЬ