Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 35

after a sultry storm, such as this, the waves all freeze to spikes of ice, and the heart lies upon them transfixed. As Firmian went on broken-hearted, by unknown, darkling paths, it seemed to him as if all the death-bells on earth were tolling behind him, as if the stream of life were running dry before him fast; and when he saw the blue of the sky cut across by a black storm-tree[102] which lay upon the stars like the bier of the future, a voice seemed to cry, "With this foot-rule of vapour, Fate is measuring you, your world, and your love, for your last coffin."

From the circ.u.mstance that the distance between him and the other figure kept always the same, Henry at last became aware that it was following him, and halted only when he halted. So he made up his mind that he would lie in wait in the next village for the coming up of this form which was creeping after him. In the next village then, Topen (which lies deep in a valley), he awaited, in the broad shadow of a gleaming church, the arrival of this unknown being which was on his track. Firmian came hastening along the broad white street, dazed with sorrow--blind in the moonlight--and stopped, as if frozen, close by Henry from whom he had so recently been severed. There they stood facing each other, like two spirits above their corpses, each taking the other for a ghost (just as the superst.i.tious think the noises made by the buried-alive are caused by spirits). Firmian trembled lest Leibgeber should be vexed with him, and opened his arms and stammered out, "It is I, Henry," and went to him. Henry gave a cry of pain, and threw himself upon the faithful breast; but his vow sealed his lips.

And thus these two miserable, or blessed beings, speechless, blind and weeping, pressed their beating hearts close together once more. And when this moment--wordless, full of torture, full of bliss--was over and past, an iron, cold one, tore them asunder, and Fate seized them with two almighty arms, and hurled the one bleeding heart to the south, and the other to the north; while the dejected, bleeding corpses pa.s.sed slowly and alone, along the widening path of parting, in the night.

And why is it that _my_ own heart breaks in twain with such a pang? Why should it be that, long ere I came to their parting, I could not keep my own tears back? Ah! my dear Christian, is it not because in this church those who once lay upon your heart and mine are mouldering into dust? No, no, I am used to it now; in the black magic of our lives to see skeletons suddenly start up in our friends' places; that of every two who put their arms about each other _one_ has to die;[103] that an unknown breath blows the brittle gla.s.s which we call a human breast, and a cry, which we know not of, shatters it in a moment. It does not pain me now so much as of old, ye two brothers sleeping in the church, that the hard, cold hand of death struck you away so soon from the honey-dew of life, and that ye stretched your wings and have vanished away. Oh! either your sleep is sounder than ours, or your dreams are happier, or your awaking is blither. But what agonises us in every grave-hillock is this thought. "Alas! beloved heart, _how_ I would have loved you had I known you were going to die!"

But, since none of us can take a corpse's hand and say, "Pale one! at all events I have sweetened thy transitory life a _little_; I have, at any rate, never given that faded heart of thine anything but love and happiness;" and as when time, sorrow, and the loveless winter of life have beautified our hearts, at length we must all go up, with unavailing sighs, to the overthrown forms which are lying beneath the landslip of the grave, and say to them, "Oh! that, now that I am better and gentler, I have thee with me no longer, and can no longer love thee! Oh! that the beloved breast is transparent and broken in, and no heart in it which I would love more fondly, and gladden as I never did before." What have we left but an unavailing sorrow, a dumb repentance, and never-ending bitter tears?

Yes, my Christian, we have something better left still--a warmer, truer, lovelier, love for every soul which we have not yet lost.

CHAPTER XXIII.

DAYS IN VADUZ--NATHALIE'S LETTER--A NEW YEAR'S WISH--WILDERNESS OF DESTINY AND THE HEART.

We next meet our Firmian (promoted to higher rank on his retirement from the world, as officers are on theirs from the service, to that of Inspector, namely) in the Inspector's quarters at Vaduz. He found he had to twist his way through so many thickets of p.r.i.c.kly-pear and impenetrable thorn-hedges, that, amid his labours, he almost forgot that he was alone--so utterly alone--in the world. No one could endure and overcome solitude, if it were not for the hope of companionship in the future, or for the belief in invisible companionship in the present.

With the Count he had only to seem to be what he really was, and then he was most like the unconventional Leibgeber. He found the Count to be an old man of the world, living alone, with neither wife, sons, nor female servants--a man who filled up and adorned his grey years with the arts and sciences, the last, and most lasting, enjoyments of a life enjoyed to the end--and who cared for nothing on earth (saving always the amus.e.m.e.nt of jesting upon it) except his daughter, who (as we are aware) had been Nathalie's greatest friend in the starry and flowery days of youth.

As he had devoted all his powers of body and soul, in early life, to climbing to the tops of all the slipperiest _mats de cocagne_ of pleasure, and carrying off the prizes from them, he had come down to earth with both sides of his being a little wearied. His mental life was now a kind of nursing, and lying in a tepid bath, which it required a shower of cold water to make him raise himself from, and into which fresh warm water had to be constantly being poured. The point of honour of keeping his word, and the greatest possible happiness for his daughter, were the only unbroken reins by which moral laws had ever restrained him; for he looked upon all their other covenants more in the light of flower-chains, or strings of pearls--matters which a man of the world breaks and mends often enough in his career.

As it is easier to imitate lameness than straight walking, it was not difficult for Siebenkaes to enact the part of his beloved _Diable Boiteux_. The Count was somewhat struck with his white-painted face (which was natural to him), and with his melancholy, and a heap of nameless divergences (variations and aberrations) from Leibgeber. But the Inspector accounted for these to his patron by saying that he was so changed that he scarce recognised himself--that he seemed to have become the changeling of his former self since his illness, and since he had seen his college friend Siebenkaes depart this life in Kuhschnappel. In brief, the Count could not but believe what he was told; who would think of such an absurd story as the one I am telling here? And if the reader had been present in the room himself, I am sure he would have believed the Inspector in preference to me, if it were for no other reason than that he remembered more of his old conversations with the Count than the latter did himself. ('Tis true he got this knowledge out of Leibgeber's diary.)

At the same time, as he had to speak, and act, in the capacity of charge-d'affaires, or resident consul, and proxy of his beloved Leibgeber, there were two things which he was, in a high degree, constrained to be--cheerful and kindly. Leibgeber's humour had a greater power of colour, a greater freedom of drawing, and a more poetic and citizen-of-the-world-ish, and ideal compa.s.s and range, than Firmian's own[104] and this a.s.sumed brightness of temper by and by became genuine. Moreover, his delicacy of feeling, and his friendship, kept constantly before his mental vision, as on a Moses-cloudy-pillar on his path of life, a shining, magnified image of Henry with a glory, and a crown of laurel on his brow and every thought within him cried, "Be glorious, be G.o.dlike, be a Socrates, to do honour to the spirit whose amba.s.sador you are." And which of us could a.s.sume the name of a beloved person, and go and act unworthily?

Nothing on earth is so often deceived--not even women or princes--as the conscience. Our Inspector tried to make _his_ believe that his name had really _been_ Leibgeber in early days--just as he signed it now--and that he really _was_ helping the Count in his work. Moreover, who could be more ready than he to make a perfectly clean breast of the whole story to the Count as soon as ever the proper time came? It was easy to see that a humourous, juristic forgery, and pictorial illusion of this sort would please him better than any amount of truths founded upon reason, or _responsa prudentum_--to say nothing of his gratification at finding he could have his friend, humorist, and jurist, with two heads, two hearts, four legs and arms--in duplicate, in short. Besides, the fact must not be lost sight of that the lies he told were more _unavoidable_ lies than lies for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the thing--inasmuch as he touched as seldom as he could upon Leibgeber's previous conversations and relations, and as much as possible on his own, which involved no breaches of truth.

Thus it is with--not our Inspector only--but man in general. He has an indescribable fondness for _halves_, perhaps because he is a colossus and demi-G.o.d standing, with out-stretched legs, upon two worlds. He particularly delights in half-romances, half-postage of selfishness, half-proofs, half-scholars (smatterers in knowledge), half-holidays, half-spheres--and (consequently) better halves.

Siebenkaes's new labours of various kinds concealed his own pains and sufferings from him for the first few weeks (at all events, when the sun was not shining). But what gave him his largest extra-ration of pleasure was the Count's satisfaction with his legal knowledge, and careful and accurate style of doing his work. Once, when the Count said to him, "Friend Leibgeber, you are keeping your promise like a man.

Your ability and accuracy over your work are deserving of all praise, and I do not conceal from you that I felt just the slightest shade of a misgiving on this very head, notwithstanding my high opinion of your other talents. For, like your Frederick II., I consider talk and work to be two wholly distinct things; and as regards the latter, I look for the most accurate and methodical attention to all its details in every one I have to deal with." Firmian rejoiced within himself, as he thought, "At all events I have turned aside some little matter of blame from my dear Henry, and gained a little modic.u.m of praise for him; though he could have done it all much better himself, if he had chosen."

After a pleasure of self-sacrifice such as this, one always wants to go on enjoying _fresh_ pleasures of self-sacrifice, and making new sacrifices, just as children, who, whenever they are given anything, cannot cease giving. He brought out his 'Selections from the Devil's Papers,' gave them to the Count, and told him plainly and openly that they were his own work. "This is not a deception in the slightest," he thought; "though he supposes they are by Leibgeber; I have no other name now." The Count never wearied of reading and praising these papers, and what particularly pleased him was, that, in the path of satire, he followed the guidance of his own two compatriots, the British Castor and Pollux of humour, Swift and Sterne. Siebenkaes listened to the encomiums on his book with such delight that he seemed exactly like a conceited author--whereas, in reality, he _was_ nothing but a _lover_ of his Henry, who had managed to conjure a few extra laurel-crowns on to his image in the Count's mind.

This single enjoyment of his was, of a truth, necessary to him by way of consolation and cordial for a life which was flowing on, beshaded and chilled between two steep banks of legal business, week after week, month after month. Alas! with the exception of the good Count's talk (whose extraordinary kindness to him would have made his heart beat even more warmly than it did, could he have thanked him for it in another's name as well as his own),--he heard nothing better than an occasional murmur of the waves of his life. He found himself, every day, in his old, disagreeable post of a critic, compelled to read what he had to give judgment upon. Formerly it had been books--now it was lawyers. He saw into so many empty heads, into so many empty hearts--saw such darkness in the former, such blackness in the latter. He saw how very much the common-herd (when it comes to the Egeria-fountain of the juristic ink-bottle to benefit its _calculi_), is like Carlsbad bath-guests, in whose case the hot-springs bring all diseased matter to the surface of the skin. He saw that most of the oldest, and worst, members of the legal profession are, in only one beautiful respect, like poisonous plants--namely, that they are not half so poisonous, but more innocuous, while they are young. He saw that a just judgment often did as much harm as an unjust one, and that the one was appealed against just as much as the other. He saw that it was easier, and, at the same time, more distasteful, to be a judge than an advocate; although neither of them loses anything by an injustice--for a judge is paid for a judgment reversed on appeal, just as an advocate is for a case which he loses. He saw that, in dealing with defendants, the principle of grooms is applied (who look upon the currycomb as a good half of the forage). And, finally, he saw that n.o.body fares worse in the affair than he who _sees_ it, and that the devil is the very last of all things that the devil _takes_.

Amid labours and views such as these, the tender fibres of the heart contract, and the open arms of the inner man are paralysed--the overweighted soul scarce has the _strength_ to love, let alone the _time_. When we love, and seek after _things_, it must be at the expense of _persons_. If we _work_ too much, we must _love_ too little. There was but one place where poor Firmian gave vent, once in the twenty-four hours, to the longings and prayers of his tender soul--namely, his pillow; and its cover was the white handkerchief waiting for his weeping eyes. A deluge (made of tears) was over all his former world--nothing floating on its surface but the two withered funeral-garlands of departed days--the flowers which Lenette and Nathalie had worn on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like petrified medicine-flowers of his sick soul.

Living so far away, and so wholly outside the elliptical vault, he could hear as little of Kuhschnappel as of Schraplau--of Lenette and Nathalie not a word. He merely learned, from the 'Messenger of the G.o.ds and Advertiser of German Programmes,' that he was dead, and that the critical profession was thereby deprived of one of its ablest and most zealous members. Thus our Inspector was honoured by the necrologium sooner than any other German scholar ever was--as soon, in fact, as the Olympic conqueror Euthymus,[105] to whom, by a decree of the Delphic Oracle, sacrifice and divine worship was adjudged during his lifetime.

I do not know which kind of ears--long ears or deaf--the German trump of fame prefers to blow to.

And yet, in the depths of this ice-month of his love-imploring heart, and in the wilderness of his loneliness, Firmian still had one living, resplendent flower--and that was Nathalie's parting-kiss. Ah! ye who waste and pine because of our insatiableness, did ye but know how a kiss, which is a first and a last, blossoms and blooms throughout a life--imperishable double-rose of speechless lips and burning souls--ye would search for bliss more enduring--aye, and find it too! That kiss sealed, in Firmian, and confirmed the spirit-bond immortalising and eternising love at its loveliest and brightest hour of bloom. The speechless lips were still eloquent, to _him_. The spirit breathed between them as of old; and often as he saw, by night, behind the veil of his closed, tearful eyelids, Nathalie going away from him, with all her sacred sorrows, and vanishing down the darkling path--he never had enough of the parting, the anguish, and the love.

At last, when six months had pa.s.sed, one beautiful winter morning, when the white hills with their snow-crystal woods lay bathed in the rose-blood of the sun, and Aurora was stretching her pinions more widely as she gently laid them down upon the glittering earth--there flew a letter into Firmian's empty hand, as if borne upon the morning-breeze of a spring as yet among the things to be. It was from Nathalie, who, like the rest of the world, supposed him to be the Henry of former days.

"DEAR LEIBGEBER,--I can restrain or control my heart no longer. Every day it longs to break in pieces before yours, and show you all its wounds. You were _once_ my friend, I know; am I quite forgotten? Have I lost _you_ too? Ah! surely not; it is only that you cannot speak to me for sorrow, since your Firmian died upon your breast, and still rests, vanishing into the frost of death, upon the aching spot. Ah! why did you persuade me to accept the fruit that grows upon his grave--and, as it were, open that grave anew every year?[106] The first day I received this fruit was bitter--bitterer than any other. You will see from a little New Year's Greeting, which I addressed to myself (and which I enclose), how I sometimes feel. One pa.s.sage in it refers to a white rose in my room, from which I managed to gather a flower or two in December. My friend, now grant me a request, the making of which is really my object in writing this letter--my most earnest prayer for sorrow, a bitterer sorrow than is mine even now--for this will give me consolation. Tell me--for there is no one else who can--and I know no other--tell me everything about our dear one's last hours and moments; what he said and what he suffered; how his eyes closed, and how his life ended? All this, everything, though it will pierce my heart, I _must_ be told. What can it cost you and me but tears?--and tears soothe suffering eyes.

"I remain, your friend,

"NATHALIE A.

"P.S. If there were not so many causes to prevent me, I would go myself to his resting-place and gather relics for my soul; but, if _you_ keep silence, I do not answer for anything. I send you my congratulations on your new appointment, and I hope I may be able to wish you joy some day by word of mouth; my heart may become so far whole once more that I shall be able to come and pay my dear friend a visit at her father's, and see _you_ without dying of sorrow, at the likeness you bear to your buried friend, _un_like you now."

I venture to translate[107] the pretty poem as follows:

"MY NEW YEAR'S GREETING TO MYSELF.

"The New Year's gates are open, and Fate, standing between the sun and the burning morning clouds upon the mound of ashes of the year which has fallen to dust, deals out the days according to their lot. What dost thou pray for, Nathalie?

"Not for joy. Alas! all the joys which have been in my heart have left but black thorns there; their rose-juice soon, was gone. The heavy thunder-cloud grows as the sun-gleam brightens--and what shines upon us is the ray reflected from the sword which the coming day will hold to our happy hearts. No, no; I pray not for joys; they make the thirsting heart so void. It is but sorrow that can fill it full.

"Fate deals the days according to their lot. What dost thou long for, Nathalie?

"Not love. Oh! those who press the th.o.r.n.y white rose of love to their hearts draw blood from out them; the warm tears of bliss which fall into the blossom soon grow chill, and are dried up amain. Love, all gleam and bloom, hangs on the morning sky of life, like some great rose-red Aurora in the heavens. Ah! do not enter that bright glittering cloud--it is but mist and tears. No, no; long not for love; die of a lovelier sorrow. Sink into the chill of death under a n.o.bler poison-tree than is the lovely myrtle.

"Thou art kneeling at the feet of Destiny, Nathalie; tell him thy desire!

"Neither do I desire more friends. No; we stand all, side by side, on undermined graves--and when we have _so_ long held each other so fondly by the hand, and _so_ long suffered together, our friend's empty mound breaks in, and he turns pale, and sinks--and I am left alone, my life all frozen, beside the filled-up grave. No, no: but when at last there comes the hour when the heart will die no more, but has put on immortal being--and when friends stand side by side in the eternal world--then let the firmer breast beat warm and high, then let the eye, which is to beam for ever, weep blissful tears, then let the lips, which never more grow pale, murmur in rapture, '_Now_ come to me, beloved soul, we will love _now_, for we shall never have to part, again.'

"Oh! thou bereaved and widowed Nathalie! what would'st thou have on earth?

"A grave, and patience; nothing else beside. But these deny me not, thou silence-keeping Fate! Dry thou mine eyes, then close them! Still my heart, then break it!--Yes, _one_ day, when the free spirit spreads her wings in a fairer heaven, and when the New Year breaks upon a purer world--when we _all_ meet, and love, again--_then_ shall I lay my longings, prayers, and wishes at thy feet. But none for _me_; for _I_ shall be too blest."

In what words could I depict the _inward_ speechlessness and motionlessness of her friend, when he had read the paper, and still held and gazed at it, although he could no longer either see or think.

Oh! the ice-floes of the glacier of death spread wider and wider, and filled up one warm Tempe valley after another. The only bond by which our solitary Firmian now held to humanity was the cord of his death-bell and coffin--his bed was but a broader bier--and every joy seemed a theft from the withered, leaf-stripped heart of another. And thus the stem of his life, like that of many flowers,[108] went deeper and deeper down, its top becoming its hidden root.

The abyss of a difficulty yawned on every side, and to do _anything_ was just as perilous as to do _nothing_. I shall lay the difficulties, or resolutions, in their order as they struck his mind, before the reader. In man, the devil flies up always sooner than the angel,--the evil intention comes before the good one.[109] _His_ first was non-moral, namely, that he should answer Nathalie, and tell her what she wished to hear--that is, should _lie_ to her. We find the black mourning coat as becoming, when others wear it for _us_, as warm when _we_ wear it for _others_. "But I shall melt her heart" (said _his_) "into fresh anguish with a continuation of wound and lie; ah! not _even_ my actual death would be worth such pain and sorrow. Therefore I shall keep utter silence." But _then_, she must think Henry annoyed, and that she has lost _this_ friend too; nay, she might, in this case, travel to Kuhschnappel, and go to his grave, and bear it as an additional burden upon her oppressed and trembling soul. In both these cases there was the risk of the _third_ danger--that she should come to Vaduz, and that he should then have to convert the written lies, which he had spared her, into spoken ones. There was but one way of escape that he could see--the most virtuous, but the steepest--he could tell her the truth. But with what danger to every relation of his life this confession was fraught, even if Nathalie kept counsel--also, a yellow, cross light would fall upon Henry in Nathalie's eyes, especially as she had no means of knowing anything as to the n.o.bleness and generosity of his aims and deceptions. On the whole, there was least for his heart to suffer on the precarious path of truth, and ultimately he resolved to go by it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

NEWS FROM KUHSCHNAPPEL--WOMAN'S ANTICLIMAX--OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL.

It is a matter which often quite puts me beyond myself that, although we _do_, in the end, duly accept and honour the bills which Virtue draws upon us, we only _pay_ them after such a vast number of days of grace and double-usances--although neither the devil nor Constantinople will hear of either the one or the other. Firmian urged no further pleas of objection, except for delay. He merely _postponed_ his confession, thinking that as Apollo is the best consoler (Paraclete) of man, and as Nathalie had shown the basilisk of sorrow its own image in the mirror of poetry, the sight of _itself_ would be sufficient to kill it, Thus it is that all virtuous motions in us are weakened by the friction of time and of our inclinations.