The Serapion Brethren Volume I Part 43

The wine of Hochheimer glittered like pearls in the beautiful, cut goblets, and opened the hearts, and loosened the tongues of the three old fellows; and old Spangenberg, advanced in years, but still glowing with life and vigour, served up many a quaint tale and adventure of his younger days; so that Master Martin's paunch waggled heartily, and he had, times without end, to wipe tears of irrepressible laughter from his eyes, Paumgartner, too, forgot his senatorial gravity more than usual, and gave himself thoroughly up to the enjoyment of the n.o.ble liquor and the entertaining talk; then Rosa came in with a pretty basket, whence she brought out table-linen, dazzling as snow. She tripped here and there with housewifely eagerness; laid the table, and covered it with all sorts of well-flavoured dishes, appetizing of odour, and begged the gentlemen, with sweetest smiles, not to disdain what had been got ready in haste. The laughter and the flow of conversation ceased. Paumgartner and Spangenberg could neither of them move his eyes away from the beautiful girl, and even Master Martin watched her housewifely activities with a smile of satisfaction, as he leant back in his chair with folded hands. When Rosa would have left them, old Spangenberg jumped up as briskly as a youth, took her by both shoulders, and cried over and over again, with tears in his eyes, "Oh thou good, precious angel!--thou sweet, kind, charming creature!" Then he kissed her three times on the forehead, and went back to his chair in deep reflection. Paumgartner drank a toast to her health.

"Ay!" began Spangenberg, when she had left the room; "ay, Master Martin! Heaven has, in that daughter of yours, bestowed on you a jewel which you cannot prize too highly. She will bring you to great honour one day. Who--be he of whatsoever condition he may--would be otherwise than only too happy to be your son-in-law?"

"You see," said Paumgartner; "you see, Master Martin, the n.o.ble Herr von Spangenberg thinks exactly as I do. Already I see my darling Rosa a n.o.bleman's bride, with the rich pearls in her lovely fair hair!"

"Dear, dear! good gentlemen!" cried Master Martin, looking quite out of temper, "why should you persist in talking about a matter which has not even begun to enter my thoughts? My daughter Rosa is only just eighteen; she is too young to be thinking of a husband; and how matters may come to pa.s.s hereafter, I leave wholly in G.o.d's hands.

But thus much is certain that neither a n.o.ble nor any other man shall have my daughter's hand, save and except that cooper who proves himself, to my satisfaction, to be the most utterly perfect master of his craft--always supposing that my daughter loves him; for I am not going to constrain my darling daughter to anything whatever in the world, least of all to a marriage that does not please her."

Spangenberg and Paumgartner looked each other in the face, much astonished at this remarkable statement of the Master's. Presently, after clearing his throat a good deal, Spangenberg began:

"Then your daughter is not to marry out of her own cla.s.s, is she?"

"G.o.d forbid that she should," answered Martin.

"But," continued Spangenberg, "suppose some doughty young Master belonging to some other craft--say, a goldsmith, or perhaps a talented young painter--were to come wooing your daughter, and pleased her very specially, much more than any of her other wooers, how were it then?"

Master Martin answered, drawing himself up, and throwing back his head:

"'Show me,' I should say, 'show me, my good young sir, the two-fudder cask that you have built as your masterpiece.' And if he couldn't do that I should open the door politely, and beg him, as civilly as I could, to try his luck elsewhere."

Spangenberg resumed:

"Suppose the young fellow said, 'I cannot show you a small-scale piece of work such as you speak of; but come with me to the market-place, and look at that stately building, reaching its pinnacles proudly up to the skies. That is my masterpiece.'"

"Ah, my good sir!" Martin interrupted impatiently; "what is the good of your taking all this trouble to alter my determination. My son-in-law shall belong to my own craft, and to no other; for I look upon my craft as being the most glorious that exists on earth. Do you suppose that all that is necessary to make a cask hold together is to fit the hoops on to the staves? Ah! ha! The glory and the beauty of our craft is that it presupposes a knowledge of the preservation and the nursing of that most precious of heaven's gifts--the n.o.ble wine, that so it may ripen, and penetrate us with its strength and sweetness, a glowing spirit of life. Then there is the build of the cask itself. If the build is to be successful, we have to measure and calculate all the curves, and the other dimensions, with rule and compa.s.s with the utmost accuracy.

Geometers and arithmeticians we must be, that we may compute the proportions and the capacities of our casks. Ah, good sir, I can tell you my very heart laughs within my body when I see a fair, well-proportioned cask laid on to the end-stool, the staves all beautifully finished off with the riving knife and the broad-axe, and the men set to with the mallets, and 'clipp, clapp' ring; the strokes of the driver. Ha! ha! that is merry music. There stands then the work, perfect; and well may I look round me with a dash of pride when I take my marking-iron and mark it with my own trade-mark on the head of the cask--my own mark, known and respected by all genuine vineyard-masters in the land. You spoke of architects, dear sir. Very good; a grand, stately house is a fine work beyond doubt. But if I were an architect, and pa.s.sed by one of my works, and saw some dirty-minded creature, some good-for-nothing, despicable wretch who had happened to become the owner of that house, looking down at me from one of the balconies, I should feel a shame at the bottom of my heart; I should long to dash that work of mine to pieces from sheer annoyance and disgust. Nothing of that sort can ever happen to me, for in my works dwells ever the very purest thing on earth--the n.o.ble wine. G.o.d's blessing on my craft!"

"Your encomium," said Spangenberg, "was admirable, and heartily felt on your part. It is to your honour that you hold your craft in high esteem. But please be patient with me if I do not leave you in peace even now. Suppose one of the n.o.bility did actually come and ask you for your daughter. Sometimes, when a matter really comes very close to one, much in it begins to a.s.sume a different appearance to what one thought."

"Ah," cried Martin a little warmly, "what could I say, except with a polite bow, 'Honoured sir, if you were but a clever cooper; but, being as you are----'"

"Listen further," said Spangenberg. "If some fine morning a handsome n.o.ble were to come on a splendid charger, with a brilliant following all in grand clothes, and rein up at your door and ask for Rosa for his helpmate?"

"Hey! hey!" cried Master Martin more impetuously than before; "I should run as fast as I could and bolt and bar the door. Then I should cry and shout, 'Ride on your road, your lordship. Roses such as mine do not bloom for you. I dare say my cellar and my cash-box please you well, and you think you may have the girl into the bargain. Ride on your road.'"

Old Spangenberg rose up, his face red as fire. He leaned both hands on the table and looked down before him. "Well," he began, after a short silence, "this is my last question, Master Martin. If the young n.o.ble at your door were my own son, if I myself were at your door with him, would you bar the door? Would you think we had come only for the sake of your cellar and your cash-box?"

"Most certainly not," answered Master Martin. "My honoured and dear sir, I should open the door politely to you; everything in my house should be at your and your son's command. But as regards Rosa, I should say, 'Had it pleased Heaven that your n.o.ble son had been a clever cooper, no one on earth would have been more welcome to me as a son-in-law than himself. As it is, however----' But why should you plague me with all those extraordinary questions, honoured sir? Our delightful conversation has come to an end, and our gla.s.ses are standing full. Let us leave the questions of the son-in-law and Rosa's marriage on one side. I drink your son's good health. People say he is a fine handsome gentleman."

Master Martin took up his goblet, and Paumgartner followed his example, saying "A truce to captious conversation; here's to your son's health."

Spangenberg touched gla.s.ses with them, and then said, with a forced laugh, "You saw, of course, that I was only speaking in jest. My son, who has only to ask and have amongst the best and n.o.blest in the land, were a raving lunatic to come here begging for your daughter."

"Ah, my dear sir," answered Martin, "even were it jest I could answer it in no other manner, without loss of my proper self-respect. For you must confess, yourselves, that you are aware that I am justified in holding myself to be the best cooper in all the country-side; that all that can be known as to wine, I know it; that I hold faithfully by the wine-laws framed in the days of our departed Emperor Maximilian; that, as a pious man, I hate and despise all G.o.dlessness; that I never burn beyond an ounce of sulphur in a two-fudder cask, which is needful for the preservation thereof. All this, dear and honoured sirs, you can sufficiently trace the savour of, in my wine here."

Spangenberg, resuming his seat, strove to a.s.sume a happier expression of countenance again, and Paumgartner led the conversation to other topics. But as the strings of an instrument, when once they have gone out of tune, stretch and warp more and more, and the master cannot evoke from it the well sounding chords which he could produce before, nothing that those old fellows tried to say would harmonise any longer.

Spangenberg called his servants and went away depressed and out of temper from Martin's house, which he had come to in such a jovial mood.

THE OLD GRANDMOTHER'S PROPHECY.

Master Martin was somewhat concerned at his old friend and patron's having gone away annoyed. He said to Paumgartner, who had finished his last goblet and was leaving too:

"I really cannot make out what the old gentleman was driving at with all those odd questions; and why should he be so vexed when he went away?"

"Dear Master Martin," answered Paumgartner, "you are a fine, grand, n.o.ble, upright fellow, and you are right to set a value on what, by the help of G.o.d, you have brought to such a prosperous issue and carried on so well, and what has been a source of wealth and fortune to you at the same time. Still, this should not lead you to ostentation and pride, which are contrary to all Christian feeling. In the first place, it was hardly right in you to set yourself above all the other masters at the meeting to-day as you did. Very likely you do know more of your craft than all the rest of them put together; but to go and cast this straight in their teeth could only give rise to anger and annoyance.

And then your conduct of this evening; you surely could not have been so blind as not to see that what Spangenberg was driving at was to find out how far your headstrong pride would really carry you. It could not but have hurt the worthy gentleman sorely to hear you attribute any young n.o.ble's wooing of your daughter to mere greed for your money. And it would have all been well enough if you had got back into the right road when he began to talk about his own son. If you had said, 'Ah, my good and honoured sir, if you were to come with your son to ask for my daughter (an honour on which, certainly, I could never have reckoned), I should waver in the firmness of my determination.' If you had said that, what would have been the consequence, but that old Spangenberg, quite forgetting his previous wrongs, would have smiled, and got back into the fine temper he was in before."

"Scold me well," said Master Martin; "I deserve it, I know. But when the old gentleman spoke such non sense, I really could not bring myself to give him any other answer."

"Then," Paumgartner continued, "this silly notion of yours that you won't give your daughter to anybody but a cooper. Was ever such nonsense heard of? You say your daughter's destiny shall be left in G.o.d's hands, and yet you go and wrest it out of G.o.d's hands yourself, by deciding that you will choose your son-in-law out of one limited circle. This may be the very destruction of both her and you. Leave off such unchristian, childish folly, Master Martin. Commit the matter to the Almighty. He will place the right decision in your daughter's pious heart."

"Ah, my dear sir," said Master Martin quite dejectedly, "I see now, for the first time, how wrong I was not to make a clean breast of the whole business at once. You, of course, suppose that it is merely my high opinion of the cooper's craft which makes me resolve never to give Rosa to anybody but a master cooper. But that is by no means the case; there is another reason. I can't let you go away until I have told you all this. You shall not pa.s.s a single night, even, with a bad opinion of me in your mind. Sit down again; I beg it as a favour. See, here is still another bottle of my oldest wine; Spangenberg was too much offended to taste it. Sit, and stay but a few minutes longer."

Paumgartner was surprised at Master Martin's friendly insistance, which was not in his usual nature. It seemed as if something lay heavy on his mind which he felt eager to be clear of. When Paumgartner had resumed his seat, and taken some of the wine, Master Martin commenced as follows:

"You are aware, dear sir, that my beloved wife died soon after Rosa's birth from the effects of a difficult confinement. My own grandmother was still alive at a great age (if one can call it being 'alive,' to be stone deaf, quite blind, scarcely able to speak, paralysed in every limb, and completely bedridden). My Rosa had been baptized, and the nurse was sitting with her in the room where the old grandmother lay. I was so sorrowful, and (when I looked at the child) so wonderfully happy, and yet so sad--I was so deeply touched that I found it impossible to do any work, and I was standing, sunk in my thoughts, beside my grandmother's bed, envying her, and thinking how well for her it was that she had done with earthly pain. And as I was so looking into her pale face, all at once she began to smile in the strangest way; her wrinkled features seemed to smooth out, her pale cheeks took on a colour; she sat up in her bed and stretched her powerless arms as she had not been able to do for a long time, and, as if suddenly inspired by some miraculous power, she called out distinctly, in a soft, sweet voice, 'Rosa! darling Rosa!' The nurse gave her the child.

She took it and dandled it in her arms. But now, my dear sir, picture my amazement, nay, my terror, when the old lady began, in a strong, clear voice, a song, in the lofty, joyful 'manner' of Herr Hans Berchler,[5] host at the sign of the Spirit, in Strasbourg, to the following effect:--

"'Little maiden, with cheeks of roses, Rosa, hear The decree.

Never yield thee to dread or doubting, Set G.o.d fast in thy heart.

Let not vain longings deride thee.

He prepares thee a brightsome dwelling, Streams, of sweet savour, flowing therein, Beauteous angels, singing full sweetly.

Pious of soul, List to the truest of wooing, Loveliest promise of love.

A House, resplendent and gleaming, He whom thy heart goeth forth to Shall to thy dwelling bring.

Needless to ask of thy father.

This is thy destined lord.

For this House, into thy dwelling Bringeth good fortune and bliss.

Keep thine eyes open, then, maiden; Watchful thine ears for the true word to come.

G.o.d's truest blessing be on thee, Walking thy flowery way.'"

"And when the old grandmother had sung this song, she put the child gently and carefully down on the bedcover, and laying her withered, trembling hands upon its forehead, whispered words which were wholly unintelligible, though the inspired and sublime expression of her face showed that she was praying. Then she sunk back with her head on the pillow, and as the nurse lifted the child she gave a deep sigh--she was gone."

"A wonderful story," said Paumgartner. "Still I don't see how this prophetic song of the old grandmother has any connection with your obstinate determination to give Rosa to n.o.body but a master cooper."

"What can be clearer," said Master Martin, "than that the old lady, specially enlightened by the Lord during the last moments of her life, declared in prophecy how matters are to go with Rosa, if she is to be happy and fortunate? The wooer who is to bring wealth, luck and happiness into her dwelling with a beautiful House; who can that be but a clever cooper, who shall finish his masterpiece, the beautiful House of his building, in my workshop? In what other house do streams of sweet savour flow up and down but in a wine-cask? And when the wine is working it rustles, and hums, and plashes; and that is the singing of the angels as they float on the tiny ripples. Ay, ay! no other bridegroom did the old grandmother mean but the master cooper. To that I pin my faith."

"Good Master Martin," said Paumgartner, "you interpret the old lady's words after your own manner; but I cannot altogether agree with your interpretation, and I still maintain that you ought to leave the whole matter in the hands of G.o.d, and in your daughter's heart: for the true meaning and the proper deciding of it most certainly lie hidden there."

"And I, as far as I am concerned," said Master Martin, "stick to my own opinion, that my son-in-law shall be none but a clever cooper. This I hold to, for once and for all."

Paumgartner was beginning almost to lose his temper over Martin's obstinacy. But he controlled himself, and rose from his chair, saying:

"It is getting late, Master Martin; I think we have had as much wine and as much conversation as are good for us."

And, as they were making for the door, there appeared a young woman with five boys, of whom the eldest might have been scarcely eight, and the youngest scarcely half a year old. The woman was weeping and sobbing. Rosa hastened to meet them, crying, "Ah! Heavens! Valentine must be dead. Here are his wife and children." "What? Valentine dead?"

cried Master Martin, much shocked, "Oh, what a misfortune! What a misfortune! My dear sir, Valentine was the best of all my workmen; a hardworking, good, honest fellow. A short time ago he hurt himself dangerously with an adze, during the building of a big cask. His wound got worse and worse; he fell into a violent fever, and now he has had to die in the prime of his years." Master Martin went up to the disconsolate woman, who was bathed in tears, lamenting that she must perish in misery and distress.

"What think you of _me_?" asked Master Martin. "Your husband came by his death in my service, and do you suppose I am going to abandon you in your need? G.o.d forbid! You all belong to my house henceforth.