Part 10 (2/2)

”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 pa.s.sion has created me a home and a calling. In pa.s.sing 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ne. 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 b.o.o.by 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 coa.r.s.ely 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, t.i.ttered 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 pa.s.s 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 c.o.xcomb 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 gra.s.sy 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 refres.h.i.+ng arms from the wild beasts that trample on thee and call themselves men. Oh G.o.d 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 dest.i.tute 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, n.o.body has ever found out what became of her. Our n.o.ble-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.”

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