68. CYCLE.
Once Roquairol came quite late to take Albano with him to the "Evening-Star Party" at the herdsman's hut, which he had arranged with Rabette. The Captain loved to build around the warm springs of his love and joy the well-curb of wholly select days and circumstances; if he could contrive it, for instance, he made his declarations of love, say on a birthday, during a total eclipse of the sun, on a valentine's day, in a blooming hot-house in winter, in a skating chair on the ice, or in a charnel-house; so, too, he loved to quarrel with others in significant days and places, in the church-pew, in the beginning of spring or winter, in the green-room of the amateur theatre, at a great fire, or not far from Tartarus or in the flute-dell. Albano, however, was too young, as others are too old, to have to season his fresh feeling with artificial hours and situations; he preferred to beautify the latter through the former.
With impetuous joy Albano flew along the road to the unexpected pleasure. Last evening had been so rich,—the four rivers of Paradise had, in one cataract, poured down from heaven into his heart,—and this evening he would leap into its sprayey whirlpool. The evening heaven itself was so fair and pure, and Hesperus went with growing splendor down his brightly glimmering path.
Rabette waited at the foot of the mountain on which stood the herdsman's hut (the little shooting-house), in order to lead him unsuspecting to the unprepared female friend, who at the window, with her gleaming eye on Hesperus, lay musing, and thought of the full, glowing autumn flowers, which, at this late time of her life, and so shortly before the longest night, were springing up. She was troubled to-day about many things. She had, in fact, sought hitherto more to deserve and to justify than to enjoy and increase her love, and more to bless with it another's heart than her own. How indescribably she longed to do deeds for him,—only sacrifices were to her deeds,—and she really envied her friend who had, every time, at least to prepare Charles a beverage. As she knew no other way, she expressed her devoted zeal by greater daughterly love and attention to Albano's parents and sister; and learned even to cook a little, which other ministers' daughters, who make nothing but salad and tea, must pardon her, especially when they reflect that, in Liana's case, they themselves would not have done otherwise, but rather have made one dish more. Yes, she accounted Rabette as more virtuous, because she could be more broadly and extensively active; Rabette, on the other hand, held Liana to be the better of the two, because she prayed so much the more. A similar error they repeated twofold in respect to the brothers; Rabette thought Charles the gentler, and Liana, Albano; both, according to inferences from their mutual reports.
So long as a woman loves, she loves right on, steadily. A man has to do something between whiles. Liana transformed everything into his image and his name: this mountain, this little chamber, this, to him once dangerous, bird-pole, became the crayon pencils for his stereotype image. She always came back upon this, that he deserved something better than her; for love is lowliness, on the wedding-ring sparkles no jewel. It touched her that her early death affected him. There she saw still the maiden blinded by the small-pox, whom he had once unconsciously pressed to his heart;[184] and, with the quick apprehension of sadness, she felt herself to resemble the blind one also, in that incident, and not merely in the similar, although shorter night, which pain had once thrown over her eyes.
As gentle as her emblem, Hesperus, dipping into the western horizon of life, did she seem to her lover. She never could pass immediately out of her own heart into the startling present; her turnings were always like those of the sunflower, very slow, and every sensation lived long in her faithful breast. Seldom, indeed, does a lover find the welcome of his loved one like the last image, which the farewell had imparted to him; a female soul must—so man desires—with all the wings, storms, heavens, of the last minute, sound over into the next. But Liana had ever received her friend shyly and softly, and otherwise than she had parted with him; and sometimes, to his fiery spirit, this tender waiting, this slow lifting of the eyelid, appeared almost as a return to the old coldness.
To-day it seized the more ardent Count more strongly than usual. Like a pair of strange children who are to become acquainted with each other, and smile upon and touch each other, the two stood beside each other friendly and embarrassed. She told how she had made his sister tell her of his childish break-neck adventure on this mountain. A loved maiden knows no more beautiful, no richer history than that of her friend. "O even then," he said with emotion, "I looked toward thy mountains! Thy name, like a golden inscription, was written on my whole youth. Ah, Liana! didst thou haply love me as I thee, when thou hadst not yet seen me?"
"Certainly not, Albano," answered she, "not till long after!" She meant, however, her blindness; and said he appeared to her in this twilight of the eyes, on that evening when he ate with her father, like an old northern king's son, somewhat like Olo,[185] and she had had a certain awe before him, as for her father and brother. Her high respect for men the fewest were hardly worthy to guess, not to say, occasion. "And how when thou hadst regained thy sight?" said Albano. "I just told thee that," she replied naively. "But when thou didst so love my brother," she continued, "and wast so good to thy sister, then to be sure I quite took heart, and am now and henceforth thy second sister. Besides, thou hast lost one—Albano, believe me, I know I am surely unworthy, especially of thee; but I have one consolation."
Perplexed by this mixture of sanctity and coldness, he could only passionately kiss her, and was constrained, without contradicting her, to ask forthwith, "What consolation?" "That thou wilt one day be entirely happy," said she softly. "Liana, speak more plainly!" said he. For he understood not that she meant her death and the announcement of Linda by the spirits. "I mean after one year," she replied, "from the date of the predictions." He looked at her speechless, wild, guessing and trembling. She fell weeping upon his heart, and suddenly gave vent to the swell of inward sighs: "Shall I not then be dead at that time," said she with deep emotion, "and look down from eternity to see that thou art rewarded for thy love to Liana? And that, too, certainly in a high degree!"
Weep, be angry, suffer, exult, and wonder more and more, passionate youth! But, to be sure, thou comprehendest not this lowly soul!—Holy humility! thou only virtue which God, not man, created! Thou art higher than all which thou concealest or knowest not! Thou heavenly beam of light! like the earthly light,[186] thou showest all other colors and floatest thyself invisible, colorless, in heaven! Let no one profane thy unconsciousness by instruction! When thy little white blossoms have once fallen, they come not again, and around thy fruits only modesty then spreads her foliage.
Painfully did the heart in Albano split into contradictions, as if into two, his own heart and Liana's. She was nothing but pure love and lowliness, and the splendor of her talents was only a foreign border-work, as white marble images of the gods have the variegated border only as decoration: one could not do anything but adore her, even in her errors. On the other hand, she had, in conjunction with tender, susceptible feelings, such firm opinions and errors; his modesty fought so vainly against her humility, and his clear-sightedness against her visionary tendency. The hostile train which this propensity drew after it he saw too clearly sweeping along over all the joys of her life. His ever-besetting suspicion, that she loved him merely because she hated nothing, and that she was always a sister instead of a lover, again charged home upon him like an armed man. Thus did all things fight together in this case,—duty and desire, fortune and place. Both were new and unknown to each other, because of love; but Liana divined as little as he. O how strange to each other and unlike each other two human beings, kindred souls, become, merely because a Divinity hovers between the two and shines upon both!
Something remained in him unharmonious and unsolved. He felt it so sadly, now that the summer night glimmered for higher raptures than he possessed; now that, deep in the ether, the trembling evening star pressed on after the sun through the rose-clouds under which he was buried; now that the meadows of grain breathed perfume and murmured not, and the closed pastures grew green and did not glow, and the world and every nightingale slept, and life below was a still cloister-garden, and, only overhead, the constellations, like silver, ethereal harps, seemed to tremble and sound before the spring winds of distant Edens.
He must needs see Liana again to-morrow, by way of tuning his heart. Rabette came up from the mountain with her friend, infinitely animated. Both seemed almost exhausted with laughing and joking; for Roquairol carried everything, even mirth, to the degree of pain. He had converted the evening star, for which he had given the invitation, into a hothouse and homestead of pleasant conceits and allusions. At first he would not come home with her, even to-morrow; but at last he consented, when Rabette assured him "she understood the fine gentleman well enough, but he must nevertheless just let her take care of things."
When the ruddy dawn arose, Albano, accompanied by him, came again; but the garden-gate of the "manor-garden" was already open, and Liana already in the arbor. A stitched book of public documents (seemingly) lay in her lap, and her folded hands beside it; she looked rather straightforward, as in thought, than upwards, as in prayer; yet she received her Albano with so mild and distant a smile, as a man, greeting a guest who comes right into the midst of his prayers, smiles upon him, and then continues his devotion. The Count had hitherto been obliged always to prepare himself for a certain reserve in her reception of him. A misunderstanding, which returns quickly, however often it is removed, acts again and again as deludingly and freshly as at the first time. He felt very strongly that something more fixed than that first virgin bashfulness, wherewith a maiden will always invent for the dazzling sun of love, besides the dawn, a twilight too, and again another for that, hindered the fiery melting together of their souls.
He asked what she was reading; she hesitated, covering it up. A thought, suddenly darting upon her, seemed to open her heart; she gave him the book, and said it was a French manuscript,—namely, written prayers, drawn up by her mother several years before, which touched her more than her own thoughts; but still there was ever-more looking through her tenderly woven face a cloistral thought, which sought to leave her heart. What could Albano object to this Psalmist of the heart? Who can answer a songstress? A praying female stands, as does also an unhappy one, on a high, holy place, which our arms cannot reach. But how miserable must most prayers be, since, although in earlier life possessing the attraction of charms, like the rosary, which is made out of sweet-smelling woods, yet afterward in advanced age they act only as blemishes, and like the relic or the death's-head with which the rosary itself ends!
Without waiting for his question, she told him at once what had disturbed her during her prayer; namely, this passage in it: O mon Dieu, fais que je sois toujours vraie et sincere, &c., whereas she had hitherto concealed her love from her dear mother. She added, she would come now very soon, and then the closed heart should be opened to her. "No," said he, almost angrily, "thou mayest not; thy secret is also mine!" Men are often hardened by that in prose which in poetry softens them; for example, woman's piety and open-heartedness.
Now no one hated more than he the clutching of the parental writing-finger, forefinger, and little finger into a pair of clasped hands; not that he feared, on the part of the Minister, wars or rivals,—he rather presupposed open arms and feasts of joy,—but because, to his magnanimous spirit, at once claiming and granting liberty, nothing was more revolting than the reflection, what smutty turf now for the kindling of the fire the parents might lay on the altar of love, or what pots they might set on to boil; how easily, then, even poetic parents often transform themselves with the children into prosaic or juristical ones, the father into an administrative, the mother into a financial board; how, then, to say the least, the court atmosphere makes one a bondsman, just as only the poetic heaven's ether makes free; and what perturbations his Hesperus might expect from the attracting world, the old Minister, who found nothing more unprofitable about love than love itself, and to whom the holiest sensibilities seemed about as useful for marriages of rank as the Hebrew is for preachers, namely, more in examination than in actual service. So ill did he think of his father-in-law, for he knew not something still worse.
But the good daughter thought far higher of her mother than did a stranger, and her heart struggled painfully against concealing from her her love. She appealed to her brother, who was just entering. But he was wholly of Albano's mind. "Women," he added, not in the best humor, "are more fond of speaking about love than in love; men, the reverse." "No," said Liana, decidedly; "if my mother ask me, I cannot be untrue." "God!" cried Albano, with a shudder, "and who could wish that?" For to him, also, free truth was the open helmet of the soul's nobility; only he spoke it merely from self-respect, and Liana out of human affection.
Rabette came with the tea-things and a flask, wherein was tea-juice and elementary fire, or nerve-ether for the Captain,—arrack. He never liked to visit people in the morning, with whom he could not drink it till evening; Rabette had yesterday guessed this naughtiness, and to-day gratified it. "How can the soul," said the sound Albano to him often, "make itself a slave to the belly and the senses? Are we not already bound closely enough by the fetters of the body, and thou wilt still draw chains through the chains?" To this Roquairol had always the same answer: "Just the reverse! Through the corporeal itself, I free myself from the corporeal; for instance, by wine from blood. As long as thou canst never escape servitude to the bodily senses, and all thy consciousness and thy thinking can only, through a bodily servitude, attaching itself to the glebe of the earth, abide in their nobility; I cannot perceive why thou dost not properly use these rebels and despots as thy servants? Why must I let the body only work ill upon me, and not advantageously as well?" Albano stood to it, that the still light of health was more dignified than the poppy-oil flame of a slave of opium; and the fate of being prisoner of war to the body, which one spirit has to bear in common with the whole human army, more honorable than the cramping confinement of a personal arrest.
To-day, however, not even the spirituous brimstone-smoked tea-water could wash away a certain discontent from Roquairol, whom night-watching had colored more pale, as it had the Count more red. He could not be reconciled to it, that the manor-garden was all shut in with a board-fence as high as a man, which was less intended as a billiard-table border, not to let the eye-ball go out, than as a mountebank's booth, to let nothing in, and which of course insured no other prospect than the prospect proper; quite as little did the pleasure-garden commend itself to his favor by the fact that the turf-benches on which they sat in the arbor had not yet been mowed, that in all the beds only vegetables for the trimming of cooked meat flapped about, that nothing ripe yet hung there but one or two moles in their hanging death-beds, that on a bowling-green, whereupon one rolls into a tinkling middle-hole, the crooked return-alley let the balls run home again, much more easily than they could—unless one threw them—be made to pass over the earth-bottom of the main alley, and that no orangery was anywhere to be seen, excepting once, when fortunately the garden-gate stood open, just as a blooming orangery box passed by in a wheelbarrow on its way to Lilar.
The Captain needed only to bring forward these particulars satirically, and thereby inwardly to wound the outwardly laughing Rabette,—because no woman can bear to hear fault found with her bodily property, whether it be children, clothes, cakes, or furniture;[187] and then his mountain-heights could gradually disencumber themselves of their clouds again, and Rabette become still more uncommonly gay.
Albano, in this morning hour of the day, and, as it were, of childhood, and in this little paradise-garden of his childish years, was inwardly glad,—for in the first love, as in Shakespeare's pieces, nothing depends on the wooden stage of the performance; but to-day's afterwinter of yesterday's chill would nevertheless not melt. The morning-blue began to be filled with brighter and brighter golden fleeces; as the garden, like small cities, had only two gates, the upper and the lower, he opened like an aurora that of the morning sun; the splendor gushed in over the smoking green; the Rosana gliding below caught lightnings, and flung them over hitherward; Albano departed finally full of love and bliss.
But the love was greater than the bliss.