“Well, who’s to be any the wiser,” she said, quite cheerfully and quite coolly. “You see they’re not so big as other things are.”
“Have you forgotten, then quite,” he stammered, “what I told you these flowers meant?”
“Let me see,” the said, more coldly still, and proud of the goodness of her memory, “the forget-me-nots mean that I’m not to forget you, and that you won’t forget me—the buds mean happiness—no, no, the buds mean happiness that’s not quite all come yet—and the white rose—I don’t recollect now what the white rose means——”
“It means pain” (he said, overwhelmed with emotion), “and innocence, and sorrow, and a poor white face.” He clasped her in his arms, as the tears came to his eyes, and cried, “Oh! poor darling! poor darling! What can I do? It’s all beyond me! I should like to give you everything the world contains, and I have nothing——”
He ceased suddenly, for while his arms were round her, she had shut up the drawer of the cupboard, and was looking at him with calm, clear, gentle eyes, not the trace of a tear in them. She resumed her petition in the old tone saying, “I may keep the siphon and the horse, mayn’t I? We shall get more money for the flowers.” What he said was, “Lenette! Oh, darling Lenette,” over and over again, each time more tenderly.
“But why not?” she asked, more gently each time, for she didn’t understand him in the least. “I had sooner pawn the coat off my back,” was his answer. But as she now got the alarming idea into her head that what he was driving at was the calico gown, and as this put her into a great state, and as she immediately began to inveigh warmly against all pledging of large articles; and as he clearly perceived that her previous coldness had been thoroughly genuine, and not assumed, he knew, alas! the very worst, a grief which no sweet drops of philosophy could avail to alleviate, namely—she either loved him no longer, or, she had never really loved him at all.
The sinews of his arms were now fairly cut in two, the sinews of his arms which had till now kept misfortune at bay. In the prostration of this his (spiritual) putrid fever he could say nothing but—“Whatever you please, dear; it’s all the same to me now.”
Upon that, she went out delighted, and quickly, to old Sabel, but came back again immediately. This pleased him; sorrow having gnawed deeper into his heart during the three moments she was gone, he could follow up the bitter speech with these quiet words: “Put up your marriage wreath along with the other flowers, there’ll be a little more weight, and a little more money for it; though it is nothing like such pretty work as my flowers.”
“My marriage wreath?” cried Lenette, colouring with anger, while two bitter tears burst from her eyes. “No, that I positively shall NOT let go, it shall be put with me into my coffin, as my poor dear mother’s was. Did you not take it up in your hand from the table on my wedding-day, when I had taken it off to have my hair powdered, and say you thought quite as much of it as you did of the marriage ceremony itself, if not more? (I noticed what you said very carefully, and remember it quite distinctly). No, no, I am your wife, at all events, and I shall never let that wreath go as long as I live.”
His emotion now took a new bent, one more in harmony with hers, but he masked this behind the question, “What made you come back in such a hurry?” It was that old Sabel had just been in at the bookbinder’s, it seemed, and Herr von Meyern had been there too. That young gentleman was in the habit of getting off his horse and dropping in, partly to see what new books the ladies were having bound at the bookbinder’s, and in what sort of pretty bindings, partly to stick up his leg with its riding boot upon the cobbler’s bench and get him to stitch a top tighter, asking about all sorts of things during the process. The world—(which expression can only mean the collection of female tongue-threshers of empty straw belonging to Kuhschnappel)—may undoubtedly conclude, if it be so minded, the Venner to be a regular Henry the Fowler with respect to more women than one in the house, the latter being a feminine Volière to him; but I want proofs of this. Lenette, however, didn’t trouble herself about any proofs, but piously fled out of the way of Rosa the birdcatcher.