Complete Short Works of George Meredith. George Meredith
gave her hand to Farina, and took a step closer to the stranger.
Werner’s brows grew black.
‘Enough to have saved you, fair maid,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Gratitude never was a woman’s gift. Say to your father that I shall make excuses to him for the conduct of my men.’
Whereupon, casting a look of leisurely scorn toward the guard coming up in the last beams of day, the Baron shrugged his huge shoulders to an altitude expressing the various contemptuous shades of feudal coxcombry, stuck one leather-ruffled arm in his side, and jolted off at an easy pace.
‘Amen!’ ejaculated the stranger, leaning on his staff. ‘There are Barons in my old land; but never a brute beast in harness.’
Margarita stood before him, and took his two hands.
‘You will come with me to my father! He will thank you. I cannot. You will come?’
Tears and a sob of relief started from her.
The city guard, on seeing Werner’s redoubtable back turned, had adopted double time, and now came panting up, while the stranger bent smiling under a fresh overflow of innocent caresses. Margarita was caught to her father’s breast.
‘You shall have vengeance for this, sweet chuck,’ cried old Gottlieb in the intervals of his hugs.
‘Fear not, my father; they are punished’: and Margarita related the story of the stranger’s prowess, elevating him into a second Siegfried. The guard huzzaed him, but did not pursue the Baron.
Old Gottlieb, without hesitation, saluted the astonished champion with a kiss on either cheek.
‘My best friend! You have saved my daughter from indignity! Come with us home, if you can believe that a home where the wolves come daring us, dragging our dear ones from our very doorsteps. Come, that we may thank you under a roof at least. My little daughter! Is she not a brave lass?’
‘She’s nothing less than the white rose of Germany,’ said the stranger, with a good bend of the shoulders to Margarita.
‘So she’s called,’ exclaimed Gottlieb; ‘she ‘s worthy to be a man!’
‘Men would be the losers, then, more than they could afford,’ replied the stranger, with a ringing laugh.
‘Come, good friend,’ said Gottlieb; ‘you must need refreshment. Prove you are a true hero by your appetite. As Charles the Great said to Archbishop Turpin, “I conquered the world because Nature gave me a gizzard; for everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach.” Come, all! A day well ended, notwithstanding!’
THE SILVER ARROW
At the threshold of Gottlieb’s house a number of the chief burgesses of Cologne had corporated spontaneously to condole with him. As he came near, they raised a hubbub of gratulation. Strong were the expressions of abhorrence and disgust of Werner’s troop in which these excellent citizens clothed their outraged feelings; for the insult to Gottlieb was the insult of all. The Rhinestream taxes were provoking enough to endure; but that the licence of these free-booting bands should extend to the homes of free and peaceful men, loyal subjects of the Emperor, was a sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes, as the saying went, and must now be met as became burgesses of ancient Cologne, and by joint action destroyed.
‘In! in, all of you!’ said Gottlieb, broadening his smile to suit the many. ‘We ‘ll talk about that in-doors. Meantime, I’ve got a hero to introduce to you: flesh and blood! no old woman’s coin and young girl’s dream-o’day: the honest thing, and a rarity, my masters. All that over some good Rhine-juice from above Bacharach. In, and welcome, friends!’
Gottlieb drew the stranger along with him under the carved old oak-wood portals, and the rest paired, and reverentially entered in his wake. Margarita, to make up for this want of courtesy, formed herself the last of the procession. She may have had another motive, for she took occasion there to whisper something to Farina, bringing sun and cloud over his countenance in rapid flushes. He seemed to remonstrate in dumb show; but she, with an attitude of silence, signified her wish to seal the conversation, and he drooped again. On the door step she paused a moment, and hung her head pensively, as if moved by a reminiscence. The youth had hurried away some strides. Margarita looked after him. His arms were straightened to his flanks, his hands clenched, and straining out from the wrist. He had the aspect of one tugging against the restraint of a chain that suddenly let out link by link to his whole force.
‘Farina!’ she called; and wound him back with a run. ‘Farina! You do not think me ungrateful? I could not tell my father in the crowd what you did for me. He shall know. He will thank you. He does not understand you now, Farina. He will. Look not so sorrowful. So much I would say to you.’
So much was rushing on her mind, that her maidenly heart became unruly, and warned her to beware.
The youth stood as if listening to a nightingale of the old woods, after the first sweet stress of her voice was in his ear. When she ceased, he gazed into her eyes. They were no longer deep and calm like forest lakes; the tender-glowing blue quivered, as with a spark of the young girl’s soul, in the beams of the moon then rising.
‘Oh, Margarita!’ said the youth, in tones that sank to sighs: ‘what am I to win your thanks, though it were my life for such a boon!’
He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it. Twice his lips dwelt upon those pure fingers.
‘Margarita: you forgive me: I have been so long without hope. I have kissed your hand, dearest of God’s angels!’
She gently restrained the full white hand in his pressure.
‘Margarita! I have thought never before death to have had this sacred bliss. I am guerdoned in advance for every grief coming before death.’
She dropped on him one look of a confiding softness that was to the youth like the opened gate of the innocent garden of her heart.
‘You pardon me, Margarita? I may call you my beloved? strive, wait, pray, hope, for you, my star of life?’
Her face was so sweet a charity!
‘Dear love! one word!—or say nothing, but remain, and move not. So beautiful you are! Oh, might I kneel to you here; dote on you; worship this white hand for ever.’
The colour had passed out of her cheeks like a blissful western red leaving rich paleness in the sky; and with her clear brows levelled at him, her bosom lifting more and more rapidly, she struggled against the charm that was on her, and at last released her hand.
‘I must go. I cannot stay. Pardon you? Who might not be proud of your love!—Farewell!’
She turned to move away, but lingered a step from him, hastily touching her bosom and either hand, as if to feel for a brooch or a ring. Then she blushed, drew the silver arrow from the gathered gold-shot braids above her neck, held it out to him, and was gone.
Farina clutched the treasure, and reeled into the street. Half a dozen neighbours were grouped by the door.
‘What ‘s the matter in Master Groschen’s house now?’ one asked, as he plunged into the midst of them.
‘Matter?’ quoth the joy-drunken youth, catching at the word, and mused off into raptures; ‘There never was such happiness! ’Tis paradise within, exile without. But what exile! A star ever in the heavens to lighten the road and cheer the path of the banished one’; and he loosened his vest and hugged the cold shaft on his breast.
‘What are you talking and capering at, fellow?’ exclaimed another: ‘Can’t you answer about those shrieks, like a Christian, you that have just come out of the house? Why, there’s shrieking