Magdalen (Machar)/Chapter 5
V
THE town of the realm and crown has three thousand inhabitants, one church, twenty inns, a brewery, and a distillery, and two newspapers which appear once every two weeks,—the ýs Gazette, a faithful organ of the conservative fathers of the town and The Free Citizen, the militant voice of the ruthless Opposition (the reader will find their genesis a few lines farther down).
The common is large and beautiful, the patrician houses about it forming a square. Above them rises the townhall with a dilapidated reddish tower, in the spire of which a two-tailed lion[1] turns with the wind. In the centre there is a stone statue of Jan of Nepomuk;[2] once a year, in the beautiful month of May, he is painted in a bright brown color, at the town’s expense.
A hunchbacked, crooked sidewalk runs along the rows of houses, and is intercepted by malodorons rills that flow from the dwellings, and that form a filigree stream on the common. Throughout the day an old sweeper heaps small piles of straw, dust, and dirt, but the wind, or wanton youths, regularly disperse them at nightfall.
From the common there is a beautiful view towards the west. The streets lie somewhat lower here, and one can see through them the cemetery with its chapel and its crosses, its darkling cypresses, its grave-stones, where rest in peace the heroes of local tradition; and farther off, the fields, the rows of trees along the roads, and brown cliffs. In one place the surface of the Elbe gleams on sunshiny days. Then there is the blue distance, against which is clearly drawn the bell of Řip with its white spire.
The pride of the town is its castle. The extensive and massive building with its tower, covered with colored tiles, rises majestically above the Elbe. The ages that have passed through it have here left their traces: a castle moat, strong ramparts, walls provided with battlements, old windows, coats of arms upon the wall, dark dungeons and corridors; and in the old, dilapidated park are mysterious pavilions, fountains, and large vases with moss-covered Cupids. One wing of the castle has purely modern windows, plush curtains, and a thermometer on a frame; and there, in the park, you suddenly pass from the ludicrous time of the rococo into beds of verdure. Thus does the silent conglomerate of the past and present breathe majestically upon you.
Here the lords of Krajek once held sway over the Picards,[3] and pious songs then hovered over the treetops in the park. From that tower pensive Rudolf, the emperor, used to watch the course of the stars with master Tycho.[4] Banner[5] sat here in judgment,—the people to this time remember those Swedish scourges and his minions. The duchess of Berry had had her gallant adventures in the park during moonlit nights,—and the patrician daughters up to this day like to visit those places, where they blush and sigh.
The park was thrown open to the town. The owner of the castle lived far away. His superintendent, a stolid German, dwelt in the wing of the castle, where the thermometer appeared in the window. He was advanced in years, solemn and stern, and people avoided him; although the poor and the children, by an old custom, kissed his hand when they came near him. He was an important personage in the life of that town. He was not active in the townhall,—for that he had not time enough, having had the care of the estate and the office of district elder for twenty-five years; but, being an intimate friend of the burgomaster’s, he was an adviser in all complicated affairs.
The Free Citizen often made profane allusions to this: the town’s head, it said, was in the townhall, but the Holy Ghost was in the castle. In the feuilleton it hinted quite openly between the lines that the superintendent was even more intimate with the fat wife of the burgomaster,—however, the whole town saw nothing incriminating in that.
A new bridge runs over the Elbe. Through a beautiful grove of lindens and oaks, whose branches meet above and form a fantastie, rustling vault, one passes to a neighboring town. Every pious soul in Bohemis is thrilled by its name: it is a holy place for pilgrims, and has a temple, the sacred image of which, they say, has wrought thousands of miracles. To this day a chapter of stout priests grows fat upon the visitors. Hundreds of these holy men sit the whole autumn and winter in low huts, like spiders in their hiding places; but when in summer the banners of the country people begin to be unfurled, and songs of the Virgin Mary fill the air, and pious women, sturdy lads, and buxom maidens hasten from all parts of our land to this place,—they come forth with their canvas booths, and catch the pious souls, and suck them dry.
Those are the places to which the old lady took Lucy the day after their arrival.
Reader, have you ever seen the life in an ant hill? These Philistine insects live in an unvaried, provincial manner. Everybody knows everybody else, and everybody has his precise daily work to do. They go out in the morning, meet friends, their feelers touch, as if they were telling their last night’s dreams, their trifling gossip, and the news of the day, and they move on, and again meet some one else, and again stand a while and talk, and then hurry on.
They know every motion of each other’s bodies, every minutest shade of their souls, everything connected with their past,—and yet a sweet habit urges them in passing to talk again and again of the same thing, as yesterday, so to-day, and so to-morrow. They somehow finish their work, as though it were of secondary importance. In the evening they return to their ant hill, and again they gather by twos, threes or fours upon their sidewalks and at the doorsteps, where they stand conversing pleasantly until deep into the night.
What an uproar, if something from without falls among them! They run around wildly and inquisitively, neglecting their daily toil; their feelers are in a convulsive tremor; they are curious; they congregate and discuss matters; the more courageous rush upon that object, and investigate it from all sides, touch it, and again run away to take counsel, their little heads shaking all the time.
The news ran like lightning through the town: Jiří had arrived with his aunt, and they had brought with them a strange young lady. Who was she? Who was she? She was not of the family, for in the town they knew well the genealogies of all its members; so there flew over the city fantastic stories, guesses, anecdotes, which those who concocted them could not themselves believe.
There was not a window in the whole town, where, if the ladies passed by, a head with its critical pair of eyes did not appear. Whoever met them in the street, on the common, or in the castle park, stopped and looked around, and, finding a friend, stood long talking with him.
In the afternoon, about two o’clock, the fat wife of the burgomaster ventured out of the house. The peony-colored velvet of her gown, the light gloves that reached to her elbows, her hat full of nodding cherries, flowers, and many-colored feathers, announced to all good people some errand of great importance. It was a hot day. Pearls of perspiration, gathering in two streams under her eyes, ran down her plump cheeks. She walked under the dark-red shade of her parasol with a small, unwavering step, as though she were sailing, nodding her head to the right and to the left, thanking all polite people with a “Guten Tag” and a “How are you?”
Jiří’s house bordered with its back wall upon the castle park, and fronted on the open country. The burgomaster’s wife entered the spacious yard. She did not see any other creature but chickens, geese, ducks, a flock of sparrows, and a few pigeons that were flying about a round dove-cot. In the sultry air was the odor of the stable and the aroma of hay, The burgomistress strutted by the steward’s dwelling to the one-story building in the back of the yard. A woman came out of it and, seeing her, wiped her hands on her apron, and ran up to her to kiss her hand.
“The Lord protect you, never mind, never mind!” and the burgomistress graciously extended her hand. “Is the counciloress at home?”
“Yes, if you please, gracious lady” (“counciloress” was the title of Jiří’s aunt).
“Mr. Jiří”
“He is at home, too, gracious lady. He is busy with the steward, writing some accounts. The master wants to take the estate into his own hands. He wants to remain here. They are figuring up.”
“And that young lady? Who is she?”
“I do not know, gracious lady. One might think she would be the lady’s daughter, but she is not. I really do not know. They are together there. . . .”
“Very well, very well, that will do. . . .”
It was a large whitewashed room. A few chairs, a table, a large safe of dark oak with carved ornaments, were its only furniture. On the wall were hung oil paintings of Hus and Žižka; between them, on a pedestal, stood a statue of Poděbrad,—Jiří’s father had here passed the greater half of his life,—and those pictures and furniture were reminiscences of him.
The old lady was sitting with Lucy at the open window. Outside, in the shadow of the house, was a field of clover. Dandelions with their ducat hue burst everywhere through the dark verdure. Crickets were chirping merrily in the grass. Lucy was thoughtlessly holding a long, narrow book in old leather binding and gilt ornamentation. The old lady had found it for her. It was the faithful companion of her youth,— “Novalis.” And the old lady sighed softly:
“Read it, child! Ah, that Heinrich of Ofterdingen! Blaue Blume! Just read it! I used to read them all night long.”
The burgomistress entered.
A loud exclamation: “Ah, Frau Räthin!”
“Ah, Frau Bürgermeisterin!”
They embraced each other. There fell cataracts of indistinguishable words. Finally the burgomistress seated herself. With a rapid glance she measured the maiden two or three times, and the aunt caught her look.
“My Lucy,” she introduced her.
“Ah, I am happy, ’s freut mich, ’s freut mich, will she stay long with us?”
Lucy blushed.
“Forever, forever,” the aunt hastened to reply.
“The young lady used to live in Prague?”
“Yes, in Prague,” Lucy said hurriedly.
“I do not know how Miss Lucy will like this life of ours. It is a wearisome, small, dead, uninteresting country, and we are plain people,—Miss Lucy, I suppose, has been used to a different sphere. . . .”
“No,” the old lady interrupted her, “my Lucy will be entirely happy here. This country will soothe her nerves which are somewhat shattered. . . .”
“In that case, Miss Lucy, you will find health here. In that case, indeed. We live an idyllic life here. We arrange picnics, games,—oh, dare I ask you? Are you not, perchance, betrothed, and ought I not to congratulate? I suppose, Mr. Jiří . . .”
Lucy was consumed with internal fire.
“The Lord protect her,” the old lady quickly interrupted her, “that would be a nice match for her! Sooner would I tie a stone about her neck with my own hands and drown her there in the Elbe. Aber sagen Sie mir, liebe, werthe Bürgermeisterin, what’s the news? How is the town? How are our acquaintances?”
“Ach, Frau Räthin,” the burgomistress drew a deep breath from the bottom of her heart, “a great deal of news, a great deal. Just think of it, the doctor’s wife . . . .” (that doctor, the head of the local opposition, the editor of the Citizen, was a sworn enemy of the burgomaster), “well, she is a woman without shame,—she was seen lately in the woods in a dreadfully intimate tête à tête with the adjunct! You know, she has had experience in such things, and God knows, how many times! However, at times I think that that is a family characteristic. Denken Sie sich, the doctor looks calmly at all that is going on,—of course, it’s a case of bad conscience! Frau Räthin, last week he had to send the chambermaid to Prague! Just think of it, it is he who is the town moralist! He wants to stain my honor! His paper wrote lately,—it is a shame to mention it,—about me, about me and our administrator! What meanness!”
The wife of the town’s head blushed crimson from her forehead to her neck. Then there followed disgusting and scandalous stories, and the whole local Opposition stood in half an hour in soiled negligee. “This one thing may, however, console us,” ended the burgomistress, “our whole party is in this respect as pure as crystal. . . .”
She several times made attempts to penetrate the shell under which was hidden the mysterious kernel of the strange young lady, but all in vain,—so she betook herself once more to the turbid stream in which the local life flowed.
She remained two hours.
“So, Frau Räthin, I bid you good-bye. Good-bye, Miss Lucy, we shall see each other at some picnic. We will drum up something soon.”
Elated, as every person is, who has found a mote in his neighbor’s eye, the burgomistress went out of the door like a peacock in noisy conceit.
“You see, Lucy, what she is,” sighed the old lady. “Just watch: to-day or to-morrow will come her rival, the doctor’s wife; and again you will hear precisely the same thing, only the names will be changed. But the saddest thing about all this is, that it will be the truth, just as what was told to-day was the truth. It is a terrible world! It was quite different in my day!”
Lucy awoke from her dreaming, for until then she was looking meditatively at the waving clover.
“But, Aunty, what is it all about? Whence comes all that hostility between the ladies?”
“Well, that is a fine story,—really, it is amusing. A few years ago the two, the doctor’s and the burgomaster’s wives, lived in great friendship, like two sisters. The third in their company was the wife of the judge,—she is dead now. These three were together everywhere, at parties, at outings, at games, and they made matches among themselves for their children, while they were still in their cribs,—in short, their friendship became a byword, Then the judge was made a councillor in some district court. Their friendship continued. The doctor’s wife and the burgomistress wrote daily letters to the wife of the councillor. So it went on for two or three years.
“The councillor’s wife died. The councillor, who was a wag and a malicious old satyr, sent the two friends a large box in remembrance of his wife. They called together a few young women, and opened it, sighing and sobbing all the time. There were two packages within, with the inscriptions: ‘For the burgomistress,’ ‘For the doctoress.’ The ladies were divided into two groups. The packages were carefully opened: within were letters, nothing but letters! Those which the burgomistress had written to the wife of the councillor were now given to the doctoress, and vice versa! Do not ask me how that scene ended! It is a wonder they did not fall to fighting! All the letters, from a to z, were nothing but calumny, gossip, dastardly stories,—in fact, each had told the worst about the other! The next day the town was full of it, and there was turmoil and agitation, as if a revolution had broken out! From that day the two hate each other as their sins. And the excitement kept on growing.
“Their husbands took part in it. The doctor and the burgomaster, who had been friends heretofore, transferred the quarrel to the townhall, and into the affairs of the town. The doctor began calling himself a ‘Young Bohemian,’ ,and the burgomaster—an ‘Old Bohemian,’[6] The doctor started a paper, and in it thundered every two weeks. Naturally the burgomaster, too, vaulted into the saddle, and founded his paper. They are fighting to the knife. . . . Speak of angels,—do you see that slender lady over there?” She pointed across the cloverpatch and the field to the road. “That is the doctoress. She is coming to see us. So be prepared. . . .”
- ↑ The coat of arms of Bohemia.
- ↑ A canon of Prague in the fourteenth century, who, a pious tradition tells, was drowned by the King under the bridge of Prague for not divulging the confession of his wife, Queen Johanna. He was canonized a saint in 1729, since which time he has been regarded as the patron saint of Bohemia. Most bridges have statues of Jan of Nepomuk. Pilgrimages in his honor are made in the month of May.
- ↑ Corruption of “Beghards”; thus the opponents of the Church were called in Bohemia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The lords of Krajek were the defenders of the Brotherhood.
- ↑ Tycho de Brahe, Danish astronomer.
- ↑ Jan Gustavson Banner, or Banér, Swedish field-marshal under Gustavus Adolphus.
- ↑ Two political parties of Bohemia; they are humorously described on pp. 204–205.