Magdalen (Machar)/Chapter 6
VI
BETWEEN the Elbe and the nearby forests lies an expanse of blooming meadows, and through the middle of these runs a narrow, sandy path. On that path there moved a slow and long procession of undulating parasols,—one, two, three, four, five, six,—you might have counted thirty of them. The bright toilets of the ladies gleamed in the sun, while to the right and left of them, and half turned towards them, skipped their gallants, balancing their canes.
The sun poured like fire from the blue-grey heavens upon that meadow. The earth was burning under foot. The dusky blades of grass hung down as though scorched. The flowers drooped, as though broken. Strong, heavy odors were wafted through the air. Crickets uttered their hellish din, as though millions of drops of molten metal were beating against a glass pane.
The stouter ladies of the gathering were drawing their handkerchiefs over their faces, and kept on saying: “What weather! But it is hot to-day!”
The light-haired, blue-eyed patrician daughters walked about, overflowing with happiness. For them such a picnic was, indeed, a holiday. Each old joke and stupid anecdote of their gallant cavaliers was rewarded with a grateful gmile, Their empty, trifling life was to have a new landmark with that day. They would say of future events: “That happened two weeks, a month, two months after the picnic. . . .”
Poor patrician daughters! Until they are fourteen they sit in their short dresses, their hair combed back, on the school-benches of their towns. Then, by an old custom, they are sent to the pious sisters at Zákupy. By Christmas their mothers, with tears of joy, are able to show their daughters’ cleanly written congratulations in pure German. So pass two years, when they return in long, old-fashioned gowns, their hair combed over their foreheads, and two braids hanging behind, their eyes continually turned earthward, and their heads filled with information.
The happy mother now leads her daughter into society. They call on the administrator, the burgomaster, on all the aldermen, on all the local dignitaries. The daughter is as quiet and as modest as a violet. Her mother is beaming: her child expresses herself faultlessly. She has brought with her from the nuns a lot of holy pictures for diligence and good behavior. She is helpful to her in the house, with the washing, the cooking, and the jroning. She secretly makes a pair of colored slippers as a holiday gift for her father. At about five o’clock each afternoon, with her prayer-book in her hand, she crosses the bridge that leads to the other town, and there, after the blessing, always kneels in the church, before the miracle-working image.
Three months, or half a year later, a change suddenly comes over her: the braids disappear, the hair over her forehead is clipped; her gown is made according to the latest fashion; she gives her holy pictures to her younger relatives; on Sunday she still goes to the church of the Virgin, but it is only from habit. She finds new friends to whom, after two weeks’ acquaintance, she vows eternal friendship, though it only lasts a month.
She keeps a diary, in which she writes every occurrence. An itinerant dancing master initiates her in his art, and once a year, during carnival-time, she goes with her mother to Prague, to attend the Students’ Ball. She is fond of reading, and her mother, who does not want her to forget her convent knowledge, subscribes for the Gartenlaube. She often weeps over her reading, and she devours Mrs. Werner and Mrs. Heimburg, as her mother, once upon a time, used to devour Marlitt.
Of our poets she values the poems of Jablonský[1] and Hálek.[2]
She borrows them somewhere, sighs over them, and in a clear hand-writing copies them into a gilt-edged album. Two hours daily she sews for her trousseau, doing this in good faith, filled with expectations.
In the evening she takes a walk on the common with her girl friends, exchanging confidences with them, their anxieties, their dreams, but not all of them: in the depth of her little soul some hero is always hidden, a baron, a count, a dignitary, perhaps a doctor. She has two or three platonic love affairs with students; she is protected from the pitfalls and persecutions of the provincial Don Juans, not by the eye of her mother, though she keeps a sharp lookout on her, but by her inborn shrewdness. . . . Thus the years pass by.
In their twenty-fourth year, our patrician girls begin to fade. They realize it, and withdraw from publicity; with poisoned resignation they again attend the church; down to the bottom of their hearts they despise those younger companions who are still in full bloom. Their tongues are the terror of the whole town.
It is quite different, however, if the cautious mother finds a husband for her daughter: they come to terms, and the obedient daughter exchanges the hero of her dreams for a common, every-day bourgeois, and is happy that she has escaped the preposterous fate of an old maid.
She lives. . . . The silenced heart begins suddenly to rebel; she subdues it for a while, but immediately throws herself into the first open arms,—the voice of conscience does not chide her, for do not all the others live the same way? With all that, she remains a decent, exemplary woman, properly managing her house, caring well for her husband, and bringing up her children as well as her mother had brought up hers; and she grows stout, and is honored by the whole town.
Old loves of the spring of my life, my faded reminiscences! You are wretched, patrician girls!
Young bureaucrats, sons of the townsmen, who were helping their fathers in their estates, or in their stares, and whose houses declared themselves for the ruling party, were busy amusing the young ladies. Jiři, with the composure of an older man, strolled by the side of the burgomistress. The burgomistress was retailing to him all her spicy stories about all the known and unknown people of the other party, Jiří laughed from time to time, like any civil person, or said something to her, but he was in the meantime thinking of his mill and estate.
He had departed from his life at Prague in despair and with a heavy heart. When the coach drove into the yard of the home in which he was born, a great idea struck him; he would peacefully look after his father’s estate, would watch the field work, would himself keep the accounts,—strangers were all the time cheating him,—he would work to fatigue during the day, and would lie down in peace at night,—a breath of Vergil’s idyls was in all these dreams and plans. He fell in love with his new occupation, and he appeared to himself to be greater and better, which comforted him very much. He did not consider what would be later, except that he would take everything into his hands, and manage the estate. He managed,—while his servants looked in dismay at most of his orders, without daring to dissuade him, And Jifi kept on making new plans.
The burgomistress referred several times to Lucy, as if by chance, but Jiří answered her questions evasively.
He was tired of his relations to Lucy. In the depth of his soul he felt that, though he had acted foolishly, he had done the proper thing. Lucy was now living in retirement, unknown to any one; she was the whole life of his aunt, to whom he owed so much, and that was well. ’Tis true, the enchantment which had once blinded his eye had paled: he looked at her now with an entirely different eye,—with the eye of a man that surveys a maiden’s attractive body.
When he saw her bending over a book or some sewing, her full bosom heaving in even measure, he felt a mad desire to embrace her, to clasp her in his arms,—but he only passed his hand over his brow, and chided himself with scornful irony. Otherwise, her whole presence annoyed him. When they were together, the weight of her soul fell upon him. He always felt something stronger and purer in her, and that annoyed him. Before his eyes hovered her past, but in vain; at last, in his vanity, he convinced himself that it was he who had transformed and purified her, that it was he who had returned her to the world so peaceful and so strong,—and he proudly raised his head.
The vanguard of picnickers had already entered under the vault of the woods, and they were breathing more at ease.
Lucy, clinging to the aunt, walked close behind her. The judge’s wife was entertaining her. She was a Prague lady whose husband’s fate had brought her to this nest. She was longing to return, and she was talking of her Prague acquaintances and of familiar places. She spoke rapidly and in abrupt sentences. The aunt barely had a chance to get in a word or a short sentence. Lucy was silent. She was fatigued, partly from the heat, partly from the occurrences of the last few days. The feelers of the whole local ant hill had touched her all over,—Oh, those terrible moments! She felt like a thief hiding with his booty, while the steps of his persecutors are heard all the time around his hiding place.
They had all come: the wives of the judge, of the tax collector, of the doctor, and of four aldermen, and three portly widows,—in short, all the somebodies. Their inquisitive, quick eyes and glib tongues kept prodding her, and the good old lady warded off their attacks with remarkable dexterity. Lucy trembled with terror at the thought that they might find all out.
How different this new life appeared to her now! She felt it, she lived it with the whole power of her soul; but she trembled with burning shame at the pictures from the past, which, unbidden, at times flashed before her soul’s eye. She was pure, but something was lacking, she did not herself know what, or how to name it,—some goal towards which to aim, some purpose for which to live. The horror of this vacuum frightened her at night, when she looked from her bed through the open window at the stars, or when she suddenly heard the mournful song of the chorus of frogs in the nearby pond.
She had come to the picnic only to please the old lady, whose dim old eyes were all the time turned watchfully upon her, with the suspicion that the country ennui was oppressing the dear young soul. The company met in front of the old castle. All the local gallants beset Lucy with clever speeches upon their lips. They were all so abominably funny! Lucy felt like a strange hen that had gotten into a flock of cocks, that abandoned their hens, their familiar, good old hens, and ran to her. They beat the earth oddly with their wings, strutted about proudly, drove away their rivals, and crowed their merriest. The icy coldness of her eyes repelled them. They returned to the good patrician daughters who Iooked at her with jealous eyes.
The picnickers reached the place agreed upon,—a slope in the shade of oaks. They seated themselves in the thick grass. Here the air was even hotter than in the open. The mothers took pears and candy out of their bags. The gallants brought water from a nearby well. Brows and faces were shining with perspiration. Jiří, too, brought a glass of water. Lucy drank it. The old lady handed her children some cold pigeon. They ate. The elder ladies seated themselves also. Only the burgomistress was walking about among the young pecple, and she called out in a loud voice:
“Frau von Fischmeister, please, take these young people under your wing!”
The alderman’s wife, Frau von Fischmeister, arose,—she was a dried-up woman, with masculine features,—she called the young ladies and the gentlemen together into a circle, and gave them a short talk on the game of “secretary.” Then they began to play. They sat around in the grass, and each one wrote a statement on a small slip. Frau von Fischmeister led the game. Lucy could not be persuaded to take part in it, but sat at one side with the aunt. The old lady followed the familiar game with interest, and she laughed, as she leaned on Lucy’s arm. Jiří, who was sitting near the slender daughter of the tax collector, at first hesitated, but finally joined the game.
That charming blonde, with eyes as blue as cornflowers, and with beautiful sunburnt hands, took hey hat off while she played. By accident Jiří leaned over her head and breathed in the intense perfume of the pomatum which her hair exhaled. He breathed it again, and a third time. She turned her eyes a little towards Jiří, and he saw something mysterious flash in them as though hundreds of tiny gnomes were dancing there in sparkling violet garments. A sweet feeling set all his nerves atremble. He said something to her. She smiled. The directress called her to order. They went on playing.
The directress again invited Lucy, and the aunt, too, urged her to play. Lucy arose, looking almost out of sorts. The directress arranged a “Blind man’s buff,” the blind man’s part falling to Jiří. He was blind-folded and the circle dispersed with loud laughter, but Jiří, with eager eyes, had none the less time to notice the direction which the slender blonde had taken. He ran after her through the thick grass. She stood still . . . she did not move . . . he was already near her . . . yet she did not move . . . he stretched out his hand . . . she quickly slapped it hard, and ran away. . . .
Then Lucy withdrew with slow step,—something drove her away from that strange merriment. She looked around her. She was standing in the midst of a pine wood. The white dresses of the picnickers flashed by behind her. She increased her steps, and hurried on: the strong odor of the balsam was soothing to her, and she inhaled it with a deep breath. At the same time she wiped the thin threads of cobwebs from her face and looked around her once more. . . . Everything was silent. She saw only the red shining trunks of the old firs.
She wanted to walk on, but she suddenly stopped in terror,—it was strange, she did not cry out,—before her, on a large grey plaid under a tree, lay a man, looking calmly and steadily at her. His large dark-brown eyes looked askance, as those of a man in the habit of reading falsehoods. There seemed to be a fire in those dark, fallen sockets, and the green shade of the tree gave a ghost-like appearance to the lean, waxen face, which was covered with a beard of sparse brown hair. His pale lips were closed. Thus did that strange man look at her without a word, without a movement.
In terror, and spellbound by his glance, Lucy asked him (she could think of nothing else then): “Are you a picnicker, too?”
The stranger answered softly: “Yes,”
“Of our party?”
“Of yours? Which is that?”
“The burgomistress’. . . .”
“Ha, ha,” he hissed as he laughed, “a good guess! So there is some one who has a better opinion of me! Well, thanks! I, who am declared a fool by my own community, am taken to be at a picnic of the best society! No, I am here my own picnicker!” and he fell to coughing. “My good old mother thinks that these trees will restore my affected lung!” He cleared his throat, and stretched himself as though fatigued by that speech. “I am just doing so to please her . . .” and he coughed again.
“Take care of yourself, and do not talk,” Lucy said, imploringly, clenching her hands.
He laughed aloud: “Ah, a human being that has sympathy for me!”
“Do you not believe it?”
“Yes, I do. You pity me, but in your heart you whisper to yourself: Lord; I will give thanks to you to-day that I am not in the same fix as that fellow.”
“Do not believe that!” Lucy exclaimed, provoked. “I will tell you what I think. I should wish to be . . .”
“. . . in your place!” he added langhingly. For a while he could not proceed on account of coughing. “So does every girl say before her twenty-fourth year.”
There was a moment of quiet. Lucy looked fixedly into his eyes, while a super-human and terrible power was working in her soul; then she asked him softly:
“Do you know who I am?”
“Lucy! Lucy!” the quavering voice of the old lady sounded through the woods. Lucy looked around her. A mist hung over her eyes. The old lady, the burgomistress, and the judge’s wife were hastening in her direction.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” whispered Lucy.
A look full of contempt reached the burgomistress from the dark eyes of the sick man.
“My child!” the old lady grasped both her hands.
“Some gentlemen have just come, Miss Lucy, and they are very anxious to make your acquaintance,” said the judge’s wife.
“Our administrator, and our judge, and my husband,” the burgomistress hastened to add.
Lucy walked back silently, and with bowed head.
“That fellow there,” the burgomistress pointed to him, “is a dangerous fool, a Jacobin, a runaway student, a good-for-nothing. Has he not done you any harm?”
Lucy only turned her head.
“What an unlucky woman his old mother is!” the burgomistress said, pityingly. “She wanted to have a doctor! His father was but a blacksmith’s apprentice. Well, blood will out. What is mob, remains mob. His consumption, I always say, is her good fortune.”
Excited, laughing, singing, the picnickers returned home, as the last beam of the sun’s reflection was paling in the sky.
In the meantime, a disgraceful old man was sitting in an inn amidst a circle of daily guests. His legs were crossed, his feet were encased in dilapidated, dusty shoes. He spoke in a loud voice, beating his fist upon the surface of the oak table. His attentive audience from time to time expressed its satisfaction, its approval. Here were owners of small cottages, shopkeepers, and one alderman; they treated the old man to beer, drank with him, and clinked glasses. The old man harangued about his rights, a father’s rights to his daughter. He said he would not allow her to be carried off and taken away by any count; he had all the statutes at his fingertips, and the police were with him; he was a cultivated gentleman; he had been a teacher somewhere in a distant village; fate had struck him a grievous blow; his daughter had been the support of his old age, his good Antigone; she had lived lately, it is true, in a bagnio, but whose affair was that? What did honor mean now anyway? Only a word! A foolish word! Though a prostitute, his daughter could for her inner worth be compared with any decent woman! He who had secretly carried her off, who had caught her in his net, should return her! He must, he must!
Nor would he escape his punishment! We are not in the East, where one may kidnap daughters! He talked, and drank, and became excited, and talked again. Every word of his fell like divine manna upon the souls of his hearers, and they continued treating him to beer, wine, and brandy, until at last his grey head fell upon the table. He began to snore loudly. . . .