CHAPTER IV
So that was the pass we had come to. On the drive home I kept repeating to myself:
"Hanckel, what a lucky dog you are! Such a treasure at your time of life! Dance for joy, shout aloud, carry on like a crazy man. The events of the day call for it."
But, gentlemen, I did not dance for joy, I did not shout aloud, I did not carry on like a crazy man. I looked over my bills and drank a glass of punch. That was the extent of my celebration.
The next day Lothar Pütz came riding up in his light-blue fatigue uniform.
"Still holding on to your commission, my boy?" I asked.
"My resignation has not yet gone into effect," he answered, looking at me grimly, but avoiding my eyes, as if I were the cause of all his trouble. "At any rate, my leave has expired. I have to go to Berlin."
I asked if he could not get an extension. But I noticed he did not want it--was suffering with homesickness for the club. We all know what that is. Besides, he had to sell his furniture, he explained, and arrange with the creditors.
"Well, then, go, my boy," I said, and hesitated an instant whether I should confide my new joy to him. But I was afraid of the silly face I'd make while confessing, so I refrained. Another thing that kept me was a feeling stowed away deep down at the bottom of my heart--I was counting on a rejection. I feared it, and I hoped for it, too.
The feeling was something like--but what's the use of delving into feelings? The facts will tell the story.
Exactly a week later in the morning the postman brought me an envelope addressed in her handwriting.
At first I was dreadfully afraid. Tears sprang into my eyes. And I said to myself:
"There, old man, now you've been relegated to the scrap heap."
At the same time a peaceful renunciation came over me, and while opening the envelope I almost wished I might find in it just a plain mitten.
But what I read was:
"Dear Friend:--
I have thought the matter over, as you wished. I am confirmed in my decision. I shall expect to see you to-day when you call on my father.
Iolanthe."
Happy! Well, of course, I was happy--at such a moment--it goes without saying. But, then, how ashamed I was. Yes, gentlemen, ashamed, ashamed to face a soul. And when I thought of all the dubious, sarcastic looks that people would soon be casting at me, I felt I'd rather back out of the business.
But the hour had come. Up and be doing.
First I beautified myself. I cut my chin twice shaving. One of the stable-boys had to ride two miles to the chemist's to get me some flesh-coloured court-plaster. My waistcoat was drawn in so tight I could scarcely breathe, and my poor old sister nearly went wild trying to give my necktie that careless, free-and-easy look I wanted.
And all the time I kept thinking and thinking--it never left me for an instant:
"Hanckel, Hanckel, you're making an ass of yourself."
But my entry into Krakowitz was grand--two dapper greys of my own breeding--silver collar trimmings--a new landau lined with wine-coloured satin. No prince in the world could have come a-wooing more proudly.
But my heart was thumping at my ribs in abject cowardice.
The old man received me at the door. He behaved as if he hadn't the faintest suspicion of what was doing.
When I asked him for a talk in private, he looked surprised and made a face, like a man scenting a "touch" from an unexpected quarter.
"You'll soon be pulling in your sails," I thought. I naturally supposed that at the first word there would be an excellently acted emotional scene--kisses, tears of joy, and the rest of the rigmarole.
That's how vain it makes you, gentlemen, to possess a wide purse.
But the old fox knew how to drive a bargain. He knew you had to run down the prospective purchaser in order to run up the price of your goods.
After I proposed for his daughter's hand, he said, all puffed up with suddenly acquired dignity:
"I beg pardon, Baron, but who will guarantee that this alliance, which--revolve the matter as you will--has something unnatural about it--who will guarantee that it will turn out happy? Who will guarantee that two years from now my daughter won't come running back home some night, bareheaded, in her nightgown, and say, 'Father, I can't live with that old man. Let me stay here with you'?"
Gentlemen, that was tough.
"And in view of all these circumstances," he continued, "I am not justified as an honourable man and father in entrusting my daughter to you----"
Very well, rejected, made a fool of. I rose, since the affair seemed to me to be ended. But he hastily pressed me back into my seat.
"Or, at least, in entrusting her to you and observing the forms that I feel a man like me owes a man like you, or to express myself more clearly--by which a father endeavours to assure his daughter's future--or, to express myself still more clearly--the dowry----"
At that I burst out laughing.
The old sharper, the old sharper! It was the dowry he had been sneaking up to! That was what the whole comedy had been about.
When he saw me laugh, he sent his dignity and his pathos and his feeling of pride to the devil and laughed heartily along with me.
"Well, if that's the way you are, old fellow," he said, "had I known it right away----"
And with that the bargain was struck.
Then the Baroness was called in, and, to her credit be it said, she forgot her assigned role and fell on my neck before her husband had had a chance, for the sake of appearances, to explain the situation.
But Iolanthe!
She appeared at the threshold pale as death, her lips tightly compressed, her eyes half shut. Without saying a word and standing there motionless as a stone, she held both hands out to me, and then allowed her parents to kiss her.
You see, that gave me food for thought again.
CHAPTER V
What I had dreaded, gentlemen, did not come about.
Evidently, I had underestimated my popularity in the district. My engagement met with general favour, both among the gentry and the rest of the people. Nothing but beaming faces when they shook hands and congratulated me.
To be sure, at such a time the whole world is in a conspiracy to lure a man on still farther along the road to his fate. People are nice and amiable to you and then, just when something threatens to go wrong, they turn on you snapping and snarling.
However that may be, I gradually got rid of my feeling of shame, and behaved as if I had a right to so much youth and beauty.
My old sister's attitude was touching, even though she was the only one whom my marriage would directly injure. On my wedding day she was to retire from Ilgenstein to be shelved at Gorowen, a family home of ours for maiden ladies and dowagers.
She shed streams of tears, tears of joy, and declared her prayers had been heard, and she was in love with Iolanthe before she had seen her.
But what would Pütz have said, Pütz who had always wanted me to marry and had never got me to?
"I'll make up to his son for it," I thought.
I wrote Lothar a long letter. I half begged his pardon for having gone a-wooing in his enemy's house and expressed the hope that in this way the old breach would be healed.
I waited a long time for his answer. When it came, just a few dry words of congratulation and a line to say he would delay his return until after the wedding day, since it would pain him to be at home on that joyous occasion and yet not be able to be with me.
That, gentlemen, piqued me. I really liked the boy, you know.
Oh, yes--and Iolanthe troubled me. Troubled me greatly, gentlemen.
She showed no real delight, you know. When I came, I found a pale, cold face. Her eyes seemed positively blurred by the dismal look in them. It was not until I had her to myself in a corner and got into a lively talk that she gradually brightened and even showed a certain childlike tenderness toward me.
But, gentlemen, I was so nice. Awfully nice, I tell you! I treated her as if she were the famous princess who could not sleep with a pea under her mattress. Every day I discovered in myself a new delicacy of feeling. I became quite proud of my delicate constitution. Only sometimes I yearned for a naughty joke or a good round curse word.
And that constantly having to be on the watch-out was a great exertion, you know. I'm a warm-hearted fellow, I'm glad to say, and I can anticipate another person's wants. Without any fuss or to-do. But I was like a blindfolded tight-rope dancer. One misstep on the right--one misstep on the left--plop!--down he falls.
And when I came home to my great empty house, where I could shout, curse, whistle, and do, heaven knows what else, to my heart's content without insulting some one or setting some one a-shudder, a sense of comfort tickled me up and down my backbone, and I sometimes said to myself:
"Thank the Lord, you're still a free man."
But not for long. Nothing stood in the way of the wedding. It was to take place in six weeks.
My dear old Ilgenstein fell into the hands of a tyrannical horde of workmen, who turned everything topsy-turvy. If I expressed a wish, "Baron," they'd say, "that is not in good taste." Well, I let them have their way. At that time I still had slavish respect for so-called "good taste." It was not until much later that I realised that in most cases back of "good taste" there is nothing but lack of real taste.
Well, to cut it short, the bunch of them carried on so fearfully in the name of that cursed "good taste" that finally nothing was left in my dear old castle but my hunting-room and study. Here I emphatically put my foot down on good taste.
And my narrow old cot! Nobody, of course, was allowed to touch that.
Gentlemen, that cot!
And now listen.
One day my sister, who stood in with the vile crew, came to my room--with a certain bitter-sweet, bashful smile--the kind old maids always smile when the question of how children come into the world is touched upon.
"I have something to say to you, George," she said, cleared her throat, and peered into the corners.
"Fire away."
"Has it occurred to you," she stammered, "I mean, of course--I mean--you see--you won't be able to sleep any more in that horrible straw bag of a bed of yours."
"Now, then, do let me have my comfort," I said.
"You don't understand," she lisped, getting more confused. "I mean after--when--I mean after the wedding."
The devil! I had never thought of that! And I, old sinner though I was, I looked just as shamefaced as she.
"I'll have to speak to the cabinet-maker," I said.
"George," she observed with a very important air, "forgive me, but I understand more about such matters than you."
"Eh, eh," I said, and shook my finger at her. It had always been such fun for me to shock her old-maidishness.
She blushed scarlet, and said:
"I saw wonderful, perfectly wonderful bedroom furniture at my friends, Frau von Housselle and Countess Finkenstein. You must have your bedroom furnished the same way."
"Go ahead," I said.
I'll have to tell you, gentlemen, why I gave in so easily. I knew my father-in-law-to-be, the old miser, would not want to spend a single cent on a trousseau. So I had said I had everything. Then I had to hustle and order whatever was needed from Berlin and Königsberg. Of course, I had forgotten about the bed.
"What would you rather have," my sister went on, "pink silk covered with plain net, or blue with Valenciennes lace? Perhaps it would be a good idea to tell the decorator who is doing the dining-room to paint a few Cupids on the ceiling."
Oh, oh, oh, gentlemen, fancy! I and Cupids!
"The bed," she continued mercilessly, "can't be made to order any more."
"What," I said, "not in six weeks?"
"Why, George! The drawings, the plans alone require a month."
I glanced sadly at my dear old bed--it hadn't needed any plans. Just six boards and four posts knocked together in one morning.
"The best thing would be," she went on, "if we wrote to Lothar and asked him to pick out the best piece he can find in the Berlin shops."
"Do whatever you want, but let me alone," I said angrily. As she was leaving the room looking hurt, I called after her: "Be sure to impress upon the decorator to make the Cupids look like me."
That, gentlemen, will give you an idea of my bridal mood.
And the nearer the wedding day came, the uncannier I felt.
Not that I was afraid--or, rather, I was frightfully afraid--but apart from that, I felt as if I were to blame, as if some wrong were being done, as if--how shall I say?
If I had only known who was being wronged. Not Iolanthe, because it was her wish. Not myself--I was what they call the happiest mortal in the world. Lothar? Perhaps. The poor fellow had looked on me as his second father, and I was removing the ground from beneath his feet by going over bag and baggage to the enemy's camp.
So that was the way I kept the promise I had made my old friend Pütz on his deathbed.
Gentlemen, any of you who, under the pressure of circumstances, have found yourselves in the council of the wicked--that thing happens once in his life to every good man--will understand me.
I thought and thought day and night and chewed my nails bloody. As I saw no other way out of the situation, I decided to heal the breach at my own expense.
It wasn't so easy for me, because you know, gentlemen, we country squires cling to our few dollars. But what doesn't one do when one is officially a "good fellow"?
So one afternoon I went to see my father-in-law-elect, and found him in his so-called study lolling on the lounge. I put the proposition of a reconciliation to him somewhat hesitatingly--to sound him, of course. As I expected, he instantly flew into a rage, stormed, choked, turned blue, and declared he'd show me the door.
"How if Lothar sees he's wrong and gives up the case as lost?" I asked.
Gentlemen, have you ever tickled a badger? I mean a tame or a half-tame one? When he blinks at you with his sleepy little eyes, half suspicious, half pleased, and keeps on snarling softly? That's just the way the old fellow behaved.
"He won't," he said after a while.
"But if he does?" I asked.
"Then you'll be the one to fork up for the whole business," he answered--the fox--quick as a flash.
"Should I lie?" I thought. "Ah--bah, the devil!" And I confessed.
"Nope," he said point-blank. "Won't do, my boy. I won't accept it."
"Why not?"
"On account of the children, of course. I must think of my grandchildren, in case you are magnanimous enough to present me with some. I can't bequeath anything to them, so should I rob them besides? I'll win the suit in all events, even if it lasts a few years longer. I can wait."
I set to work to try to persuade him.
"The money remains in the family," I said. "I pay it and you get it. After your death it will revert to me, of course."
"Aha! You're already counting on my death?" he shouted, and began to rage and storm again. "Do you want me to lay myself in my grave alive, so that you can round off your estate with Krakowitz? I suppose it has been a thorn in your eyes a long time, my beautiful Krakowitz has."
There was no use struggling against such a bundle of unreason, so I determined upon force.
"This is my ultimatum, father," I said, "settlement and reconciliation with Lothar Pütz are the sole conditions upon which I enter your family. If you don't agree I shall have to ask Iolanthe to set me free."
That brought him round.
"A man can't express the least little bit of feeling to you," he said. "I think of your children, the poor unborn little mites, and you immediately think of breaking your engagement and all that sort of thing. If you insist, I won't interfere with your pleasure. I have no personal feelings against Lothar Pütz. On the contrary, I'm told he is a magnificent fellow, a smart rider, a dashing young sport. But my dear man, I'll give you a good piece of advice. You're going to have a young girl for your wife. If she were not my own daughter and so raised above suspicion, I should suggest, 'Pick a quarrel with him, make him your enemy, insist upon payment of old loans instead of making a new one.' Nothing so sure as a sure thing, you know."
Gentlemen, until then I had taken him humorously, but from that moment on I hated him. Just let the wedding be over, then I'd shake him off.
There was still one difficult thing to do, convince Lothar that the old fellow admitted he had been wrong and had decided to give up the suit.
The coup succeeded. It surprised Lothar so little that he even forgot to thank me.
Very well, all the same to me!
I've already told you enough about Iolanthe.
The tissue of such a relation, with its attempts at intimacy and its chills, with its ebb and flow of confidence and timidity, hope and despair, is too finely woven for my coarse hands to try to spread it out before you.
To her credit be it said, she honestly attempted to accommodate herself to me.
She tried to discover my likes and dislikes. She even tried to adapt her thoughts to mine. Unfortunately she could not find very much there. Where she in the freshness of her mind took it for granted that there were live interests, there was often nothing but land long before turned waste. That is what is so horrible about growing old. It slowly deadens one nerve after the other. As we approach the fifties, both work and rest conspire to make an end of us.
Just then red neckties were in fashion. I wore a red necktie, and also pointed boots, and silk lapels on my coat.
I presented Iolanthe with rich gifts, a pearl necklace, which cost three thousand dollars, and a famous solitaire that had come up for auction in Paris. Every day roses and orchids were shipped to her from my hothouses--but by express, because my flowers were less valuable than my colts.
By the way, my colts, you know--but no, I didn't set out to tell about my colts.
CHAPTER VI
Well, at this point, gentlemen, I leave a blank and pass on to the wedding day.
My father--in--law, who always landed on his feet like a cat, had decided to exploit my popularity for his own ends, and he utilised the celebration of my wedding for renewing his connection with all the people who had long been avoiding him.
He dived deep into his pocket and arranged a prodigious feast, at which, as he expressed it, champagne was to flow in rivulets along the table.
No need to tell you that the whole hullabaloo was a nuisance to me; but that's just the trouble about being a bridegroom. He is a ridiculous figure whose organs of will have been peeled out of his cranium for the time being.
On the morning of the great day I was sitting in my study--very cross--the whole house stinking of paint--when the door opened and Lothar came in.
In high feather apparently--had on top boots--threw himself on my neck. Hurrah! Dear old uncle! Travelled all night to be here on time; won the prize the day before at the steeplechase; rode like the devil; didn't break his neck anyhow; drank like a fish. Still he was fresh; ready to dance like a top; brought some surprises along--very fiery kind; I was to give him twenty-five men to drill immediately--and so forth.
It came out in a stream while his black eyebrows kept jerking up and down and his eyes glowed from under them like burning coals.
"That is youth," I reflected and suppressed a sigh. I should have liked to borrow those eyes of his for twenty-four hours and everything else that went with them.
"You don't ask about my bride?" I ventured.
He laughed very loud. "Uncle, uncle, uncle! A pretty business! You marrying? You marrying? And I sending off the sky rockets! Hurrah!"
And still laughing he ran out of the room.
I finished my cigar, much depressed. Afterwards, I thought, I would go on a round of inspection through the renovated rooms.
In front of the bedroom door my sister caught me just as she was having her luggage carried away.
"No admission here," she said. "This is to be a surprise to both of you."
Both of us?
Silly!
About eleven o'clock I started dressing. My coat cut into my shoulders. My boots pinched me on the balls of my feet. For thirty years I had been suffering from gout--a sequel to the Pütz punches. My shirt bosom stiff as a board, necktie too short, everything awful.
About two o'clock I drove to the bride's home, where the wedding was to be celebrated.
And now, gentlemen, comes a dream, or rather a nightmare, with all the sensations of choking, of being strangled, of sinking into a pit.
And yet full of happy moments, when I thought, "Everything will be all right. You have your good heart and your fine intentions. You will spread a carpet for her to tread on. She will walk the earth like a queen and never notice her chains."
While one coach after another came rolling into the courtyard and a gallery of strange faces crowded at the windows, I ran about the garden like one possessed, spattering my new fine patent leathers with mud, and letting the tears run freely down my cheeks.
But that pleasure was cut short. They were calling out for me everywhere.
I went into the house. The old man, beside himself with glee at seeing as his guests all his old adversaries, men he had had tilts with, or had insulted, or cheated, was running from one to the other, pressing everybody's hand and swearing eternal friendship.
I wanted to say "How do you do" to a couple of friends but I was pushed with a great halloo into a room where they said my bride was awaiting me.
There she stood.
In white silk--bridal veil like a lighted cloud around her--myrtle wreath black and spiny on her hair--like a crown of thorns.
I had to shut my eyes for a second, she was so beautiful.
Stretching her hands out toward me she said:
"Are you satisfied?" And she looked at me gently with an expression of self-surrender; and her face with the smile it wore seemed like a marble mask.
Then I was overcome with happiness and a sense of guilt. I felt like dropping down on my knees and begging to be forgiven for having dared to want her for myself. But I was ashamed to. Her mother was standing behind her and her bridesmaids and other stupid things were also there.
I mumbled something that I myself did not understand, and because I did not know what else to say, I walked up and down in front of her and kept buttoning and unbuttoning my gloves.
My mother-in-law, who herself did not know what to say, smoothed down the folds of Iolanthe's veil and looked at me from the corner of her eye half reproachfully, half encouragingly.
At every turn I ran into a mirror, and--willy-nilly--I had to see myself--my bald forehead, my lobster-coloured cheeks with the heavy folds running into my chin, and the wart under the left corner of my mouth. I saw my collar, which was much too tight--even the widest girthed collar had not been wide enough--and I saw my grubby red neck bulging over my collar all around like a wreath.
I saw all that, and at each turn I was shaken with a mixed feeling of madness and honesty, that I ought to cry out to her, "Have pity on yourself! There is time yet. Let me go."
You must remember there were no such things as civil weddings at that time yet.
I should never have brought myself to the point of saying it even if I had kept walking to and fro for a thousand years. Nevertheless, when the old man came sidling in, watchful as a weasel, to say, "Come along, the pastor is waiting!" I felt injured, as though some deep-laid plan of mine had been thwarted.
I offered Iolanthe my arm. The folding doors were pulled open.
Faces! Faces! Endless masses of faces! As if glued to one another. And all of them leered at me as if to say:
"Hanckel, you are making an ass of yourself."
An avenue formed itself between them, and we walked down the avenue while I kept thinking in the deathlike silence, "Strange that nobody bursts out laughing."
So we reached the altar, which the old man had constructed with awful skill of a large packing box covered with red bunting. And quite an exhibition of flowers and candles on it, with a crucifix in the middle, as at a funeral.
The pastor was standing in front of us. He put on his solemn ministerial air and stroked back the wide sleeves of his vestment like a sleight-of-hand man about to begin his tricks.
First a hymn--five stanzas--then the sermon.
I have not the slightest idea what the pastor said, for suddenly a perverse thought entered my brain and became a fixed idea not to be shaken off.
She will say, "No!"
And the nearer we drew to the decisive moment the more the anguish of that thought throttled me. Finally I had not the least doubt in the world that she would say "No."
Gentlemen, she said "Yes."
I heaved a sigh of relief, like a criminal who has just heard the verdict "Not guilty."
And now the strangest thing of all.
Scarcely had the word crossed her lips and the fear of humiliation been lifted from my soul than I began to wish, "Oh, if only she had said 'No'."
After the Amen there were congratulations without end. I shook one hand after another with genuine fervour. "Thank you" here, "Thank you" there. I was grateful from the bottom of my heart to every fellow there because in anticipation of the excellent food and drink to follow he bestowed his polite congratulations upon me.
Only one person was missing--Lothar.
He stood in the back row looking quite sallow, as though he were hungry or felt bored.
"There he is, Iolanthe," I said and caught hold of him. "Lothar Pütz--Pütz's only son--my own boy. Shake hands with him. Call him Lothar!" She still hesitated, so I placed her hand in his and thought to myself, "Thank God he is here. He will help us over many a difficult hour."
Please don't smile, gentlemen. You think that in the course of my married life a love relation slowly developed between the two young people. Not a bit of it.
Just a little patience. Something very different is going to come.
Well, to proceed. We went to table.
Everything according to form and in abundance. Flowers, silverware, baumkuchen.
To begin with, a little glass of sherry to warm up your stomach. The sherry was good but the glass was small and I could not see any more sherry about.
"Now you must be very gallant and tender to her," I said to myself and looked at her sidewise. Her elbow was grazing my arm and I could feel how she was trembling.
"She's hungry," I thought, for I had not eaten a thing myself yet.
Her eyes were fixed on the candelabra in front of her. Their silvery sheen in the course of the years had faded and wrinkled like the skin of an old woman.
Her profile! God, how beautiful!
And that was to belong to me.
Nonsense!
And I tossed off a tumblerful of thin Rhine wine, which gurgled in my empty stomach like bubbles in a duck puddle.
"This is not the way to muster up tenderness," I thought, looking around longingly for the sherry.
Then I pulled myself together. "Please eat something," I said, satisfied that I had done something marvellous.
She nodded and lifted her spoon to her mouth.
After the soup came some excellent fish, Rhine salmon if I am not mistaken, and the sauce had the proper admixture of brandy, lemon juice and capers. Delicious, in short.
Then came venison. Pretty good even if a little too fresh still. Well, on this point opinions differ.
"Do eat something," I said again, pursing my lips so that people should think that what I was whispering was a compliment or something sentimental.
No, that sort of thing didn't get me any farther.
Already I had disposed of the second bottle of the thin Rhine wine and began to swell like a balloon.
I looked around for Lothar, who had inherited from his father a scent for everything drinkable, but he had been seated somewhere downstairs.
Then I was saved by a toast, which gave me a chance to stand up. On my rounds I discovered a small but select company of sherry bottles which the old man had hidden behind a curtain.
I picked up two of them quickly and started to pour courage into me. It was a slow process but it succeeded. I can stand a good deal, you know, gentlemen.
After the venison came a salmi of partridges. Two successive dishes of game are not quite the right thing, but they were mighty tasty.
At just about this point something like a wall of mist loosened itself from the ceiling and descended slowly--slowly.
Now I was tossing gallantries right and left. I tell you, gentlemen, I was going it.
I called my bride "enchantress" and "charming sprite," and told a rather broad hunting story, and explained to my neighbours of what use the experiences are that a bachelor of today acquires before marrying.
To be brief, gentlemen, I was irresistible.
But the wall of mist kept sinking deeper and deeper. It was like in mountain regions, where first the highest summits disappear and then little by little the mountain side, one ledge after another.
First the lights in the candelabra got reddish halos round them. They looked like small suns in a vapoury atmosphere with rainbow rays radiating from them. Then gradually everybody sitting behind the candelabra talking and rattling forks disappeared from sight and sound. Only at intervals did a white shirt bosom or a bit of a woman's arm gleam from the "purple darkness"--isn't that what Schiller calls it?
Oh, yes! Something else struck me.
My father--in--law was running around with two bottles of champagne, and whenever he saw an entirely empty glass, he would say, "Please do have some more. Why don't you drink?"
"You old fraud!" I said when he bobbed up back of me, and I pinched his leg, "is that what you call letting it flow in rivulets?"
You see, gentlemen, my condition was growing dangerous. And all of a sudden I felt my heart expanding. I had to talk. I simply had to talk. So I struck my glass madly for silence.
"For heaven's sake--keep quiet!" my bride--I beg your pardon, my wife--whispered in my ear.
But even if it cost me my life I had to talk.
What I said was reported to me afterwards, and if my authorities tell the truth, it was something like the following:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer young. But I do not regret that at all, for maturity also hath its joys. And if anybody were to assert that youth can be happy only when wedded to youth, I would say, 'An infamous lie! I myself am proof of the contrary. For I am no longer young, but I am going to make my young wife happy because my wife is an angel--and I have a loving heart--yea, I swear I have a loving heart, and whoever says that here underneath my waistcoat--there beats no loving heart--to him--I would like to lay bare my heart----'"
At this point, according to reports, my words were choked by tears, and in the middle of my abject outpourings I was hustled from the room.
When I awoke I was lying on a couch much too short for me, with all kinds of fur collars and caps and woollen wraps thrown over me. My neck was strained, my legs numb.
I looked around.
On a console under a mirror a single candle was burning. Brushes, combs, and boxes of pins lay beside it. On the walls hung a mass of cloaks, hats and all that sort of thing.
Oho, the ladies' dressing room!
Slowly I became conscious of what had happened. I looked at the clock. Nearly two. Somewhere, as though at a great distance, the playing of a piano and the scraping and sliding of dancing feet in time with the music.
My wedding!
I combed my hair, arranged my necktie, and heartily wished I might lie right down in my lovely hard camp bed and pull the covers over my ears, instead of--brr!
Well, there was nothing to be done about it. So I started for the reception rooms, though without any real feeling of shame, as I was still too sleepy and drowsy to comprehend the state I was in fully.
At first nobody noticed me.
In the rooms where the gentlemen were sitting the smoke was so thick that at only a few feet away all you could discern was merely the vague outlines of human bodies. A very steep game of cards was under way, and my father-in-law was relieving his guests of their money so neatly that had he had three more daughters to marry off he would have become a rich man.
He called it "making wedding expenses."
I glanced in at the room where the dancing was going on. The dowagers were fighting off sleep, the young people were hopping about mechanically, while the pianist opened his eyes only when he struck a wrong note. My sister was holding a glass of lemonade on her lap and was inspecting the lemon seeds. It was a doleful sight.
Iolanthe nowhere to be seen.
I returned to the card tables and tapped the old man on his shoulder as he was scooping up the stake he had just won and was stuffing it into his pocket.
He turned on me savagely.
"Well, you drunkard, you!"
"Where is Iolanthe?"
"I don't know. Go find her." And he went on playing.
The other gentlemen looked embarrassed, but acted as though nothing had happened. "Won't you try your luck, young Benedict?" they clamoured.
So I made off with all haste, for I knew my weakness. Had I taken a hand, there would have been another scandal.
I sneaked around outside the dancing hall. I did not feel equal to meeting the glances of the dowagers.
In the corridor a tin kitchen lamp was smoking, from the pantries came the rattle of plates and the giggling of half-drunken kitchen maids.
Awful!
I knocked on the door of Iolanthe's room.
No answer. Knocked again. Everything quiet. So I went in.
And what did I see?
My mother-in-law sitting on the edge of the bed and my wife kneeling beside her dressed already in her black travelling gown, her head in her mother's lap, and both women crying. It was enough to move a stone to pity.
Oh, gentlemen, how I felt!
I should have liked to rush to my carriage, call "To the station" to the coachman, and take the first train out of the place--to America, or any place where embezzling cashiers and prodigal sons go to and disappear.
But that wouldn't do.
"Iolanthe," I said humbly and contritely.
Both the women screamed. My wife clasped her mother's knees, while the mother put protecting arms around her.
"I won't annoy you, Iolanthe; I only ask your forgiveness because, out of love for you, I was so reckless."
A long silence--broken only by her sobbing.
Then her mother spoke.
"He is right, child. You must get up. It's time for you to be going." Iolanthe rose slowly, her cheeks wet, her eyes red as fire, her body still shaken with sobs. "Give him your hand. It can't be helped."
Very pleasant remark--"It can't be helped."
And Iolanthe gave me her hand, and I raised it reverently to my lips.
"George, have you seen my husband?" asked my mother-in-law.
"Yes."
"Please call him. Iolanthe wants to say good-bye."
I went back to the card room.
"Father!"
"Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-one."
"Father!"
"Thirty-three--what do you want?"
"We want to say good-bye."
"Well--go--and God bless you--and be happy!--thirty-six----"
"Don't you want to see Iolanthe?"
"Thirty-nine--won!--out with the cash!--who's still got the courage for another? George, won't you take a little flyer with us?"
I got out of the room.
I told the ladies as considerately as I could that the Baron would not come. They merely looked at each other and then led the way through the smoky corridor to the back steps, where the carriage was waiting.
The wind was whistling in our ears and a few scattering raindrops struck our faces. The two women clung to each other without saying anything as though they would never let each other go.
Now the old man, who had evidently thought better of it, came running out with a great hullabaloo, and behind him the maids, whom he had summoned, with lamps and candles.
He threw himself between mother and daughter and let loose.
"My dear child, if the blessing of a loving father----"
She shook him off--just like a wet dog. With a jump into the carriage--I behind--off!