Читать книгу Self-Doomed. A Novel - Farjeon Benjamin Leopold - Страница 2

The village in which I was born lies fifty miles from this spot, and is one of those places hidden in odd nooks and corners which the busy world seems either to have forgotten or to regard as of too slight importance to take any notice of. It moves neither backward nor forward; it is the same to-day as it was a hundred years ago. Its houses, its roads, its little shops, its bits of garden, its church, are the same now as then, and, unless something startling occurs, will be the same at the end of another hundred years. There are families living there at this moment whose great-great-grandfathers lived there-in the self-same cottages, grown now so old that their walls are rotting and crumbling away. The people, with scarcely an exception, are all of them poor, and live a life of contentment. As I should have done perhaps-my family for five generations having done so before me-had it not happened that I fell in love with Louisa Wagner.

I have spoken of the beauty of Katrine Loebeg. Louisa Wagner was even more beautiful. Do not think I say so because I loved her; it was universally acknowledged; and just in the way Katrine was sought after here so was Louisa sought after in the village in which I was born. I may say, without running the risk of being thought vain, that I was a well-looking lad. It is undoubtedly a fact that I was industrious, and not given to tippling. From my father I learned the mysteries of the art of watchmaking. Our family had been the village watch and clock menders for generations. There was, however, not enough business in that line to be picked up among the scanty and poor population to support us, so my grandfather, and my father after him, took to cobbling boots and shoes to eke out a living. I also learned to cobble, and was no mean hand at it. We were, therefore, the village watch-menders and cobblers, and managed to rub on, chiefly, it must be owned, by the patching of leather, which is a degree or two lower in the social scale than the art which teaches you how to put together the delicate works of a watch.

Louisa Wagner was the only child of a laborer on the private estate of the owner of the village lands, and in falling in love with her I fell in love with a girl in my own station in life.

Heavens! how beautiful she was! Her cheeks were handsomer than the handsomest peach, her eyes were as bright as the brightest stars, her skin was as soft as the softest velvet. To me what a vision of brightness! Where on this earth was to be found her equal? In my belief, nowhere. That is the way of lovers for a time. No feeling so potent as that which agitates the heart of a young man as he contemplates the being upon whom he has set his affections. Gradually the change comes, as we all live to learn. The heavenly light fades slowly away, and life's hard lessons, no less than the strange workings of the human heart, recall us to a sterner reality. Happy those who find themselves cast upon a peaceful shore, where they can enjoy the calmer and more enduring affection which sometimes follows the subsidence of love's delirium!

For weeks and weeks I nursed my passion, fed on it, was made happy by it. Louisa Wagner did not appear to look on me with coldness; nay, she seemed flattered by my ardent glances, and, as I believed, had a feeling stronger for me than that of ordinary friendship. That she should love me with such devotion as I loved her was not to be thought of. This love of a young man when it is pure, as mine was, ennobles him, and beautifies all surrounding things. I sang at my work, though it was even so mean as the patching of boots. Louisa had two pairs of boots, and I soled and heeled them, one after the other, and my heart went into the stitches. I held them in my hands and kissed them-yes, I am not ashamed to confess it, I kissed them in a kind of rapture. I took them to bed with me. By the side of my bed hung a cage with a linnet in it. I told the bird in a whisper that the boots belonged to Louisa-ah, what foolish, foolish things we do when the fever is upon us! – and the linnet trilled out its joyfullest notes. I laughed, I chirruped, I shed tears, and when I knelt at my bedside and repeated my prayers, I pressed Louisa's boots to my heart. Upon the soling and heeling of those boots I would have liked to challenge the world. Surely such excellent workmanship could not have been produced by other hands than mine. Louisa Wagner thought so, and said so, as she took them from me and examined them.

"You will see," I said, "they will last for years."

"They are beautifully done," she said, and I fancied she gave me an admiring glance; "such fine stitches! You are really clever."

"I can earn a living," I said, and my voice trembled because of the meaning I wished to convey in the words.

"But," she said, "I cannot pay you for them for a long, long while. You will have to wait."

"In money," I said, "you can never pay me."

"Oh yes, I can, Gustave Fink," she replied.

"No," I insisted, "indeed you never can."

"Why?" she asked.

"I did not do them for money. I wish you to accept them from me; it will make me very proud."

She thanked me quite readily, saying, "Well, if you will have it so, Gustave Fink," and gave me the sweetest smile.

I ran home in a tremor of delight, carrying her smile with me. It is a fact. Her smiling face was before me all the way.

Of course I told my linnet the news-how that Louisa had accepted my work, and paid me for it with the sweetest smile-and the bird sang gayly, and the rhythm and the tenderness of the song found an echo in my heart. Up to this point the linnet was my sole confidant. Not to another creature did I breathe my secret. None the less did I look upon myself as Louisa Wagner's accepted lover. After what had passed-which, as you see, I magnified into the most ridiculous importance-how could it be otherwise? I was satisfied, I was happy. That when I could find courage to speak plainly to her she would place her hand in mine, and permit me to touch her lips with mine, I entertained not the slightest doubt.

I was a proud young fellow the following Sunday when I saw her walking in the boots I had repaired for her, and which looked like new. She wore a new cotton dress, and a bit of new ribbon round her white throat, and I settled it in my mind that they were worn for me. No man has ever tasted a greater happiness than I did on that day. But I could not find courage to speak to Louisa of the love which made my heart like a garden of sweet flowers. I walked by her side and was contented.

Ah, how it all comes back to me! The meeting at the church door, the walk through the church-yard and the village till we came to her father's cottage, the stupid talk about the boots!

"I never felt so comfortable in my life," she said; "they are as easy as if I had worn them for years. And they do not make my feet look large."

Her feet look large! In my eyes they were the feet of a princess. Now, as she put out her foot, and I was gazing at it in a sort of rapture, who should come up to us but a neighbor of mine, a wheelwright, Steven Wolf by name.

I can see the picture as plainly as if it were bodily before me in the room. I turn towards the fire, and I see the picture there in the glowing coals.

"The prettiest foot in all the village," cried Steven Wolf, "and the prettiest mouth, and the loveliest eyes!"

His voice jarred upon me. It was like the voice of a brawler calling out in the church and interrupting the service. No wonder, I thought, that Louisa should blush as he gazed boldly at her. His look was a profanation. To save the girl I loved from further indignity I bade her good-bye and left her. Turning my head for a moment as I walked away, it pierced my heart like the thrust of a needle to see that Steven Wolf had followed her into her father's cottage.

I have called Steven Wolf a wheelwright. Well, he might be that for two days in the week; for the other five an indolent sot. He bore a bad character in the village, and there was much suspicious talk concerning him. How could Louisa's father encourage such a character at his hearth? But I could not forget that old Wagner and Steven Wolf were by no means on unfriendly terms. They were often seen together. "When Louisa is mine," I thought, "and I have the right to protect her, she shall have nothing to say to this vagabond." When Louisa was mine! Ah, fraught with happiness was the future I mapped out! I resolved to speak to her soon-before the end of the week, if I could find an opportunity.

On the Monday Steven Wolf thrust his head into my little shop, where I sat working.

"What a fine pair of soles you put on Louisa Wagner's boots!" be cried. "Here-mend mine at the same price." And he flung down a pair.

I threw them back at him with passionate words. He picked them up and walked off, laughing heartily. In the evening of the same day I saw him and Louisa walking together, and I made the acquaintance of that torturer, jealousy. There was no sleep for me that night. When I came upon them Louisa did not see me, but he, looking me full in the face, gave me a malicious, triumphant smile to feed upon. I did feed upon it for days and days till I could bear it no longer, and determined to know the best or the worst that could befall me.

I spoke to Louisa; I declared my love for her; I told her I was able to support her, and I asked her to be my wife. She answered me in the kindest manner, and I learned that she had already promised to become the wife of Steven Wolf. I stood transfixed; my life seemed most suddenly and horribly to have come to an end.

"Do not hate me," she said. "I am very, very sorry!"

"I cannot hate you," I replied. My voice was so strange in my ears that I could scarcely believe it was I who was speaking. "I shall love you all my days."

"We are still friends," she said, holding out her hand.

"Yes," I said, sadly, "we are still friends. It is not possible I could ever be your enemy."

I took her hand, and held it in mine. Tears gushed from my eyes as I felt the sympathetic pressure of her fingers.

"You will see some other girl whom you will love," she said. "You are a good man; every one speaks well of you; your wife will be proud of you."

"I shall never marry," I said, " I love only one.

Our conversation was interrupted by Steven Wolf, who stole abruptly upon us.

"No poaching!" he cried. "Respect the rights of property."

"It is not in that way," I said, and I confess that at that moment I felt a deadly hatred towards him, "I should speak of the girl I was going to marry."

"You choose your way," he retorted, "and I will choose mine. Not a bad way, is it?"

And he put his arm round Louisa's waist. Her eyes were cast down; she never looked at me.

"Words are wasted between us," I said. "Farewell, Louisa Wagner. May you be happy."

He sent a shout of mocking laughter after me.

"Truly," I could not help thinking, "in good feeling I have the advantage of you."

I suffered terribly, and for some time my mind was plunged into such darkness that I could see no gleam of goodness in all the wide world. That is the selfish view we take of things when sorrow comes to our door. "Why," I asked myself, "does Louisa Wagner marry that brute and gambler instead of an honest, hard-working youngster who not only loves but respects her? For what reason does she prefer him to me?" If I could have answered those questions I might be able to tell you more than I know of the workings of a woman's heart. It is beyond me, and beyond you, and therefore I have kept myself free from woman's power from that day to this. I recovered my peace of mind, and so that it might not again be disturbed by the sight of the woman I loved, I left my native village with my knapsack on my shoulders, and came here, where I set up in business for myself as a watch-maker, and have jogged on ever since, with a fair share of happiness and content. There is io condition of life in which a man has not good reason to be grateful. I have grown to know this, and it has been of value to me in my reflections upon life's trials and disappointments. I have my work, I have my connection, I owe no one a florin, I am at peace with the world. That is happiness enough.