Complete Short Works of George Meredith - George Meredith

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Club made them trebly suspicious of those who were not members. They had the consolation of knowing that Farina was poor, but then he was affirmed a student of Black Arts, and from such a one the worst might reasonably be feared. He might bewitch Margarita!

      Dietrich Schill was deputed by the Club to sound the White Rose herself on the subject of Farina, and one afternoon in the vintage season, when she sat under the hot vine-poles among maiden friends, eating ripe grapes, up sauntered Dietrich, smirking, cap in hand, with his scroll trailed behind him.

      ‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, offering him a bunch.

      ‘Unhappy villain that I am!’ replied Dietrich, gesticulating fox-like refusal; ‘if I but accept a favour, I break faith with the Club.’

      ‘Break it to pleasure me,’ said Margarita, smiling wickedly.

      Dietrich gasped. He stood on tiptoe to see if any of the Club were by, and half-stretched out his hand. A mocking laugh caused him to draw it back as if stung. The grapes fell. Farina was at Margarita’s feet offering them in return.

      ‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, with softer stress, and slight excess of bloom in her cheeks.

      Farina put the purple cluster to his breast, and clutched them hard on his heart, still kneeling.

      Margarita’s brow and bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina’s eyes yearned to her once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry.

      Fury helped Dietrich to forget his awkwardness. He touched Farina on the shoulder with two fingers, and muttered huskily: ‘The Club never allow that.’

      Farina bowed, as to thank him deeply for the rules of the Club. ‘I am not a member, you know,’ said he, and strolled to a seat close by Margarita.

      Dietrich glared after him. As head of a Club he understood the use of symbols. He had lost a splendid opportunity, and Farina had seized it. Farina had robbed him.

      ‘May I speak with Mistress Margarita?’ inquired the White Rose chief, in a ragged voice.

      ‘Surely, Dietrich! do speak,’ said Margarita.

      ‘Alone?’ he continued.

      ‘Is that allowed by the Club?’ said one of the young girls, with a saucy glance.

      Dietrich deigned no reply, but awaited Margarita’s decision. She hesitated a second; then stood up her full height before him; faced him steadily, and beckoned him some steps up the vine-path. Dietrich bowed, and passing Farina, informed him that the Club would wring satisfaction out of him for the insult.

      Farina laughed, but answered, ‘Look, you of the Club! beer-swilling has improved your manners as much as fighting has beautified your faces. Go on; drink and fight! but remember that the Kaiser’s coming, and fellows with him who will not be bullied.’

      ‘What mean you?’ cried Dietrich, lurching round on his enemy.

      ‘Not so loud, friend,’ returned Farina. ‘Or do you wish to frighten the maidens? I mean this, that the Club had better give as little offence as possible, and keep their eyes as wide as they can, if they want to be of service to Mistress Margarita.’

      Dietrich turned off with a grunt.

      ‘Now!’ said Margarita.

      She was tapping her foot. Dietrich grew unfaithful to the Club, and looked at her longer than his mission warranted. She was bright as the sunset gardens of the Golden Apples. The braids of her yellow hair were bound in wreaths, and on one side of her head a saffron crocus was stuck with the bell downward. Sweetness, song, and wit hung like dews of morning on her grape-stained lips. She wore a scarlet corset with bands of black velvet across her shoulders. The girlish gown was thin blue stuff, and fell short over her firm-set feet, neatly cased in white leather with buckles. There was witness in her limbs and the way she carried her neck of an amiable, but capable, dragon, ready, when aroused, to bristle up and guard the Golden Apples against all save the rightful claimant. Yet her nether lip and little white chin-ball had a dreamy droop; her frank blue eyes went straight into the speaker: the dragon slept. It was a dangerous charm. ‘For,’ says the minnesinger, ‘what ornament more enchants us on a young beauty than the soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth, and that herself knows not of! It sings double things to the heart of knighthood; lures, and warns us; woos, and threatens. ’Tis as nature, shining peace, yet the mother of storm.’

      ‘There is no man,’ rapturously exclaims Heinrich von der Jungferweide, ‘can resist the desire to win a sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping. The very danger prattles promise.’

      But the dragon must really sleep, as with Margarita.

      ‘A sham dragon, shamming sleep, has destroyed more virgins than all the heathen emperors,’ says old Hans Aepfelmann of Duesseldorf.

      Margarita’s foot was tapping quicker.

      ‘Speak, Dietrich!’ she said.

      Dietrich declared to the Club that at this point he muttered, ‘We love you.’ Margarita was glad to believe he had not spoken of himself. He then informed her of the fears entertained by the Club, sworn to watch over and protect her, regarding Farina’s arts.

      ‘And what fear you?’ said Margarita.

      ‘We fear, sweet mistress, he may be in league with Sathanas,’ replied Dietrich.

      ‘Truly, then,’ said Margarita, ‘of all the youths in Cologne he is the least like his confederate.’

      Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering wry-faced from an abhorred potion.

      ‘We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!’ he exclaimed. ‘It now becomes our duty to see that you are not snared.’

      Margarita reddened, and returned: ‘You are kind. But I am a Christian maiden and not a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny guards at my heels.’

      Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began staining her pretty mouth with grapes anew.

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      Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried was Margarita’s chosen. She sang of Siegfried all over the house. ‘O the old days of Germany, when such a hero walked!’ she sang.

      ‘And who wins Margarita,’ mused Farina, ‘happier than Siegfried, has in his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!’

      Crowning the young girl’s breast was a cameo, and the skill of some cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.

      This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb’s unmarried sister, who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon, and who reigned in her brother’s household when the good wife was gone. Margarita’s robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt Lisbeth’s sealed stock of virtue.

      ‘She must be watched, such a madl as that,’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Ursula! what limbs she has!’

      Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled well.

      ‘But,’ said she to her niece, ‘though it is good in a girl not to flaunt these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say—Be what you seem, my little one!’

      ‘And

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