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 att.i.tude 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 Putz have said, Putz 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 const.i.tution. 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 antic.i.p.ate 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! n.o.body, 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 Konigsberg. 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.