Farina

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This etext was produced by David Widger

[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]

FARINA

By George Meredith

THE WHITE ROSE CLUB

In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of
Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance,
there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and
the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb
Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than
whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient mother-
city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice and white
under the shadow of his own fig-tree.

Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in
the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-
quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to
the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have
bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to
Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud,
beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the moonlight through
the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful host were the wives
of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!

This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the
Kaiser addressed to him:

'Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!' and he was easy with
the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm. For Gottlieb was a money-
lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the plenteous
harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much rigour. 'I sow
my seed in winter,' said he, 'and hope to reap good profit in autumn; but
if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and fatten the soil.'

'Old earth's the wisest creditor,' he would add; 'she never squeezes the
sun, but just takes what he can give her year by year, and so makes sure
of good annual interest.'

Therefore when people asked Gottlieb how he had risen to such a pinnacle
of fortune, the old merchant screwed his eye into its wisest corner, and
answered slyly, 'Because I 've always been a student of the heavenly
bodies'; a communication which failed not to make the orbs and systems
objects of ardent popular worship in Cologne, where the science was long
since considered alchymic, and still may be.

Seldom could the Kaiser go to war on Welschland without first taking
earnest counsel of his Well-born son and Subject Gottlieb, and lightening
his chests. Indeed the imperial pastime must have ceased, and the Kaiser
had languished but for him. Cologne counted its illustrious citizen
something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and
scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural
respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had
walked through the awe-struck game.

But, for the young men of Cologne he had a higher claim to reverence as
father of the fair Margarita, the White Rose of Germany; a noble maiden,
peerless, and a jewel for princes.

The devotion of these youths should give them a name in chivalry. In her
honour, daily and nightly, they earned among themselves black bruises and
paraded discoloured countenances, with the humble hope to find it
pleasing in her sight. The tender fanatics went in bands up and down
Rhineland, challenging wayfarers and the peasantry with staff and beaker
to acknowledge the supremacy of their mistress. Whoso of them journeyed
into foreign parts, wrote home boasting how many times his head had been
broken on behalf of the fair Margarita; and if this happened very often,
a spirit of envy was created, which compelled him, when he returned, to
verify his prowess on no less than a score of his rivals. Not to possess
a beauty-scar, as the wounds received in these endless combats were
called, became the sign of inferiority, so that much voluntary maiming
was conjectured to be going on; and to obviate this piece of treachery,
minutes of fights were taken and attested, setting forth that a certain
glorious cut or crack was honourably won in fair field; on what occasion;
and from whom; every member of the White Rose Club keeping his particular
scroll, and, on days of festival and holiday, wearing it haughtily in his
helm. Strangers entering Cologne were astonished at the hideous
appearance of the striplings, and thought they never had observed so ugly
a race; but they were forced to admit the fine influence of beauty on
commerce, seeing that the consumption of beer increased almost hourly.
All Bavaria could not equal Cologne for quantity made away with.

The chief members of the White Rose Club were Berthold Schmidt, the rich
goldsmith's son; Dietrich Schill, son of the imperial saddler; Heinrich
Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of
whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured in
person for men to require an inspection of the document. They were
dangerous youths to meet, for the oaths, ceremonies, and recantations
they demanded from every wayfarer, under the rank of baron, were what few
might satisfactorily perform, if lovers of woman other than the fair
Margarita, or loyal husbands; and what none save trained heads and
stomachs could withstand, however naturally manful. The captain of the
Club was he who could drink most beer without intermediate sighing, and
whose face reckoned the proudest number of slices and mixture of colours.
The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and Berthold
Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were gradually
losing likeness to man. 'Good coin,' they gloried to reflect, 'needs no
stamp.'

One youth in Cologne held out against the standing tyranny, and chose to
do beauty homage in his own fashion, and at his leisure. It was Farina,
and oaths were registered against him over empty beer-barrels. An axiom
of the White Rose Club laid it down that everybody must be enamoured of
Margarita, and the conscience of the 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.

THE TAPESTRY WORD

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 that am I!' exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.

'Right good, my niece,' Lisbeth squealed; 'but now Frau Groschen lies in
God's acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?'

'From beginning to end,' replied Margarita.

Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita's cameo.

'And still you wear that thing?'

'Why not?' said Margarita.

'Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan? Oh, thou
poor lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there!
and thou become his snare to others, Margarita! What was that Welsh
wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of sin!
They say he has been seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as Satan and
limped of one leg. Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was Satan
himself I could swear!'

Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.

Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but
Aunt Lisbeth's finish made her laugh outright.

'Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,' she
answered; 'and where I see there's harm, I shall think Satan lurks.'

A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth. She sighed, and was
silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and
never overcome.

'Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,' said she.

Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for
presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last
campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved
Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth
indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita's
frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They
were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece.
Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon. They shared the
crag between them. A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could
be already made out, Roland's Corner hanging like a sentinel across the
chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.

Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught Margarita.
The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters, in the
Palatine of Bohemia's family. She usually talked of the spectres of
Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads. Those were dismal
spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of
midnight. They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed
sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!

Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt
Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the
Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a
temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of
divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried's
helm and horns.

'I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?' inquired Aunt
Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.

'Many times!' said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee

'Her love was a Baron,
A Baron so bold;
She loved him for love,
He loved her for gold.'

'He must see for himself, and be satisfied,' continued Aunt Lisbeth; 'and
Holy Thomas to warn him for an example! Poor Kraut!'

'Poor Kraut!' echoed Margarita.

'The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,
And they loved the summer weather:
They might have loved each other well,
But for one they loved together.'

'You may say, poor Kraut, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth. 'Well! his face was
before that as red as this dragon's jaw, and ever after he went about as
white as a pullet's egg. That was something wonderful!' 'That was it!'
chimed Margarita.

'O the King he loved his lawful wife,
The Knight a lawless lady:
And ten on one-made ringing strife,
Beneath the forest shady.'

'Fifty to one, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth: 'You forget the story. They
made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there.
The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead,
burning blue and damp.'

'Not to-night, aunty dear! It frightens me so,' pleaded Margarita, for
she saw the dolor coming.

'Night! when it's broad mid-day, thou timid one! Good heaven take pity
on such as thou! The dish was seven feet in length by four broad. Kraut
measured it with his eye, and never forgot it. Not he! When the dish-
cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!

"'I did not feel uncomfortable then," Kraut told us. "It seemed
natural."

'His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little
wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and
the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the
guests were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some
for toes. It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness
said, "Cheek!"'

'Ah!' shrieked Margarita, 'that can I not bear! I will not hear it,
aunt; I will not!'

'Cheek!' Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.

Margarita put her fingers to her ears.

'Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was
horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the
first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors,
and there he was. I 've heard that you must pronounce the names of the
Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three
minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall
disappear. So they say. "Oh! dear heaven of mercy!" says Kraut, "what
I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!"'

Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita's fright. She
was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and
hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.

She said severely, 'Where did you learn that song you were last singing,
Margarita? Speak, thou girl!'

Margarita laughed.

'The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
They taught me how to sing:
And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
And the eagle lend his wing.'

'I will not hear these shameless songs,' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

'For I would view the lands they view,
And be where they have been:
It is not enough to be singing
For ever in dells unseen !'

A voice was heard applauding her. 'Good! right good! Carol again,
Gretelchen! my birdie!'

Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway. She tripped
toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting. Gottlieb
glanced at the helm of Siegfried.

'Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete!
Very pretty! And that's Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a
bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in
Deutschland in love with him. Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after
all, I believe! Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried. So chirrup on,
my darling!'

'Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,' replied Margarita,
untwisting some silver threads.

'Do thy father's command, girl!' said Aunt Lisbeth.

'And doing his command,
Should I do a thing of ill,
I'd rather die to his lovely face,
Than wanton at his will.'

'There--there,' said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; 'you see,
Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to. Not another girl in
blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!--than--
I can't repeat them!--don't ask me!--She's becoming a Frankish girl!'

'What ballad's that?' said Gottlieb, smiling.

'The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness. And she
loved him--loved him----'

'As you love Siegfried, you little one?'

'More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried. Ah!
if I had seen Siegfried! Never mind. She loved him; but she loved
Virtue more. And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave
her for loving Winkried, the Devil's son, because she loved Virtue more,
and He rescued her as she was being dragged down--down--down, and was
half fainting with the smell of brimstone--rescued her and had her
carried into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before
all men, as a hope to little maidens.

'And when I thought that I was lost
I found that I was saved,
And I was borne through blessed clouds,
Where the banners of bliss were waved.'

'And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils' sons, girl?'
was Aunt Lisbeth's comment.

'Do look at Lisbeth's Dragon, little Heart! it's so like!' said Margarita
to her father.

Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.

'She's my girl! that may be seen,' said he, patting her, and wheezed up
from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon. But Aunt Lisbeth tartly
turned the Dragon to the wall.

'It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,' she
interposed. 'I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of
Spring wax cold': and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.

Margarita sang:

'I with my playmates,
In riot and disorder,
Were gathering herb and blossom
Along the forest border.'

'Thy mother's song, child of my heart!' said Gottlieb; 'but vex not good
Lisbeth: she loves thee!'

'And do you think she loves me?
And will you say 'tis true?
O, and will she have me,
When I come up to woo?'

'Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!' said Gottlieb.

'She shall have ribbons and trinkets,
And shine like a morn of May,
When we are off to the little hill-church,
Our flowery bridal way.'

'That she shall; and something more !' cried Gottlieb. 'But, hark thee,
Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days. Thou dear one! had I
not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a
hearthstone where even he might warm his boot. So get thy best dresses
and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land. A
simple burgher's daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my
butterfly, or there's neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!'

'Three days!' Margarita exclaimed; 'and the helm not finished, and the
tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.--Oh!
I must work night and day.'

'Child! I'll have no working at night! Your rosy cheeks will soon be
sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court
beauties--to say nothing of the danger. This old house saw Charles the
Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder. Some
swear he slept in it. He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our
Kaisers abide. No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden
beams.'

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