Chapter 19. The Maid and the Flower
But poor Rosa, in her secluded chamber, could not have known of whom orof what Cornelius was dreaming.
From what he had said she was more ready to believe that he dreamed ofthe black tulip than of her; and yet Rosa was mistaken.
But as there was no one to tell her so, and as the words of Cornelius'sthoughtless speech had fallen upon her heart like drops of poison, shedid not dream, but she wept.
The fact was, that, as Rosa was a high-spirited creature, of no meanperception and a noble heart, she took a very clear and judicious viewof her own social position, if not of her moral and physical qualities.
Cornelius was a scholar, and was wealthy,--at least he had beenbefore the confiscation of his property; Cornelius belonged to themerchant-bourgeoisie, who were prouder of their richly emblazonedshop signs than the hereditary nobility of their heraldic bearings.Therefore, although he might find Rosa a pleasant companion for thedreary hours of his captivity, when it came to a question of bestowinghis heart it was almost certain that he would bestow it upon atulip,--that is to say, upon the proudest and noblest of flowers, ratherthan upon poor Rosa, the jailer's lowly child.
Thus Rosa understood Cornelius's preference of the tulip to herself, butwas only so much the more unhappy therefor.
During the whole of this terrible night the poor girl did not close aneye, and before she rose in the morning she had come to the resolutionof making her appearance at the grated window no more.
But as she knew with what ardent desire Cornelius looked forward to thenews about his tulip; and as, notwithstanding her determination not tosee any more a man her pity for whose fate was fast growing into love,she did not, on the other hand, wish to drive him to despair, sheresolved to continue by herself the reading and writing lessons; and,fortunately, she had made sufficient progress to dispense with the helpof a master when the master was not to be Cornelius.
Rosa therefore applied herself most diligently to reading poor Corneliusde Witt's Bible, on the second fly leaf of which the last will ofCornelius van Baerle was written.
"Alas!" she muttered, when perusing again this document, which she neverfinished without a tear, the pearl of love, rolling from her limpideyes on her pale cheeks--"alas! at that time I thought for one moment heloved me."
Poor Rosa! she was mistaken. Never had the love of the prisoner beenmore sincere than at the time at which we are now arrived, when in thecontest between the black tulip and Rosa the tulip had had to yield toher the first and foremost place in Cornelius's heart.
But Rosa was not aware of it.
Having finished reading, she took her pen, and began with as laudablediligence the by far more difficult task of writing.
As, however, Rosa was already able to write a legible hand whenCornelius so uncautiously opened his heart, she did not despair ofprogressing quickly enough to write, after eight days at the latest, tothe prisoner an account of his tulip.
She had not forgotten one word of the directions given to her byCornelius, whose speeches she treasured in her heart, even when they didnot take the shape of directions.
He, on his part, awoke deeper in love than ever. The tulip, indeed,was still a luminous and prominent object in his mind; but he no longerlooked upon it as a treasure to which he ought to sacrifice everything,and even Rosa, but as a marvellous combination of nature and art withwhich he would have been happy to adorn the bosom of his beloved one.
Yet during the whole of that day he was haunted with a vague uneasiness,at the bottom of which was the fear lest Rosa should not come in theevening to pay him her usual visit. This thought took more and more holdof him, until at the approach of evening his whole mind was absorbed init.
How his heart beat when darkness closed in! The words which he had saidto Rosa on the evening before and which had so deeply afflicted her, nowcame back to his mind more vividly than ever, and he asked himselfhow he could have told his gentle comforter to sacrifice him to histulip,--that is to say, to give up seeing him, if need be,--whereas tohim the sight of Rosa had become a condition of life.
In Cornelius's cell one heard the chimes of the clock of the fortress.It struck seven, it struck eight, it struck nine. Never did the metalvoice vibrate more forcibly through the heart of any man than did thelast stroke, marking the ninth hour, through the heart of Cornelius.
All was then silent again. Cornelius put his hand on his heart, torepress as it were its violent palpitation, and listened.
The noise of her footstep, the rustling of her gown on the staircase,were so familiar to his ear, that she had no sooner mounted one stepthan he used to say to himself,--
"Here comes Rosa."
This evening none of those little noises broke the silence of the lobby,the clock struck nine, and a quarter; the half-hour, then a quarter toten, and at last its deep tone announced, not only to the inmates ofthe fortress, but also to all the inhabitants of Loewestein, that it wasten.
This was the hour at which Rosa generally used to leave Cornelius. Thehour had struck, but Rosa had not come.
Thus then his foreboding had not deceived him; Rosa, being vexed, shutherself up in her room and left him to himself.
"Alas!" he thought, "I have deserved all this. She will come no more,and she is right in staying away; in her place I should do just thesame."
Yet notwithstanding all this, Cornelius listened, waited, and hopeduntil midnight, then he threw himself upon the bed, with his clothes on.
It was a long and sad night for him, and the day brought no hope to theprisoner.
At eight in the morning, the door of his cell opened; but Cornelius didnot even turn his head; he had heard the heavy step of Gryphus in thelobby, but this step had perfectly satisfied the prisoner that hisjailer was coming alone.
Thus Cornelius did not even look at Gryphus.
And yet he would have been so glad to draw him out, and to inquire aboutRosa. He even very nearly made this inquiry, strange as it would needshave appeared to her father. To tell the truth, there was in all thissome selfish hope to hear from Gryphus that his daughter was ill.
Except on extraordinary occasions, Rosa never came during the day.Cornelius therefore did not really expect her as long as the day lasted.Yet his sudden starts, his listening at the door, his rapid glances atevery little noise towards the grated window, showed clearly that theprisoner entertained some latent hope that Rosa would, somehow or other,break her rule.
At the second visit of Gryphus, Cornelius, contrary to all his formerhabits, asked the old jailer, with the most winning voice, abouther health; but Gryphus contented himself with giving the laconicalanswer,--
"All's well."
At the third visit of the day, Cornelius changed his former inquiry:--
"I hope nobody is ill at Loewestein?"
"Nobody," replied, even more laconically, the jailer, shutting the doorbefore the nose of the prisoner.
Gryphus, being little used to this sort of civility on the part ofCornelius, began to suspect that his prisoner was about to try and bribehim.
Cornelius was now alone once more; it was seven o'clock in the evening,and the anxiety of yesterday returned with increased intensity.
But another time the hours passed away without bringing the sweet visionwhich lighted up, through the grated window, the cell of poor Cornelius,and which, in retiring, left light enough in his heart to last until itcame back again.
Van Baerle passed the night in an agony of despair. On the followingday Gryphus appeared to him even more hideous, brutal, and hateful thanusual; in his mind, or rather in his heart, there had been some hopethat it was the old man who prevented his daughter from coming.
In his wrath he would have strangled Gryphus, but would not this haveseparated him for ever from Rosa?
The evening closing in, his despair changed into melancholy, whichwas the more gloomy as, involuntarily, Van Baerle mixed up with it thethought of his poor tulip. It was now just that week in April w
hich themost experienced gardeners point out as the precise time when tulipsought to be planted. He had said to Rosa,--
"I shall tell you the day when you are to put the bulb in the ground."
He had intended to fix, at the vainly hoped for interview, thefollowing day as the time for that momentous operation. The weather waspropitious; the air, though still damp, began to be tempered by thosepale rays of the April sun which, being the first, appear so congenial,although so pale. How if Rosa allowed the right moment for planting thebulb to pass by,--if, in addition to the grief of seeing her no more,he should have to deplore the misfortune of seeing his tulip fail onaccount of its having been planted too late, or of its not having beenplanted at all!
These two vexations combined might well make him leave off eating anddrinking.
This was the case on the fourth day.
It was pitiful to see Cornelius, dumb with grief, and pale from utterprostration, stretch out his head through the iron bars of his window,at the risk of not being able to draw it back again, to try and get aglimpse of the garden on the left spoken of by Rosa, who had told himthat its parapet overlooked the river. He hoped that perhaps he mightsee, in the light of the April sun, Rosa or the tulip, the two lostobjects of his love.
In the evening, Gryphus took away the breakfast and dinner of Cornelius,who had scarcely touched them.
On the following day he did not touch them at all, and Gryphus carriedthe dishes away just as he had brought them.
Cornelius had remained in bed the whole day.
"Well," said Gryphus, coming down from the last visit, "I think we shallsoon get rid of our scholar."
Rosa was startled.
"Nonsense!" said Jacob. "What do you mean?"
"He doesn't drink, he doesn't eat, he doesn't leave his bed. He will getout of it, like Mynheer Grotius, in a chest, only the chest will be acoffin."
Rosa grew pale as death.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he is uneasy about his tulip."
And, rising with a heavy heart, she returned to her chamber, where shetook a pen and paper, and during the whole of that night busied herselfwith tracing letters.
On the following morning, when Cornelius got up to drag himself to thewindow, he perceived a paper which had been slipped under the door.
He pounced upon it, opened it, and read the following words, in ahandwriting which he could scarcely have recognized as that of Rosa, somuch had she improved during her short absence of seven days,--
"Be easy; your tulip is going on well."
Although these few words of Rosa's somewhat soothed the grief ofCornelius, yet he felt not the less the irony which was at the bottomof them. Rosa, then, was not ill, she was offended; she had not beenforcibly prevented from coming, but had voluntarily stayed away. ThusRosa, being at liberty, found in her own will the force not to come andsee him, who was dying with grief at not having seen her.
Cornelius had paper and a pencil which Rosa had brought to him. Heguessed that she expected an answer, but that she would not come beforethe evening to fetch it. He therefore wrote on a piece of paper, similarto that which he had received,--
"It was not my anxiety about the tulip that has made me ill, but thegrief at not seeing you."
After Gryphus had made his last visit of the day, and darkness had setin, he slipped the paper under the door, and listened with the mostintense attention, but he neither heard Rosa's footsteps nor therustling of her gown.
He only heard a voice as feeble as a breath, and gentle like a caress,which whispered through the grated little window in the door the word,--
"To-morrow!"
Now to-morrow was the eighth day. For eight days Cornelius and Rosa hadnot seen each other.