The Wagnerian Romances Part 13

Walther is again for das.h.i.+ng down the lane toward the city-gate and the horses. "But no! Can't you hear?"--his lady hangs back. "Some one else has come and taken up his station there."--"I hear it and see it. It is some street-musician. What is he doing so late at night?"--"It is Beckmesser!"--"What, the Marker? The Marker in my power? There is one whose loafing in the street shall not trouble us long...." Again she catches in terror at his arm, so ready ever to catch at the sword. "For the love of Heaven, listen!

Do you wish to waken my father? The man will sing his song and then will go his way. Let us hide behind the shrubs yonder." She draws her lover to the stone seat under the linden-tree.

Sachs at the sound of the lute has drawn in his light, become superfluous, since the road is effectually blocked for the lovers by the musical interloper. He overhears Eva's exclamation, "Beckmesser!"

and has an idea. Beckmesser shall be made of use to prevent the lovers as long as possible from moving any farther from the safe parental roof than that stone seat under the linden, where they huddle close, whispering together, while keeping a watchful eye on the actors of the comedy which follows. Sachs, as one might know of him, loves a joke. He softly opens his door, places his work-bench and lamp right in the doorway, and sets himself at his work. When Beckmesser, after impatiently preluding to bring to the window the figure he is expecting, clears his throat to begin the serenade, Sachs, vigourously hammering on his last, prevents him by bursting forth on his own account in a l.u.s.ty ditty with much loud Ohe, Ohe, Trallalei!--a playful ditty, sweet at the core, about Eve, the original mother, and the first pair of shoes, ordered for her from an angel by the Lord himself, who was sorry to see the pitiful sinner, when turned out of Paradise, go bruising her little feet, for which He had a tenderness, on the hard stones; and Adam, too, stubbing his toes against the flints, the song tells how he on the same occasion was measured for boots. Beckmesser can hardly contain his impatience and disgust till the first verse comes to an end. Upon the last note of it, he addresses the shoe-maker with what sickly civility he can summon: "How is this, master? Still up? So late at night?" Sachs expresses an equal surprise to find the town-clerk moving abroad: "I suppose you are concerned for your shoes. I am at work on them, as you see; you shall have them to-morrow."--"Devil take the shoes!" groans Beckmesser; "What I want here is quiet!" But his words are lost amid Sachs's hammer-blows and unmoderated voice launching forth upon the second verse. "You are to stop at once!" Beckmesser, in mounting anger, orders Sachs, as, hardly pausing to take breath, the shoe-maker is attacking the third verse. "Is it a practical joke you are playing on me?

Do you make no distinction between the night and the day?" Sachs looks at him in innocent surprise. "What does it matter to you that I should sing? You are anxious, are you not, to have your shoes finished?"--"Shut yourself up indoors then and keep quiet!"--"Nay, night-labour is burdensome; if I am to keep cheerful at my work, I must have air and light-hearted song. So hear how the third verse goes!" And he attacks it with a will. There is added to Beckmesser's other troubles the fearful thought that the maiden may mistake this outrageous bellowing for his love-song. A second-story window in Pogner's house has softly opened, a form is dimly outlined within the frame of it. "I am lost now," Beckmesser desperately reflects, "if he goes on singing!" He resolutely steps up to Sachs: "Friend Sachs, just listen to one word! How bent you seem upon those shoes!

I truly had forgotten all about them. As a shoe-maker, the fact is, I hold you in great esteem, but as an artist and critic I honour you even more highly. I beseech you therefore to give your attention to a little song by which I hope to-morrow to win the prize. I am eager to be told whether you think well of it." While talking, he strums, as if casually, upon his lute, to keep the lady from leaving the window. "Oh, no!" Sachs replies; "You wish to catch me by my weak side. I have no wish for another berating. Since your shoe-maker takes himself for a poet, it fares but ill with your footgear. I can see for myself that it is in a deplorable condition. And so I drop verse and rhyme, knowledge and erudition, and I make you the new shoes for to-morrow."--"Let that be, do!"

Beckmesser adjures him; "That was only a joke. Understand now what my true sentiments are. You stand high in honour with the people, and the daughter of Pogner has a great opinion of you. Now, if I intend to offer myself as a suitor for her to-morrow, can you not see how I might be destroyed by her not taking kindly to my song? Therefore listen to me quietly, do, and when I have finished my song tell me what in it you like, and what not, that I may make my dispositions accordingly."--"Go along! Let me alone!" Sachs still excuses himself; "How should so much honour accrue to me? My songs are but common street-songs; let me therefore, in my common way, sing them to the street!" He is taking up his noisy lay again about Eve and shoes when Beckmesser's rage explodes. Quaking, the town-clerk pours forth reproach and insult. This conduct of the shoe-maker's has its source in envy, nothing else; envy of the dignity of Marker which has never been bestowed upon him, and which now never will be, not so long as Beckmesser lives and has influence with the masters. When he stops at last, for lack of breath, Sachs asks artlessly: "Was that your song?... Somewhat irregular in form, but it sounded right spirited!"

Walther, in the shadow, clasping his troubled lady, who is unaccountably saddened by the untimely farce, struggles with a hysterical desire to laugh--it is all so like a fantastic dream.

At last shoe-maker and town-clerk come to an arrangement. Beckmesser shall sing his song, and Sachs, whose criticism he so unwontedly desires, shall act as Marker; but Sachs, who contends that he is loath to stop work on his shoes, instead of marking with chalk, shall mark the singer's mistakes by blows of his hammer on the last, and so, peradventure, while listening, forward his work. A disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror lest the lady leave her post before he have sung that he consents. "Begin!"

hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after preluding, sings, while Sachs punctuates the lines with smart taps on the last. These at first discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings, a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement of facts, tortured into verse, which attains metre only by throwing the accent continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, too, of music. A ridiculous, dead-in-earnest song, relating in three long verses the circ.u.mstances of the song-contest and the singer's tender hopes.

By the end of the second verse, the teasing shoe-maker has tapped so much that the soles are solid with the vamps. He swings the finished shoes triumphantly before his customer, announcing that he has thought of an appropriate verse to write on the soles, and it is: "A good song must keep time!" But Beckmesser does not stop for him. Beckmesser disdainfully goes on, as if he and the lady were alone in the world, and he sang thus loud to overpower some such thing as the sea-surf. In his engrossment he fails to take account of various ominous signs. He does not see David appear at his chamber-window. In spite of Eva's clothes which she is wearing, the boy recognises Magdalene at the cas.e.m.e.nt across the way. His jealousy is quick to suppose her cold treatment of himself due to an inclination toward this new admirer. The neighbours, too, begin to lean out of their windows and ask the reason of this abominable caterwauling. A crowd collects in the street, of persons trying to find out what is the matter. The apprentices come flocking, mischievous instigators to mischief, and the journeymen, little better than they. Soon, there is difference and quarreling among those arriving to inquire the cause of the disturbance. Neighbours pour into the street, men and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees--but is at every few steps overtaken again and beaten. The two figures, in flight and pursuit, waving lute and brandis.h.i.+ng cudgel, disappear and reappear at intervals among the swaying crowd. In vain Magdalene from above screams to David to let the gentleman go. Pogner's hand draws her away from the window; in the dim light he mistakes her for Eva. Sachs, when the confusion is well under way, draws in his work-bench and closes his door ... again all but a crack, through which he can watch the two figures wrapped in a single cloak beneath the linden-tree. When the disorder is at its height, Walther clasps the girl with his left arm, with his right bares his sword, and attempts a rush through the crowd, toward the gates and horses of freedom. Quick as thought, Sachs has cleared his way to the couple; he grasps Walther by the arm. Pogner at the same moment appears at his door, calling for Lene. Sachs pushes toward him Eva, half-fainting, bereft by panic of all power to withstand the impulsion. Pogner receives her in his arms and draws her within doors, not suspecting but that she is the faithful nurse whose garments she wears. With deft foot Sachs propels David before him into the house; then, forcibly drawing Walther with him across the threshold, fastens the door,--his object happily accomplished.

The street-battle is still raging. But at this point women pour water from the windows on the heads of the combatants, as they would on fighting dogs. Simultaneously, the horn of the night-watchman is heard. In the s.p.a.ce of a yawn the scene is deserted; all down the street are fast-closed windows and doors; Beckmesser hobbles off rubbing his back. The old night-watchman, reaching the spot, rubs his eyes, clearly wondering if he have dreamed that he heard alarming sounds from that quarter. After looking all around, he droningly calls the hour of eleven, enjoins the people to be on guard against phantoms and spooks, that no evil spirit may work harm to their souls, and so let G.o.d the Lord be praised! The full moon rising above the housetops suddenly floods the quiet lane.

The watchman slowly goes down it. As he vanishes around the corner, the curtain falls.

III

The interior of Sachs's workshop. The poet sits in an ample armchair, near the window, bathed in the morning suns.h.i.+ne, absorbed in a great book. The magnanimity of his mood, the beautiful deep calm following upon certain resolutions and sacrifices, the gently exalted melancholy of his meditations--half remembrance, and dreamy as if violet shades of evening softened them,--the composer has given us to apprehend all in the introduction to the third act.

So rapt is Sachs in the perusal of his great volume, or, as may be suspected, in images which float between the page and his eyes, that he does not see David enter carrying a basket of Lene's bestowal filled with flowers and ribbons for the adornment of his person on this festival day, as well as with cake and sausage. The apprentice, when Sachs does not speak, or, spoken to, answer, or make sign when he informs him that Beckmesser's shoes have been duly delivered, believes him to be angry, and goes into a long apology for his misconduct on the night before, brightening finally with the relation of his making-up this morning with Lene, who has satisfactorily explained all. Sachs reads on, as little disturbed as by the buzzing of a fly on the pane. Only when he has finished, and closed his book,--the unexpected clap of the covers so startles David that he stumbles to his knees--Sachs looks around him, as if coming back from a dream. His eye is caught by the bright flowers and ribbons brought in by David. Their effect of young gayety touches some chord in him more than usually sensitive at this moment. "Flowers and ribbons I see over there," he muses audibly; "Sweet and youthful they look! How come they in my house?" David is relieved to find him in this gentle mood, yet puzzled at the remoteness and abstraction from which the master is but slowly drawn. He has occasion for a moment to wonder even whether the master have perchance become hard of hearing....

Fully returned at length to a sense of the common surrounding world, Sachs asks David for his day's lesson, and the apprentice briskly sings his verse, first comically confusing the tune with that of Beckmesser's serenade, still buzzing in his head, then, at Sachs's gesture of astonishment, righting himself and acquitting himself of his task without slip. The verse is a playful bit, between psalm and street-song. It relates that when Saint John was baptising on the banks of Jordan there came to him a lady from Nuremberg bringing her little son for baptism. When she got home, however, to German land, it proved that vainly had one on the banks of Jordan been given the name of Johannes, on the banks of the Pegnitz he became Hans! The p.r.o.nouncing of the name brings to David's mind the remembrance suddenly that it is his master's name, that the day is therefore his name's-day. In an impulse of affectionate devotion he presses on him all the gay articles just received from Lene, the flowers and ribbons, the magnificent cake, and, but shyly, as if it were not quite worthy of a poet, the sausage. With great gentleness, Sachs thanks the lad and bids him keep the things for himself, adding a request that he make himself fine with those same flowers and ribbons to accompany him presently to the meadow outside the city gates where the song-contest is to be held. His stately herald he shall be. Sachs's friendliness encourages the boy to venture a small liberty. "May I not rather go as your groom's-man? Master, dear master, you must marry again!"--"You would be glad of a mistress in the house?" asks Sachs dreamily.--"It would make, in my opinion, a much more imposing household!" There is popular talk and expectation of it, as an outcome of the coming song-contest, David intimates; "You will hardly have much trouble, as I think, in singing Beckmesser out of the field; I hardly believe he will make himself very conspicuous to-day!"--"I hardly believe so, either," Sachs smiles: "But go now, and be careful not to disturb his lords.h.i.+p. Come back when you have made yourself fine."

Left alone, Sachs sinks into thought again, sitting there with his book on his knees and his head propped on his hand. We are allowed to follow his reflections, those of a philosopher,--but not one standing apart and watching a little scornfully the vagaries of men; a very human being, taking part in them, without losing a humourous sense of their character. "Illusion! Illusion! Everywhere illusion! Whichever way I bend my inquiry, searching the chronicles of the city and those of the world, to discover the reason why people, in vain and frantic rage, torment and oppress themselves and one another to the point of bloodshed! No one has any good of it, or receives any thanks for it. Through its working, the defeated and put to flight fancies himself chasing the foe. He is deaf to his own cry of pain. When he twists the knife in his own flesh, he has an idea that he is doing himself a pleasure! Who shall find a name for it? One name, forsooth, befits it: Ancient Illusion it is, without which nothing happens, nothing either goes or stands still. If it halts in its career, it merely while slumbering gathers new force; it presently wakes up, and then see who can master it!..." He smiles whimsically, nodding to himself, at the contemplation of the instance of all this uppermost in his mind, the events of the evening before. "How peaceful, in its adherence to good customs, approved in conduct and deed, lies in the heart of Germany my beloved Nuremberg! But late upon a night, a man there is found totally void of counsel how to prevent a catastrophe, resulting from youth and hot blood. A shoe-maker in his shop tugs gently at the threads of illusion: how promptly up and down the lanes and streets the thing begins to rage; men, women, boys and children, fall upon one another like mad and blind; and the crack-brained spirit is not to be laid until a shower fall of blows--a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry conflagration. G.o.d knows how it all came about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,--the lovely and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his mate, it was he responsible for all the damage done! It was the fault of the elder-tree--of Saint John's night! ... But now--" he broadly dismisses the fancies and aberrations of the warm mid-summer night, and turns his face toward the clear-defined duty of the day: "But now it is Saint John's Day! And now let us see how Hans Sachs shall contrive deftly to guide Illusion to the working out of a n.o.ble purpose. For if the spirit will not let us rest even here in Nuremberg, let it be for such works as seldom succeed by vulgar means, and succeed never without some grain of illusion in the perpetrator himself!"

Walther appears at the door of an inner chamber. Sachs rises to meet and greet his guest. They had a good talk the night before, after the wise shoester's act of well-meant violence. Walther was grateful, no doubt, upon calmer reflection, to have been saved from the ruinous folly he had projected. The two men are obviously fast friends. There is in Sachs's att.i.tude a touching deference toward the younger man, the heart-wholly acknowledged superior in talent. It is a pleasant spectacle, the grey meistersinger's eager glorying in the golden youth's simple, abundant, G.o.d-bestowed gift. The motif of his address to Walther has a touch of charming courtliness. "G.o.d keep your lords.h.i.+p! Did you find rest? You were up late--you did, however, finally sleep?"--"A little," Walther answers, "but soundly and well." There is something hushed and fixed in Walther's aspect, as if he listened to voices no one else could hear, gazed upon some vision invisible to others. He is still under the spell of a recent marvellous impression. "I have had--"

he tells Sachs, when the latter genially asks is he feeling, after his good sleep, in good form and of good courage, "I have had a wonderfully beautiful dream...."--"A good omen, that! Tell me your dream!"--"I hardly dare to touch it with my thought, so do I fear to see it fade away."--"My friend," the older poet with fine amenity takes up the part of teacher, and his observations have a ripe, sunny, elevated wisdom, for which one should store them carefully as one does good fruit, "that exactly is the task of a poet, to mark dreams and interpret them. Believe me, of all the illusions of man the most nearly approaching truth are those he comes into cognisance of through dreams. The whole art of poetry is but the interpretation of true-dreaming. What if this dream now should contain a hint how you may to-day be made a master?"--"No, no,"

Walther rejects the idea with distaste; "In the presence of the guild and its masters, scant inspiration would animate my dream-picture!"--"But yet, suppose your dream contained the magic spell by which you might win over the guild?" Walther shakes his head: "How do you cling to an illusion, if after such a rupture as you witnessed you still cherish such a hope!"--"Nay, my hope stands undiminished, nor has anything so far occurred to overthrow it; if that were not so, believe me, instead of preventing your flight, I would myself have taken flight with you! Pray you, therefore, let your resentment die! You are dealing with honourable men. They make mistakes and are fairly settled in the comfortable determination to be taken in their own way. Those who offer prizes desire after all that one shall please them. Your song scared them, and with reason, for, upon reflection, the like flaming poetry and pa.s.sion are adapted for the luring of daughters into mad adventures, but the sentiment leading to the blessed married state finds words and notes of a different sort!" Walther grins: "I know the sort--from hearing them last night; there was a good deal of noise out in the street." Sachs laughs too; "Yes! yes!... You heard likewise how I beat time. But let be all that, and follow my advice, good and short: summon up your energies for a master-song!"--"A beautiful song, and a master-song, how am I to seize the distinction between them?" asks the singer of the beautiful song which had been despised.

"My friend," Sachs explains, with a warmth as of tears and blood, "in the beautiful days of youth, when the bosom expands high and wide with the mighty transports of happy first love, many are they who can achieve a beautiful song: the Spring-time it is which sings for them! But let summer come, autumn and winter, the sorrows and cares of life,--no dearth of wedded joys along-side!--christenings, business, discord and difficulties, those who still after all that can compa.s.s the singing of a beautiful song, those, mark me, are ent.i.tled masters!" Aye, first, as a modern poet has said, warm natural drops of blood; later, the alchemist's laborious spheres of chemic gold. In youth, all-sufficient inspiration,--later, labour and rule, with meritorious concentration subst.i.tuting for impetus and fire the beauty of careful form, and making durable in this the evanescent dreams of youth. "Learn the master-rules in good season," Sachs adds, "that they may be faithful guides to you, helping you to preserve safely that which in the gracious years of youth spring-time and love with exquisite throes bred in your unconscious heart, that you may store and treasure it, and it may not be lost!"--"But who--" Walther asks, inclined to cavil where anything is concerned which relates to the master-singers, "Who created these rules which stand in such high honour?"--"They were sorely-needy masters," Sachs in his moved tones continues the charming lesson, "spirits heavily weighted with the weariness of life; in the wilderness of their distresses they created for themselves an image, that they might retain vivid and lasting the memory of young love, bearing the sign and stamp still, and breathing the fragrance, of Spring!"--"But," Walther objects, suspicious of that whole tribe of snuffy masters, for whom Sachs has the same charity of a broad understanding which he has shown in Walter's own case, "however can he for whom Spring is long past fix the essence of it in an image?"--"He recreates it as well as he can," Sachs sums with sudden curtness, recognising perhaps the futility of his attempt against this so lively dislike; and pa.s.ses on to the point more important at this moment, to his thinking. "I beg you, therefore, sorely-needy man that I am, if I am to teach you the rules, that you should renew in me the sense of that which originally gave them rise. See, here are ink, pen, and paper. I will be your scribe, do you dictate."--"Hardly should I know how to begin."--"Relate to me your morning dream."--"Nay, as a result of your teaching of rules, I feel as if it had faded quite away."--"The very point where the poet's art comes into requisition! Recall your beautiful dream of the morning, for the rest, let it be Hans Sachs's care!"

Walther takes a moment to collect himself. Sachs sits with quill poised over paper. Then Walther relates his dream, meeting Sachs's request for a master-song by casting it as he goes, with the light ease of genius, into verse and melody,--his second astonis.h.i.+ng improvisation, joyous as the first, but not agitated--reflective, as if he filled Sordello's account of himself: "_I' mi son un che quando Amore spira, noto, e quel che detta dentro vo significando._"

I am one who when Love breathes, do note, and that which he dictates within do go expressing. All things lovely seem to have congregated in this dream of his; it is no wonder that the lingering impression of it enveloped him with an atmosphere of Paradise, and that he feared almost to breathe lest it be dispelled. Just the words he has to use, without their relations, conjure up a flock of alluring images: Morning-s.h.i.+ne, roseate light, blossoms, perfume, air, joy,--unimaginable joy, a garden! The idea that a poet's song is as much a part of him as fruit is of the tree stands ill.u.s.trated by the fact that the song which falls on our ear as in its ensemble so fresh, is yet composed in great part of the Walther-motifs with which we have become familiar; his youth, his enthusiasm, his courage and his love, all go into the making of his song. As he said in answer to Kothner, what should be put into his song unless the essence of all he had known and lived?

Glimmering beneath the rosy light of dawn, the air being laden with the scent of flowers, a garden, he sings, full of never before imagined attractions, had invited him to enter it....

"That was a stanza." Sachs states, as Walther pauses. "Take careful heed now that the one following must be exactly like it."--"Why exactly alike?" the free-born asks, ready to chafe at the shadow of a restriction. Sachs, indulgent, makes play for this prodigious child's sake of the to him so grave business of song-making: "That one may see that you have selected a mate!"

In that blissful garden a magnificent tree had proffered to his desire a sumptuous harvest of golden fruit.... Such is the matter of the second stanza.

"You did not," Sachs critically considers, "close on the same tone.

Excruciating is that to the masters, but Hans Sachs learns from your doing it that in Spring-time it must perforce be so! Proceed now to the aftersong."--"What is that?" asks Walther. "Your success in finding a well-suited couple will appear now from their off-spring!"

In the garden, by an exquisite miracle, he had found suddenly standing at his side a woman, more sweetly and graciously beautiful than any he had ever beheld. Like a bride she had entwined her arms softly about him, and had guided him, with eyes and hand, toward the fruit of his desire, the fair fruit of the tree of life....

Joyfully stirred as he is by the beauty of dream and song, Sachs controls his emotion, to secure all he can from the young poet's momentary docility. "There's what I call an aftersong!" he exclaims cordially; "See, now, how rounded and fine is the whole first part.

With the melody you deal, to be sure, a bit freely. I do not say, however, that it is a fault. But it makes the thing more difficult to retain, and that incenses our old men. Let us have now a second part, that we may gain a clear idea of the first. I do not even know, so skilfully have you cast them into rhyme, what in your song was invention and what was dream...."

With heavenly glow of sunset-light, day had departed, as he lay there drinking joy from her eyes, desire the sole power in possession of his heart. Night had closed down, baffling the eyesight, when, through the branches, the rays of two bright stars had shed their light upon his face. The sound of a spring upon the quiet height had reached his ear, murmuring more musically than any spring heard theretofore; stars had appeared in mult.i.tude, dancing among the boughs overhead, until, instead of golden fruit, the laurel-tree had swarmed with a host of stars....

"Friend!" cries Sachs, striving against the full betrayal of his pleasure, lest it be an interrupting element, "your dream was an effectual guide! The second part is successful as the first. If now," he ventures, "you would compose a third, it might contain the interpretation of your dream...." But Walther jumps up from his chair, suddenly weary of the game. "Enough of words!" And Sachs, with sympathetic understanding of the incalculable ways of poets, refrains from pressing him. That overbubbling inspiration he believes can be counted upon. "Reserve then word and deed for the proper place.

And I pray you hold fast in memory, this melody, a charming one it is to fit with words. And, against the moment of singing it in a more extended circle, hold fast likewise to your dream!"--"What have you in mind?" Walther inquires. Sachs does not directly enlighten him, but: "Your faithful servant has, very seasonably, arrived with packs and porte-manteaux. The garments in which you intended to make yourself brave for wedding-ceremonials at home, he has brought here to the house. A little dove no doubt directed him to the nest where his master slept. Come with me therefore to your chamber. Fitting it is we both attire ourselves splendidly, when a splendid deed is to be dared!" Walther without question places his hand, as if it held his whole confidence, in Sachs's. They pa.s.s together out of the workshop.

The stage remains for a moment empty. The air retains as if echoes, or fragrances, of the personalities which have but just withdrawn; it is sweetened with effluvia of Walther's youth, of Sachs's greatness of heart. Suddenly, like a bar of bilious green across a s.h.i.+mmering mother-o'-pearl fabric, harmonies of a very different sort catch the attention, and Beckmesser's face is seen peering in at the window. Finding the workshop empty, he limps in. He is in holiday array, but there is little of holiday about him, save in his gaudily beribboned clothes. A long comedy-scene follows, in which Beckmesser says never a word, but his thoughts are heard and his actions are eloquent. His body is one ma.s.s of aches and pains, his soul the battleground of anger, shame, thirst for vengeance. The din of the evening before fills his ears; he is chased, as if by furies, by memories of the indignities put upon him. He is so sore he cannot sit; when he goes his joints hurt rackingly. His restless moving about the room while he waits for Sachs brings him to the master's writing-table: his eye falls on the sheet of music on which Sachs has taken down Walther's song; his attention is arrested; he reads it off mentally with ever-increasing agitation. No mistake possible, in his mind: Sachs, who had declared that he would not enter the song-contest for Pogner's daughter, has outrageously lied, and here is the proof of it, this song which he means to sing at the tournament. "Now," bursts forth Beckmesser, "everything becomes clear to me!" He jumps, hearing Sachs at the door, and stuffs the paper into his pocket. Sachs, in his handsome best-coat, meets him pleasantly. "You surely are not having any more trouble with the shoes?" Beckmesser's wrath holds in but a moment before voiding itself upon Sachs in accusation and threat. "Be sure, friend Sachs, I know you now!... That I may not stand in your way, you go so far even as to incite the mob to riot.... You have always been my enemy.... Now hear, whether I see through you. The maiden whom I have chosen, who was verily born for me, to the frustration of all widowers there be,--of her you are in pursuit! In order that Master Sachs might gain the goldsmith's rich inheritance it was that at the council of masters he stood upon minor clauses. For that reason, fool that I was! with bawling and hammering he tried to drown my song,--that the child might not be made aware of another's ability! Yes, yes! Have I hit the mark? And finally from his cobbler's shop he egged after me boys with cudgels, that he might be rid of me.... Ouch! Ouch! Green and blue was I beaten, made an object of derision to the beloved woman, so drubbed and maltreated that no tailor's flat-iron can smoothe me out! Upon my very life an attempt was made! But I came out of it with sufficient spirit left to reward you for the deed. Stand forth to-day and sing, do, and see how you prosper. Beaten and bruised as I am, I shall certainly manage to throw you out of time!" Sachs has unperturbedly let him spend himself. "My good friend, you are labouring under a delusion.

You are free to attribute to me what actions you please... but I have not the least thought of competing." "Lies and deceit!" roars Beckmesser, "I know better!" Sachs quietly repeats his statement.

"What else I have in mind is no affair of yours. But concerning the contest you are in error."--"Not in the contest? No compet.i.tion-song?"--"Certainly not." Beckmesser produces the piece of music. "Is that your hand?"--"Yes," Sachs owns, amused; "Was that it?"--"I suppose you call it a biblical lay?"--"Nay," laughs Sachs, "any one guessing it to be such would hit wide enough of the mark."--"Well, then?"--"What is it?"--"Do you ask me?"--"What do you mean?"--"That you are, in all can dour, a rogue of the first magnitude!" Sachs shrugs good-humouredly; "Maybe! I have never, however, pocketed what I found upon another's table. That one may not think evil of you, dear sir, keep the paper, I make you a gift of it." Beckmesser leaps in the air with incredulous joy: "Lord G.o.d! A poem of Sachs's!... But soft, that I may not be led into fresh troubles. You have, no doubt," he insinuates, "committed the thing perfectly to memory?"--"Have no uneasiness with regard to that."--"You bestow the sheet on me then outright?"--"To prevent you being a thief."--"And suppose I made use of it?"--"You may do as you please."--"I may sing it, then?"--"If it is not too difficult."--"And if I should please my audience?"--"I should be greatly astonished!"--Beckmesser misses the sly shoester's intention.

"You are too modest altogether," he says; and goes on to explain in what dire need he stands of a new composition, since the song sung the night before as a serenade can have no chance, if sung again to-day, of charming the Pognerin, for whom it must be a.s.sociated, thanks to the cobbler's merry jests, with every undignified circ.u.mstance. And how can he, poor belaboured wretch, find the necessary peace of mind to compose a new one? Yet, if he have not a new song, he must give up the hope of marriage. But a song of Sachs's would enable him to overcome every obstacle; if he may have it, let all the disagreements which have kept them apart be forgotten and buried. But,--he suddenly holds in, and puckers his forehead,--if this were a trap? "Even so late as yesterday," he says to Sachs, "you were my enemy. How is it that after all the troubles between us you are to-day kindly disposed toward me?"--"I worked on your shoes until late at night," Sachs disingenuously replies; "is that the sort of consideration one shows an enemy?"--"True, true.

But now give me your word. Whenever and under whatever circ.u.mstances you hear that song, you will never by any chance say that it is of your composing."--"I give you my word and oath," Sachs a.s.sents, with a spice of wicked glee, "that I will never boast of that song being mine."--Beckmesser's spirits rise to heights of mad exhilaration.

"What more do I want? I am saved! Beckmesser need trouble no further!"--"Friend," Sachs warns him, "in all kindness I advise you, study that song carefully. It is of no easy execution."--"Friend Sachs," Beckmesser waives the warning, "you are a good poet, but in all that relates to tones and tunes there is no one goes ahead of me. But now, quickly home, to learn the thing by heart. Hans Sachs, my dear fellow, I have misunderstood you. My judgment was thrown off the track by that adventurer. Just such a one was needed!

But we masters made short work of him! Good-bye! I must be off!

Elsewhere will I show my grat.i.tude for your sweet friendliness. I will vote for you hereafter, I will buy your works. I will make you Marker!" Effusively he embraces him: "Marker, Marker, Marker Hans Sachs!"

Hans Sachs looks after the departing figure with a meditative smile.

"So entirely ill-natured have I never yet found any one. He cannot fail to come to grief of some sort. Many there be who squander their wits, but they reserve enough to keep house with. The hour of weakness comes for each one of us, when he turns fool and is open to parley." So entirely ill-natured Beckmesser has been found that Sachs feels no compunction at letting him run into the pitfall gaping ahead. He is willing to win an advantage by a deception, let him follow his head, why should honest Sachs be tender of him?

The joke is not severe beyond his deserts. He has candidly rejoiced that short work was made of that adventurer, Von Stolzing; why should he not be permitted to encounter the same sort of treatment?

Why indeed should not his dishonesty be turned to use? "That Master Beckmesser here turned thief," reflects Sachs, "falls in excellently with my plan."

Eva appears in the doorway, Eva dazzling in her white wedding-dress.

"I was wondering," says Sachs to himself at sight of her, "where she could be!" For, as Walther was known to be in the house, it was thought she must before long find some pretext to stand beneath the same roof. She wears a little languid air; last evening was a sore trial to young nerves. A tinge of accusing plaintiveness is in her voice. She is markedly abstracted; her thoughts are wandering, of course, all about the house in search of _him_. She has her pretext ready, and meets Sachs's warm compliment upon her appearance with a reproachful: "Ah, master! So long as the tailor has done his work successfully, who ever will divine where I suffer inconvenience, where secretly my shoe pinches me?"--"The wicked shoe!" Sachs is for a moment really deceived; "It was your humour yesterday not to try it on."--"You see? I had too much confidence.

I was mistaken in the master."--"I am sorry, indeed I am!" He is on his knee at once: "Let me look at it, my child, that I may help you, right off, quick!"--"As soon as I stand on it, it obliges me to go; and as soon as I go, it obliges me to stand."--"Place your foot here on the stool, I will remedy the evil at once. Now, what is wrong with it?"--"You can see, it is too wide!"--"Child, that is pure vanity. The shoe is snug."--"That is what I said, and that is why it pinches my toes."--"Here, at the left?"--"No, the right."--"At the instep?"--"No, the heel."--"What?" he asks incredulously, "Something wrong too with the heel?"--"_Ach_, master,"

she exclaims, "do you know better than I where my shoe pinches me?"--"I can only wonder," he replies, good-humouredly, "that your shoe should be loose and yet pinch you everywhere!" The door of the inner room opens at this moment, and Walther stands upon the threshold in the rich gala costume of a young n.o.ble. Eva at sight of him in his splendour utters a cry, and remains spell-bound, gazing.

He stops short in the doorway, spell-bound equally at sight of her in her s.h.i.+mmering bride's-robe of white,--and from their eyes, fixed unwaveringly upon each other, their hearts travel forth on luminous beams to meet and mingle. Sachs's back is toward Walther; he has not see him, but the tell-tale light on Eva's face, reflection of a sun-burst, has reported to him of the apparition. He pretends not to see. "Aha! Here is the trouble!" he speaks, as if nothing were; "Now I see what the matter is! Child, you were right, the seams are stiff. Just wait and I will set the matter aright. Stay where you are, I will take the shoe and put it on the last for a minute. After that it will give you no further trouble." He draws the shoe tenderly from her childish foot, and leaves her standing, statue-still, lost in her trance of contemplation, with her foot on the stool, while he takes the shoe to his bench and pretends to work at it. He cannot forbear,--while he plays his little comedy, and those two angelically beautiful beings, saved and aided by him, between whom he shares his big heart, stand hushed, drinking, in oblivion of all, the heavenly nectar of each other's glances,--he cannot forbear teasing the little lady a bit, giving her a little lesson, taking a very mild vengeance on her for the faintly perfidious wiles of yesterday. So he runs on, while making himself busy with her shoe: "Forever to be cobbling! That is my fate. Night nor day, no deliverance for me! Child, listen! I have thought over what shall bring my shoe-making to an end. The best thing I can do will be after all to enter the contest for your hand. I might thus at least win something for myself as a poet!... You are not listening?

Yet it was yourself put the idea in my head.... Oh, very well! I see! Attend to your shoes! If at least," he slyly suggests, without turning, "some one would sing to me while I work! I heard to-day a regularly beautiful song. If just a third verse, equally successful, might be added to it!" Like the hypnotised receiving a suggestion, Walther, ready as a bird, breaks forth singing, his gaze never swerving from Eva: "Did the stars come to a pause in their charming dance? Light and clear, above the cl.u.s.tering locks of the most beautiful of all women, glittered with soft brilliancy a crown of stars..."

"Listen, child," Sachs bids Eva, in the short pause between the verses, "that is a master-song!"

"Miracle upon miracle! A double radiance of day now illumines me, for, even as two suns of purest delight, two divinely beautiful eyes bend their light upon me...."

"That," says Sachs, "is the sort of thing you hear sung in my house nowadays!"

"Oh, gracious vision which my heart found boldness to approach!

The wreath, which in the rays of the twin suns shows pale at once and green, tenderly and mildly she weaves about the consort's head.

Into the breast of the poet--born erst to joy, now elect to glory,--Paradisal joy she pours, in Love's dream!"

Sachs has been enabled to keep in hand his emotion at the sound of the ecstatic song by diligently busying himself with the shoe, uttering at intervals small insignificant remarks: "Let us see, now, whether I have got my shoe aright. I believe I have finally succeeded, eh? Try it, now!" He has slipped it on to her foot, "Walk on it! Tell me, does it still hurt?" But Eva, who has stood breathlessly gazing and listening to the thrilling accents, new to her, of her lover, when the heart-searching voice is silent and the tension relaxes, bursts into pa.s.sionate weeping, sinks on Sachs's breast and clings to him, sobbing. Walther with a quick stride is beside them; impulsively he grasps the hand of the good Sachs, to whom he dimly feels he owes so much,--to whom he owes really more than he dreams.

For a moment not one of them can speak. Then it becomes too much for Sachs, this soft beloved form trembling against his breast; he gently frees himself and allows the burden he relinquishes to slide upon the shoulder of Walther. Like a n.o.ble dog shaking his fur, he takes himself away and finds occupation at the further end of the room, trying by his commonplace playful talk to dispel the oppression of a too great emotion. Again he must, all for her good, tease Evchen a bit. "Has not a shoe-maker his fill of troubles?" he grumbles; "Were I not at the same time a poet, not another shoe would I make. So much hard work, such a perpetual calling upon you! This one's shoe is too loose, that one's too tight, here it claps, it hangs at the heel, there it presses, it pinches. The shoe-maker must know everything, mend everything that is torn, and if he be in addition a poet, then verily he is not allowed a moment's peace. But if, on top of all, he be a widower, then he is in all truth regarded as a very fool! The youngest of maidens, if a husband is wanted, request him to apply for them; let him understand them or let him not, it is all the same; let him say yes, let him say no, in the end he is told that he smells of pitch, and is called stupid, cantankerous, and impertinent! I wouldn't care so much," he concludes humourously, "but for my apprentice.

He is losing all respect for me!..."

The conscience-smitten girl flings her arms around him again: "Oh, Sachs, my friend, oh, n.o.ble heart, how can I ever repay you? Without your love, what were I? What were I, without you? I should have remained a child forever, had you not awakened me. Through you I won the things one prizes, through you I learned what a soul is.

Through you I awoke, through you alone I learned to think n.o.bly, freely, courageously. You guided my growth, and brought me to flowering.

Oh, dear master, scold me, well you may!... But yet I was on the right track. For, had I any choice, you, no other, should be my husband. I would hold out the prize to you alone. As it is, I myself have been chosen--to never-before-dreamed-of torment! And if this day I am wedded, it will be without choice of my own. Coercion I have suffered, have suffered violence. You know, master, that the force of it frightened even you!"--"My child," he replies, mildly, collectedly--if feelingly and a little sadly, to her impulsive confession, while a known, poignant strain, like a profound sigh, holds the ear for a moment, an echo from a different opera, "of Tristan and Isolde I know the sorrowful story. Hans Sachs was shrewd and would have none of King Mark's happiness!" With a return to the lightness which is his policy of the moment, he adds, lest emotion too far unnerve them all: "Full time it was that the right one should appear, or I should after all have run into the snare!... Aha!

There comes Lene looking for you. Hey, David, aren't you coming?"

Nurse and apprentice enter, one from outside and one from within, in their holiday garments.

"The witnesses are here, the sponsors present, now quickly to the christening! Take your places!" Sachs directs. All look at him in wonder. He lays before them his idea of giving, with proper ceremony, a name to the master-song born in his house. It is a poet's fancy, an act of tender superst.i.tion on Sachs's part, a form by which he tries to lay a helpful charm or blessing upon the new-born creation on which so much depends; send it forth equipped as well as possible with spiritual arms, that it may, as he says, "grow great without harm or mishap." The young melody's father, of course, is Walther; the Pognerin and he, Sachs, will stand its sponsors; Lene and David shall be witnesses. But as an apprentice is not a proper witness, David is promoted with the rite of a smart box on the ear from apprentice to journeyman. Sachs suggests as the name of the new-born: Song of Interpretation of the Blissful Morning-Dream, and the young G.o.dmother is requested to speak appropriate words over it. The point of what follows is hardly in Eva's words, pretty as they are; the point is that one of the most extraordinary quintets that ever charmed human ear serves as baptismal send-off to the infant melody.