The Entire Short Works of George Meredith | Page 4

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