The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas [most recommended books .TXT] 📗

you done with it? It is already rather late to plant it.”

“The bulb? It has been in the ground for these six days.”

“Where? and how?” cried Cornelius. “Good Heaven, what imprudence! What is it? In what sort of soil is it? In what aspect? Good or bad? Is there no risk of having it filched by that detestable Jacob?”

“There is no danger of its being stolen,” said Rosa, “unless Jacob will force the door of my chamber.”

“Oh! then it is with you in your bedroom?” said Cornelius, somewhat relieved. “But in what soil? in what vessel? You don’t let it grow, I hope, in water like those good ladies of Haarlem and Dort, who imagine that water could replace the earth?”

“You may make yourself comfortable on that score,” said Rosa, smiling; “your bulb is not growing in water.”

“I breathe again.”

“It is in a good, sound stone pot, just about the size of the jug in which you had planted yours. The soil is composed of three parts of common mould, taken from the best spot of the garden, and one of the sweepings of the road. I have heard you and that detestable Jacob, as you call him, so often talk about what is the soil best fitted for growing tulips, that I know it as well as the first gardener of Haarlem.”

“And now what is the aspect, Rosa?”

“At present it has the sun all day long,—that is to say when the sun shines. But when it once peeps out of the ground, I shall do as you have done here, dear Mynheer Cornelius: I shall put it out of my window on the eastern side from eight in the morning until eleven and in my window towards the west from three to five in the afternoon.”

“That’s it! that’s it!” cried Cornelius; “and you are a perfect gardener, my pretty Rosa. But I am afraid the nursing of my tulip will take up all your time.”

“Yes, it will,” said Rosa; “but never mind. Your tulip is my daughter. I shall devote to it the same time as I should to a child of mine, if I were a mother. Only by becoming its mother,” Rosa added, smilingly, “can I cease to be its rival.”

“My kind and pretty Rosa!” muttered Cornelius casting on her a glance in which there was much more of the lover than of the gardener, and which afforded Rosa some consolation.

Then, after a silence of some moments, during which Cornelius had grasped through the openings of the grating for the receding hand of Rosa, he said,—

“Do you mean to say that the bulb has now been in the ground for six days?”

“Yes, six days, Mynheer Cornelius,” she answered.

“And it does not yet show leaf?”

“No, but I think it will to-morrow.”

“Well, then, to-morrow you will bring me news about it, and about yourself, won’t you, Rosa? I care very much for the daughter, as you called it just now, but I care even much more for the mother.”

“To-morrow?” said Rosa, looking at Cornelius askance. “I don’t know whether I shall be able to come to-morrow.”

“Good heavens!” said Cornelius, “why can’t you come to-morrow?”

“Mynheer Cornelius, I have lots of things to do.”

“And I have only one,” muttered Cornelius.

“Yes,” said Rosa, “to love your tulip.”

“To love you, Rosa.”

Rosa shook her head, after which followed a pause.

“Well,”—Cornelius at last broke the silence,—“well, Rosa, everything changes in the realm of nature; the flowers of spring are succeeded by other flowers; and the bees, which so tenderly caressed the violets and the wall-flowers, will flutter with just as much love about the honey-suckles, the rose, the jessamine, and the carnation.”

“What does all this mean?” asked Rosa.

“You have abandoned me, Miss Rosa, to seek your pleasure elsewhere. You have done well, and I will not complain. What claim have I to your fidelity?”

“My fidelity!” Rosa exclaimed, with her eyes full of tears, and without caring any longer to hide from Cornelius this dew of pearls dropping on her cheeks, “my fidelity! have I not been faithful to you?”

“Do you call it faithful to desert me, and to leave me here to die?”

“But, Mynheer Cornelius,” said Rosa, “am I not doing everything for you that could give you pleasure? have I not devoted myself to your tulip?”

“You are bitter, Rosa, you reproach me with the only unalloyed pleasure which I have had in this world.”

“I reproach you with nothing, Mynheer Cornelius, except, perhaps, with the intense grief which I felt when people came to tell me at the Buytenhof that you were about to be put to death.”

“You are displeased, Rosa, my sweet girl, with my loving flowers.”

“I am not displeased with your loving them, Mynheer Cornelius, only it makes me sad to think that you love them better than you do me.”

“Oh, my dear, dear Rosa! look how my hands tremble; look at my pale cheek, hear how my heart beats. It is for you, my love, not for the black tulip. Destroy the bulb, destroy the germ of that flower, extinguish the gentle light of that innocent and delightful dream, to which I have accustomed myself; but love me, Rosa, love me; for I feel deeply that I love but you.”

“Yes, after the black tulip,” sighed Rosa, who at last no longer coyly withdrew her warm hands from the grating, as Cornelius most affectionately kissed them.

“Above and before everything in this world, Rosa.”

“May I believe you?”

“As you believe in your own existence.”

“Well, then, be it so; but loving me does not bind you too much.”

“Unfortunately, it does not bind me more than I am bound; but it binds you, Rosa, you.”

“To what?”

“First of all, not to marry.”

She smiled.

“That’s your way,” she said; “you are tyrants all of you. You worship a certain beauty, you think of nothing but her. Then you are condemned to death, and whilst walking to the scaffold, you devote to her your last sigh; and now you expect poor me to sacrifice to you all my dreams and my happiness.”

“But who is the beauty you are talking of, Rosa?” said Cornelius, trying in vain to remember a woman to whom Rosa might possibly be alluding.