Rautschin, still Rautschin!--the tiny town lying at the feet of the huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty years--but no longer in pouring rain with thunder and lightning, but Rautschin beneath skies of sapphire blue, upon a hot July afternoon.
The sun was still high in the heavens. The crooked little row of houses on one side of the Market Square, cast short, black shadows, the national red kerchiefs, with broad borders of gay flowers hanging at the door of the principal shop, fluttered gently in the summer breeze. A melancholy hubbub of discords, struggling in vain for a solution, was heard through the open window of one of the newest and ugliest houses. Eugéne Alexander Cibulka, and the wife of the district commissioner, were playing Wagner's 'Walküre,' arranged for four hands, and each had again 'lost the place.' They regularly lose the place every time a leaf is turned, and so the one who gets first to the bottom of the page, very kindly waits for the other.
Rautschin Castle stands proudly superior to every structure about it, ensconced behind all kinds of farm-buildings and additions, at the extreme end of the Market Square, to which it turns its shoulder, as it were. Except for its imposing dimensions, it is in no wise remarkable.
Standing at the entrance of a very extensive park, it dates from the time of Maria Theresa, when the present clumsy edifice, its prim façade defaced by grass-green shutters, was built upon the remains of a feudal fortress. The court-yard is not perfectly square, and the arches of the arcade rest upon granite pillars. Its interior is quite in accordance with its exterior; it is anything but splendid, and has an air of empty, dignified distinction.
Before the western side of the Castle, Count Truyn with his young wife was sitting beneath the shade of a red and gray striped marquee; behind them in a garden-room, the glass doors of which were wide open, Oswald, standing on a step-ladder, was busy hanging on the wall a piece of gold-embroidered Oriental stuff, and Gabrielle was handing him the nails.
"Well Zini, are you beginning to like our home?" said Truyn, propping his elbows upon the white garden table, between himself and his wife. He looked so contented, so proud of his possessions, so triumphant, that Zinka could not refrain from teasing him a little.
"Taken all in all, yes," she said indifferently, "but then taken all in all, I should like Siberia, with you and Ella."
"Zinka! I must confess,"--Truyn's face assumed a disturbed and almost offended expression, "I must say that I cannot understand how any one can compare Rautschin to a place of exile!"
"I did not mean to do so, rest assured," Zinka said, "I think your Rautschin very delightful, I should only like to alter a few details."
"I cannot abide improvements," growled Truyn, "it is only the Caprianis and Company, who must always be beautifying everything old--that is destroying it. I think an old place should be left as it is, with all its characteristic defects--to try to improve them, seems to me like trying to correct the drawing of a Giotto or a Cimabue."
"I can understand a respect for the old mis-drawings," Zinka rejoined quietly, "but does one owe the same respect to modern retouching, to the vandalism that has made clumsy additions to an old picture?"
"Hm!" Truyn gazed thoughtfully around him--"no, in fact. It is remarkable that you are always right, you little witch. Now be frank Zini; what exactly would you like to have different? So far as my veneration and my finances permit, you shall have your will."
Zinka pointed to the lawn that lay before them, terribly disfigured by bright red and yellow arabesques. "I think that confectioner's ornamentation there almost as ugly as the carpet-gardening at the Villa Albani," she said, "don't you?"
Truyn ran his hands through his hair, "Well, yes,"--he meekly admitted after a pause, "but I cannot possibly alter that. Old Kraus, to surprise me, has taken infinite pains to portray our crest on the lawn--I had to praise him for his brilliant idea, however hideous I thought the thing, don't you see, Zini?"
"That alters the case entirely," Zinka admitted. "I would not hurt faithful old Kraus for the world. But"--she pointed to the basin of a fountain, the shape of which was particularly ugly--"old Kraus could not have designed that basin--that might be cleared away!"
Truyn looked thoroughly discomfited. "The basin is a horror," he confessed, "but I cannot help saying a good word for it. It is endeared to me by youthful associations--if only because when I was a boy of twelve, I was very nearly drowned in it."
"Oh then indeed ...." Zinka shrugged her shoulders, with a humourous air of resignation. "I now hardly dare to object to the green shutters," she went on, "for if, as in view of their colour is highly probable, they gave you opthalmia, some thirty years ago--it would ...."
"No, no, no, I give up the shutters," exclaimed Truyn laughing, "let them go. And now I have something to tell you that you will not relish--no need to change colour, the matter is an inconvenience, not a trial. While I have been away--for the last ten years in fact--the park has been open to the public. The little town has no other public garden. I have, indeed, in view of this, placed an extensive tract of land at the disposal of the town Council, but it is not yet laid out, and until it is, I should not like entirely to deprive the public of the freedom of the Park. Therefore I should like to have you point out as soon as possible what part you would prefer to have reserved entirely for yourself, that it may be portioned off. Indeed I cannot help it, Zini."
"You will be as condescending at last as a crowned head," Zinka said laughing. "You have already relinquished a corner of the park, because the new road, laid out for the convenience of the public, must run directly beneath your windows--and ..."
"I know--I know," Truyn interrupted her impatiently, "but one owes something to the people. Of course you think 'my husband is a perfect simpleton, he'll put up with anything'--but ...."
"Have you really no better idea of what I think of my husband, than that?" Zinka asked in a low tone, looking at him with tender raillery in her eyes.
"Oh you sweet-natured little woman!" he said, attempting to chuck her under the chin.
"What are you about?" she exclaimed, thrusting his hand away, "this wall here on the street is so low, that every little ragamuffin can see us. And let me tell you that this wall has seemed more odious than anything else to-day. Between ourselves--move your chair a little nearer, Erich--I have been all this while tormented by a desire to throw myself into your arms--you dear, good, whimsical fellow--but the wall!"
"Confound the wall!" Truyn exclaimed, angrily clinching his fist.
"Tell me," Zinka asked caressingly, "is the lowness of the wall also a question of humanity? Do you find it impossible to deny the townsfolk the satisfaction of conveniently observing the castle-folk?"
"Pshaw! I was vexed about the height of the wall ten years ago--that is when the road was laid out, but--well, I cannot myself say why it is--but unless we have a rage for building, nothing is done. We complain for ten years about the same evil, and ..."
"And to part with an evil about which one has complained for ten long years," interrupted Zinka laughing, "would be almost as distressing as to clear away the basin of a fountain, in which one had been nearly drowned, thirty years before, eh, Erich?"
The broad July sunshine lay upon the red and yellow splendour of the Truyn escutcheon, shimmered brilliantly about the foremost of the mighty trees, whose dark foliage contrasted with the emerald of the lawn where they stood, beyond the open, flower-decked portion of the park, and penetrated boldly into their thick shades, limning fanciful arabesques of light upon the darker green.
From the garden-room floated Gabrielle's sweet, childlike voice, "Io so una giardiniera," she sang. Oswald had finished his upholstering, and was bending over the piano. He combined a sincere enjoyment of music with a deplorable preference for sentimental popular ballads.
The creaking of wheels intruded upon the dreamy monotony of the hour. Truyn leaned forward and started to his feet. "Ah, old Swoboda, the doctor who attended Ella with the measles," he exclaimed joyfully, recognising Dr. Swoboda, in his comical little vehicle drawn by a white horse spotted with brown. "Is he still alive? I must call him in. Holla! Doctor, how are you?"
The doctor started, looked round, and took off his hat with a smile of delight, "your servant, Count Truyn."
"Come in and have a chat," said Truyn, "it was hardly fair not to have been to see us before."
"But, my dear Count, how could I suppose ..."
A few minutes later, the old doctor was seated opposite to Truyn, underneath the marquee, imparting to the Count exact information as to the weal and woe of a multitude of people belonging to the town, and to the country round, whom the proprietor of Rautschin remembered with wonderful distinctness.
Some had died, one or two were insane--a couple were bankrupt.
"Infernal swindling speculations! is my dear old Rautschin beginning to be carried away by them?" said Truyn, "certain epidemics cannot be arrested. Sad--very sad! And now thephylloxerahas taken up its abode in Schneeburg."
"Is there much illness about here?" Zinka asked the doctor, in hopes perhaps of staving off a conservative outburst from her husband.
"None of any consequence. My business is at a low ebb, your Excellency."
"Where have you just been, doctor?" Truyn asked.
"I have just come from Schneeburg."
"Ah? anything seriously amiss in the Capriani household?--I could not shed a tear for King Midas."
"The Herr Count cannot suppose that those magnificoes would call in a poor country doctor, like myself."
"My dear Swoboda, we all have the greatest confidence in you!" Truyn said kindly.
"I thank you heartily, Herr Count, but this confidence is an old custom, and the Caprianis consider old customs as mere prejudices, and propose to do away with them. I have just come from our poor Count Fritz."
"Indeed? are the children ill?"
"No, not ill, but ailing; there is something or other the matter with them all the time--they are city children;--however, I am not really anxious about them, they'll come all right. But I am sick at heart for poor Count Fritz, he is far from well."
"Ah, indeed? what is the matter with him?" Truyn asked in a tone of evident irritation.
"His unfortunate circumstances are killing him," the doctor replied gloomily.
"Ah--hm,--I must confess to you--er--my dear doctor, that--er--I take it very ill of Fritz, that he, er--accepted a position,--er--with--that,--er--adventurer."
The old doctor looked the irritated gentleman full in the eyes. "When one is homesick and sees his children, who cannot bear the city air, hungering for bread, one will do many things, which could not be contemplated for an instant, under even slightly improved circumstances."
"Ossi always told you ...." began Zinka.
"Oh pshaw! Ossi is an enthusiast, whose heart is always drowning out his head."
The old doctor sighed. "Well, I will intrude no longer," he said. He had often enough seen his noble patients yawn, as the door was closing upon him after a prolonged visit.
"Not at all,--not at all--wait a moment; I must call the children; Gabrielle! Ossi!"
The young people appeared from the garden-room.
"Ah--it is the friend who saved my life," Gabrielle exclaimed, cordially extending her hand.
Oswald too greeted him kindly, but suddenly he, as well as the old physician became slightly embarrassed--each remembered the unpleasant scene in the inn.--The conversation did not flow very freely.
"Now, I really must go," the doctor insisted in some confusion.
"Come soon again," said Truyn, shaking hands with him, "give my remembrance to Fritz, and--er--tell him to come and see me soon." He walked towards the court-yard with the old man, and when he returned he observed that Oswald, as he was silently rolling up a cigarette, was frowning furiously, evidently angry.
"Where does the shoe pinch, Ossi?" he asked.
"I cannot understand, uncle, how you can be so hard upon Fritz!" exclaimed Oswald throwing away his cigarette. "You are wont to be the softest-hearted of men, but to that poor devil ...."
"Don't excite yourself so terribly," Truyn said kindly, but in some surprise at the young man's violence. How could he divine the disturbance of mind that was at the root of his indignation? "You are so irritable ...."
"I am perfectly calm," Oswald boldly asserted, "only .... how could you send messages to Fritz by the doctor, and ask him to come to you? Have you no idea of his miserably sore state of mind?--and physically too he is so wretched that he cannot last six months longer; I have begged you to go and see him."
"Papa! If Ossi begs you!" Gabrielle whispered, looking up at her father with the large pleading eyes of a child.
"Ah, you can't understand how any one can possibly refuse Ossi anything," Truyn said, smiling in the midst of his annoyance.
She blushed and cast down her eyes.
"What can you find to like in this fellow, Ella?" her father rallied her. "A man ready to take fire, and clinch his fist upon the smallest provocation. What would you say if I should put my veto upon this foolish betrothal with a young savage who is only half-responsible?"
Gabrielle's blush grew deeper, she looked alternately at her father and at her lover, and finally deciding in favour of the latter gently laid her hand upon his arm.
"You see, uncle!.... completely routed," exclaimed Oswald, his anger entirely dispelled by this little intermezzo. His voice rang with exultant happiness as he added, "nothing can part us now, Ella--not even a father's veto!"
And Ella clung silently to his arm and looked blissfully content.
"Poor little comrade!" said Truyn tenderly. Mingled with his emotion there was something of the pity which men of ripe years and experience always feel at the sight of the perfect happiness of young lovers.
"Poor little comrade!--well, to win back some share of your favour I will e'en put a good face upon it and comply with the wishes of your tyrant."
"How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!" thought Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood between the park at Schneeburg and the vegetable garden, and had been appropriated to the son of the late owner of the soil. A slatternly woman with a loose linen wrapper hanging about her stout figure had come towards him, and after an affirmative reply to his inquiry if the Count were at home, screamed shrilly: "Malzin! Some one to see you!" and vanished in the interior of the house.
An unpleasant suspicion assailed Truyn. "Can that be...." The next moment all else was forgotten in distress at the changed appearance of a fair, pale young man who rushed up to him exclaiming: "Erich!--you here!"
"Fritz, Fritz!" said Truyn in a broken voice, fairly clasping his unfortunate cousin in his arms.
Of all mortals he who has voluntarily resigned the position in which he was born is the most embarrassing to deal with. He has by degrees broken with his fellows, and, almost like an outcast, seems scarcely to know how to comport himself when accident throws him among his former associates; when he meets one of 'his people' he usually alternates between intrusive familiarity and embittered reserve.
There was nothing of all this, however, about Fritz. He was so simple and cordial, that Truyn felt ashamed of having avoided a meeting.
Fair, with delicate, slightly pinched features, and large melancholy gray eyes, exquisitely neat and exact in his apparel, he looked from head to foot like a cavalry officer in citizen's dress, and in poor circumstances, that is like a man who knew how to invest with a certain distinction even the shabbiness to which fate condemned him.
"You cannot imagine what pleasure your visit gives me! When I see one of you it really seems almost as if one of my dear ones had descended from heaven to press my hand," he said with emotion and Truyn replied:
"I should have come before, but I expected certainly that you .... that ...."
"That I ...." Fritz smiled significantly, "no, Erich, you could hardly ...."
"Well, well, and how are you? How are you?" said Truyn quickly.
"I still live," Fritz replied, and looked away.
Just then a voice was heard outside inquiring for "Count Malzin."
"I am not at home, Lotti, do you hear, not at home to any body," Malzin called into the next room. "Come, Erich!" and he conducted his guest out of what answered as a drawing-room into a very shabbily-furnished apartment which he called his 'den,' and where Truyn at once felt quite at home.
"That was young Capriani," Fritz explained hurriedly, "he probably came to talk with me about the burial vault. Perhaps you know that my late father had the vault reserved for us in the contract for the sale of Schneeburg. Capriani, whom usually nothing escapes, oddly enough overlooked the fact that the vault is in the park, and now he wants me to sell it to him. Let him try it--the vault he shall not have--it is the last spot of home that is left to me. I choose at least to lie in the grave with my people! But let us talk of something pleasanter. You are all well, are you not?--but there is no need to ask, I can see it by looking at you. And I know all about your domestic affairs from Ossi."
"He comes to see you often?"
"Yes," said Fritz, "and every time with a fresh scheme for my complete relief from all difficulties, which he always unfolds with the same fervid enthusiasm. The schemes are impracticable, but never mind! Existence always seems more tolerable to me while I am talking with him, and when he has gone, it is as if a soft spring shower had just passed over, purifying and freshening the air. There really is something very remarkable about the fellow. With all his fiery energy, he is so unutterably tender; ordinarily when a man situated as I am comes in contact with such a favorite of fortune, he inevitably feels annoyed--it is like a glare of light for weak eyes. But there is nothing of the kind with him--he warms without dazzling,--he understands how to stoop to misery, without condescending to it."
"Yes, yes, he has his good qualities," Truyn grumbled, "very good qualities. But he has stolen from me my little comrade's heart, and I cannot say I am greatly pleased."
"You do not expect me to pity you on the score of your future son-in-law?" said Fritz, laughing.
"Not exactly--if I must have one, then ...."
"Then thank God that just these young people have come together," Fritz said in that tone of admonition, which even young men, when forsaken of fortune, sometimes adopt towards their happier seniors. "Do you know what he has done for me--among other things--just a trifle?"
"How should I? He certainly would never tell me."
"Of course not! We had not seen each other for years, but he came to see me as soon as he knew that I was at Schneeburg, and asked me if he could do anything for me. I thought it kind, but did not take his words seriously and so thanked him and assured him he could do nothing. He came again, bringing presents for the children with kind messages from his mother, and asked me to dinner. When we retired to the smoking-room after that dinner he said to me with the embarrassed manner of a generous man, about to confer a benefit: 'Fritz, tell me frankly; does no old debt annoy you?' Of course, at first I did not want to confess, but at last I admitted that a couple of unliquidated accounts did trouble me. An unstained name is a luxury that is the hardest of all to forego. He arranged everything, and now I am perfectly free from debt. He has such a charming way of giving, as if it were the merest pastime. I once asked him how a man as happy as he, found so much time to think for others? He answered that happiness was like a rose-bush, the more blossoms one gives away, the more it flourishes!"
"Yes, yes, he certainly is a fine fellow.--We quarrel sometimes, but he is a very fine fellow!" said Truyn, "he suits the child--you must know her. And what about your children? Ossi says they are very pretty--you have three, have you not?"
"No, only two," Fritz replied, and his voice trembled as he took a little photograph from the wall--"only two; my eldest died. Look at him--" handing the picture to Truyn, "he was a pretty child, was he not?--my poor little Siegi--but too lovely, too good for the life that had fallen to his lot. He is better dead--better!" he uttered in the hard tone in which the reason asserts what the heart denies.
From the park the vague, dreamy fragrance of the fading white rocket was wafted into the room. The light flickered dimly through the leafy screen of the apricot tree before the open window that looked out upon the vegetable garden. On Fritz's writing-table the old Empire clock, wheezing in its struggle for breath, struck five times. Truyn knew the old timepiece well, but formerly it used to swing its pendulum as merrily on into eternity as if it expected a fresh delight every hour. It seemed as if by this time it had almost lost its voice from grief, so asthmatic was the sob with which it counted the seconds. And not only with the clock, with everything around him Truyn was familiar. The entire shabby apartment betrayed a fanatical worship of the past. The chairs were the same monstrosities with lyre-shaped backs and crooked legs, which had been wont to endure the angry kicks of the little Malzins, when their tutor kept them too long at their lessons. Even the pattern of the wall-paper, with its apocryphal birds and butterflies among impossible wreaths of flowers, was the same which a travelling house-painter had pasted up there thirty years before.
But what most struck Truyn, was the decoration on one of the low doors in the thick wall--it was marked all over with lines in pencil and scribbled names. Upon that door the young Malzins used to record their growth from year to year.
"Pipsi, 14," he read, "and something over," "Erich,"--he smiled involuntarily, and read on,--"Oscar 12," and then far below in uncertain characters looking as if an elder sister had guided the hand of a very little child, "Fritzl."
And through Truyn's memory there sounded the crumpling of copy-book leaves--of childrens' voices, of Cramer's Exercises, and of sleepily recited Latin verbs. Yes, even the peculiar fragrance of lavender and fresh linen, formerly exhaled from the light chintz gown of his pretty cousin, came wafting to him over the past.
"This is your old school-room!" he exclaimed.
"Of course it is," said Fritz, "can you guess whom I have to thank for keeping it intact?"
"The avarice of your principal?"
"No, the delicacy of his wife. Before I moved in here she said to me, 'my husband wished to have the house put in order for you, Herr Count, but I thought that perhaps you liked old associations, and I therefore beg you to make only what changes you think best.'"
"A good woman!" Truyn murmured.
Just then an extraordinary figure entered the room,--the same female that Truyn had encountered in the hall, but splendidly transformed, tightly laced, with cheeks covered thick with pink powder--Fritz Malzin's wife!
"Very good of you," she began after Fritz had presented Truyn to her. Her voice had the forced sweetness of stage training. "Very good to honour our humble dwelling with a visit. May I take the liberty of offering you a cup of coffee, that is, Herr Count," as Truyn evidently hesitated, "if you can put up with our simple fare; in the country, you know, when one is not prepared ...."
Fritz pulled his moustache nervously.
Although he had reached the age of gastronomic fastidiousness, and especially abhorred spoiling the appetite between meals, Truyn good-naturedly accepted this pretentiously humble invitation.
The dining-room, a long narrow apartment with three windows, smelled of fresh varnish and fly-poison; the walls were decorated with dusty laurel wreaths wound about with ribbons covered with gilt inscriptions, and with several photographs of the hostess in tights. The long table was loaded with viands. Malzin's children, a girl and a boy, respectively five and three years old, shared the meal. They were pale, and sickly, but extremely pretty with a wonderfully sympathetic expression about the mouth and eyes, reminding one of their father. It was easy to see from the shy gentleness of their demeanour that Fritz had taken great pains with their training. He exchanged little tender jests with his small daughter, but he evidently made a special pet of the boy who sat beside him in a high chair, and to whose wants he himself ministered.
There was nothing about Fritz of the amusing awkwardness of aristocratic fathers, who now and then in an amiable dilettante fashion interest themselves in the care of their offspring. On the contrary it was easy to see from the way in which he set the child straight at the table, tied on the bib, and put the mug of milk into the little hand, that the care of the child was a real occupation of his life.
Truyn sat beside his hostess murmuring threadbare compliments, touching his lips to his coffee-cup, and crumbling a piece of biscuit on his plate.
"You do our fare but little honour," the actress said more than once, "try a piece of this cake, Herr Count. Count Capriani who has a French cook, and is accustomed to the very best, always commends it."
Fritz blushed. "Try this cherry cake," he said hastily. "Lotti makes it herself. She used always to feast me upon it when we were betrothed--eh, Lotti?"
This cheery reference to her housewifely skill, offended the actress, and before Truyn could make some courteous rejoinder she exclaimed, flushed with anger, "You know, Herr Count, that where the means are so limited the mistress of the house must lend a hand."
Truyn stammered something and Fritz smiled patiently as he stroked his little son's fair curls.
It was a painfully uncomfortable hour.
Truyn looked from the photographs to the glass fly-traps beneath which innumerable flies were lying on their backs, convulsively twitching out their lives, and his glance finally rested upon his hostess. She was strongly perfumed with musk, and was painted around the eyes. Her stout arms were squeezed into sleeves far too tight, and her bust almost met her chin. After this keen scrutiny, however, Truyn discovered that she was certainly handsome, that her face although disfigured by too full lips, was strikingly like that of the capitoline Venus.
The intrusive humility of her manner, seasoned as it was with vulgar raillery, was insufferable.
"For this woman!" he repeated to himself again and again. "For this woman!" His eye fell upon a photograph portraying the Countess as 'la belle Héléne,' in a costume that displayed her magnificent physique to great advantage, and he suddenly remembered that he had seen her in that rôle; that her acting was bad; but that she produced a dazzling impression on the stage.
"Did you recognize that picture, Herr Count?" she asked suddenly.
"Instantly," he assured her.
"Did you ever see me play?"
"I once had that pleasure."
"Ah!" A remarkable transformation was immediately manifest, her languid air grew animated, thirst for the triumphs of the past glittered in her eyes. She moved her chair a little closer to Truyn and coquettishly leaning her head upon her hand whispered, "Were you one of my adorers?"
Fritz frowned and glanced angrily towards her, twisting his napkin nervously.
His attention was suddenly distracted however, by the noise of the blows of an axe resounding slowly and monotonously through the heavy summer air. Fritz changed colour, sprang up and hurried to the window.
"What is the matter?" the actress asked him negligently.
"They are cutting down the old beech," he said slowly, turning not to her, but to Truyn.--"The Friedrichs-beech; planted by one of our ancestors, Joachim Malzin, with his own hands after the liberation of Vienna; we children all cut our names upon it. Don't you remember how Madame Lenoir scolded us for it, and declared that it was notcomme il faut, but a pastime befitting prentice boys only? Good Heavens--how long ago that is!--and now they are cutting it down. Capriani insists that it interferes with his view."
"If one could only help him!--but there is nothing to be done--absolutely nothing!"
Thus Truyn reflected, as distressed and compassionate, he rode home on his sleek cob, followed by his trim English groom.
There are many varieties of compassion not at all painful, which, when well-seasoned with a charming consciousness of virtue, may serve sensitive souls as a tolerable amusement. There is, for example, an artistically contemplative compassion that, with hands thrust comfortably in pockets, looks on at some melancholy affair as at the fifth act of a tragedy, without experiencing the faintest call to recognize its existence except by heaving sundry sentimental sighs. Then there is a self-contemplative compassion which, quite as inactive as the artistically contemplative, culminates in the satisfactory consciousness of the comparative comfort of one's own condition; then a decorative compassion, which is displayed merely as a mental adornment upon solemn occasions when the man marches forth clad in full-dress moral uniform.
But there is one compassion which is among the most painful sensations that can assail a delicate-minded human being--a compassion, always united to the most earnest desire to aid, to console, and yet which knows itself powerless in presence of the suffering; that longs for nothing in the world more ardently than to aid that which it cannot aid! And this it was that oppressed Truyn, as he rode home from Schneeburg,--this vain compassion lying like a cold, hard stone upon his warm, kind heart!
"If one could only help him, could but make life at least tolerable for him,--poor Fritz, poor fellow!" he muttered again and again.
The tall poplars, standing like a long row of gigantic exclamation points on the side of the road, cast strips of dark shade upon the light, dusty soil. The crickets were chirping in the hedges; in the wheat-fields to the right and left the ears nodded gently and gravely; red poppies and blue cornflowers--useless, picturesque gipsy-folk, amidst the ripening harvest--laughed at their feet. The clover-fields had passed their prime,--they were brown and a faint odour of faded flowers floated aloft from them. The transparent veil of early twilight obscured the light and dimmed the shadows.
How thoroughly Truyn knew the road! The inmates of Schneeburg and Rautschin had formerly been good neighbours.
A throng of laughing, beckoning phantoms glided through his mind. Out of the blue mist of the morning of his life, now so far behind him, there emerged a slender, girlish figure with long, black braids, and a downy, peach-like face--dark-eyed Pipsi, for whom Erich, then an enthusiast of sixteen, copied poems--and a second phantom came with her, merry-hearted Tilda, who with the pert insolence of her thirteen years used to laugh so mercilessly at the sentimental pair of lovers; and Hugo, a rather awkward boy, always at odds with his tutor and his Greek grammar.
Where were they all? Hugo went into the army, and was killed in a duel; dark-eyed Pepsi married in Hungary, and died at the birth of her first child; Tilda married a Spanish diplomatist--Truyn had heard nothing of her for years;--not one of the Malzins was left in their native land, save Fritz, who at the time of Truyn's lyric enthusiasm was a curly-headed, babbling baby, before whose dimples the entire family were on their knees, and who of his bounty dispensed kisses among them.
Truyn's thoughts wandered on--he recalled Fritz as an dashing officer of Hussars. He was one of the handsomest men in the army, fair, with a sunny smile and the proverbial Malzin conscientiousness in his earnest eyes, very fastidious in his pleasures, almost dandified in his dress; spoiled by women of fashion.
"Who would have thought it!" Truyn repeated to himself, as he gazed reflectively between his horse's ears. Suddenly he became aware of a cloud of dust,--and of a delightful sensation warming his heart. He perceived Zinka and Gabrielle sitting in a low pony-wagon, and behind them in the footman's seat was Oswald. Zinka was driving, being the butt of much laughing criticism from the other two. How pleased Truyn was with the picture, and how often was he destined to recall it, the fair, lovely heads of the two women, the dark, handsome young fellow, who understood so well how to combine a merry familiarity with the most delicate courtesy! How happy they all looked!
"You are late, papa!" Gabrielle called out.
"Have I offended you again, comrade?"
"But papa--!"
"I was beginning to be a little anxious," said Zinka, "Ossi laughed at me, and said I was like his mother, who if he is half an hour late in returning home from a ride always imagines that he has been thrown and killed on the road, and that the only reason the groom does not make his appearance, is because he has not the courage to tell the sad tidings."
Oswald laughed. "Yes, my mother's fancy runs riot in such images, sometimes," he admitted, stretching out his hand for the reins, that he might help Zinka to turn round. "And how is poor Fritz?"
"Wretched--such misery is enough to break one's heart--and no getting rid of it."
"And you are no longer angry with him?" Oswald asked with a touch of good-humoured triumph.
"Heaven forbid! but--," Truyn rubbed his forehead--"Oh, that stock-jobber--that phylloxera!"
Just then there appeared in the road an aged man, spare of habit and somewhat bent, but walking briskly; his features were sharp but not unpleasant, his arms were long, and his old-fashioned coat fluttered about his legs.
"Good-day, Herr Stern," Oswald called out to him in response to his bow.
Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck.
"Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle asked.
"Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the lower classes who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours."
"Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald remarked.
"To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very distinguished man."
"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these families, Nathan and Shylock."
"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you, comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your Laudamus together."
"There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife.
The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier hour very inconvenient.
"Of whom are you talking?" Madame Capriani asked in her depressed tone; she was sitting erect upon a small gilt chair, she wore a gray, silk-muslin gown, rather over-trimmed,gants de Suéde, and an air of constraint.
"Of whom are you talking?" she asked a second time, smoothing her gloves.
"Of whom?--of that blockhead, Malzin," growled Capriani.
"I told you from the first that he would never be able to fill that position," his wife rejoined.
"Fill--!" Capriani shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "fill--! it takes him two hours to write a business-letter. But I was prepared for that. His office is a sinecure; the salary that I pay him is an alms,--but Alfred Capriani can do as he pleases there,--and at least the fellow understands something about horses. What outrages me is to see how he squanders my money, the money that I give him. He ransacks the country round to buy back from the peasants relics of his parents. First an old clock, that struck twelve just as he was born, then an old piano, upon which his sisters used to strum the scales. 'Tis enough to drive one mad!"
Frau von Capriani looked distressed. "That is a matter of sentiment," she suggested.
"A matter of sentiment--a matter of sentiment," Capriani repeated sarcastically. "It would be a matter of sentiment and conscience to think of saving up something for his children."
"You are right, you are right," the Countess rejoined, in her emphatic yet not unmelodious Russian-German, "but this time you are in some measure to blame for his folly. I begged you a hundred times to ask him what he would like to keep for himself of the furniture which was entirely useless to us. Instead, you had it all put up at auction."
"And the proceeds of the sale are to be devoted to the building of a new school, to be entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence," said Capriani, "the old rubbish shall aid, willy-nilly, in the spread of modern liberal ideas. It is my aim to root out prejudices not to foster them. Would you have me minister directly to Malzin's folly? It would be nonsense. It makes me shudder to see this man, who owns nothing, positively nothing, except what I give him out of sheer kindness, and who ought to look ahead, keeping his eyes fixed upon the past, and sentimentally collecting empty bon-bon boxes, the contents of which his forefathers have devoured to the last crumb. He is the personification of the invincible narrowness of his class."
"He is a good honest man," the Contessa said gently.
"Honest,--honest!" Capriani repeated impatiently, "a man whose desires have been anticipated from his childhood, upon whose plate the pheasants have always fallen ready trussed and roasted, would naturally not contemplate picking pockets. To be sure, he might be tempted to try it, but he can't do it--he is too unpractical to be dishonest. There is nothing praiseworthy in that, for all the honesty that you ascribe to him he is a thorough selfish egotist; without the smallest scruple he robs his own children of thousands."
"Malzin!" Frau von Capriani exclaimed, "why he would let his ears be cut off for his children, and if he refused to lose his hands too, it would only be because he needed them to work for his family."
"To work!" rejoined Capriani ironically. "If he would only sacrifice for their sakes his miserable pride of rank he could do far more for them than by his work! He--and work! Do you know what reply he made to my splendid offer for his family vault? 'The vault is not for sale, it is the only spot of home that is left me. I will at least lie among my people when I am dead!' Can you conceive of greater insolence?"
"Insolence--poor Malzin--he is as modest....!"
"Modest!" sneered Capriani, interrupting her, "he is fairly bristling with arrogance. A starving pauper, living on my bounty, and all the while thinking himself superior to all of us. Intercourse with us is not at all to his taste."
"He is always exquisitely courteous to me. I like him very much," Frau von Capriani declared. Her husband's constant attacks upon Malzin were beyond measure painful to her.
"Men of his stamp are always gracious to ladies," snarled Capriani.
Meanwhile his two children had entered the room, Arthur and Ad'lin, both in faultless toilettes, and both out of humour. The self-same weariness weighs upon both, the weariness of idlers who do not know how to squander time gracefully. Perhaps Georges Lodrin is not far wrong when he maintains that to idle away life gracefully is an art most difficult to acquire, and rarely learned in a single generation.
Both asked fretfully whether the post had come, and then each sank into an arm-chair and fumed. One by one the various guests then staying in the castle appeared. Paul Angelico Orchis, a conceited little versifier, (lauded in the Blanktown Gazette as 'the first lyric poet of modern times') and the possessor of a dyspepsia acquired at the expense of others. A farce by him had been produced in Blanktown, and for ten years he had been promising the public a tragedy. Meanwhile his latest effort was the invention of a picturesque waterproof cloak. Frank, the famous tailor carried out his idea in dark brown tweed, in which the poet draped himself upon every conceivable occasion. After him followed two men of the kind which Georges Lodrin describes as 'gentlemen at reduced prices,' stunted specimens of the aristocracy, who played a very insignificant part in their own circles, and from time to time fled to their inferiors in rank to enjoy a little admiration. One, Baron Kilary, is a sportsman, insolent in bearing, lewd in talk; the other, Count Fermor, is a dilettante composer and pianist, affected and sentimental.
Malzin and his wife also entered; while he bowed silently, and then respectfully kissed the hand of the hostess, Charlotte congratulated the two ladies upon the splendour of their attire, and lavished exaggerated admiration upon a couple of costly pieces of furniture which she had often seen before.
Last of all appeared our old acquaintance, the Baroness Melkweyser, who had been at Schneeburg for a week. What was she doing there? The Caprianis looked to her for their admission into Austrian society, she looked to King Midas for the augmentation of her diminished income,--and something too might be gained from country air and regular meals for her worn and weary digestion.