Among the lodgers at the widow Schmitt's, as Charlotte's mother was called, was a sallow-faced old woman, whose room was a small, dark, comfortless hole, and who wore the same shabby, green gown, summer and winter, year in and year out. She was known as Frau Pick, and she was a professional beggar.
One day, on returning from some humiliating errand, Fritz heard one of his sisters-in-law call to his wife: "Pick is waiting."--"I am ready," was the reply, and Charlotte came out into the passage with a letter in her hand. Fritz sprang to meet her, snatched the letter from her, forced her back into the room and, entering, closed the door behind them.
The letter was addressed to the archbishop of Vienna.
"What does this letter contain?" he asked angrily, seizing her so rudely by the wrist, that she screamed and fell upon her knees before him; she did not answer his question, however.
"Is it a begging-letter?"
"Yes."
He thrust her from him indignantly. "Shame upon you!" he exclaimed.
"It is all your fault!" she replied scornfully, "if you won't work, I must beg."
"Ah!"--he staggered as if from a blow full in the face, snatched up his hat and went out.
Before night he had a situation in the office of a tramway company, at a hundred gulden a month.
The summer was more sultry than usual. The air in Vienna seemed fever-laden. The trees in Ring street no longer rustled dreamily as in Spring, there was a sound among their parched leaves as of a low cough. If a rose bloomed out in the public gardens in early morning, before evening it looked dry and withered, like a reveller returning from a masked ball; the blue Danube was as tawny as a canal, and Vienna reminded one more than ever of Manzanares.
The theatres were deserted, the tramways overcrowded, all who could went out into the country. Pedestrians hugged the wall on the shady side of the street; the skies were one monotone of blue. The glare of the house-fronts made the eyes ache.
The pestilent summer atmosphere of cities hung over Vienna, saturated with decay, and reeking with filth. A deadly epidemic broke out; in almost every block one met a sad litter, borne by silent sanitary officials.
Siegi grew weaker and more weary day by day; he coughed a little but never complained. Fritz consulted his old family physician who merely prescribed nourishing food and country air.
Fritz insisted upon knowing whether any danger was to be apprehended--the old man remained silent, and of a sudden the father felt that freezing thrill that comes of touching a corpse. For the first time he recognized the possibility of the child's death.
All his pride broke down at the thought; he wrote immediately to his father, unfolding to him his own need and the child's condition, and imploring permission to bring the boy to Schneeburg.
Days passed into weeks; his letter was unanswered. He lived on mechanically with sufficient mental force to fulfil his duties at the office. He performed them slowly and with difficulty, but he was treated with consideration. Even had there been a way close at hand out of the misery he could hardly have found it now.
Every morning Siegi's weak little voice sounded weaker, as he said, when his father left him, "Come back soon!"
Why had he repaid that hundred gulden? There was no conceivable humiliation to which he would not gladly now have submitted could he but procure for Siegi the comforts that were needed! But to have to haggle over the price of an orange or of an ice!
There were moments, when he ground his teeth, and in his heart avowed that he was ready and willing to beg, to steal for Siegi. But not every one who will, can be a rogue. Once or twice he met a 'friend' who still lingered in Vienna. He advanced towards him--with words of begging on his lips--only to be seized with a fit of trembling--no, he could not--he could not--it was impossible!
And scarcely had his 'friend 'passed by before he cursed himself for his--cowardice. Weaker and weaker grew the child. Once Fritz took it to the Prater to amuse it. The gay music of the band, the carriages, all that the summer had left, in which the boy had once found such delight, now cut him to his little heart.
They sat together upon a bench, beneath the dusty trees. The child looked at the throng of vehicles with eyes wide and fixed--the father looked at his son. "Does it amuse you? Do you like it, Siegi?" he asked, bending tenderly over him; the boy smiled faintly and said, "Yes, Papa!" But, in a few moments he leaned his tired little head against the father's breast and lisped, "Let us go home."
Only a little while longer and Siegi could not leave his bed--and Fritz heard the dread word 'consumption!'
He knew that it could be only a question of weeks, and sometimes said to himself that it would be better for the child if death would come quickly. But he thrust the thought from him. No, no, he yearned to hear as long as possible the little voice, and to stroke the thin cheek. The rosy childish face was wan and pinched, the arms looked like little brown sticks, the delicate tracery of the blue veins about the temples grew daily more distinct, the brow grew more like marble....
Then came mornings when Fritz, going early to his office, feared that he should not find the child living upon his return in the evening. As he mounted the stairs when he came home his heart would seem to stand still--he would enter the room very softly. The little head would move on the pillow, a hoarse little voice would gasp: "Papa!" and the father's heart would leap for joy!
It came towards the end of August--in a heavy, stifling, sultry night. He was alone with his child.
Charlotte had retired; she could not look upon death. The heat was intolerable. The windows were wide open, but they looked out upon a court where the air was no cooler than in the sick-room. The fragrance of the roses and mignonette, which Fritz had brought home with him to perfume the air a little, floated sadly through the small room. It seemed as if the death struggle of the flowers mingled with the death struggle of the child. Siegi lay in his little bed, propped up with pillows. His breathing was so short and quick that it could hardly be counted. "Papa!" he gasped from time to time.
"What, my darling? Do you want anything?"
"No,--only--when are we going to Schneeburg?"
"Soon, my pet--very soon!"
The child became half unconscious, tossed from side to side, and plucked vehemently at the sheet with his emaciated little hands. Delirium set in, he laughed aloud, chirrupped to imaginary horses, and then with a thin, quavering little voice, began to sing an old French nursery song that his bonne had taught him:
"Il était un petit navire...."
Poor Fritz's blood ran cold, he took the child in his arms, and clasped him close. The cooler air of dawn breathed through the room--the light of the poor candle flickered strangely. Gray shadows danced on the wall like phantoms--the low chirp of a bird was heard in the distance.
Suddenly the flame of the candle leaped up and died out. Fritz started and gazed at the child--it was dead!
The next morning Fritz received a letter from his father enclosing a draft for a thousand-gulden note, coupled with the old Count's cordial and anxious words. His son's last letter had reached him in the most complicated roundabout way; he had just returned from a voyage to Australia, and had known nothing of Fritz's unfortunate circumstances.
In reply Fritz merely wrote, "The child is dead."
It was the afternoon after the funeral, and Fritz was all alone in the house. Charlotte had taken the children for a little walk; there was a sharp ring at his door. He rose and opened it. A white-haired old gentleman of distinguished mien, asked, "Is Count Malzin----"
"Father!" stammered Fritz.
The old man advanced a step, eagerly scanned the face that had grown wan and haggard almost past recognition, then opened wide his arms and clasped his son to his heart. All anger, all bitterness on both sides was forgotten.
They sat down in the dim, sordid room in which Siegi had died, and Fritz laid bare his heart.
They sat close enough to read the deep sympathy in each other's eyes, and to hear each other's low tones, and in the midst of his inconsolable grief, Fritz rejoiced in being once more with some one who understood him, some one to whose loving compassion he could confide the wretchedness of his life.
He told his father everything; of his marriage, of his imprudence--of his misery. He soon perceived that the old Count had believed Charlotte to be worse than she was, and therefore had refused to acknowledge Siegi as his grandson.
But that was all past and gone! He made his son bring out all the likenesses of the dead boy, and was absorbed in every detail concerning him; he asked endless questions, and seemed as if he would thereby fain have assumed a share of his son's overwhelming grief, relieving Fritz of it to that extent at least.
At last steps were heard outside, and Charlotte entered with the children. Fritz winced.
"Father, this is my wife."
The grand old Count advanced to meet her as if she were a princess, called her "daughter" and kissed her forehead. He could not sufficiently caress and pet the children.
The next morning Fritz with the children paid him a visit at the Hotel Munsch, and they took leave of each other with affectionate cordiality.
"Of course you will come to Schneeburg with your family as soon as possible," the old Count said anxiously, as they parted. "You need your home, my poor boy."
And Fritz rejoiced--in the midst of all his grief,--at the thought of home.
They had already begun to get ready to leave Vienna, when a letter arrived from Schneeburg.
"Dear Fritz,
Hard as it is to write it, I must ask you not to give up your situation in Vienna for the present. My poor, dear boy, I can do nothing for you until my affairs are arranged. Only have patience and all will soon be well, etc...."
When the hoped-for arrangement was completed it was discovered that the old Count was penniless. In his costly expedients to raise money he had begun frittering away his property and then--it seemed incredible--he became infected with the general mania for finding millions on the highway, and had entangled himself in a colossal speculation in Australian gold mines. Conte Capriani, with whom he had become acquainted in Vichy, had convinced him of the certainty of gain in the affair. Capriani's name alone was sufficient warrant for the value of the stock. The old Count was made president of the company; his name was used to inspire the public with confidence,--his noble old name which he had borne so honourably for sixty-five years! The first year the company paid enormous dividends--out of their capital. In the second year matters began to look suspicious. The Conte slowly withdrew from the scheme--he found that certain things were different from what he had supposed; he had been falsely informed.... He advised the Count, who went to Paris to consult him, to dispose of his stock slowly without exciting suspicion. But the Count would not listen to anything of the kind. He had pledged himself to the public, his easy confidence had induced hundreds of men to buy the stock, he had urged many of them to do so thinking it was for their advantage. Among them were poor people, impoverished relatives, nay even old servants, his children's former tutors who had invested all their savings in this unfortunate scheme, upon his recommendation. He was beside himself, bought up as much of the stock as he could, and went himself to Australia to investigate matters. He, who in his whole life from his school-days up had never known anything of figures beyond what enabled him to keep the reckoning at whist, now ciphered and calculated, bringing all his powers of mind to bear upon the possibilities of profit.
He found matters by no means as desperate as had been represented in Europe--the affair might have been made a success with prompt energetic management; what was needed was more capital. But the confidence of the stockholders was shaken; the Count upon his return to Europe tried in vain to issue fresh stock, he applied fruitlessly to the Conte Capriani, representing to him that as the originator of the entire speculation he was bound to help. The Conte maintained that he was powerless.
The stock fell lower and lower, fell with bewildering rapidity.
One day Fritz received a letter: "Schneeburg must be sold."
The poor fellow felt as if his sore heart had been struck with a hammer. His sad yearning for his home was turned to a burning thirst--a consuming desire. He was as homesick as a peasant, nay--as a Slav.
Men who live in cities and change their dwelling-place three or four times, never strike root anywhere, and consequently can have no conception of the homesickness that attacks a man who is separated from the soil upon which he and his ancestors for generations have been born and bred. A man thus bred has become acclimated like a plant, to this special air, this special soil, and however long the years of absence, wherever he may have lived meanwhile, he will always yearn for 'home.'
Fritz had caught a cold upon leaving Wipling street, at the same time that Siegi had been taken with the illness that ended in his death. Fritz recovered, but his health was shattered, his voice was husky, and h» had feverish nights which in spite of weariness were wakeful. For hours he would pace the wretched room where stood Siegi's empty little bed, which he had not brought himself to have removed, and would conjure up visions of Schneeburg.
Sell Schneeburg! In his pain at this fresh blow he forgot for a moment his grief for his child. Memories of 'home' thronged about him with a vividness that savoured of mental hallucination. He saw the morning sun glitter in the dewy moss that lay green on the thatched roofs of the village, he saw the very puddles before the houses wherein the swine wallowed, and a flock of fowls scratching on a muck-heap, and a group of shivering children cowering beneath the cross before the smithy.
He saw the pond in the middle of the village; the little dusky waves swelled and rippled beneath the nipping wind of autumn and a single rugged elm cast its long reflection across the broken surface. He saw the soft black soil on the edge of the pond stamped with countless impressions of webbed feet. He saw the geese themselves, hissing and flapping their wings while the sunlight played upon the rough pink surface of their plucked breasts. Thatched roofs, swine, and geese had certainly never interested him much--these detailed impressions had been made upon his mind all unconsciously--they belonged to the whole.
He saw long transparent wreaths of mist like ghostly shrouds, floating above the freshly-ploughed fields, and the crows flapping above the brown leafless trees, in gloomy processions, mourners for the dead summer,--a dun-coloured cow was standing between two gnarled apple-trees by the way-side, looking inquisitively out of her dark-blue glazed eyes.
The pictures grew confused, and again distinct. He saw the park with its broad emerald meadows where the venerable trees grew in large dense clumps. He knew the voice of every single tree, the rustle of the oak differed from the murmur of the copper-beech; he knew the very tree which would turn orange-coloured in autumn, which one only yellow, edged with black, and which one dark crimson. They stirred their grand old heads and broke into a chant; it sounded like a magnificent choral through the still autumn air, while single leaves, frosted with dew, as with delicate molten silver, loosed their hold and sank slowly fluttering down upon the grass.
And the kitchen garden, that Paradise of childhood, with its hoary apricot-trees, whose mellow fruit always dropped on the old-fashioned sage beds. Ah, what fruit it was, so big, and so yellow, and so juicy!
Then he laughed softly at something that had happened twenty years before, and--waking from his visions, and his reverie, passed his hand across his brow. Where was he? Sitting in the room of a miserable lodging-house, beside the empty little bed of his dead child.
He lay down very weary. The last thing that he saw distinctly before falling asleep was a large circle of red gravel in front of Schneeburg Castle, furrowed with delicate ruts. These ruts formed the figure of eight--the first figure of eight which he, a boy of fifteen, had drawn in the gravel with his father's four-in-hand--the delicate fragrance, not perceptible to every one, of wild strawberries floated past him, and then all faded. Sleep compassionately laid her hand upon his heart and brain. He slept the sleep of the dead for a couple of hours, and the next morning his torture began afresh.
He could have wandered barefoot like a beggar to Schneeburg, only to be able to fling himself down on that dear earth, and kiss the very soil of his home.
The sale was long in concluding,--purchasers chaffered as usual, when in treaty for an impoverished estate. There were fears that it would be brought to the hammer. But in the spring Capriani appeared and offered a price for Schneeburg which was at least sufficient to cover the Count's indebtedness. His lawyer urged the old man not to delay accepting this offer, but Siegfried Malzin still hesitated. For three days he wandered about Schneeburg like one distraught, then he began to yield conditionally, but all conditions vanished before Capriani's energy. Malzin lost his head, and made many injudicious concessions. He sold with the estate very many valuable articles that he ought to have kept for himself. He forgot everything--and as a man at a fire will finally rescue in triumph an old umbrella, and a child's toy, so he rescued from his property, in addition to the family vault, which from the first he insisted upon keeping, nothing, save--the stuffed charger which stood in the hall, and which a Malzin had bestridden on the occasion of the liberation of Vienna by Sobiesky.
The morning after the deed of sale had been signed, the former possessor of Schneeburg was found dead in his bed--heart-disease had delivered him from misery.
On one and the same day Fritz heard of the sale of Schneeburg and of his father's death;--he was crushed.
Capriani had a weakness for taking into his service impoverished men of rank. They worked but indifferently well, as he knew; but nevertheless he preferred to employ them. He paid them well, and treated them cruelly.
One day he offered Fritz the post of private secretary. To the astonishment, nay, to the horror, of all his friends, Fritz accepted the position.
On a cool evening in May he took possession with his wife and children of the little cottage on the borders of the park, close to the kitchen garden, and a sense of delight mingled with pain, thrilled through him, as he hurried along the paths of the dear old home that now belonged to another.
He had to warn his children not to run on the grass, not to pull the flowers, and upon his own land!--yes, his own by right--he never could appreciate that this land had ceased forever to be his.
He could not look upon Capriani except as a temporary usurper. He could not but believe in counter revolutions--what was to bring them about he could not tell.
Sometimes when he suddenly came upon old Miller, his former nurse who had found an asylum with him, he would say: "Miller, do you remember this--or that?" and upon her "yes, Count," he would smile languidly.
All the fire, all the impetuosity of his nature was extinct.
Sometimes he roused himself to feel that it was his bounden duty to do something to reinstate his son in his rights. But what?
Conte Capriani, to be sure, had begun life with a single gulden in his pocket, but that was quite a different thing. It was not for Fritz Malzin to enter the lists with the stock-jobber, who knew so well how to keep just within the letter of the law.
And so he continued to live, sadly resigned, dreaming of old times, hoping for wonderful strokes of fortune that never took shape. All the while he indulged in visions, and every evening, when he laid his cards for Patience he consulted them, always asking the self-same question--"Will Schneeburg ever revert to my children?"
A jingling of bells, a clatter of hoofs from five spirited bays harnessed in Russian fashion, and hardly seeming to touch the earth as they fly along, a rattle of wheels, a whirling cloud of dust,--and Oswald Lodrin's five-in-hand came sweeping round a corner in one of the old-fashioned streets in Rautschin. People ran from everywhere to stare,--a housemaid cleaning a window, leaned out at the risk of her neck, to follow the gay equipage; two small boys going home from school, paused and vented their delight in waving their caps and cheering; Oswald nodded to them kindly. His eyes were aglow with happiness, he had a white rosebud in his button-hole. His future father-in-law sat beside him in the driver's seat, and Georges was on the seat behind.
It was the day before the election. Oswald had just come from Castle Rautschin, where, according to agreement, he was to pick up his uncle to drive with him to the railway station, and he had taken this opportunity to display his new five-in-hand to his betrothed. The five horses clattered along gaily, as if to the races, instead of to a railway station.
"We must hurry, there is the signal," said Georges half rising from his seat, to gaze in the direction of the station.
"Don't be afraid," rejoined Oswald, "it is an Express, to be sure, but if it sees us coming, it will wait!"
"True! I forgot we were in Austria," said Georges laughing.
The bays flew like birds along the avenue of ancient poplars. The sun shone on their trim, plain harness, upon their glossy hides; white and blue butterflies were fluttering above the earliest wayside-flowers. A few minutes later Oswald drew up before the station, built Austrian-wise, after the ugly fashion of a Swiss cottage.
"Sapristi! He too is going to the election," exclaimed Georges, as he observed Capriani's equipage.
"You may be very sure he will not hide his light under a bushel," grumbled Truyn.
"And I quite forgot to have a railway coupé reserved for us. Did you remember it, uncle?" asked Oswald.
Time passed. Oswald's servant hurried off to get the tickets, and when the gentlemen went to take their places, they found that there were but two first-class coupé's, one occupied by a lady with her invalid daughter, the other by the Caprianis, father and son. What was to be done? It was most vexatious; the three gentlemen, with their servants bearing portmanteaux and dust-coats, the station master and the conductor, all stood on the platform in consultation, while the train patiently waited.
The third signal whistled, Conte Capriani appeared at the door of his coupé with a smile of invitation.
Georges calmly shifted his cigar from one corner to the other of his mouth.
"Better open an empty second-class for us," said Truyn frowning.
"I have none quite empty," the conductor explained; "but this gentleman will get out at the third station."
"It is the cattle-dealer from Kamnitz," whispered Oswald with a little grimace, after glancing through the window of the coupé. But it made no difference to his uncle who immediately sprang in and took his seat, followed by the young men. What if the man were a cattle-dealer? Truyn remembered having seen him before, and at once entered into conversation with him upon the price of meat, a conversation in which Oswald, remarkably well up as he always was in all agricultural matters, took part. The cattle-dealer alighted at his destination, greatly impressed by the affability of the noblemen, and convinced that all he had heard of their arrogance was false.
"If the coupé only did not smell so insufferably of warm leather!" exclaimed Truyn after the dealer's departure, "and ugh! the man's cigar was positively--"
"It often happens now-a-days," interposed Georges, "that a gentleman is forced to travel second-class to avoid a stock-jobber. The question in my mind is, when will our civilization be so far advanced that the stock-jobber will travel second-class to avoid one of us."
"We shall never live to see that," said Oswald.
"The insolence of those people waxes gigantic," said Georges.
"It is our own fault; if we had not danced hand-in-hand with them before the golden calf, they would not now be so presuming," observed Truyn, "remember --73."
"Hm,--our worship of that idol showed simplicity, to say the least," remarked Georges, "the golden calf returned so much gratitude for our homage."
"So much gratitude," growled Truyn. "I did not share in the worship, but I do in the disgrace!--But enough of that! Can Capriani vote? He has not owned Schneeburg for a year yet."
"No, but has he not another estate in Northern Bohemia?" asked Georges.
"You are right, he has," said Truyn. "I suppose he will vote with the Liberals."
"In all probability!" replied Oswald. "Tous les républicains ne sont pas canaille, mais toute la canaille est républicaine."
"I do not think that Capriani openly ranks among the Liberals," remarked Georges, "I know of a certainty that not long ago he placed large sums of money for charitable purposes at the disposal of several ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain."
"That was when he was a candidate for the Jockey Club," rejoined Oswald. "I heard about that. Ever since he was black-balled there, he sings a different song. He is organizing Liberal schools at Schneeburg, and has a great deal to do with universal enlightenment."
"Confound universal enlightenment!" railed Truyn.
Oswald shrugged his shoulders, "I should not shed a tear for it," said he, "in the first ardour of my charitable schemes I took some interest in it, but I soon detected the wretched business, masked by that high-sounding phrase;--it means universal distribution of rancid scraps of learning sure to provoke an indigestion which as surely will develop into an enlargement of the spleen. That kind of knowledge never widens the horizon of the masses--it does nothing, except pick holes in their illusions."
"Widen the horizon--pretty stuff that!" said Truyn, the reactionary. "In my opinion a contracted horizon is the condition of happiness for the masses."
"My dear fellow, if you attempt to advocate such views ...." began Georges, half laughing, half indignant.
"My views, remember," interrupted Truyn, "are the result of years of experience; I have lived here all my life, and know the people better than any freshly imported Herr Capriani, blown hither, Heaven only knows whence. What we want is a contented, well-fed, warmly-clad people, that will play merrily with the children on Saturday evening, go piously to church on Sunday morning, and not discuss too much on Sunday afternoon."
"Yes, of course," assented Georges. "What you want, first and foremost, is a people that won't disturb your peaceful enjoyment of life. There's no denying that."
"I am perfectly open to conviction," asserted Truyn with dignity. "As soon as you prove to me that these disturbers of the public peace promote the happiness of the masses, I will ground arms before them."
"Happiness!--I don't believe that those people care as much as they pretend for the happiness of the masses," said Oswald, looking up from his note-book in which he had begun to scribble rapidly. "Happiness is conservative--they would gain nothing from that. As far as I can see, all they want is to rouse the discontent of the people by constant irritation," and he turned to his note-book again. His scribbling did not seem to run as smoothly as before.
"There you are right," agreed Truyn. "Their aim is to arouse the discontent of the people--the discontent of the masses is the tool of their entire party, and they will go on sharpening it until some fine day they'll cut their fingers off with it, and serve them right."
"Decry the degenerate portion of the species as much as you choose," replied Georges, "you cannot but acknowledge that modern democracy has been of immense service to mankind."
"Verité de monsieur de La Palisse," muttered Oswald, without looking up.
"Don't talk to me of your 'modern democracy,' I made its acquaintance in France--this 'modern democracy' of yours," thundered Truyn in a rage. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, lighted a cigar and gazed out of the coupé-window, apparently to allay his political anxiety by the sight of his dearly-loved fatherland.
He did not succeed, however, for before a minute had passed, he turned to Georges again and exclaimed angrily, "How delightful to contemplate the next generation; what a charming prospect! A people all ignorant atheists. I ask no severer punishment for the agitators who have wrought the mischief in this generation, than to be obliged to govern the next.
"I suppose they themselves would desire nothing better," said Oswald smiling.
"That's perfectly true; all they are struggling for, is power," muttered Truyn.
"Excuse me, my dear friend; but what are you struggling for?" asked Georges.
"What arewestruggling for," repeated Truyn, looking at him compassionately, "what are we struggling for?--I will tell you;--for the Emperor and our fatherland, which means for order and justice, for the dignity of the throne, for the sanctity of home, for the fostering of beauty and nobility, for all the wealth of human achievement which we have inherited from the past, and ought to bequeath to the future--in a word, Georges,--we are protecting civilization."
"Bursts of applause from the Right--aha--congratulations to the orator from the Left!" said Georges laughing, then turning to Oswald who was still scribbling, he observed, "I rather think you have been taking short-hand notes of your uncle's speech. We will send them to Otto Ilsenbergh, he will be delighted."
"Nonsense!" said Oswald. "I am composing a telegram."
"In verse?" Georges asked innocently.
"Georges! As head of the family I desire to be treated with more respect," said Oswald, laughing.
"Oh, it occurred to me, only because you were making so many corrections," rejoined Georges.
"The thing is quite difficult--it must be so worded that Gabrielle shall understand it,--and the telegraph operators shall not; I cannot manage it."
"Suppose you refresh your powers with a glass of sherry," proposed Georges, taking down an appetizing lunch-basket from the rack above his head, and drawing forth a bottle and three wine-glasses.
The wine had a decidedly soporific effect upon the three travellers. Truyn's political excitement was soothed, and after drinking to a better future, all three leaned back in silence.
Truyn pondered upon the shy, timid confession that his wife had made to him that morning early, very early, as they were sauntering together in the park, while the sun's first slant rays were breaking through the shrubbery, and the morning-dew was still glittering on the meadows. "The whole earth seems bathed in tears of delicious joy," his young wife had whispered, and then through her own happy tears she had begged him to give her a 'really large sum' from her own money that she might make some of the poor people on the estate happy too.
Gradually his thoughts wandered, and grew vague; the sounds of railway bells, and the shrill whistle of the engine, the grating voices of conductors, and the monotonous whirr of wheels mingled, subsided, and died away; his latest impressions faded, and, instead of the green park of Rautschin, a dim Roman street rises upon his mental vision, with a procession of masked torch-bearers accompanying a coffin;--the picture changes, the Roman street is transformed to a lofty hall so tragically solemn that the sunbeams lose their smile as they enter the high windows and glide pale and wan through the twilight gloom to die at the feet of ancient statues. He looks about him, lost in surprise and wondering where is he?--in the tomb of the Medici?--or among the monuments of the melancholy gray church of Santa Croce? No, he suddenly recollects it is the Bargello, and yon white marble, that gleams through the dim religious light in such lifelike, or rather deathlike, beauty, revealing, as it lies outstretched, such clear-cut, nay, such sharp outlines, and the noble attenuation of youth, eager and fiery, is Michael Angelo's 'dead Adonis,' the ideal embodiment of the springtime of manhood crushed in its bloom. Anon vapour curls upward, and the crimson flicker of torches plays over the white statue, the masked torch-bearers stand around it, a wailing chant echoes through the hall--who is it lying there listlessly, with the ineffable charm of a fair young form, which death has suddenly snatched, before the poison of disease has wasted and deformed it?--
Truyn started, broad awake, every pulse throbbing.--Merciful God! how could he dream anything so horrible! Oswald sat opposite, with eyes half-closed, an extinguished cigarette in his hand. His face wore the expression of absolute content which is so often strangely seen on the face of the dead and which none except the dead ever wear, save the few, who, by God's grace, have been permitted to behold Heaven upon earth. Truyn could not away with a sensation of painful anxiety.
"For Heaven's sake, Ossi, open your eyes!" he exclaimed.
"What is the matter?" asked Oswald.
"Nothing," said Truyn, "only...." at that moment the train stopped.
"Pemik!" shouted the conductor, "ten minute's stop," and then opening the coupé door he politely informed the travellers that another coupé was now at their service.
Pernik is the junction of several railway lines, trains coming from two separate watering-places connect here with trains from Prague, and set free the travellers who have tried the virtue of the various baths. Ladies with faded faces, and bouquets of faded flowers, were wandering about looking for hand-bags gone astray or for waiting-maids, men were busily munching, glad to forget over their first sandwich, the dietetic limitations to which they had been forced to submit while undergoing a course of the baths; locomotives were hissing and puffing like monsters out of breath after a race; the sunshine glittered on the flat roofs of the railway-carriages, the whole atmosphere reeked with coal-dust, and hot iron; there was the usual bustle of hand-cars piled with luggage pushed along the rails, of the shifting of cars on the tracks, and of vendors of fresh water and Pernik beer, with newspaper boys loudly extolling their various wares.
Escorted by the obsequious conductor, and followed by the servants, the three conservatives were making their way through the hurly-burly when they nearly ran against a young man, who, with his hands in the pockets of his rough coat, was striding through the crowd, never turning to the right or the left, in a line as straight as that of the railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow.
"Pistasch!" exclaimed Oswald.
"Ah, I thought I should meet you somewhere."
All began to talk at once, when suddenly Pistasch turned, and said, "Good-day!" to Conte Capriani, who was coming towards him with extended hand, and an air of great cordiality.
Oswald and Truyn held themselves very erect, looked straight before them, and, passing Pistasch and Capriani, entered their coupé.
"I do not understand Kamenz," said Truyn, after they had installed themselves comfortably, and Georges had called from the window for a glass of Pernik beer. Oswald, his elbows propped on the frame of his window, was taking a prolonged observation of the interview between Capriani and Pistasch Kamenz.
The third bell rang--the speculator and the nobleman shook hands and separated; then Pistasch approached the coupé where sat the three conservatives, and asked, "Any room in there for me?"
"Room enough, but we're not sure that we ought to let you come with us, you renegade!" said Oswald, unlatching the coupé door. "Are you too going to Prague for the election?"
"No," said Pistach lazily, "not if I know it, in this heat. I am going to the races--but I shall vote."
"Such indifference, nowadays, is culpable," said Truyn gravely. "This is a serious time."
"Bah! it is all one to me, who goes to the Reichsrath;--moreover, whoever he may be, he exists principally for the benefit of the newspapers," replied Pistasch apathetically.
Only a few years previously, Truyn himself had defined the Reichsrath, as a 'circus for political acrobats'--but his political views were now daily gaining in consistency.
An interest in politics is usually aroused in men of his stamp, when they are between forty and fifty years of age--at a time when the taste for champagne begins to yield to that for claret. Almost all men are thus aroused at two different periods of life; in early youth and in late middle age.
That which ten years before Truyn had ridiculed, was now invested for him with a sacred earnestness.
"We must be true to our convictions for our country's sake!" he exclaimed.
"Has any one really any convictions,--political ones I mean?" asked Pistasch, "my conviction is that it is all up with us, but the country will last as long as I shall--after that I take no interest in it."
"And is this your latest creed?" asked Truyn indignantly.
"It is a very time-honoured creed, uncle," said Georges, "if I am not mistaken it was the fundamental article of faith of that lugubrious Solomon in a full-bottomed wig, who played such unholy pranks in France, under Voltaire's reign. 'Apres nous le déluge!'"
"Louis Fifteenth, do you mean?" asked Truyn.
But Pistasch observed, "You have become fearfully erudite while you have been abroad, Georges. I fancy you are preparing to apply for a professorship of history, in the event of the social cataclysm that seems at hand."
All the while the train is rushing onwards, past pastures seamed by narrow ditches, past turnip-fields, past villages with ragged thatched roofs, and tumble-down picket fences upon which red and blue garments are hanging to dry, while lolling over them are sunflowers, with yellow haloes encircling their black velvet faces. Nowhere is there a trace of romantic exuberance, everything tells of sober, practical thrift.
A white, dusty road winds among slender plum-trees, and along it is jolting a small waggon, drawn by a pair of thirsty dogs, their tongues hanging from their mouths; a labourer, half through his swath in a clover-field, fascinated by the whizzing train, stops mowing and stares with open mouth and eyes.
Truyn has become absorbed in the contents of 'The Press' which he holds stretched wide in both hands. Oswald, Georges, and Pistasch have improvised a table out of a wrap laid across their knees, and are indulging in a game of cards.
"What's the news, uncle?" Oswald asked as he shuffled the cards.
"The authorities have forbidden the importation of rags at any Austrian port; and a Jew has been butchered somewhere in Russia," Pistasch replied incontinently. Truyn paid no heed to Oswald's question but all at once he dropped the newspaper.
"What is the matter?" asked the young men.
"Wips Seinsberg has died suddenly!" said Truyn.
"Poor devil!" said Oswald, with about as much sympathy as we feel for people not particularly congenial. "He was a good fellow, but somewhat vacillating! Ever since his marriage I have seen very little of him."
"Was he married?" asked Truyn, who, during his stay abroad, had lost sight of Wips Seinsberg.
"He married into trade," Oswald said curtly.
It is odd; elsewhere the daughters of tradesmen marry into the nobility;--in Austria the sons of the nobility marry into trade!
"Into trade?" Truyn repeated slowly, and interrogatively.
"What did he die of?" asked Pistasch.
"It does not say," replied Truyn re-reading the notice in the newspaper.
"Hm!--that looks suspicious," said Pistasch.