June 20.
This afternoon we start. I am in a fever of anticipation. How delightful! I seem to have come to the turning-point of my existence. Something wonderful is surely going to happen.
Meanwhile, I take my leave of my little book,--I shall have no time to write in it while we are away.
July 30.
Here we are back again in the old nest! Nothing either wonderful or even extraordinary happened upon the journey; on the contrary, everything was quite commonplace. I did not meet the Russian prince, but I have brought home with me a conviction of the beauty and delights of the world, and the certainty that, if fate would only grant me the opportunity, I could play a most brilliant part in it. But my destiny has nothing of the kind to offer.
I am restless and discontented, and I have great trouble in concealing my mood from my uncle and aunt. I am likewise disgusted with my ingratitude. I know that the expenses of our trip weighed heavily upon my uncle. He has bought himself no new horses, although the old ones are lame in all four legs; and my aunt has given up her pilgrimage to Bayreuth, that I might go to the baths. She expected so much for me from this trip, and now----
Still, prosaic and commonplace as it all was, I will put it down here conscientiously in detail. Various pleasant little circumstances may recur to me as I write which have escaped me in my general discontent that has tinged everything.
Our few days in Vienna were the pleasantest part of the entire trip, little as I liked the city at first.
We arrived at ten in the evening, rather exhausted by the heat, and of course we expected to see Harry at the railroad-station, my uncle having advised him of our arrival. But in vain did we peer in every direction, or rather in vain did Aunt Rosamunda thus peer (for I did nothing of the kind); there was no Harry to be seen.
While my aunt loudly expressed her wonder at his non-appearance, I never uttered a word, but was secretly all the more vexed at what seemed to me Harry's laziness and want of consideration. Of course, I attributed his absence to the fact that a young man who passed his time in flying from one fête to another in the world (which I was not to know) could hardly be very anxious to meet a couple of relatives from the country. Perhaps he had come to be just like Heda, and I shrugged my shoulders indifferently at the thought. What could it possibly matter to me? Meanwhile, my aunt had given our luggage-tickets to a porter and got with me into an open carriage, where we quietly and wearily awaited our trunks.
Around us the lights flickered in the warm, dim, night air, which was almost as close as an in-door atmosphere, and smelled most unpleasantly of dust, dried leaves, and all sorts of exhalations. On every hand crowded houses of indescribable clumsiness and ugliness; I was depressed by the mere eight of them, and suddenly experienced the most painful sensation of shrivelling up. The deafening noise and bustle were in harmony with the houses: I never had heard anything like it. Everybody jostled everybody else, all were in a hurry, and no one paid the slightest regard to anybody. It seemed as if they were one and all bound for some great entertainment and feared to be too late.
At the hotel the reason for Harry's absence was explained. We found two beautiful bunches of roses in our rooms, and a note, as follows:
"I am more sorry than I can tell, not to be able to welcome you at the station. I am, unfortunately, on duty at a garden-party at the Archduke S----'s.... I shall report myself to you, however, at the earliest opportunity.
"Harry."
I supped with a relish, and slept soundly.
My aunt had breakfasted in our sitting-room and was reading the paper, when I had scarcely begun to dress. I was just about to brush my hair,--I have very long hair, and it is quite pretty, light brown with a dash of gold,--in fact, I was standing before the mirror in my white peignoir, with my hair hanging soft and curling all around me, very well pleased with my reflection in the glass, when suddenly I heard the jingling of spurs and sabre, and a voice which was familiar and yet unfamiliar. I trembled from head to foot.
"Zdena, hurry, and come!" called my aunt. "Here is a visitor!"
I knew well enough who it was, but, as if I did not know, I opened the door, showed myself for a moment in my white wrapper and long, loose hair,--only for a moment,--and then hastily retreated.
"Come just as you are. 'Tis only Harry; it is not as if it were a stranger. Come!" called my aunt.
But I was not to be persuaded. Not for worlds would I have had Harry suspect that--that--well, that I was in any great hurry to see him.
I dressed my hair with the most scrupulous care. Not before twenty minutes had passed did I go into the next room.
How plainly I see it all before me now,--the room, half drawing-room, half dressing-room; a trunk in one corner, in another an old piano, the key of which we were obliged to procure from the kellner; in an arm-chair a bundle of shawls, over the back of a sofa our travelling-wraps, our well-polished boots in front of the porcelain stove, great patches of misty sunshine lying everywhere, the breakfast-table temptingly spread near the window, and there, opposite my aunt, his sabre between his knees, tall, slender, very brown, very handsome, an officer of hussars,--Harry.
I like him, and am a little afraid of him. He suddenly springs up and advances a step or two towards me. His eyes--the same eyes that had glanced at me as I appeared in my wrapper--open wide in amazement; his gaze is riveted upon my face. All my fear has gone; yes, I confess it to this paper,--I am possessed by an exultant consciousness of power. He is only my cousin, 'tis true, but he is the first man upon whom I have been able to prove my powers of conquest.
I put my hands in his, so cordially extended, but when he stooped as if to kiss me, I shook my head, laughing, and said, "I am too old for that."
He yielded without a word, only touching my hand respectfully with his lips and then releasing me; whereupon I went directly to the breakfast-table. But, as he still continued to gaze at me, I asked, easily,----
"What is it, Harry? Is my hair coming down?"
He shook his head, and said, in some confusion, "Not at all. I was only wondering what you had done with all your magnificent hair!"
I made no reply, but applied myself to my breakfast.
It was really delightful, our short stay in Vienna. Harry was with us all the while. He went about with us from morning till night; patiently dragged with us to shops, picture-galleries, and cathedrals, and to the dusty, sunny Prater, where the vegetation along the drive seemed to have grown shabby. We drove together to Schönbrunn, the huge, dreamy, imperial summer residence, and wandered about the leafy avenues there. We fed the swans; we fed the monkeys and the bears, while my aunt rested near by, Baedeker in hand, upon any bench she could find. She rested a great deal, and grew more tired with every day of our stay in Vienna, and with very good reason; she can hardly endure the pavement in walking, and she refuses, from fastidiousness, to take advantage of the tramway, and, from economy, to hire a carriage.
The sunset has kindled flames in all the windows of the castle, and we are still wandering in the green avenues, talking of all sorts of things, music, and literature. Harry's taste is classic; mine is somewhat revolutionary. I talk more than he; he listens. Sometimes he throws in a word in the midst of my nonsense; at other times he laughs heartily at my paradoxes, and then again he suddenly looks askance at me and says nothing. Then I become aware that he understands far more than I of the matter in hand, and I fall silent.
The sun has set; the rosy reflection on the grass and at the foot of the old trees has faded; there is only a pale, gray gleam on the castle windows. All nature seems to sigh relieved. A cool mist rises from the basins of the fountains, like the caress of a water-nymph; the roses, petunias, and mignonette exhale delicious fragrance, which rises as incense to heaven; the lisp of the leaves and the plash of the fountain interpose a dreamy veil of sound, as it were, between us and some aggressive military music in the distance.
The twilight falls; the nurses are all taking their charges home. Here and there on the benches a soldier and a nursemaid are sitting together. It is too dark to see to read Baedeker any longer. My aunt calls to us: "Do come, children; the carriage has been waiting ever so long, and I am very hungry."
And the time had seemed so short to me. My aunt is so easily fatigued, and her aversion to tramways is so insurmountable, that she stays at home half the time in the hotel, and I make many a little expedition with Harry alone. Then I take his arm. We stroll through the old part of the city, with its sculptured monuments, its beautiful gray palaces standing side by side with the commonest lodging-houses; about us people are thronging and pushing; we are in no hurry; we should like to have time stand still,--Harry and I; we walk very slowly. I am so content, so filled with a sense of protection, when I am with him thus. It is delightful to cling to him in the crowd.
It seems to me that I should like to spend my life in slowly wandering thus in the cool of the evening through the streets, where the lights are just beginning to be lighted, where a pair of large, kindly eyes rest upon my face, and the sound of distant military music is in my ears.
The last evening before our departure arrived. We were sitting in our small drawing-room, and Harry and I were drinking iced coffee. My aunt had left hers untouched; the fever of travelling was upon her; she wandered from one room to another, opening trunks, drawers, and wardrobes, and casting suspicious glances under the piano and the sofas, sure that something would be left behind.
The kellner brought in two cards,--Countess Zriny and Fräulein Tschaky,--a cousin of Uncle Paul's, with her companion.
We had called upon the Countess the day before, and had rejoiced to find her not at home. My aunt now elevated her eyebrows, and murmured, plaintively, "It can't be helped!"
Then she hurriedly carried two bundles of shawls and a hand-bag into the next room, and the ladies were shown in.
Countess Zriny is a very stout, awkward old maid, with the figure of a meal-sack and the face of a portly abbot. Harry maintains that she has holy water instead of blood in her veins, and that she has for ten years lived exclusively upon Eau de Lourdes and Count Mattei's miraculous pills. It is odd that she should have grown so stout upon such a diet.
There is nothing to say of Fräulein Tschaky.
Aunt Rosamunda received the ladies with a majestic affability peculiarly her own, and presented me as "Our child,--Fritz's daughter!"
The Countess gave me her hand, a round, fat little hand that felt as if her Swedish glove were stuffed with wadding, then put up her eyeglass and gazed at me, lifting her eyebrows the while.
"All her father!" she murmured,--"especially her profile." Then she dropped her eyeglass, sighed, "Poor Fritz! poor Fritz!" seated herself on the sofa with my aunt, and began to whisper to her, looking steadily at me all the while.
The sensitive irritability of my nature was at once aflame. If she had pitied my father only for being snatched away so early in his fair young life, for being torn so suddenly from those whom he loved! But this was not the case. She pitied him solely because he had married my mother. Oh, I knew it perfectly well; and she was whispering about it to my aunt before me,--she could not even wait until I should be away. I could hear almost every word.
My heart suddenly grew heavy,--so heavy with the old grief that I would fain forget, that I could hardly bear it. But even in the midst of my pain I observed that Harry was aware of my suffering and shared it.
Of course my cousin Zriny--for she is my cousin, after all--was otherwise extremely amiable to me. She turned from her mysterious conversation with Aunt Rosamunda, and addressed a couple of questions to me. She asked whether I liked country life, and when I replied, curtly, "I know no other," she laughed good-humouredly, just as some contented old monk might laugh,--a laugh that seemed to shake her fat sides and double chin, as she said, "Elle a de l'esprit, la petite; elle n'est pas du tout banale."
How she arrived at that conclusion from my brief reply, I am unable to say.
After a quarter of an hour she rose, took both my hands in hers by way of farewell, put her head on one side, sighed, "Poor Fritz!" and then kissed me.
When the door had closed behind her, my aunt betook herself to the next room to make ready for a projected evening walk.
I was left alone with Harry. As I could not restrain my tears, and did not know how else to conceal them, I turned my back to him and pretended to arrange my hair at the pier-glass, before which stood a vase filled with the La France roses that he had brought me the day before.
It was a silly thing to do. He looked over my shoulder and saw in the mirror the tears on my cheeks, and then--he put his arm around my waist and whispered, "You poor little goose! You sensitive little thing! Why should you grieve because a kindhearted, weak-minded old woman was silly?"
Then I could not help sobbing outright, crying, "Ah, it is always the same,--I know it! I am not like the other girls in your world. People despise me, and my poor mother too."
"But this is childish," he said, gravely,--"childish and foolish. No one despises you. And--don't scratch my eyes out, Zdena--it is not your heart, merely, that is wounded at present, but your vanity, the vanity of an inexperienced little girl who knows nothing of the world or of the people in it. If you had knocked about in it somewhat, you would know how little it signifies if people in general wink and nod, and that the only thing really to care for is, to be understood and loved by those to whom we cling with affection."
He said this more gently and kindly than I can write it. He suddenly seemed very far above me in his earnest kindness of heart and his sweet reasonableness. I was instantly possessed with a feeling akin to remorse and shame, to think how I had teased him and tyrannized over him all through those last few days. And I cannot tell how it happened, but he clasped me close in his arms and bent down and kissed me on the lips,--and I let him do it! Ah, such a thrill passed through me! And I felt sheltered and cared for as I had not done since my mother's clasping arms had been about me. I was for the moment above all petty annoyances,--borne aloft by a power I could not withstand.
It lasted but a moment, for we were startled by the silken rustle of my aunt's gown, and did he release me? did I leave him? I do not know; but when Aunt Rosamunda appeared I was adjusting a rose in my breast, and Harry was--looking for his sabre!----. (When the major reached this point, he stamped on the floor with delight.)
"Aha, Rosel, which of us was right?" he exclaimed aloud. He would have liked to summon his wife from where he could see her walking in the garden, to impart to her his glorious discovery. On reflection, however, he decided not to do so, chiefly because there was a good deal of manuscript still unread, and he was in a hurry to continue the perusal of what interested him so intensely.)
----I avoided being alone with Harry all the rest of the evening, but the next morning at the railway-station, while my aunt was nervously counting over the pieces of luggage for the ninety-ninth time, I could not prevent his leaning towards me and saying, "Zdena, we were so unfortunately interrupted last evening. You have not yet told me--that----"
I felt myself grow scarlet. "Wait for a while!" I murmured, turning my head away from him, but I think that perhaps--I pressed his hand----
I must have done so, for happier eyes than those which looked after our train as it sped away I have never seen. Ah, how silly I had been! I carried with me for the rest of the journey a decided regret.----
(The major frowned darkly. "Why, this looks as if she would like to withdraw her promise! But let me see, there really has no promise passed between them."
He glanced hurriedly over the following leaves. "Descriptions of travel--compositions," he muttered to himself. "Paris--variations upon Baedeker--the little goose begins to be tiresome----Ah, here is something about her parents' grave--poor thing! And here----" He began to read again.)
----A few hours after our arrival we drove to the graveyard at Montmartre, an ugly, gloomy graveyard, bordering directly upon a business-street, so that the noise and bustle of the city sound deafeningly where the dead are reposing. The paths are as straight as if drawn by a ruler, and upon the graves lie wreaths of straw flowers or stiff immortelles. These durable decorations seem to me heartless,--as if the poor dead were to be provided for once for all, since it might be tiresome to visit them often.
My parents' grave lies a little apart from the broad centre path, under a knotty old juniper-tree.
I heaped it with flowers, and amid the fresh blossoms I laid the roses, now faded, which Harry gave me yesterday when we parted.
I was enchanted with Paris. My aunt was delighted with the shops. She spent all her time in them, and thought everything very reasonable. At the end of four days she had bought so many reasonable articles that she had to purchase a huge trunk in which to take them home, and she had scarcely any money left.
She was convinced that she must have made some mistake in her accounts, and she worked over them half through an entire night, but with no consoling result.
The upshot of it was that she wanted to go home immediately; but since the trip had been undertaken chiefly for my health and was to end in a visit to some sea-side resort, she wrote to my uncle, explaining the state of affairs--that is, of her finances--and asking for a subsidy.
My uncle sent the subsidy, but requested us to leave Paris as soon as possible, and to choose a modest seaside resort.
The next day we departed from Babylon.
After inquiring everywhere, and studying the guidebook attentively, my aunt finally resolved to go to St. Valery.
The evening was cold and windy when we reached the little town and drew up in the omnibus before the Hôtel de la Plage.
The season had not begun, and the hotel was not actually open, but it received us.
As no rooms were taken, all were placed at our disposal, and we chose three in the first story, one for my aunt, one for me, and one for our trunks.
The furniture, of crazy old mahogany, had evidently been bought of some dealer in second-band furniture in Rouen, but the beds were extremely good, and the bed-linen, although "coarse as sacking," as Uncle Paul would have expressed it, was perfectly clean and white.
From our windows we looked out upon the sea and upon the little wooden hut where the safety-boat was kept, and also upon the little town park, about a hundred square yards in extent; upon the Casino, quite an imposing structure on the shore; upon the red pennons which, designating the bathing-place, made a brilliant show in the midst of the prevailing gray, and upon a host of whitewashed bath-houses waiting for the guests who had not yet arrived.
How indeed could they arrive? One had need to have come from Bohemia, not to go directly home, in such cold, damp weather as we had; but we wanted to get value from our expensive trip.
The Casino was no more open than the hotel, it was even in a decidednégligé, but it was busily dressing. A swarm of painters and upholsterers were decorating it. The upholsterers hung the inside with crimson, the painters coloured the outside red and white.
The proprietor, a broad-shouldered young man answering to the high-sounding name of Raoul Donval, daily superintended the work of the--artists. He always wore a white cap with a broad black visor, and a stick in the pocket of his short jacket, and plum-coloured knickerbockers; and I think he considered himself very elegant.
They were draping and beautifying and painting our hotel too. Everything was being painted instead of scrubbed,--the stairs, the doors, the floors; everywhere the dirt was hidden beneath the same dull-red colour. Aunt Rosa declared that they seemed to her to be daubing the entire house with blood. Just at this time she was wont to make most ghastly comparisons, because, for lack of other literature, she was reading an historical romance in thePetit Journal.
She was in a far more melancholy mood than I at St. Valery. Since it had to be, I made up my mind to it, consoling myself with the reflection that I was just nineteen, and that there was plenty of time for fate, if so minded, to shape my destiny brilliantly. Unfortunately, my aunt had not this consolation, but, instead, the depressing consciousness of having given up Bayreuth. It was hard. I was very sorry for her, and did all that I could to amuse her.
I could always find something to laugh at in our visits to the empty Casino and in our walks through the town, but instead of cheering her my merriment distressed her. She had seen in the French journal which she studied faithfully every day an account of a sensitive trombone-player at the famous yearly festival at Neuilly who had broken his instrument over the head of an arrogant Englishman who had allowed himself to make merry over some detail of the festival. Therefore I could scarcely smile in the street without having my aunt twitch my sleeve and say,--
"For heaven's sake don't laugh at these Frenchmen!--remember that trombone at Neuilly."
During the first fortnight I had the whole shore, with the bath-houses and bathing-men, entirely to myself. It was ghastly! The icy temperature of the water seemed to bite into my flesh, my teeth chattered, and the bather who held me by both my hands was as blue as his dress. Our mutual isolation had the effect of establishing a friendship between the bather and myself. He had formerly been a sailor, and had but lately returned from Tonquin; he told me much that was interesting about the war and the cholera. He was a good-looking fellow, with a fair complexion and a tanned face.
After my bath I ran about on the shore until I got warm, and then we breakfasted. My aunt did not bathe. She counted the days like a prisoner.
When the weather permitted, we made excursions into the surrounding country in a little wagon painted yellow, drawn by a shaggy donkey, which I drove myself. The donkey's name was Jeanne d'Arc,--which horrified my aunt,--and she had a young one six months old that ran after us as we drove along.
For more than two weeks we were the sole inmates of the Hôtel de la Plage. The manager of the establishment--who was likewise the head of the kitchen--drove to the station every day to capture strangers, but never brought any back.
I see him now,--short and enormously broad, with a triple or quadruple chin, sitting on the box beside the coachman, his hands on his thighs. He always wore sky-blue trousers, and a short coat buckled about him with a broad patent-leather belt. The chambermaid, who revered him, informed me that it was the dress of an English courier.
One day he brought back to the host, who daily awaited the guests, two live passengers,--an old woman and a young man.
The old woman was very poor, and took a garret room. She must have been beautiful formerly, and she looked very distinguished. She positively refused to write her name in the strangers' book. By chance we learned afterwards that she was a Comtesse d'Ivry, from Versailles, who had had great misfortunes. She had a passion for sunsets; every afternoon she had an arm-chair carried out on the shore, and sat there, wrapped in a thick black cloak, with her feet on a hot-water bottle, to admire the majestic spectacle. When it rained, she still persisted in going, and sat beneath a large ragged umbrella. Upon her return she usually sighed and told the host that the sunsets here were not nearly so fine as at Trouville,--appearing to think that this was his fault.
At last the weather brightened and it grew warm; the sun chased away the clouds, and allured a crowd of people to the lonely shore. And such people! I shudder to think of them.
We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.
The next day I took my last bath.
On our return journey, at Cologne, an odd thing happened.
It was early, and I was sleepy. I was waiting for breakfast in melancholy mood, and was contemplating a huge pile of elegant hand-luggage which a servant in a very correct dark suit was superintending, when two ladies, followed by a maid, made their appearance, one fair, the other dark, from the dressing-room, which had been locked in our faces. In honour of these two princesses we had been obliged to remain unwashed. Ah, how fresh and neat and pretty they both looked! The dark one was by far the handsomer of the two, but she looked gloomy and discontented, spoke never a word, and after a hurried breakfast became absorbed in a newspaper. The fair one, on the contrary, a striking creature, with a very large hat and a profusion of passementerie on her travelling-cloak, talked a great deal and very loudly to a short, fat woman who was going with her little son to Frankfort, and who addressed the blonde as "Frau Countess."
The name of the short woman was Frau Kampe, and the name of the Countess, which I shortly learned, shall be told in due time. The Countess complained of the fatigue of travelling; Frau Kampe, in a sympathetic tone, declared that it was almost impossible to sleep in the railway-carriages at this time of year, they were so overcrowded. But the Countess rejoined with a laugh,--
"We had as much room as we wanted all the way; my husband secures that by his fees. He is much too lavish, as I often tell him. Since I have been travelling with him we have always had two railway-carriages, one for me and my maid, and the other for him and his cigars. It has been delightful."
"Even upon your wedding tour?" asked her handsome, dark companion, looking up from her reading.
"Ha, ha, ha! Yes, even upon our wedding tour," said the other. "We were a very prosaic couple, entirely independent of each other,--quite an aristocratic match!" And she laughed again with much self-satisfaction.
"Where is the Herr Count?" asked Frau Kampe. "I should like to make his acquaintance."
"Oh, he is not often to be seen; he is smoking on the platform somewhere. I scarcely ever meet him; he never appears before the third bell has rung. A very aristocratic marriage, you see, Frau Kampe,--such a one as you read of."
The Countess's beautiful companion frowned, and the little Kampe boy grinned from ear to ear,--I could not tell whether it was at the aristocratic marriage or at the successful solution of an arithmetical problem which he had just worked out on the paper cover of one of Walter Scott's novels.
I must confess that I was curious to see the young husband who even upon his marriage journey had preferred the society of his cigars to that of his bride.
My aunt had missed the interesting conversation between Frau Kampe and her young patroness; she had rushed out to see the cathedral in the morning mist. I had manifested so little desire to join her in this artistic but uncomfortable enterprise that she had dispensed with my society. She now came back glowing with enthusiasm, and filled to overflowing with all sorts of information as to Gothic architecture.
Scarcely had she seated herself to drink the coffee which I poured out for her, when a tall young man, slightly stooping in his gait, and with a very attractive, delicately-chiselled face, entered. Was he not----? Well, whoever he was, he was the husband of the aristocratic marriage.
He exchanged a few words with the blonde Countess, and was about to leave the room, when his glance fell upon my aunt.
"Baroness, you here!--what a delight!" he exclaimed, approaching her hastily.
"Lato!" she almost screamed. She always talks a little loud away from home, which annoys me.
It was, in fact, our old friend Lato Treurenberg. Before she had been with him two minutes my aunt had forgotten all her prejudice against him since his marriage,--and, what was more, had evidently forgotten the marriage itself, for she whispered, leaning towards him with a sly twinkle of her eye and a nod in the direction of the ladies,--
"What noble acquaintances you have made!--from Frankfort, or Hamburg?"
My heart was in my mouth. No one except Aunt Rosamunda could have made such a blunder.
The words had hardly escaped her lips when she became aware of her mistake, and she was covered with confusion. Lato flushed scarlet. At that moment the departure of our train was announced, and Lato took a hurried leave of us. I saw him outside putting the ladies into a carriage, after which he himself got into another.
We travelled second-class, and therefore had the pleasure of sharing a compartment with the man-servant and maid of the Countess Lato Treurenberg.
My aunt took it all philosophically, while I, I confess, had much ado to conceal my ungrateful and mean irritation.
I succeeded, however; I do not think my aunt even guessed at my state of mind. She went to sleep; perhaps she dreamed of Cologne Cathedral. I--ah, I no longer dreamed; I had long since awakened from my dreams, and had rubbed my eyes and destroyed all my fine castles in the air.
The trip from which I had promised myself so much was over, and what had been effected? Nothing, save a more distinct appreciation of our straitened circumstances and an increase of my old gnawing discontent.
I recalled the delightful beginning of our trip, the long, dreamy summer days in Vienna, the evening at Schönbrunn. Again I saw about me the fragrant twilight, and heard, through the plash of fountains and the whispering of the linden leaves, the sound of distant military music. I saw Harry--good heavens! how plainly I saw him, with his handsome mouth, his large, serious eyes! How he used to look at me! And I recalled how beautiful the world had seemed to me then, so beautiful that I thought I could desire nothing better than to wander thus through life, leaning upon his arm in the odorous evening air, with the echo of distant military music in my ear.
Then ambition rose up before me and swept away all these lovely visions, showing me another picture,--Harry, borne down by cares, in narrow circumstances, his features sharpened by anxiety, with a pale, patient face, jesting bitterly, his uniform shabby, though carefully brushed. Ah, and should I not love him ten times more then than now! he would always be the same noble, chivalric----
But I could not accept such a sacrifice from him. I could not; it would be unprincipled. Specious phrases! What has principle to do with it? I do not choose to be poor--no, I will not be poor, and therefore I am glad that we were interrupted at the right moment in Vienna. He cannot possibly imagine--ah, if he had imagined anything he would have written to me, and we have not had a line from him since we left him. He would have regretted it quite as much as I, if----
It never would occur to him to resign all his grandfather's wealth for the sake of my golden hair. Young gentlemen are not given to such romantic folly nowadays; though, to be sure, he is not like the rest of them.
The result of all my reflections was an intense hatred for my grandfather, who tyrannized over me thus instead of allowing affairs to take their natural, delightful course; and another hatred, somewhat less intense, for the brewery, which had absorbed half of Uncle Paul's property,--that is, much more than would have been necessary to assure me a happy future. When I saw from the railway the brew-house chimney above the tops of the old lindens, I shook my fist at it.
My uncle was waiting for us at the station. He was so frankly rejoiced to have us back again that it cheered my heart. His eyes sparkled as he came to me after greeting my aunt. He gazed at me very earnestly, as if he expected to perceive some great and pleasant change in me, and then, putting his finger under my chin, turned my face from side to side. Suddenly he released me.
"You are even paler than you were before!" he exclaimed, turning away. He had expected the sea-bathing to work miracles.
"Do I not please you as I am, uncle dear?" I asked, putting my hand upon his arm. Then he kissed me; but I could see plainly that his pleasure was dashed.
Now we have been at home four days, and I am writing my memoirs, because I am tired of having nothing to do. It does not rain to-day; the sun is burning hot,--ah, how it parches the August grass! The harvest was poor, the rye-straw is short, and the grains of wheat are small. And everything was so promising in May! My uncle spends a great deal of time over his accounts.
August 8.
Something quite extraordinary has happened. We have a visitor, a cousin of Aunt Rosamunda's,--Baron Roderich Wenkendorf. He is a very amiable old gentleman, about forty-five years old. He interests himself in everything that interests me,--even in Carlyle's 'French Revolution,' only he cannot bear it. Moreover, he is a Wagnerite; that is his only disagreeable characteristic. Every day he plays duets with Aunt Rosamunda from the 'Götterdämmerung,' which makes Uncle Paul and Morl nervous. Besides, he paints, of course only for pleasure, but very ambitiously. Last year he exhibited one of his pictures in Vienna--Napoleon at St. Helena--no, Charles the Fifth in the cloister. I remember, he cannot endure the Corsican upstart. He declares that Napoleon had frightful manners. We had a dispute about it. We often quarrel; but he entertains me, he pleases me, and so, perhaps----
August 10.
It might be worth while to take it into consideration. For my sake he would take up his abode in Bohemia. I do not dislike him, and my aunt says that marry whom you will you can never get used to him until after marriage. Harry and I should always be just the same to each other; he would always be welcome as a brother in our home, of course. I cannot really see why people must marry because they love each other.
When the major reached this point in his niece's memoirs, he rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "H'm!" he murmured; "why must people marry because they love each other? By Jove! On the whole, it is well that I now have some idea of what is going on in that insane little head." After this wise the major quieted his scruples as to the unpardonable indiscretion he had committed.
The reading of Zdena's extraordinary production had so absorbed his attention that he had failed to hear the approach of some heavy vehicle which had drawn up before the castle, or the rhythmic beat of the hoofs of two riding-horses. Now he was suddenly startled by a firm step to the accompaniment of a low jingling sound in the corridor outside his room-door, at which there came a knock.
"Come in!" he called out.
A young officer of hussars in a blue undress uniform entered.
"Harry! is it you?" the major exclaimed, cordially. "Let me have a look at you! What has put it into your head to drop down upon us so unexpectedly, like thedeus ex machinâin the fifth act of a melodrama?"
The young fellow blushed slightly. "I wanted to surprise you," he said, laughing, in some confusion.
"And you will stay a while with us? How long is your leave?"
"Six weeks."
"That's right. And you're glad to be at home once more?" said the major, smiling broadly, and rubbing his hands.
He seemed to his nephew to be ratherdistrait, which he certainly was, for all the while he was thinking of matters of which no mention was made.
"My uncle has either been taking a glass too much or he has drawn the first prize in a lottery," Harry thought to himself as he said, aloud, "Hedwig has just come over, and Aunt Melanie."
"Ah, the Zriny: has she quartered herself upon you?" the major asked, with something of a drawl.
"I escorted her here from Vienna. Aunt Rosamunda deputed me to inform you of our relative's arrival, and to beg you to come immediately to the drawing-room."
"H'm, h'm!--I'll go, I'll go," murmured the major, and he left the room apparently not very well pleased. In the corridor he suddenly turned to his nephew, who was following at his heels. "Have you seen Zdena yet?" he asked, with a merry twinkle of his eye.
"N--o."
"Well, go find her."
"Where shall I look for her?"
"In the garden, in the honeysuckle arbour. She is posing for her elderly adorer that he may paint her as Zephyr, or Flora, or something of the kind."
"Her elderly adorer? Who is he?" Harry asked, with a frown, his voice sounding hard and sharp.
"A cousin of my wife's, Baron Wenkendorf is his name, an enormously rich old bachelor, and head over ears in love with our girl. He calls himself a painter, in spite of his wealth, and he has induced the child to stand for some picture for him. He makes love to her, I suppose, while she poses."
"And she--what has she to say to his homage?" asked Harry, feeling as if some one were choking him.
"Oh, she's tolerably condescending. She does not object to being made love to a little. He is an agreeable man in spite of his forty-six years, and it certainly would be an excellent match."
As the major finished his sentence with an expression of countenance which Harry could not understand, the paths of the two men separated. Harry hurried down into the garden; the major walked along the corridor to the drawing-room door.
"H'm! I have warmed him up," the major said to himself; "'twill do no harm if they quarrel a little, those two children: it will bring the little goose to her senses all the sooner. There is onlyonehealthy solution for the entire problem. You----!" he shook his forefinger at the empty air. "Why must people marry because they love each other? Only wait, you ultrasensible little goose; I will remind you of that one of these days."
Meanwhile, Harry has rushed out into the garden. He is very restless, very warm, very much agitated. It never occurs to him that his uncle has been chaffing him a little; he cannot suspect that the major has any knowledge of his sentiments.
"She cannot be so worthless!" he consoles himself by reflecting, while his eyes search for her in the distance.
With this thought filling his mind, the young officer hurries on. He does not find her at first; she is not in the honeysuckle arbour.
The sultriness of the August afternoon weighs upon the dusty vegetation of the late summer. The leaves of the trees and shrubs droop wearily; the varied luxuriance of bloom is past; the first crop of roses has faded, the next has not yet arrived at maturity. Only a few red verbenas and zinnias gleam forth from the dull green monotony.
At a turn of the path Harry suddenly starts, and pauses,--he has found what he is looking for.
Directly in the centre of the hawthorn-bordered garden-path there is an easel weighted with an enormous canvas, at which, working away diligently, stands a gentleman, of whom Harry can see nothing but a slightly round-shouldered back, the fluttering ribbons of a Scotch cap set on the back of a head covered with short gray hair, and a gigantic palette projecting beyond the left elbow; while at some distance from the easel, clearly defined against the green background, stands a tall, graceful, maidenly figure draped in a loose, fantastic robe, her arms full of wild poppies, a large hat wreathed with vine-leaves on her small head, her golden-brown hair loose upon her shoulders,--Zdena! Her eyes meet Harry's: she flushes crimson,--the poppies slip from her arms and fall to the ground.
"You here!" she murmurs, confusedly, staring at him. She can find no more kindly words of welcome, and her face expresses terror rather than joyful surprise, as a far less sharp-sighted lover than Harry Leskjewitsch could not fail to observe.
He makes no reply to her words, but says, bluntly, pointing to the artist at the easel, "Be kind enough to introduce me."
With a choking sensation in her throat, and trembling lips, Zdena stammers the names of her two adorers, the old one and the young one. The gentlemen bow,--Harry with angry formality, Baron Wenkendorf with formal amiability.
"Aunt Rosa tells me to ask you to come to the drawing-room," Harry says, dryly.
"Have any guests arrived?" asks Zdena.
"Only my sister and Aunt Zriny."
"Oh, then I must dress myself immediately!" she exclaims, and before Harry is aware of it she has slipped past him and into the house.
Baron Wenkendorf pushes his Scotch cap a little farther back from his forehead, which gives his face a particularly amazed expression, and gazes with the same condescending benevolence, first at the vanishing maidenly figure, and then at the picture on the easel; after which he begins to put up his painting-materials. Harry assists him to do so, but leaves the making of polite remarks entirely to the "elderly gentleman." He is not in the mood for anything of the kind. He sees everything at present as through dark, crimson glass.
Although Zdena's distress arises from a very different cause from her cousin's, it is none the less serious.
"Oh, heavens!" she thinks to herself, as she hurries to her room to arrange her dishevelled hair, "why must he come before I have an answer ready? He surely will not insist upon an immediate decision! It would be terrible! Anything but a forced decision; that is the worst thing in the world."
Such, however, does not seem to be the opinion of her hot-blooded cousin. When, a quarter of an hour afterwards, she goes out into the corridor and towards the drawing-room door, she observes a dark figure standing in the embrasure of a window. The figure turns towards her, then approaches her.
"Harry! ah!" she exclaims, with a start; "what are you doing here? Are you waiting for anybody?"
"Yes," he replies, with some harshness, "for you!"
"Ah!" And, without looking at him, she hurries on to the door of the drawing-room.
"There is no one there," he informs her; "they have all gone to the summer-house in the garden. Wenkendorf proposes to read aloud the libretto of 'Parzifal.'" He pauses.
"And did you stay here to tell me this?" she stammers, trying to pass him, on her way to the steps leading into the garden. "It was very kind of you; you seem destined to play the part of sheep-dog to-day, to drive the company together."
They go into the garden, and the buzz of voices reaches their ears from the summer-house. They have turned into a shady path, above which arches the foliage of the shrubs on either side. Suddenly Harry pauses, and seizing his cousin's slender hands in both his own, he gazes steadily and angrily into her eyes, saying, in a suppressed voice,--
"Zdena, how can you hurt me so?"
Her youthful blood pulsates almost as fiercely as does his own; now, when the moment for an explanation has come, and can no longer be avoided, now, one kind word from him, and all the barriers which with the help of pure reason she has erected to shield her from the insidious sweetness of her dreams will crumble to dust. But Harry does not speak this word: he is far too agitated to speak it. Instead of touching her heart, his harshness irritates her pride. Throwing back her head, she darts an angry glance at him from her large eyes.
"I do not know what you mean."
"I mean that you are letting that old coxcomb make love to you," he murmurs, angrily.
She lifts her eyebrows, and replies, calmly, "Yes!"
The young officer continues to gaze searchingly into her face.
"You are thoughtless," he says, slowly, with emphasis. "In your eyes Wenkendorf is an old man; but he does not think himself so old as you think him, and--and----" Suddenly, his forced composure giving way, he bursts forth: "At the least it is ridiculous! it is silly to behave as you are doing!"
In the entire dictionary Harry could have found no word with which to describe Zdena's conduct that would have irritated her more than "silly." If he had called her unprincipled, devilish, odious, cruel, she could have forgiven him; but "silly!"--that word she never can forgive; it makes her heart burn and smart as salt irritates an open wound.
"I should like to know by what right you call me thus to account!" she exclaims, indignantly.
"By what right?" he repeats, beside himself. "Can you ask that?"
She taps the gravel of the pathway defiantly with her foot and is obstinately silent.
"What did you mean by your treatment of me in Vienna? what did you mean by all your loving looks and kind words? what did you mean when you--on the evening before you left----"
Zdena's face is crimson, her cheeks and ears burn with mortification.
"We grew up together like brother and sister," she murmurs. "I have always considered you as a brother----"
"Ah, indeed! a brother!" His pulses throb wildly; his anger well-nigh makes him forget himself. Suddenly an ugly idea occurs to him,--an odious suspicion. "Perhaps you were not aware there in Vienna that by a marriage with you I should resign my brilliant prospects?"
They confront each other, stiff, unbending, both angry, each more ready to offend than to conciliate.
Around them the August heat broods over the garden; the bushes, the flowers, the shrubbery, all cast black shadows upon the smooth-shaven, yellowing grass, where here and there cracks in the soil are visible. Everything is quiet, but in the distance can be heard the gardener filling his large watering-can at the pump, and the jolting along the road outside the garden of the heavy harvest-wagons laden with grain.
"Did you know it then?" he asks again, more harshly, more contemptuously.
Of course she knew it, quite as well as she knows it now; but what use is there in her telling him so, when he asks her about it in such a tone?
Instead of replying, she frowns haughtily and shrugs her shoulders.
For one moment more he stands gazing into her face; then, with a bitter laugh, he turns from her and strides towards the summer-house.
"Harry!" she calls after him, in a trembling undertone, but his blood is coursing too hotly in his veins--he does not hear her. Although he is one of the softest-hearted of men, he is none the less one of the most quick-tempered and obstinate.
We leave it to the reader to judge whether the major would have been very well satisfied with this result of his cunning diplomacy.
Whilst the two young people have been thus occupied in playing at hide-and-seek with their emotions and sentiments, the little summer-house, where the reading was to be held, has been the scene of a lively dispute. Countess Zriny and Baron Wenkendorf have made mutual confession of their sentiment with regard to Wagner.
The Countess is a vehement opponent of the prophet of Bayreuth, in the first place because in her youth she was a pupil of Cicimara's and consequently cannot endure the 'screaming called singing' introduced by Wagner; secondly, because Wagner's operas always give her headache; and thirdly, because she has noticed that his operas are sure to exercise an immoral influence upon those who hear them.
Wenkendorf, on the contrary, considers Wagner a great moral reformer, the first genius of the century in Germany,--Bismarck, of course, excepted. As he talks he holds in his hand the thick volume of Wagner's collected librettos, with his forefinger on the title-page of 'Parzifal,' impatiently awaiting the moment when he can begin to read aloud.
Hitherto, since the Countess and Wenkendorf are both well-bred people, their lively dispute has been conducted in rather a humorous fashion, but finally Wenkendorf suggests a most reprehensible and, in the eyes of the Countess, unpardonable idea.
"Whatever may be thought of Wagner's work, it cannot be denied," he says, with an oratorical flourish of his hand, "that he is at the head of the greatest musical revolution ever known; that he has, so to speak, delivered music from conventional Catholicism, overladen as it is with all sorts of silly old-world superstition. He is, if I may so express myself, the Luther of music."
At the word 'Luther,' uttered in raised tones, the bigoted Countess nearly faints away. In her eyes, Luther is an apostate monk who married a nun, a monster whom she detests.
"Oh, if you so compare him, Wagner is indeed condemned!" she exclaims, flushing with indignation, and trembling through all her mass of flesh.
At this moment Zdena and her cousin enter. Countess Zriny feels it her duty to embrace the girl patronizingly. Hedwig says something to her about her new gown.
"Did you get it in Paris?" she asks. "I saw one like it in Vienna last summer,--but it is very pretty. You carry yourself much better than you used to, Zdena,--really a great improvement!--a great improvement!"
At last all are seated. Baron Wenkendorf clears his throat, and opens the portly volume.
"Now we can begin," Frau Rosamunda observes.
The Baron begins. He reads himself into a great degree of enthusiasm, and is just pronouncing the words,--