It is the day after Treurenberg's meeting with Harry in the dusty little garrison town.
Lato is sitting at his writing-table, counting a package of bank-notes,--his yesterday's winnings. He divides them into two packets and encloses them in two letters, which he addresses and seals and sends by a servant to the post. He has thus wiped out two old debts. No sooner have the letters left his hand than he brushes his fingers with his handkerchief, as if he had touched something unclean.
Poor Treurenberg! He has never been a spendthrift, but he has been in debt ever since his boyhood. His pecuniary circumstances, however, have never been so oppressive, never have there been such disagreeable complications in his affairs, as since he has had a millionaire for a wife.
He leans his elbows on his writing-table and rests his chin on his hands. Angry discontent with himself is tugging at his nerves. Is it not disgusting to liquidate an old debt to his tailor, and to pay interest to a usurer, with his winnings at play? What detestable things cards are! If he loses he hates it, and if he wins--why, it gives him a momentary satisfaction, but his annoyance at having impoverished a friend or an acquaintance is all the greater afterwards. Every sensible disposition of the money thus won seems to him most inappropriate. Money won at cards should be scattered about, squandered; and yet how can he squander it,--he who has so little and needs so much? How often he has resolved never to touch cards again! If he only had some strong, sacred interest in life he might become absorbed in it, and so forget the cursed habit. He has not the force of character that will enable him to sacrifice his passion for play to an abstract moral idea. His is one of those delicate but dependent natures that need a prop in life, and he has never had one, even in childhood.
"What is the use of cudgelling one's brains till they ache, about what cannot be helped?" he says at last, with a sigh, "or which I at least cannot help," he adds, with a certain bitterness of self-accusation. He rises, takes his hat, and strolls out into the park. A huge, brown-streaked stag-hound, which had belonged to the old proprietor of the castle and which has dogged Lato's heels since the previous evening, follows him. From time to time he turns and strokes the animal's head. Then he forgets----
At the same time, Paula is sitting in her study, on the ground-floor. It looks out on the court-yard, and is hung with sad-coloured leather, and decorated with a couple of good old pictures. She is sitting there clad in a very modern buff muslin gown, with a fiery red sash, listening for sounds without and with head bent meanwhile over Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet.'
The noise of distant hoofs falls upon her ear, and a burning blush suffuses her plump cheek. Upon the white shade, which is pulled down, falls the shadow of a horse's head, and then the upper portion of his rider's figure. The hoofs no longer sound. Through the sultry summer stillness--breaking the monotonous plashing of the fountain and the murmur of the old linden--is heard the light, firm pat of a masculine hand upon a horse's neck, the caress with which your true horseman thanks his steed for service rendered; then an elastic, manly tread, the clatter of spurs and sabre, a light knock at the door of Paula's room, and Harry Leskjewitsch enters.
Paula, with a smile, holds out to him both her hands; without smiling he dutifully kisses one of them.
A pair of lovers in Meissen porcelain stands upon a bracket above Paula's writing-table,--lovers who have been upon the point of embracing each other for something more than a century. Above their heads hovers a tiny ray of sunshine, which attracts Harry's attention to the group. He and Paula fall into the very same attitudes as those taken by the powdered dandy in the flowered jacket and the little peasant-girl in dancing-slippers,--they are on the point of embracing; and for the first time in his life Harry wishes he were made of porcelain, that he might remain upon the point.
His betrothal is now eight days old. The first day he thought it would be mere child's play to loosen the knot tied by so wild a chance, but now he feels himself fast bound, and is conscious that each day casts about him fresh fetters. In vain, with every hour passed with his betrothed, does he struggle not to plunge deeper into this labyrinth, from which he can find no means of extricating himself. In vain does he try to enlighten Paula as to his sentiments towards her by a stiff, repellent demeanour, never lying to her by look, word, or gesture.
But what does it avail him to stand before her like a saint on a pedestal? Before he is aware, she has drawn his head towards her and kissed him on both eyes, whereupon both lovers sigh,--each for a different reason,--and then sit down opposite each other. Paula, however, does not long endure such formality. She moves her chair closer to his, and at last lays her hand on the young officer's shoulder.
Harry is positively wretched. No use to attempt to deceive himself any longer: Paula Harfink is in love with him.
Although she brought about the betrothal by means of cool cunning and determination, daily intercourse with the handsome, chivalric young fellow has kindled a flame in her mature heart, and her passion for him grows with every hour passed in his society.
It is useless to say how little this circumstance disposes him in her favour. Love is uncommonly unbecoming to Paula. It is impossible to credit her with the impulse that forgets self and the world, or with the amount of ideal stupidity which invests all the nonsense of lovers with grace and naturalness. Involuntarily, every one feels inclined to smile when so robust and enlightened a woman--enlightened in all directions--suddenly languishes, and puts on the semblance of ultra-feminine weakness. Harry alone does not smile; he takes the matter very tragically.
Sometimes, in deep privacy he clinches his fist and mentally calls his betrothed "a love-sick dromedary!"
Naturally he does not utter such words aloud, not even when he is alone in his room, not even in the dark; but--thought is free!
"What have you been doing all this time?" Paula asks at last, archly, thus breaking the oppressive silence.
"This time? Do you mean since yesterday?" he asks, frowning.
"It seemed long to me," she sighs. "I--I wrote you a letter, which I had not the courage to send you. There, take it with you!" And she hands him a bulky manuscript in a large envelope. It is not the first sizable billet-doux which she has thus forced upon him. In a drawer of his writing-table at Komaritz there reposes a pile of such envelopes, unopened.
"Have you read the English novel I sent you yesterday?--wonderful, is it not?--hero and heroine so like ourselves."
"I began it. I thought it rather shallow."
"Oh, well, I do not consider it a learned work. I never care for depth in a novel,--only love and high life. Shall we go on with our Shakespeare?" she asks.
"If you choose. What shall we read?"
"The moonlight scene from Romeo and Juliet."
Harry submits.
Meanwhile, Lato, with his brown attendant, wanders along the shady paths of the Dobrotschau park. Now and then he pays some attention to his shaggy companion, strokes his head, sends him after a stick, and finally has him take a bath in the little reed-encircled lake on the shores of which stand weather-stained old statues, while stately swans are gliding above its green depths. These last indignantly chase the clumsy intruder from their realm.
"Poor fellow! they will have none of you!" Treurenberg murmurs, consoling the dog as he creeps out upon the bank with drooping tail and ears.
Suddenly he hears the notes of a piano from the direction of the castle. He turns and walks towards it, almost as if he were obeying a call.
Pausing before an open glass door leading into the garden, he looks in upon a spacious, airy apartment, the furniture of which consists of a large Gobelin hanging, a grand piano, and some bamboo chairs scattered about.
At the piano a young girl is seated playing a dreamy improvisation upon 'The Miller and the Brook,' that loveliest and saddest of all Schubert's miller-songs. It is Olga. Involuntarily Lato's eyes are riveted upon the charming picture. The girl is tall and slim, with long, slender hands and feet. If one might venture to criticise anything so beautiful as her face, its pure oval might be pronounced a thought too long.
Her features are faultless, despite their irregularity; the forehead is low, the eyebrows straight and delicately pencilled, the eyes large and dark, and, when she opens them wide, of almost supernatural brilliancy. The mouth is small, the under lip a trifle too full, and the chin a little too long.
Those irregularities lend a peculiar charm to the face, reminding one of certain old Spanish family portraits,--dark-eyed beauties with high collars, and with huge pearls in their ears. The facts that Olga neither wears a bang nor curls her hair upon her forehead, but has it parted simply in the middle to lie in thick waves on either side of her head, and that her complexion is of a transparent pallor, contribute still further to her resemblance to those distinguished individuals. She wears a simple white gown, with a Malmaison rose stuck in her belt. Lato's eyes rest upon her with artistic satisfaction. The tender melody of the Miller's Song soothes his sore heart as if by a caress. He softly enters the room, sits down, and listens. Olga, suddenly aware by intuition of his presence, turns her head.
"Ah!--you here?" she exclaims, blushing slightly, and taking her hands from the keys.
"I have made so bold," he replies, smiling. "Have you any objection?"
"No; but you should have announced yourself," she says, with a little frown.
"Ah, indeed!" he rejoins, in the tone in which one teases a child. "Well, the listening to a musical soliloquy is generally considered only a harmless indiscretion."
"Yes; when I am playing something worth listening to I have no objection, but I prefer to keep my halting improvisations to myself."
"Well, then, play something worth listening to," he says, good-humouredly.
She turns again to the instrument, and begins, with great brilliancy of touch, to play a bravura-scherzo, by some Viennese composer at present in fashion.
"For heaven's sake," Treurenberg, whose feeling for music is as delicate as his appreciation of all beauty, interrupts her, "do not go on with that ghastly Witches' Sabbath!"
"The 'ghastly Witches' Sabbath' is dedicated to your cousin, Countess Wodin," Olga replies, taking up a piece of music from the piano. "There it is!" she points to the title-page "'Dedicated to the Frau Countess Irma Wodin,néeCountess Trauenstein, by her devoted servant, etc.' I thought the thing might interest you."
"Not in the least. Be a good girl, and play the Miller's Song over again."
She nods amiably. Again the dreamy melody sighs among the strings of the piano. Lato, buried in thought, hums the words,--
"Where'er a true heart dies of love,The lilies fade that grave above."
"Where'er a true heart dies of love,The lilies fade that grave above."
"Do you know the words too?" Olga exclaims, turning towards him.
"If you but knew how often I have heard that song sung!" he replies, with the absent air of a man whose thoughts are straying in a far past.
"At concerts?"
"No, in private."
"By a lady?" she asks, half persistently, half hesitatingly.
"Yes, grand inquisitor, by a lady; by a lady for whom I had a littletendresse--h'm!--a very sinceretendresse. She sang it to me every day. The very evening before her betrothal she sang it to me; and how deliciously sweet it was! Would you like to know who it was?"
"Yes."
"The Countess Wodin."
"The Countess Wodin!" Olga exclaims, amazed.
Lato laughs. "You cannot understand how any one could take any interest in such a flirt?"
"Oh, no," she says, thoughtfully, "it is not that. She is very pretty even yet, and gay and amusing, but--he is horrible, and I cannot understand her marrying him, when----"
"When she might have had me?" he concludes her sentence, laughing.
"Frankly, yes." As she speaks she looks full in his face with undisguised kindliness.
He smiles, flattered, and still more amused. "What would you have? Wodin was rich, and I--I was a poor devil."
"Oh, how odious!" she murmurs, frowning, her dark eyes glowing with indignation. "I cannot understand how any one can marry for money----" She stops short. As she spoke her eyes met his, and his were instantly averted. An embarrassing pause ensues.
Olga feels that she is upon dangerous ground. They both change colour,--he turns pale, she blushes,--but her embarrassment is far greater than his. When he looks at her again he sees that there are tears in her eyes, and he pities her.
"Do not vex yourself, Olga," he says, with a low, bitter laugh. And taking one of her slender hands in his, he strokes it gently, and then carries it to his lips.
"Ah, stillaux petits soins?--how touching!" a harsh nasal voice observes behind the pair. They look round and perceive a young man, who, in spite of his instant apology for intruding, shows not the slightest disposition to depart. He is dressed in a light summer suit after the latest watering-place fashion. He is neither tall nor short, neither stout nor slender, neither handsome nor ugly, but thoroughly unsympathetic in appearance. His very pale complexion is spotted with a few pock-marks; his light green eyes are set obliquely in his head, like those of a Japanese; the long, twisted points of his moustache reach upward to his temples, and his hair is brushed so smoothly upon his head that it looks like a highly-polished barber's block. But all these details are simply by the way; what especially disfigures him is his smile, which shows his big white teeth, and seems to pull the end of his long, thin nose down over his moustache.
"Fainacky!" exclaims Treurenberg, unpleasantly surprised.
"Yes, the same! I am charmed to see you again, Treurenberg," exclaims the Pole. "Have the kindness to present me to your wife," he adds, bowing to Olga.
"I think my wife is dressing," Treurenberg says, coldly. "This is a young relative,--a cousin of my wife's.--Olga, allow me to introduce to you Count Fainacky."
In the mean time Paula is occupied with her betrothed's education. In tones that grow drowsier and drowsier, while his articulation becomes more and more indistinct, Harry stumbles through Shakespeare's immortal verse.
Paula's part is given with infinite sentiment. The thing is growing too tiresome, Harry thinks.
"I really have had enough of this stuff for once!" he exclaims, laying aside his volume.
"Ah, Harry, how can you speak so of the most exquisite poetry of love that ever has been written?"
He twirls his moustache ill-humouredly, and murmurs, "You are very much changed within the last few days."
"But not for the worse?" she asks, piqued.
"At last she is going to take offence," he says to himself, exultantly, and he is beginning to finger his betrothal-ring, when the door opens and a servant announces, "Herr Count Fainacky."
"How well you look, my dear Baroness Paula! Ah, the correct air, beaming with bliss,--on connaît cela!Taking advantage of your Frau mother's kind invitation, I present myself, as you see, without notification," the Pole chatters on. "How are you, Harry? In the seventh heaven, of course,--of course." And he drops into an arm-chair and fans himself with a pink-bordered pocket-handkerchief upon which are depicted various jockeys upon race-horses, and which exhales a strong odour of musk.
"I am extremely glad to see you," Paula assures the visitor. "I hope you have come to stay some days with us. Have you seen mamma yet?"
"No." And Fainacky fans himself yet more affectedly. "I wandered around the castle at first without finding any one to announce me. Then I had an adventure,--ha, ha!C'est par trop bête!"
"What was it?"
"In my wanderings I reached an open door into a room looking upon the garden. There I found Treurenberg and a young lady,--only fancy,--I thought it was his wife. I took that--what is her name?--Olga--yourprotégée--for your sister,--for the Countess Selina, and begged Treurenberg to present me to his wife,--ha, ha!Vraiment c'est par trop bête!"
At this moment a tall, portly figure, with reddish hair, dazzling complexion, and rather sharp features, sails into the room.
"Here is my sister," says Paula, and a formal introduction follows.
"Before seeing the Countess Selina I thought my mistake only comical. I now think it unpardonable!" Fainacky exclaims, with his hand on his heart. "Harry, did the resemblance never strike you?" He gazes in a rapture of admiration at the Countess.
"What resemblance?" asks Harry.
"Why, the resemblance to the Princess of Wales."
"And pray who is Fräulein Olga?"
It is Fainacky who puts this question to the Countess Treurenberg, just after luncheon, during which meal he has contrived to ingratiate himself thoroughly with Lato's wife.
He and the Countess are seated beneath a red-and-gray-striped tent on the western side of the castle; beside them stands a table from which the coffee has not yet been removed. The rest of the company have vanished.
The Baroness Harfink is writing a letter to her brother, one of the leaders of the Austrian democracy, who was once minister for three months; Paula and Harry are enjoying atête-à-têtein the park, and Treurenberg is taking advantage of the strong sunlight to photograph alternately and from every point of view a half-ruinous fountain and two hollyhocks.
"Pray who is this Fräulein Olga?" Fainacky asks, removing the ashes from the end of his cigarette with the long finger-nail of his little finger.
"Ah, it is quite a sad story," is the Countess Selina's reply.
"Excuse me if I am indiscreet; I had no idea----" the Pole begins.
"Oh, you are one of the family, quite one of the family," Selina assures him, with an amiable smile. "I might have thought the question embarrassing from any one else, but I can speak to you without reserve of these matters. You are perhaps aware that a sister of my father's,--is only sister,--when quite an old maid,--I believe she was thirty-seven,--ran off with an actor, a very obscure comedian; I think he played the elderly knights at the Rudolfsheim Theatre, and as the bandit Jaromir he turned her head. She displayed thecourage de ses opinions, and married him. He treated her brutally, and she died, after fifteen years of wretched married life. On her death-bed she sent for my father, and bequeathed her daughter to his care. This was Olga. My father--I cannot tell how it happened--took the most immense fancy to the girl. He tried to persuade mamma to take her home immediately. Fancy! a creature brought up amid such surroundings, behind the foot-lights. True, my aunt was separated from her bandit Jaromir for several years before her death; but under such strange circumstances mamma really could not take the little gypsy into the house with her own half-grown daughters. So she was sent to a convent, and we all hoped she would become a nun. But no; and when her education was finished, shortly before papa's death, mamma took her home. I was married at the time, and I remember her arrival vividly. You can imagine how terrible it was for us to admit so strange an element among us. But, although he seldom interfered in domestic affairs, it was impossible to dispute papa's commands."
"H'm, h'm!" And the Pole's slender white fingers drum upon the top of the table. "Je comprends. It is a great charge for your mother, andc'est bien dur." Although he speaks French stumblingly, he continually expresses himself in that tongue, as if it is the only one in which he can give utterance to the inmost feelings of his soul.
"Ah, mamma has always sacrificed everything to duty!" sighs Selina; "and somebody had to take pity upon the poor creature."
"Nobly said, and nobly thought, Countess Selina; but then, after all,--an actor's daughter,--you really do not know all that it means. Does she show no signs of her unfortunate parentage?"
"No," says Selina, thoughtfully; "her manners are very good, the spell of the Sacré Cœur Convent is still upon her. She is not particularly well developed intellectually, but, since you call my attention to it, she does show some signs of the overstrained enthusiasm which characterized her mother."
"And in combination with her father's gypsy blood. Such signs are greatly to be deplored," the Pole observes. "You must long to have her married?"
"A difficult matter to bring about. Remember her origin." The Countess inclines her head on one side, and takes a long stitch in her embroidery. "She must be the image of her father. The bandit Jaromir was a handsome man of Italian extraction."
"Is the fellow still alive?" asks the Pole.
"No, he is dead, thank heaven! it would be terrible if he were not," says Selina, with a laugh. "À propos," she adds, selecting and comparing two shades of yellow, "do you think Olga pretty?"
"H'm!pas mal,--not particularly. Had I seen her anywhere else, I might perhaps have thought her pretty, but here--forgive my frankness, Countess Selina--no other woman has a chance when you are present. You must be conscious of that yourself."
"Vil flatteur!" the young wife exclaims, playfully lashing the Pole's hand with a skein of wool. The pair have known each other for scarcely three hours, and they are already upon as familiar a footing as if they had been friends from childhood. Moreover, they are connections. At Carlsbad, where Fainacky lately made the acquaintance of the Baroness Harfink and her daughter Paula, he informed the ladies that one of his grandmothers, a Löwenzahn by birth, was cousin to an uncle of the Baroness's.
The persistence with which he dwelt upon this fact, the importance he attached to being treated as a cousin by the Harfinks, touched Paula as well as her mother. Besides, as they had already told Selina, they liked him from the first.
"One is never ashamed to be seen with him," was the immediate decision of the fastidious ladies; and as time passed on they discovered in him such brilliant and unusual qualities that they considered him a great acquisition,--an entertaining, cultivated man of some talent.
He is neither cultivated nor entertaining, and as for his talent, that is a matter of opinion. If his singing is commonplace, his performance on the piano commonplace, and thevers de sociétéwhich he scribbles in young ladies' extract-books more commonplace than all, in one art he certainly holds the first rank,--the art of discovering and humouring the weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, the art of the flatterer.
To pursue this art with distinguished ability two qualifications are especially needful,--impudence and lack of refinement. With the help of these allies the strongest incense may be wafted before one's fellow-creatures, and they will all--with the exception of a few suspicious originals--inhale it eagerly. Experience has taught Fainacky that boldness is of far more avail in this art than delicacy, and he conducts himself accordingly.
Flattery is his special profession, his means for supporting his idle, coxcomb existence,--flattery and its sister art, slander. A successful epigram at another's expense gives many of us more pleasure than a compliment paid to ourselves.
He flutters, flattering and gossiping, from one house to another. The last few weeks he has spent with a bachelor prince in the neighbourhood, who, a sufferer from neuralgia in the face, has been known, when irritated, to throw the sofa-cushions at his guests. At first Fainacky professed to consider this a very good joke; but one day when the prince showed signs of selecting more solid projectiles for the display of his merry humour, Fainacky discovered that the time had come for him to bestow the pleasure of his society elsewhere.
Dobrotschau seemed to offer just what he sought, and he has won his hostess's heart a second time by his abuse during luncheon of his late host's cook.
While he is now paying court to the Countess Selina, a touching scene is enacting in another part of the garden. Paula, who during her walk with her betrothed has perceived Treurenberg with his photographic apparatus in the distance, proposes to Harry that they be photographed as lovers. The poor young fellow's resistance avails nothing against Paula's strong will. She triumphantly drags him up before the apparatus, and, after much trying, discovers a pose which seems to her sufficiently tender. With her clasped hands upon Harry's shoulder, she gazes up at him with enthusiastic devotion.
"Do not look so stern," she murmurs; "if I did not know how you love me, I should almost fancy you hated me."
Lato, half shutting his eyes in artistic observation of the pair, takes off the shield of the instrument, saying, "Now, if you please!"
The impression is a failure, because Harry moved his head just at the critical moment. When, however, Paula requires him to give pantomimic expression to his tender sentiments for the second time, he declares that he cannot stay three minutes longer, the 'vet' is waiting for him at Komaritz.
"Oh, that odious 'vet'!" sighs Paula. "This is the third time this week that you have had to leave me because of him."
Harry bites his lip. Evidently it is high time to invent another pretext for the unnatural abbreviation of his visits. But--if she would only take offence at something!
"Can you not come with me to Komaritz?" he asks Lato, in order to give the conversation a turn, whereupon Lato, who instantly accedes to his request, hurries into the castle to make ready for his ride. Shortly afterwards, riding-whip in hand, he approaches Selina, who is still beneath the red-and-gray tent with Fainacky.
"Ah, you are going to leave me alone again, faithless spouse that you are!" she calls out, threatening him with a raised forefinger. Then, turning to the Pole, she adds, "Our marriage is a fashionable one, such as you read of in books: the husband goes one way, the wife another. 'Tis the only way to make life tolerable in the long run, is it not, Lato?"
Lato makes no reply, flushes slightly, kisses his wife's hand, nods carelessly to Fainacky, and turns to go.
"Shall you come back to dinner?" Selina calls after him.
"Of course," he replies, as he vanishes behind the shrubbery.
Fainacky strokes his moustache thoughtfully, stares first at the Countess, then at the top of the table, and finally gives utterance to an expressive "Ah!"
Lato hurries on to overtake his friend, whom he espies striding towards the park gate.
Suddenly Olga approaches him, a huge straw hat shading her eyes, and in her hands a large, dish-shaped cabbage-leaf full of inviting, fresh strawberries.
"Whither are you hurrying?" she asks.
"I am going to ride to Komaritz with Harry," he replies. "Ah, what magnificent strawberries!"
"I know they are your favourite fruit, and I plucked them for you," she says.
"In this heat?--oh, Olga!" he exclaims.
"The sun would have burned them up by evening," she says, simply.
He understands that she has meant to atone for her inadvertence of the morning, and he is touched.
"Will you not take some?" she asks, persisting in offering him the leaf.
He takes one. Meanwhile, his glance encounters Harry's. Olga is entirely at her ease, while Lato--from what cause he could not possibly tell--is slightly embarrassed.
"I have no time now," he says, gently rejecting the hand that holds the leaf.
"Shall I keep them for your dessert?--you are coming back to dinner?" she asks.
"Certainly. I shall be back by six o'clock," he calls to her. "Adieu, my child."
As the two friends a few minutes later ride down the long poplar avenue, Harry asks,--
"Has this Olga always lived here?"
"No. She came home from the convent a year after my marriage. Selina befriends her because Paula cannot get along with her. She often travels with us."
"She seems pleasant and sympathetic," says Harry, adding, after a short pause, "I have seldom seen so perfect a beauty."
"She is as good as gold," Lato says, quickly, adding, in a rather lower tone, "and most forlorn, poor thing!"
The clumsy Komaritz mansion casts its huge shadow upon the old-fashioned garden, upon the large rectangular flower-beds bordered with sage and parsley, wherein bloom in gay companionship sweet-smelling centifolia roses, dark-blue monk's-hood, scarlet verbenas, and lilac phlox; upon the tangle of raspberry- and blackberry-bushes that grow along the garden wall; and upon the badly-mown lawn. Ancient pear-trees and apple-trees mingle their shade with that of the old house.
An afternoon languor broods over it all. The buzz of bees above the flower-beds sounds languid; languid sounds the rustle of the leaves when, after a prolonged slumber, they awake for an instant, shiver, and then fall silent again; languid is the tone of the old piano, upon which the youngest Leskjewitsch is practising the 'Cloches du Monastere,' under the supervision of a teacher engaged for the summer holidays,--a Fräulein Laut.
Nothing is for the present to be seen or heard of the other inmates of the castle. Hedwig is consulting with her maid, and the Countess Zriny is endeavouring to repair a great misfortune. On her journey from Vienna to Komaritz she relieved her maid, who was overladen with hand-bags, of two objects particularly dear to her soul,--a carved, partly-painted and partly-gilded St. John, and a large bottle of eau de Lourdes. In changing trains at Pernik, she slipped and fell at full length upon the platform; the bottle of eau de Lourdes flew one way and the St. John another; the bottle was broken, and St. John not only lost his head and one hand, but when the poor Countess gathered up his remains he proved to be injured in every part. His resuscitation is at present the important task of the old lady's life. At this moment she is working away at the folds of his garment with much devotion--and black oil paint.
Harry and Lato have told no one of their arrival. They are lying upon a grassy slope beneath a huge apple-tree, smoking, and exchanging reminiscences.
"How homelike all this is!" says Treurenberg, in his soft voice, and with a slightly drawling intonation. "I grow ten years younger here. The same flowers, the same trees, the same fragrance, the same world-forgotten solitude, and, if I am not mistaken,"--he smiles a little,--"the same music. You used to play the 'Convent Bells' then."
"Yes," Harry replies, "'Les Cloches du Monastere' was the acme and the point of departure of my musical studies. I got rid of my last music-teacher and my last 'coach' at the same time."
"Do you mean Tuschalek?" asks Treurenberg.
"That was his name."
"H'm! I can see him now. Heavens! those hands!" Treurenberg gazes reflectively into space. "They were always as red as radishes."
"They reminded me rather of carrots that had just been pulled out of the ground," Harry mutters.
"How the old times rise up before me!" Lato muses, letting his glance wander anew over the garden, where there is buzzing of innumerable bees; over the clumsy façade of the mansion; over the little eminence where still stand the quarters of Tuschalek and the Pole; then up to the old ruined castle, which stands out against the dark-blue August skies an almost formless shape, brown and grim, with its old scars from fire, and hung about with wreaths of wild climbing vines.
"'Tis odd,--something has seemed to me lacking about the dear old nest," Lato begins again, after a pause. "Now I know what it is."
"Well?"
"The little figure of your cousin Zdena. I am always looking for her to come skipping from among the flowers like a wayward little fairy."
Harry frowns, plucks a buttercup growing in the grass, and is mute.
Without heeding his friend's mood, Treurenberg goes on: "As a child, she was most charming and unusually intelligent and gifted. Has the promise of her childhood not been fulfilled?"
Harry pulls another buttercup out of the grass, and carefully deposits it beside the first.
"That is a matter of opinion," he remarks, carelessly, without looking at his friend.
"'Tis strange! Many a girl's beauty vanishes suddenly at about fourteen without leaving a trace; but I would have wagered my head that your cousin would have been beautiful," remarks Lato.
"I have not said that she is ugly," Harry growls.
"But you do not like her!" Lato now rivets his eyes full upon the gloomy face of his former playmate.
Harry turns away his head.
"I did not say I did not like her," he bursts out, "but I can't talk of her, because--because it is all her fault!"
"What is 'all'?" asks Lato, still looking fixedly at his friend.
Harry frowns and says nothing.
Lato does not speak again for a few moments. Then, having lighted a fresh cigar, he begins: "I always fancied,--one so often arranges in imagination a friend's future for him, particularly when one's own fate is fixed past recall,--I always said to myself that you and your cousin would surely come together. I liked to think that it would be so. To speak frankly, your betrothal to Paula was a great surprise to me."
"Indeed? Well, so it was to me!" Harry blurts out, then turns very red, is ashamed of his unbecoming confession; and then--then he is glad that it has been extorted from him; glad that he can speak frankly about the affair to any one with whom he can take counsel.
Treurenberg draws a long breath, and then whistles softly to himself.
"Sets the wind in that quarter?" he says at last. "I thought so. I determined that you should show your colours. And may I ask how you ever got into such a confounded scrape?"
Harry groans. "What would you have?--moonlight, nervous excitement,--all of a sudden there we were! I had quarrelled with my cousin Zdena--God bless her! In spite of her whims and fancies,--one never knows what she would be at,--she is the dearest, loveliest creature----! But that is only by the way----"
"Not at all, not at all; it interests me extremely," Treurenberg interrupts him, laughing.
"That may be, but it has very little to do with my explanation," Harry rejoins, dryly. "The fact is, that it was a warm night in August, and I was driving alone with Paula,--that is, with no coachman, and only my groom, who followed with my horse, and whom I entirely forgot,--from Zirkow to Dobrotschau, along that rough forest road,--you remember,--where one is jolted against one's companion at every step, and there is opportunity for a girl to be becomingly timid--h'm! She suddenly became frightened at a will-o'-the-wisp, she never struck me before as having such weak nerves,--and--well, I was distraught over my quarrel with Zdena, and I had taken perhaps a glass too much of Uncle Paul's old Bordeaux; in short, I kissed her. In an instant I recollected myself, and, if I am not mistaken, I said, 'Excuse me!' or, 'I beg pardon!' She cannot have heard this extremely sensible remark, however, for in the twinkling of an eye I was betrothed. The next day I was determined to put an end to such nonsense, and I sat down at my writing-table--confound it all! I never was great with the pen, and the model of such a letter as I wanted to write was not to be found in any 'Complete Letter-Writer.' Everything I tried to put on paper seemed to me so terribly indelicate and rough, and so I determined to tell the mother. I meant to bring forward a previous and binding attachment; to plead in my excuse the superlative charms of the Baroness Paula--oh, I had it all splendidly planned; but the old Baroness never let me open my lips, and so matters came to be arranged as you find them."
Through the open glass doors of the dining-room, across the flower-beds, comes the faint voice of the old piano. But it is no longer echoing the 'Cloches du Monastere,' but a wailing canzonetta by some popular local composer upon which the youngest Leskjewitsch is expending a most unnecessary amount of banging upon keys and pressing of pedals. With a grimace Harry stops his ears. Treurenberg looks very grave.
"You do not, then, intend to marry Paula?"
"God forbid!" Harry exclaims.
"Then,"--Lato bites his lip, but goes on calmly,--"forgive an old friend who is aware of the difficulty of your position, for the disagreeable remark,--but if you do not intend to marry my sister-in-law, your conduct with regard to her is not only very unbecoming but also positively wrong."
"Why?" Harry asks, crossly.
"Why?" Lato lifts his eyebrows. "Why, because you compromise her more deeply with every visit you pay her. You cannot surely deceive yourself as to the fact that upon the superficial observer you produce the impression of an unusually devoted pair of lovers."
"I do not understand how you can say such a thing!" Harry exclaims, angrily, "when you must have seen----"
"That you are on the defensive with Paula," Treurenberg interrupts him, with a wan smile. "Yes, I have seen it."
"Well, she ought to see it too," Harry mutters.
Lato shrugs his shoulders.
"She must lose patience sooner or later," says Harry.
"It is difficult to exhaust the patience of a young woman whose sensibilities are not very delicate and who is very much in love," his friend replies. "You must devise some other, and--forgive my frankness--some more honest and straightforward means for attaining your end."
Harry puffs furiously at his cigarette, sending a cloud of smoke over the flower-bed. "Lato, you are rough upon me, but not rougher than I am upon myself. If you knew how degraded I feel by my false position, if you knew how the whole matter weighs upon me, you would do something more for me than only hold up a candle by the light of which I perceive more clearly the misery of my position. You would----"
"What?" Lato asks, disturbed.
"Help me!"
Lato looks at him in dismay for a moment, and then stammers, "No, Harry, do not ask it of me,--not of me. I could do you no good. They never would let me speak, any more than my mother-in-law would allow you to speak. And even if I finally prevailed upon them to listen, they would blame me for the whole affair, would believe that I had excited your mind against the family."
"How could they possibly imagine that you could conduct yourself so towards a friend?" Harry asks, with a grim smile.
Lato turns his head aside.
"Then you will not do me this service?"
"I cannot!" Treurenberg murmurs, faintly.
"I might have known it!" Harry breaks forth, his eyes flashing with indignant scorn. "You are the same old fellow, the very same,--a good fellow enough, yes, sympathetic, compassionate, and, as long as you are allowed to remain perfectly passive, the noblest of men. But as soon as anything is required of you,--if any active interference is called for at your hands, there's an end of it. You simply cannot, you would rather die than rouse yourself to any energetic action!"
"Perhaps so," Lato murmurs, with a far-away look in his eyes, and a smile that makes Harry's blood run cold.
A pause ensues, the longest of the many pauses that have occurred in thistête-à-tête.
The bees seem to buzz louder than ever. A dry, thirsty wind sighs in the boughs of the apple-tree; two or three hard green apples drop to the ground. At last Treurenberg gathers himself up.
"You must take me as I am," he says, wearily; "there is no cutting with a dull knife. I cannot possibly enlighten my mother-in-law as to the true state of your feelings. It would do no good, and it would make an infernal row. But I will give you one piece of good advice----"
Before he is able to finish his sentence his attention is arrested by a perfect babel of sounds from the dining-room. The piano music is hushed, its discord merged into the angry wail of a shrieking feminine voice and the rough, broken, changing tones of a lad,--the rebellious pupil, Vladimir Leskjewitsch. The hurly-burly is so outrageous that every one is roused to investigate it. Countess Zriny rushes in, with short, waddling steps, the paint-brush with which she has been mending St. John's robe still in her hand; Hedwig rushes in; Harry and Lato rush in.
"What is the matter? What is the matter?"
"You poured that water on the keys intentionally, to prevent your playing," the teacher angrily declares to her pupil.
"I do not deny it," Vladimir rejoins, loftily.
The spectators suppress a smile, and are all, as is, alas! so frequently the case, on the side of the culprit, a tall, overgrown lad of about fourteen, with a handsome dark face, large black eyes, a short, impertinent nose, and full, well-formed lips. With hands thrust deep into the pockets of his blue jacket, he gravely surveys the circle, and tosses his head defiantly.
"You hear him! you hear him!" Fräulein Laut screams, turning to the by-standers. Then, approaching Vladimir, she asks, angrily, "And how can you justify such conduct?"
Vladimir scans her with majestic disdain. "How can you justify your having ruined all my pleasure in music?" he asks, in a tragic tone, and with a bombastic flourish of his hand. "That piano has been my dear friend from childhood!"--he points feelingly to the instrument, which is yellow with age, has thin, square legs, and six pedals, the use of which no one has ever yet fathomed,--"yes, my friend! And today I hate it so that I have well-nigh destroyed it! Fräulein Laut, justify that."
"Must I be subjected to this insolence?" groans the teacher.
"Vladimir, go to your room!" Harry orders, with hardly maintained gravity.
Vladimir departs with lofty self-possession. The teacher turns contemptuously from those present, especially from Harry, who tries to appease her with a few courteous phrases. With a skilful hand she takes the piano apart, dismembers the key-board, and spreads the hammers upon sheets of tin brought for her from the kitchen by Blasius, the old servant, that the wet, swollen wood may be dried before the fire.
"Take care lest there be anauto-da-fé," Harry calls after her. Without deigning to reply, she vanishes with the bowels of the piano.
Blasius, meanwhile, with imperturbable composure, has spread the table for the evening meal at one end of the spacious room, in which there is now diffused an agreeable odour of fresh biscuits. A mountain of reddish-yellow almond cakes is flanked on one side by a plate of appetizing rye bread, on the other by butter garnished with ice and cresses. There is a fruit-basket at either end of the table, filled with peaches, early grapes, and all kinds of ripe green and purple plums, while a bowl of cut glass holds whipped cream cooled in ice. Finally, old Blasius brings in a tray fairly bending beneath the burden of various pitchers and flagons, the bewildering number of which is due to the fact that at Komaritz the whims of all are consulted, and consequently each one orders something different, be it only a different kind of cream.
"As of old, no one is in danger at Komaritz of death from starvation," Lato remarks, smiling.
"Help us to be rid of the provision," Harry says.
Hedwig repeats the invitation rather affectedly, but Lato, looking at his watch, discovers that he has already overstayed his time by an hour.
All express regret, and bid him farewell.
"And the good advice you were about to give me?" Harry says, interrogatively, as he takes leave of his friend, having accompanied him to the gate of the court-yard.
"Cut short your leave of absence; go away," Lato replies. "You will at least be relieved for the time from any necessity for dissimulation, and such affairs are better adjusted by letter."
Harry gazes gloomily into space; Lato springs into the saddle. "Adieu!" he calls out, and is gone.