Ding-dong--ding-dong! the Angelus bells are ringing through the evening air with their message of rest for weary mortals.
The long shadows of the trees grow paler, and vanish, taking with them all the glory of the world and leaving only a dull, borrowed twilight to hover above the earth.
The sun has set. Ding-dong! rings the bell of Komaritz, near at hand, as Lato rides past; the bells of the other villages echo the sound dreamily, to have their notes tossed back by the bells of the lonely chapels on the mountain-sides across the steel-gray stream, whose waters glide silently on ward. Ding-dong! each answers to all, and the tired labourer rejoices in unison.
The hour of rest has come, the hour when families reassemble after the pursuits and labours of the day have ceased to claim and separate them,--when mortals feel more warmly and sensibly the reality of family ties. Thin blue smoke is curling from the chimneys; here and there a woman can be seen standing at the door of a cottage, shading her eyes with her hand as she looks expectantly down the road. Upon the doorstep of a poor hut sits a brown, worn labourer, dirty and ragged, about to eat his evening meal with a leaden spoon from an earthen bowl; a young woman crouches beside him, with her back against the door-post, content and silent, while a chubby child, with bare legs somewhat bowed, and a curly head, leans against his knee and, with its mouth open in expectation, peeps into the earthen bowl. The father smiles, and from time to time thrusts a morsel between the fresh, rosy lips. Then he puts aside the bowl and takes the little fellow upon his knee. It is a pretty child,--and perhaps in honour of the father's return home--wonderfully clean, but even were this not the case---- Most of the children tumbling about before the huts on this sultry August evening are neither pretty nor clean; they are dirty, ragged, dishevelled; many are sickly, and some are crippled; but there is hardly one among them to whom this hour does not bring a caress.
An atmosphere of mutual human sympathy seems to brood in silence above the resting earth, while the bells ring on,--ding-dong, ding-dong.
Lato has left the village behind him, and is trotting along the road beneath the tall walnuts. The noise of wagons, heavily laden with the harvest, and the tramp of men upon the road fall upon his ear,--everything is going home.
There is a languor in the aromatic summer air, somewhat that begets in every human being a desire for companionship, a longing to share the burden of existence with another. Even the flowers seem to bend their heads nearer to one another.
Now the bells are hushed, the road is deserted; Lato alone is still pursuing his way home. Home? Is it possible that he has accustomed himself to call his mother-in-law's castle home? In many a hotel--at "The Lamb," for example, in Vienna he has felt much more at home. Where, then, is his home? He vainly asks himself this question. Has he ever had a home?
The question is still unanswered. His thoughts wander far back into the past, and find nothing, not even a few tender memories. Poor Lato! He recalls his earliest years, his childhood. His parents were considered the handsomest couple in Austria. The Count was fair, tall, slender, with an apparent delicacy of frame that concealed an amount of physical strength for which he was famous, and with nobly-chiselled features. His duels and his love-affairs were numerous. He was rashly brave, and irresistible; so poor an accountant that he always allowed his opponents to reckon up his gains at play, but when his turn came to pay a debt of honour he was never known to make an error in a figure. It is scarcely necessary to mention that his gambling debts were the only ones the payment of which he considered at all important. He was immensely beloved by his subordinates,--his servants, his horses, and his dogs; he addressed them all with the German "thou," and treated them all with the same good-humoured familiarity. He was thought most urbane, and was never guilty of any definite intentional annoyance; but he suffered from a certain near-sightedness. He recognized as fellow-mortals only those fellow-mortals who occupied the same social plane with himself; all others were in his eyes simply population,--the masses.
There is little to tell of his wife, save that she was a brilliant brunette beauty, with very loud manners and a boundless greed of enjoyment. She petted little Lato like a lapdog; but one evening, just as she was dressed for a ball, she was informed that the child had been taken violently ill with croup, whereupon she flew into a rage with those who had been so thoughtless and unfeeling as to tell her such a thing at so inopportune a moment. Her carriage was announced; she let it wait while she ran up-stairs to the nursery, kissed the gasping little patient, exclaimed, with a lifted forefinger, "Be a good boy, my darling; don't die while mamma is at the ball!" and vanished.
The little fellow was good and did not die. As a reward, his mother gave him the largest and handsomest rocking-horse that was to be found in Vienna. Such was the Countess Treurenberg as a mother; and as a wife--well, Hans Treurenberg was satisfied with her, and her behaviour was no one else's affair. The couple certainly got along together admirably. They never were seen together except when they received guests.
Peace to her ashes! The Countess paid a heavy price for her short-lived joys. When scarcely twenty-six years old, she was attacked by a mortal disease. Her condition was all the more painful because she persisted in concealing her malady from the world, even denying its existence. Up to the last she went into society, and she died in full dress, diamonds and all, in a glare of light, on a lounge in her dressing-room.
The widower at first took her death so terribly to heart that his associates remarked upon it.
"Treurenberg is really a very good fellow!" they said, and so he was.
For a time he kept little Lato with him constantly. Even on the evenings when gambling was going on, and they played long and high at Hans Treurenberg's, the boy was present. When hardly twelve years old he was fully initiated into the mysteries of all games of chance. He would sit silent and quiet until far into the night, watching the course of the game, trembling with excitement at any sudden turn of luck. And how proud he was when he was allowed to take a hand! He played extremely well for his age, and his luck was constant. His father's friends made merry over his gambling ability. His father would pat his cheeks, stroke his hair off his forehead, take his face between his hands, and kiss him. Then, with his fingers beneath the lad's chin, he would turn his face this way and that, calling his guests' attention to the boy's beauty, to his eyes sparkling with eagerness, to his flushed cheeks. Then he would kiss the boy again, make him drink a glass of champagne, and send him to bed.
Then was sown the seed of the evil passion which was in after-years to cause Lato so many an hour of bitter suffering. Calm, almost phlegmatic, with regard to all else, as soon as he touched a card his excitement was intense, however he might manage to conceal it.
When Count Hans grew tired of the constant companionship of his son, he freed himself from it after a perfectly respectable fashion. He sent him to Prague, a city renowned for the stolidity of its institutions, committing him to the care of relatives, and of a professor who undertook to supply the defects of the boy's neglected education. When Lato was eighteen he entered a regiment of hussars.
Hereafter, if the father took but little pains about his son, he certainly showed him every kindness,--paid his debts, and laughed while he admired the young man's mad pranks. Moreover, he really loved him, which did not, however, hinder him from contriving to have Lato declared of age at twenty, that the young fellow might have possession of his maternal inheritance, since he himself needed money.
It was at this time that the elder Treurenberg's view of life and the world underwent a remarkable change. He became a Liberal, and this not only in a political sense, but socially, a much rarer transformation. He appeared frequently at the tables of wealthy men of business, where he was valued not merely as an effective aristocratic decoration, but as a really charming companion. His liberal views took on more magnificent dimensions: he announced himself a heretic with regard to the exclusiveness of the Austrian aristocracy, smiled at the folly of Austrian court etiquette, and then, one fine day he made friends with the wealthyparvenu, Conte Capriani, and, throwing overboard as useless ballast impeding free action the 'noblesse oblige' principle, he devoted himself blindly and with enthusiasm to stock-gambling. The result was hardly encouraging. When Lato applied to his father one day for a considerable sum of money, it was not to be had. Melancholy times for the Treurenbergs ensued; thanks, however, to the friendship of Conte Capriani, who sometimes helped him to a really profitable transaction, Count Hans was able to keep his head above water. And he continued to hold it as high as ever, to preserve the same air of distinction, to smile with the same amiable cordiality in which there was a spice ofhauteur; in a word, he preserved the indefinable prestige of his personality, which made it impossible that Conte Capriani's demeanour towards him should ever partake of the nature of condescension. The only thing required of Count Hans by Capriani was that he should spend a couple of weeks with him every year in the hunting-season. This the Count seemed quite willing to do, and he therefore appeared every year, in August or October, at Heinrichsdorf, an estate in West Hungary, where Capriani had preferred to live since his affair with young Count Lodrin had made his castle of Schneeburg impossible for him as a place of residence.
One year the Count asked his son to accompany him to Heinrichsdorf.
Will Lato ever forget the weeks he spent there, the turning-point as they were of his existence? How foreign and tiresome, how hard and bald, it all was! how uncomfortable, how uncongenial!--the furniture, among which here and there, as was the fashion, some costly antique was displayed; the guests, among whom were various representatives of historic Austrian nobility; the Conte's secretary, a choleric Hungarian, who concealed the remnant of a pride of rank which ill became his present position beneath an aggressive cynicism, and who was wont to carry in his pocket, when he went to walk, a little revolver, with which he shot at sparrows or at the flies creeping upon some wall, by way perhaps of working off the bitterness of his soul. There, too, was the master of the house, showing the same frowning brow to all whom he met, contradicting all with the same rudeness, hunting to earth any stray poetic sentiment, and then, after a violent explosion of pure reason, withdrawing gloomily to his cabinet, where he could give himself over to his two passions,--that for money-making, and that for setting the world at naught.
The only person in the assemblage whom Lato found attractive was the mistress of the mansion, with whom he often talked for hours, never ceasing to wonder at the melancholy grace and quiet dignity of her bearing, as well as at the well-nigh morbid delicacy and high moral tone of her sentiments.
Above all did Lato dislike those among the guests of a like rank with his own, men who were like himself in money difficulties, and who hovered about this deity of the stock market in hopes of obtaining his blessing upon their speculations.
Count Hans moved among all these aristocratic and un-aristocratic luminaries with the same unchanging grace that carried him victoriously over all annoyances,--always genial and courtly; but the son could not emulate his father's ease of mind and manner; he felt depressed and humiliated.
Then the Baroness Harfink and her daughters made their appearance. The two striking, pleasure-loving girls had an enlivening effect upon the wearied assemblage.
Paula was the cleverer of the two, but she talked too much, which was tiresome, and then she had a reputation for learning, which frightened men away. Selina, on the other hand, knew how to veil her lack of cleverness beneath an interesting taciturnity; she had a fashion of slowly lifting her eyelids which appealed to a man's fancy. With a degree of prudence frequently displayed by rather dull girls, she forbore to appeal to the crowd, and concentrated her efforts to charm upon Lato. She accompanied him in the pheasant-shooting parties, took lessons from him in lawn-tennis,--in a white dress, her loosened hair gleaming in the sunlight,--or simply lay quietly back in a rocking-chair in the shade in front of the castle, gazing at him with her large, half-closed eyes, while he, half in jest, half in earnest, said all sorts of pretty things.
There was always play in the evenings at the castle, and usually very high play. The atmosphere about the gaming-tables was hardly agreeable, and the Conte moved about among them, taking no share in such "silly waste of time," while every one else was eager to win. Lato took part in the unedifying pastime, and at first fortune befriended him; then he lost. His losses embarrassed him, and he withdrew from playing. He was not the only one to avoid the gambling-tables after a short trial of luck; several gentlemen followed his example. The Conte took triumphant note of this, and arranged a party for five-kreutzer whist, in which he joined.
Lato bit his lip. Never before had his unfortunate pecuniary circumstances so weighed upon him. The thirst for gold--the prevailing epidemic at Heinrichsdorf--demanded a fresh victim.
There had been a hunting-dinner; Conte Capriani's wine had been unusually fiery; every one was gay; Heinrichsdorf could remember no such brilliant festivity. The windows of the drawing-room where the company were assembled were open and looked out upon the park. The intoxicating fragrance of the sultry August night was wafted into the room; the stars sparkled above the black tree-tops, twinkling restlessly, like deceitful will-o'-the-wisps, in the blue vault of heaven; the sweet, wild music of a band of Hungarian gypsies came floating into the apartment with the fragrance of the night. Selina looked wonderfully beautiful on that evening, a sultana-like beauty, nothing more, but she harmonized with the spell of the August night. She wore a red crape gown, red as flickering fire, red as benumbing poppy-blossoms, verydécolletée, and its decided colour heightened the white, pearly lustre of the girl's neck and arms. The lines about her mouth had not then settled into a stereotyped smile; her nose was not sharp; the sheen of her hair had not been dimmed by perpetual powdering. Essentially commonplace as she was, for the moment there was about her a mingling of languor and excitement, which betrays an accelerated movement of the heart. Selina Harfink was in love. Lato was perfectly aware of it, and that she was in love with him. He bestowed but little thought upon this fact, however. What could come of it? And yet, whenever he was with her, a cold shiver ran through him.
The mysterious shades of night were invaded by music and the summer breeze; wherever Lato was he saw that red gown. A hand was laid upon his arm, and when he turned he gazed into a pair of eyes veiled yet glowing.
"Why do you avoid me?" Selina whispered.
"Southern Roses!" one of the gentlemen standing near a window called to the musicians, and immediately there floated out into the night, to mingle with the low whisper of the linden leaves, the notes of the first bars of that most beguiling of all Strauss's beguiling waltzes.
He danced with her, and then--almost rudely--he left her. It was the only time he had danced with her that evening, and now he left the room, hurrying away to be somewhere where that red dress was not before his eyes. And yet he had the sensation of overcoming himself, of denying himself at least a pleasant excitement.
Why? What could ever come of it?
For the first time in several days he joined the gamesters. He played high, with varying luck, but when he left the gaming-table he carried with him the consciousness of having lost more than he was at present in a condition to pay.
He went to his room and began mechanically to undress. A fever seemed burning in his veins; how sultry it was! through the open windows he could see black thunder-clouds gathering in the skies. The air was damp and laden with a fragrance so sweet as to be almost sickening. A low murmur sighed among the leaves of the shrubbery in the park,--melancholy, mysterious, alluring, yet mingled with a soft plaint, breathing above the late summer roses. "Enjoy! enjoy! life is brief!" He turned away, lay down, and closed his eyes; but still he seemed to see the red dress. He could not think of marrying her. A girl from such a family and with such a crowd of insufferable connections! Had she only been a poor little thing whom he could snatch away from her surroundings; but no, if he married her, he was sufficiently clear in his mind for the moment to understand, he must adjust himself to her social position. The power was hers,--money!
Oh, this wretched money! At every turn the lack of it tormented him; he had tried to retrench, to economize, but how paltry such efforts seemed to him! What a good use he could make of it if he had it! She was very beautiful----
A light footfall made itself heard in the passage outside his door. Was not that his father's step? Lato asked himself. The door opened; Count Hans entered, straight, tall, and slender, with haughty, refined features and sparkling blue eyes, very bald, very gray; but what vitality and energy he showed in his every movement! At this moment Lato felt a great admiration for his father, beside whom he himself seemed pitiably weak. He took shame to himself; what would his father say could he know of the ideas which he, Lato Treurenberg, had just been entertaining?
"Still awake, Lato?" the knightly old man asked, kindly, sitting down on the edge of his son's bed. "I saw from below your light still burning, and I wanted to ask if anything were troubling you. You are not wont to suffer from sleeplessness."
Lato was touched, and doubly ashamed of the low, mean way of extricating himself from his difficulties which had but now seemed to him almost possible.
"One's thoughts run such riot, sometimes," he murmured.
"H'm!" The father put his cigar between his lips and puffed forth a cloud of smoke to float upward to the ceiling. "I think you lost at baccarat to-night," he remarked.
"Yes."
"Much?"
"More than I can pay at present," Lato replied, with a weary smile.
"As if that were of any moment!" Count Hans consoled him. "I am at your service, and am, besides, your debtor."
"But, father----"
"Yes, yes, I tell you it is so. I am your debtor. Do you think I forget it? Indeed I do not. I am sorry that I cannot help it; but 'tis the fault of circumstances. The estates yield absolutely nothing; they require money enough, but when it comes to looking for any return I look in vain. No one who has not tried it knows what a sinking-fund land is. It cannot go on thus; we must make a fundamental effort, or we shall be ruined!"
"Yes, father," Lato murmured, "we must be in earnest, instead of enjoying ourselves thoughtlessly and with a dread of work. We have lost our force; we have been faithless to our principles; we must begin a new existence, you and I." As he uttered these high-sounding words, Lato had the unpleasant sensation of repeating something learned by rote; the big phrases confused him; he was embarrassed by the consciousness of his father's too ready satire. He looked up at him, but the old Count did not seem to have heard him. This was a relief; he sighed, and was silent. Suddenly the red dress fluttered before his eyes again.
Count Hans raised his head, and murmured, "She looked very lovely this evening."
"Who?" asked Lato, slowly. He did not need to ask; he knew that his father had shared his thoughts. He was terribly startled. Something seemed to be crumbling away which he had believed would always stand firm.
"Selina, of course,--the only really pretty woman in the house," said Count Hans. "Her beauty has expanded wonderfully in the last few days. It is always becoming to pretty women to be in love."
"In love?" Lato repeated, his throat contracted, his tongue dry.
The old Count laughed. "Ah, you're a sly fellow, Lato."
Lato was mute.
His father continued: "They are all jealous of you, Lato. Did you not see what happened this evening in the conservatory, just after dinner? Pistasch Kamenz proposed to her, and she refused him. He told me of it himself, and made light of it; but he was hard hit. I can quite understand it. She is an exceedingly beautiful woman; she does not carry herself well, 'tis true,--with women of her class the physical training is sure to be neglected,--but all that can be changed."
Lato was still mute. So, then, Pistasch Kamenz had tried that of which he, Lato, had been ashamed, and had failed. He should not fail.
The old Count waited a moment, and then went on: "I am sorry for Kamenz; the match would have been an excellent one for him; he would have settled down."
"Settled down--upon his wife's money!" Lato muttered, without looking at his father.
"Is there anything new in that?" exclaimed the Count, with unruffled composure. "A man of honour can take nothing from a woman whom he loves, but everything from his wife. 'Tis an old rule, and it is comical,"--Count Hans laughed softly,--"how here in Austria we require that a rich wife should always belong to the same sphere with her husband; he is forgiven for amésallianceonly if he marries a beggar. It is pure folly! We shall never amount to anything unless we toss aside the entire burden of prejudice which we drag about with us. It weighs us down; we cannot keep step with the rest; how can a man run sheathed in mail? With the exception of a few magnates among us who are able to enjoy their prestige, we are wretchedly off. We spend our lives sacrificing ourselves for a position which we cannot maintain respectably; we pamper a chimera to be devoured by it in the end. Most of all do I admire thebourgeoisie, whom we impress, and whose servility keeps bright the nimbus about our heads. Bah! we can do nothing more with the old folly! We must mingle in the fresh life of the present."
"Yes," Lato muttered again, but more indistinctly than at first, "we ought to work, to achieve somewhat."
Count Hans did not, perhaps, hear this remark; at all events he did not heed it.
"All the huge new fortunes in England marry into the aristocracy," he said.
Outside, the same strange alluring murmur breathed above the thirsty flowers; the breeze of the coming storm streamed into the room.
"To marry a woman for the sake of her money is detestable," Count Hans began afresh, and his voice was almost as soft and wooing as that of the summer night outside; "but, good heavens! why should one refuse to marry a girl whom he loves just because she is rich?"
He paused. Lato had closed his eyes.
"Are you asleep?" his father murmured.
Lato shook his head, without speaking. The old Count arose, extinguished the candle on the table, and softly withdrew.
About four months afterwards Lato stood with Selina Harfink before the altar, in a large splendidly-decorated church filled with a crowd of people, among whom Lato, as he walked towards the altar, mechanically sought some familiar face,--at first in vain. At last he found some one,--his old English teacher; then a horse-dealer with whom he had had transactions; and then there in the background--how could they have escaped him?--about a dozen ladies of his own circle. Some of them held their eye-glasses to their eyes, then crowded together and whispered among themselves. He turned away his head.
How dared they whisper about him! He had not sold himself; he was marrying a girl whom he loved, who was accidentally rich!
The long train moved slowly up to the altar. Lato felt as if he were dragging after him a burden that grew heavier with every step. He was glad to be able to kneel down before the priest. He looked at his bride. She knelt beside him, brilliantly beautiful, glowing with passion, supremely content. In vain did he look for the shimmer of tears in her eyes, for a trace of virginal shyness in her features, for aught that could arouse sympathy and tenderness. No; about her full red lips there was the tremor of gratified vanity and of triumphant--love! Love?
From her face Lato's gaze wandered among the wedding-guests. Strangers,--all strangers. His family was represented by his father and the Countess Zriny, a distant cousin of Count Hans, who had once been in love with him. Lato shivered. Solemn music resounded through the church. Tears rose to his eyes. Suddenly a strange wailing sound mingled with the strains of the chant. He looked up. Behind the tall church windows fluttered something black, formless, like a mourning banner. It was the broken top of a young tree, not quite torn from the parent stem, waving to and fro in the wind.
And then the priest uttered the words that decided his future fate.
Before the departure of the young couple, and whilst Selina was making ready for their journey, Count Hans had an opportunity for emotion. He paced restlessly to and fro in the room where with Lato he was awaiting the bride, trying vainly to say something cheering to the bridegroom, something to arouse in him a consciousness of the great good fortune in which he himself was a sharer. At last the voices of the bride and her friends were heard approaching. The old nobleman went up to his son, laid his hands tenderly upon his shoulders, and exclaimed, "Hold up your head, old fellow: your life is before you, your life is before you!"
And Lato repeated, "My life is before me----" The next instant the door opened.
"The carriage is waiting!"
The last words that Selina said to her friends out of the window of the carriage just before driving off were, "Do not forget to send me the newspapers, if there is anything in them about our marriage."
The horses started, the carriage rolled on. How swiftly the wheels flew over the stones! In the twilight, illumined only by the glare of the carriage lamps, Lato could see the outline of Selina's figure as she sat beside him, and the pure red and white of her face, only partially concealed by her veil. He put his arm around her, and she nestled close to him and raised her lips to his. His ardour was chilled by an annoying sensation which he could not at first trace to its source. It was produced by the strong perfume which Selina used. It was the same perfume that had been a favourite with the actress who had been Lato's first love, a handsome, fair woman, with an incomparable complexion. He was suddenly reminded that Selina looked like her, and it vexed him.
Selina had long since forgotten it,--women almost always forget such things,--but in the early times of her marriage it would not have pleased her to think it a "distinguished one." She was desperately in love with Lato, served him like a slave, racked what brain she had to prepare surprises for him in the way of costly gifts, and left entirely to him the disposal of her property. Not a penny would she call her own. It all belonged to him,--all. It was quite touching to see her penitent air when she applied to him, whispering, "I am a terrible spendthrift, Lato. Do not be angry; but I want some more money. Will you not pay my milliner's bill for me? And then, if I am very good, you'll give me something to put in my portomonnaie,--a hundred guilders,--only a hundred guilders, Lato darling?"
At first such scenes annoyed him terribly, and he tried hard to prevent them. Then--well, he got used to them, even felt flattered, touched; almost forgot whence came the money that was now so abundant with him,--believed, at all events, that others had forgotten it,--and played the lavish husband with his wife, bestowed costly gifts upon her, and was pleased with her admiration of them.
All this time he lived in a kind of whirl. He had accustomed himself to his young wife's endearments, as he had accustomed himself to travel with a train of servants, to occupy the best rooms in the best hotels, to drink the best wines, to smoke the best cigars, to have enormous bills at the tailor's, to gratify all his expensive tastes, to spend time in devising costly plans for the future, and, half involuntarily, to do it all as if he no longer remembered a time when he had been obliged to consider well every outlay.
In after-years his cheeks burned when he recalled this part of his life,--but there was no denying the fact--he had for a time been ostentatiously extravagant, and with his wife's money. Poor Lato!
Two years the whirl lasted; no longer.
At first he had tried to continue in the service, but the hardships of a military life became burdensome to him as he yielded to the new sense of luxury, and Selina, for her part, had no taste for the annoyances that fell to her share in the nomadic life of a soldier's wife. He resigned. They planned to purchase an estate, but could not agree upon where to purchase; and they zigzagged about, travelling from Nice to Rome, and from Rome to Paris, everywhere courteously received and fêted.
Then came their child. Selina, of course, passed the time of her confinement in Vienna, to be under her mother's protection, and nearly paid for her child's life with her own. When she recovered, her entire nature seemed changed; she was always tired. Her charm had fled. Her nose grew sharp, there were hard lines about her mouth, her face became thin, while her figure broadened.
And her feeling for Lato underwent a fundamental alteration. Hers was one of those sensual, cold-hearted natures which, when the first tempest of passion has subsided, are incapable of any deeper sentiment, and her tenderness towards her husband decreased with astonishing celerity. Henceforth, vanity became her sole passion, and in Vienna she was best able to satisfy it. The greatest enjoyment she derived from her foreign travel and from her intercourse with distinguished people lay in being able to discourse of them to her Vienna circle. She went into the world more than ever,--the world which she had known from childhood,--and dragged Lato with her. She was never weary of displaying in financial society her new title, her distinguished husband, her eccentric Parisian toilets.
Her world sufficed her. She never dreamed of asking admission to his world. He made several melancholy attempts to introduce his wife among his relatives; they failed lamentably. No one had any particular objection to Selina. Had she been a poor girl all would have vied with one another in doing something for her "for dear Lato's sake." But to receive all that loud, vulgar, ostentatious Harfink tribe, no one could require of them, not even the spirit of the age. Why did not Lato take his wife to the country, and separate her from her family and their influence? Then after some years, perhaps---- It was such an unfortunate idea to settle in Vienna with his wife!
Yes, an unfortunate idea!
Wherever he showed himself with his wife, at the theatre, on the Prater, everywhere, his acquaintances greeted him cordially from a distance, and avoided him as if he had been stricken with a contagious disease. On the occasion of the death of one of his aunts, he received kind letters of condolence from relatives who lived in the next street!
Selina was not in the slightest degree annoyed by all this. It always had been so in Austria, and probably always would be so. She had expected nothing else. And Lato,--what had he expected? he who understood such matters better than she did? A miracle, perhaps; at least an exception in his favour.
His life in Vienna was torture to him. He made front against his former world, defied it, even vilified it, and was possessed by a hungry desire for what he had lost, for what he had prized so little when it was naturally his own. If he could but have found something to replace what he had resigned! Sincerity, earnestness, a deeper grasp of life, elevation of thought,--all of which he might have found among the best of thebourgeoisie,--he had sufficient intellect and refinement to have enjoyed. Perhaps under such influences there was stuff in him of a kind to be remodelled, and he might have become a useful, capable man. But the circle in which he was forced to live was not that of the truebourgeoisie. It was an inorganic mass of rich people and idlers tossed together, all with titles of yesterday, who cared for nothing in the world save money-getting and display,--a world in which the men played at languid dulness and the women at frivolity, because they thought it 'chic,' in which all wanted to be 'fast,' to make a sensation, to be talked of in the newspapers,--a world which, with ridiculous exclusiveness, boasted of its anti-Semitic prejudices, and in which the money acquired with such unnatural celerity had no room for free play, so that the golden calf, confined within so limited an arena, cut the most extraordinary capers. These people spent their time in perfecting themselves in aristocratic demeanour and in talking alternately of good manners, elegant toilets, and refinedmenus. The genuine patrician world of trade held itself aloof from this tinsel society, or only accidentally came into contact with it.
Lato's was a very unpleasant experience. The few people of solid worth whom he met at his mother-in-law's avoided him. His sole pleasure in life was his little son, who daily grew plumper, prettier, merrier. He would stretch out his arms to his father when the merest baby, and crow with delight. What a joy it was for Lato to clasp the little creature in his arms!
The boy was just fifteen months old when the first real quarrel took place between Lato and his wife, and estranged them for life.
Hitherto Lato had had the management and right of disposal of his wife's property, and although more than one disagreeable remark anent his extravagance had fallen from her lips he had taken pains not to heed them. But one day he bought a pair of horses for which he had been longing, paying an amateur price for them.
He was so delighted with his purchase that he immediately drove the horses in the Prater to try them. On his return home he was received by Selina with a very cross face. She had heard of his purchase, and asked about the horses.
He praised them with enthusiasm. Forgetting for the moment all the annoyances of his position, he cried, "Come and look at them!"
"No need," she made answer. "You did not ask my opinion before buying them; it is of no consequence now whether I like them or not."
He bit his lip.
"What did you pay for them?" she asked. He told her the price; she shrugged her shoulders and laughed contemptuously. "So they told me," she said. "I would not believe it!"
"When you have seen the horses you will not think the price too high," Lato said, controlling himself with difficulty.
"Oh, the price may be all right," she rejoined, sharply, "but the extravagance seems great to me. Of course, if you have it----"
Everything swam before his eyes. He turned and left the room. That very day he sold the horses, fortunately without loss. He brought the bank-notes to his wife, who was seated at her writing-table, and put them down before her. She was startled, and tried to compromise matters. He was inflexible. For half a day the apple of discord in the shape of a bundle of bank-notes lay on the writing-table, a bait for dishonest servants; then it vanished within Selina's desk.
From that moment Lato was not to be induced to use a single penny of his wife's money. He retrenched in all directions, living as well as he could upon his own small income, derived from his maternal inheritance, and paid him punctually by his father.
He was not in the least annoyed by the shabby part he was consequently obliged to play among his wealthy associates, but when he recalled how he had previously appropriated his wife's money his cheeks and ears burned furiously.
There was no longer any talk of buying an estate. Instead, Selina's mother bought one. The Treurenbergs could pass their summers there. Why squander money on an estate? One magnificent castle in the family was enough.
Shortly after Lato's estrangement from his wife his little son died of the croup. This was the annihilation of his existence; the last sunbeam upon his path faded; all around and within him was dark and cold.
He ponders all this as he rides from Komaritz to Dobrotschau. His horse's pace grows slower and slower, his bridle hangs loose. Evening has set in. Suddenly a sharp whirr rouses the lonely man. He looks up, to see a belated bird hurrying home to its nest. His dreamy gaze follows the black fluttering thing, and he wonders vaguely whether the little wanderer will find his home and be received with affection by his feathered family. The idle fancy makes him smile; but, "What is there to laugh at?" he suddenly reflects. "Good heavens! a life that warms itself beside another life, in which it finds peace and comfort,--is not this the central idea of all existence, great or small? Everything else in the world is but of secondary interest."
For him there is no human being in whom he can confide, to whom he can turn for sympathy; for him there is only cheerless solitude.
The moon is setting; above the low mountain-spur its silver crescent hovers in the liquid light green of the summer evening sky. The castle of Dobrotschau looms up in the twilight.
"What is that? Along the road, towards the belated horseman, comes a white figure. Can it be Selina? His heart beats fast; he is ready to be grateful for the smallest proof of affection, so strong is the yearning within him for a little human sympathy. No, it is not Selina; it is a tall, slender girl. She has seen him, and hastens her steps.
"Lato!" calls an anxious, familiar voice.
"Olga!" he exclaims, and, springing from his horse, he approaches her. Yes, it is Olga,--Olga in a white dress, without hat or gloves, and with a look of anxiety in her eyes.
"Thank heaven!" she exclaims.
"My child, what is the matter?" he asks, half laughing.
"I have been so anxious," she confesses. "You are an hour and a half late for dinner, and you know how foolish I am. All sorts of fancies beset me. My imagination works swiftly."
"You are a dear child, Olga," he whispers, softly, taking her hand and kissing it twice. Then they walk together towards the castle. He leads his horse by the bridle, and listens to all the trifling matters of which she tells him.
The world is no longer dreary and empty for him. Here is at least one person who is not indifferent to his going and coming.
At Dobrotschau he finds the entire party in the garden-room. Selina and the Pole are playing a duett. Dinner is over. They could not wait for him, Selina explains, because the cook was trying to-day for the first time a soufflé of Parmesan cheese and truffles, which would have been ruined by delay. But his hospitable mother-in-law adds,--
"Your dinner is all ready in the dining-room. I gave orders that it should be served as soon as you came."
And Lato goes to the dining-hall, a magnificent oak-wainscoted room, in which the chandelier, lighted in his honour, represents a round island of light in a sea of black darkness. The soup-tureen is on the sideboard: a servant lifts the cover, and the butler ladles out a plateful of the soup and places it before Lato.
He takes a spoonful discontentedly, then motions to the butler to take the plate away. Olga suddenly appears.
"Have you left any for me?" she asks. "I am fearfully hungry, for I could not eat any dinner."
"From anxiety?" asks Lato.
"Yes," she says, laughing, "from anxiety." And she takes a seat opposite him.
"Oh, you silly girl!" says Treurenberg, watching her with satisfaction as she sips her soup. Lato himself suddenly has an access of appetite.
Few things in this world are more unpleasant than to be obliged to admit the excellence of a friend's advice when it runs counter to all our most secret and decided inclinations.
Harry Leskjewitsch finds himself thus disagreeably situated the evening after Lato's visit to Komaritz.
While Lato, "gens-d'armed" by two lackeys, is eating his late dinner with Olga, Harry is striding discontentedly to and fro in the steep, uneven court-yard at Komaritz, muttering between his teeth,--
"Lato is right, quite right. I am behaving unpardonably: no respectable man would play this double part. I must go away."
Yes, away; but how can he go away while he knows that Baron Wenkendorf is at Zirkow? It appears to him that he can still do something to prevent Zdena from giving ear to her elderly suitor, for such he certainly seems to be. Harry has been often at Zirkow of late,--no fewer than three times since his entanglement,--and he has consequently had opportunity to watch Zdena's behaviour. Her feeling for the man has certainly reached another stage; she conducts herself with more gravity towards him, and with more cordiality; she often turns to him with trifling questions, and seems to take a kind of pleasure in his society.
"Who knows?" Harry says to himself, clinching his hand and almost mad with jealousy, as he paces the court-yard to and fro.
The crescent moon in the August sky creeps over the dark roof of the brew-house. The air is freshened by the fragrance of the group of walnuts; but another and more penetrating odour mingles with it,--the odour of old wood impregnated with some kind of fermenting stuff. There, against the uneven wall of the old brew-house, stands a row of huge casks.
The casks recall to Harry memories that fill him with sweet and bitter sensations. Into one of them he had crept with Zdena, during a storm, in the early years of their acquaintance. Ah, what a bewitching little creature she was then! He can see her distinctly now, with her long, golden hair; her large, brown eyes, that had so truthful a gaze; the short upper lip of the childish mouth, that seemed always on the point of asking a question; yes, even the slender, childish hands he can see, with the wide, white apron-sleeves; the short skirt and the bare little legs, usually, it must be confessed, much scratched. He recalls the short, impatient movement with which she used to pull her skirts over her knees when she sat down. In one of those casks they had taken refuge from a shower,--he and she,--and they had sat there, close together, looking out upon the world through the gray curtain of the rain. How comically she had peered out, now and then holding out her hand to make sure that it was still pouring! It would not stop. Harry can hear at this moment the rustle of the rain through the foliage of the walnuts, its drip upon the cask, and the cackling of the agitated geese in the court-yard. He had told the child stories to amuse her, and she had gone to sleep with her head on his shoulder, and finally he had taken off his jacket to wrap it about her as he carried her through the rain into the house.
Oh, what a lecture they had had from Mademoiselle, who, meanwhile, had been sending everywhere to find the children, and was half crazy with anxiety!
"I cannot conceive why you should have been anxious, mademoiselle," he had said, with all the dignity of his twelve years. "You ought to know that Zdena is well taken care of when she is with me."
Twelve years have passed since then, but it seems to him suddenly that it all happened only yesterday.
"Well taken care of," he mutters to himself,--"well taken care of. I believe that she would be well taken care of with me to-day, but--good heavens!"
His lips are dry, his throat feels contracted. Up to the present moment he has regarded his betrothal to Paula as a disagreeable temporary entanglement; never has he viewed it as a serious, enduring misfortune. Lato's words have thrown a vivid light upon his position; he sees clearly that he is no longer a free agent, and that every hour passed with Paula rivets his fetters more securely. Yes, Lato is right; he must go away. But he must see her once more before he goes,--only once.