We were very good friends, Harry and I,--there's no denying that. We told each other all our secrets,--at least I told him mine,--and we divided all our bon-bons with each other. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we played at marriage, the ceremony giving occasion for a deal of delightful "dressing up." Moreover, we had long been agreed that, sooner or later, this play should become earnest, and that we would marry each other. But when the first down became perceptible on Harry's upper lip, our mutual friendship began to flag. It was just about the time that Harry went to a public school.
His indifference grieved me at first, then I became consoled, and at last I was faithless to him. A cousin of Harry's, who came to Komaritz to spend the holidays, gave occasion for this breach of faith. His name was Lato, Count Treurenberg. The name alone kindled my enthusiasm. He had scarcely been two days in Komaritz, where I too was staying at the time, when Hedwig confided to me that she was in love with him.
"So am I," I replied. I was firmly convinced that this was so.
My confession was the signal for a highly dramatic scene. Hedwig, who had frequently been to the theatre in Prague, ran about the room wringing her hands and crying, "Both with the same man! both!--it is terrible! One of us must resign him, or the consequences will be fearful."
I diffidently offered to sacrifice my passion.
She shrieked, "No, I never can accept such a sacrifice from you! Fate shall decide between us."
Whereupon we put one white and one black bean in a little, broken, handle-less coffee-pot which we found in the garret, and which Hedwig called an urn.
The decisive moment made my heart beat. We cast lots for precedence in drawing from the urn. It fell to me, and I drew out a black bean! The moment was thrilling. Heda sank upon a sofa, and fanned her joyful face with her pocket-handkerchief. She declared that if she had drawn the black bean she would have attempted her life. This declaration dispelled my despair; I shuddered at the idea of being the cause of anything so horrible.
From that day Heda never spoke to Lato von Treurenberg without drooping her head on one side and rolling her eyes languishingly,--conduct which seemed to cause the young fellow some surprise, but which he treated with great courtesy, while Harry used to exclaim, "What is the matter with you, Heda? You look like a goose in a thunder-storm!"
My behaviour towards Lato underwent no change: I had drawn the "black ball," and, in consequence, the most cordial friendship soon subsisted between us.
It would have been difficult not to like Lato, for I have never met a more amiable, agreeable young fellow.
He was about seventeen years old, very tall, and stooped slightly. His features were delicately chiselled; his smile was quite bewitching in its dreamy, all-embracing benevolence. There was decided melancholy in his large, half-veiled eyes, which caused Hedwig to liken him to Lord Byron.
His complexion was rather dark,--which was odd, as his hair was light brown touched with gold at the temples. His neck was too long, and his arms were uncommonly long. All his appointments, from his coats to his cigar-case, were extremely elegant, testifying to a degree of fastidiousness thitherto quite unknown in Komaritz. Nevertheless, he seemed very content in this primitive nest, ignoring all discomfort, and making no pretension. Heda, who was quick to seize upon every opportunity to admire him, called my attention to his amiable forbearance, or, I confess, I should not have noticed it.
From Hedwig I learned much concerning the young man; among other things, she gave me a detailed account of his family circumstances. His mother was, she informed me, a "mediatisirte."[1]She uttered the word reverently, and, when I confessed that I did not know what it meant, she nearly fainted. His father was one of the most fascinating men in Austria. He is still living, and is by no means, it seems, at the end of his fascinations, but, being a widower, hovers about from one amusing capital to another, breaking hearts for pastime. It seems to be a wonderfully entertaining occupation, and, when one once indulges in it, the habit cannot be got rid of,--like opium-eating.
While he thus paraded his brilliant fascinations in the gay world, he did not, of course, find much time to interest himself in his boy, who was left to the care of distant relatives, and who, when found to be backward in his studies, was placed, I believe by Uncle Karl's advice, under the care of a Prague professor by the name of Suwa, who kept, as Harry once told me, a kind of orthopædic institution for minds that lacked training.
Beside Lato, during that vacation there were two other guests at Komaritz, one a very distant cousin of Harry's, and the other a kind of sub-tutor whose duty it was to coach Harry in his studies.
We could not endure the sub-tutor. His name was Franz Tuschalek; he was about nineteen, with hands and feet like shovels, and a flat, unmeaning face. His manner was intensely servile, and his coat-sleeves and trousers were too short, which gave him a terribly indigent air. One could not help regarding him with a mixture of impatience and sympathy. By my radical uncle's express desire, he and Harry called each other by their Christian names. Still, obnoxious as poor Tuschalek was to us, he was more to our minds than the distant cousin.
This last was a Pole, about twenty years old, with a sallow face and long oblique eyes, which he rolled in an extraordinary way. His hair was black, and he curled it with the curling-tongs. He was redolent of musk, and affected large plaid suits of clothes. His German was not good, and his French was no better, but he assured us that he was a proficient in Chinese and Arabic. He was always playing long and difficult concertos on the table, but he never touched the piano at Komaritz, declaring that the instrument was worn out. He was always short of funds, and was perpetually boasting of the splendour of his family.
He frequently sketched, upon some stray piece of paper, a magnificent and romantic structure, which he would display to us as his Polish home,--"our ancestral castle."
Sometimes this castle appeared with two turrets, sometimes with only one, a fact to which Harry did not fail to call his attention.
His distinguished ancestry was a topic of never-failing interest to him; he was never weary of explaining his connection with various European reigning dynasties, and his visiting-cards bore the high-sounding names "Le Comte Ladislas Othon Fainacky de Chrast-Bambosch," although, as Harry confided to us, he had no right to the title of comte, being the son of a needy Polish baron.
Although Franz Tuschalek was almost as obnoxious to Harry as the "braggart Sarmatian," as Lato called the Pole, he never allowed his antipathy to be seen, but treated him with great consideration, as he did all inferiors, scarcely allowing himself to give vent to his distaste for him even in his absence. But he paraded his dislike of Fainacky, never speaking of him as a guest, but as an "invasion," and always trying to annoy him by some boyish trick.
At length, one Sunday, the crisis in Harry's first vacation occurred. We had all been to early mass, and the celebrant had accompanied us back to Komaritz, as was his custom, to breakfast. After a hasty cup of coffee he took his leave of us children, and betook himself to the bailiff's quarters, where we more than suspected him of a quiet game of cards with that official and his underlings.
The door of the dining-room leading out into the garden was wide open, and delicious odours from the moist flower-beds floated in and mingled with the fragrance of the coffee. It had rained in the night, but the sun had emerged from the clouds and had thrown a golden veil over trees and shrubs. We were just rising from table when the "braggart Sarmatian" entered, booted and spurred, smelling of all the perfumes of Arabia, and with his hair beautifully curled. He had not been to mass, and had breakfasted in his room in the frame house on the hill, which had been rebuilt since the fire. After he had bidden us all an affected good-morning, he said, turning to Harry,--
"Has the man come with the mail?"
"Yes," Harry replied, curtly.
"Did no registered letter come for me?"
"No."
"Strange!"
"Very strange," Harry sneered. "You have been expecting that letter a long time. If I were you, I'd investigate the matter."
"There's something wrong with the post," the Pole declared, with an air of importance. "I must see about it. I think I had best apply to my uncle the cabinet-minister."
Harry made a curious grimace. "There is no need to exercise your powers of invention for me," he observed. "I know your phrase-book and the meaning of each individual sentence. 'Has no registered letter come for me?' means 'Lend me some money.' My father instructed me to supply you with money if you needed it, but never with more than ten guilders at a time. Here they are, and, if you wish to drive to X----, tell the bailiff to have the drag harnessed for you. We--in fact, we will not look for you before evening. Good-bye."
"I shall have to call you to account some day, Harry," Fainacky said, with a frown; then, relapsing into his usual languid affectation of manner, he remarked, over his shoulder, to Mademoiselle Duval, "C'est un enfant," put away the ten-guilder piece in a gorgeous leather pocket-book, and left the room.
Scarcely had the door closed behind him when Harry began to express in no measured terms his views with regard to the "Polish invasion." Then he set his wits to work to devise some plan of getting rid of Fainacky, but it was not until the afternoon, when we were assembled in the dining-room again, that a brilliant idea occurred to him while reading Heine's "Romancero," a book which he loved to read when Heda and I were by because it was a forbidden volume to us.
Suddenly, starting up from his half-reclining position in a large arm-chair, he snapped his fingers, waved his book in the air, and exclaimed, "Eureka!"
"What is it?" Lato asked, good-naturedly.
"I have found something to drive the Pole wild!" cried Harry, rubbing his hands with delight. Whereupon he began to spout, with immense enthusiasm and shouts of laughter, Heine's "Two Knights," a poem in which he pours out his bitterest satire upon the Poles, their cause, and their country. This precious poem Harry commanded Tuschalek to write out in his finest round hand upon a large sheet of paper, which was then to be nailed upon the door of Fainacky's sleeping-apartment. I did not like the poem. I confess my Polish sympathies were strong, and I did not approve of ridiculing the "braggart Sarmatian's" nation by way of disgusting him with Komaritz; but nothing that I could say had any effect. The poem was written out upon the largest sheet of paper that the house afforded, and was the first thing to greet the eyes of Fainacky when he retired to his room for the night. In consequence, the Sarmatian declared, the next morning, at breakfast, that the insult thus offered to his nation and himself was not to be endured by a man of honour, and that he should leave Komaritz that very day.
Nevertheless, he stayed four weeks longer, during which time, however, he never spoke to Harry except upon three occasions when he borrowed money of him.
Tuschalek departed at an earlier date. Harry's method for getting rid of him was much simpler, and consisted of a letter to his father. As well as I can recollect, it ran thus:
"My Dear Father,--
"I pray you send Tuschalek away. I assure you I will study diligently without him. To have about you a fellow hired at ten guilders a month, who calls you by your Christian name, is very deleterious to the character.
"Your affectionate son,
"Harry.
"P.S.--Pray, if you can, help him to another situation, for I can't help pitying the poor devil."
About this time Lato sprained his ankle in leaping a ditch, and was confined for some days to a lounge in the dining-room. Heda scarcely left his side. She brought him flowers, offered to write his letters for him, and finally read aloud to him from the "Journal des Demoiselles." Whether he was much edified I cannot say. He left Komaritz as soon as his ankle was strong again. I was really sorry to have him go; for years we heard nothing more of him.----
"The gypsy!" exclaimed the major. "How fluently she writes! Who would have thought it of her! I remember that Fainacky perfectly well,--a genuine Polish coxcomb! Lato was a charming fellow,--pity he should have married in trade!"
At this moment a loud bell reminded the old cavalryman that the afternoon coffee was ready. He hurriedly slipped his niece's manuscript into a drawer of his writing-table, and locked it up before joining his family circle, where he appeared with the most guileless smile he could assume.
Zdena seemed restless and troubled, and confessed at last that she had lost her diary, which she was quite sure she had put into her work-basket. She had been writing in the garden, and had thrust it into the basket in a hurry. The major seemed uninterested in the loss, but, when the girl's annoyance reached its climax in a conjecture that the cook had, by mistake, used the manuscript for kindling, he comforted her, saying, "Nonsense! the thing will surely be found." He could not bring himself to resign the precious document,--he was too much interested in reading it.
The next day, after luncheon, while Frau Rosamunda was refreshing herself with an afternoon nap and Zdena was in the garden posing for the Baron von Wenkendorf as the goddess of Spring, the major retired to his room and locked himself in, that he might not be disturbed.
"Could she possibly have fallen in love with that Lato? Some girls' heads are full of sentimental nonsense. But I hardly think it--and so--" he went on muttering to himself whilst finding the place where he had left off on the previous day.
The next chapter of this literarychef-d'œuvrebegan as follows:
I had a long letter to-day from Miss O'Donnel in Italy, full of most interesting things. One of the two nieces whom she is visiting is being trained as an opera-singer. She seems to have a brilliant career before her. In Italy they call her "la Patti blonde," and her singing-teacher, to whom she pays thirty-five francs a lesson, declares that she will certainly make at least a hundred thousand francs a year as a prima donna. What an enviable creature! I, too, have an admirable voice. Ah, if Uncle Paul would only let me be trained! But his opinions are so old-fashioned!
And everything that Miss O'Donnel tells me about the mode of life of the Misses Lyall interests me. They live with their mother in Italy, and receive every evening, principally gentlemen, which, it seems, is the Italian custom. The elder Miss Lyall is as good as engaged to a distinguished Milanese who lost his hair in the war of '59; while the younger, the blonde Patti, will not hear of marriage, but contents herself with turning the head of every man who comes near her.
Ah! I have arrived at the conviction that there can be no finer existence than that of a young girl in training for a prima donna, who amuses herself in the mean time by turning the head of every man who comes near her.----
("Goose!" exclaimed the major at this point.)
----To-day I proposed to Uncle Paul that he should take me to Italy for the winter, to have me educated as a singer. There was a great row. Never before, since I have known him, has he spoken so angrily to me.----
("I should think not!" growled the major at this point.)
----The worst was that he blamed Miss O'Donnel for putting such "stuff" (thus he designated my love for art) into my head, and threatened to forbid her to correspond with me. Ah, I wept for the entire afternoon amid the ruins of my shattered hopes. I am very unhappy. After a long interruption, the idea has occurred to me to-day of continuing my memoirs.
Uncle Karl finally yielded to Harry's entreaties, and allowed him to enter the army. That very autumn after the summer which Lato and Fainacky passed at Komaritz he was to enter a regiment of hussars.
It had been a problem for Uncle Karl, the taming of this eager young nature, and I think he was rather relieved by the military solution thus afforded.
As Harry of course had nothing to do in town before joining his regiment, he stayed longer than usual this year in Komaritz,--stayed all through September and until late in October. Komaritz was quite deserted: Lato had gone, the Pole had gone; but Harry still stayed on.
And, strange to say, now, when we confronted our first long parting, our old friendship gradually revived, stirred, and felt that it had been living all this time, although it had had one or two naps. How well I remember the day when he came to Zirkow to take leave of us--of me!
It was late in October, and the skies were blue but cold. The sun shone down upon the earth kindly, but without warmth. A thin silvery mist floated along the ground. The bright-coloured leaves shivered in the frosty air.
On the wet lawn, where the gossamers gleamed like steel, lay myriads of brown, red, and yellow leaves. The song-birds were gone, the sparrows twittered shrilly, and in the midst of the brown autumnal desolation there bloomed in languishing loveliness a white rose upon a leafless stalk.
With a scarlet shawl about my shoulders and my head bare I was sauntering about the garden, wandering, dreaming through the frosty afternoon. I heard steps behind me, and when I looked round I saw Harry approaching, his brows knitted gloomily.
"I only want to bid you 'good-bye,'" he called out to me. "We are off to-morrow."
"When are you coming back?" I asked, hastily.
"Perhaps never," he said, with an important air. "You know--a soldier----"
"Yes, there is a threatening of war," I whispered, and my childish heart felt an intolerable pang as I spoke.
He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh.
"And, at all events, you, when I come back, will be a young lady with--lovers--and you will hardly remember me."
"Oh, Harry, how can you talk so!"
Rather awkwardly he holds out to me his long slender hand, in which I place my own.
Ah, how secure my cold, weak fingers feel in that warm strong hand! Why do I suddenly recall the long-past moonlit evenings in Komaritz when we sat together on the garden-steps and Harry told me ghost-stories, in dread of which, when they grew too ghastly, I used to cling close to him as if to find shelter in his strong young life from the bloodless throng of spirits he was evoking?
Thus we stand, hand in hand, before the white rose, the last which autumn had left. It droops above us, and its cheering fragrance mingles with the autumnal odours around us. I pluck it, stick it in Harry's button-hole, and then suddenly begin to sob convulsively. He clasps me close, close in his arms, kisses me, and murmurs, "Do not forget me!" and I kiss him too, and say, "Never--never!" while around us the faded leaves fall silently upon the grass.
Now follow a couple of very colourless years. There was nothing more to anticipate from the summers. For, although Heda regularly appeared at Komaritz as soon as the city was too hot or too deserted, she did not add much to my enjoyment. Komaritz itself seemed changed when Harry was no longer there to turn everything upside-down with his good-humoured, madcap ways.
And there was a change for the worse in our circumstances; affairs at Zirkow were not so prosperous as they had been.
To vary the monotony of his country life, my uncle had built a brewery, from which he promised himself a large increase of income. It was to be a model brewery, but after it was built the startling discovery was made that there was not water enough to work it. For a while, water was brought from the river in wagons drawn by four horses, but, when this was found to be too expensive, the brewery was left to itself.
For years now it has remained thus passive, digesting in triumphant repose the sums of money which it swallowed up. The monster!
Whenever there is any little dispute between my uncle and my aunt, she is certain to throw his brew-house in his face. But, instead of being crushed by the mischief he has wrought, he declares, "The project was admirable: my idea was a brilliant one if it had only succeeded!"
But it did not succeed.
The consequence was--retrenchment and economy. My aunt dismissed two servants, my uncle kept only a pair of driving horses, and my new gowns were made out of my aunt Thérèse's old ones.
The entire winter we spent at Zirkow, and my only congenial friend was my old English governess, the Miss O'Donnel already mentioned, who came shortly before Harry's entrance into the army, not so much to teach me English as to learn German herself.
Born in Ireland, and a Catholic, she had always had excellent situations in the most aristocratic English families. This had given her, besides her other acquirements, a great familiarity with the curious peculiarities of the British peerage, and with social distinctions of rank in England, as to which she enlightened me, along with much other valuable information.
At first I thought her quite ridiculous in many respects,--her general appearance,--she had once been a beauty, and still wore corkscrew curls,--her way of humming to herself old Irish ballads, "Nora Creina," "The harp that once through Tara's halls," etc., with a cracked voice and unconscious gestures, her formality and sensitiveness. After a while I grew fond of her. What quantities of books she read aloud to me in the long evenings in January and December, while my wooden needles clicked monotonously as I knitted woollen comforters for the poor!--all Walter Scott's novels, Dickens and Thackeray, many of the works of English historians, from the academic, fluent Gibbon to that strange prophet of history, Carlyle, and every day I had to study with her one act of Shakespeare, which bored me at first. She was so determined to form my literary taste that while my maid was brushing my hair she would read aloud some lighter work, such as "The Vicar of Wakefield" or Doctor Johnson's "Rasselas."
As Uncle Paul was very desirous to perfect my education as far as possible, he was not content with these far-reaching efforts, but, with a view to further accomplishments on my part, sent me thrice a week to X----, where an old pianiste, who was said to have refused a Russian prince, and was now humpbacked, gave me lessons on the piano; and a formerballerina, at present married to the best caterer in X----, taught me to dance.
This last was a short, fat, good-humoured person with an enormous double chin and a complexion spoiled by bad rouge. When a ballet-dancer she had been known as Angiolina Chiaramonte; her name now is Frau Anna Schwanzara. She always lost her breath, and sometimes the buttons off her waist, when she danced for her pupils, and she prided herself upon being able to teach every known dance, even to the cancan. I did not learn the cancan, but I did learn the fandango, the czardas, and the Highland fling, with many another national dance. Waltzes and polkas I did not learn, because we had no one for a partner to practise with me; Frau Schwanzara was too short-breathed, although she was very good-humoured and did her best.
Sometimes I thought it very hard to have to get up so early and drive between high walls of snow in a rattling inspector's wagon (Uncle Paul would not allow his last good carriage to be used on these journeys) two long leagues to X----, but it was, at all events, a break in the monotony of my life.
If I was not too sleepy, we argued the whole way, Miss O'Donnel and I, usually over some historic event, such as the execution of Louis XVI. or Cromwell's rebellion. Sometimes we continued our debate as we walked about the town, where we must have been strange and yet familiar figures. Miss O'Donnel certainly was odd in appearance. She always wore a long gray cloth cloak, under which, to guard against dirt, she kilted up her petticoats so high that her red stockings gleamed from afar. On her head was perched a black velvet bonnet with a scarlet pompon, and in summer and winter she carried the same bulgy green umbrella, which she called her "Gamp." Once we lost each other in the midst of a particularly lively discussion. Nothing daunted, she planted herself at a street-corner, and, pounding the pavement with her umbrella, called, lustily, "Zdena! Zdena! Zdena!" until a policeman, to whom I described her, conducted me to her.
In addition to Miss O'Donnel's peculiarities, the extraordinary structure of our vehicle must have attracted some attention in X----. It was a long, old-fashioned coach hung on very high springs, and it looked very like the shabby carriages seen following the hearse at third-class funerals. Twin sister of the Komaritz "Noah's Ark," it served a double purpose, and could be taken apart in summer and used as an open carriage. Sometimes it fell apart of itself. Once when we were driving quickly through the market-square and past the officers' casino in X----, the entire carriage window fell out upon the pavement. The coachman stopped the horses, and a very tall hussar picked up the window and handed it in to me, saying, with a smile, "You have dropped something, mademoiselle!" I was deeply mortified, but I would not for the world have shown that I was so. I said, simply, "Thank you; put it down there, if you please," pointing to the opposite seat,--as if dropping a window out of the carriage were the most ordinary every-day occurrence. Upon my reply to him he made a profound bow, which I thought all right. He was a late arrival in the garrison; the other officers knew us or our carriage by sight. Every one of them, when he came to X----, paid his respects to my uncle, who in due course of time returned the visit, and there was an end of it. The officers were never invited to Zirkow.
Sometimes the roads were so blocked with snow that we could not drive to town, nor could we walk far. For the sake of exercise, or what Miss O'Donnel called our "daily constitutional," we used then to walk numberless times around the house, where the gardener had cleared a path for us. As we walked, Miss O'Donnel told me stories from the Arabian Nights or Ovid's Metamorphoses, varied sometimes by descriptions of life among the British aristocracy. When once she was launched upon this last topic, I would not let her finish,--I besieged her with questions. She showed me the picture of one of her pupils, the Lady Alice B----, who married the Duke of G---- and was the queen of London society for two years.
"'Tis odd how much you look like her," she often said to me. "You are sure to make a sensation in the world; only have patience. You are born to play a great part."
If Uncle Paul had heard her, I believe he would have killed her.
Every evening we played a rubber of whist. Miss O'Donnel never could remember what cards were out, and, whenever we wished to recall a card or to transgress some rule of the game, Aunt Rosamunda always said, "That is not allowed at the Jockey Club."
Once my uncle and aunt took me upon a six weeks' pleasure-tour,--or, rather, an educational excursion. We thoroughly explored the greater part of Germany and Italy on this occasion, travelling very simply, with very little luggage, never speaking to strangers, having intercourse exclusively with pictures, sculptures, and valets-de-place. After thus becoming acquainted, in Baedeker's society, with a new piece of the world, as Aunt Rosamunda observed with satisfaction, we returned to Zirkow, and life went on as before.
And really my lonely existence would not have struck me as anything extraordinary, if Hedwig had not been at hand to enlighten me as to my deprivations.
She had been introduced into society, and wrote me of her conquests. Last summer she brought a whole trunkful of faded bouquets with her to Komaritz,--ball-trophies. Besides this stuff, she brought two other acquisitions with her to the country, a sallow complexion and an adjective which she used upon every occasion--"impossible!" She tossed it about to the right and left, applying it to everything in the dear old nest which I so dearly loved, and which she now never called anything save "Mon exil." The house at Komaritz, the garden, my dress,--all fell victims to this adjective.
Two of her friends shortly followed her to Komaritz, with a suitable train of governesses and maids,--countesses from Prague society, Mimi and Franziska Zett.
They were not nearly so affected as Heda,--in fact, they were not affected at all, but were sweet and natural, very pretty, and particularly pleasant towards me. But we were not congenial; we had nothing to say to one another; we had no interests in common. They were quite indifferent to my favourite heroes, from the Gracchi to the First Consul; in fact, they knew hardly anything about them, and I knew still less of the Rudis, Nikis, Taffis, and whatever else the young gentlemen were called, with whom they danced and flirted at balls and parties, and about whom they now gossiped with Heda.
They, too, brought each a trunkful of faded bouquets, and one day they piled them all up on the grass in the garden and set fire to them. They declared that it was the custom in society in Vienna thus to burn on Ash Wednesday every relic of the Carnival. To be sure, it was not Ash Wednesday in Komaritz, and the Carnival was long past, but that was of no consequence.
The favourite occupation of the three young ladies was to sit in the summer-house, with a generous supply of iced raspberry vinegar, and make confession of the variouspassions funesteswhich they had inspired. I sat by and listened mutely.
Once Mimi amiably asked me to give my experience. I turned my head away, and murmured, ashamed, "No one ever made love to me." Mimi, noticing my distress, put her finger beneath my chin, just as if she had been my grand-aunt, and said, "Only wait until you come out, and you will bear the palm away from all of us, for you are by long odds the prettiest of us all."
When afterwards I looked in the glass, I thought she was right.
"Until you go into society," Mimi had said. Good heavens! into society!--I! For some time a suspicion had dawned upon me that Uncle Paul did not mean that I should ever "go into society." When, the day after Mimi's portentous speech, I returned to Zirkow, I determined to put an end to all uncertainty upon the subject.
After dinner--it had been an uncommonly good one--I put my hand caressingly within my uncle's arm, and whispered, softly, "Uncle, do you never mean to take me to balls, eh?"
He had been very gay, but he at once grew grave, as he replied,--
"What good would balls do you? Make your eyes droop, and your feet ache! I can't endure the thought of having you whirled about by all the young coxcombs of Prague and then criticised afterwards. Marriages are made in heaven, Zdena, and your fate will find you here, you may be sure."
"But I am not thinking of marriage," I exclaimed, indignantly. "I want to see the world, uncle dear; can you not understand that?" and I tenderly stroked his coat-sleeve.
He shook his curly head energetically.
"Be thankful that you know nothing of the world," he said, with emphasis.
And I suddenly recalled the intense bitterness in my mother's tone as she uttered the word "world," when I waked in the dark night and found her kneeling, crying, at my bedside in our old Paris home.
"Is it really so very terrible--the world?" I asked, meekly, and yet incredulously.
"Terrible!" he repeated my word with even more energy than was usual with him. "It is a hot-bed of envy and vanity, a place where one learns to be ashamed of his best friend if he chance to wear an ill-made coat; that is the world you are talking of. I do not wish you to know anything about it."
This was all he would say.
It might be supposed that the unattractive picture of the world drawn by Uncle Paul would have put a stop at once and forever to any desire of mine for a further acquaintance with it, but--there is ever a charm about what is forbidden. At present I have not the faintest desire to visit Pekin, but if I were forbidden to go near that capital I should undoubtedly be annoyed.
And day follows day. Nearly a year has passed since that unedifying conversation with my uncle.
The only amusement that varied the monotony of our existence was a letter at long intervals from Harry. For a time he was stationed in Salzburg; for a year he has been in garrison in Vienna, where, of course, he is absorbed in the whirl of Viennese society. I must confess that it did not greatly please me when I first learned that he had entered upon that brilliant worldly scene: will he not come to be like Hedwig? My uncle declares that the world is the hot-bed of envy and vanity; and yet there must be natures upon which poisonous atmospheres produce no effect, just as there are men who can breathe with impunity the air of the Pontine marshes; and Harry's nature is one of these. At least so it would seem from his letters, they are so cordial and simple, such warm affection speaks in every line. A little while ago he sent me his photograph. I liked it extremely, but I did not say so; all the more loudly, however, did my uncle express his admiration. He offered to wager that Harry is the handsomest officer in the entire army, and he shouted loudly for Krupitschka, to show him the picture.
Harry told us one interesting piece of news,--I forget whether it was this winter or the last; perhaps it was still longer ago, for Harry was stationed in Enns at the time, and the news related to our old friend Treurenberg.
He had married a girl in the world of trade,--a Fräulein Selina von Harfink. Harry, whom Lato had bidden to his marriage, and who had gone for old friendship's sake from Enns to Vienna to be the escort in the church of the first of the eight bridesmaids, made very merry in his letter over the festivity.
We were all intensely surprised; we had not heard a word of Lato's betrothal, and the day after Harry's letter came the announcement of the marriage.
Uncle Paul, who takes most of the events of life very philosophically, grew quite angry on learning of this marriage.
Since Lato has married for money, he cares nothing more for him.
"I should not care if he had made a fool of himself and married an actress," he exclaimed, over and over again, "but to sell himself--ugh!"
When I suggested, "Perhaps he fell in love with Selina," my uncle shrugged his shoulders, and seemed to consider any such possibility entirely out of the question.
We talked for two weeks at Zirkow about Lato Treurenberg's marriage.
Now we have almost forgotten it. Since Lato has been married he has been quite estranged from his former associations.
To-day is my birthday. I am nineteen years old. How kind my uncle and aunt are to me! How they try to give me pleasure! My heap of presents was really grand. Arrayed about my cake, with its lighted candles, I found two new gowns, a hat which Heda had purchased for me in Prague,--and which, by the way, would be highly appreciated upon the head of a monkey in a circus,--several volumes of English literature sent me by Miss O'Donnel from Italy, and, in a white silk sachet upon which Mimi Zett had embroidered a bird of paradise in the midst of a snow-scene (a symbol of my melancholy condition), a card, upon which was written, "A visit to some watering-place, by the way of Vienna and Paris." I uttered a shriek of delight and threw my arms around my uncle's neck.
The three young girls from Komaritz came over to Zirkow to dine, in honour of the occasion; we drank one another's health in champagne, and in the afternoon we had coffee in the woods, which was very inconvenient but very delightful. Then we consulted the cards as to our future, and Heda lost her temper because the oracle declared that she would marry an apothecary.
What nonsense it was! The cards prophesied to me that I should marry for love;--I! As if I should think of such a thing! But I was not in the least vexed, although I knew how false it was.
Towards eight o'clock the girls drove home, and I concluded the evening by taking my new bonnet to pieces and then scribbling here at my writing-table. I cannot make up my mind to go to bed. I am fairly tingling to my finger-tips with delightful anticipations. To think of seeing Paris once more,--Paris, where I was born, the very centre of the civilized world! Oh, it is too charming!
Something extraordinary will happen during this trip,--I am sure of it. I shall meet some one who will liberate me from my solitude and set me upon the pedestal for which I long; an English peer, perhaps, or a Russian prince, oh, it will of course be a Russian prince--who spends most of his time in Paris. I shall not mind his not being very young. Elderly men are more easily managed.----
(At this point the major frowns. "I should not have thought it of her, I really should not have thought it of her. Well, we shall see whether she is in earnest." And he goes on with his reading.)
June 10, ----.
I have a piece of news to put down. The Frau von Harfink who bought Dobrotschau a while ago--the estate that adjoins Zirkow, a fine property with a grand castle but poor soil--is no other than Lato Treurenberg's mother-in-law. She called upon us to-day. When Krupitschka brought the cards of the Baroness Melanie von Harfink and her daughter Paula, Aunt Rosa denounced the visit as a presumption upon the part of the ladies. She had been engaged all day long in setting the house "to rights," preparatory to our departure, and had on a very old gown in which she does not often appear; wherefore she would fain have denied herself. But I was burning with curiosity to see Lato's mother-in-law: so I remarked, "Uncle Paul and I will go and receive the ladies, while you dress."
This made my aunt very angry. "It never would occur to me to dress for these wealthyparvenues. This gown is quite good enough for them." And she smoothed the faded folds of her skirt so that a neatly-darned spot was distinctly conspicuous. The ladies were immediately shown in; they were extremely courteous and amiable, but they found no favour in my aunt's eyes.
There really was no objection to make to Mamma von Harfink, who is still a very handsome woman, except that her manner was rather affected. The daughter, however, was open to criticism of various kinds, and subsequently became the subject of a serious dispute between my aunt and uncle. My aunt called Fräulein Paula disagreeable, absolutely hideous, and vulgar; whereupon my uncle, slowly shaking his head, rejoined,----
"Say what you please, she may not be agreeable, but she is very pretty."
Upon this my aunt grew angry, and called Fräulein Paula a "red-haired kitchen-maid." My uncle shrugged his shoulders, and observed, "Nevertheless, there have been kitchen-maids who were not ugly."
Then my aunt declared, "I can see nothing pretty about such fat creatures; but, according to her mother's account, you are not alone in your admiration. Madame Harfink had hardly been here five minutes when she informed me that Professor X----, of Vienna, had declared that her daughter reminded him of Titian's penitent Magdalen in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, and she asked me whether I was not struck with the resemblance."
My uncle grinned--I could not see at what and said, "H'm! the Magdalen, perhaps; but whether penitent or not----" and he pinched my cheek.
The dispute continued for a while longer, and ended with my aunt's emphatic declaration that men always had the worst possible taste with regard to young girls. My uncle burst into a laugh at this, and replied, "True. I gave proof of it on the 21st of May, 1858." It was his marriage-day.
Of course my aunt laughed, and the quarrel ended. The subject was changed, and we discussed Lato Treurenberg's marriage, which had puzzled us all. My aunt declared that since she had seen the family Treurenberg's choice appeared to her more incomprehensible than ever.
My uncle shook his head sagely, and observed, "If Selina Treurenberg at all resembles her sister, it explains much to me, especially when I recall the poor fellow's peculiarities. It makes me more lenient towards him, and--I pity him from my heart." They evidently did not wish to say anything more upon the subject before me.