'Gloria Victis!' A Romance
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Title: 'Gloria Victis!' A Romance
Author: Ossip Schubin
Translator: Mary Maxwell
Release date: March 24, 2011 [eBook #35672]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35672
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'GLORIA VICTIS!' A ROMANCE ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=g9o9AAAAYAAJ
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
GLORIA VICTIS!
A ROMANCE
BY
OSSIP SCHUBIN
Author of "Our Own Set."
"Alas! poor human nature!"
_Chesterfield_.
From the German by MARY MAXWELL
NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1886
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886
by William S. Gottsberger
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
Press of
William E. Gottsberger
New York
GLORIA VICTIS!
CHAPTER I.
"There is no help for it, I must do it to-day," the Baroness Melkweyser
murmured with a sigh breathed into the depths of the toilet-glass,
before which, she was sitting while her maid dressed her hair. "It is
now just a week," she went on to herself, after having uttered the
above words aloud, "quite one week since Capriani entrusted the affair
to me. I have met him three times, and each time was obliged to tell
him that there had been no favourable opportunity as yet. He is
beginning to take my delay ill. Come, then, _courage!_.... _en
avant!_.... Truyn certainly ought to be glad to marry his daughter as
soon as possible, and I cannot see why Gabrielle should make any
objection to becoming the sister-in-law of the Duke of Larothiere. To
be sure, most Austrians have such antediluvian ideas! _Nons verrons!_ I
will, as Capriani desires, see how the land lies."
She shrugged her shoulders as though shifting off all responsibility
and turning to her maid exclaimed: "_mais depechez vous donc_,
Euphrosine, will you never remember how much I always have to do!"
Whereupon the impatient lady, snatched from her maid the head-dress
which she was arranging, and, quite in the style of Napoleon I.,
crowned herself.
* * *
The scene lies in Paris. The short after-season which, like an echo of
the carnival, is wont to follow Lent, that holy intermezzo crowded with
charity-bazaars, musical soirees and other elegant penitential
observances, is rather duller than usual this year. Easter came too
late and although _Figaro_ continues its daily record of balls and
routs, Paris takes very little heed. All genuine enthusiasm for such
entertainments is lacking. Paris thinks of nothing now save the races,
the last auction at the Hotel Drouot, the latest change of ministry,
and the newest thing in stocks.
It is the beginning of May. Two weeks ago, rather later than usual,
spring made its appearance--like a young king full of eager
benevolence, and generous promises, with green banner held aloft and
crowned with sunshine--thus it swept above the earth which sullenly and
reluctantly opened its weary eyes. "Awake, awake, I bring with me joy!"
called spring in sweet siren tones sometimes low and wooing and anon
loud and imperious. And a mysterious whisper thrilled and stirred the
land, the trees stretched their black branches, the buds burst. Men
felt a pleasant languor, while their hearts beat louder.
The spring advanced quickly, working its lovely miracles--loading the
trees with blossoms and filling human hearts with joy--and upon those
for whom its lavish hand had left nothing else, it bestowed a smile, or
it granted them a dream.
There are, indeed, some unfortunates for whom its brilliant splendour
never does aught save reveal the scars of old wounds, which in its
careless gayety it formerly inflicted; and while others flock abroad to
admire its beauty, these hide away their misery. But when daylight's
haughty glare has faded, and spring has modestly shrouded its
loveliness in a veil of grey, these wretches inhaling its fragrance in
their seclusion come forth from their concealment, into the soothing
twilight, among the dewy blossoms, and once more give utterance to the
yearning that has so long been mute, rejoicing with tears in their old
anguish, crying: "Oh Spring, oh youth--even thy falsehood was lovely--"
thus doing it homage by their grief, for spring has no enemies.
* * *
Somewhat apart from the aggressive brilliancy of the Avenue
l'Imperatrice wind a couple of quiet streets like detached fragments of
the Faubourg St. Germain. Everything here breathes that charming and
genuine elegance which is almost an instinct, and rules mankind
despotically. It is not a grimace artificially assumed for show.
One of the prettiest of the small hotels standing between its
court-yard and garden, in the Avenue ----, formerly it was called the
Avenue Labedoyere, tomorrow it may perhaps be the Avenue Paul de
Cassagnac, and the day after the Avenue Montmorency--was occupied by
Count Truyn with his young wife and his daughter.
This evening the family had assembled in a pleasant drawing-room on the
rez-de-chaussee, and one after another each expressed delight in the
repose and relief of such an hour after the social exertions of the
day. The husband and wife as they sat opposite each other near the
fireplace--he with his _Figaro_, and she busy with the restoration of
some antique embroidery--were evidently people who had attained the
goal of existence and were content. It was plain that their thoughts
did not range beyond the present.
Not so with Gabrielle. Twice during the last quarter of an hour she has
changed her seat and three times she has consulted the clock upon the
chimney-piece.
At last she goes to a mirror and arranges her breast-knot of violets.
"Our Ella is beginning to be pretty," said Truyn opening his eyes after
a doze behind the _Figaro_.
"Have you just discovered that?" Zinka asked smiling.
"Do you think my gown is becoming, Zini?" Gabrielle asked as gravely as
if the matter were the Eastern question.
"Very becoming," her step-mother kindly assured her.
"Oho!" said Truyn banteringly, "our Ella is beginning to be vain."
Whereupon Gabrielle blushed deeply and to hide her confusion went to
the piano and began to strum "Annette and Lubin." She did not play well
but her hands looked very pretty running over the keys.
"I am surprised that Ossi does not make his appearance," said Truyn,
laying aside his _Figaro_. Like all Austrians residing in Paris he had
a special preference for that frivolous journal. "I met him this
afternoon on the Boulevard, and he asked me expressly whether we were
to be at home this evening."
Gabrielle looked, as her father observed with surprise, rather
embarrassed. He had spoken thoughtlessly, and in masculine ignorance of
the state of affairs. He was just beginning to teaze the girl about her
behaviour when the footman announced the Baroness Melkweyser.
Her head-dress of red feathers sat somewhat askew upon the
old-fashioned puffs of hair that framed her sallow face. She wore a
gown of flowered brocade, the surpassing ugliness of which showed it to
have been purchased at a bargain at some great bazaar as a "_fin de
saison_." She squinted slightly, winked constantly, was entirely out of
breath, and sank exhausted into an arm-chair, before uttering a word of
greeting.
"Ah, if you only knew all I have done this blessed day!" she exclaimed.
The Truyn trio looked at her in smiling silence.
"Confessed and received the sacrament very early," the baroness began
the list of her achievements, "always on the second of every month--I
never can manage it on the first--then at the Pierson sale I bought six
things marked with Louis Philippe's cipher, then I went to see Ada de
Thienne's trousseau,--then to a breakfast at the new minister's--too
comical--his wife made herself perfectly ridiculous, in a bare neck at
two o'clock in the daytime!"
"That is the inevitable consequence of a change of ministers," Zinka
remarked. Her manner of speech, quiet, and rather inclined to irony,
was that of those who, with rigid self-control have for years endured
with dignity some great grief.
The baroness, meanwhile, rattled on, unheeding. "Then I went my
round of charities, then looked for a wedding-present for my niece
Stefanie...."
"Heavens, Zoe!" Truyn groaned.
"Yes, I lead a most fatiguing existence," the baroness wailed. "Just as
I sat down to supper,--I missed my dinner--it occurred to me that it
really would be better not to let to-day pass without making you a very
important communication--that is--hm--discussing--a most important
matter with you--and--here I am. Pray, Zinka, let me have a sandwich,
for I am dying of hunger."
"Ring the bell, Erich," Zinka said with a smile.
"And now to business," said the baroness, "_je tiens une occasion_--it
really is the most advantageous opportunity!"
"You shall have your sandwich, Zoe," said Truyn, quietly stretching out
his hand to the bell handle, "but pray spare me your advantageous
opportunities. If I had availed myself of all your boasted
'opportunities,' I should now be the proud possessor of fourteen
rattle-trap Buehl pianos and at least twenty-five tumble-down country
houses. As it is I have bought for love of you three holy-water pots of
Mme. Maintenon's, an inkstand of the Pompadour's, and I can't tell how
many nightcaps of Louis XVI., warranted genuine."
"And an excellent bargain you had of them," the baroness declared.
"Louis Sixteenth's nightcaps have latterly been going up in price. But
this time there is no question of purchase," she went on to say, "and
that is the best of it."
"That certainly is very fine," muttered Truyn.
"The question is,--I suppose I ought to ask Gabrielle to leave the
room, that used to be the way, girls never were allowed to be present
while their parents disposed of their future, but I .... _j'aime a
attaquer les choses franchement_. The question is, in fact, with regard
to--Gabrielle's marriage."
Zinka with a smile took the hand of the young girl standing beside her
in her own, and tenderly laid it against her cheek.
"Gabrielle's beauty produced a sensation at the last ball at the
Spanish embassy's," the baroness continued.
"I must entreat you not to make such a fatal assault upon my daughter's
modesty," exclaimed Zinka.
"Bah!" the baroness shrugged her shoulders, "stop up your ears,
Gabrielle. Produced a sensation is the correct phrase. It is
remarkable--the _succes_ that the Austrian women always have in Paris.
I have a suitor for Gabrielle--the most brilliant _parti_ in Paris."
"Stop, stop, Zoe, I beg you," said Truyn, provoked, "you make me
nervous! You always forget how your French way of arranging marriages
goes against the grain with us and our old-fashioned Austrian ideas.
You say I have a rich husband for your daughter in just the same tone
in which you say I have a purchaser for your house! And I seriously
entreat you to consider that a jewel like my dear comrade yonder, may
be bestowed, upon one deemed worthy of such a possession, but can never
be sold."
"Ah, here is my sandwich!" exclaimed the baroness, paying no attention
to his words in her satisfaction over the tea-tray. Whilst Gabrielle
was occupied with making tea the visitor applied herself to the
refreshments, whispering meanwhile confidentially and mysteriously to
Truyn. "I thought that your new domestic relations might make you
desirous to have Gabrielle mar ...."
An angry flash in Truyn's blue eyes, usually so kindly, warned her that
she was on the wrong track; she lost countenance and consequently
proceeded rather too precipitately in her investigations as to 'how the
land lay.'
"At least my proposition is worth being taken into serious
consideration," she said hastily. "Count Capriani commissioned me to
ask you whether there was any prospect of his obtaining Gabrielle's
hand for his only--remember, his only son."
"Count Capriani, I do not know who he is," Truyn said coldly.
"Well then, Conte Capriani," Zoe explained impatiently.
"Ah, indeed, Conte Capriani," Truyn said significantly,--"the railroad
Capriani!"
"Yes."
"And he dares to ask my daughter's hand for his son?"
Perfect silence reigned for a moment. Gabrielle's little nose expressed
intense disdain.
"Zoe, you are insane," Truyn said at last, very contemptuously. "This
is not, I believe, the first of April."
"I cannot understand your irritation," the baroness rejoined, with the
bravado that is the result of great embarrassment. "You are always
proclaiming yourself a Liberal with no prejudices!"
Truyn coloured slightly. He had grown more decided than he had been a
few years before, and his shirt collars were perhaps a little higher
and stiffer. His whole bearing expressed the dignified content that
distinguishes the man of conservative views of life. He gently twitched
his high collar as he began: "I am a Liberal--at least I fancy that I
am. If my daughter had set her heart upon marrying a man her inferior
as regards birth and family, I should certainly consent to her doing
so, provided the man were one whose character and attainments atoned
for his low origin."
Zinka smiled sceptically with a scarcely perceptible shrug. Truyn's
colour deepened. "I do not deny," he admitted, "that it would be very
hard for me, but all the same I should consent and should do all that I
could to assist such a son-in-law to attain a position worthy of my
daughter--that is suitable to her mode of life."
"Do not be afraid, papa. I have not the slightest desire to fall in
love with a deputy on the extreme Left," Gabrielle observed.
"In young Capriani's case there would be no need for you to trouble
yourself about your son-in-law's position," said the baroness loftily.
"_Sa position est toute faite_. All Paris was at the ball the night
before last in the Capriani Hotel--all the _rois en exil_ appeared
there, and even some Siberian magnates, and all--that is very many--of
the Austrians at present in Paris."
"You know just as well as I do why all these magnates appeared at
Capriani's," Truyn rejoined angrily. "But indeed I care nothing for
this speculator's position--the man himself is odious--a common parvenu
with a boor of a son."
"Have it your own way," said the baroness. "Perhaps you know that a
daughter of Capriani's is married to the Duke of Larothiere?"
"Yes, I know it."
"And that the Conte's property is estimated at a hundred million?"
"It may be a hundred billion for all I care."
"He is incontestably one of the most influential financiers in Europe."
"Unfortunately, and one of the most corrupt and corrupting," Truyn
rejoined with emphasis.
"You have not, however, asked Gabrielle's opinion," persisted the
baroness.
Gabrielle tossed her head, but her answer was unuttered, for just at
this moment the servant flung open the door, and the interesting
conversation was interrupted by the announcement of fresh visitors.
CHAPTER II.
Two young men entered--two Counts Lodrin. They bore the same name; they
were the sons of brothers--and as unlike each other as possible.
With regard to Oswald--the "Ossi" of whom Truyn made mention a while
before.--Gabrielle was convinced that no sculptured classic god, none
of Raphael's cherubim could compare with him in beauty and distinction.
She was perhaps alone in this view, although it must be confessed that
few mortal men surpassed him in these two respects. About six and
twenty, tall, slender--very dark--a gay, good-humoured smile on his
handsome, aristocratic face--with an eager, ardent manner--and with
what might be called the gypsy-like distinction that characterizes an
entire class of the Austrian aristocracy he was the embodiment of
chivalric youth. With all the attractiveness of his face, his eyes
struck you at once--it would be hard to say what was wrong about them,
whether they were too large, or too dark.
They certainly were very beautiful, but they produced the impression of
not suiting the face--of having been placed there by accident. But the
incongruous impression made by those large, dark eyes upon almost every
one who saw the young man for the first time was extremely fleeting,
and passed away as soon as Oswald began to talk--as soon as his look
became animated.
His cousin Georges was at least a dozen years his elder, and nearly a
head shorter than he. Many persons declared that he looked like a
jockey; they were wrong. He looked like what he was, a prodigal son,
very well-born. Spare in figure, his face smoothly shaven, except for a
long sandy moustache, his hair quite gray, and brushed up from the
temples after a vanished fashion, his features keen and mobile, his
eyes round as a bird's, his carriage rather stooping and with motions
characterized by a certain negligence, he produced the impression of a
man who had seen a great deal of the world, and who now took a
philosophic view of his life and of his position.
Oswald is the heir, Georges is the next to inherit.
Scarcely were the usual formal greetings over when Oswald made an
attempt to join his pretty cousin Gabrielle, with the laudable purpose
of helping her to pour out tea. His design was cruelly frustrated,
however, by Count Truyn, who instantly engaged him in a brisk
discussion of the latest anti-Catholic measures on the part of the
Republic. Oswald sat beside his uncle restlessly drumming on the brim
of his opera-hat, the image of politely-concealed youthful impatience,
now and then adding an "abominable!" or a "disgusting," to the
indignant expressions of the elder man, and all the while glancing
towards Gabrielle. Certain personal matters interested him far more
just now than the deplorable excesses of the French government. He had
not read the article in the _Temps_ to which his uncle alluded, he did
not take the French Republic at all in earnest, he considered it in
fact no Republic at all, but only a monarchy gone mad; French politics
interested him from an ethnographical point of view only, all which he
calmly confessed to his uncle, by whom he was scolded as "unpardonably
indifferent," and "culpably blind." The elder man's conservative
philippics grew more eager, and the younger one's courteous admissions
more vague, until at last Zinka succeeded in releasing the latter by
asking Gabrielle to sing something. Gabrielle, of course, declared that
she was hoarse, but Oswald who was, by the way, about as much
interested in her singing from a musical point of view as in the
trumpet-solos of the emperor of Russia, smiled away her objections and
rising, with a sigh of relief, went to open the grand piano.
No one seemed to have any idea of according a strict silence to the
young girl's music, and whilst Gabrielle warbled in a sweet, but rather
thin voice, some majestic air of Handel's, and Oswald leaning against
the cover of the instrument looked down at her with ardent intentness,
Georges, his hands upon his knees, his body inclined towards the
Baroness Melkweyser who, still busied with her refreshments, was
disposing of sandwich after sandwich, said: "You are wearing yourself
out in the service of mankind. Have you allowed yourself one
half-hour's repose to-day?--No, not one--as any one may see who looks
at you. _A propos_, who was the Japanese woman dressed in yellow at whose
side I saw you to-day sitting in a fainting condition in a landau--in
front of Gouache's was it?--on the Boulevard de la Madeleine?"
"Adeline Capriani."
"_Ah tiens!_ That was why I seemed to have seen her before."
"A very queer figure was she not?"
"She is not ugly," said Georges. "It is a pity that she dresses so
ridiculously."
"Her dress costs her a fortune every year--the first artists in Paris
design her gowns," Madame Zoe declared.
"Indeed----? Now I understand why she always looks as if she had been
stolen from a bric-a-brac shop," said Georges. "Explain to me, however,
why this wealthy young lady is still unmarried. Perhaps the Conte
thinks another son-in-law too expensive an article ... Did you know
that Larothiere lost 300,000 francs again yesterday at baccarat at the
Jockey Club?"
"That is of no consequence," Zoe said loftily. "Gaston loves his
wife--it is all that Capriani requires of his sons-in-law."
"_Sapperment!_" Georges exclaimed, "that's the right kind of a
father-in-law; what if you should negotiate a marriage, Baroness,
between me and Mademoiselle Capriani?"
"Do not indulge in such sorry jests," Truyn interposed disapprovingly.
"I am in solemn earnest; the financial ground beneath my feet is very
shaky at present, and having one's debts paid by such a good fellow as
Ossi palls upon one in time. I am undecided whether to turn Hospitaller
or to marry an heiress."
"Ah, if Oswald heard you!" Zinka said with her quiet smile.
"Ossi at this moment, if I am not greatly mistaken, is listening to the
songs of angels in Heaven, and takes precious little heed of us
ordinary mortals," replied Georges, glancing with a certain dreaminess
in his eyes towards the youthful pair who had left the piano and were
standing in the deep recess of an open balconied window.
"Happy youth," murmured Georges.
Yes, happy youth! They were standing there, he very pale, she blushing
slightly, mute, confused, the sparkling eyes of each seeking, avoiding
the other's. He has led her to the recess to show her the moon, to lay
his heart at her feet, but he has forgotten the moon, and he has not
yet dared to pour out his heart to her.
The fragrant breath of the spring night was wafted towards them,
fanning their youthful faces caressingly.
All nature was thrilling beneath the first gentle May shower. The large
white panicles of the elder in the little garden in front of the house
gleamed brightly through the gray twilight. The small fountain murmured
monotonously, its slender jet of water sparkling in the light from the
drawing-room windows. They were dancing in the house opposite; like
colourless phantoms the different couples glided across the lowered
shades of the windows. The "Ecstasy" waltz played by a piano and a
violin mingled its frivolous sobs and laughter with the modest song of
the fountain and the whispers of the elder-bushes. All else was quiet
in the Avenue-Labedoyere, but from the distance the restless roar of
the huge city invaded the silence of night--mysterious, confused, as
the demoniac restlessness of Hell may sometimes invade the divine peace
of Heaven.
"Gabrielle!" Oswald began at last with hesitation and very gently, "I
have come very often of late to the Avenue-Labedoyere. Can you guess
why?"
"Why?" The blush on Gabrielle's cheek deepens. "Why?--since you were in
Paris for three weeks without coming near your relatives you ought to
make up for lost time," she murmured.
"True, Gabrielle--but--do you really not know for whose sake I have
come so often, so very often?"
She was silent.
His breath came more quickly, the colour rose to his cheek. Surely he
must have divined Gabrielle's innocent secret from the young girl's
tell-tale shyness, but yet at this decisive moment the words died in
his throat as they must for every genuine, honest lover who would fain
ask the momentous question of her whom he loves.
"Gabrielle," he murmured hastily and somewhat indistinctly, "will you
take the full heart I offer you--can you accept it, or...." he
hesitated and looked inquiringly into her lovely face. "Ella, all my
happiness lies in your hands!"
Her heart beat loudly, the lace ruffles on her bosom trembled,
as she slowly lifted her eyes to his.--How handsome he was, how
well the tender humility in his face became him! His happiness
lies in her hands! Her eyes filled with tears. "I do not
know ... I ... Oswald ... Ossi!" she murmured disconnectedly, and then she
placed her slender hand in the strong one held out to her.
Truyn with his back to the window, noticed nothing, but the baroness
who had been observing this romantic intermezzo through her eyeglass
with cold-blooded curiosity, said drily to herself: "_J'en suis pour
mes frais_;" then turning for the last time to Truyn, she said, "I have
communicated to you Capriani's proposal."
"And you are at liberty to tell him how I received it," Truyn replied
stiffly.
"_J'arrangerai un peu_," the baroness said as she rose, "do not disturb
the young people, I will slip out on tiptoe. Adieu." And with a
courteous glance around, she hurried away.
"Well, what do you think?" exclaimed Truyn, as he returned to the
drawing-room, after escorting her to the hall. "What do you think,
Georges?" and sitting down beside the young man he tapped him on the
knee. "Capriani sends that goose Zoe in all seriousness to ask for my
daughter's hand for his son. What do you say to that?"
"Audacious enough," said Georges shrugging his shoulders, "but what
would you have--'tis a sign of the times!"
This dry way of judging of the matter did not please Truyn at all.
"Ossi!" he called.
"What, uncle?" The young people advanced together into the room.
"I have an interesting piece of news for you. A secret agent of the
_Maison Foy_ has made a proposal to-day for Ella's hand for Capriani,
jr! What do you say to that?"
"Ella's hand for the son of that railway Capriani!" exclaimed Oswald
angrily. "Impossible! The secret agent deserves .... and he made an
expressive motion with his hand. His indignation became him extremely
well, and Truyn's glance rested with evident admiration upon the young
fellow's athletic figure as he stood with head slightly thrown back,
and eyes flashing scornfully.
"Unfortunately it was a lady--Zoe Melkweyser," the elder man explained.
"Then she deserves at least six months of Charenton," said Oswald,
"'tis incredible!" and he clinched his hand. "Your daughter, uncle,
and the son of the Conte--I suppose he is a Conte--or a Marchese
perhaps--Capriani! You know that little orang-outang, Georges?"
"Of course, one meets him everywhere. He addressed me by my first name
yesterday," Georges replied calmly. "Ah, my dear friends, you entirely
misconceive this extraordinary proposal. For my part, I see in it no
personal insult to the Countess Gabrielle, but simply a symptom of an
approaching social earthquake. The triumph of the tradesman is manifest
everywhere. Zola in his most prominent work has celebrated the
apotheosis of the bag-man and the shop-girl; Chapu has designed the
facade of the latest millinery establishment; Paris will yet see the
Bourse hold its sessions in _La Madeleine_, and the _Bon Marche_ will
set up a branch of its trade in _Notre Dame_."
"Likely enough," said Truyn with a troubled sigh, "I am only surprised
that Capriani has not tried to be President of the French Republic."
"He has not thought the position at present a favourable one for his
speculations," said Georges, "but what is not, may be."
"Ah, I am proud of my Austria," said Truyn, suddenly becoming stiff and
wooden of aspect. "Such adventurers have at least no position there."
"Do not be too proud of your Austria," rejoined Georges, "I heard
something at the embassy to-day that will hardly please you. _Id est_,
Capriani has bought Schneeburg and will be your nearest neighbour in
Bohemia."
Truyn started to his feet. "Capriani .... Schneeburg .... impossible! How
could Malzin bring himself to such a sacrifice!"
"It must have gone hard with the poor fellow, God rest his soul! The
night after the contract had been signed he died of apoplexy."
"Good Heavens!" murmured Truyn, pacing restlessly to and fro. "Good
Heavens!"
"And there is another interesting piece of news," Georges went on.
"Well?"
"Fritz--do you remember him?"
"Certainly. The only Malzin now left, a very amiable lad who
unfortunately made an impossible marriage."
"Yes, he married an actress, and just at the time when every one else
was tired of ...."
"Georges!" exclaimed Oswald frowning and glancing towards Gabrielle. He
was evidently of the opinion that such things should not be mentioned
in the presence of young girls.
"Hm--hm," muttered Georges, "and he has accepted the post of Capriani's
private secretary."
"Frightful!" exclaimed Oswald.
"He must have become morally corrupt to some degree, before he could
make up his mind to submit to such a humiliation," interposed Truyn
indignantly.
"Poor devil!" said Oswald.
"What would you have?" the philosophic Georges remarked and hummed
ironically the air of '_Garde la reine_.' "_Ce n'est pas toujours les
memes qui ont l'assiette au beurre_. I tell you it is all up with us."
All preserved a melancholy silence for a while, then Truyn favoured the
party with a few grand political aphorisms, and Oswald at last said to
himself perfectly calmly, and as if impromptu, "Gabrielle and
Capriani's son!"
The melancholy mood vanished and they talked and laughed so that there
was a sound as of merry bells through the silence of the night.
CHAPTER III.
Zoe Melkweyser was an Austrian and a distant relative of Truyn's. Very
well-born, but in very narrow pecuniary circumstances, she had grown up
on her widowed father's heavily-mortgaged estate, condemned through
want of means to a continued residence there, restless as was the
temperament with which nature had endowed her. As a school-girl she had
no greater pleasure than imaginary journeys from place to place upon
the map, and one day she confided to her governess, Mrs. Sidney, under
the seal of secrecy, that she would consent to marry any man, even were
he a negro, who would promise to indulge her restlessness and allow her
to travel to her heart's content.
It was no negro, however, but a banker from Brussels, who finally
fulfilled her requirements. She met him at a watering-place, whither
she had gone under the chaperonage of a wealthy and compassionate
relative. In spite of her thirst for travel she could hardly have made
up her mind to marry an Austrian banker, but a Belgian Cr[oe]sus was
quite a different affair in her opinion.
All the objections and remonstrances of her aristocratic connections in
Austria upon her return thither betrothed, she cut short with, "What
would you have? Of course I never should have met him here, but he was
received at court in Brussels."
And in fact Baron Alfred Melkweyser was not only received at court in
Brussels, but what was still more extraordinary, by the Princess L----,
being admitted to the most exclusive Belgian circles, 'among the people
whom everyone knows.'
It would have been difficult to find any fault with him except for his
brand-new patent of nobility, and Zoe never had any cause to repent her
marriage. His manners were perfectly correct, he rode well, had a
laudable passion for antiquities, ordered his clothes at Poole's,
always used _vous_ in talking with his wife, paid all her bills without
even a wry face, patiently travelled with her all over the world, and
at her desire removed with her to Paris.
After ten years of childless marriage he died suddenly, of his first
and unfortunately unsuccessful attempt to drive four-in-hand. As this,
his first ambitious folly, was also his last, society forbore to
ridicule it, and even after his death he enjoyed the reputation of an
'_homme parfaitement bien_.'
His widow bewailed his loss sincerely, and purchased all her mourning
of _Cypres_ at reduced prices. Bargains had always been a passion with
her, and scarcely had her year of mourning passed, before, thanks to
her expensive taste for cheap, useless articles, she had disposed of
half the source of her income. Among other things she purchased at low
prices various stocks which turned out badly. She owed her familiarity
with financial affairs entirely to her speculative vein, and not at
all, as her aristocratic relatives and country-folk erroneously
imagined, to her deceased husband, who had, in fact, held himself
persistently aloof from former financial acquaintances.
It was not acquisitiveness that spurred Zoe on to her various
undertakings, but the restlessness of her temperament. She delighted in
everything novel and fatiguing, whether it were a pilgrimage to
_Lourdes_, a bargain day at the _Bon Marche_, or a first representation
at the _Francais_, to which, by persistent wire-pulling and constant
appeals to one and another person of influence, she was able to obtain
tickets of admission not only for herself but for all her most intimate
friends. She had one means, however, far more entertaining than all
others, of procuring the excitement needed by her temperament, and this
was the introduction to 'the world,' of American or European financial
magnates. She extorted for them invitations to the most distinguished
routs, she designed the balls which these wealthy people were to give
to dazzle Paris withal, and she expended an incredible amount of
cunning and energy in inducing the aristocratic world to appear at
these entertainments. Her tactics were those of genius; instead of
contenting herself after the fashion of less skilful mortals with
inviting the poorer and more modest members of Paris society, she bent
all her efforts to securing the presence of some legitimist duchess at
the ball, if only for an hour. She succeeded in doing this in most
cases by placing at the duchess' disposal a large sum of money for
charitable purposes. When she had gained over two or three of these
fixed stars, the planets of Parisian society began to appear at these
balls.
Planets, in their social relations, are notably much more fastidious
than fixed stars, as is but natural; they are forced to reflect a light
not their own.
The entire scheme was usually most successful; the balls were beautiful
and everything went excellently well. Sometimes, indeed, not one of the
assembled guests had the civility to invite the mistress of the mansion
to dance, and many of those present affected to mistake the host for a
footman, but none the less was everyone content and pleased when the
ball was over. Zoe Melkweyser was glad that she had enjoyed so
brilliant an opportunity of getting out of breath; the givers of the
ball were pleased to read the long list of their distinguished guests
in _Figaro_; and _le monde_ rejoiced in having something to laugh at,
and spent three days in ridiculing the extravagance of the Cotillon
favours.
The latest and most brilliant of Zoe's proteges was Conte Capriani.
Who was he? What was he? 'A poisonous fungus that the sultry
storm-laden atmosphere had bred upon heaven only knows what muck-heap.'
A clever statesman had made use of this phrase not long before to
define the innate characteristics of this Cr[oe]sus. The phrase had
been laughingly caught up and repeated, and no one had troubled
themselves further about Capriani's antecedents. In a smaller city they
would soon have been investigated, but Paris never busies itself long
with the solution of such commonplace mysteries; on the contrary it
takes care not to pry into the past of an adventurer whom it finds of
very great use. Thus the antecedents of this financial Jove remained,
like those of most deities, shrouded in myth.
Among the many legends that had at first been circulated concerning
him, was one that he had formerly been a lady's physician and that he
had been most successful with his aristocratic patients.
Whether this were or were not true, certain it was that his air and
manner suggested that adulatory, fawning servility which characterizes
those physicians whose professional efforts are, for lack of other
occupation, chiefly directed to soothing the nerves of hysteric
women. His exterior was that of a man who has once been handsome,
_cidevant-beau_, spoiled only by the piercing glance of his large black
eyes, and the cynical droop of his loose under-lip. He carried his head
well forward, as if listening, and around his mouth and eyes there were
strange lines and wrinkles in the yellow skin which had of late grown
flabby,--lines suggesting that some of the figures with which he played
the despot had flown angrily into his face and embedded themselves
there.
That he had begun life with nothing he himself was wont to declare,
whenever he gave way to the fit of rage that seized him upon any
offence offered to his vanity; but how he had gained his immense
fortune he never told. He made profit out of every thing that afforded
gain, most of all out of the credulity of indolent inexperienced
avarice. His success as a 'bear' was famous, and notorious; it
sometimes seemed as if ill-luck existed only for his advantage, and it
was well known that he had emerged from great financial crises which
ruined thousands, not only unharmed, but with an increase of wealth.
There were various whispers afloat concerning his speculations, but no
one had been able to attach any direct blame to him. Once only, in
connection with his construction of a Spanish railway he had laid
himself open to a couple of disgraceful charges. The times were
unpropitious; the public, exasperated by various huge swindles,
demanded a victim; but whilst several lesser individuals, were brought
to trial and subjected to a public investigation, all legal proceedings
against Capriani were suddenly quashed. Why?.... No one knew or at
least no one told aloud what was known.
He was a '_personnage tare_,' but the stain upon his name was of so
peculiar a nature that prudence required of many well-known and eminent
men that they should not see it. Poor devils who stood outside the
demoniac spell of his financial magic art called him an unprincipled
swindler: people who had penetrated within the conjuror's circle called
him a financial genius, flattered him almost servilely in their longing
to share in his colossal enterprises, and if they did so procured for
him in return a slight social recognition. And it was curious to
observe how much at heart the magnate had this same social recognition,
how he sued for the favour of every lofty dignitary, of every capital
letter in the social alphabet. He persisted unweariedly in hurling his
golden bomb-shells into the stronghold of Parisian society, and at last
the fortress capitulated. He was received, as an enemy to be sure, with
closed shutters and in silence, but he was received everywhere, at all
the embassies, throughout the entire official representative world, and
even in some drawing-rooms of the Faubourg. Everywhere he met those
who, while he smiled at them in the most friendly way, looked over his
shoulder without seeing him, but this he endured serenely. The hour for
revenge will come, he said to himself, and almost always it did come!
Thanks to an ostentatious benevolence backed by millions, he had of
late contrived to improve perceptibly his social standing; at his last
ball, several crowned heads had been present. Zoe was right; he was
undoubtedly one of the most influential financiers in Europe; she might
almost have described him as one of the most influential men.
In Paris he was one of the celebrities that are shown to strangers.
When he walked past, or rather drove past, for he was physically
indolent and avoided all bodily exertion, he was pointed out as
Monsieur Grevy or Mdlle. Bernhardt is pointed out. He occupied a vast
hotel that he had built after the model of the castle of Chenonceau,
but two stories higher, in the neighbourhood of the Park Monceau; in a
quarter of an hour after leaving the Avenue Labedoyere the Baroness
Zoe's _fiacre_ drew up before this mimicry of vanished feudalism
erected by a modern Cr[oe]sus.
"Gabrielle's betrothal will make everything smooth," she said to
herself. "I am glad to be well rid of the affair!"
A Maitre d'Hotel, who, it was said, had formerly been chamberlain to
the Duc de Morny, and one of whose duties it was to instruct his
present master in the laws of aristocratic etiquette, conducted the
baroness with dignified solemnity to the 'small drawing-room' where the
Contessa Capriani was wont to receive on quiet evenings.
The 'small drawing-room' was a very large, and very
brilliantly-furnished apartment, which, in spite of landscapes by
Corot, in spite of gold-woven Japanese hangings, old inlaid cabinets
and a thousand articles of value, produced a dreary in-harmonious
impression. It was evident that nothing here was devised for the
pleasure and comfort of the inmates of the house, but that everything
was arranged with a view of impressing visitors. It almost seemed as if
millions run mad had tossed all these splendours together aimlessly,
insanely shouting, "something more costly, something more costly
still!"
Here sat the Contessa busied with some fancy work. She appeared
well-bred, but shy, and embarrassed by her wealth, as she advanced a
few steps to welcome the baroness, made a few conventional remarks, and
then begged with a sigh to be excused for going on with her work, which
work consisted in cutting all sorts of flowers and birds out of a piece
of cretonne in order to sew them on a piece of satin. She devoted
several hours a day to this occupation, and since her own rooms, as
well as those of her acquaintances, were far too splendidly furnished
to have any place in them for this sort of work, the result of her
diligence was bestowed every year upon some charity-bazaar.
Zoe Melkweyser thought the Contessa unusually depressed. Excited voices
were heard in the next room, and every time that there was a
particularly loud explosion the mistress of the mansion winced.
"Can the 300,000 francs which the Duke of Larothiere lost last night be
a bitter pill for even King Midas?" Zoe asked herself.
This supposition proved, however to be erroneous. Madame Capriani moved
her chair rather nearer to Zoe, and whispered, "My husband is terribly
agitated,--my poor son--that article in _Figaro_,--you saw it of
course ...."
"I? I have not seen _Figaro_ to-day," Zoe reassured her. It was true,
she had not seen _Figaro_ but she had heard of the article to which the
countess alluded; the excitement in the _casa_ Capriani was quite
intelligible to her now. No, Capriani never even pulled a wry face at
the sums lost at play by his son-in-law; he enjoyed smiling away such
losses; everything was allowable in the duke. For the comparatively
petty extravagances of his own son he had much less forbearance, in
fact he showed very little tenderness for this scion of his, whose name
was Arthur, and who was far from satisfactory to his father. The
Croesus could forgive his son's noble scorn of everything relating to
business, for positively refusing to have a desk in his father's
counting-room and for devoting his entire existence to sport,--but it
drove him frantic to have Arthur held up to ridicule by the sporting
world.
Hitherto Arthur's grandest achievements in the sporting world had
culminated in a couple of broken collar-bones and a quantity of lost
wagers,--today their number had been increased by a trifling _fiasco_.
A very trifling _fiasco_, but of a highly delicate nature. Two
Austrians, an attache and one of his friends at present in Paris, both
belonging to extremely aristocratic families, had lately out of wild
caprice, and amid much laughter, undertaken to run a foot-race
backwards.
Several French journals had taken immediate occasion to write articles
on this eccentric wager, describing backward races as a traditional and
very favourite sport among the youthful aristocrats of Austria. These
journalistic rhapsodies had incited Arthur Capriani to arrange a
similar race with brilliant accessories, music, torchlight, and a large
assemblage of young dandies, and ladies of every description. He lost
the race, got a severe contusion on his head, and the next day appeared
the article in _Figaro_ which so exasperated the Conte.
"If you were only capable of something in the world beside making
yourself ridiculous!" Zoe distinctly heard the father's excited voice
say, "but you can do nothing else, nothing! And to think of my toiling
for you,--making money for you!"
"_Mon Dieu!_ you make money because you delight in nothing else,"
retorted young Capriani.
"And for you--for _you_, I am contemplating one of the most brilliant
matches in Austria," the Conte fairly shouted, "'tis ridiculous!"
"I fancy that Count Truyn agrees with you there," was Arthur's
repartee.
"Ah, you would, would you?--you dare to sneer at your father?" Capriani
burst forth, after the illogical fashion of angry men, "the father to
whom you owe everything! I should like to see you begin life as I did,
bare-footed, with only one gulden in your pocket!"
"What's the use of these recriminations?" drawled the son, "your
antecedents mortify me enough without them, and ...."
There was a incoherent cry, a savage word ....!
The Contessa, very pale, put down her scissors; she trembled violently.
"I think it would be better to separate them," Zoe remarked very
calmly.
"I will try to," gasped Madame Capriani, and opening the door into the
next room, she called, "_Mon-ami_, the Baroness Melkweyser is here--I
believe she brings you some news ...."
"_Il s'agit de votre fameuse affaire, mon cher comte_," Zoe called
coaxingly.
Her words produced a magical effect; both men made their appearance,
the father with a honeyed smile, the son, a short thick-set fellow with
handsome features but a rude ill-tempered air, frowning and sullen.
"_Bon soir baronne_."
"_Bon soir_."
"_Eh bien?_" and settling himself in an arm-chair, his legs
outstretched, and toying with his double eyeglass in the triumphant
attitude with which he was wont to contemplate the favourable
development of some particularly clever business transaction, Capriani
began, "So you have at last found a favourable opportunity."
"No,--no, not at all!" said Zoe, "but I thought best not to leave you
in uncertainty any longer, and so I came to you this evening."
"You know I gave you no authority to make a direct proposal," said the
Conte.
"How can you suppose me capable of such want of tact!" Zoe rejoined
hypocritically, "unfortunately I have not been able even to find out
how the land lies. If you had commissioned me a little sooner--just a
little sooner,--but there is nothing to be done now, for Gabrielle
Truyn is already betrothed!"
"_Nom d'un chien!_" muttered Arthur; he had been no less impressed by
Gabrielle's beauty than by her lofty descent--"_nom d'un chien!_"
"Indeed, already betrothed," his father said coldly, slowly putting his
eyeglass upon his nose and scanning the baroness mistrustfully as he
asked, "betrothed to whom?"
"To her cousin, Oswald Lodrin."
"To Oswald Lodrin," he repeated quickly. "You cannot, indeed, enter the
lists against him, my poor Arthur!"
"Perhaps not as far as arrogance is concerned," growled the Vicomte,
"he is the haughtiest human being I ever came across."
"That may be, but--" the Conte smiled oddly, "he is also one of the
handsomest and most distinguished of Austrians, and he is renowned as
such."
Whilst Arthur continued to mutter unintelligibly, but in evident
ill-humor, Capriani senior left his arm-chair and taking a low seat
beside Zoe, said, "To-morrow the X---- railway stock is to be issued.
The shares will be in great demand; shall I save you a couple of
hundred?"
CHAPTER IV.
The fragrance of the elder blossoms floated sweet and strong upon the
air in the dim warm stillness of the Avenue Labedoyere. The poetry that
breathes in the odour of flowers no words can reproduce, music alone
can sometimes translate it; it ascended from the full white panicles in
the little garden before the Hotel Truyn and breathed through the open
window into Gabrielle's chamber like an exultant yearning, like a song
filled with love's delicious pain.
Zinka sat on the edge of the little white bed where the young girl was
lying, her golden hair rippling about her brow and temples, while upon
her pale face lay the melancholy of illimitable joy; her eyes were
moist.
"And you are not surprised, Zini ... not at all?" she whispered.
"No, my child," replied Zinka tenderly, "not in the least; I knew you
were destined for each other from the first moment that I saw you
together."
"Ah," Gabrielle sighed, "I cannot comprehend it yet. It all seems to me
like a delicious dream from which I must waken, but even if I must,
even if the dear God takes from me all that He has given me, I shall
thank Him on my knees as long as I live for this one lovely dream."
"Calm yourself, my darling," Zinka whispered, lovingly stroking the
young girl's cheeks, "how your cheeks burn!" And she poured a few drops
of essence of orange flowers into a glass of water, "drink this, you
little enthusiast."
"It will do no good, dear little mother," said Gabrielle, obediently
lifting the composing draught to her burning lips. "Ah, you cannot
imagine how I feel, it seems as if--as if my heart would break with
happiness!"
Zinka kissed her, made the sign of the cross upon her forehead, drew
the coverlet over her shoulders, once more admonished her to be calm,
and left her.
Thunder rumbled without; Zinka started and as a second clap resounded
she turned back. "Are you afraid of the storm, Ella, shall I stay with
you?" she asked gently.
"Ah no, dear little mother," Gabrielle replied in the intoxication of
her happiness, "I hardly hear the thunder."
And Zinka departed. "I do not know why I cannot rejoice in this as I
ought," she said to herself, "it seems to me as if we had forgotten to
invite some one of the twelve fairies to this betrothal."
And whilst the thunder crashed above the Champs Elysees she suddenly
recalled an old fairy story that a fever-stricken peasant from the
Trastevere had once told her in Rome.
It was a gloomy story, one of those legends in which the popular
imagination, boldly overleaping all chronological and historical
obstacles, bestows upon Pagan gods the wings of Christian angels, and
arms God the Father with the lightnings of angry Jove. It ran somewhat
thus:
"There was once a beautiful maiden who was good as an angel, so good
that it gave her unutterable pain to see any one sad and not to be able
to help; and once when she had cried herself to sleep over the woes of
mankind she had a wonderful vision. A dark form with a veiled face
approached her and said, 'If you have the courage to cut your heart out
of your breast and plant it deep in the earth, there will spring from
it a flower so glorious, so wonderful, that whoever inhales its
fragrance will feel a bliss so intense that he would gladly purchase it
with all the torture of our mortal existence.'
"And the maiden cut her heart out of her breast and planted it deep in
the brown earth, and watered it with her tears, and there sprang from
it a magically-beautiful flower, with luxuriant green leaves, and large
white blossoms with blood-red calyxes, and whoever inhaled the breath
of these blossoms felt an intoxicating delight course through his
veins, so that in his wild ecstasy he forgot all earthly care and
trouble. The flowers unfolded to more and more enchanting loveliness,
and through the thick foliage sighed the sweetest music.
"Now when the angels in Heaven heard of this strange plant they
entreated the Almighty Father to allow them to go get it and to plant
it in Paradise.
"The Lord granted their request. Then they fluttered down from Heaven,
but when they approached the wondrous plant a voice spoke from it,
saying, 'Let me alone, I blossom for the consolation of the earth, I
could not live in Paradise; the soil in which I flourish must be
watered with heart's blood and tears!'
"But the angels did not heed these words, and, beguiled by the
delicious fragrance, they tried to tear away the roots from the lap of
earth; their efforts were vain, they had to return with their purpose
unfulfilled.
"When mankind saw this it exulted in its blissful possession. Happy
mortals laughed at the angels' futile envy. Then the angels prostrated
themselves anew at the feet of the Almighty, and implored Him to
revenge them upon the blasphemers. And the Almighty gave ear to their
prayer; He hurled a thunderbolt at the plant, and it was swept from off
the face of the earth.
"But its roots still slumber underground, and sometimes when in mild
spring nights a mysterious fragrance steals upon the air, a fragrance
wafted from no visible blossom, these roots are stirring to life, and
green leaves shoot upward into the spring. But the sweet perfume still
moves the angels to anger, and it scarcely rises aloft before the
thunder rolls over the earth and the lightning blasts the green leaves.
The flower will never blossom again."
CHAPTER V.
Oswald and his cousin Georges were sitting at breakfast in their
pleasant room in the Hotel Bristol by a window that looked out upon the
Place Vendome, and down the brilliant Rue de la Paix, the perspective
of which was lost in a hurly-burly of omnibuses, orange carts, flower
wagons, advertising vehicles painted fiery red, fiacres, sun-illumined
dust, and human beings rushing madly hither and thither. Whilst Georges
was drinking his tea in sober comfort with a brief remark as to the
incomparable excellence of the Paris butter, Oswald, who although
endowed by nature with an excellent appetite had paid but scant
attention to his meals of late, recounted for the tenth time to his
cousin the extraordinary combination of circumstances which had brought
together Gabrielle and himself. He was a victim of the lovers' delusion
that sees in the most ordinary occurrences the finger of the Deity, and
that regards their happiness as a special marvel wrought by Providence
for their benefit.
It was, so Oswald narrated, in April, on the second day of the Auteuil
races, the first faint tinge of green was perceptible on the landscape.
He was on horseback, riding a magnificent Arabian steed which one of
his friends had lent him, and which he was handling with the excessive
care which an Austrian always bestows upon a horse that is not his own.
Suddenly he saw walking across the race-course a young lady in a dark
green dress; a ray of sunlight that turned her hair to gold attracted
his attention to her. She walked quickly past with an elderly gentleman
and Oswald turned to look after her. His horse was a little restless,
his rider's spurs were rather too sharp; with the sudden movement he
scratched the animal's silken skin, and instantly exclaimed, "_Ah,
pardon!_" a piece of courtesy for which his companions ridiculed him
loudly. In the meantime the young lady with the gray-haired gentleman
had vanished.
"Who is that exquisitely beautiful girl?" he asked, and Wips Siegburg,
secretary of the Austrian Legation, replied laughing, "Do you not know
her, she is your cousin!"
"Gabrielle Truyn!" exclaimed Oswald; and Siegburg said sagely, "this
comes of enjoying one's self too busily in Paris, and consequently
finding no time to visit one's nearest relatives."
Oswald peered in every direction but he could not discover her again.
After the race, under the leafless trees of the Champs Elysees rolled
crowds of carriages, victorias, all sorts of coaches, four-in-hands,
lumbering roomy omnibuses,--all veiled in the whirling, sunlit dust as
in golden gauze, while everywhere, alike in the omnibuses and in the
more elegant vehicles, reigned a uniform air of dull fatigue.
Paris had lost another battle with ennui.
In the motley throng Oswald was almost forced to walk his horse,
pondering as he went upon the best way of excusing his discourtesy to
his uncle. He had now been four entire weeks in Paris, and had not yet
presented himself in the Avenue Labedoyere. Fortunately he had gone so
little into society that he had not yet met the Truyns; Paris is so
huge, perhaps they had not yet heard that he was there. Yes, Paris is
huge, but 'society' everywhere is small. No, he could hardly venture to
appear at his uncle's yet.
He was growing quite melancholy over these reflections, when he
suddenly observed that his horse had coolly poked his nose over the
hood, which had been thrown back, of a low carriage in front, and was
nibbling at a bouquet of white roses that he found there. Oswald
shortened his bridle, and just then a lady sitting in the carriage
turned round; it was Gabrielle Truyn. With no attempt to conceal her
displeasure she observed what had been done, and when Oswald, hat in
hand, humbly stammered his excuses, she bestowed upon him the haughty
stare which an insolent intruder would have merited, and turned away.
She knew perfectly well who he was, as he afterwards learned, and that
he had been four weeks in Paris. The gentleman beside her now turned
round, his eyes met Oswald's; he smiled, and said with good-humoured
sarcasm ... "Ossi!--what an unexpected pleasure!"
"Uncle--I--I have long been intending to pay you my respects...."
Oswald stammered.
"Apparently your resolutions require time to ripen," said Truyn drily.
"Ah uncle!--I--may I come to see you now?"
"You do us too much honour," said Truyn provokingly, "we will kill the
fatted calf and celebrate the Prodigal's return." Then taking pity upon
his nephew's embarrassment he added. "Don't be afraid, we shall not
turn you out of doors, we have some consideration for young gentlemen
who are in Paris for the first time; we know that they have other
things to do besides looking up tiresome relatives, what say you,
Ella?"
"My cousin has forgotten me," the young man murmured, "have the
kindness to present me to her."
"It is your cousin, Oswald Lodrin, an old playmate of yours."
At her father's words Gabrielle merely turned her exquisite profile
towards her cousin and acknowledged his low bow by a slight inclination
of her head. Then she stretched out her hand for her bouquet,
murmuring, "My poor roses! they are entirely ruined." And she suddenly
tossed them away into the road. There was an opening in the blockade of
carriages before them; Gabrielle's golden hair gleamed before Oswald's
eyes for a flash, then all around grew gray; the twilight had absorbed
the last glimmer of sunshine.
That same evening Oswald ordered at a large flower shop, on the
Madeleine Boulevard, the most exquisite bouquet of gardenias, orchids
and white roses that Paris could produce and sent it to his cousin to
replace her ruined roses.
All this he retailed. His first visit, too, in the Avenue Labedoyere,
the visit when he did not find Truyn at home, and when Gabrielle did
not make her appearance, but Zinka, whom he had not known before,
received him. There had been much discussion in Austria over this
second marriage of his uncle, and Oswald had brought to Paris a violent
antipathy to Zinka. But it soon vanished, or rather was transformed
into a very affectionate esteem.
And then the first little dinner, a very little dinner (just to make
them acquainted, Truyn said) strictly _en famille_--no strangers, only
Oswald and Siegburg. The brightly-lit table with its flowers, glass,
and sparkling silver, in the middle of the dim brown dining-room, the
delicate fair heads of the two ladies in their light dresses standing
out so charmingly against the background of the old leather hangings,
Truyn's paternal cordiality, and Zinka's kindly raillery,--he thought
he had never had so delightful a dinner.
Gabrielle, to be sure, held herself rather aloof. She evidently
resented his tardy appearance in the Avenue Labedoyere; she hardly
noticed his beautiful flowers. She talked exclusively to Siegburg who
was odiously entertaining, and who glanced across the table now and
then, his eyes sparkling with merry malice, at Oswald. Then as they
were serving the asparagus, he took it into his head to ask Gabrielle,
"Do you know who is the most courteous man in Paris, Countess
Gabrielle?"
"No, how should I?"
"Your charming cousin there," rejoined the young diplomat.
"Indeed!" Gabrielle said with incredulous emphasis, bending her head a
little on one side as is the fashion with pretty women when they
undertake the inconvenient task of eating asparagus.
"Yes, verily, he says '_pardon_' even to his horse, when he scratches
it with his spurs."
"Ah! Apparently he lavishes all his courtesy upon horses," Gabrielle
said pointedly.
"In the case to which I allude, he really did owe some consideration to
his horse, for the poor animal could not possibly know why he was made
to feel the spur. The fact was that at the races the other day Lodrin
saw a lady the sight of whom so electrified him that he turned
positively all round on his horse, and in doing so scratched the poor
beast with his spur."
"Ah, and who, if one may ask, was this remarkable lady?" asked
Gabrielle.
"Ella, since when have you become conscience keeper for young
gentlemen?" asked Truyn.
She blushed to the roots of her hair, but Oswald said with perfect
composure, looking her directly in the face: "Certainly--it was
Countess Gabrielle Truyn."
She bit her lip angrily.
"It serves you right," said Truyn smiling, "why do you ask about
matters that do not concern you? The jest, however, is a little stale,
Ossi."'
"I should not venture to jest; I simply told the truth," rejoined
Oswald. In view of the young girl's evident agitation he had regained
entire calm.
"One is not always justified in telling the truth," Gabrielle observed
with the pettish frankness in which even the best-bred young ladies
will indulge, when irritated by the accelerated beating of their
hearts.
"Indeed? Not even in reply to a question?" Oswald said very quietly,
and Truyn frowned after the fashion of affectionate papas, whose
daughters' behaviour does not exactly gratify their paternal ambition.
Zinka interrupted the fencing of the young people by an inquiry as to
the new vaudeville which Gabrielle wished to see, but of which Zinka
was not quite sure she should approve.
Oswald took no further notice of Gabrielle that evening, but devoted
himself to Zinka. He sat beside her for nearly an hour, and enjoyed it
extremely; she had a charming way of listening, assenting to his
observations by a silent smile, and inciting him to all kinds of small
confidences, without asking any direct questions.
When he afterwards reflected upon what had been the interesting subject
of their conversation, he discovered that she had led him to speak only
of himself, that he had told her everything about his life that a young
man can tell to a young woman whom he has seen but twice.
She listened attentively, and when he took his leave she had grown
almost cordial.
"Now that you have broken the ice, I hope we shall see you frequently.
_A propos_, to-morrrow is our night at the opera; if you have nothing
more agreeable in prospect and have not heard '_La Juive_' too
often...."
* * *
And then the charming, uncertain, hoping, exulting, despairing time
that ensued! Gabrielle's pique slowly vanished; then without any
reasonable cause returned; her behaviour towards her cousin vacillated
strangely between naive cordiality and proud reserve; some days she
seemed to misconstrue everything that was said, and then all at once a
single cordial word would mollify her.
And the dances, the cotillon at the Countess Crecy's ball in the pretty
little Hotel, Rue St. Dominique,--the cotillon in which all had paid
homage to Gabrielle as to a young queen, and in which when, of all the
favours that she had to bestow only one remained, she suddenly became
confused, looking from the favour to her cousin, and seeming more and
more undecided until at last he advanced a step towards her and
whispered, "Well, Gabrielle, am I to have the Golden Fleece or not?"
That was two days before the betrothal. To the day of his death he
should wear that favour and no other on his heart. It should be buried
with him!
Although not given to writing much he had kept a diary in Paris. Long
since he had torn out the first pages; its contents now extended
exactly from the first meeting to the first kiss. After his marriage
the book was to be sealed up, to be given to his eldest son upon his
twenty-first birthday.
Whilst Oswald, borne upon a lover's wings that knew no boundary line
between heaven and earth, between the future and the past, at one time
eulogized his betrothed, and at another made arrangements for his own
burial, and his eldest son's twenty-first birthday, Georges, who had
gradually finished his breakfast, leaned back in his chair watching the
fantastic wreaths of smoke ascending from the bowl of his tschibouk.
When at last Oswald paused and fell into a reverie he took occasion to
utter the following profundity. "Living is very dear in Paris!" Twice
was he obliged to repeat this brilliant aphorism, before Oswald seemed
to hear it. Then glancing at his cousin reproachfully, the young fellow
put his hand in his pocket, "would you like the key, Georges?" he said
offering it to him.
"No," replied Georges, taking Oswald's hand, key and all in his own,
and pressing it down upon the table. "No, my dear fellow, many thanks.
Do you remember what Montaigne says about _le desir qui s'accroist par
la malaysance_."
"Montaigne?--I am not very intimate with the old gentleman," Oswald
replied with a laugh, "how came you pray to make his acquaintance?"
"Why you see, Oswald, there have been times when my means were not
sufficient to provide me with amusements befitting my station in life,
and I was obliged to have recourse, _faute de mieux_, to reading. But
to recur to _plaisirs de la malaysance_, Montaigne proves as clearly as
that two and two make four that if there were no locks there would be
no thieves! Now,--hm--one thing is certain; since your strong box has
been open to me I no longer have the smallest desire to possess myself
of its contents. Do you know, Ossi, that I have grown very fond of you
in these few weeks? Do not overturn the pepper cruet," he admonished
his cousin, who suddenly extended his hand to him with somewhat awkward
shyness. "Yes, very fond, you have effected a radical change in me; I
should really like to go back with you to Bohemia, perhaps you could
find me something to do there. Will you take me with you to Bohemia?"
"With the greatest pleasure, Georges."
"Reflect a little. What would your mother say to your introducing an
unbidden guest into her household?"
"My dear Georges, my mother, if I were to take home Karl Marx--or--" he
did not conclude for at that moment his servant brought in a small
salver upon which lay his newspapers and letters.
CHAPTER VI.
A couple of cards of invitation were after a fleeting examination stuck
into the frame of the mirror, then came two Austrian newspapers, then
three letters from Austria; one addressed in a firm, bold hand he
opened instantly with a smile of pleasure and the exclamation "from my
mother! at last! I am very curious to know what she says to my
betrothal--I began to be anxious--she has taken so long to write."
But the light in his eyes faded, he frowned, angrily crushed the letter
together, and propping his elbows on the table leaned his head upon his
hands. "I could not have thought this possible," he murmured.
"Is not your mother satisfied?" Georges asked.
"Satisfied--?" growled Oswald, "satisfied--? she couldn't be
dissatisfied if she tried ever so hard, but she does not rejoice with
me. There, read that. 'Dear child, I agree to everything that will make
you happy, and pray for every blessing upon yourself and your
betrothed, whom, moreover, I remember as a charming little girl ....'"
"Well, what more can you ask?" said Georges, elevating his eyebrows.
"What more can I ask?" Oswald very nearly shouted, "what more can I
ask? why, I am not used to having such conventional phrases served up
to me by my mother!"
"Do you and your mother live upon perfectly good terms with each
other?" asked Georges, mechanically brushing away a few crumbs on the
table-cloth, and without looking at his cousin.
Oswald opened his eyes wide. "My mother and I? Why, yes, what can you
be thinking of?"
Georges made no reply, he remembered perfectly well that years
previously, before he had left home the Countess Lodrin had been
anything but tender to her charming little son, nay, that she had been
the downright fine-lady mother who figures in romances, but who
fortunately is found but seldom in real life.
He thought it unnecessary, however, to remind his cousin of this.
In the meanwhile Oswald had somewhat cooled down. "My poor unreasonable
mother!" he said half-aloud to himself, "it is so hard for her to give
me up, in all her life she has had me only. Well, I shall soon bring
her round. Ah, Georges, Georges, it seems but a poor arrangement in
this life that we must so often take from one person to give to
another! I only hope that my mother's letter to my betrothed is more
cordial. Ah, here are two more epistles," and in no cheerful mood he
opened one after the other of the two very business-like envelopes,
read their contents, compared them with each other, threw both upon the
table and, quite pale, with very red lips and flashing eyes, began to
pace to and fro, from time to time passing his hand angrily across his
forehead. "Everything disagreeable is sure to happen all at once!" he
exclaimed.
Georges knowing his cousin's impetuousity watched his excitement with
smiling composure. "Is Vesuvius again in a state of eruption," he said
kindly, "or what is the matter, man alive?"
"Siegl is an ass!"
"Ah?--and your man of business besides?"
"Yes."
"Then this present affair is a matter of business?"
"No!" Oswald said gloomily, "an affair of honour. The matter is that I
am forced to break my word--_voila tont!_ But I cannot understand
Siegl, he ought to know ...." Suddenly he went to his secretary, opened
it, rummaged nervously among a chaos of letters, at last finding a
closely-written sheet, which he read through carefully, then grew
very quiet, and seating himself opposite Georges at the uncleared
breakfast-table, said "I am wrong, it is my fault."
"Pray explain yourself," said Georges, "my counsel, and my experience
are at your service."
"The matter is simple enough. Before I came away from home I gave Siegl
a power of attorney to conclude an unfinished sale, the sale of a
couple of insignificant building lots in W----. In practical business
matters I can thoroughly rely upon him. Well, the other day I had this
letter from him asking whether I would agree to the winding up of the
affair under certain conditions, and at the end of the letter he asked
me in this case to telegraph him. His handwriting is execrable and his
style most tedious,--and--and I hurried off to the Avenue Labedoyere. I
was going to ride in the Bois with Gabrielle,--in short I skimmed over
the letter, never noticing that he asked about another far more
important sale, and telegraphed, 'I agree to everything; do as you
think best.'"
"_Eh bien!_"
Oswald cleared his throat. "You remember Dr. Schmitt? He was our family
physician, a true man if ever there was one, my father valued him
highly. Well, he leased an estate from us, Kanitz, it lies in one
corner of the Schneeburg grounds; after the old man's death his son
held the lease, he is a very good fellow, we served together in the
same regiment in our volunteer year. He married, and set great store by
the lease, which would run out in three years. Before his marriage he
came to me to know whether he might depend upon an extension of the
lease; of course I promised it to him, thereby relieving him of immense
anxiety. And now Siegl has sold the property at a high price to
Capriani, and is very proud of the transaction, and it is all because
of my thoughtlessness, because I thought it too tedious to read through
his roundabout epistle and .... and young Schmitt, poor devil, is quite
beside himself, and writes me this letter! I cannot understand Siegl,
he might have asked me again, he knows me perfectly well, he ought
to have known that I could never have contemplated anything of the
kind ....! But it's just the way with all my people! If they can make a
few gulden for me, no matter how, they pride themselves upon it hugely;
no one seems to understand that I care precious little for the
augmentation of my income; what I want is, to alleviate as far as lies
in my power the existence of as many men as possible!"
"How old are you, Ossi?" Georges asked with an oddly-scrutinizing
glance at his cousin.
"Twenty-six. What makes you ask?"
"Your transcendental views of life, my child. Men and ants are born
with wings, but both rub them off in the struggle for existence,--men
usually do so before they are twenty-four."
"That goal is passed," rejoined Oswald, "and the winged ants do not
lose their wings, they only die young," and he became again absorbed in
study of the two letters. "I cannot blame Siegl this time, try as hard
as I can, it is _my_ fault; 'tis enough to drive one mad!"
"I can understand how it goes against the grain, but--well, you must
indemnify Schmitt with another property."
"That of course, but it does not help the matter," Oswald grumbled, "he
has a special love for Kanitz--he was born there, his parents are
buried there in a pretty little churchyard on the edge of the woods by
the Holtitzer brook. He takes care of their graves himself--they are
perfect beds of flowers. And his wife!--I paid her a visit last
Autumn,--she is a dear little shy thing, and she looked at me out
of her large eyes as if I were Omnipotence itself. There is such an
old-fashioned loyalty, so poetic a content about those people; upon
whom shall we depend if we heedlessly destroy the devotion of such as
they? Schmitt must keep Kanitz, even although I buy it back at double
the price paid for it!"
"My dear fellow you can do nothing with money where Capriani is
concerned," Georges observed calmly, "but I am convinced that he is
very desirous of standing well with all of you. If you make a personal
request of him he certainly will not object to annul his purchase. If
the matter is really important to you go and call upon Capriani,
and...."
Oswald tossed his head angrily. "What? ask me to have any personal
intercourse with that man--no--in an extreme case indeed----but there
must be some legal way out of the difficulty, it is a matter for our
agents--_Ca!_ A quarter of twelve and I breakfast at Truyn's."
"You must make haste. Can I do anything for you?"
Oswald went to the writing-table and in large bold characters
wrote a couple of lines on a sheet of paper. "Pray see that this
telegraph to Schmitt goes off immediately, and then one thing
more--if it does not bore you too much--please leave a card for me at
the places on this list. Do not take any trouble, but if you should be
passing.... Good-bye old fellow--remember we are to go home together."
"Hotspur!" murmured Georges as the door closed after his cousin. "Well,
after all, I do not grudge him his position; he becomes it well."
CHAPTER VII.
If Oswald Lodrin might be regarded as the chivalric embodiment of the
old-time '_noblesse oblige_,' his cousin Georges was on the contrary
the personification of the modern axiom '_noblesse permet_.'
He had made use of the credit of the Lodrins, the accumulation of
centuries, to screen his maddest pranks. True, he had never overdrawn
this credit, he had never by any of his numberless eccentricities
raised any barrier between himself and his equals in rank. He had grown
to manhood discontentedly convinced that Count Hugo Lodrin, his
father's elder brother, had done him great wrong, and this wrong was
his marriage late in life with the beautiful Princess Wjera Zinsenburg.
Georges was barely eight years old at the time, but he remembered as
long as he lived how angrily his father, after a life of careless
extravagance led in the certainty of inheriting the Lodrin estates, had
received the announcement of the betrothal, and how hardly he had
spoken of Wjera Zinsenburg.
The boy grew up, his heart filled with a hatred none the less vehement
because it was childish, first for his aunt, and afterward for his
cousin.
His hatred for his aunt grew with his growth, but as for his hatred for
his cousin?... It was difficult to cherish resentment against his
loving, helpless little cousin with his big black eyes and pretty rosy
mouth. And in the summer holidays, which he spent every year in Tornow
with his father, he struck up a friendship with the little fellow.
It was a lasting friendship. One day after his father's death when he
had for several years been an officer of hussars, and always in
pecuniary difficulties, Georges received a letter, which upon very
slanting lines evidently ruled in pencil by Ossi, himself, and in very
sprawling clumsy characters, ran thus:
"Dear Georges,
"Papa says you need money, I don't need any, so I send you my pocket
money, and when I'm big you shall have more. The donkeys are given
away. Papa got angry with Jack because he bit me. Now, for a
punishment, he has to carry sand for the gardeners. I have a pair of
ponies now; they are very pretty and I ride every day. I can ride quite
well and I am not afraid, but I stroke Jack whenever I see him, and I
think he is ashamed of himself.
"Your Ossi."
Yes, he needed money--a great deal of money; his father had left him
next to nothing, and the small allowance which his uncle made him,
always seasoning it with good advice, did not nearly suffice him.
His uncle paid his debts upon condition that he should exchange from
the hussars into the dragoons, then held in rather high estimation as
heavy cavalry. Georges needed money quite as much as a dragoon,
however, as when a hussar. Then came feminine influences--a quarrel
with his colonel--a duel. He resigned his commission with honour and to
the regret of the entire staff. Once more, and, as he was solemnly
informed, for the last time, his uncle paid his debts, and wishing to
have no further concern in his nephew's money matters he also paid out
a handsome sum as a release from all further demands.
Georges manifested his repentance after this settlement by an immediate
excursion to Paris with a pert little French concert-saloon singer.
This was the finishing stroke in the eyes of his strictly moral, nay,
even bigotted uncle. From that time onward the young man's letters to
the old count were returned to him unopened. Georges vanished from the
scene. The rumour ran that after he had tried his luck and failed in
the California gold diggings, he had been a rider in a circus; there
was also a report that he had served mahogany-coloured Spaniards and
jet-black negroes as waiter at Rio Janeiro, that he had been an omnibus
driver in New York--this last fact was vouched for. Still, he contrived
to impress the stamp of spontaneous eccentricity upon every one of the
expedients to which he resorted in his pecuniary embarrassments.
One day after Oswald had attained his majority he received a letter in
which his cousin, after appealing to the old boyish friendship,
described his present condition. Oswald, who was kindheartedness
itself, and, moreover, enthusiastically eager to discharge his duties
as head of the family, did not delay an hour in arranging his cousin's
affairs and in settling upon him an income suitable to his rank.
Thus Georges returned to his old sphere of life and to his former
habits, smiling calmly, but testifying no special delight, and not the
slightest surprise at the change in his circumstances. The honest
friendship which he felt for the cousin whom as a child he had petted,
quite destroyed his old grudge against his fate.
CHAPTER VIII.
Picture a sleepy little market-town lying, at a respectful distance,
near a very large castle, where the clock in the tower has not gone for
twenty years; a ruggedly uneven market-place, thickly paved with sharp
stones and no sidewalk, queer old-fashioned houses with high-gabled
roofs and small windows, and here and there a faded-out image of
the Virgin above an arched gateway, a tradesman's shop serving as
post-office as well as for the sale of tobacco, and adorned over the
doorway with a wreath of wooden lemons and pomegranates, and the
imperial double-eagle, a corner where stands a piled-up carrier's van
covered with black oilskin, a smithy sending forth from its dark
interior a shower of crimson sparks, while from the low passage-way of
the opposite inn, 'The Golden Lion,' a waiter with a dirty apron, and
bare feet thrust into old red slippers, is gazing over at the smithy
where a crowd of dripping street boys are collected about two
thoroughbreds and a groom liveried in the English fashion--picture all
this and you see Rautschin,--Rautschin on a dark afternoon in May in a
pouring rain with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning.
Somewhat apart from the gaping urchins a young man is walking to and
fro in front of the row of houses; his quick impatient step testifies
to his having been detained by some untoward mishap and also to his
being quite unused to such delay.
The rain descends from heaven in fine, regular, grey sheets. The young
man's cigar has gone out, he is cold, and thoroughly annoyed he passes
the unattractive waiter and enters the inn.
The room in which he takes refuge is low and spacious with bright blue
walls, and a well-smoked ceiling. Limp, soiled muslin curtains
reminding one of the train of an old ball-dress, hang before the
windows where are glass hanging-lamps, and flower-pots of painted
porcelain filled with mignonette, cactuses, and catnip. The furniture
consists of two chromos representing the Emperor and his consort, of a
number of yellow chairs, of several green tables, and of an array of
spittoons.
At one of the tables sit three guests evidently much at home; one of
them is tuning a zither, while the other two are smoking very
malodorous cigars, and drinking beer out of tankards of greenish glass.
Engaged in eager conversation none of them observed the entrance of the
stranger who, to avoid attracting attention, seated himself in a dark
corner with his back to the group.
"A couple more truck-loads of all sorts of fine furniture have arrived
at Schneeburg," remarked one of the trio, a young man with red hair,
and unusual length of limb. He is a surveyor's clerk, his name is
Wenzl Wostraschil, but he is familiarly known as 'the Daily News' from
the amount of sensational intelligence which he disperses. "Count
Capriani ...."
"I know of no Count Capriani," interrupted an old gentleman with white
hair and a red face; he is Doctor Swoboda, by profession district
physician, in politics just as strictly conservative as Count Truyn
became as soon as he had proclaimed his socialism by taking to himself
a bourgeoise bride--"I know of no Count Capriani, you probably mean
Conte!"
"It is the same thing," observed the zither player, Herr Cibulka.
"In the dictionary, perhaps," the old doctor rejoined sarcastically.
"The two titles are synonymous in my opinion," said Herr Cibulka as he
laid aside his tuning-key and began to play 'The Tyrolean and his
child,' while with closed lips he half-hummed, half-murmured the air to
himself, his big fat hands groping to and fro on the instrument as if
trying to aid his memory.
Herr Cibulka--this sonorous Slavonic name signifies _onion_ in
Bohemian--Eugene Alexander Cibulka--he is wont to sign his name with a
very tiny Cibulka at the end of a very big Eugene Alexander--assistant
district-attorney, transcendentalist, and Lovelace, is the pioneer of
culture in the sleepy droning little town. He is a tall young fellow
inclining to corpulence, with an uncommonly luxuriant growth of hair on
both his head and face, and with the flabby oily skin of a man who has
all his life long been fed upon dainties.
Evidently much occupied with his outer man he dresses himself as he
says, 'simply but tastefully;' he pulls his cuffs well over his
knuckles, and delights in a snuff-coloured velvet coat with metal
buttons. He fancies that he looks like the Flying Dutchman, or at least
like the brigand, Jaromir. In reality he looks like an advertisement
for 'the only genuine onion ointment for the beard.' He is considered
by the Rautschin ladies as quite irresistible and fabulously cultured.
He criticises everything--music, literature and politics, being
especially great in the domain of politics, and he discourses at length
whenever an opportunity presents itself, combating with admirable
energy perils that have long ceased to terrify any one. It is not clear
as to what party he belongs, but since he berates the clergy, hates the
nobility, and despises the lower-classes, consequently pursuing the
straight and narrow path of his subjective vanities and social
aspirations, he probably considers himself a Liberal. His uncle is in
the ministerial department and _he_ dreams of a portfolio.
Meanwhile the red-haired man with an air of indifference has taken up
his tankard. "Count or Conte, as you please," he said, giving the
disputed point the go-by, and continuing as he put his beer glass down
on an uninviting little brown table, "at all events he must be
accustomed to live in fine style, for he declared that it was
impossible for a man used to modern conveniences to live in Schneeburg
in the condition in which Count Malzin had occupied it. So the house
has been entirely newly furnished. Immense! the doings of these
money-giants--the world belongs to them!"
"Unfortunately, and our poor nobles must go to the wall," sighed the
old doctor, whose platonic love for the nobility keeps pace with the
red-haired man's equally platonic affection for money. "Except a couple
of owners of entailed estates here and there none of them will be able
to compete with these great financiers."
"The law of entail cannot be allowed to exist much longer, it is a
stumbling block in the path of national progress .... My uncle in the
ministerial department ...." Eugene Alexander began in a deep bass
voice, which suggested a sentimentally guttural rendering of 'The
Evening Star' at aesthetic tea-parties.
"Spare me the remarks of your uncle in the ministerial department,"
interrupted Dr. Swoboda angrily.
"The law of entail must be abolished," Herr Cibulka said, as another
man might say, "that new street must be opened."
"Have you got your liberal seven-league boots on again?" Swoboda
rejoined. "How you stride off into the future! You evidently suppose
that if the law of entail were abolished to-day or to-morrow, this
'stumbling-block in the path of national progress' being removed,
various districts of Tornow and Rautschin would find their way into the
pockets of yourself and of your hypothetical children? You are
mistaken, my dear fellow, hugely mistaken. Heaven forbid! Trade would
monopolize the real estate, and that is all you would get by it,
nothing more. The supremacy of money would be confirmed."
"I should prefer, it is true, the supremacy of mind!" Eugene Alexander
said didactically.
"Ah! you think you would come in for a share there," growled the old
doctor under his breath.
Without noticing the irony, Eugene Alexander went on, "The supremacy of
money, of individual merit, is certainly more to be desired than the
supremacy of fossilized prejudice."
"Indeed?... now tell us honestly," said the doctor, "do you really
believe that the masses, whose sufferings are real and not imaginary,
would gain anything thereby?"
"There certainly would be a fresh impetus given to culture,--a freer
circulation of capital," began Cibulka.
"Listen to me a moment," broke in the doctor. "Circulation of capital?
A financier's capital circulates inside his pockets, not outside of
them except on certain occasions on 'Change. The art of spending money
does not go hand-in-hand with the art of making it,--few things in this
world delight me more than the spectacle of a millionaire who, having
ostentatiously retired from business, contemplates his money-bags in
positive despair, not knowing what to do with them and bored to
death because the only occupation in which he takes any delight,
money-getting, is debarred him by his position."
"No one can say of Conte Capriani that he does not know how to spend
his money," the red-headed 'Daily News' affirmed, "everything is being
arranged in the most expensive style, the rooms hung with silk shot
with silver, the carpets as thick as your fist, and the paintings and
artistic objects,--why they are coming by car-loads. I am intimate with
the castellan, and he shows me everything; the outlay is princely."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "The extravagance of a financier is
always for show, it is never a natural expenditure. There's no free
swing to it, and I am not at all impressed by your Conte; one day he
may take it into his head to paper his room with thousand-gulden
bank-notes, and the next he will haggle like the veriest skinflint;
just ask the Malzin servants; he discharged them at a moment's notice
without a penny."
"They were a worthless old lot," Eugene Alexander rejoined, "and
besides it was Count Malzin's duty to provide for his people."
"Poor Count Malzin!" exclaimed the doctor, "he pleaded for his
servants, as I know positively; but provide for them--how could he
provide for them when he could not provide for his own son! When I
think of our poor Count Fritz! A handsomer, sweeter-tempered, kindlier
gentleman never lived in the world! And when I reflect that Schneeburg
is now in the hands of strangers, that Count Fritz cannot live
there....!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the red-head insisted, wriggling on his chair
like an eel, "he is going to live there, in the little Swiss cottage in
the park where the young people used to be with their tutor and
drawing-master in the hunting season, away from the bustle in the
castle."
"Frightful!" murmured the doctor. "This whole Schneeburg business is
too--too sad. The old bailiff is ill of typhus fever brought on by
sheer grief and anxiety, and his whole family would go to destruction
were it not for the generous support of the Countess Lodrin."
"Don't tell us of the generosity of the Countess Lodrin," sneered
Cibulka, or of the generosity of any of the Lodrins. "You need only look
at their estates; the peasants are huddled there in pens like swine."
The stranger, who had until now remained motionless in his dim corner,
apparently paying no heed to the talk, here turned his head to listen.
"That seems very improbable," Dr. Swoboda replied to the last
assertion, "The young count treats all his dependants with a kindly
consideration that it would be difficult to match. If his people suffer
from any injustice it certainly is without his knowledge; Count Oswald
is one of the old school. Hats off to so true a gentleman!"
"You are, and always will be a truckler to princes," said Eugene
Alexander, offended. "I must say that a man like Capriani who has won
for himself a position in society among the greatest by his personal
merit, by the work of his hands, seems to me more worthy of
consideration than a petty Count, who has had everything showered upon
him from his cradle."
"What trash you are talking about personal merit," thundered the
doctor. "Capriani has grown rich on swindling--swindling, on
'Change--swindling in women's boudoirs. He was formerly a physician,
and as such insinuated himself into distinguished houses, and wormed
out political secrets which he made use of in his speculations. Finally
he married a rich banker's daughter; they say his wife is a good woman.
I never saw him but once, but I cannot understand how a woman with a
modicum of taste could ever consent...."
"Oh they say that in his time he has enjoyed the favour of all kinds of
ladies, very great ladies...." the red-head interposed with an air
of importance. "I know from the widow of the late Count Lodrin's
valet--there was a game carried on down there in Italy between the
Countess Wjera...."
He had no time to conclude. The stranger sprang up and like a
flash of lightning struck the speaker twice across the face with his
riding-whip; then without a word he left the room.
"Who was that?" asked Cibulka pale with terror, while the red-headed
man, bewildered, rubbed his cheek.
"Count Oswald Lodrin," said the doctor. "It serves you right for your
insolence!"
"I shall not submit to such brutality--I will appeal to the courts,"
snarled red-head.
"And what can you say?" said the old doctor. "'I have wantonly repeated
low, scandalous gossip--I have slandered a lady who is blessed and
worshipped by all the country round, I have spit in the face of a
saint'--this is what you can say. Let me advise you not to stir, my
worthy Wostraschil."
This 'my worthy Wostraschil' was uttered by the simple old doctor in a
tone which he must have caught unconsciously and involuntarily from
some aristocratic patient.
He arose and stood at the window, looking with a smile of satisfaction
after Oswald, who with head held haughtily erect, face pale, and eyes
flashing angrily, was striding directly across the square to the
smithy.
"A splendid fellow--a true gentleman," the old man murmured. He was
proud of this Austrian, product, and would gladly have paid a tax for
the maintenance of this national article of luxury.
CHAPTER IX.
Arrived in Tornow only that morning, Oswald hardly finished his
breakfast before he rode over to Kanitz, where, after his good-humoured
despotic fashion he adjusted the whole affair with a smile, and soothed
the anxious young tenant.
On the way back his horse lost a shoe, and his groom was well scolded
by his impetuous young master for the carelessness resulting in such an
accident. The riders had been forced to abate their speed and to take a
roundabout way through Rautschin, that the nervous, high-bred animal
might be relieved as soon as possible.
On the way they were overtaken by the storm. Perhaps Oswald would not
have endured the very smoky atmosphere of the inn room so long, had he
not been unconsciously interested in the talk of its three guests.
By no means indifferent to Doctor Swoboda's enthusiastic appreciation
of his merits, he had enjoyed playing the part of the Emperor Joseph in
the popular song and was meditating some pleasantly-devised way of
surprising the old man with his thanks for his loyalty, when the vile
insinuation made by the red-head drove everything else out of his mind.
The horse was shod; he flung himself into the saddle and galloped out
of the town.
The rain had ceased, the clouds were broken. Steaming with moisture,
its outlines glimmering in the light of the setting sun, Rautschin was
left behind. Long streaks of violet cloud with golden edges, lay just
above the horizon, and where the sun was setting, the sky glowed dully
red. The storm had torn the bridal wreath from the head of spring; on
the surface of the water lying in the ruts and hollows of the roads
glinted snowy, fallen blossoms, and the apple-trees and pear-trees
trembled softly in their tattered white array, like young people
awakened from a dream. By the roadside stretched a sheet of water, its
shores bristling with rushes, its surface bluish-gray and gloomy, like
a large pool into which the sky had fallen and been drowned. A couple
of ravens were flapping heavily above it.
The golden edges of the clouds grew narrower, the glow of the sunset
was consumed in its own fire, the colours faded, and profound
melancholy brooded over all the plain.
Oswald's blood was still in a ferment. "Rascally dog!" he muttered
between his teeth ...."and to have to drop the matter for my mother's
sake, not to be able to thrash him within an inch of his life, and
drive him from the country! No human being is safe from such envious
liars, they would drag down everything above them, even the Lord God
Himself! Bah, _cela ne devrait pas monter jusque a la hauteur de mon
dedain_. But,"--he shook himself,--"it takes more than one's will to
calm the blood."
Twilight had set in when he reached Tornow Castle.
It was a spacious, clumsy structure with several court-yards, one
portion with pointed Gothic archways was ancient, irregular and
picturesque, another part was of a later rococo style with conventional
decoration. In front, fringed by tall alders lay a romantic little
lake, the park stretched far to the rear of the castle. The iron gate
with its quaint scroll work, above which was suspended the Lodrin
escutcheon, between two time-stained sandstone urns, turned upon its
rusty hinges, and Oswald rode up to the castle and dismounted. Two
lackeys, who seemed to have little to do save to wear their blue
liveries and striped waistcoats with due dignity, and self-complacency,
were standing in the gateway, peering into the gathering darkness. The
young Count ran hastily up the broad, flat hall-steps.
The last pale ray of daylight penetrated into the hall, through the
tiny panes of the huge windows; here and there the metallic lustre of
some old weapon on the wall gleamed among the dusky shadows.
"Ossi, is that you?" called a voice almost masculine in its deep tone,
but musical withal and in evident anxiety, as a tall female figure
advanced to meet him.
"Yes, mother," he replied gently.
"How late you are! We have been waiting dinner an hour for you."
"Forgive me, mother,"--he carried her hand with reverent affection to
his lips,--"it really was not my fault."
"Fault--fault! I am not reproaching you, Ossi! No, but my child, I was
half dead with anxiety. You are always so punctual, and one quarter of
an hour after another passed and you did not come.--And then the storm.
The lightning struck near here in several places, and your John Bull is
skittish,--you do not think so,--but I know the beast well. If it had
gone on for one more quarter of an hour .... but what detained you, my
child?"
Oswald smiled tenderly and considerately, as tall chivalric sons are
wont to smile at the exaggerated anxieties of their mothers. "Give me
only five minutes to change my dress and I will tell you all," he said,
and once more kissing her hand he hurried away.
Oswald's was one of those impetuous temperaments which are always
stirred to the depths morally and physically by a violent outburst of
anger; even when its cause is forgotten every pulse and vein will still
thrill.
Although he joined his mother in the drawing-room some minutes later in
a perfectly cheerful mood, she instantly saw from his face that
something must have provoked him excessively.
"Anything disagreeable?" she asked drawing him down beside her upon a
sofa, "did you have a distressing scene with Schmitt? did he reproach
you? or ...."
"Heaven forbid, mamma!" broke in Oswald. "Schmitt and reproach?--he is
the most devoted soul--humiliatingly devoted and faithful! Poor
Schmitt! No, no, my horse cast a shoe. I was terribly vexed, I had to
ride slowly, and take the roundabout way through Rautschin." He spoke
quickly and with forced gayety.
"You are concealing something, lest it should annoy me," the countess
said decidedly. "When will you learn that nothing in the world annoys
me as much as your considerate reticence! I lie awake half the night
when I see that you have some vexation to bear which you will not share
with me. You ought to have no secrets from me."
"In a certain way every honourable man must have secrets from her whom
he respects as I respect you," Oswald said half-annoyed, half-tenderly,
while he puzzled his brains to discover a way of pacifying his mother
without telling either a falsehood or the whole truth. A brilliant idea
then occurred to him. "In fact the matter is a very stupid affair. In
the inn where I stopped during the storm I suddenly heard one of three
men who were in the room speak with contempt of the Lodrin generosity;
the fellow asserted that on the Lodrin estates the labourers lived in
pens like pigs, and,--er--my temperament is not exactly stoical, and
I,--in short I got angry. It is hard to hear such things when one
honestly tries to treat his people well! And there may be some truth in
it; I will make inquiries to-morrow, no, I will find out for myself. I
can learn nothing from my bailiffs, they only cajole me. Last year
there was typhus fever in Morowitz, the people died like flies, and I
knew nothing of it; when at last I did learn about it I went there
immediately, but the epidemic was well nigh at an end. _A propos_,
mamma, I cannot but forgive you if it be so, but was it not all
concealed from me at your request? You knew that I should go over there
at once, and you were afraid of contagion."
"No, my dear child," the countess said gravely, "foolishly anxious as I
am about you upon trifling occasions,--and I have just shown how
foolishly anxious I can be,--I never would lift a finger to seclude you
from a peril if such peril lay in the path of duty. I would rather die
of anxiety than hamper you or exert a detracting influence upon you in
your line of conduct. I would be broken on the wheel to save your life,
but----" she shuddered and moved closer to him,--"I would rather see
you dead, than anything else save what you are--my pride, and a
blessing to all around you!" She looked him full in the face, the
mother's large, earnest eyes gleaming with exultant enthusiasm. "If you
only knew how I suffered during that stupid storm! I am so glad to have
you again, my boy, my fine, noble boy!" And drawing his head down to
her she kissed him on the brow.
The rustle of a newspaper attracted Oswald's attention, and for the
first time he observed Georges, who, buried in the depths of a
luxurious arm-chair, had been watching from behind his newspaper the
little scene between mother and son.
A servant appeared at the door--dinner was announced.
CHAPTER X.
"Very remarkable!" Georges said a few hours later as, smoking a cigar,
he entered his cousin's bedroom, where Oswald was already in bed.
"What is very remarkable?" Oswald asked drowsily as he lay on his back,
his hands clasped under his head.
"The change in your mother," said Georges, sitting down on the edge of
the bed, "I should hardly have known her again."
"I can't understand that," Oswald rejoined. "Her hair has grown
gray--it grew gray when she was quite young,--but her features are the
same. I think her very beautiful still."
"I think her more beautiful than ever," Georges said gravely, "but...."
he thoughtfully blew the smoke from his cigar upwards to the
ceiling--"how old is your mother?"
"Fifty-six."
"Only fifty-six--and yet she seems an old woman."
"An old woman....! What are you thinking of? My mother can do nearly as
much as I can, she can ride for five hours at a time, and can take long
walks and never...."
"My dear fellow," interrupted Georges impatiently. "I did not mean to
say that your respected mamma seemed at all decrepit, but only that her
features, her whole bearing, wear the stamp of that calm, kindly
cheerfulness that belongs to those who have done with life. She asks
nothing more--she bestows. And that, Ossi, is not a characteristic of
youth--no, not of even, the most generous youth."
"There you are right," Oswald rejoined thoughtfully. "Many a woman of
her age would still go into society and enjoy its distractions, she,
since my father's death, has had no thought of anything except my
education and the management of my property. It is wonderful, the
knowledge she has of business. You would laugh if I should tell you of
what large sums she saved up for me during my minority. Such strict
economy was not to my taste, and I put a stop to it, but it must be
forgiven in a mother."
"And the gentleness and kindness of her manner!" Georges continued,
"her unreasoning maternal nervousness! I assure you it was no easy
task, the hour spent in trying to allay her anxiety. Her feeling for
you is positive idolatry."
"Try to be patient with this weakness of hers."
"My dear boy, he would be a worthless fellow who did not respect this
weakness. It only surprises me in your mother; I had not expected
anything of the kind. Before I left home she kept you at such a
distance. I could not then understand why she always treated you so
coldly and harshly, and, to tell the truth, I took such, lack of
affection on her part, very ill."
Oswald leaned upon his elbow among the pillows. "That was while my
father was alive," he said softly, "yes, I have often thought of that,
and have thought also that I could explain her conduct. You see my
father's foolish fondness for me irritated her, and she suppressed the
manifestation of her own affection. Between ourselves, Georges, my
mother was wretched in her marriage; her poor heart was always upon the
rack, it could no more beat freely and naturally than a man with a rope
tight about his neck can sing. I respected my father immensely,
but ... well, Georges, look there...." he pointed to a large painting
above his bed, the portrait of the countess in the proud splendour of
her youthful beauty, "and then, look there...." and he pointed to a
white plaster death-mask framed in black velvet hanging on the wall
opposite. "As far back as I can remember, my father looked just like
that; they were never congenial. And now let me go to sleep, old fellow,
good-night!"
CHAPTER XI.
No, 'congenial' they never had been and never could have been.
Although the painting was far from portraying the charm of the Countess
Lodrin's beauty in the bloom of youth, the repulsive death-mask
opposite did full justice to the deceased count. The face that it
represented was almost horse-like in its length; smoothly shaven as
that of a monk, with a sharp-pointed nose, little round eyes, a mouth
like the slit in a child's money-jug, and seamed with innumerable
wrinkles, it resembled one of those bloodless aged heads which abound
in pictures by Memmling or Van Eyck.
It would be an error to suppose that illness and the final agony had
distorted the face before it had been perpetuated in the plaster cast.
Count Lodrin had never looked otherwise, he had always looked like a
corpse, and Pistasch Kamenz boldly maintained that 'the old gentleman
looked his best in his coffin.'
Not only Count Pistasch, but everybody else ridiculed Count Lodrin; few
men have ever lived who have been more ridiculed. One fact, however, no
ridicule could affect--Count Lodrin was a gentleman through and
through.
That he possessed a tender heart and a sense of duty, which, in spite
of the vacillations of a timid temperament, always triumphed in
important crises, no one had ever denied who had seen him in any grave
emergency,--and that this sense of duty, with a mild admixture of pride
of rank, belonged to him more as a gentleman than as a human being, did
not detract from his merit.
Given over in his youth to the ghostly influence of priestly tutors, he
had led a melancholy, misanthropic existence. His delicate constitution
made impossible any participation in the manly sports of his equals in
rank. Therefore there was developed in him, as in many another recluse,
an intense devotion to art; he was indefatigable in sifting and
enlarging his collections.
People of his rank usually marry young. It was not so with him. As with
several historic characters, the timidity of his temperament culminated
in an aversion to women, which rendered futile all the bold schemes of
ambitious mammas. In his solitude he had come to be forty-five years
old; it was an article of faith in Austrian society that he never would
marry, when suddenly his betrothal to Wjera Zinsenburg was announced.
His brother's creditors made wry faces; society laughed. Two months
afterwards the strange couple were united in the chapel of the palace
of the Zinsenburgs. Among those present at the ceremony there were some
who envied the bridegroom, many who ridiculed him, and a few who pitied
him.
As the pair stood beside each other before the altar they presented a
strange contrast.
The face of the bride, nobly chiselled, and with an indignant curve of
the full, red lips, recalled to the minds of all who had been in Rome a
beautiful but unpleasing memory,--the profile of the Medusa in the
Villa Ludovisi, that wondrous relievo in which the pride of a demon
seems contending with the suffering of an angel.
The bridegroom looked as he did fifteen years afterward on his bier,
only more unhappy, for upon the bier his face wore the expression of a
man who had just been relieved of an old burden; at the altar his
expression was that of one who bends beneath the weight of a burden
just assumed.
It was shortly manifest that no late-awakened passion had decided him
to contract this alliance. A weaker will had been forced to bow before
a stronger.
CHAPTER XII.
But what had induced the exquisitely-beautiful girl to choose such a
husband as this, every one asked; and no one answered. The question had
to be dismissed with a shrug, and, 'She is a riddle!'
The same thing had been said four years previously, when with an air of
proud indifference, and with cold, 'level-fronting eyelids,' she had
appeared in Vienna society. There was about her an exotic air always
irresistible to the genuine Austrian temperament. Her father was a
diplomatist, her mother a Russian. Wjera's Russian blood betrayed
itself in everything about her, in her deep, almost harsh voice, which
was, nevertheless, capable of exquisite modulations, in the hybrid
combination of Oriental nonchalance and northern energy that
characterized her whole bearing, her gestures, her figure.
When she reclined upon a divan or leaned back in an arm-chair there was
a suggestion of the odalisque in her attitude; but in her walk there
was a short, sharp rhythm; it was firm and despotic like that of a
race-horse, and yet light as the fluttering of a bird. She was tall and
not too slender--the beauty of her shoulders and bust was so great that
it had become famous--her head was small and faultlessly poised upon
her neck--her features were not perfectly regular, but how charming was
her face! pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of
gold about the temples and the back of the neck. The cheek-bones were
rather too high, the face not quite oval enough; the brow was low; the
profile haughty, and delicately modelled.
The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their
openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they
were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them
something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their
depths.
Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no
suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither
disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history.
In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been
distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally
betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the
tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact
that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had
been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large
did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the
man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the
fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She
did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of
distinction, but mentally coarse--alternating between brutish excesses
and superstitious penances--at once cynical as a roue and sentimental
as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him nobly in her imagination.
Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly
gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry
them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch
up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order
that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood
unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the
desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.
It was not so with Wjera; when doubt had once sown discord between her
head and her heart, she fought out the battle unflinchingly,
inexorably, in strict honesty, and when the conflict was over her dream
had vanished. In this wondrously lovely illusion she had exhausted all
the ideality of her nature. Her reason gained the upperhand at last,
and ever after she analyzed her fellow-mortals with sharp precision;
judging them with harsh justice, and speaking of the affections with an
unaffected, contemptuous coolness very rare in a girl so young.
Time passed by. She came to be twenty-six years old. She was the eldest
and the handsomest of five daughters, and her distaste for marriage
increased the difficulty of providing for the other sisters, and
excited unpleasant remark among her family circle. Chance introduced
Count Lodrin to her acquaintance, and perhaps because he seemed to her
a respectable nullity, she selected him for her husband.
No one could remember ever having seen so ill-matched a pair. She,
aglow with life, delighting in physical exercises, a reckless and
indefatigable horsewoman--to whom a steeple-chase was no more than is a
waltz to other women,--and he, paying with an attack of illness for
every unusual physical effort, not even daring to take a long drive
without an extra cushion at his back.
Whilst his thoughts moved slowly in a traditional roundabout way, 'her
woman's wit flew straight and did exactly hit,' before the Count had
cleared his throat for his first 'consequently.'
Her quick wit bewildered him; her outspoken acuteness of discernment
offended him. There was a world-wide dissimilarity between her views
and his. The Count was a strict Catholic; the Countess was inclined to
scepticism; although cast in a loftier mould, in her daring mockery and
her graceful eccentricity she recalled the fine ladies of the
eighteenth century--of that time when social and mental freedom, made
fashionable by philosophers, had not yet been degraded to vulgarity by
demagogues. His wife's wicked wit shocked poor Count Lodrin. Much
ridicule was cast upon the couple, but every one was none the less glad
to belong to the brilliant circle which the Countess drew around her,
and daily the wonder grew that calumny could not touch the beautiful
wife of this dead-and-alive dotard.
Three years passed; now and then women hinted innuendoes about Wjera
Lodrin, but the other sex continued to speak of her with that mixture
of admiration and irritation which bears the truest testimony to the
blamelessness of a very beautiful woman. At last society was content to
shrug its shoulders and to repeat, 'She is a riddle.'
The Countess was unutterably bored. The only occupation that she
pursued with inexhaustible interest, though at the same time with
reckless intrepidity, was riding.
"She has no sphere of activity; hers is the grand, fiery nature of a
gifted man beating against the petty barriers of feminine existence.
What is to come of it?" a sagacious student of human nature once said,
in speaking of her.
All at once there was a decided change for the worse in Count Lodrin's
health, and the physicians prescribed a sojourn in the South.
Reluctantly enough the Countess consented to accompany her husband.
They set out, and the world maliciously compared Wjera to Juana of
Castile, because she travelled with a corpse, and a father-confessor.
The Count found Nice quite too gay, and therefore took refuge in a
secluded villa in the Riviera.
The Countess nearly died of ennui in the gray, sultry, sirocco-like
monotony of an autumn heavy with the fragrance of roses, and in the
tedium of an Italian winter. In spring the pair returned to Bohemia,
the Count in somewhat better health, the Countess as cold and hard as
ever, but irritable to a degree until now quite foreign to her.
In the August after their return Oswald was born. The old Count could
not contain himself for joy; the Countess cared but very little for the
child.
This was the woman whom Georges had known fifteen years before, and
now,--he could hardly believe his senses!
Before he went to bed on the first night of his return to Tornow, he
stood for a long while at the window of his room looking thoughtfully
out into the night. The moon was high in the heavens; everything was
still, save for a low rustle now and then in the huge lindens growing
on the border of the pond in front of the castle. The ancient trees
seemed to stir and stretch themselves in their sleep. His gaze wandered
over the compact angular architecture of the high, black-gabled roofs,
the rows of houses with tiny windows, in the little town,--all bathed
in bluish moonlight. It was hardly changed since he had last seen
it,--in the castle everything was changed. What had become of the
social distractions in which the Countess Lodrin had been wont to
delight?--Vanished, as by magic. The entire castle impressed him as
having recovered from a restless fever.
Had the Countess's former cold, harsh demeanour been but the mask for
the intense hunger of a strangely dowered nature that could find no fit
nourishment? And had love for her child filled up at last the fearful
rift made in her inmost life by an early disappointment?
Georges asked himself these questions. Once more his glance wandered to
the pond in whose waters the moon was mirrored. "Strange!" he
murmured,--"today it was but a dark pool, and now in the moonlight it
gleams a silver disk! Hm! Extraordinary, how true maternal love will
hallow every woman's heart! Strange exceedingly! what must she not have
suffered in her life ...!"
CHAPTER XIII.
The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the
Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She
was sitting in an arm-chair knitting with very thick wooden needles and
coarse brown worsted, something evidently destined for a charitable
purpose.
The boudoir, an irregular square room and with a picturesque
bow-window, was furnished with no regard to uniformity of style, and
therefore had the charm which characterizes rooms which have been as it
were gradually evolved from the habits and tastes of a cultured
occupant, until they are the frame or setting of an individuality. A
delightful confusion of comfort and feminine taste reigned here, and
the two or three trifling articles that offended all artistic sense,
struck the eye only as piquant beauty spots. The cabinets, filled with
rare old porcelain, threw into strong relief the ugly inkstand and
candlesticks of modern dark-blue Sevres upon a writing-table. They
were a memento,--a marriage gift from a Russian cousin and youthful
playmate who fell in the Crimean war. Among some old pictures, an
Andrea del Sarto, a Franz Hals, and two Wateaus, hung in triumphant
self-complacency a portrait by Lawrence--a man's head and bust,--a
crimson-lined cloak was thrown around the shoulders, the shirt collar
was open, black hair fell low on the brow, the eyes were large and
wild, the frankly smiling mouth was exquisitely chiselled. It hung just
over the writing-table, lord of all, and was the portrait of Oswald
Zinsenburg, an uncle of the Countess, a gifted fellow, who, when
Secretary of Legation in England, had been intimate with Lord Byron,
and in all the romantic ardour of a young aristocrat fighting for
freedom, had died of brain fever at Missolonghi at the age of
twenty-seven, shortly after Lord Byron's death.
This portrait the Countess Wjera loves, principally because it is so
like her son, and upon it her gaze rested as she dropped the long
wooden-needles in her lap, and fell into a revery.
The air of the room was penetrated with the delicious fragrance of the
roses, and lilies of the valley that filled the various vases.
Everything was quiet,--the birds were taking their siesta, the faint
pattering of the horse-chestnut blossoms could be heard as they fell
upon the gravel path, before the castle.
The drowsy midday stillness was suddenly broken by a softly whistled
Russian gipsy melody and an elastic young footstep. The Countess turned
her head. She knew the air well--how often she had sung it! The
whistling came nearer, then ceased, and the door of the boudoir opened.
"May we come in?" a cheery voice asked.
"Always welcome!" replied the Countess, and Oswald, followed by a large
shaggy Newfoundland, entered, his curls wet and clinging to his
forehead, a bunch of waterlilies in his hand, and looking more than
ever like the portrait by Lawrence.
"Good morning, mamma; how are you? Make your bow, Darling--so, old
fellow--so!" And as the Newfoundland gravely lowered his fine head, a
performance for which he was duly caressed by his master, Oswald sank
into a low seat beside his mother.
"You have been bathing," she observed, stroking back his wet hair.
"Yes, I have been swimming in the lake at Wolnitz, and I have brought
you these waterlilies," he replied, laying the flowers in her lap,
"they are the first I have seen this year, and they are your favourite
flowers, are they not? How fair and melancholy they are! Strange that
these pure white things should spring from such slimy mud! May I?"
taking out his cigar-case.
"Of course, my child. What have you been about to-day? I have not seen
you before."
"I went out very early. I had sent for the forester to come to me at
seven, and I went with him to the new plantations. The young firs are
as straight as soldiers. And then I dawdled about in the woods--it was
so lovely there!--'tis the earth's honeymoon, and when I see everything
blossoming out in the sunshine, I think of all that lies in the near
future for me, and I feel like shouting for joy! Apropos, mamma, I have
found a site for the Widow's Asylum that you want to found. I have been
puzzling over the best situation for it, and I have decided to put the
old Elizabeth monastery at the disposal of your benevolence. Is this
what you would like?"
She held out her hand to him with a smile. "Have you found time to
think of that too? I thought you had forgotten my scheme long ago."
"Ah yes, I am in the habit of forgetting your wishes!" he said gaily.
"No, Heaven knows you are not," the Countess murmured, "you have always
been loving and considerate to me."
"And what else could I be, mamma?" he said affectionately. "Ah, on a
glorious spring day like this, when the world is so beautiful, and my
blood goes coursing in my veins with delight, I am tempted to kneel
down before you and thank you for the dear life you have bestowed upon
me--what is the matter, mamma, you have suddenly grown so pale?"
"It is nothing--only a slight pain in my heart--it has gone already,"
the Countess whispered, turning aside her head.
"Quite gone?--is it my cigar smoke?"
"Not at all, dear child!"--
In spite of this assertion he tossed his cigar out of the window. "You
used to smoke yourself," he observed.
"Yes," she said, looking down at her knitting, "but since I have
learned to employ my hands, I have given up smoking."
"You knit instead--It seems odd to me to see _you_ knitting. Georges
thinks you very much altered."
"I have grown old, _voila!_"
"And he thinks too that you spoil me tremendously, that no mother in
all Austria spoils her son as you do me."
"No other mother has such a son," the Countess said proudly.
"Oh, oh!" he laughed and took his seat beside her again.
"Nevertheless, I am not blind to your faults," she continued, "I know
them all."
"And love every one of them."
"Because they are the faults of a noble nature--men of lower tendencies
are obliged to show more self-control."
"Indeed! God bless your aristocratic prejudices! and now for a piece of
news. The Truyns reach Rautschin to-morrow by the four o'clock train.
Will you drive with me to meet them?"
"Certainly, if you wish me to."
"If I wish you to--if I wish you to!"--he softly snapped his fingers,
"and you look all the while as if I had asked you to attend an
execution with me. I cannot quite understand you, mamma, you used to
take delight in every little pleasure that chance threw in my way, and
now will you not rejoice in my great happiness? As soon as there is any
allusion made to my betrothal, your whole manner changes; you grow so
distant and reserved, that I hardly like to mention my betrothed."
"I really did not know, Ossi ..." began the Countess with constraint.
"Oh, yes, mother, I felt in Paris that you were not pleased with my
betrothal, and I have racked my brain to discover what there can be
about it that you do not like, and I can not imagine what it is. There
can be no objection to make to Gabrielle." Then suddenly smiling in the
midst of his irritation, and curbing the impetuous flow of his words,
he asked in a lower tone and more calmly, "Ah, _ca_, mamma, perhaps you
dislike the connection with my darling's stepmother? I assure you
that ...."
"Nonsense!" replied the Countess, growing still more disturbed, "from
what you and Georges both tell me of the young woman, she seems to
adapt herself very well to her position. A residence abroad and foreign
associations are much better means of training than ...."
"Yes, mamma," interrupted Oswald in some surprise, having followed out
his own train of thought, "but if you are so kindly disposed towards
Zinka, I cannot possibly conceive what exception you can take to my
betrothal. There never was a purer, more noble creature than my little
Gabrielle. Highly as I rank you, mother, she is every way worthy of
you."
The Countess changed colour, "I do not understand what you wish," she
exclaimed, "do not distress me, I have no objection to the girl!...."
"Well then,--you could not possibly expect me to remain unmarried."
The Countess cast down her eyes and was silent.
Oswald sprang up, called his dog and left the room, his face very pale,
his eyes very dark.
Impetuous and hasty as he was with others, he had always controlled
himself in his mother's presence. Leaving the room was the extreme
point to which he allowed his displeasure to manifest itself when with
her. If he wished to vent his anger, he did it in seclusion, he never
had spoken an angry word--scarcely a loud one to her. And his
disagreeable mood never lasted long.
"I am myself again, mamma!" with these words, in which he was wont to
announce his return to a better frame of mind, he presented himself
half an hour afterward in his mother's boudoir. She was sitting just as
he had left her, the waterlilies in her lap, very pale, very erect,
with the set features that veil distress of mind.
Pushing his chair close up to her he laid his hand upon her shoulder,
and said with the winning tenderness of all impetuous men after bursts
of anger: "Forgive me, mamma, I was very wrong again!" She smiled
faintly and murmured some half inaudible words of affection--"I was
odiously egotistical," he went on, "I had quite forgotten what a change
my marriage will make in your life, what a trial it must be to you, you
poor, foolish, jealous little mother! But whatever change there may be
outwardly in our relations, we must always be the same in heart; and if
I must deprive you of something," he added gaily, "my children shall
requite you. It had to come sooner or later, mamma; or could you really
wish me to renounce the fairest share of existence?"
She trembled in every limb, and suddenly taking his hand, before he
could prevent it, she carried it to her lips, "No, you shall renounce
no joy, my child, my noble child!" she exclaimed,--"but--leave me now
for a while, for only a little while--I am tired!"
CHAPTER XIV.
Truyn had insisted that the betrothal of his daughter to Oswald Lodrin
should be celebrated in Bohemia. Zinka had yielded with great
reluctance and sorrow, and had at last resolved to bid farewell to her
dear foreign home.
"Why," she persisted in asking him, "cannot the ceremony take place, as
in our own case, at the Austrian Embassy?"
But Truyn would not hear of it. "Dear heart," he replied, "it would go
against the grain. The betrothals of all my sisters and of my aunts
were celebrated at Rautschin, why should I depart from the traditions
of my family?"
"As if you had not already departed from them, and in the most vital
regard," said Zinka, with arch tenderness.
"That is a very different thing,--if there were any good reason,
then--then--!"
"Ah, dear friend, you have grown insufferably conservative, you would
have shouted on the first day of the creation of the world: '_Conserves
le chaos, seigneur Dieu, conservez le chaos!_'"
Whereupon Truyn, kissing her hand, made reply. "That comes of living in
France, dear child."
And so the pretty house in the Avenue Labedoyere was deserted. The
shutters were closed, the carpets rolled up, the bric-a-brac stowed
away; only in some roundabout fashion did a bluish beam of light slip
into the vault-like obscurity, and the restless motes pursue their
fantastic dance among the shrouded shapes of the furniture.
The Truyn family were rapidly approaching their home. Nearly thirty
hours had passed since Paris had faded from their eyes in the misty
blue distance--since the last gigantic announcement of the '_Belle
Jardiniere_,' and of the '_Pauvre diable_' had flitted past them. The
Bavarian boundary, with its stupid Custom House formalities lay behind
them. Truyn was reading a Vienna newspaper with great interest,
Gabrielle was gazing abstractedly at the crimson coupe cushions
opposite, with the far-away look in her eyes of young lovers. Zinka was
leaning back in her corner, her veil half drawn aside, her hands folded
in her lap, the latest impressions of her Paris life hovering
kaleidiscopically before her mental vision, her heart oppressed by a
strange melancholy.
"Ah, this defamed, delightful Paris! how it captivates the heart with
its good-for-nothing beauty, and its corrupt, sickly sentiment!"
She was still mentally rehearsing the last days before her departure,
the going to and fro from shop to shop, the interesting consultations
with Monsieur Worth, the affected face with which that eminent artist
put his finger to his lip, while attending the ladies to their
carriage, and continued to 'compose' Gabrielle's wedding dress,
murmuring to himself with his English accent: "_Oui, oui, une
orginalite distahnguee c'est ce qu'il fant_," while sleek young clerks,
and young girls faultless in figure, displayed to the best advantage
the richest costumes, trailing about silks and satins of fabulous
elegance.
"_Ce n'est pas cela, qui ferait votre affaire, Madame la Comtesse je le
sais bien_," said Mons. Worth pointing to certain monstrosities devised
for American parvenus, "ah, Madame la Comtesse cannot imagine, how hard
it is for an artist to have to work for people of no taste! _Ah oui,
une originalite distahnguee!_"
The man-milliner's, monotonous refrain kept sounding on in Zinka's
ears. Then she thought of the farewell visits, the daily heap of cards
filling the great copper salver in the vestibule, the wearisome
farewell entertainments, and of her husband's toast--the toast which he
proposed at the magnificent banquet, given in his honour, by the
Austrian Hungarians in Paris. Unutterably distasteful as it always is
to men of his stamp, to be conspicuous, he at last made up his mind to
propose this toast; he worked at it for an entire week, and subjected
it to the criticism, not only of his wife and of his daughter, but of
every one whose judgment he respected in Paris. It was a masterpiece of
a toast, a toast designed to unite in brotherly affection all the
Austrians in Paris, and which ultimately, with its well-meant,
many-sided compliments gave occasion for dissatisfaction to every
member of the Austrian-Hungarian colony, whether conservative or
liberal. Zinka laughed to herself as she recalled that poor
misunderstood toast. She laughed outright, started, and--awoke--rubbed
her eyes and looked out.
Yes, Paris lay far behind her, very far. She was in Austria, beautiful,
dreamingly-drowsy Austria, and, in spite of the reluctance with which
she returned to her fatherland, it affected her.
A low blue chain of hills lay on the western horizon like a vanishing
storm-cloud. The landscape around was level and extended. Large, quiet
pools, surrounded by tall rushes, and covered with a network of
fragrant waterlilies, gleamed here and there among the emerald meadows.
The sun was near its setting. The shadows of the telegraph poles
stretched out indefinitely. Little towns contentedly sleeping away
their dull lives among green lindens, showed their old-fashioned
silhouettes, black against the sunlit evening clouds.
Truyn laid aside his newspaper, and his face grew eager and animated,
every knotted gnarled willow, every half-ruinous garden wall here
interested him.
A forest of firs, their trunks glowing red in the last rays of the sun,
bordered the railway. "There, just by that stunted fir, I shot my first
deer," Truyn exclaimed, and in his eyes sparkled the memory of a happy
boyhood; then, drawing Zinka to him, he whispered tenderly: "You are at
home, Zini; we are travelling upon our own soil."
"Ah," replied Zinka, nestling close to him, timid as a child afraid of
ghosts.
"How nervous you are!" he said, gently stroking her cheek--"you silly
little goose you!"
"It is not for myself," she whispered, "so long as you love me, you and
Ella, I can bear anything. But I know you--it would grieve you to the
very heart, if ...."
"Tickets, if you please!"
A breathless panting--a shrill whistle.
"Rautschin--five minutes stay!"
"Aunt Wjera!" Gabrielle exclaimed, joyously hurrying out of the coupe.
There was something like defiance in Zinka's heart, but when she saw
the woman, who in all her exquisite beauty, all the distinguished grace
of manner inspired by kindness and cordiality, advanced to meet them,
her defiant mood vanished in admiration, and with a feeling of almost
childlike reverence, she bowed to the superiority of the elder lady,
who greeted her most cordially.
After the first excitement of meeting was over, Countess Wjera's
attention was naturally concentrated upon her son's betrothed.
"I can but congratulate you from my heart, Ossi," she said earnestly,
looking full into the young girl's eyes--eyes that shone like two blue
violets under the clearest skies--violets that had suffered nothing
from late frosts or too ardent sunshine. "You are a favourite of
fortune, my child."
Gabrielle blushed, and buried her face in the bunch of white roses,
which Oswald had brought her; and Oswald was touched, and smiled his
thanks to his mother, as he whispered a tender word to his betrothed.
"Do you know who came in the same train with us?" Truyn suddenly asked,
interrupting the happy moment.
"Capriani, father and son, I saw them," said Oswald, "look at him,
mamma, there is my rival, the enterprising young spark, who sued for
Gabrielle's hand. A mad idea, was it not? Gabrielle, and a son of
Capriani!--we shouted with laughter, when the Melkweyser announced the
proposal."
The flurry of the arrival had subsided, and the Countess leisurely
inspected through her eyeglass the sallow young man who was talking
with Georges Lodrin. Gabrielle said something about his dark blue
travelling-suit, shot with gold; Zinka made inquiries, all in a breath,
of her husband, and of the two lady's-maids, whether this or that
article of luggage had not been left in Paris or in the railway coupe.
When at last all her anxieties on this point had been relieved, and
they had passed through the station to the carriages, they observed a
magnificent four-in-hand, the harness decorated with a coronet.
"By Jove!" Truyn exclaimed with delight, "superb, Ossi, superb! I have
rarely seen four such beauties together!"
"Nor have I," said Oswald, examining the horses critically,
"unfortunately they are not mine--they belong to Capriani."
"Impossible!" Truyn said disdainfully, "speculator that he is, he may
bore through the isthmus of Panama, for all I care, but he cannot get
together such a four-in-hand as that."
"Fritz Malzin selected and arranged it for him," Oswald explained.
"Poor Fritz!"
"I cannot understand him," Truyn said in an undertone, and hastily
changing the subject, he asked: "Have you come to terms with Capriani,
about the Kanitz affair, Ossi? Could not the sale be revoked?"
"The matter would have been very difficult to adjust, I am told--of
course I understand nothing of such things,--" replied Oswald, "but
Capriani--what will you say to this, uncle?--yielded the point, 'out of
special regard' for me, as his lawyer informed Dr. Schindler. Between
ourselves, it was--what word shall I use?--audacious, for I have never
spoken to him in my life, and yet I had to accept his uncalled-for
courtesy, for Schmitt's sake."
"Remarkable, very!" said Truyn, "We usually have to pay dear for the
courtesies of a Capriani and his kind!"
"Have you everything, Ella?" asked Zinka, "shall we start?"
"I should like to have my hand-bag, Hortense has left it with the large
luggage."
Meanwhile, with an unpleasant smile and hat in hand, a sallow-faced,
grey-haired, elderly man, with the look of a bird of prey, approached
the Countess Wjera, and held out his right hand. "I am immensely
gratified, your Excellency, after so long a time ....!"
The Countess, her eyes half closed, measured him haughtily. "With whom
have I the pleasure ...?"
"Conte Capriani."
The Countess silently shrugged her shoulders, and turning half away,
called in an irritated tone, "Are we ready to go at last, Ossi?...."
A whirling cloud of dust was soon the only trace left of the bustle of
the arrival.
The short drive was spent by Truyn in reminiscences, by the betrothed
pair in sentiment.
At the tea, which was awaiting the travellers, and of which the
Lodrin's stayed to partake, there was much laughter over the _chic_ of
the Caprianis, over their wealth, and--their obtrusiveness. Oswald
suddenly grew thoughtful.
"Did you ever before meet these people, mamma?" he asked.
"I never knew any Conte Capriani in my life,--who are these Caprianis?"
asked the Countess.
"Nobody knows," said Oswald. "Some say he is a Greek, some that he
comes from Marseilles, and others that he is a Turk."
"They are all wrong," Georges said drily, "he comes originally from
Bohemia; he was formerly a physician, and his name was Stein."
BOOK SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
Rautschin, still Rautschin!--the tiny town lying at the feet of the
huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty
years--but no longer in pouring rain with thunder and lightning, but
Rautschin beneath skies of sapphire blue, upon a hot July afternoon.
The sun was still high in the heavens. The crooked little row of houses
on one side of the Market Square, cast short, black shadows, the
national red kerchiefs, with broad borders of gay flowers hanging at
the door of the principal shop, fluttered gently in the summer breeze.
A melancholy hubbub of discords, struggling in vain for a solution, was
heard through the open window of one of the newest and ugliest houses.
Eugene Alexander Cibulka, and the wife of the district commissioner,
were playing Wagner's 'Walkuere,' arranged for four hands, and each had
again 'lost the place.' They regularly lose the place every time a leaf
is turned, and so the one who gets first to the bottom of the page,
very kindly waits for the other.
Rautschin Castle stands proudly superior to every structure about it,
ensconced behind all kinds of farm-buildings and additions, at the
extreme end of the Market Square, to which it turns its shoulder, as it
were. Except for its imposing dimensions, it is in no wise remarkable.
Standing at the entrance of a very extensive park, it dates from the
time of Maria Theresa, when the present clumsy edifice, its prim facade
defaced by grass-green shutters, was built upon the remains of a feudal
fortress. The court-yard is not perfectly square, and the arches of the
arcade rest upon granite pillars. Its interior is quite in accordance
with its exterior; it is anything but splendid, and has an air of
empty, dignified distinction.
Before the western side of the Castle, Count Truyn with his young wife
was sitting beneath the shade of a red and gray striped marquee; behind
them in a garden-room, the glass doors of which were wide open, Oswald,
standing on a step-ladder, was busy hanging on the wall a piece of
gold-embroidered Oriental stuff, and Gabrielle was handing him the
nails.
"Well Zini, are you beginning to like our home?" said Truyn, propping
his elbows upon the white garden table, between himself and his wife.
He looked so contented, so proud of his possessions, so triumphant,
that Zinka could not refrain from teasing him a little.
"Taken all in all, yes," she said indifferently, "but then taken all in
all, I should like Siberia, with you and Ella."
"Zinka! I must confess,"--Truyn's face assumed a disturbed and almost
offended expression, "I must say that I cannot understand how any one
can compare Rautschin to a place of exile!"
"I did not mean to do so, rest assured," Zinka said, "I think your
Rautschin very delightful, I should only like to alter a few details."
"I cannot abide improvements," growled Truyn, "it is only the Caprianis
and Company, who must always be beautifying everything old--that is
destroying it. I think an old place should be left as it is, with all
its characteristic defects--to try to improve them, seems to me like
trying to correct the drawing of a Giotto or a Cimabue."
"I can understand a respect for the old mis-drawings," Zinka rejoined
quietly, "but does one owe the same respect to modern retouching, to
the vandalism that has made clumsy additions to an old picture?"
"Hm!" Truyn gazed thoughtfully around him--"no, in fact. It is
remarkable that you are always right, you little witch. Now be frank
Zini; what exactly would you like to have different? So far as my
veneration and my finances permit, you shall have your will."
Zinka pointed to the lawn that lay before them, terribly disfigured by
bright red and yellow arabesques. "I think that confectioner's
ornamentation there almost as ugly as the carpet-gardening at the Villa
Albani," she said, "don't you?"
Truyn ran his hands through his hair, "Well, yes,"--he meekly admitted
after a pause, "but I cannot possibly alter that. Old Kraus, to
surprise me, has taken infinite pains to portray our crest on the
lawn--I had to praise him for his brilliant idea, however hideous I
thought the thing, don't you see, Zini?"
"That alters the case entirely," Zinka admitted. "I would not hurt
faithful old Kraus for the world. But"--she pointed to the basin of a
fountain, the shape of which was particularly ugly--"old Kraus could
not have designed that basin--that might be cleared away!"
Truyn looked thoroughly discomfited. "The basin is a horror," he
confessed, "but I cannot help saying a good word for it. It is endeared
to me by youthful associations--if only because when I was a boy of
twelve, I was very nearly drowned in it."
"Oh then indeed ...." Zinka shrugged her shoulders, with a humourous air
of resignation. "I now hardly dare to object to the green shutters,"
she went on, "for if, as in view of their colour is highly probable, they
gave you opthalmia, some thirty years ago--it would ...."
"No, no, no, I give up the shutters," exclaimed Truyn laughing, "let
them go. And now I have something to tell you that you will not
relish--no need to change colour, the matter is an inconvenience, not a
trial. While I have been away--for the last ten years in fact--the park
has been open to the public. The little town has no other public
garden. I have, indeed, in view of this, placed an extensive tract of
land at the disposal of the town Council, but it is not yet laid out,
and until it is, I should not like entirely to deprive the public of
the freedom of the Park. Therefore I should like to have you point out
as soon as possible what part you would prefer to have reserved
entirely for yourself, that it may be portioned off. Indeed I cannot
help it, Zini."
"You will be as condescending at last as a crowned head," Zinka said
laughing. "You have already relinquished a corner of the park, because
the new road, laid out for the convenience of the public, must run
directly beneath your windows--and ..."
"I know--I know," Truyn interrupted her impatiently, "but one owes
something to the people. Of course you think 'my husband is a perfect
simpleton, he'll put up with anything'--but ...."
"Have you really no better idea of what I think of my husband, than
that?" Zinka asked in a low tone, looking at him with tender raillery
in her eyes.
"Oh you sweet-natured little woman!" he said, attempting to chuck her
under the chin.
"What are you about?" she exclaimed, thrusting his hand away, "this
wall here on the street is so low, that every little ragamuffin can see
us. And let me tell you that this wall has seemed more odious than
anything else to-day. Between ourselves--move your chair a little
nearer, Erich--I have been all this while tormented by a desire to
throw myself into your arms--you dear, good, whimsical fellow--but the
wall!"
"Confound the wall!" Truyn exclaimed, angrily clinching his fist.
"Tell me," Zinka asked caressingly, "is the lowness of the wall also a
question of humanity? Do you find it impossible to deny the townsfolk
the satisfaction of conveniently observing the castle-folk?"
"Pshaw! I was vexed about the height of the wall ten years ago--that is
when the road was laid out, but--well, I cannot myself say why it
is--but unless we have a rage for building, nothing is done. We
complain for ten years about the same evil, and ..."
"And to part with an evil about which one has complained for ten long
years," interrupted Zinka laughing, "would be almost as distressing as
to clear away the basin of a fountain, in which one had been nearly
drowned, thirty years before, eh, Erich?"
The broad July sunshine lay upon the red and yellow splendour of the
Truyn escutcheon, shimmered brilliantly about the foremost of the
mighty trees, whose dark foliage contrasted with the emerald of the
lawn where they stood, beyond the open, flower-decked portion of the
park, and penetrated boldly into their thick shades, limning fanciful
arabesques of light upon the darker green.
From the garden-room floated Gabrielle's sweet, childlike voice, "_Io
so una giardiniera_," she sang. Oswald had finished his upholstering,
and was bending over the piano. He combined a sincere enjoyment of
music with a deplorable preference for sentimental popular ballads.
The creaking of wheels intruded upon the dreamy monotony of the hour.
Truyn leaned forward and started to his feet. "Ah, old Swoboda, the
doctor who attended Ella with the measles," he exclaimed joyfully,
recognising Dr. Swoboda, in his comical little vehicle drawn by a white
horse spotted with brown. "Is he still alive? I must call him in.
Holla! Doctor, how are you?"
The doctor started, looked round, and took off his hat with a smile of
delight, "your servant, Count Truyn."
"Come in and have a chat," said Truyn, "it was hardly fair not to have
been to see us before."
"But, my dear Count, how could I suppose ..."
A few minutes later, the old doctor was seated opposite to Truyn,
underneath the marquee, imparting to the Count exact information as to
the weal and woe of a multitude of people belonging to the town, and to
the country round, whom the proprietor of Rautschin remembered with
wonderful distinctness.
Some had died, one or two were insane--a couple were bankrupt.
"Infernal swindling speculations! is my dear old Rautschin beginning to
be carried away by them?" said Truyn, "certain epidemics cannot be
arrested. Sad--very sad! And now the _phylloxera_ has taken up its
abode in Schneeburg."
"Is there much illness about here?" Zinka asked the doctor, in hopes
perhaps of staving off a conservative outburst from her husband.
"None of any consequence. My business is at a low ebb, your
Excellency."
"Where have you just been, doctor?" Truyn asked.
"I have just come from Schneeburg."
"Ah? anything seriously amiss in the Capriani household?--I could not
shed a tear for King Midas."
"The Herr Count cannot suppose that those magnificoes would call in a
poor country doctor, like myself."
"My dear Swoboda, we all have the greatest confidence in you!" Truyn
said kindly.
"I thank you heartily, Herr Count, but this confidence is an old
custom, and the Caprianis consider old customs as mere prejudices, and
propose to do away with them. I have just come from our poor Count
Fritz."
"Indeed? are the children ill?"
"No, not ill, but ailing; there is something or other the matter with
them all the time--they are city children;--however, I am not really
anxious about them, they'll come all right. But I am sick at heart for
poor Count Fritz, he is far from well."
"Ah, indeed? what is the matter with him?" Truyn asked in a tone of
evident irritation.
"His unfortunate circumstances are killing him," the doctor replied
gloomily.
"Ah--hm,--I must confess to you--er--my dear doctor,
that--er--I take it very ill of Fritz, that he, er--accepted
a position,--er--with--that,--er--adventurer."
The old doctor looked the irritated gentleman full in the eyes. "When
one is homesick and sees his children, who cannot bear the city air,
hungering for bread, one will do many things, which could not be
contemplated for an instant, under even slightly improved
circumstances."
"Ossi always told you ...." began Zinka.
"Oh pshaw! Ossi is an enthusiast, whose heart is always drowning out
his head."
The old doctor sighed. "Well, I will intrude no longer," he said. He
had often enough seen his noble patients yawn, as the door was closing
upon him after a prolonged visit.
"Not at all,--not at all--wait a moment; I must call the children;
Gabrielle! Ossi!"
The young people appeared from the garden-room.
"Ah--it is the friend who saved my life," Gabrielle exclaimed,
cordially extending her hand.
Oswald too greeted him kindly, but suddenly he, as well as the old
physician became slightly embarrassed--each remembered the unpleasant
scene in the inn.--The conversation did not flow very freely.
"Now, I really must go," the doctor insisted in some confusion.
"Come soon again," said Truyn, shaking hands with him, "give my
remembrance to Fritz, and--er--tell him to come and see me soon." He
walked towards the court-yard with the old man, and when he returned he
observed that Oswald, as he was silently rolling up a cigarette, was
frowning furiously, evidently angry.
"Where does the shoe pinch, Ossi?" he asked.
"I cannot understand, uncle, how you can be so hard upon Fritz!"
exclaimed Oswald throwing away his cigarette. "You are wont to be the
softest-hearted of men, but to that poor devil ...."
"Don't excite yourself so terribly," Truyn said kindly, but in some
surprise at the young man's violence. How could he divine the
disturbance of mind that was at the root of his indignation? "You are
so irritable ...."
"I am perfectly calm," Oswald boldly asserted, "only .... how could you
send messages to Fritz by the doctor, and ask him to come to you? Have
you no idea of his miserably sore state of mind?--and physically too he
is so wretched that he cannot last six months longer; I have begged you
to go and see him."
"Papa! If Ossi begs you!" Gabrielle whispered, looking up at her father
with the large pleading eyes of a child.
"Ah, you can't understand how any one can possibly refuse Ossi
anything," Truyn said, smiling in the midst of his annoyance.
She blushed and cast down her eyes.
"What can you find to like in this fellow, Ella?" her father rallied
her. "A man ready to take fire, and clinch his fist upon the smallest
provocation. What would you say if I should put my veto upon this
foolish betrothal with a young savage who is only half-responsible?"
Gabrielle's blush grew deeper, she looked alternately at her father and
at her lover, and finally deciding in favour of the latter gently laid
her hand upon his arm.
"You see, uncle!.... completely routed," exclaimed Oswald, his anger
entirely dispelled by this little intermezzo. His voice rang with
exultant happiness as he added, "nothing can part us now, Ella--not
even a father's veto!"
And Ella clung silently to his arm and looked blissfully content.
"Poor little comrade!" said Truyn tenderly. Mingled with his emotion
there was something of the pity which men of ripe years and experience
always feel at the sight of the perfect happiness of young lovers.
"Poor little comrade!--well, to win back some share of your favour I
will e'en put a good face upon it and comply with the wishes of your
tyrant."
CHAPTER II.
"How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!" thought
Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood
between the park at Schneeburg and the vegetable garden, and had been
appropriated to the son of the late owner of the soil. A slatternly
woman with a loose linen wrapper hanging about her stout figure had
come towards him, and after an affirmative reply to his inquiry if the
Count were at home, screamed shrilly: "Malzin! Some one to see you!"
and vanished in the interior of the house.
An unpleasant suspicion assailed Truyn. "Can that be...." The next
moment all else was forgotten in distress at the changed appearance of
a fair, pale young man who rushed up to him exclaiming: "Erich!--you
here!"
"Fritz, Fritz!" said Truyn in a broken voice, fairly clasping his
unfortunate cousin in his arms.
Of all mortals he who has voluntarily resigned the position in which he
was born is the most embarrassing to deal with. He has by degrees
broken with his fellows, and, almost like an outcast, seems scarcely to
know how to comport himself when accident throws him among his former
associates; when he meets one of 'his people' he usually alternates
between intrusive familiarity and embittered reserve.
There was nothing of all this, however, about Fritz. He was so simple
and cordial, that Truyn felt ashamed of having avoided a meeting.
Fair, with delicate, slightly pinched features, and large melancholy
gray eyes, exquisitely neat and exact in his apparel, he looked from
head to foot like a cavalry officer in citizen's dress, and in poor
circumstances, that is like a man who knew how to invest with a certain
distinction even the shabbiness to which fate condemned him.
"You cannot imagine what pleasure your visit gives me! When I see one
of you it really seems almost as if one of my dear ones had descended
from heaven to press my hand," he said with emotion and Truyn replied:
"I should have come before, but I expected certainly that
you .... that ...."
"That I ...." Fritz smiled significantly, "no, Erich, you could
hardly ...."
"Well, well, and how are you? How are you?" said Truyn quickly.
"I still live," Fritz replied, and looked away.
Just then a voice was heard outside inquiring for "Count Malzin."
"I am not at home, Lotti, do you hear, not at home to any body," Malzin
called into the next room. "Come, Erich!" and he conducted his guest
out of what answered as a drawing-room into a very shabbily-furnished
apartment which he called his 'den,' and where Truyn at once felt quite
at home.
"That was young Capriani," Fritz explained hurriedly, "he probably came
to talk with me about the burial vault. Perhaps you know that my late
father had the vault reserved for us in the contract for the sale of
Schneeburg. Capriani, whom usually nothing escapes, oddly enough
overlooked the fact that the vault is in the park, and now he wants me
to sell it to him. Let him try it--the vault he shall not have--it is
the last spot of home that is left to me. I choose at least to lie in
the grave with my people! But let us talk of something pleasanter. You
are all well, are you not?--but there is no need to ask, I can see it
by looking at you. And I know all about your domestic affairs from
Ossi."
"He comes to see you often?"
"Yes," said Fritz, "and every time with a fresh scheme for my complete
relief from all difficulties, which he always unfolds with the same
fervid enthusiasm. The schemes are impracticable, but never mind!
Existence always seems more tolerable to me while I am talking with
him, and when he has gone, it is as if a soft spring shower had just
passed over, purifying and freshening the air. There really is
something very remarkable about the fellow. With all his fiery energy,
he is so unutterably tender; ordinarily when a man situated as I am
comes in contact with such a favorite of fortune, he inevitably feels
annoyed--it is like a glare of light for weak eyes. But there is
nothing of the kind with him--he warms without dazzling,--he
understands how to stoop to misery, without condescending to it."
"Yes, yes, he has his good qualities," Truyn grumbled, "very good
qualities. But he has stolen from me my little comrade's heart, and I
cannot say I am greatly pleased."
"You do not expect me to pity you on the score of your future
son-in-law?" said Fritz, laughing.
"Not exactly--if I must have one, then ...."
"Then thank God that just these young people have come together," Fritz
said in that tone of admonition, which even young men, when forsaken of
fortune, sometimes adopt towards their happier seniors. "Do you know
what he has done for me--among other things--just a trifle?"
"How should I? He certainly would never tell me."
"Of course not! We had not seen each other for years, but he came to
see me as soon as he knew that I was at Schneeburg, and asked me if he
could do anything for me. I thought it kind, but did not take his words
seriously and so thanked him and assured him he could do nothing. He
came again, bringing presents for the children with kind messages from
his mother, and asked me to dinner. When we retired to the smoking-room
after that dinner he said to me with the embarrassed manner of a
generous man, about to confer a benefit: 'Fritz, tell me frankly; does
no old debt annoy you?' Of course, at first I did not want to confess,
but at last I admitted that a couple of unliquidated accounts did
trouble me. An unstained name is a luxury that is the hardest of all to
forego. He arranged everything, and now I am perfectly free from debt.
He has such a charming way of giving, as if it were the merest pastime.
I once asked him how a man as happy as he, found so much time to think
for others? He answered that happiness was like a rose-bush, the more
blossoms one gives away, the more it flourishes!"
"Yes, yes, he certainly is a fine fellow.--We quarrel sometimes, but he
is a very fine fellow!" said Truyn, "he suits the child--you must know
her. And what about your children? Ossi says they are very pretty--you
have three, have you not?"
"No, only two," Fritz replied, and his voice trembled as he took a
little photograph from the wall--"only two; my eldest died. Look at
him--" handing the picture to Truyn, "he was a pretty child, was he
not?--my poor little Siegi--but too lovely, too good for the life that
had fallen to his lot. He is better dead--better!" he uttered in the
hard tone in which the reason asserts what the heart denies.
From the park the vague, dreamy fragrance of the fading white rocket
was wafted into the room. The light flickered dimly through the leafy
screen of the apricot tree before the open window that looked out upon
the vegetable garden. On Fritz's writing-table the old Empire clock,
wheezing in its struggle for breath, struck five times. Truyn knew the
old timepiece well, but formerly it used to swing its pendulum as
merrily on into eternity as if it expected a fresh delight every hour.
It seemed as if by this time it had almost lost its voice from grief,
so asthmatic was the sob with which it counted the seconds. And not
only with the clock, with everything around him Truyn was familiar. The
entire shabby apartment betrayed a fanatical worship of the past. The
chairs were the same monstrosities with lyre-shaped backs and crooked
legs, which had been wont to endure the angry kicks of the little
Malzins, when their tutor kept them too long at their lessons. Even the
pattern of the wall-paper, with its apocryphal birds and butterflies
among impossible wreaths of flowers, was the same which a travelling
house-painter had pasted up there thirty years before.
But what most struck Truyn, was the decoration on one of the low doors
in the thick wall--it was marked all over with lines in pencil and
scribbled names. Upon that door the young Malzins used to record their
growth from year to year.
"Pipsi, 14," he read, "and something over," "Erich,"--he smiled
involuntarily, and read on,--"Oscar 12," and then far below in
uncertain characters looking as if an elder sister had guided the hand
of a very little child, "Fritzl."
And through Truyn's memory there sounded the crumpling of copy-book
leaves--of childrens' voices, of Cramer's Exercises, and of sleepily
recited Latin verbs. Yes, even the peculiar fragrance of lavender and
fresh linen, formerly exhaled from the light chintz gown of his pretty
cousin, came wafting to him over the past.
"This is your old school-room!" he exclaimed.
"Of course it is," said Fritz, "can you guess whom I have to thank for
keeping it intact?"
"The avarice of your principal?"
"No, the delicacy of his wife. Before I moved in here she said to me,
'my husband wished to have the house put in order for you, Herr Count,
but I thought that perhaps you liked old associations, and I therefore
beg you to make only what changes you think best.'"
"A good woman!" Truyn murmured.
Just then an extraordinary figure entered the room,--the same female
that Truyn had encountered in the hall, but splendidly transformed,
tightly laced, with cheeks covered thick with pink powder--Fritz
Malzin's wife!
"Very good of you," she began after Fritz had presented Truyn to her.
Her voice had the forced sweetness of stage training. "Very good to
honour our humble dwelling with a visit. May I take the liberty of
offering you a cup of coffee, that is, Herr Count," as Truyn evidently
hesitated, "if you can put up with our simple fare; in the country, you
know, when one is not prepared ...."
Fritz pulled his moustache nervously.
Although he had reached the age of gastronomic fastidiousness, and
especially abhorred spoiling the appetite between meals, Truyn
good-naturedly accepted this pretentiously humble invitation.
CHAPTER III.
The dining-room, a long narrow apartment with three windows, smelled of
fresh varnish and fly-poison; the walls were decorated with dusty
laurel wreaths wound about with ribbons covered with gilt inscriptions,
and with several photographs of the hostess in tights. The long table
was loaded with viands. Malzin's children, a girl and a boy,
respectively five and three years old, shared the meal. They were pale,
and sickly, but extremely pretty with a wonderfully sympathetic
expression about the mouth and eyes, reminding one of their father. It
was easy to see from the shy gentleness of their demeanour that Fritz
had taken great pains with their training. He exchanged little tender
jests with his small daughter, but he evidently made a special pet of
the boy who sat beside him in a high chair, and to whose wants he
himself ministered.
There was nothing about Fritz of the amusing awkwardness of
aristocratic fathers, who now and then in an amiable dilettante fashion
interest themselves in the care of their offspring. On the contrary it
was easy to see from the way in which he set the child straight at the
table, tied on the bib, and put the mug of milk into the little hand,
that the care of the child was a real occupation of his life.
Truyn sat beside his hostess murmuring threadbare compliments, touching
his lips to his coffee-cup, and crumbling a piece of biscuit on his
plate.
"You do our fare but little honour," the actress said more than once,
"try a piece of this cake, Herr Count. Count Capriani who has a French
cook, and is accustomed to the very best, always commends it."
Fritz blushed. "Try this cherry cake," he said hastily. "Lotti
makes it herself. She used always to feast me upon it when we were
betrothed--eh, Lotti?"
This cheery reference to her housewifely skill, offended the actress,
and before Truyn could make some courteous rejoinder she exclaimed,
flushed with anger, "You know, Herr Count, that where the means are so
limited the mistress of the house must lend a hand."
Truyn stammered something and Fritz smiled patiently as he stroked his
little son's fair curls.
It was a painfully uncomfortable hour.
Truyn looked from the photographs to the glass fly-traps beneath which
innumerable flies were lying on their backs, convulsively twitching out
their lives, and his glance finally rested upon his hostess. She was
strongly perfumed with musk, and was painted around the eyes. Her stout
arms were squeezed into sleeves far too tight, and her bust almost met
her chin. After this keen scrutiny, however, Truyn discovered that she
was certainly handsome, that her face although disfigured by too full
lips, was strikingly like that of the capitoline Venus.
The intrusive humility of her manner, seasoned as it was with vulgar
raillery, was insufferable.
"For this woman!" he repeated to himself again and again. "For this
woman!" His eye fell upon a photograph portraying the Countess as '_la
belle Helene_,' in a costume that displayed her magnificent physique to
great advantage, and he suddenly remembered that he had seen her in
that role; that her acting was bad; but that she produced a dazzling
impression on the stage.
"Did you recognize that picture, Herr Count?" she asked suddenly.
"Instantly," he assured her.
"Did you ever see me play?"
"I once had that pleasure."
"Ah!" A remarkable transformation was immediately manifest, her languid
air grew animated, thirst for the triumphs of the past glittered in her
eyes. She moved her chair a little closer to Truyn and coquettishly
leaning her head upon her hand whispered, "Were you one of my adorers?"
Fritz frowned and glanced angrily towards her, twisting his napkin
nervously.
His attention was suddenly distracted however, by the noise of the
blows of an axe resounding slowly and monotonously through the heavy
summer air. Fritz changed colour, sprang up and hurried to the window.
"What is the matter?" the actress asked him negligently.
"They are cutting down the old beech," he said slowly, turning not to
her, but to Truyn.--"The Friedrichs-beech; planted by one of our
ancestors, Joachim Malzin, with his own hands after the liberation of
Vienna; we children all cut our names upon it. Don't you remember how
Madame Lenoir scolded us for it, and declared that it was not _comme il
faut_, but a pastime befitting prentice boys only? Good Heavens--how
long ago that is!--and now they are cutting it down. Capriani insists
that it interferes with his view."
CHAPTER IV.
"If one could only help him!--but there is nothing to be
done--absolutely nothing!"
Thus Truyn reflected, as distressed and compassionate, he rode home on
his sleek cob, followed by his trim English groom.
There are many varieties of compassion not at all painful, which, when
well-seasoned with a charming consciousness of virtue, may serve
sensitive souls as a tolerable amusement. There is, for example, an
artistically contemplative compassion that, with hands thrust
comfortably in pockets, looks on at some melancholy affair as at the
fifth act of a tragedy, without experiencing the faintest call to
recognize its existence except by heaving sundry sentimental sighs.
Then there is a self-contemplative compassion which, quite as inactive
as the artistically contemplative, culminates in the satisfactory
consciousness of the comparative comfort of one's own condition; then a
decorative compassion, which is displayed merely as a mental adornment
upon solemn occasions when the man marches forth clad in full-dress
moral uniform.
But there is one compassion which is among the most painful sensations
that can assail a delicate-minded human being--a compassion, always
united to the most earnest desire to aid, to console, and yet which
knows itself powerless in presence of the suffering; that longs for
nothing in the world more ardently than to aid that which it cannot
aid! And this it was that oppressed Truyn, as he rode home from
Schneeburg,--this vain compassion lying like a cold, hard stone upon
his warm, kind heart!
"If one could only help him, could but make life at least tolerable for
him,--poor Fritz, poor fellow!" he muttered again and again.
The tall poplars, standing like a long row of gigantic exclamation
points on the side of the road, cast strips of dark shade upon the
light, dusty soil. The crickets were chirping in the hedges; in the
wheat-fields to the right and left the ears nodded gently and gravely;
red poppies and blue cornflowers--useless, picturesque gipsy-folk,
amidst the ripening harvest--laughed at their feet. The clover-fields
had passed their prime,--they were brown and a faint odour of faded
flowers floated aloft from them. The transparent veil of early twilight
obscured the light and dimmed the shadows.
How thoroughly Truyn knew the road! The inmates of Schneeburg and
Rautschin had formerly been good neighbours.
A throng of laughing, beckoning phantoms glided through his mind. Out
of the blue mist of the morning of his life, now so far behind him,
there emerged a slender, girlish figure with long, black braids, and a
downy, peach-like face--dark-eyed Pipsi, for whom Erich, then an
enthusiast of sixteen, copied poems--and a second phantom came with
her, merry-hearted Tilda, who with the pert insolence of her thirteen
years used to laugh so mercilessly at the sentimental pair of lovers;
and Hugo, a rather awkward boy, always at odds with his tutor and his
Greek grammar.
Where were they all? Hugo went into the army, and was killed in a duel;
dark-eyed Pepsi married in Hungary, and died at the birth of her first
child; Tilda married a Spanish diplomatist--Truyn had heard nothing of
her for years;--not one of the Malzins was left in their native
land, save Fritz, who at the time of Truyn's lyric enthusiasm was a
curly-headed, babbling baby, before whose dimples the entire family
were on their knees, and who of his bounty dispensed kisses among them.
Truyn's thoughts wandered on--he recalled Fritz as an dashing officer
of Hussars. He was one of the handsomest men in the army, fair, with a
sunny smile and the proverbial Malzin conscientiousness in his earnest
eyes, very fastidious in his pleasures, almost dandified in his dress;
spoiled by women of fashion.
"Who would have thought it!" Truyn repeated to himself, as he gazed
reflectively between his horse's ears. Suddenly he became aware of a
cloud of dust,--and of a delightful sensation warming his heart. He
perceived Zinka and Gabrielle sitting in a low pony-wagon, and behind
them in the footman's seat was Oswald. Zinka was driving, being the
butt of much laughing criticism from the other two. How pleased Truyn
was with the picture, and how often was he destined to recall it, the
fair, lovely heads of the two women, the dark, handsome young fellow,
who understood so well how to combine a merry familiarity with the most
delicate courtesy! How happy they all looked!
"You are late, papa!" Gabrielle called out.
"Have I offended you again, comrade?"
"But papa--!"
"I was beginning to be a little anxious," said Zinka, "Ossi laughed at
me, and said I was like his mother, who if he is half an hour late in
returning home from a ride always imagines that he has been thrown and
killed on the road, and that the only reason the groom does not make
his appearance, is because he has not the courage to tell the sad
tidings."
Oswald laughed. "Yes, my mother's fancy runs riot in such images,
sometimes," he admitted, stretching out his hand for the reins, that he
might help Zinka to turn round. "And how is poor Fritz?"
"Wretched--such misery is enough to break one's heart--and no getting
rid of it."
"And you are no longer angry with him?" Oswald asked with a touch of
good-humoured triumph.
"Heaven forbid! but--," Truyn rubbed his forehead--"Oh, that
stock-jobber--that phylloxera!"
Just then there appeared in the road an aged man, spare of habit and
somewhat bent, but walking briskly; his features were sharp but not
unpleasant, his arms were long, and his old-fashioned coat fluttered
about his legs.
"Good-day, Herr Stern," Oswald called out to him in response to his
bow.
Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck.
"Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle
asked.
"Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people
should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the
lower classes who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours."
"Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald
remarked.
"To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very
distinguished man."
"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if
any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to
me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them
into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas
Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these
families, Nathan and Shylock."
"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really
talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head
slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with
rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you,
comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic
about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your
Laudamus together."
CHAPTER V.
"There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such
weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife.
The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian
custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg
at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the
second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier
hour very inconvenient.
"Of whom are you talking?" Madame Capriani asked in her depressed
tone; she was sitting erect upon a small gilt chair, she wore a gray,
silk-muslin gown, rather over-trimmed, _gants de Suede_, and an air of
constraint.
"Of whom are you talking?" she asked a second time, smoothing her
gloves.
"Of whom?--of that blockhead, Malzin," growled Capriani.
"I told you from the first that he would never be able to fill that
position," his wife rejoined.
"Fill--!" Capriani shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "fill--! it
takes him two hours to write a business-letter. But I was prepared
for that. His office is a sinecure; the salary that I pay him is an
alms,--but Alfred Capriani can do as he pleases there,--and at least
the fellow understands something about horses. What outrages me is to
see how he squanders my money, the money that I give him. He ransacks
the country round to buy back from the peasants relics of his parents.
First an old clock, that struck twelve just as he was born, then an old
piano, upon which his sisters used to strum the scales. 'Tis enough to
drive one mad!"
Frau von Capriani looked distressed. "That is a matter of sentiment,"
she suggested.
"A matter of sentiment--a matter of sentiment," Capriani repeated
sarcastically. "It would be a matter of sentiment and conscience to
think of saving up something for his children."
"You are right, you are right," the Countess rejoined, in her emphatic
yet not unmelodious Russian-German, "but this time you are in some
measure to blame for his folly. I begged you a hundred times to ask him
what he would like to keep for himself of the furniture which was
entirely useless to us. Instead, you had it all put up at auction."
"And the proceeds of the sale are to be devoted to the building of a
new school, to be entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence,"
said Capriani, "the old rubbish shall aid, willy-nilly, in the spread
of modern liberal ideas. It is my aim to root out prejudices not to
foster them. Would you have me minister directly to Malzin's folly? It
would be nonsense. It makes me shudder to see this man, who owns
nothing, positively nothing, except what I give him out of sheer
kindness, and who ought to look ahead, keeping his eyes fixed upon the
past, and sentimentally collecting empty bon-bon boxes, the contents of
which his forefathers have devoured to the last crumb. He is the
personification of the invincible narrowness of his class."
"He is a good honest man," the Contessa said gently.
"Honest,--honest!" Capriani repeated impatiently, "a man whose desires
have been anticipated from his childhood, upon whose plate the
pheasants have always fallen ready trussed and roasted, would naturally
not contemplate picking pockets. To be sure, he might be tempted to try
it, but he can't do it--he is too unpractical to be dishonest. There is
nothing praiseworthy in that, for all the honesty that you ascribe to
him he is a thorough selfish egotist; without the smallest scruple he
robs his own children of thousands."
"Malzin!" Frau von Capriani exclaimed, "why he would let his ears be
cut off for his children, and if he refused to lose his hands too, it
would only be because he needed them to work for his family."
"To work!" rejoined Capriani ironically. "If he would only sacrifice
for their sakes his miserable pride of rank he could do far more for
them than by his work! He--and work! Do you know what reply he made to
my splendid offer for his family vault? 'The vault is not for sale, it
is the only spot of home that is left me. I will at least lie among my
people when I am dead!' Can you conceive of greater insolence?"
"Insolence--poor Malzin--he is as modest....!"
"Modest!" sneered Capriani, interrupting her, "he is fairly bristling
with arrogance. A starving pauper, living on my bounty, and all the
while thinking himself superior to all of us. Intercourse with us is
not at all to his taste."
"He is always exquisitely courteous to me. I like him very much," Frau
von Capriani declared. Her husband's constant attacks upon Malzin were
beyond measure painful to her.
"Men of his stamp are always gracious to ladies," snarled Capriani.
Meanwhile his two children had entered the room, Arthur and Ad'lin,
both in faultless toilettes, and both out of humour. The self-same
weariness weighs upon both, the weariness of idlers who do not know how
to squander time gracefully. Perhaps Georges Lodrin is not far wrong
when he maintains that to idle away life gracefully is an art most
difficult to acquire, and rarely learned in a single generation.
Both asked fretfully whether the post had come, and then each sank into
an arm-chair and fumed. One by one the various guests then staying in
the castle appeared. Paul Angelico Orchis, a conceited little
versifier, (lauded in the Blanktown Gazette as 'the first lyric poet of
modern times') and the possessor of a dyspepsia acquired at the expense
of others. A farce by him had been produced in Blanktown, and for ten
years he had been promising the public a tragedy. Meanwhile his latest
effort was the invention of a picturesque waterproof cloak. Frank, the
famous tailor carried out his idea in dark brown tweed, in which the
poet draped himself upon every conceivable occasion. After him followed
two men of the kind which Georges Lodrin describes as 'gentlemen at
reduced prices,' stunted specimens of the aristocracy, who played a
very insignificant part in their own circles, and from time to time
fled to their inferiors in rank to enjoy a little admiration. One,
Baron Kilary, is a sportsman, insolent in bearing, lewd in talk; the
other, Count Fermor, is a dilettante composer and pianist, affected and
sentimental.
Malzin and his wife also entered; while he bowed silently, and then
respectfully kissed the hand of the hostess, Charlotte congratulated
the two ladies upon the splendour of their attire, and lavished
exaggerated admiration upon a couple of costly pieces of furniture
which she had often seen before.
Last of all appeared our old acquaintance, the Baroness Melkweyser, who
had been at Schneeburg for a week. What was she doing there? The
Caprianis looked to her for their admission into Austrian society,
she looked to King Midas for the augmentation of her diminished
income,--and something too might be gained from country air and regular
meals for her worn and weary digestion.
CHAPTER VI.
It is really melancholy for people who have been accustomed in Paris to
entertain crowned heads, to be obliged in Austria to put up with a few
sickly sprigs of nobility.
The Menu was very elaborate; the clumsy table service came from
_Froment-Munice_ and the china was Sevres of the latest pattern, white,
with a coronet and cipher in gilt; the butler looked like a cabinet
minister, and the silk stockings of the flunkies were faultless.
Nevertheless the entire dinner produced a sham, masquerading effect,
reminding one more or less of a stage banquet when all the viands are
of papier-mache.
The hostess, with Baron Kilary on her right, and Fritz Malzin on her
left, devoted herself almost exclusively to the latter, asking him
kindly questions about his children.
The host, seated between the Baroness Melkweyser, and the Countess
Malzin, contented himself with seeing that the actress's plate was kept
well supplied, and with exchanging jests with her which were merely
silly during soup, but which grew more objectionable at dessert.
The Baroness Melkweyser studied the Menu, Paul Angelico Orchis
complained of his dyspepsia and asked advice of his neighbour, Ad'lin
Capriani, as to his diet. Moreover he testified his gratitude for
Capriani's hospitality by praising everything enthusiastically. He
remarked that he had visited Schneeburg formerly, but that he should
hardly have recognised the castle again, absolutely hardly have
recognised it, it was so wonderfully improved, he could not see how
Count Capriani could have effected so much in so short a time.
Whereupon the master of the mansion replied with aristocratic
nonchalance: "The place had to be made habitable, but there's not much
that can be done with it, it is nothing but an old barracks, an
inconvenient old barracks." He then held forth at length upon the
improvements which he still contemplated, concluding with, "But I have
no room--the Schneeburg domain is so contracted, so insignificant!
Unfortunately all the estates which would serve my purpose are owned by
people unwilling to sell."
Madame Capriani tried several times unsuccessfully to check her
husband, and Fritz looked gloomily down into his empty plate.
He had always been so proud of his Schneeburg, and that it should not
be good enough for this swindler, forsooth!----
Fermor looked discontented, and talked to Adeline about his
compositions, betraying at every word the sentimental arrogance of a
narrow-minded, lackadaisical, provincial aristocrat, greedy for
adulation, and salving his conscience for his new associations, by
making himself as disagreeable as possible to the people whose bread he
eats.
Malzin, albeit in a subordinate position, manifested from habit the
instinctive reserve of a true gentleman, fearful of wounding the
susceptibilities of his inferiors. The conduct of his fellows was in
striking contrast to his own. Fermor ignored him. Kilary on the
contrary continually tried to draw him into familiar talk upon subjects
of which none of the others knew anything, a course evidently
irritating to the host.
Malzin was, moreover, the only one at table towards whom Kilary
conducted himself courteously. To the poet he was especially insolent.
At dessert he read aloud with sentimental emphasis a couple of
bonbon-mottoes, and then asked, "My dear Orchis, are these immortal
lines your own?" at which the poet vainly tried to smile. The rumour
ran that when his finances were at a low ebb he did sometimes place his
genius at the disposal of a Vienna confectioner.
After dinner the gentlemen retired to the smoking-room to smoke, the
ladies to the drawing-room to yawn.
"I cannot cease looking at you, this evening, Comtesse," Charlotte
Malzin exclaimed, seating herself on a sofa beside the daughter of the
house, "your gown is enchanting."
"Very much too picturesque for this part of the world, they can't
appreciate these contrasts of colour in this barbarous country," Ad'lin
said crossly, as she was wont to receive the actress's advances. "They
are far behind the age in Austria! _Dieu, qui l'Autriche m'ennuie!_"
The actress fell silent, in some confusion.
"What had the poet to say to you, Ad'lin?" asked the Baroness
Melkweyser, after she had inspected through her eye-glass each piece of
furniture in turn in the drawing-room.
"That he could not digest truffles, and that he means to dedicate his
next work to me."
"Ah! the first item is highly interesting, and the last uncommonly
flattering," the Melkweyser rejoined.
"Yes, it means that I must order at least fifty copies of the
interesting effusion," Ad'lin said fretfully, adding with a half smile,
"People in our position have to encourage literature--_noblesse
oblige_!"
The Baroness bit her lip and resumed her voyage of discovery, turning
to a cabinet filled with antique porcelain.
"You really cannot think," Ad'lin began, leaving her sofa to join her
friend, "how I have longed for you! You are the only link here in
Austria between ourselves and civilization. I depend upon your forming
an agreeable circle for us here."
It was noteworthy that since Zoe's return to her native land, Adeline's
familiarity had seemed far less acceptable to her than it had been in
Paris. "An agreeable circle!" she exclaimed, "that is easily said,
but you make it very hard for me. You do not want to know our
financiers ...."
"The Austrian financiers have no position; even the Rothschilds are not
received at Court."
"And the Austrian aristocracy is excessively exclusive on its own
soil--!" said Zoe.
"Ah that exclusiveness is a _fable convenue_," Ad'lin insisted, "I am
convinced that if Austrian society knew us ...."
Instead of replying, the Melkweyser directed her eye-glass towards the
porcelain on the shelves of the cabinet. "That is the Malzin old-Vienna
tea-service."
"Yes, but it cannot be used--it is not complete."
"I know it, Wjera Zinsenburg has the other half."
"If it would give the Countess the slightest pleasure to complete the
set, I should be perfectly ready to place this half at her disposal!"
Capriani's voice was heard to say.
The gentlemen had left their cigars and had come to the drawing-room
for their coffee. Fermor who was too nervous to allow himself the
indulgence of a cup of Mocha, sat down at the piano, and began to
prelude in an affected manner.
Leaning in a languishing attitude against the raised cover of the
piano, Ad'lin murmured, "No one but you invents such modulations. You
ought to indulge me with a grand composition, Count; have you never
completed one?"
"I am busy now with a work of some scope for a grand orchestra," Fermor
lisped, dabbing his limp, bloodless hands upon the keyboard like a
nervous kangaroo.
"Ah! A sonata?--An opera?"
"No, a requiem; that is a kind of requiem--more correctly a morning
impromptu, the last thoughts of a dying poacher."
"Oh how interesting! Pray let me hear it."
"It is a rather complicated piece of music, Fraeulein Capriani," Fermor
always ignores the Capriani patent of nobility--"if you are not
especially fond of our German classic masters ...."
"I adore Wagner and Beethoven."
"Then, indeed, I will .... but the harmony is very complicated!"
Whereupon he began, with closed eyes, after the fashion of pretentious
dilettanti, to deliver himself of a piece of music, the beginning of
which reminded one of a piano-tuner, and the intermediate portion of
the triumphal march of an operetta, and which, after it had lasted half
an hour, and the audience had given up all hope of relief, suddenly,
and without any apparent reason stopped short, a common termination
where there has been no reason for beginning.
"_C'est divin!_" Ad'lin exclaimed. "Your composition, Count, reminds me
of the intermezzo of the Fifth symphony."
"You are mistaken, Fraeulein Capriani, my composition recalls no other
music!" Fermor said, greatly irritated.
With his eyes glowing, his full red underlip trembling, and his manner
insolently obtrusive, Capriani threw himself down beside Charlotte
Malzin upon the sofa and stretched his arm along the back of it behind
her shoulders.
"Come and help me with my work, Count Malzin," Frau von Capriani called
kindly from her pile of cretonne. "You have so steady a hand."
And while Fritz took his place beside her, and began to cut a bird of
Paradise out of the stuff with great precision, Kilary took Arthur by
the buttonhole and said, "You ought to know all about it young man, how
must one begin who wants to grow rich?"
"You must ask my father," Arthur replied insolently. "All that I
understand of financial matters is, how to make debts."
A servant brought in the letters and papers upon a silver salver.
Whilst Arthur opened a dozen begging letters, and tossed them aside,
ironically remarking, "Three impoverished Countesses--two Barons--a
captain ..." and whilst Ad'lin hailed with enthusiasm two letters from
a couple of French duchesses whom she counted among her friends, the
Conte hurriedly ran his eye over an unpretending epistle which he had
instantly opened. His hands trembled, a strange greed shone in his
eyes, and quivered about his lips. Quite pale, as one is apt to be
in a moment of victory he paced the room to and fro once or twice
and then stepping directly up to Malzin he exclaimed, "What do you
think--coal--! Schneeburg is a coal-bed. Extraordinary! Your father
tried after madder, and I--have found coal!"
Malzin shuddered slightly, but merely said, "I congratulate you!"
"Malzin would never have forgiven himself if your bargain had turned
out a poor one," sneered Kilary.
There was something in his irony that irritated Capriani, a rebellion
of caste against the autocracy of money, which he chose to punish. As
he was powerless with Kilary he turned to Malzin and said in a tone of
insolent authority, "Malzin, get me the map of Bohemia that lies on my
writing-table." At a moment like this the thin varnish of refinement
which contact with the world had imparted was rubbed off entirely, he
showed himself in all his coarseness, and this not through any
recklessness, but intentionally, in the consciousness that he, Alfred
Capriani might do as he chose. At a moment like this he delighted in
treading beneath his feet all who did not prostrate themselves before
his millions.
Malzin had attained a height where such insults did not reach him. But
the blood mounted to the cheek of the mistress of the mansion. "Arthur,
go and get the map!" she said gently.
Fritz languidly prevented him. "You do not know where the thing is," he
said good-humouredly and left the room.
Capriani went on pacing the spacious apartment in long strides. "They
are all alike, these blockheads," he muttered, "when they take it into
their heads to work they are more stupid than ever. Old Malzin tried
everything; he ruined himself in artificial madder-red, in lager beer,
in sugar and in stocks,--and it never occurred to him that millions
were lying in the ground beneath his feet."
Malzin returned with the map and as every table was overcrowded with
bibelots and jardinieres, it was spread out upon the piano. Capriani
eagerly travelled over it with his pudgy forefinger. "The track of the
new railway must go here, between the iron works and Schneeburg."
"Then it must go a very long round," Arthur remarked, "can you obtain
the permit?"
Capriani stuck a thumb in an arm-hole of his waistcoat and smiled.
"Malzin, you know the estates around here; to whom does that belong?"
pointing to a spot upon the map.
"That belongs to Kamenz," said Malzin bending forward, and fitting his
eye-glass in his eye.
"And that?"
"To Lodrin."
"Then it comes to whether the interests of these gentlemen jump with
your own," Arthur observed. "If they should work against you, you never
can obtain the permit."
"Pshaw! I understand tolerably well how to deal with these gentlemen."
"Kamenz will give you no trouble, he is up to his neck in
embarrassments, and would be glad to dispose advantageously of a piece
of his land," drawled Kilary, looking at the map and giving his opinion
with lazy assurance.
"Lodrin's affairs cannot be in a very brilliant condition," Arthur
remarked; "ever since his majority he has been making no end of
improvements, and he is hard up financially."
"With such an enormous property as the Lodrin estate there can be none
save temporary embarrassments," Kilary said drily, "and in no case
would Lodrin allow himself to be influenced by personal considerations.
If you cannot demonstrate to him that the new railway will conduce to
the universal benefit of the whole country he never will agree to it,
and unless he does you can do nothing with the present ministry. A
comical fellow Lodrin--a perfect pedant in some ways."
"No," said Malzin, "not the least of a pedant, but a hot head with a
heart of gold, and when duty is concerned, he is just like his father."
"The old idiot," Capriani muttered below his breath, slowly as, with an
air that was almost tender he stroked his long whiskers, while an odd
smile played about his lips. "In fact you are right, Malzin,--a
charming fellow, Ossi--a superb creature; not one of your Austrian
nobility can hold a candle to him. But I--you'll see, Malzin,--I'll
twist Ossi Lodrin around my thumb."
Half an hour afterwards the guests separated. Frau von Capriani, more
depressed than usual, retired to her room.
The gentlemen went to the garden, and shot at a target; Conte Capriani,
who never could bring down a pheasant on the wing, proved more
successful than any of the others in hitting the bull's-eye.
When the Melkweyser, who had been indulging in a short nap, entered the
library half an hour afterwards to look for a 'sanitary novel' she
found Ad'lin deep in the study of a small thick volume.
Zoe looked over her shoulder; the book was the 'Gotha Almanach,' the
Bradshaw of the Austrian aristocracy.
"What are you looking for?" the Baroness asked.
"For the Fermors--I want to know who the Count's mother was. She is not
in this year's list. She was a Princess Brack, was she not?"
"No, his mother was a Fraeulein Schmitt, the daughter of a rich
tavern-keeper."
"Ah!"
CHAPTER VII.
The Malzins walked home through the park. Fritz looked perturbed. His
wife held her head high, and in no agreeable mood chewed at the stalk
of a rose which the Conte had cut for her.
"Lotti," Fritz began after a while, "I know that you act without
reflection; you were a little imprudent to-day; it would be of no
consequence with a man of breeding, but from a man like Capriani a lady
must not allow the least familiarity."
"You always find something to lecture me about," she replied sharply.
"I have long known that I am not good enough for you. But I must
confess that I have never observed that the ladies of your circle are
more reserved than those of mine."
"You know none of them," Fritz rejoined with incautious haste.
"You certainly have afforded me no opportunity of knowing them,"
Charlotte retorted, reddening with anger, "although you probably would
have done so, had you not been ashamed of me from the first. Count
Truyn has managed to give his wife a position,--but you--you would
rather have died than have stirred a finger for me."
This was not literally true, for Fritz had once knocked off the hat of
an acquaintance who had forgotten to remove it in Charlotte's presence;
on one occasion he had fought a duel on her account, and on another had
horsewhipped a slandering editor, but it was substantially true that he
had made not the smallest effort to introduce her to his world. He made
no reply now to her reproaches, hung his head, and pulled at his
moustache. She went on with angry volubility. "You were ashamed to walk
in the street with me, and when you took me to the theatre you always
hid yourself in the back of the box, and every day you had some fault
to find with my ways. I have watched your aristocratic ladies at the
races, at the theatre, and at artist's festivals--and their manners are
as free--and it must out--as ill-bred ...."
"The ill-breeding of a lady of rank," Fritz interrupted her impatiently
"extends usually only as far as the good-breeding of the man with whom
she chances to be."
"I don't know what you mean," the opera-bouffe singer replied.
"Our ladies know that the men whom they honour with their gay talk
recognise their little whims, and merry extravagances as tokens of
confidence which they would never dream of abusing. We never allow
ourselves to step beyond the line which the lady herself draws.
Familiarities like those which Capriani allowed himself toward you
to-day are impossible among people of refinement. Of course from him
nothing better can be expected; low fellow that he is!"
"And you are his hired servant," said Charlotte.
"Yes!" he replied, "I am his servant; it is my duty to select his
horses and to write his letters, but I am not obliged to dine with him;
that is not in the contract. And from this time I shall accept no more
of his invitations. I will not expose myself a second time to the
annoyance to which you and he subjected me to-day.
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