Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/othoumyaustria00schuiala
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
"O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!"
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
OF
OSSIP SCHUBIN
BY
MRS. A. L. WISTER
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1897.
* * * * *
Copyright, 1890, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
A Manuscript Misappropriated.
CHAPTER II.
The Contents of the Manuscript.
CHAPTER III.
An Arrival.
CHAPTER IV.
A Quarrel.
CHAPTER V.
Baroness Paula.
CHAPTER VI.
Entrapped.
CHAPTER VII.
An Invitation.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Secret.
CHAPTER IX.
An Encounter.
CHAPTER X.
A Garrison Town.
CHAPTER XI.
An Old Friend.
CHAPTER XII.
A Graveyard in Paris.
CHAPTER XIII.
At Dobrotschau.
CHAPTER XIV.
Olga.
CHAPTER XV.
Comrades and Friends.
CHAPTER XVI.
Lato Treurenberg.
CHAPTER XVII.
Mismated.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A Friend's Advice.
CHAPTER XIX.
Frau Rosa's Birthday.
CHAPTER XX.
Komaritz Again.
CHAPTER XXI.
"Poor Lato!"
CHAPTER XXII.
Harry's Musings.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Zdena to the Rescue.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A Sleepless Night.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Confession.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Baron's Aid.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Baron Franz.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A Short Visit.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Submission.
CHAPTER XXX.
Persecution.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Consolation.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Interrupted Harmony.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Early Sunrisee.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Struggles.
CHAPTER XXXV.
A Slanderer.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Failure.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A Visit.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
At Last.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Dinner.
CHAPTER XL.
A Farewell.
CHAPTER XLI.
Resolve.
CHAPTER XLII.
Found.
CHAPTER XLIII.
Count Hans.
CHAPTER XLIV.
Spring.
CHAPTER XLV.
Old Baron Franz.
"O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!"
CHAPTER I.
A MANUSCRIPT MISAPPROPRIATED.
"Krupitschka, is it going to rain?" Major von Leskjewitsch asked his
servant, who had formerly been his corporal. The major was leaning out
of a window of his pretty vine-wreathed country-seat, smoking a
chibouque; Krupitschka, in the garden below, protected by a white
apron, and provided with a dark-green champagne-bottle, was picking the
Spanish flies from off the hawthorn-bushes. At his master's question,
he looked up, gazed at a few clouds on the horizon, replied, "Don't
know--maybe, and then again maybe not," and deftly entrapped three
victims at once in the long neck of his bottle. A few days previous he
had made a very satisfactory bargain with the apothecary of the
neighbouring little town for Spanish flies.
"Ass! Have you just got back from the Delphic oracle?" the major
exclaimed, angrily, turning away from the window.
At the words "Delphic oracle," Krupitschka pricked up his ears. It
annoyed him to have his master and the other gentlemen make use of
words that he did not understand, and he determined to buy a foreign
dictionary with the proceeds of the sale of his cantharides. Meanwhile,
he noted down, in a dilapidated memorandum-book, "delphin wrackle,"
muttering the while, "What sort of team is that, I wonder?"
Unable to extort any prognosis of the weather from Krupitschka, the
major turned to the barometer; but that stood, as it had done
uninterruptedly for the past fortnight, at 'Changeable.'
"Blockhead!" growled the major, shaking the barometer a little to rouse
it from its lethargy; and then, seating himself at the grand piano, he
thundered away at a piece of music familiar to all the country round as
"The Major's Triumphal March." All the country round was likewise
familiar with the date of the origin of this effective work,--the
spring of 1866.
At that time the major had composed this march with the patriotic
intention of dedicating it to the victorious General Benedek, but the
melancholy events of the brief summer campaign left him no desire to do
so, and the march was never published; nevertheless, the major played
it himself now and then, to his own immense satisfaction and to the
horror of his really musical wife.
This wife, a Northern German by birth, fair and dignified in
appearance, sat rocking comfortably in an American chair, reading the
latest number of the _German Illustrated News_, while her husband
amused himself at the piano.
The major banged away at the keys in a fury of enthusiasm, until a
black poodle, which had crept under the piano in despair, howled
piteously.
"Ah, Paul," sighed Frau von Leskjewitsch, letting her paper drop in her
lap, "are you determined to make my piano atone for the loss of the
battle of Koeniggratz?"
"Why do you have a foreign piano, then?" was the patriotic reply; and
the major went on strumming.
"You make Mori wretched," his wife remarked; "that dog is really
musical."
"A nervous mongrel--a genuine lapdog," the major muttered,
contemptuously, without ceasing his performance.
"Your march is absolutely intolerable," Frau von Leskjewitsch said at
last.
"But if it were only by Richard Wagner--" the major remarked,
significantly: "of course you Wagnerites do not admit even the
existence of any composer except your idol."
With this he left the piano, and, with his thumbs stuck into the
armholes of his vest, began to pace the apartment to and fro.
There was quite space enough for him to do so, for the room was large
and its furniture scanty. Nowhere was he in any danger of stumbling
over a plush table loaded with bric-a-brac, or a dwarf arm-chair, or
any other of the ornaments of a modern drawing-room.
The stock of curios in the house--and it was by no means
inconsiderable, consisting of exquisite figures and groups of
Louisburg, Meissen, and old Viennese porcelain, of seventeenth-century
fans, and of thoroughly useless articles of ivory and silver--was all
arranged in two antique glass cabinets, standing in such extremely dark
corners that their contents could not be seen even at mid-day without a
candle.
Baroness Leskjewitsch hated everything, as she was wont to express
herself, that was useless, that gathered dust, and that was in the way.
In accordance with the severe style of the furniture, perfect order
reigned everywhere, except that in an arm-chair lay an object in
striking contrast to the rest of the apartment,--a brown work-basket
about as large as a common-sized portmanteau. It lay quite forlornly
upon one side, like a sailing-vessel capsized by the wind.
The major paused, looked at the basket with an odd smile, and then
could not resist the temptation to rummage in it a little.
His wife always maintained that he was something of a Paul Pry; and
perhaps she was right.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, dragging to light a piece of embroidery upon
Japanese canvas. "The first design for a cushion--the 17th is
my birthday. What little red book is this?--'Maximes de La
Rochefoucauld'--don't know him. And here--why, only look!" He pulled
out a package tied with blue ribbon. "A manuscript! It seems that Zdena
has leanings to authorship! H'm--h'm! When a girl like our Zdena takes
to such ways, it is usually a sign that she feels impelled to confide
in a roundabout way, to paper, something which nothing could induce her
to confess frankly to any living being. H'm! I really am curious to
know what goes on in that whimsical, childish brain.
"'My Memoirs!'" The major pulled aside the blue ribbon that held the
package together. "A motto! Two mottoes!--a perfect _luxe_ of mottoes!"
he murmured, and then read out aloud,--
'Whether you marry or not, you will always repent it.'
Plato.
Then comes,--
'Should you marry, then be sure
Life's sorest ills you must endure.'
Lermontow.
'L'amour, c'est le grand moteur de toutes les betises humaines.'
G. Sand.
I really should not have supposed that our Zdena had already pondered
the marriage problem so deeply," he said, gleefully; then,
contemplating with a smile the mass of wisdom scribbled in a bold,
dashing handwriting, he added, "there seems to be more going on in that
small brain than we had suspected. "What do you think, Rosel? may not
Zdena possibly have a weakness for Harry?"
"Nonsense!" replied the Baroness. She was evidently somewhat
annoyed,--first, because her husband had roused her from a pleasant
nap, or, rather, disturbed her in the perusal of an article upon
Grecian excavations, and secondly, because he had called her Rosel. Her
real name was Rosamunda, a name of which she was very proud; she really
could not, even after almost twenty years of married life, reconcile
herself to her husband's thus robbing it of all its poetry. "Nonsense!"
she exclaimed, with some temper. "I have a very different match in view
for her."
"I did not ask you what you had in view for Zdena," the major observed,
contemptuously. "I know that without asking. I only wish to know
whether during your stay in Vienna you did not notice that Zdena had
taken a liking to----"
"Oh, Zdena is far too sensible, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, also
too ambitious, to dream of marrying Harry. She knows that Harry would
ruin his prospects by a marriage with her," Frau von Leskjewitsch
continued. "There's no living upon love and air alone."
"Nevertheless there are always some people who insist upon trying it,
although the impossibility has long been demonstrated, both
theoretically and practically," growled the major.
"And, aside from all that, Harry is not at all the husband for your
niece," Frau Rosamunda went on, didactically. "She is wonderfully well
developed intellectually, for her age. And he--well, he is a very good
fellow, I have nothing to say against him, but----"
"'A very good fellow'! I should like to know where you could find me a
better," cried the major. "In the first place, he is as handsome as a
man can be----"
"As if beauty in a man were of any importance!" Frau von Leskjewitsch
remarked, loftily.
Paying no attention to this interruption, the major went on reckoning
up his favourite's advantages, in an angry crescendo. "He rides like a
centaur!" he declared, loudly, and the comparison pleased him so much
that he repeated it twice,--"yes, like a centaur; he passed his
military examinations as if they had been mere play, and he is
considered one of the most brilliant and talented officers in the
army. He is a little quick-tempered, but he has the best heart in the
world, and he has been in love with Zdena since he was a small boy;
while she----"
"Let me advise you to lower your voice a little," said Frau Rosamunda,
going to the window, which she partly closed.
"Stuff!" muttered her husband.
"As you please. If you like to make Zdena a subject for gossip, you are
quite free to do so, only I would counsel you in that case to consult
your crony Krupitschka. He has apparently not lost a single word of
your harangue. I saw him from the window just now, staring up here, his
mouth wide open, and the Spanish flies crawling out of his bottle and
up his sleeves."
With which words and a glance of dignified displeasure, Frau Rosamunda
left the room.
"H'm! perhaps I was wrong," thought the major: "women are keener in
such matters than we men. 'Tis desirable I should be mistaken, but--I'd
wager my gelding's forefoot,--no--" He shook his head, and contemplated
the manuscript tied up with blue ribbon. "Let's see," he murmured, as
he picked it up and carried it off to his smoking-room.