things, she gave me a detailed account of his family circumstances. His
mother was, she informed me, a "mediatisirte."[1] She uttered the word
reverently, and, when I confessed that I did not know what it meant,
she nearly fainted. His father was one of the most fascinating men in
Austria. He is still living, and is by no means, it seems, at the end
of his fascinations, but, being a widower, hovers about from one
amusing capital to another, breaking hearts for pastime. It seems to be
a wonderfully entertaining occupation, and, when one once indulges in
it, the habit cannot be got rid of,--like opium-eating.
While he thus paraded his brilliant fascinations in the gay world, he
did not, of course, find much time to interest himself in his boy, who
was left to the care of distant relatives, and who, when found to be
backward in his studies, was placed, I believe by Uncle Karl's advice,
under the care of a Prague professor by the name of Suwa, who kept, as
Harry once told me, a kind of orthopaedic institution for minds that
lacked training.
Beside Lato, during that vacation there were two other guests at
Komaritz, one a very distant cousin of Harry's, and the other a kind of
sub-tutor whose duty it was to coach Harry in his studies.
We could not endure the sub-tutor. His name was Franz Tuschalek; he was
about nineteen, with hands and feet like shovels, and a flat, unmeaning
face. His manner was intensely servile, and his coat-sleeves and
trousers were too short, which gave him a terribly indigent air. One
could not help regarding him with a mixture of impatience and sympathy.
By my radical uncle's express desire, he and Harry called each other by
their Christian names. Still, obnoxious as poor Tuschalek was to us, he
was more to our minds than the distant cousin.
This last was a Pole, about twenty years old, with a sallow face and
long oblique eyes, which he rolled in an extraordinary way. His hair
was black, and he curled it with the curling-tongs. He was redolent of
musk, and affected large plaid suits of clothes. His German was not
good, and his French was no better, but he assured us that he was a
proficient in Chinese and Arabic. He was always playing long and
difficult concertos on the table, but he never touched the piano at
Komaritz, declaring that the instrument was worn out. He was always
short of funds, and was perpetually boasting of the splendour of his
family.
He frequently sketched, upon some stray piece of paper, a magnificent
and romantic structure, which he would display to us as his Polish
home,--"our ancestral castle."
Sometimes this castle appeared with two turrets, sometimes with only
one, a fact to which Harry did not fail to call his attention.
His distinguished ancestry was a topic of never-failing interest
to him; he was never weary of explaining his connection with
various European reigning dynasties, and his visiting-cards bore
the high-sounding names "Le Comte Ladislas Othon Fainacky de
Chrast-Bambosch," although, as Harry confided to us, he had no right to
the title of comte, being the son of a needy Polish baron.
Although Franz Tuschalek was almost as obnoxious to Harry as the
"braggart Sarmatian," as Lato called the Pole, he never allowed his
antipathy to be seen, but treated him with great consideration, as he
did all inferiors, scarcely allowing himself to give vent to his
distaste for him even in his absence. But he paraded his dislike of
Fainacky, never speaking of him as a guest, but as an "invasion," and
always trying to annoy him by some boyish trick.
At length, one Sunday, the crisis in Harry's first vacation occurred.
We had all been to early mass, and the celebrant had accompanied us
back to Komaritz, as was his custom, to breakfast. After a hasty cup of
coffee he took his leave of us children, and betook himself to the
bailiff's quarters, where we more than suspected him of a quiet game of
cards with that official and his underlings.
The door of the dining-room leading out into the garden was wide open,
and delicious odours from the moist flower-beds floated in and mingled
with the fragrance of the coffee. It had rained in the night, but the
sun had emerged from the clouds and had thrown a golden veil over trees
and shrubs. We were just rising from table when the "braggart
Sarmatian" entered, booted and spurred, smelling of all the perfumes of
Arabia, and with his hair beautifully curled. He had not been to mass,
and had breakfasted in his room in the frame house on the hill, which
had been rebuilt since the fire. After he had bidden us all an affected
good-morning, he said, turning to Harry,--
"Has the man come with the mail?"
"Yes," Harry replied, curtly.
"Did no registered letter come for me?"
"No."
"Strange!"
"Very strange," Harry sneered. "You have been expecting that letter a
long time. If I were you, I'd investigate the matter."
"There's something wrong with the post," the Pole declared, with an air
of importance. "I must see about it. I think I had best apply to my
uncle the cabinet-minister."
Harry made a curious grimace. "There is no need to exercise your powers
of invention for me," he observed. "I know your phrase-book and the
meaning of each individual sentence. 'Has no registered letter come for
me?' means 'Lend me some money.' My father instructed me to supply you
with money if you needed it, but never with more than ten guilders at a
time. Here they are, and, if you wish to drive to X----, tell the
bailiff to have the drag harnessed for you. We--in fact, we will not
look for you before evening. Good-bye."
"I shall have to call you to account some day, Harry," Fainacky said,
with a frown; then, relapsing into his usual languid affectation of
manner, he remarked, over his shoulder, to Mademoiselle Duval, "_C'est
un enfant_," put away the ten-guilder piece in a gorgeous leather
pocket-book, and left the room.
Scarcely had the door closed behind him when Harry began to express in
no measured terms his views with regard to the "Polish invasion." Then
he set his wits to work to devise some plan of getting rid of Fainacky,
but it was not until the afternoon, when we were assembled in the
dining-room again, that a brilliant idea occurred to him while reading
Heine's "Romancero," a book which he loved to read when Heda and I were
by because it was a forbidden volume to us.
Suddenly, starting up from his half-reclining position in a large
arm-chair, he snapped his fingers, waved his book in the air, and
exclaimed, "Eureka!"
"What is it?" Lato asked, good-naturedly.
"I have found something to drive the Pole wild!" cried Harry, rubbing
his hands with delight. Whereupon he began to spout, with immense
enthusiasm and shouts of laughter, Heine's "Two Knights," a poem in
which he pours out his bitterest satire upon the Poles, their cause,
and their country. This precious poem Harry commanded Tuschalek to
write out in his finest round hand upon a large sheet of paper, which
was then to be nailed upon the door of Fainacky's sleeping-apartment. I
did not like the poem. I confess my Polish sympathies were strong, and
I did not approve of ridiculing the "braggart Sarmatian's" nation by
way of disgusting him with Komaritz; but nothing that I could say had
any effect. The poem was written out upon the largest sheet of paper
that the house afforded, and was the first thing to greet the eyes of
Fainacky when he retired to his room for the night. In consequence, the
Sarmatian declared, the next morning, at breakfast, that the insult
thus offered to his nation and himself was not to be endured by a man
of honour, and that he should leave Komaritz that very day.
Nevertheless, he stayed four weeks longer, during which time, however,
he never spoke to Harry except upon three occasions when he borrowed
money of him.
Tuschalek departed at an earlier date. Harry's method for getting rid
of him was much simpler, and consisted of a letter to his father. As
well as I can recollect, it ran thus:
"My Dear Father,--
"I pray you send Tuschalek away. I assure you I will study diligently
without him. To have about you a fellow hired at ten guilders a month,
who calls you by your Christian name, is very deleterious to the
character.
"Your affectionate son,
"Harry.
"P.S.--Pray, if you can, help him to another situation, for I can't
help pitying the poor devil."
About this time Lato sprained his ankle in leaping a ditch, and was
confined for some days to a lounge in the dining-room. Heda scarcely
left his side. She brought him flowers, offered to write his letters
for him, and finally read aloud to him from the "_Journal des
Demoiselles_." Whether he was much edified I cannot say. He left
Komaritz as soon as his ankle was strong again. I was really sorry to
have him go; for years we heard nothing more of him.----
"The gypsy!" exclaimed the major. "How fluently she writes! Who would
have thought it of her! I remember that Fainacky perfectly well,--a
genuine Polish coxcomb! Lato was a charming fellow,--pity he should
have married in trade!"
At this moment a loud bell reminded the old cavalryman that the
afternoon coffee was ready. He hurriedly slipped his niece's manuscript
into a drawer of his writing-table, and locked it up before joining his
family circle, where he appeared with the most guileless smile he could
assume.
Zdena seemed restless and troubled, and confessed at last that she had
lost her diary, which she was quite sure she had put into her
work-basket. She had been writing in the garden, and had thrust it into
the basket in a hurry. The major seemed uninterested in the loss, but,
when the girl's annoyance reached its climax in a conjecture that the
cook had, by mistake, used the manuscript for kindling, he comforted
her, saying, "Nonsense! the thing will surely be found." He could not
bring himself to resign the precious document,--he was too much
interested in reading it.
The next day, after luncheon, while Frau Rosamunda was refreshing
herself with an afternoon nap and Zdena was in the garden posing for
the Baron von Wenkendorf as the goddess of Spring, the major retired to
his room and locked himself in, that he might not be disturbed.
"Could she possibly have fallen in love with that Lato? Some girls'
heads are full of sentimental nonsense. But I hardly think it--and
so--" he went on muttering to himself whilst finding the place where he
had left off on the previous day.
The next chapter of this literary _chef-d'[oe]uvre_ began as follows:
VIII.
I had a long letter to-day from Miss O'Donnel in Italy, full of most
interesting things. One of the two nieces whom she is visiting is
being trained as an opera-singer. She seems to have a brilliant career
before her. In Italy they call her "_la Patti blonde_," and her
singing-teacher, to whom she pays thirty-five francs a lesson, declares
that she will certainly make at least a hundred thousand francs a year
as a prima donna. What an enviable creature! I, too, have an admirable
voice. Ah, if Uncle Paul would only let me be trained! But his opinions
are so old-fashioned!
And everything that Miss O'Donnel tells me about the mode of life of
the Misses Lyall interests me. They live with their mother in Italy,
and receive every evening, principally gentlemen, which, it seems, is
the Italian custom. The elder Miss Lyall is as good as engaged to a
distinguished Milanese who lost his hair in the war of '59; while the
younger, the blonde Patti, will not hear of marriage, but contents
herself with turning the head of every man who comes near her.
Ah! I have arrived at the conviction that there can be no finer
existence than that of a young girl in training for a prima donna, who
amuses herself in the mean time by turning the head of every man who
comes near her.----
("Goose!" exclaimed the major at this point.)
----To-day I proposed to Uncle Paul that he should take me to Italy for
the winter, to have me educated as a singer. There was a great row.
Never before, since I have known him, has he spoken so angrily to
me.----
("I should think not!" growled the major at this point.)
----The worst was that he blamed Miss O'Donnel for putting such "stuff"
(thus he designated my love for art) into my head, and threatened to
forbid her to correspond with me. Ah, I wept for the entire afternoon
amid the ruins of my shattered hopes. I am very unhappy. After a long
interruption, the idea has occurred to me to-day of continuing my
memoirs.
IX.
HARRY BECOMES A SOLDIER.
Uncle Karl finally yielded to Harry's entreaties, and allowed him to
enter the army. That very autumn after the summer which Lato and
Fainacky passed at Komaritz he was to enter a regiment of hussars.
It had been a problem for Uncle Karl, the taming of this eager young
nature, and I think he was rather relieved by the military solution
thus afforded.
As Harry of course had nothing to do in town before joining his
regiment, he stayed longer than usual this year in Komaritz,--stayed
all through September and until late in October. Komaritz was quite
deserted: Lato had gone, the Pole had gone; but Harry still stayed on.
And, strange to say, now, when we confronted our first long parting,
our old friendship gradually revived, stirred, and felt that it had
been living all this time, although it had had one or two naps. How
well I remember the day when he came to Zirkow to take leave of us--of
me!
It was late in October, and the skies were blue but cold. The sun shone
down upon the earth kindly, but without warmth. A thin silvery mist
floated along the ground. The bright-coloured leaves shivered in the
frosty air.
On the wet lawn, where the gossamers gleamed like steel, lay myriads of
brown, red, and yellow leaves. The song-birds were gone, the sparrows
twittered shrilly, and in the midst of the brown autumnal desolation
there bloomed in languishing loveliness a white rose upon a leafless
stalk.
With a scarlet shawl about my shoulders and my head bare I was
sauntering about the garden, wandering, dreaming through the frosty
afternoon. I heard steps behind me, and when I looked round I saw Harry
approaching, his brows knitted gloomily.
"I only want to bid you 'good-bye,'" he called out to me. "We are off
to-morrow."
"When are you coming back?" I asked, hastily.
"Perhaps never," he said, with an important air. "You know--a
soldier----"
"Yes, there is a threatening of war," I whispered, and my childish
heart felt an intolerable pang as I spoke.
He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh.
"And, at all events, you, when I come back, will be a young lady
with--lovers--and you will hardly remember me."
"Oh, Harry, how can you talk so!"
Rather awkwardly he holds out to me his long slender hand, in which I
place my own.
Ah, how secure my cold, weak fingers feel in that warm strong hand! Why
do I suddenly recall the long-past moonlit evenings in Komaritz when we
sat together on the garden-steps and Harry told me ghost-stories, in
dread of which, when they grew too ghastly, I used to cling close to
him as if to find shelter in his strong young life from the bloodless
throng of spirits he was evoking?
Thus we stand, hand in hand, before the white rose, the last which
autumn had left. It droops above us, and its cheering fragrance mingles
with the autumnal odours around us. I pluck it, stick it in Harry's
button-hole, and then suddenly begin to sob convulsively. He clasps me
close, close in his arms, kisses me, and murmurs, "Do not forget me!"
and I kiss him too, and say, "Never--never!" while around us the faded
leaves fall silently upon the grass.
X.
MY EDUCATION.
Now follow a couple of very colourless years. There was nothing more to
anticipate from the summers. For, although Heda regularly appeared at
Komaritz as soon as the city was too hot or too deserted, she did not
add much to my enjoyment. Komaritz itself seemed changed when Harry was
no longer there to turn everything upside-down with his good-humoured,
madcap ways.
And there was a change for the worse in our circumstances; affairs at
Zirkow were not so prosperous as they had been.
To vary the monotony of his country life, my uncle had built a brewery,
from which he promised himself a large increase of income. It was to be
a model brewery, but after it was built the startling discovery was
made that there was not water enough to work it. For a while, water was
brought from the river in wagons drawn by four horses, but, when this
was found to be too expensive, the brewery was left to itself.
For years now it has remained thus passive, digesting in triumphant
repose the sums of money which it swallowed up. The monster!
Whenever there is any little dispute between my uncle and my aunt, she
is certain to throw his brew-house in his face. But, instead of being
crushed by the mischief he has wrought, he declares, "The project was
admirable: my idea was a brilliant one if it had only succeeded!"
But it did not succeed.
The consequence was--retrenchment and economy. My aunt dismissed two
servants, my uncle kept only a pair of driving horses, and my new gowns
were made out of my aunt Therese's old ones.
The entire winter we spent at Zirkow, and my only congenial friend was
my old English governess, the Miss O'Donnel already mentioned, who came
shortly before Harry's entrance into the army, not so much to teach me
English as to learn German herself.
Born in Ireland, and a Catholic, she had always had excellent
situations in the most aristocratic English families. This had given
her, besides her other acquirements, a great familiarity with the
curious peculiarities of the British peerage, and with social
distinctions of rank in England, as to which she enlightened me, along
with much other valuable information.
At first I thought her quite ridiculous in many respects,--her general
appearance,--she had once been a beauty, and still wore corkscrew
curls,--her way of humming to herself old Irish ballads, "Nora Creina,"
"The harp that once through Tara's halls," etc., with a cracked voice
and unconscious gestures, her formality and sensitiveness. After a
while I grew fond of her. What quantities of books she read aloud to me
in the long evenings in January and December, while my wooden needles
clicked monotonously as I knitted woollen comforters for the poor!--all
Walter Scott's novels, Dickens and Thackeray, many of the works of
English historians, from the academic, fluent Gibbon to that strange
prophet of history, Carlyle, and every day I had to study with her one
act of Shakespeare, which bored me at first. She was so determined to
form my literary taste that while my maid was brushing my hair she
would read aloud some lighter work, such as "The Vicar of Wakefield" or
Doctor Johnson's "Rasselas."
As Uncle Paul was very desirous to perfect my education as far as
possible, he was not content with these far-reaching efforts, but, with
a view to further accomplishments on my part, sent me thrice a week to
X----, where an old pianiste, who was said to have refused a Russian
prince, and was now humpbacked, gave me lessons on the piano; and a
former _ballerina_, at present married to the best caterer in X----,
taught me to dance.
This last was a short, fat, good-humoured person with an enormous
double chin and a complexion spoiled by bad rouge. When a
ballet-dancer she had been known as Angiolina Chiaramonte; her name now
is Frau Anna Schwanzara. She always lost her breath, and sometimes the
buttons off her waist, when she danced for her pupils, and she prided
herself upon being able to teach every known dance, even to the cancan.
I did not learn the cancan, but I did learn the fandango, the czardas,
and the Highland fling, with many another national dance. Waltzes and
polkas I did not learn, because we had no one for a partner to practise
with me; Frau Schwanzara was too short-breathed, although she was very
good-humoured and did her best.
Sometimes I thought it very hard to have to get up so early and drive
between high walls of snow in a rattling inspector's wagon (Uncle Paul
would not allow his last good carriage to be used on these journeys)
two long leagues to X----, but it was, at all events, a break in the
monotony of my life.
If I was not too sleepy, we argued the whole way, Miss O'Donnel and I,
usually over some historic event, such as the execution of Louis XVI.
or Cromwell's rebellion. Sometimes we continued our debate as we walked
about the town, where we must have been strange and yet familiar
figures. Miss O'Donnel certainly was odd in appearance. She always wore
a long gray cloth cloak, under which, to guard against dirt, she kilted
up her petticoats so high that her red stockings gleamed from afar. On
her head was perched a black velvet bonnet with a scarlet pompon, and
in summer and winter she carried the same bulgy green umbrella, which
she called her "Gamp." Once we lost each other in the midst of a
particularly lively discussion. Nothing daunted, she planted herself at
a street-corner, and, pounding the pavement with her umbrella, called,
lustily, "Zdena! Zdena! Zdena!" until a policeman, to whom I described
her, conducted me to her.
In addition to Miss O'Donnel's peculiarities, the extraordinary
structure of our vehicle must have attracted some attention in X----.
It was a long, old-fashioned coach hung on very high springs, and it
looked very like the shabby carriages seen following the hearse at
third-class funerals. Twin sister of the Komaritz "Noah's Ark," it
served a double purpose, and could be taken apart in summer and used as
an open carriage. Sometimes it fell apart of itself. Once when we were
driving quickly through the market-square and past the officers' casino
in X----, the entire carriage window fell out upon the pavement. The
coachman stopped the horses, and a very tall hussar picked up the
window and handed it in to me, saying, with a smile, "You have dropped
something, mademoiselle!" I was deeply mortified, but I would not for
the world have shown that I was so. I said, simply, "Thank you; put it
down there, if you please," pointing to the opposite seat,--as if
dropping a window out of the carriage were the most ordinary every-day
occurrence. Upon my reply to him he made a profound bow, which I
thought all right. He was a late arrival in the garrison; the other
officers knew us or our carriage by sight. Every one of them, when he
came to X----, paid his respects to my uncle, who in due course of time
returned the visit, and there was an end of it. The officers were never
invited to Zirkow.
Sometimes the roads were so blocked with snow that we could not drive
to town, nor could we walk far. For the sake of exercise, or what Miss
O'Donnel called our "daily constitutional," we used then to walk
numberless times around the house, where the gardener had cleared a
path for us. As we walked, Miss O'Donnel told me stories from the
Arabian Nights or Ovid's Metamorphoses, varied sometimes by
descriptions of life among the British aristocracy. When once she was
launched upon this last topic, I would not let her finish,--I besieged
her with questions. She showed me the picture of one of her pupils, the
Lady Alice B----, who married the Duke of G---- and was the queen of
London society for two years.
"'Tis odd how much you look like her," she often said to me. "You are
sure to make a sensation in the world; only have patience. You are born
to play a great part."
If Uncle Paul had heard her, I believe he would have killed her.
Every evening we played a rubber of whist. Miss O'Donnel never could
remember what cards were out, and, whenever we wished to recall a card
or to transgress some rule of the game, Aunt Rosamunda always said,
"That is not allowed at the Jockey Club."
Once my uncle and aunt took me upon a six weeks' pleasure-tour,--or,
rather, an educational excursion. We thoroughly explored the greater
part of Germany and Italy on this occasion, travelling very simply,
with very little luggage, never speaking to strangers, having
intercourse exclusively with pictures, sculptures, and valets-de-place.
After thus becoming acquainted, in Baedeker's society, with a new piece
of the world, as Aunt Rosamunda observed with satisfaction, we returned
to Zirkow, and life went on as before.
And really my lonely existence would not have struck me as anything
extraordinary, if Hedwig had not been at hand to enlighten me as to my
deprivations.
She had been introduced into society, and wrote me of her conquests.
Last summer she brought a whole trunkful of faded bouquets with her to
Komaritz,--ball-trophies. Besides this stuff, she brought two other
acquisitions with her to the country, a sallow complexion and an
adjective which she used upon every occasion--"impossible!" She tossed
it about to the right and left, applying it to everything in the dear
old nest which I so dearly loved, and which she now never called
anything save "Mon exil." The house at Komaritz, the garden, my
dress,--all fell victims to this adjective.
Two of her friends shortly followed her to Komaritz, with a suitable
train of governesses and maids,--countesses from Prague society, Mimi
and Franziska Zett.
They were not nearly so affected as Heda,--in fact, they were not
affected at all, but were sweet and natural, very pretty, and
particularly pleasant towards me. But we were not congenial; we had
nothing to say to one another; we had no interests in common. They were
quite indifferent to my favourite heroes, from the Gracchi to the First
Consul; in fact, they knew hardly anything about them, and I knew still
less of the Rudis, Nikis, Taffis, and whatever else the young gentlemen
were called, with whom they danced and flirted at balls and parties,
and about whom they now gossiped with Heda.
They, too, brought each a trunkful of faded bouquets, and one day they
piled them all up on the grass in the garden and set fire to them. They
declared that it was the custom in society in Vienna thus to burn on
Ash Wednesday every relic of the Carnival. To be sure, it was not Ash
Wednesday in Komaritz, and the Carnival was long past, but that was of
no consequence.
The favourite occupation of the three young ladies was to sit in the
summer-house, with a generous supply of iced raspberry vinegar, and
make confession of the various _passions funestes_ which they had
inspired. I sat by and listened mutely.
Once Mimi amiably asked me to give my experience. I turned my head
away, and murmured, ashamed, "No one ever made love to me." Mimi,
noticing my distress, put her finger beneath my chin, just as if she
had been my grand-aunt, and said, "Only wait until you come out, and
you will bear the palm away from all of us, for you are by long odds
the prettiest of us all."
When afterwards I looked in the glass, I thought she was right.
"Until you go into society," Mimi had said. Good heavens! into
society!--I! For some time a suspicion had dawned upon me that Uncle
Paul did not mean that I should ever "go into society." When, the day
after Mimi's portentous speech, I returned to Zirkow, I determined to
put an end to all uncertainty upon the subject.
After dinner--it had been an uncommonly good one--I put my hand
caressingly within my uncle's arm, and whispered, softly, "Uncle, do
you never mean to take me to balls, eh?"
He had been very gay, but he at once grew grave, as he replied,--
"What good would balls do you? Make your eyes droop, and your feet
ache! I can't endure the thought of having you whirled about by all the
young coxcombs of Prague and then criticised afterwards. Marriages are
made in heaven, Zdena, and your fate will find you here, you may be
sure."
"But I am not thinking of marriage," I exclaimed, indignantly. "I want
to see the world, uncle dear; can you not understand that?" and I
tenderly stroked his coat-sleeve.
He shook his curly head energetically.
"Be thankful that you know nothing of the world," he said, with
emphasis.
And I suddenly recalled the intense bitterness in my mother's tone as
she uttered the word "world," when I waked in the dark night and found
her kneeling, crying, at my bedside in our old Paris home.
"Is it really so very terrible--the world?" I asked, meekly, and yet
incredulously.
"Terrible!" he repeated my word with even more energy than was usual
with him. "It is a hot-bed of envy and vanity, a place where one learns
to be ashamed of his best friend if he chance to wear an ill-made coat;
that is the world you are talking of. I do not wish you to know
anything about it."
This was all he would say.
It might be supposed that the unattractive picture of the world drawn
by Uncle Paul would have put a stop at once and forever to any desire
of mine for a further acquaintance with it, but--there is ever a charm
about what is forbidden. At present I have not the faintest desire to
visit Pekin, but if I were forbidden to go near that capital I should
undoubtedly be annoyed.
And day follows day. Nearly a year has passed since that unedifying
conversation with my uncle.
The only amusement that varied the monotony of our existence was a
letter at long intervals from Harry. For a time he was stationed in
Salzburg; for a year he has been in garrison in Vienna, where, of
course, he is absorbed in the whirl of Viennese society. I must confess
that it did not greatly please me when I first learned that he had
entered upon that brilliant worldly scene: will he not come to be like
Hedwig? My uncle declares that the world is the hot-bed of envy and
vanity; and yet there must be natures upon which poisonous atmospheres
produce no effect, just as there are men who can breathe with impunity
the air of the Pontine marshes; and Harry's nature is one of these. At
least so it would seem from his letters, they are so cordial and
simple, such warm affection speaks in every line. A little while ago he
sent me his photograph. I liked it extremely, but I did not say so; all
the more loudly, however, did my uncle express his admiration. He
offered to wager that Harry is the handsomest officer in the entire
army, and he shouted loudly for Krupitschka, to show him the picture.
Harry told us one interesting piece of news,--I forget whether it was
this winter or the last; perhaps it was still longer ago, for Harry was
stationed in Enns at the time, and the news related to our old friend
Treurenberg.
He had married a girl in the world of trade,--a Fraeulein Selina von
Harfink. Harry, whom Lato had bidden to his marriage, and who had gone
for old friendship's sake from Enns to Vienna to be the escort in the
church of the first of the eight bridesmaids, made very merry in his
letter over the festivity.
We were all intensely surprised; we had not heard a word of Lato's
betrothal, and the day after Harry's letter came the announcement of
the marriage.
Uncle Paul, who takes most of the events of life very philosophically,
grew quite angry on learning of this marriage.
Since Lato has married for money, he cares nothing more for him.
"I should not care if he had made a fool of himself and married
an actress," he exclaimed, over and over again, "but to sell
himself--ugh!"
When I suggested, "Perhaps he fell in love with Selina," my uncle
shrugged his shoulders, and seemed to consider any such possibility
entirely out of the question.
We talked for two weeks at Zirkow about Lato Treurenberg's marriage.
Now we have almost forgotten it. Since Lato has been married he has
been quite estranged from his former associations.
To-day is my birthday. I am nineteen years old. How kind my uncle and
aunt are to me! How they try to give me pleasure! My heap of presents
was really grand. Arrayed about my cake, with its lighted candles,
I found two new gowns, a hat which Heda had purchased for me in
Prague,--and which, by the way, would be highly appreciated upon the
head of a monkey in a circus,--several volumes of English literature
sent me by Miss O'Donnel from Italy, and, in a white silk sachet upon
which Mimi Zett had embroidered a bird of paradise in the midst of a
snow-scene (a symbol of my melancholy condition), a card, upon which
was written, "A visit to some watering-place, by the way of Vienna and
Paris." I uttered a shriek of delight and threw my arms around my
uncle's neck.
The three young girls from Komaritz came over to Zirkow to dine, in
honour of the occasion; we drank one another's health in champagne, and
in the afternoon we had coffee in the woods, which was very
inconvenient but very delightful. Then we consulted the cards as to our
future, and Heda lost her temper because the oracle declared that she
would marry an apothecary.
What nonsense it was! The cards prophesied to me that I should marry
for love;--I! As if I should think of such a thing! But I was not in
the least vexed, although I knew how false it was.
Towards eight o'clock the girls drove home, and I concluded the evening
by taking my new bonnet to pieces and then scribbling here at my
writing-table. I cannot make up my mind to go to bed. I am fairly
tingling to my finger-tips with delightful anticipations. To think of
seeing Paris once more,--Paris, where I was born, the very centre of
the civilized world! Oh, it is too charming!
Something extraordinary will happen during this trip,--I am sure of it.
I shall meet some one who will liberate me from my solitude and set me
upon the pedestal for which I long; an English peer, perhaps, or a
Russian prince, oh, it will of course be a Russian prince--who spends
most of his time in Paris. I shall not mind his not being very young.
Elderly men are more easily managed.----
(At this point the major frowns. "I should not have thought it of her,
I really should not have thought it of her. Well, we shall see whether
she is in earnest." And he goes on with his reading.)
June 10, ----.
I have a piece of news to put down. The Frau von Harfink who bought
Dobrotschau a while ago--the estate that adjoins Zirkow, a fine
property with a grand castle but poor soil--is no other than Lato
Treurenberg's mother-in-law. She called upon us to-day. When
Krupitschka brought the cards of the Baroness Melanie von Harfink and
her daughter Paula, Aunt Rosa denounced the visit as a presumption upon
the part of the ladies. She had been engaged all day long in setting
the house "to rights," preparatory to our departure, and had on a very
old gown in which she does not often appear; wherefore she would fain
have denied herself. But I was burning with curiosity to see Lato's
mother-in-law: so I remarked, "Uncle Paul and I will go and receive the
ladies, while you dress."
This made my aunt very angry. "It never would occur to me to dress for
these wealthy _parvenues_. This gown is quite good enough for them."
And she smoothed the faded folds of her skirt so that a neatly-darned
spot was distinctly conspicuous. The ladies were immediately shown in;
they were extremely courteous and amiable, but they found no favour in
my aunt's eyes.
There really was no objection to make to Mamma von Harfink, who is
still a very handsome woman, except that her manner was rather
affected. The daughter, however, was open to criticism of various
kinds, and subsequently became the subject of a serious dispute between
my aunt and uncle. My aunt called Fraeulein Paula disagreeable,
absolutely hideous, and vulgar; whereupon my uncle, slowly shaking his
head, rejoined,----
"Say what you please, she may not be agreeable, but she is very
pretty."
Upon this my aunt grew angry, and called Fraeulein Paula a "red-haired
kitchen-maid." My uncle shrugged his shoulders, and observed,
"Nevertheless, there have been kitchen-maids who were not ugly."
Then my aunt declared, "I can see nothing pretty about such fat
creatures; but, according to her mother's account, you are not alone in
your admiration. Madame Harfink had hardly been here five minutes when
she informed me that Professor X----, of Vienna, had declared that her
daughter reminded him of Titian's penitent Magdalen in the Borghese
Gallery in Rome, and she asked me whether I was not struck with the
resemblance."
My uncle grinned--I could not see at what and said, "H'm! the Magdalen,
perhaps; but whether penitent or not----" and he pinched my cheek.
The dispute continued for a while longer, and ended with my aunt's
emphatic declaration that men always had the worst possible taste with
regard to young girls. My uncle burst into a laugh at this, and
replied, "True. I gave proof of it on the 21st of May, 1858." It was
his marriage-day.
Of course my aunt laughed, and the quarrel ended. The subject was
changed, and we discussed Lato Treurenberg's marriage, which had
puzzled us all. My aunt declared that since she had seen the family
Treurenberg's choice appeared to her more incomprehensible than ever.
My uncle shook his head sagely, and observed, "If Selina Treurenberg at
all resembles her sister, it explains much to me, especially when I
recall the poor fellow's peculiarities. It makes me more lenient
towards him, and--I pity him from my heart." They evidently did not
wish to say anything more upon the subject before me.
June 20.
This afternoon we start. I am in a fever of anticipation. How
delightful! I seem to have come to the turning-point of my existence.
Something wonderful is surely going to happen.
Meanwhile, I take my leave of my little book,--I shall have no time to
write in it while we are away.
July 30.
Here we are back again in the old nest! Nothing either wonderful or
even extraordinary happened upon the journey; on the contrary,
everything was quite commonplace. I did not meet the Russian prince,
but I have brought home with me a conviction of the beauty and delights
of the world, and the certainty that, if fate would only grant me the
opportunity, I could play a most brilliant part in it. But my destiny
has nothing of the kind to offer.
I am restless and discontented, and I have great trouble in concealing
my mood from my uncle and aunt. I am likewise disgusted with my
ingratitude. I know that the expenses of our trip weighed heavily upon
my uncle. He has bought himself no new horses, although the old ones
are lame in all four legs; and my aunt has given up her pilgrimage to
Bayreuth, that I might go to the baths. She expected so much for me
from this trip, and now----
Still, prosaic and commonplace as it all was, I will put it down here
conscientiously in detail. Various pleasant little circumstances may
recur to me as I write which have escaped me in my general discontent
that has tinged everything.
Our few days in Vienna were the pleasantest part of the entire trip,
little as I liked the city at first.
We arrived at ten in the evening, rather exhausted by the heat, and of
course we expected to see Harry at the railroad-station, my uncle
having advised him of our arrival. But in vain did we peer in every
direction, or rather in vain did Aunt Rosamunda thus peer (for I did
nothing of the kind); there was no Harry to be seen.
While my aunt loudly expressed her wonder at his non-appearance, I
never uttered a word, but was secretly all the more vexed at what
seemed to me Harry's laziness and want of consideration. Of course, I
attributed his absence to the fact that a young man who passed his time
in flying from one fete to another in the world (which I was not to
know) could hardly be very anxious to meet a couple of relatives from
the country. Perhaps he had come to be just like Heda, and I shrugged
my shoulders indifferently at the thought. What could it possibly
matter to me? Meanwhile, my aunt had given our luggage-tickets to
a porter and got with me into an open carriage, where we quietly and
wearily awaited our trunks.
Around us the lights flickered in the warm, dim, night air, which was
almost as close as an in-door atmosphere, and smelled most unpleasantly
of dust, dried leaves, and all sorts of exhalations. On every hand
crowded houses of indescribable clumsiness and ugliness; I was
depressed by the mere eight of them, and suddenly experienced the most
painful sensation of shrivelling up. The deafening noise and bustle
were in harmony with the houses: I never had heard anything like it.
Everybody jostled everybody else, all were in a hurry, and no one paid
the slightest regard to anybody. It seemed as if they were one and all
bound for some great entertainment and feared to be too late.
At the hotel the reason for Harry's absence was explained. We found two
beautiful bunches of roses in our rooms, and a note, as follows:
"I am more sorry than I can tell, not to be able to welcome you at the
station. I am, unfortunately, on duty at a garden-party at the Archduke
S----'s.... I shall report myself to you, however, at the earliest
opportunity.
"Harry."
I supped with a relish, and slept soundly.
My aunt had breakfasted in our sitting-room and was reading the paper,
when I had scarcely begun to dress. I was just about to brush my
hair,--I have very long hair, and it is quite pretty, light brown with
a dash of gold,--in fact, I was standing before the mirror in my white
peignoir, with my hair hanging soft and curling all around me, very
well pleased with my reflection in the glass, when suddenly I heard the
jingling of spurs and sabre, and a voice which was familiar and yet
unfamiliar. I trembled from head to foot.
"Zdena, hurry, and come!" called my aunt. "Here is a visitor!"
I knew well enough who it was, but, as if I did not know, I opened the
door, showed myself for a moment in my white wrapper and long, loose
hair,--only for a moment,--and then hastily retreated.
"Come just as you are. 'Tis only Harry; it is not as if it were a
stranger. Come!" called my aunt.
But I was not to be persuaded. Not for worlds would I have had Harry
suspect that--that--well, that I was in any great hurry to see him.
I dressed my hair with the most scrupulous care. Not before twenty
minutes had passed did I go into the next room.
How plainly I see it all before me now,--the room, half drawing-room,
half dressing-room; a trunk in one corner, in another an old
piano, the key of which we were obliged to procure from the kellner; in
an arm-chair a bundle of shawls, over the back of a sofa our
travelling-wraps, our well-polished boots in front of the porcelain
stove, great patches of misty sunshine lying everywhere, the
breakfast-table temptingly spread near the window, and there, opposite
my aunt, his sabre between his knees, tall, slender, very brown, very
handsome, an officer of hussars,--Harry.
I like him, and am a little afraid of him. He suddenly springs up and
advances a step or two towards me. His eyes--the same eyes that had
glanced at me as I appeared in my wrapper--open wide in amazement; his
gaze is riveted upon my face. All my fear has gone; yes, I confess it
to this paper,--I am possessed by an exultant consciousness of power.
He is only my cousin, 'tis true, but he is the first man upon whom I
have been able to prove my powers of conquest.
I put my hands in his, so cordially extended, but when he stooped as if
to kiss me, I shook my head, laughing, and said, "I am too old for
that."
He yielded without a word, only touching my hand respectfully with
his lips and then releasing me; whereupon I went directly to the
breakfast-table. But, as he still continued to gaze at me, I asked,
easily,----
"What is it, Harry? Is my hair coming down?"
He shook his head, and said, in some confusion, "Not at all. I was only
wondering what you had done with all your magnificent hair!"
I made no reply, but applied myself to my breakfast.
It was really delightful, our short stay in Vienna. Harry was with us
all the while. He went about with us from morning till night; patiently
dragged with us to shops, picture-galleries, and cathedrals, and to the
dusty, sunny Prater, where the vegetation along the drive seemed to
have grown shabby. We drove together to Schoenbrunn, the huge, dreamy,
imperial summer residence, and wandered about the leafy avenues there.
We fed the swans; we fed the monkeys and the bears, while my aunt
rested near by, Baedeker in hand, upon any bench she could find. She
rested a great deal, and grew more tired with every day of our stay in
Vienna, and with very good reason; she can hardly endure the pavement
in walking, and she refuses, from fastidiousness, to take advantage of
the tramway, and, from economy, to hire a carriage.
The sunset has kindled flames in all the windows of the castle, and we
are still wandering in the green avenues, talking of all sorts of
things, music, and literature. Harry's taste is classic; mine is
somewhat revolutionary. I talk more than he; he listens. Sometimes he
throws in a word in the midst of my nonsense; at other times he laughs
heartily at my paradoxes, and then again he suddenly looks askance at
me and says nothing. Then I become aware that he understands far more
than I of the matter in hand, and I fall silent.
The sun has set; the rosy reflection on the grass and at the foot of
the old trees has faded; there is only a pale, gray gleam on the castle
windows. All nature seems to sigh relieved. A cool mist rises from the
basins of the fountains, like the caress of a water-nymph; the roses,
petunias, and mignonette exhale delicious fragrance, which rises as
incense to heaven; the lisp of the leaves and the plash of the fountain
interpose a dreamy veil of sound, as it were, between us and some
aggressive military music in the distance.
The twilight falls; the nurses are all taking their charges home. Here
and there on the benches a soldier and a nursemaid are sitting
together. It is too dark to see to read Baedeker any longer. My aunt
calls to us: "Do come, children; the carriage has been waiting ever so
long, and I am very hungry."
And the time had seemed so short to me. My aunt is so easily fatigued,
and her aversion to tramways is so insurmountable, that she stays at
home half the time in the hotel, and I make many a little expedition
with Harry alone. Then I take his arm. We stroll through the old part
of the city, with its sculptured monuments, its beautiful gray palaces
standing side by side with the commonest lodging-houses; about us
people are thronging and pushing; we are in no hurry; we should like to
have time stand still,--Harry and I; we walk very slowly. I am so
content, so filled with a sense of protection, when I am with him thus.
It is delightful to cling to him in the crowd.
It seems to me that I should like to spend my life in slowly wandering
thus in the cool of the evening through the streets, where the lights
are just beginning to be lighted, where a pair of large, kindly eyes
rest upon my face, and the sound of distant military music is in my
ears.
The last evening before our departure arrived. We were sitting in our
small drawing-room, and Harry and I were drinking iced coffee. My aunt
had left hers untouched; the fever of travelling was upon her; she
wandered from one room to another, opening trunks, drawers, and
wardrobes, and casting suspicious glances under the piano and the
sofas, sure that something would be left behind.
The kellner brought in two cards,--Countess Zriny and Fraeulein
Tschaky,--a cousin of Uncle Paul's, with her companion.
We had called upon the Countess the day before, and had rejoiced to
find her not at home. My aunt now elevated her eyebrows, and murmured,
plaintively, "It can't be helped!"
Then she hurriedly carried two bundles of shawls and a hand-bag into
the next room, and the ladies were shown in.
Countess Zriny is a very stout, awkward old maid, with the figure of a
meal-sack and the face of a portly abbot. Harry maintains that she has
holy water instead of blood in her veins, and that she has for ten
years lived exclusively upon Eau de Lourdes and Count Mattei's
miraculous pills. It is odd that she should have grown so stout upon
such a diet.
There is nothing to say of Fraeulein Tschaky.
Aunt Rosamunda received the ladies with a majestic affability
peculiarly her own, and presented me as "Our child,--Fritz's daughter!"
The Countess gave me her hand, a round, fat little hand that felt as if
her Swedish glove were stuffed with wadding, then put up her eyeglass
and gazed at me, lifting her eyebrows the while.
"All her father!" she murmured,--"especially her profile." Then she
dropped her eyeglass, sighed, "Poor Fritz! poor Fritz!" seated herself
on the sofa with my aunt, and began to whisper to her, looking steadily
at me all the while.
The sensitive irritability of my nature was at once aflame. If she had
pitied my father only for being snatched away so early in his fair
young life, for being torn so suddenly from those whom he loved! But
this was not the case. She pitied him solely because he had married my
mother. Oh, I knew it perfectly well; and she was whispering about it
to my aunt before me,--she could not even wait until I should be away.
I could hear almost every word.
My heart suddenly grew heavy,--so heavy with the old grief that I would
fain forget, that I could hardly bear it. But even in the midst of my
pain I observed that Harry was aware of my suffering and shared it.
Of course my cousin Zriny--for she is my cousin, after all--was
otherwise extremely amiable to me. She turned from her mysterious
conversation with Aunt Rosamunda, and addressed a couple of questions
to me. She asked whether I liked country life, and when I replied,
curtly, "I know no other," she laughed good-humouredly, just as some
contented old monk might laugh,--a laugh that seemed to shake her fat
sides and double chin, as she said, "_Elle a de l'esprit, la petite;
elle n'est pas du tout banale_."
How she arrived at that conclusion from my brief reply, I am unable to
say.
After a quarter of an hour she rose, took both my hands in hers by way
of farewell, put her head on one side, sighed, "Poor Fritz!" and then
kissed me.
When the door had closed behind her, my aunt betook herself to the next
room to make ready for a projected evening walk.
I was left alone with Harry. As I could not restrain my tears, and did
not know how else to conceal them, I turned my back to him and
pretended to arrange my hair at the pier-glass, before which stood a
vase filled with the La France roses that he had brought me the day
before.
It was a silly thing to do. He looked over my shoulder and saw in the
mirror the tears on my cheeks, and then--he put his arm around my waist
and whispered, "You poor little goose! You sensitive little thing! Why
should you grieve because a kindhearted, weak-minded old woman was
silly?"
Then I could not help sobbing outright, crying, "Ah, it is always the
same,--I know it! I am not like the other girls in your world. People
despise me, and my poor mother too."
"But this is childish," he said, gravely,--"childish and foolish. No
one despises you. And--don't scratch my eyes out, Zdena--it is not your
heart, merely, that is wounded at present, but your vanity, the vanity
of an inexperienced little girl who knows nothing of the world or of
the people in it. If you had knocked about in it somewhat, you would
know how little it signifies if people in general wink and nod, and
that the only thing really to care for is, to be understood and loved
by those to whom we cling with affection."
He said this more gently and kindly than I can write it. He suddenly
seemed very far above me in his earnest kindness of heart and his sweet
reasonableness. I was instantly possessed with a feeling akin to
remorse and shame, to think how I had teased him and tyrannized over
him all through those last few days. And I cannot tell how it happened,
but he clasped me close in his arms and bent down and kissed me on the
lips,--and I let him do it! Ah, such a thrill passed through me! And I
felt sheltered and cared for as I had not done since my mother's
clasping arms had been about me. I was for the moment above all petty
annoyances,--borne aloft by a power I could not withstand.
It lasted but a moment, for we were startled by the silken rustle of my
aunt's gown, and did he release me? did I leave him? I do not know; but
when Aunt Rosamunda appeared I was adjusting a rose in my breast, and
Harry was--looking for his sabre!----. (When the major reached this
point, he stamped on the floor with delight.)
"Aha, Rosel, which of us was right?" he exclaimed aloud. He would have
liked to summon his wife from where he could see her walking in the
garden, to impart to her his glorious discovery. On reflection,
however, he decided not to do so, chiefly because there was a good deal
of manuscript still unread, and he was in a hurry to continue the
perusal of what interested him so intensely.)
----I avoided being alone with Harry all the rest of the evening, but
the next morning at the railway-station, while my aunt was nervously
counting over the pieces of luggage for the ninety-ninth time, I could not
prevent his leaning towards me and saying, "Zdena, we were so unfortunately
interrupted last evening. You have not yet told me--that----"
I felt myself grow scarlet. "Wait for a while!" I murmured, turning my
head away from him, but I think that perhaps--I pressed his hand----
I must have done so, for happier eyes than those which looked after our
train as it sped away I have never seen. Ah, how silly I had been! I
carried with me for the rest of the journey a decided regret.----
(The major frowned darkly. "Why, this looks as if she would like to
withdraw her promise! But let me see, there really has no promise
passed between them."
He glanced hurriedly over the following leaves. "Descriptions of
travel--compositions," he muttered to himself. "Paris--variations upon
Baedeker--the little goose begins to be tiresome----Ah, here is
something about her parents' grave--poor thing! And here----" He began
to read again.)
----A few hours after our arrival we drove to the graveyard at
Montmartre, an ugly, gloomy graveyard, bordering directly upon a
business-street, so that the noise and bustle of the city sound
deafeningly where the dead are reposing. The paths are as straight
as if drawn by a ruler, and upon the graves lie wreaths of straw
flowers or stiff immortelles. These durable decorations seem to me
heartless,--as if the poor dead were to be provided for once for all,
since it might be tiresome to visit them often.
My parents' grave lies a little apart from the broad centre path, under
a knotty old juniper-tree.
I heaped it with flowers, and amid the fresh blossoms I laid the roses,
now faded, which Harry gave me yesterday when we parted.
I was enchanted with Paris. My aunt was delighted with the shops. She
spent all her time in them, and thought everything very reasonable. At
the end of four days she had bought so many reasonable articles that
she had to purchase a huge trunk in which to take them home, and she
had scarcely any money left.
She was convinced that she must have made some mistake in her accounts,
and she worked over them half through an entire night, but with no
consoling result.
The upshot of it was that she wanted to go home immediately; but since
the trip had been undertaken chiefly for my health and was to end in a
visit to some sea-side resort, she wrote to my uncle, explaining the
state of affairs--that is, of her finances--and asking for a subsidy.
My uncle sent the subsidy, but requested us to leave Paris as soon as
possible, and to choose a modest seaside resort.
The next day we departed from Babylon.
After inquiring everywhere, and studying the guidebook attentively, my
aunt finally resolved to go to St. Valery.
The evening was cold and windy when we reached the little town and drew
up in the omnibus before the Hotel de la Plage.
The season had not begun, and the hotel was not actually open, but it
received us.
As no rooms were taken, all were placed at our disposal, and we chose
three in the first story, one for my aunt, one for me, and one for our
trunks.
The furniture, of crazy old mahogany, had evidently been bought of some
dealer in second-band furniture in Rouen, but the beds were extremely
good, and the bed-linen, although "coarse as sacking," as Uncle Paul
would have expressed it, was perfectly clean and white.
From our windows we looked out upon the sea and upon the little wooden
hut where the safety-boat was kept, and also upon the little town park,
about a hundred square yards in extent; upon the Casino, quite an
imposing structure on the shore; upon the red pennons which,
designating the bathing-place, made a brilliant show in the midst of
the prevailing gray, and upon a host of whitewashed bath-houses waiting
for the guests who had not yet arrived.
How indeed could they arrive? One had need to have come from Bohemia,
not to go directly home, in such cold, damp weather as we had; but we
wanted to get value from our expensive trip.
The Casino was no more open than the hotel, it was even in a decided
_neglige_, but it was busily dressing. A swarm of painters and
upholsterers were decorating it. The upholsterers hung the inside with
crimson, the painters coloured the outside red and white.
The proprietor, a broad-shouldered young man answering to the
high-sounding name of Raoul Donval, daily superintended the work of
the--artists. He always wore a white cap with a broad black visor, and
a stick in the pocket of his short jacket, and plum-coloured
knickerbockers; and I think he considered himself very elegant.
They were draping and beautifying and painting our hotel too.
Everything was being painted instead of scrubbed,--the stairs, the
doors, the floors; everywhere the dirt was hidden beneath the same
dull-red colour. Aunt Rosa declared that they seemed to her to be
daubing the entire house with blood. Just at this time she was wont to
make most ghastly comparisons, because, for lack of other literature,
she was reading an historical romance in the _Petit Journal_.
She was in a far more melancholy mood than I at St. Valery. Since it
had to be, I made up my mind to it, consoling myself with the
reflection that I was just nineteen, and that there was plenty of time
for fate, if so minded, to shape my destiny brilliantly. Unfortunately,
my aunt had not this consolation, but, instead, the depressing
consciousness of having given up Bayreuth. It was hard. I was very
sorry for her, and did all that I could to amuse her.
I could always find something to laugh at in our visits to the empty
Casino and in our walks through the town, but instead of cheering
her my merriment distressed her. She had seen in the French journal
which she studied faithfully every day an account of a sensitive
trombone-player at the famous yearly festival at Neuilly who had broken
his instrument over the head of an arrogant Englishman who had allowed
himself to make merry over some detail of the festival. Therefore I
could scarcely smile in the street without having my aunt twitch my
sleeve and say,--
"For heaven's sake don't laugh at these Frenchmen!--remember that
trombone at Neuilly."
During the first fortnight I had the whole shore, with the bath-houses
and bathing-men, entirely to myself. It was ghastly! The icy
temperature of the water seemed to bite into my flesh, my teeth
chattered, and the bather who held me by both my hands was as blue as
his dress. Our mutual isolation had the effect of establishing a
friendship between the bather and myself. He had formerly been a
sailor, and had but lately returned from Tonquin; he told me much that
was interesting about the war and the cholera. He was a good-looking
fellow, with a fair complexion and a tanned face.
After my bath I ran about on the shore until I got warm, and then we
breakfasted. My aunt did not bathe. She counted the days like a
prisoner.
When the weather permitted, we made excursions into the surrounding
country in a little wagon painted yellow, drawn by a shaggy donkey,
which I drove myself. The donkey's name was Jeanne d'Arc,--which
horrified my aunt,--and she had a young one six months old that ran
after us as we drove along.
For more than two weeks we were the sole inmates of the Hotel de la
Plage. The manager of the establishment--who was likewise the head of
the kitchen--drove to the station every day to capture strangers, but
never brought any back.
I see him now,--short and enormously broad, with a triple or quadruple
chin, sitting on the box beside the coachman, his hands on his thighs.
He always wore sky-blue trousers, and a short coat buckled about him
with a broad patent-leather belt. The chambermaid, who revered him,
informed me that it was the dress of an English courier.
One day he brought back to the host, who daily awaited the guests, two
live passengers,--an old woman and a young man.
The old woman was very poor, and took a garret room. She must have been
beautiful formerly, and she looked very distinguished. She positively
refused to write her name in the strangers' book. By chance we learned
afterwards that she was a Comtesse d'Ivry, from Versailles, who had had
great misfortunes. She had a passion for sunsets; every afternoon she
had an arm-chair carried out on the shore, and sat there, wrapped in a
thick black cloak, with her feet on a hot-water bottle, to admire the
majestic spectacle. When it rained, she still persisted in going, and
sat beneath a large ragged umbrella. Upon her return she usually sighed
and told the host that the sunsets here were not nearly so fine as at
Trouville,--appearing to think that this was his fault.
At last the weather brightened and it grew warm; the sun chased away
the clouds, and allured a crowd of people to the lonely shore. And such
people! I shudder to think of them.
We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.
The next day I took my last bath.
On our return journey, at Cologne, an odd thing happened.
It was early, and I was sleepy. I was waiting for breakfast in
melancholy mood, and was contemplating a huge pile of elegant
hand-luggage which a servant in a very correct dark suit was
superintending, when two ladies, followed by a maid, made their
appearance, one fair, the other dark, from the dressing-room, which
had been locked in our faces. In honour of these two princesses we had
been obliged to remain unwashed. Ah, how fresh and neat and pretty they
both looked! The dark one was by far the handsomer of the two, but she
looked gloomy and discontented, spoke never a word, and after a hurried
breakfast became absorbed in a newspaper. The fair one, on the contrary,
a striking creature, with a very large hat and a profusion of passementerie
on her travelling-cloak, talked a great deal and very loudly to a short,
fat woman who was going with her little son to Frankfort, and who addressed
the blonde as "Frau Countess."
The name of the short woman was Frau Kampe, and the name of the
Countess, which I shortly learned, shall be told in due time. The
Countess complained of the fatigue of travelling; Frau Kampe, in a
sympathetic tone, declared that it was almost impossible to sleep in
the railway-carriages at this time of year, they were so overcrowded.
But the Countess rejoined with a laugh,--
"We had as much room as we wanted all the way; my husband secures that
by his fees. He is much too lavish, as I often tell him. Since I have
been travelling with him we have always had two railway-carriages, one
for me and my maid, and the other for him and his cigars. It has been
delightful."
"Even upon your wedding tour?" asked her handsome, dark companion,
looking up from her reading.
"Ha, ha, ha! Yes, even upon our wedding tour," said the other. "We were
a very prosaic couple, entirely independent of each other,--quite an
aristocratic match!" And she laughed again with much self-satisfaction.
"Where is the Herr Count?" asked Frau Kampe. "I should like to make his
acquaintance."
"Oh, he is not often to be seen; he is smoking on the platform
somewhere. I scarcely ever meet him; he never appears before the third
bell has rung. A very aristocratic marriage, you see, Frau Kampe,--such
a one as you read of."
The Countess's beautiful companion frowned, and the little Kampe boy
grinned from ear to ear,--I could not tell whether it was at the
aristocratic marriage or at the successful solution of an arithmetical
problem which he had just worked out on the paper cover of one of
Walter Scott's novels.
I must confess that I was curious to see the young husband who even
upon his marriage journey had preferred the society of his cigars to
that of his bride.
My aunt had missed the interesting conversation between Frau Kampe and
her young patroness; she had rushed out to see the cathedral in the
morning mist. I had manifested so little desire to join her in this
artistic but uncomfortable enterprise that she had dispensed with my
society. She now came back glowing with enthusiasm, and filled to
overflowing with all sorts of information as to Gothic architecture.
Scarcely had she seated herself to drink the coffee which I poured out
for her, when a tall young man, slightly stooping in his gait, and with
a very attractive, delicately-chiselled face, entered. Was he not----?
Well, whoever he was, he was the husband of the aristocratic marriage.
He exchanged a few words with the blonde Countess, and was about to
leave the room, when his glance fell upon my aunt.
"Baroness, you here!--what a delight!" he exclaimed, approaching her
hastily.
"Lato!" she almost screamed. She always talks a little loud away from
home, which annoys me.
It was, in fact, our old friend Lato Treurenberg. Before she had been
with him two minutes my aunt had forgotten all her prejudice against
him since his marriage,--and, what was more, had evidently forgotten
the marriage itself, for she whispered, leaning towards him with a sly
twinkle of her eye and a nod in the direction of the ladies,--
"What noble acquaintances you have made!--from Frankfort, or Hamburg?"
My heart was in my mouth. No one except Aunt Rosamunda could have made
such a blunder.
The words had hardly escaped her lips when she became aware of her
mistake, and she was covered with confusion. Lato flushed scarlet. At
that moment the departure of our train was announced, and Lato took a
hurried leave of us. I saw him outside putting the ladies into a
carriage, after which he himself got into another.
We travelled second-class, and therefore had the pleasure of sharing a
compartment with the man-servant and maid of the Countess Lato
Treurenberg.
My aunt took it all philosophically, while I, I confess, had much ado
to conceal my ungrateful and mean irritation.
I succeeded, however; I do not think my aunt even guessed at my state
of mind. She went to sleep; perhaps she dreamed of Cologne Cathedral.
I--ah, I no longer dreamed; I had long since awakened from my dreams,
and had rubbed my eyes and destroyed all my fine castles in the air.
The trip from which I had promised myself so much was over, and what
had been effected? Nothing, save a more distinct appreciation of our
straitened circumstances and an increase of my old gnawing discontent.
I recalled the delightful beginning of our trip, the long, dreamy
summer days in Vienna, the evening at Schoenbrunn. Again I saw about me
the fragrant twilight, and heard, through the plash of fountains and
the whispering of the linden leaves, the sound of distant military
music. I saw Harry--good heavens! how plainly I saw him, with his
handsome mouth, his large, serious eyes! How he used to look at me! And
I recalled how beautiful the world had seemed to me then, so beautiful
that I thought I could desire nothing better than to wander thus
through life, leaning upon his arm in the odorous evening air, with the
echo of distant military music in my ear.
Then ambition rose up before me and swept away all these lovely
visions, showing me another picture,--Harry, borne down by cares, in
narrow circumstances, his features sharpened by anxiety, with a pale,
patient face, jesting bitterly, his uniform shabby, though carefully
brushed. Ah, and should I not love him ten times more then than now! he
would always be the same noble, chivalric----
But I could not accept such a sacrifice from him. I could not; it would
be unprincipled. Specious phrases! What has principle to do with it? I
do not choose to be poor--no, I will not be poor, and therefore I am
glad that we were interrupted at the right moment in Vienna. He cannot
possibly imagine--ah, if he had imagined anything he would have written
to me, and we have not had a line from him since we left him. He would
have regretted it quite as much as I, if----
It never would occur to him to resign all his grandfather's wealth for
the sake of my golden hair. Young gentlemen are not given to such
romantic folly nowadays; though, to be sure, he is not like the rest of
them.
The result of all my reflections was an intense hatred for my
grandfather, who tyrannized over me thus instead of allowing affairs to
take their natural, delightful course; and another hatred, somewhat
less intense, for the brewery, which had absorbed half of Uncle Paul's
property,--that is, much more than would have been necessary to assure
me a happy future. When I saw from the railway the brew-house chimney
above the tops of the old lindens, I shook my fist at it.
My uncle was waiting for us at the station. He was so frankly rejoiced
to have us back again that it cheered my heart. His eyes sparkled as he
came to me after greeting my aunt. He gazed at me very earnestly, as if
he expected to perceive some great and pleasant change in me, and then,
putting his finger under my chin, turned my face from side to side.
Suddenly he released me.
"You are even paler than you were before!" he exclaimed, turning away.
He had expected the sea-bathing to work miracles.
"Do I not please you as I am, uncle dear?" I asked, putting my hand
upon his arm. Then he kissed me; but I could see plainly that his
pleasure was dashed.
Now we have been at home four days, and I am writing my memoirs,
because I am tired of having nothing to do. It does not rain to-day;
the sun is burning hot,--ah, how it parches the August grass! The
harvest was poor, the rye-straw is short, and the grains of wheat are
small. And everything was so promising in May! My uncle spends a great
deal of time over his accounts.
August 8.
Something quite extraordinary has happened. We have a visitor, a cousin
of Aunt Rosamunda's,--Baron Roderich Wenkendorf. He is a very amiable
old gentleman, about forty-five years old. He interests himself in
everything that interests me,--even in Carlyle's 'French Revolution,'
only he cannot bear it. Moreover, he is a Wagnerite; that is his only
disagreeable characteristic. Every day he plays duets with Aunt
Rosamunda from the 'Goetterdaemmerung,' which makes Uncle Paul and
Morl nervous. Besides, he paints, of course only for pleasure, but
very ambitiously. Last year he exhibited one of his pictures in
Vienna--Napoleon at St. Helena--no, Charles the Fifth in the cloister.
I remember, he cannot endure the Corsican upstart. He declares that
Napoleon had frightful manners. We had a dispute about it. We often
quarrel; but he entertains me, he pleases me, and so, perhaps----
August 10.
It might be worth while to take it into consideration. For my sake he
would take up his abode in Bohemia. I do not dislike him, and my aunt
says that marry whom you will you can never get used to him until after
marriage. Harry and I should always be just the same to each other; he
would always be welcome as a brother in our home, of course. I cannot
really see why people must marry because they love each other.