A QUARREL.
Meanwhile, Harry has rushed out into the garden. He is very restless,
very warm, very much agitated. It never occurs to him that his uncle
has been chaffing him a little; he cannot suspect that the major has
any knowledge of his sentiments.
"She cannot be so worthless!" he consoles himself by reflecting, while
his eyes search for her in the distance.
With this thought filling his mind, the young officer hurries on. He
does not find her at first; she is not in the honeysuckle arbour.
The sultriness of the August afternoon weighs upon the dusty vegetation
of the late summer. The leaves of the trees and shrubs droop wearily;
the varied luxuriance of bloom is past; the first crop of roses has
faded, the next has not yet arrived at maturity. Only a few red
verbenas and zinnias gleam forth from the dull green monotony.
At a turn of the path Harry suddenly starts, and pauses,--he has found
what he is looking for.
Directly in the centre of the hawthorn-bordered garden-path there is an
easel weighted with an enormous canvas, at which, working away
diligently, stands a gentleman, of whom Harry can see nothing but a
slightly round-shouldered back, the fluttering ribbons of a Scotch cap
set on the back of a head covered with short gray hair, and a gigantic
palette projecting beyond the left elbow; while at some distance from
the easel, clearly defined against the green background, stands a tall,
graceful, maidenly figure draped in a loose, fantastic robe, her arms
full of wild poppies, a large hat wreathed with vine-leaves on her
small head, her golden-brown hair loose upon her shoulders,--Zdena! Her
eyes meet Harry's: she flushes crimson,--the poppies slip from her arms
and fall to the ground.
"You here!" she murmurs, confusedly, staring at him. She can find no
more kindly words of welcome, and her face expresses terror rather than
joyful surprise, as a far less sharp-sighted lover than Harry
Leskjewitsch could not fail to observe.
He makes no reply to her words, but says, bluntly, pointing to the
artist at the easel, "Be kind enough to introduce me."
With a choking sensation in her throat, and trembling lips, Zdena
stammers the names of her two adorers, the old one and the young one.
The gentlemen bow,--Harry with angry formality, Baron Wenkendorf with
formal amiability.
"Aunt Rosa tells me to ask you to come to the drawing-room," Harry
says, dryly.
"Have any guests arrived?" asks Zdena.
"Only my sister and Aunt Zriny."
"Oh, then I must dress myself immediately!" she exclaims, and before
Harry is aware of it she has slipped past him and into the house.
Baron Wenkendorf pushes his Scotch cap a little farther back from his
forehead, which gives his face a particularly amazed expression, and
gazes with the same condescending benevolence, first at the vanishing
maidenly figure, and then at the picture on the easel; after which he
begins to put up his painting-materials. Harry assists him to do so,
but leaves the making of polite remarks entirely to the "elderly
gentleman." He is not in the mood for anything of the kind. He sees
everything at present as through dark, crimson glass.
Although Zdena's distress arises from a very different cause from her
cousin's, it is none the less serious.
"Oh, heavens!" she thinks to herself, as she hurries to her room to
arrange her dishevelled hair, "why must he come before I have an answer
ready? He surely will not insist upon an immediate decision! It would
be terrible! Anything but a forced decision; that is the worst thing in
the world."
Such, however, does not seem to be the opinion of her hot-blooded
cousin. When, a quarter of an hour afterwards, she goes out into the
corridor and towards the drawing-room door, she observes a dark figure
standing in the embrasure of a window. The figure turns towards her,
then approaches her.
"Harry! ah!" she exclaims, with a start; "what are you doing here? Are
you waiting for anybody?"
"Yes," he replies, with some harshness, "for you!"
"Ah!" And, without looking at him, she hurries on to the door of the
drawing-room.
"There is no one there," he informs her; "they have all gone to the
summer-house in the garden. Wenkendorf proposes to read aloud the
libretto of 'Parzifal.'" He pauses.
"And did you stay here to tell me this?" she stammers, trying to pass
him, on her way to the steps leading into the garden. "It was very kind
of you; you seem destined to play the part of sheep-dog to-day, to
drive the company together."
They go into the garden, and the buzz of voices reaches their ears from
the summer-house. They have turned into a shady path, above which
arches the foliage of the shrubs on either side. Suddenly Harry pauses,
and seizing his cousin's slender hands in both his own, he gazes
steadily and angrily into her eyes, saying, in a suppressed voice,--
"Zdena, how can you hurt me so?"
Her youthful blood pulsates almost as fiercely as does his own; now,
when the moment for an explanation has come, and can no longer be
avoided, now, one kind word from him, and all the barriers which with
the help of pure reason she has erected to shield her from the
insidious sweetness of her dreams will crumble to dust. But Harry does
not speak this word: he is far too agitated to speak it. Instead of
touching her heart, his harshness irritates her pride. Throwing back
her head, she darts an angry glance at him from her large eyes.
"I do not know what you mean."
"I mean that you are letting that old coxcomb make love to you," he
murmurs, angrily.
She lifts her eyebrows, and replies, calmly, "Yes!"
The young officer continues to gaze searchingly into her face.
"You are thoughtless," he says, slowly, with emphasis. "In your eyes
Wenkendorf is an old man; but he does not think himself so old as you
think him, and--and----" Suddenly, his forced composure giving way, he
bursts forth: "At the least it is ridiculous! it is silly to behave as
you are doing!"
In the entire dictionary Harry could have found no word with which to
describe Zdena's conduct that would have irritated her more than
"silly." If he had called her unprincipled, devilish, odious, cruel,
she could have forgiven him; but "silly!"--that word she never can
forgive; it makes her heart burn and smart as salt irritates an open
wound.
"I should like to know by what right you call me thus to account!" she
exclaims, indignantly.
"By what right?" he repeats, beside himself. "Can you ask that?"
She taps the gravel of the pathway defiantly with her foot and is
obstinately silent.
"What did you mean by your treatment of me in Vienna? what did you mean
by all your loving looks and kind words? what did you mean when you--on
the evening before you left----"
Zdena's face is crimson, her cheeks and ears burn with mortification.
"We grew up together like brother and sister," she murmurs. "I have
always considered you as a brother----"
"Ah, indeed! a brother!" His pulses throb wildly; his anger well-nigh
makes him forget himself. Suddenly an ugly idea occurs to him,--an
odious suspicion. "Perhaps you were not aware there in Vienna that by a
marriage with you I should resign my brilliant prospects?"
They confront each other, stiff, unbending, both angry, each more ready
to offend than to conciliate.
Around them the August heat broods over the garden; the bushes, the
flowers, the shrubbery, all cast black shadows upon the smooth-shaven,
yellowing grass, where here and there cracks in the soil are visible.
Everything is quiet, but in the distance can be heard the gardener
filling his large watering-can at the pump, and the jolting along the
road outside the garden of the heavy harvest-wagons laden with grain.
"Did you know it then?" he asks again, more harshly, more
contemptuously.
Of course she knew it, quite as well as she knows it now; but what use
is there in her telling him so, when he asks her about it in such a
tone?
Instead of replying, she frowns haughtily and shrugs her shoulders.
For one moment more he stands gazing into her face; then, with a bitter
laugh, he turns from her and strides towards the summer-house.
"Harry!" she calls after him, in a trembling undertone, but his blood
is coursing too hotly in his veins--he does not hear her. Although he
is one of the softest-hearted of men, he is none the less one of the
most quick-tempered and obstinate.
We leave it to the reader to judge whether the major would have been
very well satisfied with this result of his cunning diplomacy.
Whilst the two young people have been thus occupied in playing at
hide-and-seek with their emotions and sentiments, the little
summer-house, where the reading was to be held, has been the scene of
a lively dispute. Countess Zriny and Baron Wenkendorf have made mutual
confession of their sentiment with regard to Wagner.
The Countess is a vehement opponent of the prophet of Bayreuth, in the
first place because in her youth she was a pupil of Cicimara's and
consequently cannot endure the 'screaming called singing' introduced by
Wagner; secondly, because Wagner's operas always give her headache; and
thirdly, because she has noticed that his operas are sure to exercise
an immoral influence upon those who hear them.
Wenkendorf, on the contrary, considers Wagner a great moral reformer,
the first genius of the century in Germany,--Bismarck, of course,
excepted. As he talks he holds in his hand the thick volume of Wagner's
collected librettos, with his forefinger on the title-page of
'Parzifal,' impatiently awaiting the moment when he can begin to read
aloud.
Hitherto, since the Countess and Wenkendorf are both well-bred people,
their lively dispute has been conducted in rather a humorous fashion,
but finally Wenkendorf suggests a most reprehensible and, in the eyes
of the Countess, unpardonable idea.
"Whatever may be thought of Wagner's work, it cannot be denied," he
says, with an oratorical flourish of his hand, "that he is at the head
of the greatest musical revolution ever known; that he has, so to
speak, delivered music from conventional Catholicism, overladen as it
is with all sorts of silly old-world superstition. He is, if I may so
express myself, the Luther of music."
At the word 'Luther,' uttered in raised tones, the bigoted Countess
nearly faints away. In her eyes, Luther is an apostate monk who married
a nun, a monster whom she detests.
"Oh, if you so compare him, Wagner is indeed condemned!" she exclaims,
flushing with indignation, and trembling through all her mass of flesh.
At this moment Zdena and her cousin enter. Countess Zriny feels it her
duty to embrace the girl patronizingly. Hedwig says something to her
about her new gown.
"Did you get it in Paris?" she asks. "I saw one like it in Vienna last
summer,--but it is very pretty. You carry yourself much better than you
used to, Zdena,--really a great improvement!--a great improvement!"
At last all are seated. Baron Wenkendorf clears his throat, and opens
the portly volume.
"Now we can begin," Frau Rosamunda observes.
The Baron begins. He reads himself into a great degree of enthusiasm,
and is just pronouncing the words,--
"Then after pain's drear night
Comes morning's glorious light;
Before me gleams
Brightly the sacred wave,
The blessed daylight beams,
From night of pain to save
Gawain----"
when Frau Rosamunda, who has been rummaging in her work-basket, rises.
"What is the matter, Rosamunda?" the Baron asks, impatiently. He is the
only one who addresses her by her beautiful baptismal name unmutilated.
"Excuse me, my dear Roderich, but I cannot find my thimble. Zdena, be
so kind as to go and get me my thimble."
While Zdena has gone to look for it, Frau von Leskjewitsch turns to her
cousin, who is rather irritated by this interruption, and exclaims,
"Very interesting!--oh, extremely interesting! Do you not think so?"
turning for confirmation of her opinion to the other listeners. But the
other listeners do not respond. Countess Zriny, who, with her hands as
usual encased in Swedish gloves, is knitting with thick, wooden needles
something brown for the poor, only drops her double chin majestically
upon her breast, and Harry--usually quite unsurpassable in the
well-bred art of being bored with elegance and decorum--is tugging
angrily at his moustache.
Zdena shortly returns with the missing thimble. The reading begins
afresh, and goes quite smoothly for a time; Wenkendorf is satisfied
with his audience.
"Oh, wonderful and sacred one!" he is reading, with profound emotion.
Everyone is listening eagerly. Hark! A scratching noise, growing louder
each minute, and finally ending in a pounding at the summer-house door,
arouses the little company from its rapt attention. A smile lights up
Frau Rosamunda's serene features:
"It is Morl. Let him in, Harry." Morl, the hostess's black poodle, is
admitted, goes round the circle, laying his paw confidingly upon the
knee of each member of it in turn, is petted and caressed by his
mistress, and finally, after he has vainly tried to oust the Countess
Zriny from the corner of the sofa which he considers his own special
property, establishes himself, with a low growl, in the other corner of
that piece of furniture.
Wenkendorf, meanwhile, drums the march from 'Tannhaeuser' softly on the
cover of his thick book and frowns disapprovingly. Harry observes his
annoyance with satisfaction, watching him the while attentively, and
reflecting on the excellent match in view of which Zdena has forgotten
her fleeting attachment for the playmate of her childhood.
"A contemptible creature!" he says to himself: "any man is good enough
to afford her amusement. Who would have thought it? Fool that I was!
I'm well out of it,--yes, really well out of it."
And whilst he thus seriously attempts to persuade himself that, under
the circumstances, nothing could be more advantageous for him than this
severance of all ties with his beautiful, fickle cousin, his heart
burns like fire in his breast. He has never before felt anything like
this torture. His glance wanders across to where Zdena sits sewing,
with bent head and feverish intentness, upon a piece of English
embroidery.
The reading is interrupted again,--this time by Krupitschka, who wants
more napkins for afternoon tea. Wenkendorf has to be assured with great
emphasis that they all think the text of 'Parzifal' extremely
interesting before he can be induced to open the book again. Suddenly
the gravel outside crunches beneath approaching footsteps. The major's
voice is heard, speaking in courteous tones, and then another, strange
voice, deep and guttural. The summer-house door is opened.
"A surprise, Rosel," the major explains. "Baroness Paula!"
The first to go forward and welcome the young lady cordially is Harry.