AN ENCOUNTER.
No one can bear pain with such heroic equanimity as can a woman when
her pride or her sense of dignity is aroused. Full twenty minutes have
elapsed since the light has been darkened in Zdena's sky, her thought
of the future embittered, and every joy blotted out of her existence.
During these twenty minutes she has talked and laughed; has walked in
the park with Paula and Harry; has pointed out to the betrothed couple
the comically human physiognomy of a large pansy in a flower-bed; has
looked on while Paula, plucking a marguerite, proceeds, with an arch
look at Harry, to consult that old-fashioned oracle, picking off the
petals one by one, with, "He loves me, he loves me not." Yes, when
urged to partake of some refreshment, she has even delicately pared and
cut up with a silver knife a large peach, although she could not
swallow a mouthful of it. How could she, when she felt as if an iron
hand were throttling her!
And now she is in the carriage again, driving towards home. As she
drove off she had a last glimpse of Paula and Harry standing side by
side in the picturesque court-yard before the castle, beside the
fountain, that vies with the lindens in murmuring its old tales,--tales
that no longer interest any one. They stood there together,--Paula
waving her hand and calling parting words after the visitor; Harry
stiff and mute, lifting his cap. Then Paula put her hand upon his arm
to go back into the castle with him,--him, her lover, her property!
And Zdena is alone at last. The pain in her heart is becoming torture.
Her breath comes short and quick. At the same time she has the
restless, impatient sensation which is experienced by all who are
unaccustomed to painful emotion, before they can bring themselves
to believe in the new and terrible trouble in which they find
themselves,--a sensation of being called upon to shake off some burden
unjustly imposed. But the burden can neither be shifted nor shaken off.
Her consciousness is the burden, the burden of which she cannot be rid
except with life itself. Life,--it has often seemed to her too short;
and, in spite of all her transitory girlish discontent, she has
sometimes railed at fate for according to mankind so few years in which
to enjoy this lovely, sunny, laughing world. But now her brief earthly
future stretches out endlessly before her,--an eternity in which joy is
dead and everything black and gloomy.
"Good God! will this torture last forever?" she asks herself. No, it is
not possible that such pain can last long: she will forget it, she
must! It seems to her that she can at least be rid of some of it if she
can only weep her fill in solitude. Yes, she must cry it out before she
goes back to Zirkow, before she meets again the keen, kindly eyes that
would fain pry into her very soul.
Meanwhile, she has told the coachman to drive to Komaritz. The carriage
rolls through the long village. The air tastes of straw and hay; the
rhythmic beat of the thrashers' flails resounds from the peasants'
small barns. Zdena stops her ears; she cannot bear the noise,--the
noise and the garish, cruel light. At last the village lies behind her.
The sound of flails is still heard in the distance; to Zdena they seem
to be beating the summer to death with clubs.
The carriage drives on, drives towards the forest. On the edge of the
wood stands a red-and-white signpost, the two indexes of which point in
opposite directions through the depths of the leafy thicket: one
pathway is tolerably smooth, and leads to Komaritz; the other, starting
from the same point, is rough, and leads to Zirkow.
She calls to the coachman. He stops the horses.
"Drive on to Komaritz and leave the plums there," she orders him, "and
I will meanwhile take the short path and walk home." So saying, she
descends from the vehicle.
He sees her walk off quickly and with energy; sees her tall, graceful
figure gradually diminish in the perspective of the Zirkow woodland
path. For a while he gazes after her, surprised, and then he obeys her
directions.
If Krupitschka had been upon the box he would have opposed his young
mistress's order as surely as he would have disobeyed it obstinately.
He would have said, "The Baroness does not understand that so young a
lady ought not to go alone through the forest--the Herr Baron would be
very angry with me if I allowed it, and I will not allow it."
But Schmidt is a new coachman. He does as he is bidden, making no
objection.
Zdena plunges into the wood, penetrates deeper and deeper into the
thicket, aimlessly, heedlessly, except that she longs to find a spot
where she can hide her despair from human eyes. She does not wish to
see the heavens, nor the sun, nor the buzzing insects and wanton
butterflies on the edge of the forest.
At last the shade is deep enough for her. The dark foliage shuts out
the light; scarcely a hand's-breadth of blue sky can be seen among the
branches overhead. She throws herself on the ground and sobs. After a
while she raises her head, sits up, and stares into space.
"How is it possible? How could it have happened?" she thinks. "I cannot
understand. From waywardness? from anger because I was a little silly?
Oh, God! oh, God! Yes, I take pleasure in luxury, in fine clothes, in
the world, in attention. I really thought for the moment that these
were what I liked best,--but I was wrong. How little should I care for
those things, without him! Oh, God! oh, God! How could he find it in
his heart to do it!" she finally exclaims, while her tears flow afresh
down her flushed cheeks.
Suddenly she hears a low crackling in the underbrush. She starts and
looks up. Before her stands an elderly man of medium height, with a
carefully-shaven, sharp-cut face, and a reddish-gray peruke. His tall
stove-pipe hat is worn far back on his head, and his odd-looking
costume is made up of a long green coat, the tails of which he carries
under his left arm, a pair of wide, baggy, nankeen trousers, a long
vest, with buttons much too large, and a pair of clumsy peasant shoes.
The most remarkable thing about him is the sharp, suspicious expression
of his round, projecting eyes.
"What do you want of me?" stammers Zdena, rising, not without secret
terror.
"I should like to know what you are crying for. Perhaps because you
have quarrelled with your cousin Henry," he says, with a sneer.
He addresses her familiarly: who can he be? Evidently some one of
unsound mind; probably old Studnecka from X----, a former brewer, who
writes poems, and who sometimes thinks himself the prophet Elisha,
under which illusion he will stop people in the road and preach to
them. This must be he. She has heard that so long as his fancies are
humoured he is perfectly gentle and harmless, but that if irritated by
contradiction he has attacks of maniacal fury, and has been known to
lay violent hands upon those who thus provoke him.
Before she finds the courage to answer him, he comes a step nearer to
her, and repeats his question with a scornful smile which discloses a
double row of faultless teeth.
"How do you know that I have a cousin?" asks Zdena, still more alarmed,
and recoiling a step or two.
"Oh, I know everything, just as the gypsies do."
"Of course this is the prophet," the girl thinks, trembling. She longs
to run away, but tells herself that the prudent course will be to try
to keep him in good humour until she has regained the path out of this
thicket, where she has cut herself off from all human aid. "Do you
know, then, who I am?" she asks, trying to smile.
"Oh, yes," replies this strange prophet, nodding his head. "I have long
known you, although you do not know me. You are the foolish daughter of
a foolish father."
"How should he have any knowledge of me or of my family?" she reflects.
The explanation is at hand. She remembers distinctly that the prophet
Studnecka was one of the eccentric crowd that Baron Franz Leskjewitsch
was wont to assemble about him for his amusement during the three or
four weeks each year when the old man made the country around unsafe by
his stay here.
"You know my grandfather too, then?" she continues.
"Yes, a little," the old man muttered. "Have you any message to send
him? I will take it to him for you."
"I have nothing to say to him!--I do not know him!" she replies. Her
eyes flash angrily, and she holds her head erect.
"H'm I he does not choose to know you," the old man remarks, looking at
her still more keenly.
"The unwillingness is mutual. I have not the least desire to know
anything of him," she says, with emphasis.
"Ah!--indeed!" he says, with a lowering glance from beneath his shaggy
eyebrows. "Shall I tell him so, from you?"
"If you choose!" she replies. Suddenly an idea strikes her; she
observes him in her turn more keenly than hitherto, his face, his
figure, his hands, tanned and neglected, but slender and shapely, with
almond-shaped nails. There is something familiar in his features.
Is he really the brewer Studnecka, the fool? And if no fool, who can it
be that ventures thus to address her? Something thrills her entire
frame. A portrait recurs to her memory,--a portrait of the elder
Leskjewitsch, which, since the family embroilment, has hung in the
lumber-room at Zirkow. There is not a doubt that this crazy old
creature is her grandfather.
He sees that she has recognized him.
Her bearing has suddenly become haughty and repellent. She adjusts her
large straw hat, which has been hanging at the back of her neck.
"Then I am to tell him from you that you do not wish to have anything
to do with him?" the old man asks again.
"Yes." Her voice is hard and dull.
"And besides," he asks, "have you nothing else to say to him?" He looks
at her as if to read her soul.
She returns his look with eyes in whose brown depths the tears so
lately shed are still glistening. She knows that she is putting the
knife to her own throat, but what matters it? The gathered bitterness
of years overflows her heart and rises to her lips.
"And besides,"--she speaks slowly and provokingly,--"besides, I should
like to tell him that I consider his conduct cold-hearted, petty, and
childish; that after he has tormented to death two people, my father
and my mother, he might, in his old age, attempt by love and kindness
to make some amends for his wickedness, instead of going on weaving
fresh misery out of his wretched hatred and obstinacy, and--that never
whilst I live will I make one advance towards him!" She bows slightly,
turns, and leaves him. He looks after her graceful figure as it slowly
makes its way among the underbrush and is finally lost to sight.
"A splendid creature! What a carriage! what a figure! and what a
bewitching face! No wonder she has turned the brain of that silly lad
at Komaritz. He knows what's what. The child shows race," he mutters;
"she's a genuine Leskjewitsch. All Fritz.--Poor Fritz!"
The old man passes his hand across his forehead, and then gazes after
her once more. Is that her blue dress glimmering among the trees? No,
it is a bit of sky. She has vanished.
Zdena manages to slip up to her own room unobserved when she reaches
Zirkow. She makes her first appearance at table, her hair charmingly
arranged, dressed as carefully as usual, talkative, gay. The most acute
observer would hardly suspect that a few hours previously she had all
but cried her eyes out.
"And did you bring us the piece of news from Dobrotschau?" asks Frau
Rosamunda during the soup, which Zdena leaves untasted.
"Oh, yes. And most extraordinary it is," she replies. "Paula Harfink is
betrothed."
"To whom?"
"To Harry," says Zdena, without the quiver of an eyelash, calmly
breaking her bread in two as she speaks.
"To Harry? Impossible!" shouts the major.
"Not at all," Zdena declares, with a smile. "I saw him with her. She
already calls him by his first name."
"I do not understand the world nowadays," growls the old soldier,
adding, under his breath, "That d--d driving about in the moonlight!"
Frau von Leskjewitsch and her cousin Wenkendorf content themselves
during the remainder of the meal with discussing the annoying
consequences for the family from such a connection, partaking,
meanwhile, very comfortably of the excellent dinner. The major glances
continually at his niece. It troubles him to see her smile so
perpetually. Is it possible that she is not taking the matter more
seriously to heart?
After dinner, when Frau von Leskjewitsch has carried her cousin off to
the greenhouse to show him her now gloxinias, the major chances to go
into the drawing-room, which he supposes empty. It is not so. In the
embrasure of a window stands a figure, motionless as a statue,--quite
unaware of the approach of any one. The major's heart suffers a sharp
pang at sight of that lovely, tender profile, the features drawn
and pinched with suppressed anguish. He would like to go up to his
darling,--to take her in his arms. But he does not dare to do so. How
can one bestow caresses upon a creature sore and crushed in every limb?
He leaves the room on tiptoe, as one leaves the room of an invalid who
must not be disturbed.
"God have mercy on the poor child!" he murmurs.