MISMATED.
About four months afterwards Lato stood with Selina Harfink before the
altar, in a large splendidly-decorated church filled with a crowd of
people, among whom Lato, as he walked towards the altar, mechanically
sought some familiar face,--at first in vain. At last he found some
one,--his old English teacher; then a horse-dealer with whom he had had
transactions; and then there in the background--how could they have
escaped him?--about a dozen ladies of his own circle. Some of them held
their eye-glasses to their eyes, then crowded together and whispered
among themselves. He turned away his head.
How dared they whisper about him! He had not sold himself; he was
marrying a girl whom he loved, who was accidentally rich!
The long train moved slowly up to the altar. Lato felt as if he were
dragging after him a burden that grew heavier with every step. He was
glad to be able to kneel down before the priest. He looked at his
bride. She knelt beside him, brilliantly beautiful, glowing with
passion, supremely content. In vain did he look for the shimmer of
tears in her eyes, for a trace of virginal shyness in her features, for
aught that could arouse sympathy and tenderness. No; about her full red
lips there was the tremor of gratified vanity and of triumphant--love!
Love?
From her face Lato's gaze wandered among the wedding-guests.
Strangers,--all strangers. His family was represented by his father and
the Countess Zriny, a distant cousin of Count Hans, who had once been
in love with him. Lato shivered. Solemn music resounded through the
church. Tears rose to his eyes. Suddenly a strange wailing sound
mingled with the strains of the chant. He looked up. Behind the tall
church windows fluttered something black, formless, like a mourning
banner. It was the broken top of a young tree, not quite torn from the
parent stem, waving to and fro in the wind.
And then the priest uttered the words that decided his future fate.
Before the departure of the young couple, and whilst Selina was making
ready for their journey, Count Hans had an opportunity for emotion. He
paced restlessly to and fro in the room where with Lato he was awaiting
the bride, trying vainly to say something cheering to the bridegroom,
something to arouse in him a consciousness of the great good fortune in
which he himself was a sharer. At last the voices of the bride and her
friends were heard approaching. The old nobleman went up to his son,
laid his hands tenderly upon his shoulders, and exclaimed, "Hold up
your head, old fellow: your life is before you, your life is before
you!"
And Lato repeated, "My life is before me----" The next instant the door
opened.
"The carriage is waiting!"
The last words that Selina said to her friends out of the window of the
carriage just before driving off were, "Do not forget to send me the
newspapers, if there is anything in them about our marriage."
The horses started, the carriage rolled on. How swiftly the wheels flew
over the stones! In the twilight, illumined only by the glare of the
carriage lamps, Lato could see the outline of Selina's figure as she
sat beside him, and the pure red and white of her face, only partially
concealed by her veil. He put his arm around her, and she nestled close
to him and raised her lips to his. His ardour was chilled by an
annoying sensation which he could not at first trace to its source. It
was produced by the strong perfume which Selina used. It was the same
perfume that had been a favourite with the actress who had been Lato's
first love, a handsome, fair woman, with an incomparable complexion. He
was suddenly reminded that Selina looked like her, and it vexed him.
Selina had long since forgotten it,--women almost always forget such
things,--but in the early times of her marriage it would not have
pleased her to think it a "distinguished one." She was desperately in
love with Lato, served him like a slave, racked what brain she had to
prepare surprises for him in the way of costly gifts, and left entirely
to him the disposal of her property. Not a penny would she call her
own. It all belonged to him,--all. It was quite touching to see her
penitent air when she applied to him, whispering, "I am a terrible
spendthrift, Lato. Do not be angry; but I want some more money. Will
you not pay my milliner's bill for me? And then, if I am very good,
you'll give me something to put in my portomonnaie,--a hundred
guilders,--only a hundred guilders, Lato darling?"
At first such scenes annoyed him terribly, and he tried hard to prevent
them. Then--well, he got used to them, even felt flattered, touched;
almost forgot whence came the money that was now so abundant with
him,--believed, at all events, that others had forgotten it,--and
played the lavish husband with his wife, bestowed costly gifts upon
her, and was pleased with her admiration of them.
All this time he lived in a kind of whirl. He had accustomed himself to
his young wife's endearments, as he had accustomed himself to travel
with a train of servants, to occupy the best rooms in the best hotels,
to drink the best wines, to smoke the best cigars, to have enormous
bills at the tailor's, to gratify all his expensive tastes, to spend
time in devising costly plans for the future, and, half involuntarily,
to do it all as if he no longer remembered a time when he had been
obliged to consider well every outlay.
In after-years his cheeks burned when he recalled this part of his
life,--but there was no denying the fact--he had for a time been
ostentatiously extravagant, and with his wife's money. Poor Lato!
Two years the whirl lasted; no longer.
At first he had tried to continue in the service, but the hardships of
a military life became burdensome to him as he yielded to the new sense
of luxury, and Selina, for her part, had no taste for the annoyances
that fell to her share in the nomadic life of a soldier's wife. He
resigned. They planned to purchase an estate, but could not agree upon
where to purchase; and they zigzagged about, travelling from Nice to
Rome, and from Rome to Paris, everywhere courteously received and
feted.
Then came their child. Selina, of course, passed the time of her
confinement in Vienna, to be under her mother's protection, and nearly
paid for her child's life with her own. When she recovered, her entire
nature seemed changed; she was always tired. Her charm had fled. Her
nose grew sharp, there were hard lines about her mouth, her face became
thin, while her figure broadened.
And her feeling for Lato underwent a fundamental alteration. Hers was
one of those sensual, cold-hearted natures which, when the first
tempest of passion has subsided, are incapable of any deeper sentiment,
and her tenderness towards her husband decreased with astonishing
celerity. Henceforth, vanity became her sole passion, and in Vienna she
was best able to satisfy it. The greatest enjoyment she derived from
her foreign travel and from her intercourse with distinguished people
lay in being able to discourse of them to her Vienna circle. She went
into the world more than ever,--the world which she had known from
childhood,--and dragged Lato with her. She was never weary of
displaying in financial society her new title, her distinguished
husband, her eccentric Parisian toilets.
Her world sufficed her. She never dreamed of asking admission to his
world. He made several melancholy attempts to introduce his wife among
his relatives; they failed lamentably. No one had any particular
objection to Selina. Had she been a poor girl all would have vied with
one another in doing something for her "for dear Lato's sake." But to
receive all that loud, vulgar, ostentatious Harfink tribe, no one could
require of them, not even the spirit of the age. Why did not Lato take
his wife to the country, and separate her from her family and their
influence? Then after some years, perhaps---- It was such an
unfortunate idea to settle in Vienna with his wife!
Yes, an unfortunate idea!
Wherever he showed himself with his wife, at the theatre, on the
Prater, everywhere, his acquaintances greeted him cordially from a
distance, and avoided him as if he had been stricken with a contagious
disease. On the occasion of the death of one of his aunts, he received
kind letters of condolence from relatives who lived in the next street!
Selina was not in the slightest degree annoyed by all this. It always
had been so in Austria, and probably always would be so. She had
expected nothing else. And Lato,--what had he expected? he who
understood such matters better than she did? A miracle, perhaps; at
least an exception in his favour.
His life in Vienna was torture to him. He made front against his former
world, defied it, even vilified it, and was possessed by a hungry
desire for what he had lost, for what he had prized so little when it
was naturally his own. If he could but have found something to replace
what he had resigned! Sincerity, earnestness, a deeper grasp of life,
elevation of thought,--all of which he might have found among the best
of the _bourgeoisie_,--he had sufficient intellect and refinement to
have enjoyed. Perhaps under such influences there was stuff in him of a
kind to be remodelled, and he might have become a useful, capable man.
But the circle in which he was forced to live was not that of the true
_bourgeoisie_. It was an inorganic mass of rich people and idlers
tossed together, all with titles of yesterday, who cared for nothing in
the world save money-getting and display,--a world in which the men
played at languid dulness and the women at frivolity, because they
thought it '_chic_,' in which all wanted to be 'fast,' to make a
sensation, to be talked of in the newspapers,--a world which, with
ridiculous exclusiveness, boasted of its anti-Semitic prejudices, and
in which the money acquired with such unnatural celerity had no room
for free play, so that the golden calf, confined within so limited an
arena, cut the most extraordinary capers. These people spent their time
in perfecting themselves in aristocratic demeanour and in talking
alternately of good manners, elegant toilets, and refined _menus_. The
genuine patrician world of trade held itself aloof from this tinsel
society, or only accidentally came into contact with it.
Lato's was a very unpleasant experience. The few people of solid worth
whom he met at his mother-in-law's avoided him. His sole pleasure in
life was his little son, who daily grew plumper, prettier, merrier. He
would stretch out his arms to his father when the merest baby, and crow
with delight. What a joy it was for Lato to clasp the little creature
in his arms!
The boy was just fifteen months old when the first real quarrel took
place between Lato and his wife, and estranged them for life.
Hitherto Lato had had the management and right of disposal of his
wife's property, and although more than one disagreeable remark anent
his extravagance had fallen from her lips he had taken pains not to
heed them. But one day he bought a pair of horses for which he had been
longing, paying an amateur price for them.
He was so delighted with his purchase that he immediately drove the
horses in the Prater to try them. On his return home he was received by
Selina with a very cross face. She had heard of his purchase, and asked
about the horses.
He praised them with enthusiasm. Forgetting for the moment all the
annoyances of his position, he cried, "Come and look at them!"
"No need," she made answer. "You did not ask my opinion before buying
them; it is of no consequence now whether I like them or not."
He bit his lip.
"What did you pay for them?" she asked. He told her the price; she
shrugged her shoulders and laughed contemptuously. "So they told me,"
she said. "I would not believe it!"
"When you have seen the horses you will not think the price too high,"
Lato said, controlling himself with difficulty.
"Oh, the price may be all right," she rejoined, sharply, "but the
extravagance seems great to me. Of course, if you have it----"
Everything swam before his eyes. He turned and left the room. That
very day he sold the horses, fortunately without loss. He brought the
bank-notes to his wife, who was seated at her writing-table, and put
them down before her. She was startled, and tried to compromise
matters. He was inflexible. For half a day the apple of discord in the
shape of a bundle of bank-notes lay on the writing-table, a bait for
dishonest servants; then it vanished within Selina's desk.
From that moment Lato was not to be induced to use a single penny of
his wife's money. He retrenched in all directions, living as well as he
could upon his own small income, derived from his maternal inheritance,
and paid him punctually by his father.
He was not in the least annoyed by the shabby part he was consequently
obliged to play among his wealthy associates, but when he recalled how
he had previously appropriated his wife's money his cheeks and ears
burned furiously.
There was no longer any talk of buying an estate. Instead, Selina's
mother bought one. The Treurenbergs could pass their summers there. Why
squander money on an estate? One magnificent castle in the family was
enough.
Shortly after Lato's estrangement from his wife his little son died of
the croup. This was the annihilation of his existence; the last sunbeam
upon his path faded; all around and within him was dark and cold.
He ponders all this as he rides from Komaritz to Dobrotschau. His
horse's pace grows slower and slower, his bridle hangs loose. Evening
has set in. Suddenly a sharp whirr rouses the lonely man. He looks up,
to see a belated bird hurrying home to its nest. His dreamy gaze
follows the black fluttering thing, and he wonders vaguely whether the
little wanderer will find his home and be received with affection by
his feathered family. The idle fancy makes him smile; but, "What is
there to laugh at?" he suddenly reflects. "Good heavens! a life
that warms itself beside another life, in which it finds peace and
comfort,--is not this the central idea of all existence, great or
small? Everything else in the world is but of secondary interest."
For him there is no human being in whom he can confide, to whom he can
turn for sympathy; for him there is only cheerless solitude.
The moon is setting; above the low mountain-spur its silver crescent
hovers in the liquid light green of the summer evening sky. The castle
of Dobrotschau looms up in the twilight.
"What is that? Along the road, towards the belated horseman, comes a
white figure. Can it be Selina? His heart beats fast; he is ready to be
grateful for the smallest proof of affection, so strong is the yearning
within him for a little human sympathy. No, it is not Selina; it is a
tall, slender girl. She has seen him, and hastens her steps.
"Lato!" calls an anxious, familiar voice.
"Olga!" he exclaims, and, springing from his horse, he approaches her.
Yes, it is Olga,--Olga in a white dress, without hat or gloves, and
with a look of anxiety in her eyes.
"Thank heaven!" she exclaims.
"My child, what is the matter?" he asks, half laughing.
"I have been so anxious," she confesses. "You are an hour and a half
late for dinner, and you know how foolish I am. All sorts of fancies
beset me. My imagination works swiftly."
"You are a dear child, Olga," he whispers, softly, taking her hand and
kissing it twice. Then they walk together towards the castle. He leads
his horse by the bridle, and listens to all the trifling matters of
which she tells him.
The world is no longer dreary and empty for him. Here is at least one
person who is not indifferent to his going and coming.
At Dobrotschau he finds the entire party in the garden-room. Selina and
the Pole are playing a duett. Dinner is over. They could not wait for
him, Selina explains, because the cook was trying to-day for the first
time a souffle of Parmesan cheese and truffles, which would have been
ruined by delay. But his hospitable mother-in-law adds,--
"Your dinner is all ready in the dining-room. I gave orders that it
should be served as soon as you came."
And Lato goes to the dining-hall, a magnificent oak-wainscoted room, in
which the chandelier, lighted in his honour, represents a round island
of light in a sea of black darkness. The soup-tureen is on the
sideboard: a servant lifts the cover, and the butler ladles out a
plateful of the soup and places it before Lato.
He takes a spoonful discontentedly, then motions to the butler to take
the plate away. Olga suddenly appears.
"Have you left any for me?" she asks. "I am fearfully hungry, for I
could not eat any dinner."
"From anxiety?" asks Lato.
"Yes," she says, laughing, "from anxiety." And she takes a seat
opposite him.
"Oh, you silly girl!" says Treurenberg, watching her with satisfaction
as she sips her soup. Lato himself suddenly has an access of appetite.