"POOR LATO!"
Five hours have passed since Zdena's arrival in Komaritz. Harry has
been very good; that is, he has scarcely made an appearance; perhaps
because he is conscious that when he is with Zdena he can hardly take
his eyes off her, which, "under existing circumstances," might strike
others as, to Bay the least, extraordinary.
After dinner he goes off partridge shooting, inviting his younger
brother, who is devoted to him and whom he spoils like a mother, to
accompany him. But Vips, as the family prefer to call him instead of
Vladimir, although usually proud and happy to be thus distinguished by
his elder brother, declines his invitation today. In fact, he has
fallen desperately in love with Zdena. He is lying at her feet on the
steps leading from the dwelling-room into the garden. His hair is
beautifully brushed, and he has on his best coat.
The Countess Zriny is in her room, writing to her father confessor;
Fraeulein Laut is at the piano, practising something by Brahms, to which
musical hero she is almost as much devoted as is Rosamunda to her
idolized Wagner; and Heda is sitting beside her cousin on the
garden-steps, manufacturing with praiseworthy diligence crochetted
stars of silk.
"What do you really think of Harry's betrothal, Zdena?" she begins at
last, after a long silence.
At this question the blood rushes to Zdena's cheeks; nevertheless her
answer sounds quite self-possessed.
"What shall I say? I was very much surprised."
"So was I," Heda confesses. "At first I was raging, for, after all,
_elle n'est pas de notre monde_. But lately so many young men of our
set have married nobodies that one begins to be accustomed to it,
although I must say I am by no means enchanted with it yet. One's own
brother,--it comes very near; but it is best to shut one's eyes in such
cases. Setting aside the _mesalliance_, there is no objection to make
to Paula. She is pretty, clover, frightfully cultivated,--too
cultivated: it is rather bad form,--and for the rest, if she would only
dress a little better, she would be quite presentable. And then she
makes such advances; it is touching. The last time I dined at
Dobrotschau I found in my napkin a butterfly pendant, with little
sapphires and rubies in its diamond wings. I must show it to you; 'tis
delicious," she rattles on.
"And what did you find in your napkin, Vips?" asks Zdena, who seems to
herself to be talking of people with whom she has not the slightest
connection, so strange is the whole affair.
"I? I was not at the dinner," says the boy.
"Not invited?" Zdena rallies him.
"Not invited!" Vips draws down the corners of his mouth scornfully.
"Oh, indeed! not invited! Why, they invited the entire household,--even
her!" He motions disdainfully towards the open door, through which
Fraeulein Laut can be seen sitting at the piano. "Yes, we were even
asked to bring Hector. But I stayed at home, because I cannot endure
those Harfinks."
"Ah! your sentiments are also opposed to the _mesalliance_?" Zdena goes
on, ironically.
"_Mesalliance!_" shouts Vips. "You know very well that I am a Liberal!"
Vips finished reading "Don Carlos" about a fortnight ago, and even
before then showed signs of Liberal tendencies.
The previous winter, when he attended the representation, at a theatre
in Bohemia, of a new play of strong democratic colouring, he applauded
all the freethinking tirades with such vehemence that his tutor was at
last obliged, to the great amusement of the public, to hold back his
hands.
"Ah, indeed, you are Liberal?" says Zdena. "I am delighted to hear it."
"Of course I am; but every respectable man must be a bit of an
aristocrat," Vips declares, grandly, "and I cannot endure that Harry
should marry that Paula. I told him so to his face; and I am not going
to his wedding. I cannot understand why he takes her, for he's in
love----" He suddenly pauses. Two gentlemen are coming through the
garden towards the steps,--Harry and Lato.
Lato greets Zdena cordially. Heda expresses her surprise at Harry's
speedy return from his shooting, and he, who always now suspects some
hidden meaning in her remarks, flushes and frowns as he replies, "I saw
Treurenberg in the distance, and so I turned back. Besides, the
shooting all went wrong to-day," he adds, with a compassionate glance
at the large hound now stretched out at his master's feet at the bottom
of the steps. "He would scarcely stir: I cannot understand it, he is
usually so fresh and gay, and loves to go shooting more than all the
others; to-day he was almost sullen, and lagged behind,--hey, old
boy?" He stoops and strokes the creature's neck, but the dog seems
ill-tempered, and snaps at him.
"What! snap--snap at me! that's something new," Harry exclaims,
frowning; then, seizing the animal by the collar, he shakes it
violently and hurls it from him. "Be off!" he orders, sternly. The dog,
as if suddenly ashamed, looks back sadly, and then walks slowly away,
with drooping ears and tail. "I don't know what is the matter with the
poor fellow!" Harry says, really troubled.
"He walks strangely; he seems stiff," Vladimir remarks, looking after
the dog. "It seems to hurt him."
"Some good-for-nothing boy must have thrown a stone at him and bruised
his back," Harry decides.
"You had better be careful with that dog," Heda now puts in her word.
"Several dogs hereabouts have gone mad, and one roamed about the
country for some time before he could be caught and killed."
"Pray, hush!" Harry exclaims, almost angrily, to his sister, with whom
he is apt to disagree: "you always forebode the worst. If a fly stings
one you are always sure that it has just come from an infected horse or
cow."
"You have lately been so irritable, I cannot imagine what is the matter
with you," lisps Hedwig.
Harry frowns.
Lato, meanwhile, has paid no heed to these remarks: he is apparently
absorbed in his own thoughts, as, sitting on a lower step, he has been
drawing with the handle of his riding-whip cabalistic signs in the
gravel of the path. Now he looks up.
"I have a letter for you from Paula,--here it is," he observes, handing
Harry a thick packet wrapped in light-blue tissue paper. While Harry,
with a dubious expression of countenance, drops the packet into his
coat-pocket, Lato continues: "Paula has all sorts of fancies about your
absence. You have not been to Dobrotschau for two days. She is afraid
you are ill, and that you are keeping it from her lest she should be
anxious. She is coming over here with my wife tomorrow afternoon to
look after you--I mean, to pay the ladies a visit." After Lato has
given utterance to these words in a smooth monotone, his expression
suddenly changes: his features betoken embarrassment, as, leaning
towards Harry, he whispers, "I should like to speak with you alone. Can
you give me a few minutes?"
Shortly afterwards, Harry rises and takes his friend with him to his
own room, a spacious vaulted chamber next to the dining-room, which he
shares with his young brother.
"Well, old fellow?" he begins, encouragingly, clapping Lato on the
shoulder. Lato clears his throat, then slowly takes his seat in an
arm-chair beside a table covered with a disorderly array of Greek and
Latin books and scribbled sheets of paper. Harry sits opposite him, and
for a while neither speaks.
The silence is disturbed only by the humming of the bees, and by the
scratching at the window of an ancient apricot-tree, which seems
desirous to call attention to what it has to say, but desists with a
low rustle that sounds like a sigh. The tall clock strikes five; it is
not late, and yet the room is dim with a gray-green light; the sunbeams
have hard work to penetrate the leafy screen before the windows.
"Well?" Harry again says, at last, gently twitching his friend's
sleeve.
"It is strange," Treurenberg begins; his voice has a hard, forced
sound, he affects an indifference foreign to his nature, "but since my
marriage I have had excellent luck at play. To speak frankly, it has
been very convenient. Do not look so startled; wait until you are in my
position. In the last few days, however, fortune has failed me. In my
circumstances this is extremely annoying." He laughs, and flicks a
grain of dust from his coat-sleeve.
Harry looks at him, surprised. "Ah! I understand. You want money. How
much? If I can help you out I shall be glad to do so."
"Six hundred guilders," says Lato, curtly.
Harry can scarcely believe his ears. How can Lato come to him for such
a trifle?
"I can certainly scrape together that much for you," he says,
carelessly, and going to his writing-table he takes a couple of
bank-notes out of a drawer. "Here!" and he offers the notes to his
friend.
Lato hesitates for a moment, as if in dread of the money, then takes
it, and puts it in his pocket.
"Thanks," he murmurs, hoarsely, and again there is a silence, which
Lato is the first to break. "Why do you look at me so inquiringly?" he
exclaims, almost angrily.
"Forgive me, Lato, we are such old friends."
"What do you want to know?"
"I was only wondering how a man in your brilliant circumstances could
be embarrassed for so trifling a sum as six hundred guilders!"
"A man in my brilliant circumstances!" Lato repeats, bitterly. "Yes,
you think, as does everybody else, that I am still living upon my
wife's money. But you are mistaken. I tried it, indeed, for a while,
but I was not made to play that part, no! It was different at first; my
wife wished that I should have the disposal of her means, and I half
cheated myself into the belief that her millions belonged to me. She
came to me for every farthing. I used to rally her upon her
extravagance; I played at magnanimity, and forgave her, and made her
costly presents--yes--good heavens, how disgusting! But that is long
since past; we have separate purses at present, thank God! I am often
too shabby nowadays for the grand folk at Dobrotschau, but that does
not trouble me." He drums nervously upon the table.
Harry looks more and more amazed. "But then I cannot see why--" he
murmurs, but lacks the courage to finish the sentence.
"I know what you wish to say," Lato continues, bitterly. "You wonder
why, under these circumstances, I cannot shake off the old habit. What
would you have? Hitherto I have won almost constantly; now my luck has
turned, and yet I cannot control myself. Those who have not this cursed
love of play in their blood cannot understand it, but play is the only
thing in the world in which I can become absorbed,--the only thing that
can rid me of all sorts of thoughts which I never ought to entertain.
There! now you know!"
He draws a deep, hoarse breath, then laughs a hard, wooden laugh. Harry
is very uncomfortable: he has never before seen Lato like this. It
distresses him to notice how his friend has changed in looks of late.
His eyes are hollow and unnaturally bright, his lips are dry and
cracked as from fever, and he is more restless than is his wont.
"Poor Lato! what fresh trouble have you had lately?" asks Harry,
longing to express his sympathy.
Lato flushes crimson, then nervously curls into dog's-ears the leaves
of a Greek grammar on the table, and shrugs his shoulders.
"Oh, nothing,--disagreeable domestic complications," he mutters,
evasively.
"Nothing new has happened, then?" asks Harry, looking at him keenly.
Lato cannot endure his gaze. "What could have happened?" he breaks
forth.
"How do you get along with your wife?"
"Not at all,--worse every day," Treurenberg says, dryly. "And now comes
this cursed, meddling Polish jackanapes----"
"If the gentlemen please, the Baroness sends me to say that coffee is
served." With these words Blasius makes his appearance at the door.
Lato springs hastily to his feet. The conversation is at an end.