INTERRUPTED HARMONY.
Dinner is over, and the gilt chandelier in the garden-room, where
coffee is usually served, is lighted. Selina is sitting at the piano
accompanying Fainacky, who is singing. Paula is in her own rooms with
her mother, inspecting the latest additions to her trousseau, just
arrived from Vienna. Lato has remained in the garden-room, where he
endures with heroic courage the sound of Fainacky's voice as he whines
forth his sentimental French songs, accentuating them in the most
touching places with dramatic gestures and much maltreatment of his
pocket-handkerchief. After each song he compliments Selina upon her
playing. Her touch reminds him of Madame Essipoff. Selina, whose
digestion is perfect so far as flattery is concerned, swallows all his
compliments and looks at him as if she wished for more.
On the wide gravel path, before the glass doors of the room, Olga is
pacing to and fro. The broad light from door and window reveals clearly
the upper portion of her figure. Her head is slightly bent, her hands
are clasped easily before her. There is a peculiar gliding grace in all
her movements. With all Treurenberg's efforts to become interested in
the newspaper which he holds, he cannot grasp the meaning of a single
sentence. The letters flicker before his eyes like a crowd of crawling
insects. Weary of such fruitless exertion, he lifts his eyes, to
encounter Olga's gazing at him with a look of tenderest sympathy. He
starts, and makes a fresh effort to absorb himself in the paper, but
before he is aware of it she has come in from the garden and has taken
her seat on a low chair beside him.
"Is anything the matter with you?" she asks.
"What could be the matter with me?" he rejoins, evasively.
"I thought you might have a headache, you look so pale," she says, with
a matronly air.
"Olga, I would seriously advise you to devote yourself to the study of
medicine, you are so quick to observe symptoms of illness in those
about you."
She returns his sarcasm with a playful little tap upon his arm.
Fainacky turns and looks at them, a fiendish light in his green eyes,
in the midst of his most effective rendering of Massenet's "_Nuits
d'Espagne_."
"If you want to talk, I think you might go out in the garden, instead
of disturbing us here," Selina calls out, sharply.
Lato instantly turns to his newspaper, and when he looks up from it
again, Olga has vanished. He rises and goes to the open door. The
sultry magic of the September night broods over the garden outside. The
moon is not yet visible,--it rises late,--but countless stars twinkle
in the blue-black heavens, shedding a pale silvery lustre upon the dark
earth. Olga is nowhere to be seen; but there---- He takes a step or two
forward; she is walking quickly. He pauses, looks after her until she
disappears entirely among the shrubbery, and then he goes back to the
garden-room.
It is Selina's turn to sing now, and she has chosen a grand aria from
"Lucrezia Borgia." She is a pupil of Frau Marchesi's, and she has a
fine voice,--that is to say, a voice of unusual compass and power,
which might perhaps have made a reputation on the stage, but which is
far from agreeable in a drawing room. It is like the blowing of
trumpets in the same space.
His wife's singing is the one thing in the world which Lato absolutely
cannot tolerate, and never has tolerated. Passing directly through the
room, he disappears through a door opposite the one leading into the
garden.
Even in the earliest years of their married life Selina always took
amiss her husband's insensibility to her musical performances, and now,
when she avers his indifference to her in every other respect to be a
great convenience, her sensitiveness as an artist is unchanged.
Breaking off in the midst of her song, she calls after him, "Is that a
protest?"
He does not hear her.
"_Continuez done, ma cousine_, I implore you," the Pole murmurs.
With redoubled energy, accompanying herself, Countess Selina sings
on, only dropping her hands from the keys when she has executed a
break-neck cadenza by way of final flourish. Fainacky, meanwhile,
gracefully leaning against the instrument, listens ecstatically, with
closed eyes.
"Selina, you are an angel!" he exclaims, when she has finished. "Were I
in Treurenberg's place you should sing to me from morning until night."
"My husband takes no pleasure in my singing; at the first sound of my
voice he leaves the room, as you have just seen. He has no more taste
for music than my poodle."
"Extraordinary!" the Pole says, indignantly. And then, after a little
pause, he adds, musingly, "I never should have thought it. The day I
arrived here, you remember, I came quite unexpectedly; and, looking for
some one to announce me, I strayed into this very room----" He
hesitates.
"Well?--go on."
"Well, Nina, or Olga--what is your _protegee's_ name?" He snaps his
fingers impatiently.
"Olga! Well, what of her?"
"Nothing, nothing, only she was sitting at the piano strumming away at
something, and Lato was listening as devoutly as if she----"
But Selina has risen hastily and is walking towards the door into the
garden with short impatient steps, as if in need of the fresh air. Her
face is flushed, and she plucks nervously at the lace about her throat.
"What have I done? Have I vexed you?" the Pole whines, clasping his
hands.
"Oh, no, you have nothing to do with it!" the Countess sharply rejoins.
"I cannot understand Lato's want of taste in making so much fuss about
that slip of a girl."
"You ought to try to marry her off," sighs the Pole.
"Try I try!" the Countess replies, mockingly. "There is nothing to be
done with that obstinate thing."
"Of course it must be difficult; her low extraction, her lack of
fortune,----"
"Lack of fortune?" Selina exclaims.
"I thought Olga was entirely dependent upon your mother's generosity,"
Fainacky says, eagerly.
"Not at all. My father saved a very fair sum for Olga from the remains
of her mother's property. She has the entire control of a fortune of
three or four hundred thousand guilders,--quite enough to make her a
desirable match; but the girl seems to have taken it into her head that
no one save a prince of the blood is good enough for her!" And the
Countess actually stamps her foot.
"Do you really imagine that it is Olga's ambition alone that prevents
her from contracting a sensible marriage?" Fainacky drawls, with
evident significance.
"What else should it be?" Selina says, imperiously. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing, nothing; she seems to me rather exaggerated,--overstrained.
Let us try this duet of Boito's."
"I do not wish to sing any more," she replies, and leaves the room.
He gazes after her, lost in thought for a moment, then snaps his
fingers.
"Four hundred thousand guilders--by Jove!"
Whereupon he takes his seat at the piano, and improvises until far into
the night upon the familiar air, "In Ostrolenka's meads."