A STORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
The billiard-table is in the library, a long, narrow room, with a vast
deal of old-fashioned learning enclosed in tall, glazed bookcases. In a
metal cage between the windows swings a gray parrot with a red head,
screaming monotonously, "Rascal! rascal!" The afternoon sun gleams upon
the glass of the bookcases; the whole room is filled with blue-gray
smoke, and looks very comfortable. The gentlemen are both excellent
billiard-players, only Edgar is a little out of practice. Leaning on
his cue, he is just contemplating with admiration a bold stroke of his
friend's, when Freddy, quite beside himself, rushes into the room and
into his father's arms.
"Why, what is it? what is the matter, old fellow?" the captain says,
stroking his cheek kindly.
"Os--ostler Frank----" Freddy begins, but without another word he
bursts into a fresh howl.
Startled by such sounds of woe from her son, Katrine hurries in, to
find the captain seated in a huge leather arm-chair, the boy between
his knees, vainly endeavouring to soothe him. Rohritz stands half
smiling, half sympathetically, beside them, chalking his cue, while the
parrot rattles at the bars of his cage and tries to out-shriek Freddy.
"What has happened? Has he hurt himself? What is the matter?" Katrine
asks, in great agitation.
"N--n--no!" sobs Freddy, his fingers in his eyes, and the corners of
his mouth terribly depressed; "but os--ostler Frank----"
Ostler Frank is the second coachman and Freddy's personal friend.
"Ostler Frank is an ass!" exclaims the captain, beginning to trace the
connection of ideas in his son's mind; "an ass. You must not let him
frighten you."
"What did he tell you?" asks Katrine, standing beside her husband. "How
did he frighten you? He has not dared to tell you a ghost-story? I
expressly forbade it."
"Oh, no, Katrine: 'tis all about some stupid nonsense, not worth
speaking of," replies the captain,--"a mere nothing."
"I should like to know what it is, however," Katrine says, growing more
uneasy.
"He--told--me--papa must fight a duel; and when--they--fight a
duel--they are killed!" Freddy screams, in despair, nearly throttling
his father in his affection and terror.
"I should really be glad to have some intelligible explanation of the
matter," Katrine says, with dignity.
"Oh, it is the merest trifle," the captain rejoins, changing colour,
and tugging at his moustache.
"The affair is very simple, madame," Rohritz interposes. "Les felt it
his duty, lately,--the day before yesterday, in fact,--to chastise an
impertinent scoundrel in Hradnyk, and has conscientiously kept at home
since, awaiting the fellow's challenge,--of course in vain. What he
should have done would have been to emphasize in a note the box on the
ear he administered."
"Yes, that's true," says the captain: "it is a pity that it did not
occur to me."
Freddy has gradually subsided. As during his tearful misery he has done
a great deal of rubbing at his eyes with inky fingers, his cheeks are
now streaked with black, and he is sent off by his mother with a smile,
in charge of a servant, to be washed.
"Might I be informed," she asks, after the door has closed upon the
child, and with a rather mistrustful glance at her husband, "what the
individual at Hradnyk did to provoke the chastisement in question?"
"'Tis not worth the telling, Katrine," stammers the captain. "Why
should you care to know anything about it?"
"You are very wrong, Les, to make any secret of it," Rohritz
interposes. "The scoundrel undertook to use certain expressions which
irritated Les, with regard to you, madame."
"With regard to me?" Katrine exclaims, with a contemptuous curl of her
lip. "What could any one say about me?"
"What, indeed?" the captain repeats. "Well, I will tell you all about
it some time when we are alone, if you insist upon it. It was a silly
affair altogether, but I took the matter to heart."
"You Hotspur!" Katrine laughs.
Rohritz has just turned to slip out of the room and leave the pair to a
reconciliatory _tete-a-tete_, when the door opens, and a servant
announces that the sleigh is ready.
"Where are you going?" Katrine asks, hastily, in an altered tone, as
the servant withdraws.
"I was going to Glockenstein, to take the 'Maitre de Forges' to the
grass-widow; she asked me for it yesterday; but if you wish, Katrine, I
will stay at home."
"If I wish," Katrine coldly repeats. "Since when have I attempted to
interfere in any way with your innocent amusements?"
"I only thought----you have sometimes seemed to me a little jealous of
the grass-widow."
Rohritz could have boxed his friend's ears for his want of tact.
Katrine's aristocratic features take on an indescribably haughty and
contemptuous expression.
"Jealous?--I?" she rejoins, with cutting severity, adding, with a
shrug, "on the contrary, I am glad to have another woman relieve me of
the trouble of entertaining you."
Tame submission to such words from his wife, and before a witness, is
not the part of a hot-blooded soldier like Jack Leskjewitsch.
"Adieu, Rohritz!" he says, and, with a low bow to his wife, he leaves
the room.
For an instant Katrine seems about to run after him and bring him back.
She takes one step towards the door, then pauses undecided. The sharp,
shrill sound of sleigh-hells rises from without through the wintry
silence: the sleigh has driven off. Katrine goes to the window to look
after it. With lightning speed it glides along, the centre of a bluish,
sparkling cloud of snow-particles whirled aloft by the trampling
horses. It is out of sight almost immediately.
Her head bent, Katrine turns from the window, and leaves the room with
lagging steps.
* * * * *
The _menu_ for dinner comprises the captain's favourite dish of roast
pheasants, but six o'clock strikes and the master of the house has not
yet arrived at home.
"Would it not be better to postpone the dinner a little for to-day?"
Katrine asks Rohritz, for form's sake. They wait one hour,--two hours:
the captain does not appear. At last Katrine orders dinner to be
served. Unable to eat a morsel, she sits with an empty plate before
her, hardly speaking a word.
The meal is over, coffee has been served, Freddy has played three games
of cards with his tutor and then disappeared with a very sleepy face.
Katrine and Rohritz sit opposite each other, each taking great pains to
appear unconcerned. One quarter of an hour after another passes without
a word exchanged between them. Suddenly Katrine rises, goes to the
window, opens first the inner shutter and then the peep-hole in the
other.
"Listen how the wind roars!" she says, in a hoarse, subdued voice, to
Rohritz. "And the snow is falling as if a feather bed had been cut in
two."
Rohritz is really unable to smile, as he would have been tempted to do
at any other time, at the contrast between Katrine's deeply tragic air
and her very commonplace comparison: he is rather anxious himself.
"Hark! just hark how the wind whistles! I hope Jack has not got wedged
in a snow-drift."
Rohritz makes some reply which Katrine does not heed. In increasing
agitation she paces the room to and fro.
"The worst place is the bit of road near the quarry," she murmurs to
herself. "If he goes a hand's-breadth too far on one side, then----"
"Les has a remarkable sense of locality, and is the best whip I know,"
Rohritz remarks, soothingly.
She is silent, compresses her lips, listens at the window, hearkens to
the raging wind, which drives the snow-flakes against the shutters and
tears and rattles at the boughs of the giant linden until they shriek
from out their long winter sleep.
How much we are able to forgive a man when we are anxious about him!
"I would rather send some one to meet him," she stammers. "I am
exceedingly anxious."
She reaches out her hand for the bell-rope, when suddenly from the
far distance, like mocking, elfin laughter, comes the tinkle of
sleigh-bells. Katrine holds her breath, listens. The sleigh approaches,
draws up before the door. Rohritz goes out into the hall. Katrine hears
a man stamping the snow from his boots, hears the captain's fresh,
cheery voice as he answers his friend's questions. Her anxiety is
converted into a sensation of great bitterness. She cannot rally
herself too much for her childish anxiety, cannot forgive herself for
behaving so ridiculously before Rohritz. Whilst she has been fancying
her husband lost in a snow-drift, he beyond all doubt has been
admirably entertained with the grass-widow.
The door opens; the captain appears alone, without his comrade.
"Still up, Katrine?" he asks, in a gentle undertone, approaching his
wife, and with an uncertain, half-embarrassed smile he adds, "Rohritz
told me you were anxious about--about me." As he speaks he tries to
take his wife's hand to draw her towards him; but Katrine avoids him.
"Rohritz was mistaken," she rejoins, very dryly. "For a moment I
thought you might have fallen into the quarry, because I could not see
any apparent reason for your late return. But as for anxiety----"
Without finishing the sentence, she shrugs her shoulders.
The captain smiles bitterly, and passes his hand across his forehead.
"Yes, he was evidently mistaken; it was an attempt to bring us
together," he murmurs; "his sentimental representation did at first
seem rather incredible to me. But what one wishes to believe one does
believe so easily! I was foolish enough to delight in the hope of a
kindly welcome from you; but, in fact, in comparison with the reception
you have vouchsafed me the weather outside is genial."
He seats himself astride of a low chair, and begins to drum impatiently
upon the back of it.
"It seems to me quite late enough to go to bed," says Katrine, taking a
silver candlestick from the mantel-piece. "It is a quarter-past ten."
Suddenly the captain grasps her by the wrist. "Stay!" he says, sternly.
"You have come back in a very bad humour," Katrine remarks, with a
contemptuous smile. "The grass-widow must have proved unkind. Your
delay in returning led me to suppose the contrary."
The captain looks at his wife with an odd expression. Was it possible
she could take sufficient interest in him to be jealous?
"I have not seen the grass-widow," he rejoins, after a short pause.
"That is, you did not find her at home? How very sad!"
"I did not go to Glockenstein."
"Ah, indeed! I thought----"
"You are quite right," he said, with an air of bravado. "After the very
kind and choice words with which in the presence of an auditor you
dismissed me, I certainly whipped up the horses in order to reach
Glockenstein with all speed. When angels will have nothing to do with
us, we are fain to go for consolation to the devil: he is sure to be at
hand. Frau Ruprecht would have received me with open arms; I am by no
means"--with a forced laugh--"so insignificant in her eyes; for her I
am quite a hero, and what would you have? she is stupid, but she is
pretty and young, and an amount of consideration from any woman
flatters a poor fellow who is never without the consciousness of his
inferiority in the eyes of his clever wife at home."
"Ah! really?" Katrine sneers. "May I beg you to make a little haste
with your explanations?--the lamp is beginning to burn dimly."
"It burns quite well enough for what I have to say," replies the
captain. "I whipped up my horses, as I said,--I was positively in a
hurry to fall at the Ruprecht's feet; but, just at the last moment, so
many different things occurred to me! Glockenstein was in sight, but I
turned aside, and then drove over to Reitzenberg's to settle with him
about the wood."
"Ah! It seems to have been a very protracted business discussion."
"I took supper with Reitzenberg, and played a game of cards
afterwards."
"Hm! Since, then, you have perhaps sufficiently explained the reason of
your delay, will you permit me to withdraw?" Katrine asks.
"Apparently you do not believe me. And yet you ought to know that
falsehood is not to be reckoned among my bad qualities."
"True; but"--Katrine shrugs her shoulders--"no man hesitates to
improvise a little when there's a lady in the case. I should like to
know, however, why you take so much trouble in the present instance for
me, who have so little interest in such things." And, taking the
candlestick once more from the chimney-piece, she asks, "Can I go now?
Have you finished?"
"No," he exclaims, angrily, "I have not finished, and you will hearken
to me. Matters are come to a worse pass than you fancy; our whole
existence is at stake. You know how my sister Lina's marriage turned
out, and you are in a fair way to plunge me into the same misery into
which Franz Meineck was thrust by his wife."
"Your comparison of me to your sister seems to me rather forced,"
Katrine replies. "I know it is not pleasant to hear one's relatives
criticised by another, however we may disapprove of them ourselves, but
I must defend myself. Your sister neglected her household and her
children, giving herself over to a ridiculous ambition; whilst I----"
She hesitates, deterred from proceeding by something in the captain's
look:
"Whilst you----" he begins. "I know perfectly well what you would say.
Your household is perfectly attended to, you are an ideal mother, and
daintily neat. In a word, you would have been for me the ideal wife if
you had ever shown me a particle of affection."
"I have always done my duty by you."
"Your hard, prescribed, bounden duty."
"You could not expect anything more of me. When we married it was
agreed between us that each should be satisfied with a sensible amount
of friendship."
He has risen, and is gazing at her keenly, searchingly.
"That is true; you are right," he says, bitterly. "The sad thing about
it is that I had forgotten it!"
"I cannot understand how you--I must say I never have observed--that
you----"
"Indeed? You never have observed that I have long ceased to keep my
part of our compact!" the captain exclaims. "Really? Women are
fabulously blind when they do not choose to see. Do you suppose I
should have allowed the reins to be taken from my hands, do you suppose
I should have resigned my authority over you, have lost the right of
disposing of my own child, and have abandoned my profession, if--if I
had not fallen in love with you like a very school-boy! There! now
despise me doubly for my confession, and until you see me stifling in
the mire, like poor Franz Meineck, console yourself with the conviction
that you have done your duty by me."
He makes her a profound bow, then turns and leaves the room.