Gloria Victis! Part 10

"No other mother has such a son," the Countess said proudly.

"Oh, oh!" he laughed and took his seat beside her again.

"Nevertheless, I am not blind to your faults," she continued, "I know them all."

"And love every one of them."

"Because they are the faults of a n.o.ble nature--men of lower tendencies are obliged to show more self-control."

"Indeed! G.o.d bless your aristocratic prejudices! and now for a piece of news. The Truyns reach Rautschin to-morrow by the four o'clock train.

Will you drive with me to meet them?"

"Certainly, if you wish me to."

"If I wish you to--if I wish you to!"--he softly snapped his fingers, "and you look all the while as if I had asked you to attend an execution with me. I cannot quite understand you, mamma, you used to take delight in every little pleasure that chance threw in my way, and now will you not rejoice in my great happiness? As soon as there is any allusion made to my betrothal, your whole manner changes; you grow so distant and reserved, that I hardly like to mention my betrothed."

"I really did not know, Ossi ..." began the Countess with constraint.

"Oh, yes, mother, I felt in Paris that you were not pleased with my betrothal, and I have racked my brain to discover what there can be about it that you do not like, and I can not imagine what it is. There can be no objection to make to Gabrielle." Then suddenly smiling in the midst of his irritation, and curbing the impetuous flow of his words, he asked in a lower tone and more calmly, "Ah, _ca_, mamma, perhaps you dislike the connection with my darling's stepmother? I a.s.sure you that ...."

"Nonsense!" replied the Countess, growing still more disturbed, "from what you and Georges both tell me of the young woman, she seems to adapt herself very well to her position. A residence abroad and foreign a.s.sociations are much better means of training than ...."

"Yes, mamma," interrupted Oswald in some surprise, having followed out his own train of thought, "but if you are so kindly disposed towards Zinka, I cannot possibly conceive what exception you can take to my betrothal. There never was a purer, more n.o.ble creature than my little Gabrielle. Highly as I rank you, mother, she is every way worthy of you."

The Countess changed colour, "I do not understand what you wish," she exclaimed, "do not distress me, I have no objection to the girl!...."

"Well then,--you could not possibly expect me to remain unmarried."

The Countess cast down her eyes and was silent.

Oswald sprang up, called his dog and left the room, his face very pale, his eyes very dark.

Impetuous and hasty as he was with others, he had always controlled himself in his mother's presence. Leaving the room was the extreme point to which he allowed his displeasure to manifest itself when with her. If he wished to vent his anger, he did it in seclusion, he never had spoken an angry word--scarcely a loud one to her. And his disagreeable mood never lasted long.

"I am myself again, mamma!" with these words, in which he was wont to announce his return to a better frame of mind, he presented himself half an hour afterward in his mother's boudoir. She was sitting just as he had left her, the waterlilies in her lap, very pale, very erect, with the set features that veil distress of mind.

Pus.h.i.+ng his chair close up to her he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and said with the winning tenderness of all impetuous men after bursts of anger: "Forgive me, mamma, I was very wrong again!" She smiled faintly and murmured some half inaudible words of affection--"I was odiously egotistical," he went on, "I had quite forgotten what a change my marriage will make in your life, what a trial it must be to you, you poor, foolish, jealous little mother! But whatever change there may be outwardly in our relations, we must always be the same in heart; and if I must deprive you of something," he added gaily, "my children shall requite you. It had to come sooner or later, mamma; or could you really wish me to renounce the fairest share of existence?"

She trembled in every limb, and suddenly taking his hand, before he could prevent it, she carried it to her lips, "No, you shall renounce no joy, my child, my n.o.ble child!" she exclaimed,--"but--leave me now for a while, for only a little while--I am tired!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Truyn had insisted that the betrothal of his daughter to Oswald Lodrin should be celebrated in Bohemia. Zinka had yielded with great reluctance and sorrow, and had at last resolved to bid farewell to her dear foreign home.

"Why," she persisted in asking him, "cannot the ceremony take place, as in our own case, at the Austrian Emba.s.sy?"

But Truyn would not hear of it. "Dear heart," he replied, "it would go against the grain. The betrothals of all my sisters and of my aunts were celebrated at Rautschin, why should I depart from the traditions of my family?"

"As if you had not already departed from them, and in the most vital regard," said Zinka, with arch tenderness.

"That is a very different thing,--if there were any good reason, then--then--!"

"Ah, dear friend, you have grown insufferably conservative, you would have shouted on the first day of the creation of the world: '_Conserves le chaos, seigneur Dieu, conservez le chaos!_'"

Whereupon Truyn, kissing her hand, made reply. "That comes of living in France, dear child."

And so the pretty house in the Avenue Labedoyere was deserted. The shutters were closed, the carpets rolled up, the bric-a-brac stowed away; only in some roundabout fas.h.i.+on did a bluish beam of light slip into the vault-like obscurity, and the restless motes pursue their fantastic dance among the shrouded shapes of the furniture.

The Truyn family were rapidly approaching their home. Nearly thirty hours had pa.s.sed since Paris had faded from their eyes in the misty blue distance--since the last gigantic announcement of the '_Belle Jardiniere_,' and of the '_Pauvre diable_' had flitted past them. The Bavarian boundary, with its stupid Custom House formalities lay behind them. Truyn was reading a Vienna newspaper with great interest, Gabrielle was gazing abstractedly at the crimson coupe cus.h.i.+ons opposite, with the far-away look in her eyes of young lovers. Zinka was leaning back in her corner, her veil half drawn aside, her hands folded in her lap, the latest impressions of her Paris life hovering kaleidiscopically before her mental vision, her heart oppressed by a strange melancholy.

"Ah, this defamed, delightful Paris! how it captivates the heart with its good-for-nothing beauty, and its corrupt, sickly sentiment!"

She was still mentally rehearsing the last days before her departure, the going to and fro from shop to shop, the interesting consultations with Monsieur Worth, the affected face with which that eminent artist put his finger to his lip, while attending the ladies to their carriage, and continued to 'compose' Gabrielle's wedding dress, murmuring to himself with his English accent: "_Oui, oui, une orginalite distahnguee c'est ce qu'il fant_," while sleek young clerks, and young girls faultless in figure, displayed to the best advantage the richest costumes, trailing about silks and satins of fabulous elegance.

"_Ce n'est pas cela, qui ferait votre affaire, Madame la Comtesse je le sais bien_," said Mons. Worth pointing to certain monstrosities devised for American parvenus, "ah, Madame la Comtesse cannot imagine, how hard it is for an artist to have to work for people of no taste! _Ah oui, une originalite distahnguee!_"

The man-milliner's, monotonous refrain kept sounding on in Zinka's ears. Then she thought of the farewell visits, the daily heap of cards filling the great copper salver in the vestibule, the wearisome farewell entertainments, and of her husband's toast--the toast which he proposed at the magnificent banquet, given in his honour, by the Austrian Hungarians in Paris. Unutterably distasteful as it always is to men of his stamp, to be conspicuous, he at last made up his mind to propose this toast; he worked at it for an entire week, and subjected it to the criticism, not only of his wife and of his daughter, but of every one whose judgment he respected in Paris. It was a masterpiece of a toast, a toast designed to unite in brotherly affection all the Austrians in Paris, and which ultimately, with its well-meant, many-sided compliments gave occasion for dissatisfaction to every member of the Austrian-Hungarian colony, whether conservative or liberal. Zinka laughed to herself as she recalled that poor misunderstood toast. She laughed outright, started, and--awoke--rubbed her eyes and looked out.

Yes, Paris lay far behind her, very far. She was in Austria, beautiful, dreamingly-drowsy Austria, and, in spite of the reluctance with which she returned to her fatherland, it affected her.

A low blue chain of hills lay on the western horizon like a vanis.h.i.+ng storm-cloud. The landscape around was level and extended. Large, quiet pools, surrounded by tall rushes, and covered with a network of fragrant waterlilies, gleamed here and there among the emerald meadows.

The sun was near its setting. The shadows of the telegraph poles stretched out indefinitely. Little towns contentedly sleeping away their dull lives among green lindens, showed their old-fas.h.i.+oned silhouettes, black against the sunlit evening clouds.

Truyn laid aside his newspaper, and his face grew eager and animated, every knotted gnarled willow, every half-ruinous garden wall here interested him.

A forest of firs, their trunks glowing red in the last rays of the sun, bordered the railway. "There, just by that stunted fir, I shot my first deer," Truyn exclaimed, and in his eyes sparkled the memory of a happy boyhood; then, drawing Zinka to him, he whispered tenderly: "You are at home, Zini; we are travelling upon our own soil."

"Ah," replied Zinka, nestling close to him, timid as a child afraid of ghosts.

"How nervous you are!" he said, gently stroking her cheek--"you silly little goose you!"

"It is not for myself," she whispered, "so long as you love me, you and Ella, I can bear anything. But I know you--it would grieve you to the very heart, if ...."

"Tickets, if you please!"

A breathless panting--a shrill whistle.

"Rautschin--five minutes stay!"

"Aunt Wjera!" Gabrielle exclaimed, joyously hurrying out of the coupe.

There was something like defiance in Zinka's heart, but when she saw the woman, who in all her exquisite beauty, all the distinguished grace of manner inspired by kindness and cordiality, advanced to meet them, her defiant mood vanished in admiration, and with a feeling of almost childlike reverence, she bowed to the superiority of the elder lady, who greeted her most cordially.