O Thou, My Austria! Part 18

He turns and looks at her. How charming she is! With the arch condescension of a princess certain of victory, she laughs in his face and whispers,--

"Are you not beginning to be sorry that you said such hateful things to me the other day?"

He has grown paler still; his eyes alone seem blazing in his head. For a while he leaves her question unanswered, devouring her lovely, laughing face with his gaze; then, suddenly seizing her almost roughly by both wrists, he exclaims,--

"And are you not beginning to be sorry that you gave me cause to do so?"

At this question, imprudent as it is, considering the circ.u.mstances, Zdena hangs her golden head, and whispers, very softly, "Yes."

It is cold and gloomy in the hall; the two suits of armour cast long dark-gray shadows upon the black-and-white-tiled floor; two huge bluebottle flies are buzzing on the frame of an old portrait, and a large moth with transparent wings and a velvet body is b.u.mping its head against the ceiling, whether for amus.e.m.e.nt or in despair it is impossible to say.

Zdena trembles all over; she knows that she has said something conclusive, something that she cannot recall. She is conscious of having performed a difficult task, and she expects her reward.

Something very sweet, something most delicious, is at hand. He must clasp her in his arms, as on that evening in Vienna. Ah, it is useless to try to deceive herself,--she cannot live without him. But he stands as if turned to stone, ashy pale, with a look of horror.

A door opens. Paula Harfink enters the hall, tall, portly, handsome after her fas.h.i.+on, in a flowered Pompadour gown, evidently equipped for a walk, wearing a pair of buckskin gloves and a garden-hat trimmed with red poppies and yellow gauze.

"Ah! have you been waiting for me up-stairs, Harry?" she asks; then, perceiving Zdena, she adds, "A visitor!--a welcome visitor!"

To Zdena's amazement and terror, she finds herself tenderly embraced by Paula, who, looking archly from one to the other of the cousins, asks, "Shall we wait until Sunday for the grand surprise, Harry? Let your cousin guess. Come, Baroness Zdena, what is the news at Dobrotschau?"

For one moment Zdena feels as if a dagger were plunged into her heart and turned around in the wound; then she recovers her composure and smiles, a little contemptuously, perhaps even haughtily, but naturally and with grace.

"Oh, it is not very difficult to guess," she says. "What is the news?

Why, a betrothal. You have my best wishes, Baroness; and you too, Harry,--I wish you every happiness!"

CHAPTER IX.

AN ENCOUNTER.

No one can bear pain with such heroic equanimity as can a woman when her pride or her sense of dignity is aroused. Full twenty minutes have elapsed since the light has been darkened in Zdena's sky, her thought of the future embittered, and every joy blotted out of her existence.

During these twenty minutes she has talked and laughed; has walked in the park with Paula and Harry; has pointed out to the betrothed couple the comically human physiognomy of a large pansy in a flower-bed; has looked on while Paula, plucking a marguerite, proceeds, with an arch look at Harry, to consult that old-fas.h.i.+oned oracle, picking off the petals one by one, with, "He loves me, he loves me not." Yes, when urged to partake of some refreshment, she has even delicately pared and cut up with a silver knife a large peach, although she could not swallow a mouthful of it. How could she, when she felt as if an iron hand were throttling her!

And now she is in the carriage again, driving towards home. As she drove off she had a last glimpse of Paula and Harry standing side by side in the picturesque court-yard before the castle, beside the fountain, that vies with the lindens in murmuring its old tales,--tales that no longer interest any one. They stood there together,--Paula waving her hand and calling parting words after the visitor; Harry stiff and mute, lifting his cap. Then Paula put her hand upon his arm to go back into the castle with him,--him, her lover, her property!

And Zdena is alone at last. The pain in her heart is becoming torture.

Her breath comes short and quick. At the same time she has the restless, impatient sensation which is experienced by all who are unaccustomed to painful emotion, before they can bring themselves to believe in the new and terrible trouble in which they find themselves,--a sensation of being called upon to shake off some burden unjustly imposed. But the burden can neither be s.h.i.+fted nor shaken off.

Her consciousness is the burden, the burden of which she cannot be rid except with life itself. Life,--it has often seemed to her too short; and, in spite of all her transitory girlish discontent, she has sometimes railed at fate for according to mankind so few years in which to enjoy this lovely, sunny, laughing world. But now her brief earthly future stretches out endlessly before her,--an eternity in which joy is dead and everything black and gloomy.

"Good G.o.d! will this torture last forever?" she asks herself. No, it is not possible that such pain can last long: she will forget it, she must! It seems to her that she can at least be rid of some of it if she can only weep her fill in solitude. Yes, she must cry it out before she goes back to Zirkow, before she meets again the keen, kindly eyes that would fain pry into her very soul.

Meanwhile, she has told the coachman to drive to Komaritz. The carriage rolls through the long village. The air tastes of straw and hay; the rhythmic beat of the thrashers' flails resounds from the peasants'

small barns. Zdena stops her ears; she cannot bear the noise,--the noise and the garish, cruel light. At last the village lies behind her.

The sound of flails is still heard in the distance; to Zdena they seem to be beating the summer to death with clubs.

The carriage drives on, drives towards the forest. On the edge of the wood stands a red-and-white signpost, the two indexes of which point in opposite directions through the depths of the leafy thicket: one pathway is tolerably smooth, and leads to Komaritz; the other, starting from the same point, is rough, and leads to Zirkow.

She calls to the coachman. He stops the horses.

"Drive on to Komaritz and leave the plums there," she orders him, "and I will meanwhile take the short path and walk home." So saying, she descends from the vehicle.

He sees her walk off quickly and with energy; sees her tall, graceful figure gradually diminish in the perspective of the Zirkow woodland path. For a while he gazes after her, surprised, and then he obeys her directions.

If Krupitschka had been upon the box he would have opposed his young mistress's order as surely as he would have disobeyed it obstinately.

He would have said, "The Baroness does not understand that so young a lady ought not to go alone through the forest--the Herr Baron would be very angry with me if I allowed it, and I will not allow it."

But Schmidt is a new coachman. He does as he is bidden, making no objection.

Zdena plunges into the wood, penetrates deeper and deeper into the thicket, aimlessly, heedlessly, except that she longs to find a spot where she can hide her despair from human eyes. She does not wish to see the heavens, nor the sun, nor the buzzing insects and wanton b.u.t.terflies on the edge of the forest.

At last the shade is deep enough for her. The dark foliage shuts out the light; scarcely a hand's-breadth of blue sky can be seen among the branches overhead. She throws herself on the ground and sobs. After a while she raises her head, sits up, and stares into s.p.a.ce.

"How is it possible? How could it have happened?" she thinks. "I cannot understand. From waywardness? from anger because I was a little silly?

Oh, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d! Yes, I take pleasure in luxury, in fine clothes, in the world, in attention. I really thought for the moment that these were what I liked best,--but I was wrong. How little should I care for those things, without him! Oh, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d! How could he find it in his heart to do it!" she finally exclaims, while her tears flow afresh down her flushed cheeks.

Suddenly she hears a low crackling in the underbrush. She starts and looks up. Before her stands an elderly man of medium height, with a carefully-shaven, sharp-cut face, and a reddish-gray peruke. His tall stove-pipe hat is worn far back on his head, and his odd-looking costume is made up of a long green coat, the tails of which he carries under his left arm, a pair of wide, baggy, nankeen trousers, a long vest, with b.u.t.tons much too large, and a pair of clumsy peasant shoes.

The most remarkable thing about him is the sharp, suspicious expression of his round, projecting eyes.

"What do you want of me?" stammers Zdena, rising, not without secret terror.

"I should like to know what you are crying for. Perhaps because you have quarrelled with your cousin Henry," he says, with a sneer.

He addresses her familiarly: who can he be? Evidently some one of unsound mind; probably old Studnecka from X----, a former brewer, who writes poems, and who sometimes thinks himself the prophet Elisha, under which illusion he will stop people in the road and preach to them. This must be he. She has heard that so long as his fancies are humoured he is perfectly gentle and harmless, but that if irritated by contradiction he has attacks of maniacal fury, and has been known to lay violent hands upon those who thus provoke him.

Before she finds the courage to answer him, he comes a step nearer to her, and repeats his question with a scornful smile which discloses a double row of faultless teeth.

"How do you know that I have a cousin?" asks Zdena, still more alarmed, and recoiling a step or two.

"Oh, I know everything, just as the gypsies do."

"Of course this is the prophet," the girl thinks, trembling. She longs to run away, but tells herself that the prudent course will be to try to keep him in good humour until she has regained the path out of this thicket, where she has cut herself off from all human aid. "Do you know, then, who I am?" she asks, trying to smile.

"Oh, yes," replies this strange prophet, nodding his head. "I have long known you, although you do not know me. You are the foolish daughter of a foolish father."

"How should he have any knowledge of me or of my family?" she reflects.

The explanation is at hand. She remembers distinctly that the prophet Studnecka was one of the eccentric crowd that Baron Franz Leskjewitsch was wont to a.s.semble about him for his amus.e.m.e.nt during the three or four weeks each year when the old man made the country around unsafe by his stay here.

"You know my grandfather too, then?" she continues.

"Yes, a little," the old man muttered. "Have you any message to send him? I will take it to him for you."

"I have nothing to say to him!--I do not know him!" she replies. Her eyes flash angrily, and she holds her head erect.

"H'm I he does not choose to know you," the old man remarks, looking at her still more keenly.