O Thou, My Austria! Part 2

"Out in the world----" Whether or not it was the tone in which she p.r.o.nounced the word "world," I cannot tell, but it has ever since had a strange sound for me,--a sound betokening something grand yet terrible.

Thus I made the discovery that there were nights, and that grown-up people could cry.

Soon afterwards it was winter; the nights grew longer, the days shorter, and it was never really bright in our home again,--the suns.h.i.+ne had vanished.

It was cold, and the trees in the gardens high up in Montmartre, where they took me to walk, grew bare and ugly.

Once, I remember, I asked my mother, "Mamma, will the trees never be green again?"

"Oh, yes, when the spring comes," she made answer.

"And then will it be bright here again?" I asked, anxiously.

To this she made no reply, but her eyes suddenly grew so sad that I climbed into her lap and kissed her upon both eyelids.

Papa was rarely with us now, and I was convinced that he had taken the suns.h.i.+ne away from our home.

When at long intervals he came to dine with us, there was as much preparation as if a stranger had been expected. Mamma busied herself in the kitchen, helping the cook, who was also my nurse-maid, to prepare the dinner. She laid the cloth herself, and decorated the table with flowers. To me everything looked magnificent: I was quite awe-stricken by the unwonted splendour.

One day a very beautiful lady paid us a visit, dressed in a velvet cloak trimmed with ermine--I did not know until some time afterwards the name of the fur--and a gray hat. I remember the hat distinctly, I was so delighted with the bird sitting on it. She expressed herself as charmed with everything in our home, stared about her through her eye-gla.s.s, overturned a small table and two footstools with her train, kissed me repeatedly, and begged mamma to come soon to see her. She was a cousin of papa's, a Countess Gatinsky,--the very one for whom, when she was a young girl and papa an elegant young attach, he had been doing the honours of Paris on that eventful afternoon when, while she and her mother were busy and absorbed, shopping in the _Bon March_, he had fallen desperately in love with my pale, beautiful mother.

When the Countess left us, mamma cried bitterly. I do not know whether she ever returned the visit, but it was never repeated, and I never saw the Countess again, save once in the Bois de Boulogne, where I was walking with my mother. She was sitting in an open barouche, and my father was beside her. Opposite them an old man sat crouched up, looking very discontented, and very cold, although the day was quite mild and he was wrapped up in furs.

They saw us in the distance; the Countess smiled and waved her hand; papa grew very red, and lifted his hat in a stiff, embarra.s.sed way.

I remember wondering at his manner: what made him bow to us as if we were two strangers?

Mamma hurried me on, and we got into the first omnibus she could find.

I stroked her hand or smoothed the folds of her gown all the way home, for I felt that she had been hurt, although I could not tell how.

The days grow sadder and darker, and yet the spring has come. Was there really no suns.h.i.+ne in that April and May, or is it so only in my memory?

Meanwhile, the trees have burst into leaf, and the first early cherries have decked our modest table. We have not seen papa for a long time. He is staying at a castle in the neighbourhood of Paris, but only for a few days.

It is a sultry afternoon in the beginning of June,--I learned the date of that wretched day later. The flowers in the balcony before our windows, scarlet carnations and fragrant mignonette, are drooping, because mamma has forgotten to water them, and mamma herself looks as weary as the flowers. Pale and miserable, she moves about the room with the air of one whom the first approach of some severe illness half paralyzes. Her pretty gown, a dark-blue silk with white spots, seems to hang upon her slender figure. She arranges the articles in the room here and there restlessly, and, noticing a soft silken scarf which papa sometimes wore knotted carelessly about his throat in the mornings, and which has been left hanging on the k.n.o.b of a curtain, she picks it up, pa.s.ses it slowly between her hands, and holds it against her cheek.

There!--is not that a carriage stopping before our door? I run out upon the balcony, but can see nothing of what is going on in the street below; our rooms are too high up. I can see, however, that the people who live opposite are hurrying to their windows, and that the pa.s.sers-by stop in the street, and stand and talk together, gathering in a little knot. A strange bustling noise ascends the staircase; it comes up to our landing,--the heavy tread of men supporting some weighty burden.

Mamma stands spellbound for a moment, and then flings the door open and cries out. It is papa whom they are bringing up, deadly pale, covered with blankets, helpless as a child.

There had been an accident in an avenue not far from Bellefontaine, the castle which the Countess Gatinsky had hired for the summer. Papa had been riding with her,--riding a skittish, vicious horse, against which he had been warned. He had only laughed, however, declaring that he knew how to manage the brute. But he could not manage him. As I learned afterwards, the horse, after vainly trying to throw his rider, had reared, and rolled over backwards upon him. He was taken up senseless.

When he recovered consciousness in Bellefontaine, whither they carried him, and the physician told him frankly that he was mortally hurt, he desired to be taken home,--to those whom he loved best in the world.

At first they would not accede to his wishes; Countess Gatinsky wanted to send for mamma and me,--to bring us to Bellefontaine. But he would not hear of it. He was told that to take him to Paris would be an injury to him in his present condition. Injury!--he laughed at the word. He wanted to die in the dear little nest in Paris, and it was a dying man's right to have his way.

I have never talked of this to any one, but I have thought very often of our sorrow, of the shadow that suddenly fell upon my childhood and extinguished all its suns.h.i.+ne.

And I have often heard people whispering together about it when they thought I was not listening. But I listened, listened involuntarily, as one does to words which one would afterwards give one's life not to have heard. And when the evil words stabbed me like a knife, it was a comfort to be able to say to myself, "It was merely the caprice of a moment,--his heart had no share in it;" it was a comfort to be able to say that mamma sat at his bedside and that he died with his hand in hers.

I do not remember how long the struggle lasted before death came, but I never can forget the moment when I was taken in to see him.

I can see the room now perfectly,--the bucket of ice upon which the afternoon sun glittered, the b.l.o.o.d.y bandages on the floor, the furniture in disorder, and, lying here and there, articles of dress which had not yet been put away. There, in the large bed, where the gay flowered curtains had been drawn back as far as possible to let in the air, lay papa. His cheeks were flushed and his blue eyes sparkled, and when I went up to him he laughed. I could not believe that he was ill.

Mamma sat at the head of the bed, dressed in her very prettiest gown, her wonderful hair loosened and hanging in all its silken softness about her shoulders. She, too, smiled; but her smile made me s.h.i.+ver.

Papa looked long and lovingly at me, and, taking my small hand in his, put it to his lips. Then he made the sign of the cross upon my forehead. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and I embraced him with all the fervour of my five years. Mamma drew me back. "You hurt him," she said. He laughed,--laughed as a brave man laughs at pain. He always laughed: I never saw him grave but once,--only once. Mamma burst into tears.

"Minette, Minette, do not be a coward. I want you to be beautiful always," said he. Those words I perfectly remember.

Yes, he wanted her to be beautiful to the last!

They sent me out of the room. As I turned at the door, I saw how papa stroked mamma's wonderful hair--slowly--lingeringly--with his slender white hand.

I sat in the kitchen all the long summer afternoon. At first our servant told me stories. Then she had to go out upon an errand; I stayed in the kitchen alone, sitting upon a wooden bench, staring before me, my doll, with which I did not care to play, lying upon the brick floor beside me. The copper saucepans on the wall gleam and glitter in the rays of the declining sun, and the bluebottle flies crawl and buzz about their s.h.i.+ning surfaces.

A moaning monotonous sound, now low, then loud, comes from my father's room. I feel afraid, but I cannot stir: I am, as it were, rooted to my wooden bench. The hoa.r.s.e noise grows more and more terrible.

Gradually twilight seems to fall from the ceiling and to rise from the floor; the copper vessels on the wall grow vague and indistinct; here and there a gleam of brilliancy pierces the gray gloom, then all is dissolved in darkness. In the distance a street-organ drones out Malbrough; I have hated the tune ever since. The moans grow louder. I lean my head forward upon my knees and stop my ears. What is that? One brief, piercing cry,--and all is still!

I creep on tiptoe to papa's room. The door is open. I can see mamma bending over him, kissing him, and lavis.h.i.+ng caresses upon him: she is no longer afraid of hurting him.

That night a neighbour took me home with her, and when I came back, the next day, papa lay in his black coffin in a darkened room, and candles were burning all around him.

He seemed to me to have grown. And what dignity there was in his face!

That was the only time I ever saw him look grave.

Mamma lifted me up that I might kiss him. Something cold seemed to touch my cheek, and suddenly I felt I--cannot describe the sensation--an intense dread,--the same terror, only ten times as great, as that which overcame me when I first wakened in the night and was aware of the darkness. Screaming, I extricated myself from mamma's arms, and ran out of the room.----

(Here the major stopped to brush away the tears before reading on.)

----For a while mamma tried to remain in Paris and earn our living by the embroidery in which she was so skilful; but, despite all her trying, she could not do it. The servant-girl was sent away, our rooms grew barer and barer, and more than once I went to bed crying with hunger.

In November, Uncle Paul came to see us, and took us back with him to Bohemia. I cannot recall the journey, but our arrival I remember distinctly,--the long drive from the station, along the muddy road, between low hedges, or tall, slim poplars; then through the forest, where the wind tossed about the dry fallen leaves, and a few crimson-tipped daisies still bloomed gaily by the roadside, braving the brown desolation about them; past curious far-stretching villages, their low huts but slightly elevated above the mud about them, their black thatched roofs green in spots with moss, their narrow windows gay with flowers behind the thick, dim panes; past huge manure-heaps, upon which large numbers of gay-coloured fowls were clucking and crowing, and past stagnant ditches where amber-coloured swine were wallowing contentedly.

The dogs rush excitedly out of the huts, to run barking after our carriage, while a mob of barefooted, snub-nosed children, their breath showing like smoke in the frosty air, come bustling out of school, and shout after us "Praised be Jesus Christ!"

A turn--we have driven into the castle court-yard; Krupitschka hastens to open the carriage door. At the top of the steps stands a tall lady in mourning, very majestic in appearance, with a kind face. I see mamma turn pale, shrink--then all is a blank.

II.

At the period when I again take up my reminiscences I am entirely at home at Zirkow, and almost as familiar with Uncle Paul and Aunt Rosa as if I had known them both all my life.

Winter has set in, and, ah, such a wonderful, beautiful winter,--so bright, and glittering with such quant.i.ties of pure white snow! I go sleighing with Uncle Paul; I make a snow man with Krupitschka,--a monk in a long robe, because the legs of the soldier we tried to make would not stand straight; and I help Krupitschka's wife to make bread in a large wooden bowl with iron hoops. How delicious is the odour of the fermenting dough, and how delightful it is to run about the long brick-paved corridors and pa.s.sages, to have so much s.p.a.ce and light and air! When one day Uncle Paul asks me, "Which is best, Paris or Zirkow?"

I answer, without hesitation, "Zirkow!"

Uncle Paul laughs contentedly, but mamma looks at me sadly. I feel that I have grieved her.