O Thou, My Austria! Part 33

At last Harry asks, taking the black leather travelling-bag from his cousin's hand, "Is this all your luggage?"

"The milkman is to bring a small trunk," she replies, without looking at him.

"We have had your old room made ready for you."

"Ah, my old room,--how delightful!"

They cross the threshold, when Harry suddenly stands still.

"Are you not going to give me your hand?" he asks, in a tone of entreaty, whereupon she extends her hand, and then instantly withdraws it. She seems to herself to be doing wrong. As matters stand, she must not make the smallest advance to him,--no, not the smallest: she has resolved upon that. In fact, she did not expect to see him here, and she must show him that she is quite annoyed by his postponing his departure.

Yap, yap, yap! the rabble of dachshunds, multiplied considerably in the last twelve years, comes tumbling down the steps to leap about Zdena; Harry's faithful hound Hector comes and puts his paws on her shoulder; and, lastly, the ladies come down into the hall,--Heda, the Countess Zriny, Frulein Laut,--and, surrounding Zdena, carry her off to her room. Here they stay talking with her for a while; then they withdraw, each to follow her own devices.

How glad the girl is to be alone! She is strangely moved, perplexed, and yet unaccountably happy.

It is clear that Harry intends to dissolve the engagement into which so mysterious a chain of circ.u.mstances has forced him. The difficulty of doing this Zdena does not take into consideration. Paula must see that he does not care for her; and then--then there will be nothing left for her save to release him. Thus Zdena concludes, and the world looks very bright to her.

Oh, the dear old room! she would not exchange it for a kingdom.

How home-like and comfortable!--so shady and cool, with its deep window-recesses, where the suns.h.i.+ne filters in through the green, rustling net-work of vines; with its stiff antiquated furniture forming so odd a contrast to the wild luxuriance of extraordinary flowers with which a travelling fresco-painter ages ago decorated walls and ceiling; with its old-fas.h.i.+oned embroidered _prie-dieu_ beneath an ancient bronze crucifix, and its little bed, so snowy white and cool, fragrant with lavender and orris!

The floor, of plain deal planks, scrubbed to a milky whiteness, is bare, except that beside the bed lies a rug upon which a very yellow tiger is rolling, and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth, in a very green meadow, and on the wall hangs one single picture,--a faded chromo, at which Zdena, when a child, had almost stared her eyes out.

The picture represents a young lady gazing at her reflection in a mirror. Her hair is worn in tasteless, high puffs and much powdered, her waist is unnaturally long and slim, and her skirts are bunched up about her hips. To the modern observer she is not attractive, but Zdena hails her as an old acquaintance. Beneath the picture are the words "_Lui plairai-je?_" The thing hangs in one of the window-embrasures, above a marquetrie work-table, upon which has been placed a nosegay of fresh, fragrant roses.

"Who has plucked and placed them there?" Zdena asks herself. Suddenly a shrill bell rings, calling to table the inmates of Komaritz in house and garden. Zdena hurriedly picks out of the nosegay the loveliest bud, and puts it in her breast, then looks at herself in the gla.s.s,--a tall, narrow gla.s.s in a smooth black frame with bra.s.s rosettes at the corners,--and murmurs, smiling, "_Lui plairai-je?_" then blushes violently and takes out the rose from her bosom. It is a sin even to have such a thought,--under existing circ.u.mstances.

CHAPTER XXI.

"POOR LATO!"

Five hours have pa.s.sed since Zdena's arrival in Komaritz. Harry has been very good; that is, he has scarcely made an appearance; perhaps because he is conscious that when he is with Zdena he can hardly take his eyes off her, which, "under existing circ.u.mstances," might strike others as, to Bay the least, extraordinary.

After dinner he goes off partridge shooting, inviting his younger brother, who is devoted to him and whom he spoils like a mother, to accompany him. But Vips, as the family prefer to call him instead of Vladimir, although usually proud and happy to be thus distinguished by his elder brother, declines his invitation today. In fact, he has fallen desperately in love with Zdena. He is lying at her feet on the steps leading from the dwelling-room into the garden. His hair is beautifully brushed, and he has on his best coat.

The Countess Zriny is in her room, writing to her father confessor; Frulein Laut is at the piano, practising something by Brahms, to which musical hero she is almost as much devoted as is Rosamunda to her idolized Wagner; and Heda is sitting beside her cousin on the garden-steps, manufacturing with praiseworthy diligence crochetted stars of silk.

"What do you really think of Harry's betrothal, Zdena?" she begins at last, after a long silence.

At this question the blood rushes to Zdena's cheeks; nevertheless her answer sounds quite self-possessed.

"What shall I say? I was very much surprised."

"So was I," Heda confesses. "At first I was raging, for, after all, _elle n'est pas de notre monde_. But lately so many young men of our set have married n.o.bodies that one begins to be accustomed to it, although I must say I am by no means enchanted with it yet. One's own brother,--it comes very near; but it is best to shut one's eyes in such cases. Setting aside the _msalliance_, there is no objection to make to Paula. She is pretty, clover, frightfully cultivated,--too cultivated: it is rather bad form,--and for the rest, if she would only dress a little better, she would be quite presentable. And then she makes such advances; it is touching. The last time I dined at Dobrotschau I found in my napkin a b.u.t.terfly pendant, with little sapphires and rubies in its diamond wings. I must show it to you; 'tis delicious," she rattles on.

"And what did you find in your napkin, Vips?" asks Zdena, who seems to herself to be talking of people with whom she has not the slightest connection, so strange is the whole affair.

"I? I was not at the dinner," says the boy.

"Not invited?" Zdena rallies him.

"Not invited!" Vips draws down the corners of his mouth scornfully.

"Oh, indeed! not invited! Why, they invited the entire household,--even her!" He motions disdainfully towards the open door, through which Frulein Laut can be seen sitting at the piano. "Yes, we were even asked to bring Hector. But I stayed at home, because I cannot endure those Harfinks."

"Ah! your sentiments are also opposed to the _msalliance_?" Zdena goes on, ironically.

"_Msalliance!_" shouts Vips. "You know very well that I am a Liberal!"

Vips finished reading "Don Carlos" about a fortnight ago, and even before then showed signs of Liberal tendencies.

The previous winter, when he attended the representation, at a theatre in Bohemia, of a new play of strong democratic colouring, he applauded all the freethinking tirades with such vehemence that his tutor was at last obliged, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the public, to hold back his hands.

"Ah, indeed, you are Liberal?" says Zdena. "I am delighted to hear it."

"Of course I am; but every respectable man must be a bit of an aristocrat," Vips declares, grandly, "and I cannot endure that Harry should marry that Paula. I told him so to his face; and I am not going to his wedding. I cannot understand why he takes her, for he's in love----" He suddenly pauses. Two gentlemen are coming through the garden towards the steps,--Harry and Lato.

Lato greets Zdena cordially. Heda expresses her surprise at Harry's speedy return from his shooting, and he, who always now suspects some hidden meaning in her remarks, flushes and frowns as he replies, "I saw Treurenberg in the distance, and so I turned back. Besides, the shooting all went wrong to-day," he adds, with a compa.s.sionate glance at the large hound now stretched out at his master's feet at the bottom of the steps. "He would scarcely stir: I cannot understand it, he is usually so fresh and gay, and loves to go shooting more than all the others; to-day he was almost sullen, and lagged behind,--hey, old boy?" He stoops and strokes the creature's neck, but the dog seems ill-tempered, and snaps at him.

"What! snap--snap at me! that's something new," Harry exclaims, frowning; then, seizing the animal by the collar, he shakes it violently and hurls it from him. "Be off!" he orders, sternly. The dog, as if suddenly ashamed, looks back sadly, and then walks slowly away, with drooping ears and tail. "I don't know what is the matter with the poor fellow!" Harry says, really troubled.

"He walks strangely; he seems stiff," Vladimir remarks, looking after the dog. "It seems to hurt him."

"Some good-for-nothing boy must have thrown a stone at him and bruised his back," Harry decides.

"You had better be careful with that dog," Heda now puts in her word.

"Several dogs hereabouts have gone mad, and one roamed about the country for some time before he could be caught and killed."

"Pray, hus.h.!.+" Harry exclaims, almost angrily, to his sister, with whom he is apt to disagree: "you always forebode the worst. If a fly stings one you are always sure that it has just come from an infected horse or cow."

"You have lately been so irritable, I cannot imagine what is the matter with you," lisps Hedwig.

Harry frowns.

Lato, meanwhile, has paid no heed to these remarks: he is apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, as, sitting on a lower step, he has been drawing with the handle of his riding-whip cabalistic signs in the gravel of the path. Now he looks up.

"I have a letter for you from Paula,--here it is," he observes, handing Harry a thick packet wrapped in light-blue tissue paper. While Harry, with a dubious expression of countenance, drops the packet into his coat-pocket, Lato continues: "Paula has all sorts of fancies about your absence. You have not been to Dobrotschau for two days. She is afraid you are ill, and that you are keeping it from her lest she should be anxious. She is coming over here with my wife tomorrow afternoon to look after you--I mean, to pay the ladies a visit." After Lato has given utterance to these words in a smooth monotone, his expression suddenly changes: his features betoken embarra.s.sment, as, leaning towards Harry, he whispers, "I should like to speak with you alone. Can you give me a few minutes?"

Shortly afterwards, Harry rises and takes his friend with him to his own room, a s.p.a.cious vaulted chamber next to the dining-room, which he shares with his young brother.

"Well, old fellow?" he begins, encouragingly, clapping Lato on the shoulder. Lato clears his throat, then slowly takes his seat in an arm-chair beside a table covered with a disorderly array of Greek and Latin books and scribbled sheets of paper. Harry sits opposite him, and for a while neither speaks.

The silence is disturbed only by the humming of the bees, and by the scratching at the window of an ancient apricot-tree, which seems desirous to call attention to what it has to say, but desists with a low rustle that sounds like a sigh. The tall clock strikes five; it is not late, and yet the room is dim with a gray-green light; the sunbeams have hard work to penetrate the leafy screen before the windows.

"Well?" Harry again says, at last, gently twitching his friend's sleeve.