O Thou, My Austria! Part 43

"Oh, no one will take any notice, and there is plenty of time before dinner. Take a walk with me in the park; it is not so warm as it was."

"I cannot, my child; I have a letter to write."

"As you please;" and she adds, in an undertone, "You are changed towards me."

Before he can reply, she is gone.

The path along which she has disappeared is flecked with crimson,--the petals of the rose that she had worn in her girdle.

Lato feels as if rudely awakened from unconsciousness. He walks unsteadily, and covers his eyes with his hand as if dazzled by even the tempered light of the afternoon. The terrible bliss for which he longs, of which he is afraid, seems so near that he has but to reach out his hand and grasp it. He stamps his foot in horror of himself. What! a pure young girl! his wife's relative! The very thought is impossible!

He is tormented by the feverish fancies of overwrought nerves. He shakes himself as if to be rid of a burden, then turns and walks rapidly along a path leading in an opposite direction from where the scattered rose-leaves are lying on the ground.

As he pa.s.ses on with eyes downcast, he almost runs against the Pole.

The glances of the two men meet; involuntarily Lato averts his from Fainacky's face, and as he does so he is conscious of a slight embarra.s.sment, which the other takes a malicious delight in noticing.

"Aha!" he begins; "your long interview with the fair Olga seems to have had a less agreeable effect upon your mood than I had antic.i.p.ated."

Such a remark would usually have called forth from Lato a sharp rejoinder; to-day he would fain choose his words, to excuse himself, as it were.

"She was much agitated," he murmurs. "I had some trouble in soothing her. She--she is nervous and sensitive; her position in my mother-in-law's household is not a very pleasant one."

"Well, you certainly do your best to improve it," Fainacky says, hypocritically.

"And you to make it impossible!" Lato exclaims, angrily.

"Did the fair Olga complain of me, then?" drawls the other.

"There was no need that she should," Treurenberg goes on to say. "Do you suppose that I need anything more than eyes in my head to see how you follow her about and stare at her?"

Fainacky gives him a lowering look, and then laughs softly.

"Well, yes, I confess, I have paid her some attention; she pleases me.

Yes, yes, I do not deny my sensibility to female charms. I never played the saint!"

"Indeed! At least you seem to have made an effort to-day to justify your importunity," Treurenberg rejoins, filled with contempt for the simpering specimen of humanity before him. "You have offered her your hand."

Scarcely have the words left his lips when Treurenberg is conscious that he has committed a folly in thus irritating the man.

Fainacky turns pale to the lips, and his expression is one of intense malice.

"It is true," he says, "that I so far forgot myself for a moment as to offer your youthful _protge_ my hand. Good heavens! I am not the first man of rank who, in a moment of enthusiasm and to soothe the irritated nerves of a shy beauty, has offered to marry a girl of low extraction. The obstacle, however, which bars my way to her heart appears to be of so serious a nature that I shall make no attempt to remove it."

He utters the words with a provoking smile and most malicious emphasis.

"To what obstacle do you refer?" Lato exclaims, in increasing anger.

"Can you seriously ask me that question?" the Pole murmurs, in a low voice like the hiss of a serpent.

Transported with anger, Treurenberg lifts his hand; the Pole scans him quietly.

"If you wish for a duel, there is no need to resort to so drastic a measure to provoke it. But do you seriously think it would be well for the fair fame of your--your lovely _protge_ that you should fight for her?" And, turning on his heel, Fainacky walks towards the castle.

Lato stands as if rooted to the spot, his gaze riveted on the ground.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

INTERRUPTED HARMONY.

Dinner is over, and the gilt chandelier in the garden-room, where coffee is usually served, is lighted. Selina is sitting at the piano accompanying Fainacky, who is singing. Paula is in her own rooms with her mother, inspecting the latest additions to her trousseau, just arrived from Vienna. Lato has remained in the garden-room, where he endures with heroic courage the sound of Fainacky's voice as he whines forth his sentimental French songs, accentuating them in the most touching places with dramatic gestures and much maltreatment of his pocket-handkerchief. After each song he compliments Selina upon her playing. Her touch reminds him of Madame Essipoff. Selina, whose digestion is perfect so far as flattery is concerned, swallows all his compliments and looks at him as if she wished for more.

On the wide gravel path, before the gla.s.s doors of the room, Olga is pacing to and fro. The broad light from door and window reveals clearly the upper portion of her figure. Her head is slightly bent, her hands are clasped easily before her. There is a peculiar gliding grace in all her movements. With all Treurenberg's efforts to become interested in the newspaper which he holds, he cannot grasp the meaning of a single sentence. The letters flicker before his eyes like a crowd of crawling insects. Weary of such fruitless exertion, he lifts his eyes, to encounter Olga's gazing at him with a look of tenderest sympathy. He starts, and makes a fresh effort to absorb himself in the paper, but before he is aware of it she has come in from the garden and has taken her seat on a low chair beside him.

"Is anything the matter with you?" she asks.

"What could be the matter with me?" he rejoins, evasively.

"I thought you might have a headache, you look so pale," she says, with a matronly air.

"Olga, I would seriously advise you to devote yourself to the study of medicine, you are so quick to observe symptoms of illness in those about you."

She returns his sarcasm with a playful little tap upon his arm.

Fainacky turns and looks at them, a fiendish light in his green eyes, in the midst of his most effective rendering of Ma.s.senet's "_Nuits d'Espagne_."

"If you want to talk, I think you might go out in the garden, instead of disturbing us here," Selina calls out, sharply.

Lato instantly turns to his newspaper, and when he looks up from it again, Olga has vanished. He rises and goes to the open door. The sultry magic of the September night broods over the garden outside. The moon is not yet visible,--it rises late,--but countless stars twinkle in the blue-black heavens, shedding a pale silvery l.u.s.tre upon the dark earth. Olga is nowhere to be seen; but there---- He takes a step or two forward; she is walking quickly. He pauses, looks after her until she disappears entirely among the shrubbery, and then he goes back to the garden-room.

It is Selina's turn to sing now, and she has chosen a grand aria from "Lucrezia Borgia." She is a pupil of Frau Marchesi's, and she has a fine voice,--that is to say, a voice of unusual compa.s.s and power, which might perhaps have made a reputation on the stage, but which is far from agreeable in a drawing room. It is like the blowing of trumpets in the same s.p.a.ce.

His wife's singing is the one thing in the world which Lato absolutely cannot tolerate, and never has tolerated. Pa.s.sing directly through the room, he disappears through a door opposite the one leading into the garden.

Even in the earliest years of their married life Selina always took amiss her husband's insensibility to her musical performances, and now, when she avers his indifference to her in every other respect to be a great convenience, her sensitiveness as an artist is unchanged.

Breaking off in the midst of her song, she calls after him, "Is that a protest?"

He does not hear her.

"_Continuez done, ma cousine_, I implore you," the Pole murmurs.

With redoubled energy, accompanying herself, Countess Selina sings on, only dropping her hands from the keys when she has executed a break-neck cadenza by way of final flourish. Fainacky, meanwhile, gracefully leaning against the instrument, listens ecstatically, with closed eyes.

"Selina, you are an angel!" he exclaims, when she has finished. "Were I in Treurenberg's place you should sing to me from morning until night."