O Thou, My Austria! Part 6

Herr Schmied smiled, surprised and touched. He took the boy's hand in his, and said, sadly, "Even then, Harry. Yet I am sorry, for I was beginning to be very fond of you."

The tears were in Harry's eyes, but he evidently felt that no entreaty would be of any avail.

In fact, the next morning Herr Schmied took his departure. A few days afterwards, however, Harry received a letter from him with a foreign post-mark. He had written four long pages to his former pupil. Harry flushed with pride and joy as he read it, and answered it that very evening.

Herr Schmied is now Professor of Modern History in a foreign university, his name is well known, and he is held in high honour. He still corresponds with Harry, whose next tutor was a French abb. The cause of the abb's dismissal I have forgotten; indeed, I remember only one more among the numerous preceptors, and he was the last,--a German from Bohemia, called Ewald Finke.

His name was not really Ewald, but Michael, but he called himself Ewald because he liked it better. He had studied abroad, which always impressed us favourably, and, as Uncle Karl was told, he had already won some reputation in Leipsic by his literary efforts. He was looking for a situation as tutor merely that he might have some rest from intellectual labours that had been excessive. "Moreover," his letter of recommendation from a well-known professor went on to say, "the Herr Baron will not be slow to discover that he is here brought into contact with a rarely-gifted nature, one of those in intercourse with whom allowance must be made for certain peculiarities which at first may prove rather annoying." Uncle Karl instantly wrote, in reply, that "annoying peculiarities" were of no consequence,--that he would accord unlimited credit in the matter of allowance to the new tutor. In fact, he took such an interest in the genius thus offered him that he prolonged his stay in Komaritz to two weeks, instead of departing at the end of three days, as he had at first intended, solely in expectation of the new tutor.

By the way, those who are familiar with my uncle's morbid restlessness may imagine the joy of his household at his prolonged stay in Komaritz.

Not knowing how otherwise to kill his time, he hit upon the expedient of shooting it, and, as the hunting season had not begun, he shot countless b.u.t.terflies. We found them lying in heaps among the flowers, little, shapeless, shrivelled things, mere specks of brilliant dust.

When weary of this amus.e.m.e.nt, he would seat himself at the piano and play over and over again the same dreary air, grasping uncertainly at the chords, and holding them long and firmly when once he had got them.

Harry a.s.sured me that he was playing a funeral march for the dead b.u.t.terflies, and I supposed it to be his own composition. This, however, was not the case, and the piece was not a funeral march, but a polonaise,--"The Last Thought of Count Oginski," who is said to have killed himself after jotting down this music.

At last Herr Finke made his appearance. He was a tall, beardless young man, with hair cut close to his head, and a sallow face adorned with the scars of several sabre-cuts, a large mouth, a pointed nose, the nostrils quivering with critical scorn, and staring black eyes with large round spectacles, through which they saw only what they chose to see.

Uncle Karl's reception of him was grandiloquent. "Enter," he exclaimed, going to meet him with extended hands. "My house is open to you. I delight in grand natures which refuse to be cramped within the limits of conventionality."

Herr Finke replied to this high-sounding address only by a rather condescending nod, shaking the proffered hand as if bestowing a favour.

After he had been refreshed with food and drink, Uncle Karl challenged him to a fencing-match, which lasted upward of an hour, at the end of which time my uncle confessed that the new tutor was a master of fence, immediately wrote to thank the ill.u.s.trious professor to whom he owed this treasure of learning, and left Komaritz that same evening.

Herr Finke remained precisely three weeks in his new situation. So far as lessons went he seemed successful enough, but his "annoying peculiarities" ended in an outbreak of positive insanity, during which he set fire to the frame house on the hill where he was lodged, and was carried off to a mad-house in a strait-waistcoat, raving wildly.

Uncle Karl was sadly disappointed, and suddenly resolved to send Harry to a public school, being convinced that no good could come of tutors.

From this time forward the young Leskjewitsches came to Komaritz only for the vacations.

VII.

We were very good friends, Harry and I,--there's no denying that. We told each other all our secrets,--at least I told him mine,--and we divided all our bon-bons with each other. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we played at marriage, the ceremony giving occasion for a deal of delightful "dressing up." Moreover, we had long been agreed that, sooner or later, this play should become earnest, and that we would marry each other. But when the first down became perceptible on Harry's upper lip, our mutual friends.h.i.+p began to flag. It was just about the time that Harry went to a public school.

His indifference grieved me at first, then I became consoled, and at last I was faithless to him. A cousin of Harry's, who came to Komaritz to spend the holidays, gave occasion for this breach of faith. His name was Lato, Count Treurenberg. The name alone kindled my enthusiasm. He had scarcely been two days in Komaritz, where I too was staying at the time, when Hedwig confided to me that she was in love with him.

"So am I," I replied. I was firmly convinced that this was so.

My confession was the signal for a highly dramatic scene. Hedwig, who had frequently been to the theatre in Prague, ran about the room wringing her hands and crying, "Both with the same man! both!--it is terrible! One of us must resign him, or the consequences will be fearful."

I diffidently offered to sacrifice my pa.s.sion.

She shrieked, "No, I never can accept such a sacrifice from you! Fate shall decide between us."

Whereupon we put one white and one black bean in a little, broken, handle-less coffee-pot which we found in the garret, and which Hedwig called an urn.

The decisive moment made my heart beat. We cast lots for precedence in drawing from the urn. It fell to me, and I drew out a black bean! The moment was thrilling. Heda sank upon a sofa, and fanned her joyful face with her pocket-handkerchief. She declared that if she had drawn the black bean she would have attempted her life. This declaration dispelled my despair; I shuddered at the idea of being the cause of anything so horrible.

From that day Heda never spoke to Lato von Treurenberg without drooping her head on one side and rolling her eyes languis.h.i.+ngly,--conduct which seemed to cause the young fellow some surprise, but which he treated with great courtesy, while Harry used to exclaim, "What is the matter with you, Heda? You look like a goose in a thunder-storm!"

My behaviour towards Lato underwent no change: I had drawn the "black ball," and, in consequence, the most cordial friends.h.i.+p soon subsisted between us.

It would have been difficult not to like Lato, for I have never met a more amiable, agreeable young fellow.

He was about seventeen years old, very tall, and stooped slightly. His features were delicately chiselled; his smile was quite bewitching in its dreamy, all-embracing benevolence. There was decided melancholy in his large, half-veiled eyes, which caused Hedwig to liken him to Lord Byron.

His complexion was rather dark,--which was odd, as his hair was light brown touched with gold at the temples. His neck was too long, and his arms were uncommonly long. All his appointments, from his coats to his cigar-case, were extremely elegant, testifying to a degree of fastidiousness thitherto quite unknown in Komaritz. Nevertheless, he seemed very content in this primitive nest, ignoring all discomfort, and making no pretension. Heda, who was quick to seize upon every opportunity to admire him, called my attention to his amiable forbearance, or, I confess, I should not have noticed it.

From Hedwig I learned much concerning the young man; among other things, she gave me a detailed account of his family circ.u.mstances. His mother was, she informed me, a "mediatisirte."[1] She uttered the word reverently, and, when I confessed that I did not know what it meant, she nearly fainted. His father was one of the most fascinating men in Austria. He is still living, and is by no means, it seems, at the end of his fascinations, but, being a widower, hovers about from one amusing capital to another, breaking hearts for pastime. It seems to be a wonderfully entertaining occupation, and, when one once indulges in it, the habit cannot be got rid of,--like opium-eating.

While he thus paraded his brilliant fascinations in the gay world, he did not, of course, find much time to interest himself in his boy, who was left to the care of distant relatives, and who, when found to be backward in his studies, was placed, I believe by Uncle Karl's advice, under the care of a Prague professor by the name of Suwa, who kept, as Harry once told me, a kind of orthopdic inst.i.tution for minds that lacked training.

Beside Lato, during that vacation there were two other guests at Komaritz, one a very distant cousin of Harry's, and the other a kind of sub-tutor whose duty it was to coach Harry in his studies.

We could not endure the sub-tutor. His name was Franz Tuschalek; he was about nineteen, with hands and feet like shovels, and a flat, unmeaning face. His manner was intensely servile, and his coat-sleeves and trousers were too short, which gave him a terribly indigent air. One could not help regarding him with a mixture of impatience and sympathy.

By my radical uncle's express desire, he and Harry called each other by their Christian names. Still, obnoxious as poor Tuschalek was to us, he was more to our minds than the distant cousin.

This last was a Pole, about twenty years old, with a sallow face and long oblique eyes, which he rolled in an extraordinary way. His hair was black, and he curled it with the curling-tongs. He was redolent of musk, and affected large plaid suits of clothes. His German was not good, and his French was no better, but he a.s.sured us that he was a proficient in Chinese and Arabic. He was always playing long and difficult concertos on the table, but he never touched the piano at Komaritz, declaring that the instrument was worn out. He was always short of funds, and was perpetually boasting of the splendour of his family.

He frequently sketched, upon some stray piece of paper, a magnificent and romantic structure, which he would display to us as his Polish home,--"our ancestral castle."

Sometimes this castle appeared with two turrets, sometimes with only one, a fact to which Harry did not fail to call his attention.

His distinguished ancestry was a topic of never-failing interest to him; he was never weary of explaining his connection with various European reigning dynasties, and his visiting-cards bore the high-sounding names "Le Comte Ladislas Othon Fainacky de Chrast-Bambosch," although, as Harry confided to us, he had no right to the t.i.tle of comte, being the son of a needy Polish baron.

Although Franz Tuschalek was almost as obnoxious to Harry as the "braggart Sarmatian," as Lato called the Pole, he never allowed his antipathy to be seen, but treated him with great consideration, as he did all inferiors, scarcely allowing himself to give vent to his distaste for him even in his absence. But he paraded his dislike of Fainacky, never speaking of him as a guest, but as an "invasion," and always trying to annoy him by some boyish trick.

At length, one Sunday, the crisis in Harry's first vacation occurred.

We had all been to early ma.s.s, and the celebrant had accompanied us back to Komaritz, as was his custom, to breakfast. After a hasty cup of coffee he took his leave of us children, and betook himself to the bailiff's quarters, where we more than suspected him of a quiet game of cards with that official and his underlings.

The door of the dining-room leading out into the garden was wide open, and delicious odours from the moist flower-beds floated in and mingled with the fragrance of the coffee. It had rained in the night, but the sun had emerged from the clouds and had thrown a golden veil over trees and shrubs. We were just rising from table when the "braggart Sarmatian" entered, booted and spurred, smelling of all the perfumes of Arabia, and with his hair beautifully curled. He had not been to ma.s.s, and had breakfasted in his room in the frame house on the hill, which had been rebuilt since the fire. After he had bidden us all an affected good-morning, he said, turning to Harry,--

"Has the man come with the mail?"

"Yes," Harry replied, curtly.

"Did no registered letter come for me?"

"No."

"Strange!"

"Very strange," Harry sneered. "You have been expecting that letter a long time. If I were you, I'd investigate the matter."

"There's something wrong with the post," the Pole declared, with an air of importance. "I must see about it. I think I had best apply to my uncle the cabinet-minister."