Part 10 (1/2)
”Come just as you are. 'Tis only Harry; it is not as if it were a stranger. Come!” called my aunt.
But I was not to be persuaded. Not for worlds would I have had Harry suspect that--that--well, that I was in any great hurry to see him.
I dressed my hair with the most scrupulous care. Not before twenty minutes had pa.s.sed did I go into the next room.
How plainly I see it all before me now,--the room, half drawing-room, half dressing-room; a trunk in one corner, in another an old piano, the key of which we were obliged to procure from the kellner; in an arm-chair a bundle of shawls, over the back of a sofa our travelling-wraps, our well-polished boots in front of the porcelain stove, great patches of misty suns.h.i.+ne lying everywhere, the breakfast-table temptingly spread near the window, and there, opposite my aunt, his sabre between his knees, tall, slender, very brown, very handsome, an officer of hussars,--Harry.
I like him, and am a little afraid of him. He suddenly springs up and advances a step or two towards me. His eyes--the same eyes that had glanced at me as I appeared in my wrapper--open wide in amazement; his gaze is riveted upon my face. All my fear has gone; yes, I confess it to this paper,--I am possessed by an exultant consciousness of power.
He is only my cousin, 'tis true, but he is the first man upon whom I have been able to prove my powers of conquest.
I put my hands in his, so cordially extended, but when he stooped as if to kiss me, I shook my head, laughing, and said, ”I am too old for that.”
He yielded without a word, only touching my hand respectfully with his lips and then releasing me; whereupon I went directly to the breakfast-table. But, as he still continued to gaze at me, I asked, easily,----
”What is it, Harry? Is my hair coming down?”
He shook his head, and said, in some confusion, ”Not at all. I was only wondering what you had done with all your magnificent hair!”
I made no reply, but applied myself to my breakfast.
It was really delightful, our short stay in Vienna. Harry was with us all the while. He went about with us from morning till night; patiently dragged with us to shops, picture-galleries, and cathedrals, and to the dusty, sunny Prater, where the vegetation along the drive seemed to have grown shabby. We drove together to Schnbrunn, the huge, dreamy, imperial summer residence, and wandered about the leafy avenues there.
We fed the swans; we fed the monkeys and the bears, while my aunt rested near by, Baedeker in hand, upon any bench she could find. She rested a great deal, and grew more tired with every day of our stay in Vienna, and with very good reason; she can hardly endure the pavement in walking, and she refuses, from fastidiousness, to take advantage of the tramway, and, from economy, to hire a carriage.
The sunset has kindled flames in all the windows of the castle, and we are still wandering in the green avenues, talking of all sorts of things, music, and literature. Harry's taste is cla.s.sic; mine is somewhat revolutionary. I talk more than he; he listens. Sometimes he throws in a word in the midst of my nonsense; at other times he laughs heartily at my paradoxes, and then again he suddenly looks askance at me and says nothing. Then I become aware that he understands far more than I of the matter in hand, and I fall silent.
The sun has set; the rosy reflection on the gra.s.s and at the foot of the old trees has faded; there is only a pale, gray gleam on the castle windows. All nature seems to sigh relieved. A cool mist rises from the basins of the fountains, like the caress of a water-nymph; the roses, petunias, and mignonette exhale delicious fragrance, which rises as incense to heaven; the lisp of the leaves and the plash of the fountain interpose a dreamy veil of sound, as it were, between us and some aggressive military music in the distance.
The twilight falls; the nurses are all taking their charges home. Here and there on the benches a soldier and a nursemaid are sitting together. It is too dark to see to read Baedeker any longer. My aunt calls to us: ”Do come, children; the carriage has been waiting ever so long, and I am very hungry.”
And the time had seemed so short to me. My aunt is so easily fatigued, and her aversion to tramways is so insurmountable, that she stays at home half the time in the hotel, and I make many a little expedition with Harry alone. Then I take his arm. We stroll through the old part of the city, with its sculptured monuments, its beautiful gray palaces standing side by side with the commonest lodging-houses; about us people are thronging and pus.h.i.+ng; we are in no hurry; we should like to have time stand still,--Harry and I; we walk very slowly. I am so content, so filled with a sense of protection, when I am with him thus.
It is delightful to cling to him in the crowd.
It seems to me that I should like to spend my life in slowly wandering thus in the cool of the evening through the streets, where the lights are just beginning to be lighted, where a pair of large, kindly eyes rest upon my face, and the sound of distant military music is in my ears.
The last evening before our departure arrived. We were sitting in our small drawing-room, and Harry and I were drinking iced coffee. My aunt had left hers untouched; the fever of travelling was upon her; she wandered from one room to another, opening trunks, drawers, and wardrobes, and casting suspicious glances under the piano and the sofas, sure that something would be left behind.
The kellner brought in two cards,--Countess Zriny and Frulein Tschaky,--a cousin of Uncle Paul's, with her companion.
We had called upon the Countess the day before, and had rejoiced to find her not at home. My aunt now elevated her eyebrows, and murmured, plaintively, ”It can't be helped!”
Then she hurriedly carried two bundles of shawls and a hand-bag into the next room, and the ladies were shown in.
Countess Zriny is a very stout, awkward old maid, with the figure of a meal-sack and the face of a portly abbot. Harry maintains that she has holy water instead of blood in her veins, and that she has for ten years lived exclusively upon Eau de Lourdes and Count Mattei's miraculous pills. It is odd that she should have grown so stout upon such a diet.
There is nothing to say of Frulein Tschaky.
Aunt Rosamunda received the ladies with a majestic affability peculiarly her own, and presented me as ”Our child,--Fritz's daughter!”