Part 13 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV.
A QUARREL.
Meanwhile, Harry has rushed out into the garden. He is very restless, very warm, very much agitated. It never occurs to him that his uncle has been chaffing him a little; he cannot suspect that the major has any knowledge of his sentiments.
”She cannot be so worthless!” he consoles himself by reflecting, while his eyes search for her in the distance.
With this thought filling his mind, the young officer hurries on. He does not find her at first; she is not in the honeysuckle arbour.
The sultriness of the August afternoon weighs upon the dusty vegetation of the late summer. The leaves of the trees and shrubs droop wearily; the varied luxuriance of bloom is past; the first crop of roses has faded, the next has not yet arrived at maturity. Only a few red verbenas and zinnias gleam forth from the dull green monotony.
At a turn of the path Harry suddenly starts, and pauses,--he has found what he is looking for.
Directly in the centre of the hawthorn-bordered garden-path there is an easel weighted with an enormous canvas, at which, working away diligently, stands a gentleman, of whom Harry can see nothing but a slightly round-shouldered back, the fluttering ribbons of a Scotch cap set on the back of a head covered with short gray hair, and a gigantic palette projecting beyond the left elbow; while at some distance from the easel, clearly defined against the green background, stands a tall, graceful, maidenly figure draped in a loose, fantastic robe, her arms full of wild poppies, a large hat wreathed with vine-leaves on her small head, her golden-brown hair loose upon her shoulders,--Zdena! Her eyes meet Harry's: she flushes crimson,--the poppies slip from her arms and fall to the ground.
”You here!” she murmurs, confusedly, staring at him. She can find no more kindly words of welcome, and her face expresses terror rather than joyful surprise, as a far less sharp-sighted lover than Harry Leskjewitsch could not fail to observe.
He makes no reply to her words, but says, bluntly, pointing to the artist at the easel, ”Be kind enough to introduce me.”
With a choking sensation in her throat, and trembling lips, Zdena stammers the names of her two adorers, the old one and the young one.
The gentlemen bow,--Harry with angry formality, Baron Wenkendorf with formal amiability.
”Aunt Rosa tells me to ask you to come to the drawing-room,” Harry says, dryly.
”Have any guests arrived?” asks Zdena.
”Only my sister and Aunt Zriny.”
”Oh, then I must dress myself immediately!” she exclaims, and before Harry is aware of it she has slipped past him and into the house.
Baron Wenkendorf pushes his Scotch cap a little farther back from his forehead, which gives his face a particularly amazed expression, and gazes with the same condescending benevolence, first at the vanis.h.i.+ng maidenly figure, and then at the picture on the easel; after which he begins to put up his painting-materials. Harry a.s.sists him to do so, but leaves the making of polite remarks entirely to the ”elderly gentleman.” He is not in the mood for anything of the kind. He sees everything at present as through dark, crimson gla.s.s.
Although Zdena's distress arises from a very different cause from her cousin's, it is none the less serious.
”Oh, heavens!” she thinks to herself, as she hurries to her room to arrange her dishevelled hair, ”why must he come before I have an answer ready? He surely will not insist upon an immediate decision! It would be terrible! Anything but a forced decision; that is the worst thing in the world.”
Such, however, does not seem to be the opinion of her hot-blooded cousin. When, a quarter of an hour afterwards, she goes out into the corridor and towards the drawing-room door, she observes a dark figure standing in the embrasure of a window. The figure turns towards her, then approaches her.
”Harry! ah!” she exclaims, with a start; ”what are you doing here? Are you waiting for anybody?”
”Yes,” he replies, with some harshness, ”for you!”
”Ah!” And, without looking at him, she hurries on to the door of the drawing-room.
”There is no one there,” he informs her; ”they have all gone to the summer-house in the garden. Wenkendorf proposes to read aloud the libretto of 'Parzifal.'” He pauses.
”And did you stay here to tell me this?” she stammers, trying to pa.s.s him, on her way to the steps leading into the garden. ”It was very kind of you; you seem destined to play the part of sheep-dog to-day, to drive the company together.”
They go into the garden, and the buzz of voices reaches their ears from the summer-house. They have turned into a shady path, above which arches the foliage of the shrubs on either side. Suddenly Harry pauses, and seizing his cousin's slender hands in both his own, he gazes steadily and angrily into her eyes, saying, in a suppressed voice,--