Part 23 (1/2)
AT DOBROTSCHAU.
It is the day after Treurenberg's meeting with Harry in the dusty little garrison town.
Lato is sitting at his writing-table, counting a package of bank-notes,--his yesterday's winnings. He divides them into two packets and encloses them in two letters, which he addresses and seals and sends by a servant to the post. He has thus wiped out two old debts. No sooner have the letters left his hand than he brushes his fingers with his handkerchief, as if he had touched something unclean.
Poor Treurenberg! He has never been a spendthrift, but he has been in debt ever since his boyhood. His pecuniary circ.u.mstances, however, have never been so oppressive, never have there been such disagreeable complications in his affairs, as since he has had a millionaire for a wife.
He leans his elbows on his writing-table and rests his chin on his hands. Angry discontent with himself is tugging at his nerves. Is it not disgusting to liquidate an old debt to his tailor, and to pay interest to a usurer, with his winnings at play? What detestable things cards are! If he loses he hates it, and if he wins--why, it gives him a momentary satisfaction, but his annoyance at having impoverished a friend or an acquaintance is all the greater afterwards. Every sensible disposition of the money thus won seems to him most inappropriate.
Money won at cards should be scattered about, squandered; and yet how can he squander it,--he who has so little and needs so much? How often he has resolved never to touch cards again! If he only had some strong, sacred interest in life he might become absorbed in it, and so forget the cursed habit. He has not the force of character that will enable him to sacrifice his pa.s.sion for play to an abstract moral idea. His is one of those delicate but dependent natures that need a prop in life, and he has never had one, even in childhood.
”What is the use of cudgelling one's brains till they ache, about what cannot be helped?” he says at last, with a sigh, ”or which I at least cannot help,” he adds, with a certain bitterness of self-accusation. He rises, takes his hat, and strolls out into the park. A huge, brown-streaked stag-hound, which had belonged to the old proprietor of the castle and which has dogged Lato's heels since the previous evening, follows him. From time to time he turns and strokes the animal's head. Then he forgets----
At the same time, Paula is sitting in her study, on the ground-floor.
It looks out on the court-yard, and is hung with sad-coloured leather, and decorated with a couple of good old pictures. She is sitting there clad in a very modern buff muslin gown, with a fiery red sash, listening for sounds without and with head bent meanwhile over Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet.'
The noise of distant hoofs falls upon her ear, and a burning blush suffuses her plump cheek. Upon the white shade, which is pulled down, falls the shadow of a horse's head, and then the upper portion of his rider's figure. The hoofs no longer sound. Through the sultry summer stillness--breaking the monotonous plas.h.i.+ng of the fountain and the murmur of the old linden--is heard the light, firm pat of a masculine hand upon a horse's neck, the caress with which your true horseman thanks his steed for service rendered; then an elastic, manly tread, the clatter of spurs and sabre, a light knock at the door of Paula's room, and Harry Leskjewitsch enters.
Paula, with a smile, holds out to him both her hands; without smiling he dutifully kisses one of them.
A pair of lovers in Meissen porcelain stands upon a bracket above Paula's writing-table,--lovers who have been upon the point of embracing each other for something more than a century. Above their heads hovers a tiny ray of suns.h.i.+ne, which attracts Harry's attention to the group. He and Paula fall into the very same att.i.tudes as those taken by the powdered dandy in the flowered jacket and the little peasant-girl in dancing-slippers,--they are on the point of embracing; and for the first time in his life Harry wishes he were made of porcelain, that he might remain upon the point.
His betrothal is now eight days old. The first day he thought it would be mere child's play to loosen the knot tied by so wild a chance, but now he feels himself fast bound, and is conscious that each day casts about him fresh fetters. In vain, with every hour pa.s.sed with his betrothed, does he struggle not to plunge deeper into this labyrinth, from which he can find no means of extricating himself. In vain does he try to enlighten Paula as to his sentiments towards her by a stiff, repellent demeanour, never lying to her by look, word, or gesture.
But what does it avail him to stand before her like a saint on a pedestal? Before he is aware, she has drawn his head towards her and kissed him on both eyes, whereupon both lovers sigh,--each for a different reason,--and then sit down opposite each other. Paula, however, does not long endure such formality. She moves her chair closer to his, and at last lays her hand on the young officer's shoulder.
Harry is positively wretched. No use to attempt to deceive himself any longer: Paula Harfink is in love with him.
Although she brought about the betrothal by means of cool cunning and determination, daily intercourse with the handsome, chivalric young fellow has kindled a flame in her mature heart, and her pa.s.sion for him grows with every hour pa.s.sed in his society.
It is useless to say how little this circ.u.mstance disposes him in her favour. Love is uncommonly unbecoming to Paula. It is impossible to credit her with the impulse that forgets self and the world, or with the amount of ideal stupidity which invests all the nonsense of lovers with grace and naturalness. Involuntarily, every one feels inclined to smile when so robust and enlightened a woman--enlightened in all directions--suddenly languishes, and puts on the semblance of ultra-feminine weakness. Harry alone does not smile; he takes the matter very tragically.
Sometimes, in deep privacy he clinches his fist and mentally calls his betrothed ”a love-sick dromedary!”
Naturally he does not utter such words aloud, not even when he is alone in his room, not even in the dark; but--thought is free!
”What have you been doing all this time?” Paula asks at last, archly, thus breaking the oppressive silence.
”This time? Do you mean since yesterday?” he asks, frowning.
”It seemed long to me,” she sighs. ”I--I wrote you a letter, which I had not the courage to send you. There, take it with you!” And she hands him a bulky ma.n.u.script in a large envelope. It is not the first sizable billet-doux which she has thus forced upon him. In a drawer of his writing-table at Komaritz there reposes a pile of such envelopes, unopened.
”Have you read the English novel I sent you yesterday?--wonderful, is it not?--hero and heroine so like ourselves.”
”I began it. I thought it rather shallow.”
”Oh, well, I do not consider it a learned work. I never care for depth in a novel,--only love and high life. Shall we go on with our Shakespeare?” she asks.
”If you choose. What shall we read?”