Part 27 (1/2)

his friend replies. ”You must devise some other, and--forgive my frankness--some more honest and straightforward means for attaining your end.”

Harry puffs furiously at his cigarette, sending a cloud of smoke over the flower-bed. ”Lato, you are rough upon me, but not rougher than I am upon myself. If you knew how degraded I feel by my false position, if you knew how the whole matter weighs upon me, you would do something more for me than only hold up a candle by the light of which I perceive more clearly the misery of my position. You would----”

”What?” Lato asks, disturbed.

”Help me!”

Lato looks at him in dismay for a moment, and then stammers, ”No, Harry, do not ask it of me,--not of me. I could do you no good. They never would let me speak, any more than my mother-in-law would allow you to speak. And even if I finally prevailed upon them to listen, they would blame me for the whole affair, would believe that I had excited your mind against the family.”

”How could they possibly imagine that you could conduct yourself so towards a friend?” Harry asks, with a grim smile.

Lato turns his head aside.

”Then you will not do me this service?”

”I cannot!” Treurenberg murmurs, faintly.

”I might have known it!” Harry breaks forth, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with indignant scorn. ”You are the same old fellow, the very same,--a good fellow enough, yes, sympathetic, compa.s.sionate, and, as long as you are allowed to remain perfectly pa.s.sive, the n.o.blest of men. But as soon as anything is required of you,--if any active interference is called for at your hands, there's an end of it. You simply cannot, you would rather die than rouse yourself to any energetic action!”

”Perhaps so,” Lato murmurs, with a far-away look in his eyes, and a smile that makes Harry's blood run cold.

A pause ensues, the longest of the many pauses that have occurred in this _tte--tte_.

The bees seem to buzz louder than ever. A dry, thirsty wind sighs in the boughs of the apple-tree; two or three hard green apples drop to the ground. At last Treurenberg gathers himself up.

”You must take me as I am,” he says, wearily; ”there is no cutting with a dull knife. I cannot possibly enlighten my mother-in-law as to the true state of your feelings. It would do no good, and it would make an infernal row. But I will give you one piece of good advice----”

Before he is able to finish his sentence his attention is arrested by a perfect babel of sounds from the dining-room. The piano music is hushed, its discord merged into the angry wail of a shrieking feminine voice and the rough, broken, changing tones of a lad,--the rebellious pupil, Vladimir Leskjewitsch. The hurly-burly is so outrageous that every one is roused to investigate it. Countess Zriny rushes in, with short, waddling steps, the paint-brush with which she has been mending St. John's robe still in her hand; Hedwig rushes in; Harry and Lato rush in.

”What is the matter? What is the matter?”

”You poured that water on the keys intentionally, to prevent your playing,” the teacher angrily declares to her pupil.

”I do not deny it,” Vladimir rejoins, loftily.

The spectators suppress a smile, and are all, as is, alas! so frequently the case, on the side of the culprit, a tall, overgrown lad of about fourteen, with a handsome dark face, large black eyes, a short, impertinent nose, and full, well-formed lips. With hands thrust deep into the pockets of his blue jacket, he gravely surveys the circle, and tosses his head defiantly.

”You hear him! you hear him!” Frulein Laut screams, turning to the by-standers. Then, approaching Vladimir, she asks, angrily, ”And how can you justify such conduct?”

Vladimir scans her with majestic disdain. ”How can you justify your having ruined all my pleasure in music?” he asks, in a tragic tone, and with a bombastic flourish of his hand. ”That piano has been my dear friend from childhood!”--he points feelingly to the instrument, which is yellow with age, has thin, square legs, and six pedals, the use of which no one has ever yet fathomed,--”yes, my friend! And today I hate it so that I have well-nigh destroyed it! Frulein Laut, justify that.”

”Must I be subjected to this insolence?” groans the teacher.

”Vladimir, go to your room!” Harry orders, with hardly maintained gravity.

Vladimir departs with lofty self-possession. The teacher turns contemptuously from those present, especially from Harry, who tries to appease her with a few courteous phrases. With a skilful hand she takes the piano apart, dismembers the key-board, and spreads the hammers upon sheets of tin brought for her from the kitchen by Blasius, the old servant, that the wet, swollen wood may be dried before the fire.

”Take care lest there be an _auto-da-f_,” Harry calls after her.

Without deigning to reply, she vanishes with the bowels of the piano.