Part 33 (2/2)
”Not invited?” Zdena rallies him.
”Not invited!” Vips draws down the corners of his mouth scornfully.
”Oh, indeed! not invited! Why, they invited the entire household,--even her!” He motions disdainfully towards the open door, through which Frulein Laut can be seen sitting at the piano. ”Yes, we were even asked to bring Hector. But I stayed at home, because I cannot endure those Harfinks.”
”Ah! your sentiments are also opposed to the _msalliance_?” Zdena goes on, ironically.
”_Msalliance!_” shouts Vips. ”You know very well that I am a Liberal!”
Vips finished reading ”Don Carlos” about a fortnight ago, and even before then showed signs of Liberal tendencies.
The previous winter, when he attended the representation, at a theatre in Bohemia, of a new play of strong democratic colouring, he applauded all the freethinking tirades with such vehemence that his tutor was at last obliged, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the public, to hold back his hands.
”Ah, indeed, you are Liberal?” says Zdena. ”I am delighted to hear it.”
”Of course I am; but every respectable man must be a bit of an aristocrat,” Vips declares, grandly, ”and I cannot endure that Harry should marry that Paula. I told him so to his face; and I am not going to his wedding. I cannot understand why he takes her, for he's in love----” He suddenly pauses. Two gentlemen are coming through the garden towards the steps,--Harry and Lato.
Lato greets Zdena cordially. Heda expresses her surprise at Harry's speedy return from his shooting, and he, who always now suspects some hidden meaning in her remarks, flushes and frowns as he replies, ”I saw Treurenberg in the distance, and so I turned back. Besides, the shooting all went wrong to-day,” he adds, with a compa.s.sionate glance at the large hound now stretched out at his master's feet at the bottom of the steps. ”He would scarcely stir: I cannot understand it, he is usually so fresh and gay, and loves to go shooting more than all the others; to-day he was almost sullen, and lagged behind,--hey, old boy?” He stoops and strokes the creature's neck, but the dog seems ill-tempered, and snaps at him.
”What! snap--snap at me! that's something new,” Harry exclaims, frowning; then, seizing the animal by the collar, he shakes it violently and hurls it from him. ”Be off!” he orders, sternly. The dog, as if suddenly ashamed, looks back sadly, and then walks slowly away, with drooping ears and tail. ”I don't know what is the matter with the poor fellow!” Harry says, really troubled.
”He walks strangely; he seems stiff,” Vladimir remarks, looking after the dog. ”It seems to hurt him.”
”Some good-for-nothing boy must have thrown a stone at him and bruised his back,” Harry decides.
”You had better be careful with that dog,” Heda now puts in her word.
”Several dogs hereabouts have gone mad, and one roamed about the country for some time before he could be caught and killed.”
”Pray, hus.h.!.+” Harry exclaims, almost angrily, to his sister, with whom he is apt to disagree: ”you always forebode the worst. If a fly stings one you are always sure that it has just come from an infected horse or cow.”
”You have lately been so irritable, I cannot imagine what is the matter with you,” lisps Hedwig.
Harry frowns.
Lato, meanwhile, has paid no heed to these remarks: he is apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, as, sitting on a lower step, he has been drawing with the handle of his riding-whip cabalistic signs in the gravel of the path. Now he looks up.
”I have a letter for you from Paula,--here it is,” he observes, handing Harry a thick packet wrapped in light-blue tissue paper. While Harry, with a dubious expression of countenance, drops the packet into his coat-pocket, Lato continues: ”Paula has all sorts of fancies about your absence. You have not been to Dobrotschau for two days. She is afraid you are ill, and that you are keeping it from her lest she should be anxious. She is coming over here with my wife tomorrow afternoon to look after you--I mean, to pay the ladies a visit.” After Lato has given utterance to these words in a smooth monotone, his expression suddenly changes: his features betoken embarra.s.sment, as, leaning towards Harry, he whispers, ”I should like to speak with you alone. Can you give me a few minutes?”
Shortly afterwards, Harry rises and takes his friend with him to his own room, a s.p.a.cious vaulted chamber next to the dining-room, which he shares with his young brother.
”Well, old fellow?” he begins, encouragingly, clapping Lato on the shoulder. Lato clears his throat, then slowly takes his seat in an arm-chair beside a table covered with a disorderly array of Greek and Latin books and scribbled sheets of paper. Harry sits opposite him, and for a while neither speaks.
The silence is disturbed only by the humming of the bees, and by the scratching at the window of an ancient apricot-tree, which seems desirous to call attention to what it has to say, but desists with a low rustle that sounds like a sigh. The tall clock strikes five; it is not late, and yet the room is dim with a gray-green light; the sunbeams have hard work to penetrate the leafy screen before the windows.
”Well?” Harry again says, at last, gently twitching his friend's sleeve.
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