Part 55 (1/2)

”Ah! for a change you want to marry a poor girl! You display a truly edifying fickleness of character. And who is the fair creature to whom you have sacrificed your avarice?”

”I am betrothed to my cousin Zdena.”

”Indeed?--to Zdena?” the Baron says, with well-feigned indignation.

”Have you forgotten that in that case I shall disinherit you?”

”You will do as you choose about that,” Harry replies, dryly. ”I should be glad to a.s.sure my wife a pleasant and easy lot in life; but if you fancy that I have come here to sue for your favour, you are mistaken.

It was my duty to inform you of my betrothal. I have done so; and that is all.”

”Indeed? That is all?” thunders old Leskjewitsch. ”It shall be all!

Wait, you scoundrel, you good-for-naught, and we'll see if you go on carrying your head so high! I will turn the leaf: I will make Zdena my heiress,--but only upon condition that she sends you about your business. She shall choose between you--that is, between poverty--and me!”

”It will not take her long. Good-morning.” With which Harry turns on his heel and leaves the room.

The old Baron sits motionless for a while. The mild spring breeze blows in through the open windows; there is a sound in the air of cooing doves, of water dripping on the stones of the paved court-yard from the roof, of the impatient pawing and neighing of a horse, and then the clatter of spurs and sabre.

The old man smiles broadly. ”He shows race: the boy is a genuine Leskjewitsch,” he mutters to himself,--”a good mate for the girl!” Then he goes to the window. Harry is just about to mount, when his uncle roars down to him, ”Harry! Harry! The deuce take you! are you deaf?

Can't you hear?”

Meanwhile, the major and his niece are walking in the garden at Zirkow.

It was the major who had insisted that Harry should immediately inform his uncle of his betrothal.

Zdena has shown very little interest in the discussion as to how the cross-grained, eccentric old man would receive the news. And when her uncle suddenly looks her full in the face to ask how she can adapt herself to straitened means, she calmly lays her band on the arm of her betrothed, and whispers, tenderly, ”You shall see.” Then her eyes fill with tears as she adds, ”But how will you bear it, Harry?”

He kisses both her hands and replies, ”Never mind, Zdena; I a.s.sure you that at this moment Conte Capriani is a beggar compared with myself.”

Just at this point Frau Rosamunda plucks her spouse by the sleeve and forces him, _nolens volens_, to retire with her.

”I cannot understand you,” she lectures him in their conjugal _tte--tte_. ”You are really indelicate, standing staring at the children, when you must see that they are longing to kiss each other.

Such young people must be left to themselves now and then.” At first Frau Rosamunda found it very difficult to a.s.sent to this rather imprudent betrothal, but she is now interested in it heart and soul.

She arranges everything systematically, even delicacy of sentiment. Her exact rules in this respect rather oppress the major, who would gladly sun himself in the light and warmth of happiness which surrounds the young couple, about whose future, however, he is seriously distressed, lamenting bitterly his own want of business capacity which has so impoverished him.

”If I could but give the poor child more of a dowry,” he keeps saying to himself. ”Or if Franz would but come to his senses,--yes, if he would only listen to reason, all would be well.”

All this is in his thoughts, as he walks with his niece in the garden on this bright spring forenoon, while his nephew has gone to Vorhabshen to have an explanation with his uncle. Consequently he is absent-minded and does not listen to the girl's gay chatter, the outcome of intense joy in her life and her love.

The birds are twittering loudly as they build their nests in the blossom-laden trees, the gra.s.s is starred with the first dandelions.