Part 13 (1/2)
”Papa! If Ossi begs you!” Gabrielle whispered, looking up at her father with the large pleading eyes of a child.
”Ah, you can't understand how any one can possibly refuse Ossi anything,” Truyn said, smiling in the midst of his annoyance.
She blushed and cast down her eyes.
”What can you find to like in this fellow, Ella?” her father rallied her. ”A man ready to take fire, and clinch his fist upon the smallest provocation. What would you say if I should put my veto upon this foolish betrothal with a young savage who is only half-responsible?”
Gabrielle's blush grew deeper, she looked alternately at her father and at her lover, and finally deciding in favour of the latter gently laid her hand upon his arm.
”You see, uncle!.... completely routed,” exclaimed Oswald, his anger entirely dispelled by this little intermezzo. His voice rang with exultant happiness as he added, ”nothing can part us now, Ella--not even a father's veto!”
And Ella clung silently to his arm and looked blissfully content.
”Poor little comrade!” said Truyn tenderly. Mingled with his emotion there was something of the pity which men of ripe years and experience always feel at the sight of the perfect happiness of young lovers.
”Poor little comrade!--well, to win back some share of your favour I will e'en put a good face upon it and comply with the wishes of your tyrant.”
CHAPTER II.
”How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!” thought Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood between the park at Schneeburg and the vegetable garden, and had been appropriated to the son of the late owner of the soil. A slatternly woman with a loose linen wrapper hanging about her stout figure had come towards him, and after an affirmative reply to his inquiry if the Count were at home, screamed shrilly: ”Malzin! Some one to see you!”
and vanished in the interior of the house.
An unpleasant suspicion a.s.sailed Truyn. ”Can that be....” The next moment all else was forgotten in distress at the changed appearance of a fair, pale young man who rushed up to him exclaiming: ”Erich!--you here!”
”Fritz, Fritz!” said Truyn in a broken voice, fairly clasping his unfortunate cousin in his arms.
Of all mortals he who has voluntarily resigned the position in which he was born is the most embarra.s.sing to deal with. He has by degrees broken with his fellows, and, almost like an outcast, seems scarcely to know how to comport himself when accident throws him among his former a.s.sociates; when he meets one of 'his people' he usually alternates between intrusive familiarity and embittered reserve.
There was nothing of all this, however, about Fritz. He was so simple and cordial, that Truyn felt ashamed of having avoided a meeting.
Fair, with delicate, slightly pinched features, and large melancholy gray eyes, exquisitely neat and exact in his apparel, he looked from head to foot like a cavalry officer in citizen's dress, and in poor circ.u.mstances, that is like a man who knew how to invest with a certain distinction even the shabbiness to which fate condemned him.
”You cannot imagine what pleasure your visit gives me! When I see one of you it really seems almost as if one of my dear ones had descended from heaven to press my hand,” he said with emotion and Truyn replied:
”I should have come before, but I expected certainly that you .... that ....”
”That I ....” Fritz smiled significantly, ”no, Erich, you could hardly ....”
”Well, well, and how are you? How are you?” said Truyn quickly.
”I still live,” Fritz replied, and looked away.
Just then a voice was heard outside inquiring for ”Count Malzin.”
”I am not at home, Lotti, do you hear, not at home to any body,” Malzin called into the next room. ”Come, Erich!” and he conducted his guest out of what answered as a drawing-room into a very shabbily-furnished apartment which he called his 'den,' and where Truyn at once felt quite at home.
”That was young Capriani,” Fritz explained hurriedly, ”he probably came to talk with me about the burial vault. Perhaps you know that my late father had the vault reserved for us in the contract for the sale of Schneeburg. Capriani, whom usually nothing escapes, oddly enough overlooked the fact that the vault is in the park, and now he wants me to sell it to him. Let him try it--the vault he shall not have--it is the last spot of home that is left to me. I choose at least to lie in the grave with my people! But let us talk of something pleasanter. You are all well, are you not?--but there is no need to ask, I can see it by looking at you. And I know all about your domestic affairs from Ossi.”
”He comes to see you often?”