Barbarossa and Other Tales Part 4

"Do remain where you are," I insisted, venturing to catch hold of one of her hands which felt cool and smooth, and instantly slipped out of my grasp. "These newspapers are horribly dull. Allow us to introduce ourselves. My friend here, Mr. ----"

At that moment the shop-door opened, a little girl pushed shyly in, with two copper coins in her small fist, for which she wanted some sweeties. Our beauty availed herself of this opportunity of declining our acquaintance, and after having served the child, sat down again in her window-corner and took up her knitting.

Our position grew more and more unbearable. As to the tarts they were eaten long ago, and I had, partly out of embarra.s.sment, and partly to give myself the air of an experienced wine-bibber, tossed off my gla.s.s of bishop at a draught, and now sat with burning brow and wandering mind, looking at the flies crawling along the gla.s.s's edge, and intoxicating themselves with the crimson drops. Sebastian was as silent as an Indian Fakir, and seemed to be listening intently to what was going on in the shop, where indeed there was not a sound to be heard, except now and then the click of the knitting-needles against the counter.

"Come, you trappist," said I at length, "we will pay our bill and get some fresh air. My lungs are as it were candied. For any one but a fly this atmosphere is insupportable."

"Good-bye, pretty child," said I at the counter with all the importance of a roue of sixteen, who has a volume of lyrical poems at home written in the style of Heine, and ready for the press. "I hope that we may improve our acquaintance at some future time when you are less absorbed. Au revoir!"

I should no doubt have indulged in greater absurdities, but that she looked at me with so strangely absent an expression that I suddenly felt ashamed of my impertinence, made her a low bow, and hurried out into the street. Sebastian followed me instantly; he had hardly dared to look at her.

"Now then," he said, as we rushed along through the silent street, "what do you say?"

"That the bishop is very fair, but the tarts execrable. I cannot understand how you forced your portion down as well as half of mine. I suspect that confectioner's shop of only selling old cakes bought second-hand."

"What of that?" growled he. "I did not ask about such things. I want to know what you think of _her_."

"My good friend," I returned in an authoritative and fatherly tone.

"What can one say about a girl who is able to breathe in that atmosphere! Woman is ever an enigma as you well know."

(He nodded a.s.sent and sighed; I had contrived--G.o.d knows how--to pa.s.s with him as a great discerner of feminine spirits, and was fond of introducing into my generalisations the word "Woman," which has always a mystical charm for youths of our age.)

"This monosyllabic creature--that she is enchanting it is impossible to deny! But I warn you against her, Bastel. Believe me, she has no heart."

"You think so?" he interpolated in a horrified tone without looking at me.

"That is to say she has either never had one, or destiny has changed it into stone in her breast. Otherwise would she so coldly have turned away when I addressed her? She has a past I tell you, perhaps a present also, but no future."

This stupendous sentence of mine thrown off in mere thoughtlessness produced an unexpected effect upon my chum. He started as though a snake had bitten him, s.n.a.t.c.hed his arm out of mine and said--

"You think then that she--that she no longer--in a word you doubt her virtue?"

I saw now the mischief I had done. "Be easy, child," said I, throwing my arm over his shoulder. "Come, we must not have a scene here. We have agreed woman is an enigma. But as to character I have no grounds for suspecting hers. I only meant to say, take care that you do not get involved in an unpromising affair. For she looks like one from whom a victim would not easily escape! If you like I will keep an eye upon her, and I promise to render you every a.s.sistance that one friend can to another."

We had now reached a dark and deserted street-corner. Suddenly he embraced me, squeezed my hand as though bent on fusing it with his own, and instantly vanished up the nearest side-street.

I for my part walked home very slowly in order to grow cool and collected, but the singular form I had seen never left me for a moment.

I was so feverishly abstracted at the home tea-table that my good mother grew alarmed, and sent me early to bed. When I went to my cla.s.s the following morning, I found I had not prepared my Plato, and was obliged to put up with many mocking remarks from the lecturer on history in consequence of my having pushed the date of the battle of Cannae a good century too far back. The day was wet, and I lounged down the street full of depression and _ennui_. Sebastian kept himself out of sight. I stood an hour at the window on which he had drummed "_Non piu andrai_" the day before, and looked meditatively at the rain-pools in the street below, out of which the sparrows were picking a few oat-husks. I heard the horses stamping in the stable, and the stable-boy whistling Weber's "Jungfern Kranz" and found myself suddenly whistling it too, and stamping the while. I felt so absurd and pitiable that tears nearly came. At length I armed myself with an umbrella, and ran out into the wet and windy street.

I had been invited to a party at a friend's house for that evening, but I had an hour to spare. And this hour, I thought, could not be better spent than in sauntering through the street where the confectioner's shop stood, and patrolling a short time on the other side to watch who went in. As it was already growing dusk I felt pretty well concealed under my umbrella, but all the same I was conscious of a certain agreeable mysterious sensation as though playing an important part in some deed of honour. In point of fact, however, there was nothing remarkable to be seen. The shop seemed to be pretty well frequented, but only by a humble cla.s.s of customers, children, schoolboys intent upon devouring their pocket money, coughing old women going in for a penny-worth of lozenges. Dangerous young men did not seem aware that behind those brown blinds lurked a dangerous young girl.

Much relieved by the result of my observation, I finally crossed the street just to find out whether there were any possibility of peeping in. The gas was lit in both rooms, but the shop-window was so well-protected that one could see nothing whatever from without. But on the other hand the blind of the reading-room had a crack just across the back of the angler. So I stood and looked in, a good deal ashamed of myself for spying. And there, on the very same corner of the sofa that he occupied yesterday, sat my poor friend Sebastian before an empty plate covered with flies, his eyes wandering beyond the newspaper into empty s.p.a.ce. A singular thrill came over me, half jealousy, half satisfaction, at his having got on no further. Just as I was watching him, he made a movement as if to take up his cap and leave. I drew back from the window, and crept along the houses like a thief who has had the narrowest escape of capture. When I got to the house where I was expected, I had of course to collect my wits. I was more lively than usual, and paid my court to the daughters of the house with all the awkward nonchalance of a man of the world of sixteen, nay, I even allowed myself to be persuaded to read out my last poem, and drank several gla.s.ses of strong Hungarian wine, which made me neither wiser nor more modest. When ten o'clock struck, I suddenly took my departure under the pretext of an appointment with a friend. To keep late hours seemed to me congruous with the character of a youthful poet. Had people but known that the real engagement was the copying out fair a German essay, all the halo would have vanished!

And as it was that luckless essay fared badly enough. The night was wondrously beautiful. After long-continued rain, the air was as soft and exquisitely still as a human heart just reconciled to a long-estranged friend (I involuntarily fall back into the lyrical style of those early days!), and the sky sparkled and shone with thousands of newly-washed stars. In spite of the lateness of the hour, girls and women went chattering through the streets without hat or shawl, with merely a kerchief thrown over their heads, as though the lovely night had enticed them out just to inhale, before going to bed, one draught of fresh air after the discomfort of the day. Every window stood open, the roses gave out their fragrance; one heard Mendelssohn's "Songs without words" played on the piano, or some sweet female voice quietly singing to itself.

How it happened I did not know, but all of a sudden there I was again at the little shop, and had hold of the door handle before I could make out even to myself what it was that led me there.

As I entered, Lottka raised her head from the counter where it had been resting on her arm. Her eyes shewed that she had been asleep. The book, over which she had been tiring herself, fell from her lap as she rose.

"I have disturbed you, Miss Lottka," said I. "Forgive me, I will go away at once. I happened to be pa.s.sing by--and as the night was so beautiful--as since yesterday you--Would you be so kind as to give me a gla.s.s of bishop, Miss Lottka?"

Strange that my usually reckless eloquence should so regularly fail me in the presence of this quiet creature!

"What have you been reading?" I began again after a pause, walking the while up and down the shop. "A book from the lending library? Such a torn shabby copy is not fit for your small white hands. Allow me--I have a quant.i.ty of charming books at home--romances too--"

"Pardon me," she quietly rejoined. "I have no time to read romances.

This is a French Grammar."

"You are studying by yourself then?"

"I already speak it a little, I wish to understand it more thoroughly."

She relapsed into silence, and began to arrange the plates and spoons.

"Miss Lottka," said I after an interval, during which I had regained courage from a contemplation of the gruff old Blucher in the smaller room. "Are you happy in the position that you occupy at present?"

She looked at me out of her large weary eyes with the amazement of a child in a fairy-tale when suddenly addressed by a bird.

"How come you to put such a question?" she enquired.

"Pray do not attribute it to heartless curiosity," I went on, in my excitement upsetting a small pyramid of biscuits. "Believe that I feel a genuinely warm interest in you-- If you need a friend--if anything has happened to you--you understand me-- Life is so sad, Miss Lottka--and just in our youth--"

I was floundering deeper and deeper, and the drops stood on my brow. I would have given a good deal if that old Blucher had not encouraged me to make this speech.

However I was spared further humiliation. The door leading from the interior of the house opened, and the person to whom the shop belonged made her appearance. She seemed a good-natured square woman, with a thick cap-border, who explained to me as civilly as she could, that I had already remained a quarter of an hour beyond the usual time of shutting up, for that she was in the habit of putting out the gas at half-past ten. Accordingly I paid in all haste for my half-emptied gla.s.s, threw an expressive and half-reproachful glance at the silent girl, and went my way.

That night my couch was not one of roses. I made a serious attempt to finish my German essay:--"Comparison between the Antigone of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Goethe," but what were either of these Hecubas to me? I began to scribble verses on the margin of the book, and their melody had so lulling an effect that not long after midnight I fell asleep in my chair, and in spite of the uncomfortable position never woke till morning, though in my verses I had confessed myself once more in love; and what of all the untoward circ.u.mstances of the case was the darkest, in love with the heart's choice of my best friend!

This too was my first waking thought on the following morning. I remember distinctly, however, that the misfortune which I clearly saw to be ours, did not after all make me actually miserable, nay that it rather exalted my self-complacency and rendered me very interesting in my own eyes, as I had now a chance of personally experiencing all that I had hitherto merely read of. I was never tired of conjuring up the disastrous and heartrending scenes to which this complication must necessarily lead, and an indefinably pleasurable kind of pity for myself, for Sebastian, and for the innocent source of our woes suffused all my thoughts.

Instead of going to the gymnasium, where I should have had to appear without the German essay, I preferred to visit the "hedge-school" as the French say, that is to lounge about the park, and there on a lonely bench in the most out-of-the-way corner, commit my youthful sorrows to paper. Heine and Eichendorff were at that time contending for my immortal soul. On that particular morning I was not yet ripe for the irony of the "Buch der Lieder," and the tree-tops rustled too romantically above my head for the utterance of any tones but such as suited a youthful scapegrace. About noon I saw with melancholy satisfaction that the poem ent.i.tled "New Love," begun that morning, would form a very considerable addition to my volume, if it went on long at this rate.

In the afternoon when I sat, thinking no evil, in my room, and attempting to draw the profile of my secretly beloved one from memory, I heard Sebastian's step on the stair. I hastily hid away the sheet of paper, and dipped my pen in the ink-stand to seem as though I were interrupted at my work. When he entered I had not the heart to look up at him.

He too gave me a very cursory greeting, stretched himself out as usual in my arm chair, and began to smoke a short-pipe.

In about half-an-hour he asked,

"Have you been there again?"

"Yes," I replied, and seemed to be very busy looking out a word in my lexicon.

"And what do you think of her now?"

"What I think? I have not yet found out the riddle. So much, however, I know, that she is not a flesh and blood girl, but a water-nixie, a Melusina, 'cold even to her heart,' and who knows whether her very figure does not end like a mermaid's '_desinit in piscem_?'"

He sprang up. "I must beg you not to speak in such a tone!"

"Patience, old boy," said I. "Do not go and suppose that I think lightly of her. A past history she has that is quite clear. But why need there be any harm in it? Suppose there were only some misfortune, a great grief, or a great love?"