O Thou, My Austria! Part 55

"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.

Harry is expected at lunch. The major is burning with impatience.

"One o'clock," he remarks. "The boy ought to be back by this time. What do you say to walking a little way to meet him?"

"As you please, uncle," the girl gaily a.s.sents. They turn towards the house, whence Krupitschka comes running, breathless with haste.

"What is the matter?" the major calls out.

"Nothing, nothing, Herr Baron," the man replies; "but the Frau Baroness desires you both to come to the drawing-room; she has a visitor."

"Is that any reason why you should run yourself so out of breath that you look like a fish on dry land?" the major bawls to his old servant.

"You fairly frightened me, you a.s.s! Who is the visitor?"

"Please--I do not know," declares Krupitschka, lying brazenly, while the major frowns, saying, "There's an end to our walk," and never noticing the sly smile upon the old man's face.

Zdena runs to her room to smooth her hair, tossed by the breeze, while the major, annoyed, goes directly to the drawing-room. He opens the door and stands as if rooted to the threshold. Beside the sofa where Frau Rosamunda is enthroned, with her official hostess expression, doing the honours with a grace all her own, sits a broad-shouldered old gentleman in a loose long-tailed coat, laughing loudly at something she has just told him.

"Franz!" exclaims Paul von Leskjewitsch.

"Here I am," responds the elder brother, with hardly-maintained composure. He rises; each advances towards the other, but before they can clasp hands the elder of the two declares, "I wish, Paul, you would tell your bailiff to see to the ploughing on your land. That field near the forest is in a wretched condition,--hill and valley, the clods piled up, and wheat sown there. I have always held that no military man can ever learn anything about agriculture. You never had the faintest idea of farming." And as he speaks he clasps the major's hand and pinches Harry's ear. The young fellow has been looking on with a smile at the meeting between the brothers.

"I understand you, uncle: I am not to leave the service. I could not upon any terms," the young man a.s.sures him,--"not even if I were begged to do so."

"He's a hard-headed fellow," Baron Franz says, with a laugh; "and so is the girl. Did she tell you that she met me in the forest? We had a conversation together, she and I. At first she took me for that fool Studnecka; then she guessed who I was, and read me such a lecture! I did not care: it showed me that she was a genuine Leskjewitsch. H'm! I ought to have come here then, but--I--could not find the way; I waited for some one to show it to me." He pats Harry on the shoulder. "But where the deuce is the girl? Is she hiding from me?"

At this moment Zdena enters. The old man turns ghastly pale; his hands begin to tremble violently, as he stretches them out towards her. She gazes at him for an instant, then runs to him and throws her arms around his neck. He clasps her close, as if never to let her leave him.

The others turn away. There is a sound of hoa.r.s.e sobbing. All that the strong man has h.o.a.rded up in his heart for twenty years a.s.serts itself at this moment.

It is not long, however, before all emotion is calmed, and affairs take their natural course. The two elderly men sit beside Frau Rosamunda, still enthroned on her sofa, and the lovers stand in the recess of a window and look out upon the spring.

"So we are not to be poor, after all?" Zdena says, with a sigh.

"It seems not," Harry responds, putting his arm round her.

She does not speak for a while; then she murmurs, softly, "'Tis a pity: I took such pleasure in it!"

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: One of a princely family who, although subject to royal authority, is allowed to retain some sovereign privileges.]

THE END.