"Excuse me if I am indiscreet; I had no idea----" the Pole begins.
"Oh, you are one of the family, quite one of the family," Selina a.s.sures him, with an amiable smile. "I might have thought the question embarra.s.sing from any one else, but I can speak to you without reserve of these matters. You are perhaps aware that a sister of my father"s,--is only sister,--when quite an old maid,--I believe she was thirty-seven,--ran off with an actor, a very obscure comedian; I think he played the elderly knights at the Rudolfsheim Theatre, and as the bandit Jaromir he turned her head. She displayed the _courage de ses opinions_, and married him. He treated her brutally, and she died, after fifteen years of wretched married life. On her death-bed she sent for my father, and bequeathed her daughter to his care. This was Olga.
My father--I cannot tell how it happened--took the most immense fancy to the girl. He tried to persuade mamma to take her home immediately.
Fancy! a creature brought up amid such surroundings, behind the foot-lights. True, my aunt was separated from her bandit Jaromir for several years before her death; but under such strange circ.u.mstances mamma really could not take the little gypsy into the house with her own half-grown daughters. So she was sent to a convent, and we all hoped she would become a nun. But no; and when her education was finished, shortly before papa"s death, mamma took her home. I was married at the time, and I remember her arrival vividly. You can imagine how terrible it was for us to admit so strange an element among us. But, although he seldom interfered in domestic affairs, it was impossible to dispute papa"s commands."
"H"m, h"m!" And the Pole"s slender white fingers drum upon the top of the table. "_Je comprends_. It is a great charge for your mother, and _c"est bien dur_." Although he speaks French stumblingly, he continually expresses himself in that tongue, as if it is the only one in which he can give utterance to the inmost feelings of his soul.
"Ah, mamma has always sacrificed everything to duty!" sighs Selina; "and somebody had to take pity upon the poor creature."
"n.o.bly said, and n.o.bly thought, Countess Selina; but then, after all,--an actor"s daughter,--you really do not know all that it means.
Does she show no signs of her unfortunate parentage?"
"No," says Selina, thoughtfully; "her manners are very good, the spell of the Sacr C[oe]ur Convent is still upon her. She is not particularly well developed intellectually, but, since you call my attention to it, she does show some signs of the overstrained enthusiasm which characterized her mother."
"And in combination with her father"s gypsy blood. Such signs are greatly to be deplored," the Pole observes. "You must long to have her married?"
"A difficult matter to bring about. Remember her origin." The Countess inclines her head on one side, and takes a long st.i.tch in her embroidery. "She must be the image of her father. The bandit Jaromir was a handsome man of Italian extraction."
"Is the fellow still alive?" asks the Pole.
"No, he is dead, thank heaven! it would be terrible if he were not,"
says Selina, with a laugh. "_ propos_," she adds, selecting and comparing two shades of yellow, "do you think Olga pretty?"
"H"m! _pas mal_,--not particularly. Had I seen her anywhere else, I might perhaps have thought her pretty, but here--forgive my frankness, Countess Selina--no other woman has a chance when you are present. You must be conscious of that yourself."
"_Vil flatteur!_" the young wife exclaims, playfully lashing the Pole"s hand with a skein of wool. The pair have known each other for scarcely three hours, and they are already upon as familiar a footing as if they had been friends from childhood. Moreover, they are connections. At Carlsbad, where Fainacky lately made the acquaintance of the Baroness Harfink and her daughter Paula, he informed the ladies that one of his grandmothers, a Lwenzahn by birth, was cousin to an uncle of the Baroness"s.
The persistence with which he dwelt upon this fact, the importance he attached to being treated as a cousin by the Harfinks, touched Paula as well as her mother. Besides, as they had already told Selina, they liked him from the first.
"One is never ashamed to be seen with him," was the immediate decision of the fastidious ladies; and as time pa.s.sed on they discovered in him such brilliant and unusual qualities that they considered him a great acquisition,--an entertaining, cultivated man of some talent.
He is neither cultivated nor entertaining, and as for his talent, that is a matter of opinion. If his singing is commonplace, his performance on the piano commonplace, and the _vers de socit_ which he scribbles in young ladies" extract-books more commonplace than all, in one art he certainly holds the first rank,--the art of discovering and humouring the weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, the art of the flatterer.
To pursue this art with distinguished ability two qualifications are especially needful,--impudence and lack of refinement. With the help of these allies the strongest incense may be wafted before one"s fellow-creatures, and they will all--with the exception of a few suspicious originals--inhale it eagerly. Experience has taught Fainacky that boldness is of far more avail in this art than delicacy, and he conducts himself accordingly.
Flattery is his special profession, his means for supporting his idle, c.o.xcomb existence,--flattery and its sister art, slander. A successful epigram at another"s expense gives many of us more pleasure than a compliment paid to ourselves.
He flutters, flattering and gossiping, from one house to another. The last few weeks he has spent with a bachelor prince in the neighbourhood, who, a sufferer from neuralgia in the face, has been known, when irritated, to throw the sofa-cushions at his guests. At first Fainacky professed to consider this a very good joke; but one day when the prince showed signs of selecting more solid projectiles for the display of his merry humour, Fainacky discovered that the time had come for him to bestow the pleasure of his society elsewhere.
Dobrotschau seemed to offer just what he sought, and he has won his hostess"s heart a second time by his abuse during luncheon of his late host"s cook.
While he is now paying court to the Countess Selina, a touching scene is enacting in another part of the garden. Paula, who during her walk with her betrothed has perceived Treurenberg with his photographic apparatus in the distance, proposes to Harry that they be photographed as lovers. The poor young fellow"s resistance avails nothing against Paula"s strong will. She triumphantly drags him up before the apparatus, and, after much trying, discovers a pose which seems to her sufficiently tender. With her clasped hands upon Harry"s shoulder, she gazes up at him with enthusiastic devotion.
"Do not look so stern," she murmurs; "if I did not know how you love me, I should almost fancy you hated me."
Lato, half shutting his eyes in artistic observation of the pair, takes off the shield of the instrument, saying, "Now, if you please!"
The impression is a failure, because Harry moved his head just at the critical moment. When, however, Paula requires him to give pantomimic expression to his tender sentiments for the second time, he declares that he cannot stay three minutes longer, the "vet" is waiting for him at Komaritz.
"Oh, that odious "vet"!" sighs Paula. "This is the third time this week that you have had to leave me because of him."
Harry bites his lip. Evidently it is high time to invent another pretext for the unnatural abbreviation of his visits. But--if she would only take offence at something!
"Can you not come with me to Komaritz?" he asks Lato, in order to give the conversation a turn, whereupon Lato, who instantly accedes to his request, hurries into the castle to make ready for his ride. Shortly afterwards, riding-whip in hand, he approaches Selina, who is still beneath the red-and-gray tent with Fainacky.
"Ah, you are going to leave me alone again, faithless spouse that you are!" she calls out, threatening him with a raised forefinger. Then, turning to the Pole, she adds, "Our marriage is a fashionable one, such as you read of in books: the husband goes one way, the wife another.
"Tis the only way to make life tolerable in the long run, is it not, Lato?"
Lato makes no reply, flushes slightly, kisses his wife"s hand, nods carelessly to Fainacky, and turns to go.
"Shall you come back to dinner?" Selina calls after him.
"Of course," he replies, as he vanishes behind the shrubbery.
Fainacky strokes his moustache thoughtfully, stares first at the Countess, then at the top of the table, and finally gives utterance to an expressive "Ah!"
Lato hurries on to overtake his friend, whom he espies striding towards the park gate.
Suddenly Olga approaches him, a huge straw hat shading her eyes, and in her hands a large, dish-shaped cabbage-leaf full of inviting, fresh strawberries.
"Whither are you hurrying?" she asks.
"I am going to ride to Komaritz with Harry," he replies. "Ah, what magnificent strawberries!"
"I know they are your favourite fruit, and I plucked them for you," she says.
"In this heat?--oh, Olga!" he exclaims.
"The sun would have burned them up by evening," she says, simply.
He understands that she has meant to atone for her inadvertence of the morning, and he is touched.
"Will you not take some?" she asks, persisting in offering him the leaf.
He takes one. Meanwhile, his glance encounters Harry"s. Olga is entirely at her ease, while Lato--from what cause he could not possibly tell--is slightly embarra.s.sed.
"I have no time now," he says, gently rejecting the hand that holds the leaf.
"Shall I keep them for your dessert?--you are coming back to dinner?"
she asks.
"Certainly. I shall be back by six o"clock," he calls to her. "Adieu, my child."
As the two friends a few minutes later ride down the long poplar avenue, Harry asks,--
"Has this Olga always lived here?"
"No. She came home from the convent a year after my marriage. Selina befriends her because Paula cannot get along with her. She often travels with us."