I have never attempted to conceal from myself or to deny the fact that I am vain.
Ah, how merrily we bowled along over the white, dusty road! The ponies"
hoofs hardly touched the ground. After a while the road grew bad, and we drove more slowly. Then we turned into a rough path between high banks. What a road! Deep as a chasm; the wheels of the vehicle jolted right and left through ruts overgrown with thistles, brambles, and wild roses.
"Suppose we should meet another carriage?" I asked my uncle, anxiously.
"Just what I was asking myself," he replied, composedly; "there is really no room for pa.s.sing. But why not trust in Providence?"
The road grows worse, but now, instead of pa.s.sing through a chasm, it runs along the edge of a precipice. The dog-cart leans so far to one side that the groom gets out to steady it. The wheels grate against the stones, and the ponies shake their s.h.a.ggy heads discontentedly, as much as to say, "We were not made for such work as this."
In after-years, when so bad a road in the midst of one of the most civilized provinces of Austria seemed to me inexplicable, Uncle Paul explained it to me. At one time in his remembrance the authorities decided to lay out a fine road there, but Uncle Karl contrived to frustrate their purpose; he did not wish to have Komaritz too accessible--for fear of guests.
A delicious pungent fragrance is wafted from the vine-leaves in the vineyards on the sides of the hills, flocks of white and yellow b.u.t.terflies hover above them, the gra.s.shoppers chirp shrilly, and from the distance comes the monotonous sound of the sweep of the mower"s scythe. The sun is burning hot, and the shadows are short and coal-black.
Click-clack--click-clack--precipice and ravine lie behind us, and we are careering along a delightful road shaded by huge walnut-trees.
A brown, shapeless ruin crowning a vine-clad eminence rises before us.
Click-clack--click-clack--the ponies fly past a marble St. John, around which are grouped three giant lindens, whose branches scatter fading blossoms upon us; past a smithy, from which issues a strong odour of wagon-grease and burnt hoofs; past a slaughter-house, in front of which a butchered ox is hanging from a chestnut-tree; past pretty whitewashed cottages, some of them two stories high and with flower-gardens in front,--Komaritz is a far more important and prosperous village than Zirkow; then through a lofty but perilously ruinous archway into a s.p.a.cious, steeply-ascending court-yard, through the entire length of which runs a broad gutter. Yes, yes, it was there--in that court-yard--that I saw him for the first time, and he was riding upon a pig, holding fast by its ears, and the animal, galloping furiously, was doing its best to throw him off. But this was no easy matter, for he sat as if he were part of his steed, and withal maintained a loftiness of bearing that would have done honour to a Spanish grandee at a coronation. He was very handsome, very slender, very brown, and wore a white suit, the right sleeve of which was spotted with ink.
In front of the castle, at a wooden table fastened to the ground beneath an old pear-tree, sat a yellow-haired young man, with a bloated face and fat hands, watching the spectacle calmly and drinking beer from a stone mug with a leaden cover.
When the pig found that it could not throw its rider, it essayed another means to be rid of him. It lay down in the gutter and rolled over in the mud. When Harry arose, he looked like the bad boys in "Slovenly Peter" after they had been dipped in the inkstand.
"I told you how it would be," the fat young man observed, phlegmatically, and went on drinking beer. As I afterwards learned, he was Harry"s tutor, Herr Pontius.
"What does it matter?" said Harry, composedly, looking down at the mud dripping from him, as if such a bath were an event of every-day occurrence; "I did what I chose to do."
"And now I shall do what I choose to do. You will go to your room and translate fifty lines of Horace."
Harry shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. I now think that he was posing a little for our sakes, for we had just driven up to the castle, but then his composure made a great impression upon me. After he had bowed respectfully to Uncle Paul from where he stood, he vanished behind a side-door of the castle, at the chief entrance of which we had drawn up. A dignified footman received us in the hall, and a crowd of little black dachshunds, with yellow feet and eyebrows, barked a loud welcome.
We were conducted into a large room on the ground-floor,--apparently reception-room, dining-room, and living-room all in one,--whence a low flight of wooden steps led out into the garden. A very sallow but otherwise quite pretty Frenchwoman, who reminded me--I cannot tell why--of the black dachshunds, and who proved to be my little cousin"s governess, received us here and did the honours for us.
My cousin Heda, a yellow-haired little girl with portentously good manners, relieved me of my parasol, and asked me if I had not found the drive very warm. Whilst I made some monosyllabic and confused reply, I was wondering whether her brother would get through his punishment and make his appearance again before we left. When my uncle withdrew on the pretext of looking after some agricultural matter, Heda asked me if I would not play graces with her. She called it _jeu de grce_, and, in fact, spoke French whenever it was possible.
I agreed, she brought the graces, and we went out into the garden.
Oh, that Komaritz garden! How clumsy and ugly, and yet what a dear, old-fashioned garden it was! Lying at the foot of the hill crowned by the ancient ruin and the small frame house built for the tutors,--who were changed about every two months,--it was divided into huge rectangular flower-beds, bordered with sage, lavender, or box, from which mighty old apricot-trees looked down upon a luxuriant wilderness of lilies, roses, blue monk"s-hood, scarlet verbenas, and whatever else was in season. Back of this waste of flowers there were all sorts of shrubs,--hawthorns, laburnums, jessamines, with here and there an ancient hundred-leaved rose-bush, whose heavy blossoms, borne down by their own weight, drooped and lay upon the mossy paths that intersected this thicket. Then came a green lawn, where was a swing hung between two old chestnuts, and near by stood a queer old summerhouse, circular, with a lofty tiled roof, upon the peak of which gleamed a battered bra.s.s crescent. Everywhere in the shade were fastened in the ground comfortable garden-seats, smelling deliciously of moss and mouldering wood, and where you least expected it the ground sloped to a little bubbling spring, its banks clothed with velvet verdure and gay with marsh daisies and spiderwort, sprung from seed which the wind had wafted hither. I cannot begin to tell of the kitchen-garden and orchard; I should never be done.
And just as I have here described it as it was fourteen years ago the dear old garden stands to-day, with the exception of some trifling changes; but--they are talking of improvements--poor garden! What memories are evoked when I think of it!
Again I am six years old and playing with Heda,--I intent and awkward, Heda elegantly indifferent. If one of her hoops soars away over my head, or falls among the flowers in one of the beds, she shrugs her shoulders with an affected smile, and exclaims, "_Monstre!_" At first I offer to creep in among the flowers after the lost hoop, but she rejects my offer with a superior "_Quelle ide!_" and a.s.sures me that it is the gardener"s business.
Consequently, we soon come to the end of our supply of hoops, and are obliged to have recourse to some other mode of amusing ourselves.
"I am quite out of breath," says Heda, fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief. ""Tis a stupid don"t you think so?"
"But if I only could do it!" I sigh.
"It is quite out of fashion; nothing is played now but croquet," she informs me. "Do you like to play croquet?"
"I do not know what croquet is," I confess, much mortified.
"Ha, ha!" she laughs. "Mademoiselle," turning to the governess, who is now seated on the garden-steps, "only think, _ma pet.i.te cousine_ does not know what croquet is!--delicious! Excuse me," taking my hand, "it is very ill bred to laugh, _mais c"est plus fort que moi_. It is a delightful game, that is played with b.a.l.l.s and iron hoops. Sometimes you strike your foot, and that hurts; but more often you only pretend that it does, and then the gentlemen all come round you an pity you: it is too delightful. But sit down," pointing with self-satisfied condescension to the steps. We both sit down, and she goes on: "Where did you pa.s.s the winter?"
"At Zirkow."
"Oh, in the country! I pity you."
Heda--I mention this in a parenthesis--was at this time scarcely ten years old. "No winter in the country for me," this pleasure-loving young person continues. "Oh, what a delightful winter I had! I was at twelve b.a.l.l.s. It is charming if you have partners enough--oh, when three gentlemen beg for a waltz! But society in Prague is nothing to that of Vienna--I always say there is only one Vienna. Were you ever in Vienna?"
"No," I murmur. Suddenly, however, my humiliated self-consciousness rebels, and, setting my arms akimbo, I ask, "And were you ever in Paris?" The Frenchwoman behind us laughs.
Down from above us falls a hard projectile upon Heda"s fair head,--a large purple bean,--and then another. She looks up angrily. Harry is leaning out of a window above us, his elbows resting on the sill, and his head between his hands. "What an ill-bred boor you are!" she calls out.
"And do you know what you are?" he shouts; "an affected braggart--that"s what you are."
With which he jumps from the window into the branches of a tree just before it, and comes scrambling down to the ground. "What is your name?" he asks me.
"Zdena."
"I am happy to make your acquaintance, Zdena. Heda bores you, doesn"t she?"
I shake my head and laugh; feeling a protector near me, I am quite merry once more. "Would you like to take a little ride, Zdena?" he asks.
"Upon a pig?" I inquire, in some trepidation.
He laughs, somewhat embarra.s.sed, and shrugs his shoulders. "You do not really suppose that I am in the habit of riding pigs!" he exclaims; "I only do it when my tutor forbids it--it is too ridiculous to suppose such a thing!" and he hurries away.
I look after him remorsefully. I am vexed to have been so foolish, and I am sorry to have frightened him away.
In a few minutes, however, he appears again, and this time on horseback. He is riding a beautiful pony, chestnut, with a rather dandified long tail and a bushy mane. Harry has a splendid seat, and is quite aware of it. Apparently he is desirous of producing an impression upon me, for he performs various astounding feats,--jumps through the swing, over a garden-seat and a wheelbarrow,--and then, patting his horse encouragingly on the neck, approaches me, his bridle over his arm.
"Will you try now?" he asks.
Of course I will. He lifts me into the saddle, where I sit sideways, buckles the stirrup shorter, quite like a grown-up admirer; and then I ride slowly and solemnly through the garden, he carefully holding me on the while. I become conscious of a wish to distinguish myself in his eyes. "I should like to try it alone," I stammer, in some confusion.
"I see you are brave; I like that," he says, resigning the bridle to me. Trot, trot goes the pony. "Faster, faster!" I cry, giving the animal a dig with my heel. The pony rears, and--I am lying on the ground, with sc.r.a.ped hands and a scratched chin.
"It is nothing," I cry, bravely ignoring my pain, when Harry hurries up to me with a dismayed face. "We must expect such things," I add, with dignity. "Riding is always dangerous; my father was killed by being thrown from his horse."
"Indeed? Really?" Harry says, sympathetically, as he wipes the gravel off my hands. "How long has he been dead?"
"Oh, a long time,--a year."
"My mother has been dead much longer," he says, importantly, almost boastfully. "She has been dead three years. And is yours still living?"
"N--no." And the tears, hitherto so bravely restrained, come in a torrent.