She was astonished to find Boris in the living-room as early as this.
In his suit of cream-colored silk, with the carnation-red belt, he sat in a chair waiting, pale, very handsome, and a trifle solemn.
"What? Up already, my boy?" said the old lady.
"Yes," said Boris seriously, "I got up on purpose, for I sent to ask uncle whether he would see me directly after breakfast; I must speak to him."
Countess Betty looked at her nephew uncertainly and a little anxiously.
"Oh, that"s it, well, why shouldn"t he see you? But--what is it? Is it about ... about--"
Boris nodded:--"Yes, about Billy."
"Dear Boris," said the old lady, bending her head back a little so as to look her nephew in the eyes, "must that be, just at this time? It will excite Billy so--and your uncle, and me, and us all, and we have just been so happy and so jolly together. Can"t you put it off?"
But Boris grew still more solemn: "I am sorry, dear aunt, that I must disturb the contentment here. That is, I fear, the part which I am once and for all destined to play," and he laughed bitterly; "no, I am a kill-joy, but I do what I have to."
"Oh, oh yes," said Countess Betty anxiously, "well in that case--perhaps ail will be well. I will go right up to see Billy, for in any case she must stay in bed for the present; I will take her breakfast to her." Busily she hurried away, and Boris again seated himself in his chair, pale and resolute, and waited.
When Boris was called to his uncle, he found the latter in his study, sitting by the window. He was smoking his morning cigar and looking out into the courtyard. There the agricultural work of the forenoon was actively going on. In the pond horses were being watered, quite shiny in the sun. Harvest wagons rolled past, bright yellow against the blue sky. The count turned carelessly toward his nephew, nodded to him, and then immediately looked out of the window again.
"Good morning, Boris," he said; "you wanted to speak to me: very well, be seated, please."
When Boris had seated himself, it was quite still in the room. He had prepared so many big words to say, but here in this room before this old man, whose thoughts seemed to be so far removed from all that concerned Boris, nothing of what he had prepared now seemed to be in keeping. "Is he really only interested in the pa.s.sing harvest wagons,"
thought Boris, "or is he maliciously shamming!"
"How that lad yonder lies on top of the load of barley," the count now began, "lolling for all the world like a king. He really has the feeling of ownership now, even though not a straw belongs to him. He has more feeling of ownership at this moment than I have here at my window. Remarkable, isn"t it?" He turned to Boris. As he noticed the tense expression on the pale face, he raised his eyebrows a little and remarked, "Oh, I remember, you wish to speak of yourself; I am listening." Then he again looked out of the window.
"Yes, uncle," said Boris, and his voice sounded vexed and quarrelsome, "I wanted to tell you that I ... I love Billy."
The count pulled at his cigar and then said slowly and with marked nasal intonation,
"Certainly, that is comprehensible. That is natural. Perhaps many another lad will have the same experience. Billy is an unusually pretty young girl, and so young men fall in love with her; that has always been the way of the world."
"But Billy loves me, too," Boris resolutely jerked out.
His uncle looked at him sharply out of his gray eyes; the face kept its calm, only the nose seemed to grow still whiter: "My dear Boris, in my youth we too used to fall in love with young girls, and at times we doubtless said, "I am in love with such or such a one," but to say, "This young girl is madly in love with me,"--that was not considered good taste in those days."
Boris reddened, but he felt himself regaining his a.s.surance, a certain agreeable combativeness warmed his heart. He could actually once more curl up his lips in that sad and proud smile, of which a lady had once said to him: "That is so pretty that it must be hard not to disappoint people later on."
"Perhaps it is not good taste," he said, "but there are crises in life when taste no longer has restraining force; I only meant to say that Billy and I have come to an agreement. I lack taste, very well, but only because I should like to be plain."
"Oh, that is it," rejoined Count Hamilcar, and the cigar trembled a little in his hand, "then I too shall have to be plain. As I have always taken an interest in you, I have frequently been called upon to help you out of all the difficulties in which your recklessness, or, to express myself less plainly, your interesting disposition has involved you. Then since you know all that I know of you, you will understand that for the happiness of my daughter I have not counted on you in any respect."
Now Boris found his eloquence again, found again all the big words that he had got ready yesterday in the maple-avenue, and he had to rise from his chair to say them.
"I know all that you have done for me, uncle. I know my failings, too.
But that is not what decides in this case. Billy"s love for me is undeserved good fortune. Such happiness is always undeserved. But not to stretch out my hands toward it would be suicide for me, yes sheer suicide."
"My dear boy," interrupted the count, "the use of the word suicide as a rhetorical device should be urgently discouraged, in the interests of good taste."
Boris grew impa.s.sioned, and his voice rose to a high key: "I care nothing for rhetorical devices or good taste. The matter at issue is my destiny, but that would of course be immaterial, immaterial to you. But Billy is concerned, Billy gives me my right, and even if I am reckless and unworthy and a bad match and unattractive, Billy"s love is my right."
He had finished and re-seated himself in his chair. That had relieved him. The count gently stroked his white nose and retorted,
"The right to fall in love with my daughter I cannot deny you, nor the right to ask me for the hand of my daughter, but what you just said sounded rather as if you were asking me in Billy"s name for your own hand."
"I wanted to be open and loyal toward you," replied Boris.
"Oh, did you?" remarked the count. "You call it loyal, as a guest in my house, to "come to an agreement," as you call it, behind my back, with my seventeen-year-old daughter."
"It was perhaps not correct," said Boris wearily and with a superior air, "but good gracious, when anything so powerful takes possession here in the heart and here in the head, we simply give it utterance."
Sharply and angrily the count rejoined, "A decent man keeps to himself nine-tenths of what pa.s.ses through his head and heart."
"You wish to insult me, uncle," and Boris smiled his handsome melancholy smile, "very well, very well. Perhaps we Poles cannot keep our heads and hearts as well in check as you Germans; but that does not prevent us from being decent."
"It costs little, my boy," scoffed the count, "to lay our faults at our nation"s door; it cannot defend itself. Moreover ..." He stopped, for his cigar had gone out; he lit it with much ceremony, and when he began to speak again the irritation was gone from his voice, and it had once more its contemplatively nasal tone. "The discussion here is probably fruitless, we are neither of us sufficiently objective in this matter.
I therefore regret having to decline your proposal."
Boris rose and bowed formally. "Then I presume I can go," he said.
"Yes," replied the count, "the subject is exhausted for now. It should be added that I must beg you to terminate your visit here today."
Boris bowed again.
"Of course in the afternoon," added the count.
"Thank you," said Boris, and then walked out very erect.
Count Hamilcar took a long pull at his cigar and again looked out of the window. He wished to see another harvest wagon, and a lad lying sleepily on top of it in the hot yellow straw. In the yard behind a bush Marion had been standing the whole time, looking in through his window. Now that Boris was gone, she too ran toward the house. Youth on duty, reconnoitring against old age, thought the count. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He was a little weary. Of course she would come at once. As he knew his daughter, she would not let herself miss the intoxication of loyalty, of confessing, of having courage to stand before the cruel father.
Goodness, how life kept distributing the same old roles over and over.
Disgusting. Now the door moved. He did not open his eyes: an unspeakable sluggishness made his eyelids heavy. He heard Billy enter the room, step up close to him, and stand still before him. Then he opened his eyes and smiled a little.
"Well, my daughter?" he asked, "come, sit down beside me."
"No, papa," replied Billy, "I had rather stand."
"Very well, stand."--He too had to stand when he delivered his speech, thought Count Hamilcar. Billy stood there in her white dress, red carnations at her belt, her arms hanging down, and the hands lightly clasped. Her face was pale and her eyes very bright. She looks resolute, flitted through the count"s mind, Charlotte Corday at Marat"s bath-tub.
"I simply wanted to say, papa," began Billy, "that I am _for_ Boris, that I am on his side. Even if you insult him and send him away, I am for him, I must be."
She spoke calmly, only drawing the red carnations out of her belt and nervously pulling them to pieces the while.
The count nodded: "Surely, child, I expected nothing else. I fear we shall not convince each other. You will always see Boris otherwise than I see him. Our points of vision are simply too different. We cannot even hold the same opinion about what you are feeling. You consider it something lasting, even something eternal, h"m? And I--something transitory. Now I could appeal to my experience and say that I have seen more things pa.s.s away than you have. But you will object that what you are living through has never been experienced before, is unique. We cannot meet anywhere. So there is nothing left for it but the old and tried rule, that I decide and you obey. I am trustee of your life, and when you begin to be your own trustee, I must hand it over to you undiminished. But to throw in this Polish cousin I should regard as an unprofitable debiting of this capital intrusted to me."
"But I prefer to have it debited and ... and ... and all you say, but with Boris," cried Billy, angrily throwing her carnations on the floor.
The count shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Yes, my child, in this our views differ, as I say, and for the present my view is the prevailing one."