Читать книгу "O Thou, My Austria!" - Ossip Schubin - Страница 13

I was soon at home at Komaritz, often passed weeks there, feeling extremely comfortable amid those strange surroundings,--for the life led in the clumsy, unadorned old house upon which the mediæval castle looked down was certainly a strange one.

In fact, the modern structure was no whit superior to the castle except in the matter of ugliness and in the fact that it possessed a roof. Otherwise it was almost as ruinous as the ruin, and had to be propped up in a fresh place every year. The long passages were paved with worn tiles; the ground-floor was connected with the upper stories by a steep winding staircase. The locks on the doors were either broken or the keys were lost, and the clocks, if they went at all, all pointed to different hours.

In a large room called the drawing-room, where the plaster was crumbling down from the ceiling bit by bit, there stood, among three-legged tables and threadbare arm-chairs, many an exquisite antique. In the rooms in use, on the other hand, there was no article of mere luxury: all was plain and useful, as in some parsonage. And yet there was something strangely attractive in this curious home. The rooms were of spacious dimensions; those on the ground-floor were all vaulted. The sunbeams forced their way through leafy vines and creepers into the deep embrasures of the windows. The atmosphere was impregnated with a delicious, mysterious fragrance,--an odour of mould, old wood, and dried rose-leaves. Harry maintained that it smelled of ghosts, and that there was a white lady who "walked" in the corner room next to the private chapel.

I must confess, in spite of my love for the old barrack, that it was not a fit baronial mansion. No one had ever lived there, save a steward, before Uncle Karl, who, as the youngest Leskjewitsch, inherited it, took up his abode there. He had, when he was first married, planned a new castle, but soon relinquished his intention, first for financial reasons, and then from dread of guests, a dread that seems to have become a chronic disease with him. When his wife died, all thought of any new structure had been given up. From that time he scarcely ever stayed there himself, and the old nest was good enough for a summer residence for the children. With the exception of Heda,--besides Harry there was a good-for-nothing small boy,--the children thought so too. They had a pathetic affection for the old place where they appeared each year with the flowers, the birds, and the sunshine. They seemed to me to belong to the spring. Everything was bright and warm about me when they came.

Harry was my faithful knight from first to last; our friendship grew with our growth. He tyrannized over me a little, and liked to impress me, I think, with a sense of his superiority; but he faithfully and decidedly stood by me whenever I needed him. He drove me everywhere about the country; his two ponies could either be driven or ridden; he taught me to ride, climbed mountains with me, explored with me every corner of the old ruin on the hill, and then when we came home at night, each somewhat weary with our long tramp, he would tell me stories.

How vividly I remember it all! I can fancy myself now sitting beside him on the lowest of the steps leading from the living-room into the garden. At our feet the flowers exhale sweet, sad odours, the pale roses drenched in dew show white amid the dim foliage; above our heads there is a dreamy whisper in the boughs of an old apricot-tree, whose leaves stand out sharp and black against the deep-blue sky, sown with myriads of sparkling stars. And Harry is telling me stories. Ah, such stories! the most terrible tales of robbers and ghosts, each more shudderingly horrible than its predecessor.

Oh, how delightful it is to feel one shudder after another creeping down your back in the warm summer evening! and if it grows too fearful, and I begin to be really afraid of the pale, bloodless phantoms which he conjures up before me, I move a little closer to him, and, as if seeking protection, clasp his hand, taking refuge from my ghostly fears in the consciousness of his warm young life.