Читать книгу "O Thou, My Austria!" - Ossip Schubin - Страница 8

It rains--ah, how it rains! great drops following one another, and drenching the garden paths, plash--plash in all the puddles! Never a sunbeam to call forth a rainbow against the dark sky, never a gleam of light in the dull slaty gray. It seems as if the skies could never have done weeping over the monotony of existence--still the same--still the same!

I have tried everything by way of amusement. I curled Morl's hair with the curling-tongs. I played Chopin's mazurkas until my brain reeled. I even went up to the garret, where I knew no one could hear me, and, in the presence of an old wardrobe, where uncle's last uniform as a lieutenant was hanging, and of two rusty stove-pipes, I declaimed the famous monologue from the "Maid of Orleans."

"Oh, I could tear my hair with vexation!" as Valentine says. I read Faust a while ago,--since last spring I have been allowed to read all our classics,--and Faust interested me extremely, especially the prologue in heaven, and the first monologue, and then the walk. Ah, what a wonderful thing that walk is! But the love-scenes did not please me. Gretchen is far too meek and humble to Faust. "Dear God! How ever is it such a man can think and know so much?"

My voice is very strong and full, and I think I have a remarkable talent for the stage. I have often thought of becoming an actress, for a change; to--yes, it must out--to have an opportunity at last to show myself to the world,--to be admired. Miss O'Donnel is always telling me I was made to be admired, and I believe she is right. But what good does that do me? I think out all kinds of things, but no one will listen to them, especially now that Miss O'Donnel has gone. She seemed to listen, at all events, and every now and then would declare, "Child, you are a wonder!" That pleased me. But she departed last Saturday, to pay a visit to her relatives in Italy. Her niece is being educated there for an opera-singer. Since she went there is no one in whom I can confide. To be sure, I love Uncle Paul and Aunt Rosamunda dearly,--much more dearly than Miss O'Donnel; but I cannot tell them whatever happens to come into my head. They would not understand, any more than they understand how a girl of my age can demand more of life than if she were fifty--but indeed----

Rain--rain still! Since I've nothing else to do, I'll begin to-day to write my memoirs!

That sounds presumptuous--the memoirs of a girl whose existence flows on between Zirkow and Komaritz. But, after all,--

"Where'er you grasp this human life of ours

In its full force, be sure 'twill interest;"

which means, so far as I can understand, that, if one has the courage to write down one's personal observations and recollections simply and truthfully, it is sure to be worth the trouble.

I will be perfectly frank; and why not?--since I write for myself alone.

But that's false reasoning; for how many men there are who feign to themselves for their own satisfaction, bribing their consciences with sophistry! My conscience, however, sleeps soundly without morphine; I really believe there is nothing for it to do at present. I can be frank because I have nothing to confess.

Every Easter, before confession, I rack my brains to scrape together a few sins of some consequence, and I can find nothing but unpunctuality at prayers, pertness, and too much desire for worldly frivolities.

Well! Now, to begin without further circumlocution. Most people begin their memoirs with the history of their grandparents, some with that of their great-grandparents, seeming to suppose that the higher they can climb in their genealogical tree the more it adds to their importance. I begin simply with the history of my parents.

My father and mother married for love; they never repented their marriage, and yet it was the ruin of both of them.

My father was well born; not so my mother. Born in Paris, the daughter of a needy petty official, she was glad to accept a position as saleswoman in one of the fashionable Paris shops. Poor, dear mamma! It makes me wretched to think of her, condemned to make up parcels and tie up bundles, to mount on stepladders, exposed to the impertinence of capricious customers, who always want just what is not to be had,--all in the stifling atmosphere of a shop, and for a mere daily pittance.

Nothing in the world vexes me so much as to have people begin to whisper before me, glancing at me compassionately as they nod their heads. My ears are very acute, and I know perfectly well that they are talking of my poor mother and pitying me because my father married a shop-girl. I feel actually boiling with rage. Young as I was when I lost her, she still lives in my memory as the loveliest creature I have ever met in my life.

Tall and very slender, but always graceful, perfectly natural in manner, with tiny hands and feet, and large, melancholy, startled eyes, in a delicate, old-world face, she looked like an elf who could not quite comprehend why she was condemned to carry in her breast so large a human heart, well-nigh breaking with tenderness and melancholy. I know I look like her, and I am proud of it. Whenever I am presented to one of my couple of hundred aunts whose acquaintance I am condemned to make, she is sure to exclaim, "How very like Fritz she is!--all Fritz!" And I never fail to rejoin, "Oh, no, I am like my mother; every one who knew her says I am like mamma."

And then my aunts' faces grow long, and they think me pert.

Although I was scarcely six years old when Uncle Paul took us away from Paris, I can remember distinctly my home there. It was in a steep street in Montmartre, very high up on the fourth or fifth floor of a huge lodging-house. The sunlight shone in long broad streaks into our rooms through the high windows, outside of which extended an iron balcony. Our rooms were very pretty, very neat,--but very plain. Papa did not seem to belong to them; I don't know how I discovered this, but I found it out, little as I was. The ceilings looked low, when he rose from the rocking-chair, where he loved to sit, and stood at his full height. He always held his head gaily, high in the air, never bowing it humbly to suit his modest lodgings.

His circumstances, cramped for the time, as I learned later, by his imprudent marriage, contracted in spite of his father's disapproval, apparently struck him as a good joke, or, at the worst, as a passing annoyance. He always maintained the gay humour of a man of rank who, finding himself overtaken by a storm upon some party of pleasure, is obliged to take refuge in a wretched village inn.

Now and then he would stretch out his arms as if to measure the smallness of his house, and laugh. But mamma would cast down her large eyes sadly; then he would clasp her to his breast, kiss her, and call her the delight of his life; and I would creep out of the corner where I had been playing with my dolls, and pluck him by the sleeve, jealously desirous of my share of caresses.

In my recollection of my earliest childhood--a recollection without distinct outlines, and like some sweet, vague dream lingering in the most secret, cherished corner of my heart--everything is warm and bright; it is all light and love!

Papa is almost always with us in our sunny little nest. I see him still,--ah, how plainly!--leaning back in his rocking-chair, fair, with a rather haughty but yet kindly smile, his eyes sparkling with good-humoured raillery. He is smoking a cigarette, and reading the paper, apparently with nothing in the world to do but to enjoy life; all the light in the little room seems to come from him.

The first four years of my life blend together in my memory like one long summer day, without the smallest cloud in the blue skies above it.

I perfectly remember the moment in which my childish happiness was interrupted by the first disagreeable sensation. It was an emotion of dread. Until then I must have slept through all the hours of darkness, for, when once I suddenly wakened and found the light all gone, I was terrified at the blackness above and around me, and I screamed aloud. Then I noticed that mamma was kneeling, sobbing, beside my bed. Her sobs must have wakened me. She lighted a candle to soothe me, and told me a story. In the midst of my eager listening, I asked her, "Where is papa?"

She turned her head away, and said, "Out in the world!"

"Out in the world----" Whether or not it was the tone in which she pronounced the word "world," I cannot tell, but it has ever since had a strange sound for me,--a sound betokening something grand yet terrible.

Thus I made the discovery that there were nights, and that grown-up people could cry.

Soon afterwards it was winter; the nights grew longer, the days shorter, and it was never really bright in our home again,--the sunshine had vanished.

It was cold, and the trees in the gardens high up in Montmartre, where they took me to walk, grew bare and ugly.

Once, I remember, I asked my mother, "Mamma, will the trees never be green again?"

"Oh, yes, when the spring comes," she made answer.

"And then will it be bright here again?" I asked, anxiously.

To this she made no reply, but her eyes suddenly grew so sad that I climbed into her lap and kissed her upon both eyelids.

Papa was rarely with us now, and I was convinced that he had taken the sunshine away from our home.

When at long intervals he came to dine with us, there was as much preparation as if a stranger had been expected. Mamma busied herself in the kitchen, helping the cook, who was also my nurse-maid, to prepare the dinner. She laid the cloth herself, and decorated the table with flowers. To me everything looked magnificent: I was quite awe-stricken by the unwonted splendour.

One day a very beautiful lady paid us a visit, dressed in a velvet cloak trimmed with ermine--I did not know until some time afterwards the name of the fur--and a gray hat. I remember the hat distinctly, I was so delighted with the bird sitting on it. She expressed herself as charmed with everything in our home, stared about her through her eye-glass, overturned a small table and two footstools with her train, kissed me repeatedly, and begged mamma to come soon to see her. She was a cousin of papa's, a Countess Gatinsky,--the very one for whom, when she was a young girl and papa an elegant young attaché, he had been doing the honours of Paris on that eventful afternoon when, while she and her mother were busy and absorbed, shopping in the Bon Marché, he had fallen desperately in love with my pale, beautiful mother.

When the Countess left us, mamma cried bitterly. I do not know whether she ever returned the visit, but it was never repeated, and I never saw the Countess again, save once in the Bois de Boulogne, where I was walking with my mother. She was sitting in an open barouche, and my father was beside her. Opposite them an old man sat crouched up, looking very discontented, and very cold, although the day was quite mild and he was wrapped up in furs.

They saw us in the distance; the Countess smiled and waved her hand; papa grew very red, and lifted his hat in a stiff, embarrassed way.

I remember wondering at his manner: what made him bow to us as if we were two strangers?

Mamma hurried me on, and we got into the first omnibus she could find. I stroked her hand or smoothed the folds of her gown all the way home, for I felt that she had been hurt, although I could not tell how.

The days grow sadder and darker, and yet the spring has come. Was there really no sunshine in that April and May, or is it so only in my memory?

Meanwhile, the trees have burst into leaf, and the first early cherries have decked our modest table. We have not seen papa for a long time. He is staying at a castle in the neighbourhood of Paris, but only for a few days.

It is a sultry afternoon in the beginning of June,--I learned the date of that wretched day later. The flowers in the balcony before our windows, scarlet carnations and fragrant mignonette, are drooping, because mamma has forgotten to water them, and mamma herself looks as weary as the flowers. Pale and miserable, she moves about the room with the air of one whom the first approach of some severe illness half paralyzes. Her pretty gown, a dark-blue silk with white spots, seems to hang upon her slender figure. She arranges the articles in the room here and there restlessly, and, noticing a soft silken scarf which papa sometimes wore knotted carelessly about his throat in the mornings, and which has been left hanging on the knob of a curtain, she picks it up, passes it slowly between her hands, and holds it against her cheek.

There!--is not that a carriage stopping before our door? I run out upon the balcony, but can see nothing of what is going on in the street below; our rooms are too high up. I can see, however, that the people who live opposite are hurrying to their windows, and that the passers-by stop in the street, and stand and talk together, gathering in a little knot. A strange bustling noise ascends the staircase; it comes up to our landing,--the heavy tread of men supporting some weighty burden.

Mamma stands spellbound for a moment, and then flings the door open and cries out. It is papa whom they are bringing up, deadly pale, covered with blankets, helpless as a child.

There had been an accident in an avenue not far from Bellefontaine, the castle which the Countess Gatinsky had hired for the summer. Papa had been riding with her,--riding a skittish, vicious horse, against which he had been warned. He had only laughed, however, declaring that he knew how to manage the brute. But he could not manage him. As I learned afterwards, the horse, after vainly trying to throw his rider, had reared, and rolled over backwards upon him. He was taken up senseless. When he recovered consciousness in Bellefontaine, whither they carried him, and the physician told him frankly that he was mortally hurt, he desired to be taken home,--to those whom he loved best in the world.

At first they would not accede to his wishes; Countess Gatinsky wanted to send for mamma and me,--to bring us to Bellefontaine. But he would not hear of it. He was told that to take him to Paris would be an injury to him in his present condition. Injury!--he laughed at the word. He wanted to die in the dear little nest in Paris, and it was a dying man's right to have his way.

I have never talked of this to any one, but I have thought very often of our sorrow, of the shadow that suddenly fell upon my childhood and extinguished all its sunshine.

And I have often heard people whispering together about it when they thought I was not listening. But I listened, listened involuntarily, as one does to words which one would afterwards give one's life not to have heard. And when the evil words stabbed me like a knife, it was a comfort to be able to say to myself, "It was merely the caprice of a moment,--his heart had no share in it;" it was a comfort to be able to say that mamma sat at his bedside and that he died with his hand in hers.

I do not remember how long the struggle lasted before death came, but I never can forget the moment when I was taken in to see him.

I can see the room now perfectly,--the bucket of ice upon which the afternoon sun glittered, the bloody bandages on the floor, the furniture in disorder, and, lying here and there, articles of dress which had not yet been put away. There, in the large bed, where the gay flowered curtains had been drawn back as far as possible to let in the air, lay papa. His cheeks were flushed and his blue eyes sparkled, and when I went up to him he laughed. I could not believe that he was ill. Mamma sat at the head of the bed, dressed in her very prettiest gown, her wonderful hair loosened and hanging in all its silken softness about her shoulders. She, too, smiled; but her smile made me shiver.

Papa looked long and lovingly at me, and, taking my small hand in his, put it to his lips. Then he made the sign of the cross upon my forehead. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and I embraced him with all the fervour of my five years. Mamma drew me back. "You hurt him," she said. He laughed,--laughed as a brave man laughs at pain. He always laughed: I never saw him grave but once,--only once. Mamma burst into tears.

"Minette, Minette, do not be a coward. I want you to be beautiful always," said he. Those words I perfectly remember.

Yes, he wanted her to be beautiful to the last!

They sent me out of the room. As I turned at the door, I saw how papa stroked mamma's wonderful hair--slowly--lingeringly--with his slender white hand.

I sat in the kitchen all the long summer afternoon. At first our servant told me stories. Then she had to go out upon an errand; I stayed in the kitchen alone, sitting upon a wooden bench, staring before me, my doll, with which I did not care to play, lying upon the brick floor beside me. The copper saucepans on the wall gleam and glitter in the rays of the declining sun, and the bluebottle flies crawl and buzz about their shining surfaces.

A moaning monotonous sound, now low, then loud, comes from my father's room. I feel afraid, but I cannot stir: I am, as it were, rooted to my wooden bench. The hoarse noise grows more and more terrible.

Gradually twilight seems to fall from the ceiling and to rise from the floor; the copper vessels on the wall grow vague and indistinct; here and there a gleam of brilliancy pierces the gray gloom, then all is dissolved in darkness. In the distance a street-organ drones out Malbrough; I have hated the tune ever since. The moans grow louder. I lean my head forward upon my knees and stop my ears. What is that? One brief, piercing cry,--and all is still!

I creep on tiptoe to papa's room. The door is open. I can see mamma bending over him, kissing him, and lavishing caresses upon him: she is no longer afraid of hurting him.

That night a neighbour took me home with her, and when I came back, the next day, papa lay in his black coffin in a darkened room, and candles were burning all around him.

He seemed to me to have grown. And what dignity there was in his face! That was the only time I ever saw him look grave.

Mamma lifted me up that I might kiss him. Something cold seemed to touch my cheek, and suddenly I felt I--cannot describe the sensation--an intense dread,--the same terror, only ten times as great, as that which overcame me when I first wakened in the night and was aware of the darkness. Screaming, I extricated myself from mamma's arms, and ran out of the room.----

(Here the major stopped to brush away the tears before reading on.)

----For a while mamma tried to remain in Paris and earn our living by the embroidery in which she was so skilful; but, despite all her trying, she could not do it. The servant-girl was sent away, our rooms grew barer and barer, and more than once I went to bed crying with hunger.

In November, Uncle Paul came to see us, and took us back with him to Bohemia. I cannot recall the journey, but our arrival I remember distinctly,--the long drive from the station, along the muddy road, between low hedges, or tall, slim poplars; then through the forest, where the wind tossed about the dry fallen leaves, and a few crimson-tipped daisies still bloomed gaily by the roadside, braving the brown desolation about them; past curious far-stretching villages, their low huts but slightly elevated above the mud about them, their black thatched roofs green in spots with moss, their narrow windows gay with flowers behind the thick, dim panes; past huge manure-heaps, upon which large numbers of gay-coloured fowls were clucking and crowing, and past stagnant ditches where amber-coloured swine were wallowing contentedly.

The dogs rush excitedly out of the huts, to run barking after our carriage, while a mob of barefooted, snub-nosed children, their breath showing like smoke in the frosty air, come bustling out of school, and shout after us "Praised be Jesus Christ!"

A turn--we have driven into the castle court-yard; Krupitschka hastens to open the carriage door. At the top of the steps stands a tall lady in mourning, very majestic in appearance, with a kind face. I see mamma turn pale, shrink--then all is a blank.