CHAPTER XIX. A CRUEL UNCLE.
What are the forces, and on whose behalf employed, that trouble the smooth current of true love? We have seen one pair cruelly separated, and now must these innocents be subjected to infamous treatment? Has the sentence from the beginning been irrevocably pronounced, that if both Adam and Eve prove faithful and worthy, their Eden cannot escape the serpent? Must their bliss be poisoned either by the reptile of Fate or by themselves? Poor sorry lovers, there is no peace, no security for you, even in romance. Your only chance of permanent interest lies in the mist of misfortune. The moment you bask in cloudless content, the wings of poetry are clipped, and your garb is the insipidity of commonplace.
The bolt of Destiny was shot from the blue of dreams next morning, when Rudolph was banqueting blissfully with his uncle and aunt at the midday breakfast.
“Rudolph,” said the enemy, in amiable baronial form, “your aunt and I have arranged a charming surprise for you.”
Rudolph looked up quietly, without a smart of premonition, and smiled his pleasantest.
“That is kind, uncle. And the surprise?”
“Well, seeing how bored you are here—and, really, my dear boy, I am not astonished—we are going to take you on an exciting voyage through the Peloponnesus. We will show you all the historic spots.”
“But, my dear uncle, I have no desire whatever to see the Peloponnesus or any historic spots,” exclaimed Rudolph, paling before the vision of himself wandering away from Andromache. “I hate history, and don’t care a straw for the ancient Greeks.”
“Oh, Rudolph, don’t show me that I’ve built my hopes on you in vain,” exclaimed the baroness, in cheerful dismay. “I have been counting on you to explain everything to me. Your acquaintance with school books is so much more recent than mine, and the baron is even more hazy in his recollections than I.”
“I am very sorry to disappoint you, aunt, but I cannot leave Athens at present. I am not bored, uncle, I assure you. I am very happy, and I love Athens.”
The baron looked at him sharply, and thought he wore much too happy an air.
“Rudolph, I entreat you—if I were not so massive, I would kneel to you,” cried the baron, in mock prayer, “allow us to drag you away for one solitary fortnight from the enchantress, Mademoiselle Photini Natzelhuber. I admit that our society and the sight of historic spots will prove an inadequate substitute for her charms and fascinations, but humour this whim of two old people, and your return to the feet of the yellow-eyed witch of Academy Street will be the more delightful.”
“I don’t know what you mean, uncle,” protested Rudolph, with a look of startled anxiety. “I have not seen Mademoiselle Natzelhuber since Madame Jarovisky’s ball.”
“Not possible? Good gracious! that one so young should be so faithless! The contemplation of the perfidy of my own sex, Madame, fills my eyes with tears. But no, I apprehend. It is merely the refined hesitation of innocence. He sighs at her door—serenades her—have you not, Madame, remarked a tell-tale look about his violin?—and consumes quantities of paper. Well, I shall see that there are at least a dozen quires of note paper, of the very best quality, stamped with the family coat-of-arms, placed in your portmanteau, Rudolph, and your aunt and I will retire discreetly into the background while you compose your flaming epistles and frantically adjure the moon and stars instead of Mademoiselle Photini.
“‘Ma Photini, prépare ta toilette,
Il y a un mois que la mienne est déjà faite;
Mes beaux habits, mes seuls habits,
Voilà un mois que je les ai mis.’
There are some verses, ‘une invitation au mariage,’ of which I make you a present. You didn’t know that I sometimes perpetrate impromptu verses? Good, aren’t they? ‘Ma Photini,’” he began again, singing the lines to an impromptu air, seemingly unconscious that the crimson of anger had mounted to Rudolph’s brow.
“You must not tease the boy,” said the baroness, maliciously. “Remember, you were once in love yourself.”
“With you, Madame, before me, as a substantial testimony of that pleasant fact, I do not see how I can forget it,” smiled the baron.
“My dear baron, our Rudolph well understands that that is not the sort of love he is pricked with. But, seriously, my dear child, you must not abandon us. A young man loves and he rides away—for a time—which does not in the least prevent him from riding back again, also for a time. Don’t you see? The Natzelhuber won’t die meanwhile.”
“Aunt, I cannot understand why you should talk in this way about Mademoiselle Natzelhuber. Let me positively state that she is nothing to me, nor am I anything to her,” cried Rudolph, testily.
“Poor Mademoiselle! I weep for her,” said the baron. “And there is that wretched Agiropoulos stamping and swearing about Athens, plotting duels and blood and the Lord knows what, protesting against yellow-headed Austrians and amber moustaches. Dear me! That such noble indignation, and a jealousy with a fine mediæval flavour in it, should be wasted! Well, it is settled. If you have got over that little affair of the Natzelhuber, any scruples I may have cherished against tearing you away from the violet-crowned city—vanish. So, my nephew, you will get yourself up in that fascinating green coat and the long boots to-morrow morning, and we will begin by Marathon.”
The baron had finished his coffee and cigar, and stood up with a gesture clearly indicating that the matter was settled. His mocking smile struck Rudolph coward, and though his heart clamoured for open recognition of Andromache, he was unable to force his tongue to break a silence he felt to be mean and unmanly.
“By the way, Rudolph, we have invited the Foreign Legations to dinner at Kephissia, and there will be an expedition before dinner to Tatoi. The young people will ride, and the elder ones will go by carriage. We start at four, so you will not forget to look your best, and do your utmost to entertain Mademoiselle Veritassi,” said the baron, from the door.
This last shot broke the deeps of holy indignation in the lover’s heart. The Karapolos dined at half-past one. It would be discourteous to call earlier than three. And how much time did that leave him for Andromache? and he would be dragged away from her on the morrow. He looked so candidly miserable and disappointed, that his aunt went over to him, and kissed his forehead.
“Is it your wish, aunt, that I should go with you this afternoon? Could I not join you later in time for dinner at Kephissia?”
“You poor child!” exclaimed the baroness, tenderly, smiling to herself to think that he imagined them ignorant of his secret, and that it should be so easy to manage and thwart him.
“No, no, Rudolph. It would be an affront to our guests. You are like the son of the house now, and your presence is indispensable to the young people.”
Rudolph sighed, and kissed his aunt’s plump hand in piteous and dumb eloquence of protest and acquiescence. His eyes were full of tears as he stood at his own window, and gazed like an angry, disappointed child across the lovely hills and sudden sweeps of empty plain. Why had he not spoken? Why had he not asserted himself? A man on the brink of marriage ought surely to be able to take on himself the responsibility of speech and decision. But there was the mocking smile of his uncle that lashed him into petrified cowardice, like a well-bred taunt, and flushed him like a buffet, and how to make these worldly relations understand the charm of innocence, the fragrance of a violet, the beauty of an untutored heart?
Punctually at three o’clock, he rapped with his silver-handled walking-stick upon the glass door at the foot of Lycabettus. He had learnt to ask in Greek for the ladies, and with a stare and smile of frank familiarity, Maria supposed it was Andromache and not the others he wanted. The Austrian aristocrat, to whom all evidences of democracy and ill-bred freedom were repugnant, reproved her with a slight touch of haughty insolence, and pointedly repeated his wish to see Kyria Karapolos and her family.
“Kyria Karapolos, the fair young foreigner, is here,” shouted Maria, and left him to find his way into the little salon.
“My dear Monsieur Ehrenstein, it is a pleasure to me to welcome you,” said Kyria Karapolos, hastening to join him.
Her French was fluent, but droll enough to make conversation with her a surprise and a puzzle.
“I have come to tell you that my uncle and aunt have planned an excursion to the Peloponnesus, and they insist on my accompanying them,” Rudolph began at once, very dolorously indeed.
“Well, of course you must please your uncle and aunt. It will make them the more disposed afterwards to assent to your happiness. Here is Andromache. Monsieur Ehrenstein has to leave Athens for a little while. It is quite right. He must not displease those who stand to him as father and mother.”
Andromache blanched to the lips, and then a wave of red flowed into her face. Rudolph felt that he loved her more than ever, and while he held her hand, a smile struggled through the pain of his eyes.
“It is so cruel to have to leave you just now, Andromache.”
She dared not trust herself to speak, for she hardly knew how much it is permitted a modest maiden to say to her lover. But her pretty eyes said a great deal more than she dreamed. Rudolph looked into them, and a happy light broke over his face.
“You grieve too, dear,” he said, softly.
“Must you go, Rudolph?” she asked, tremulously.
“Shall I go, sweet friend?”
Andromache looked question at her mother.
“Of course he must,” cried Kyria Karapolos. “It would be folly to anger or thwart them in the beginning. Besides, it won’t be for long, and we can be getting things ready for the wedding in the meantime.”
“Am I to go, Andromache?” Rudolph still asked, holding her shy glance boldly with his own.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She took a little roll of embroidery from the pocket of her apron, and applied herself to it eagerly, but the needle pricks marked tiny spots of red along the cambric. Rudolph noted this, and anxiously cried out that she was hurting him. Andromache looked up in amazement.
“Don’t you understand?” asked this youth, suddenly growing subtle. “It is my fingers you are so cruelly pricking with that sharp needle.”
Andromache flashed him a joyous smile, and he bent forward, and held both her hands to his mouth.
“I love you, I love you,” he murmured, fondly.
“Rudolph,” she said, and dropped her eyes.
Kyria Karapolos thought proper to strike this growing heat chill with a sound commonplace, by asking him if he had much land in Austria, and what was the exact amount of his rent-roll.
“I believe it amounts to five thousand, but my steward manages everything for me. You may be assured, however, that I have quite enough for Andromache and myself,” answered Rudolph, simply.
This drove him to describe Rapoldenkirchen, and he necessarily rhapsodised over its loveliness, and the happiness that awaited Andromache in that shadowed home. And there in front of him was the clock summoning him from heaven; it already pointed cruelly to the stroke of four. He stood up and announced his hurry, shook hands with Kyria Karapolos, and held a moment Andromache’s slim fingers, looking sorrowfully into the shining March-violets he felt an irresistible impulse to kiss.
“You will think of me every day, dear?”
“I will, Rudolph.”
“Whisper. Am I very dear to you?”
“Oh, Rudolph, I love you,” she cried, and broke down in simple passion.
He stooped hurriedly and pressed his lips to her hair. In another instant he was outside, tearing madly down the rough streets, splashing his boots and clothes in the little streams, jumping over groups of astonished babies, and racing, as if pursued by furies, past the Platea Omonia and up the Patissia Road.
There was a carriage outside the Austrian Embassy, and just as he got inside, a group of riders bore down towards it.
“Monsieur Rudolph will be down presently,” the major-domo explained, in answer to the irritable inquiries of the baron.
When Rudolph descended to the hall in his charming riding attire, the baron surveyed him with a curious and amused smile, and nodded approvingly.
“There are some young ladies for you to look after. Spare them, I entreat you,” and, in reply to Rudolph’s questioning look, added, “Young ladies, you know, are weak and susceptible, and you wear an abominably victimising air.”
Rudolph jumped into the saddle with a very apparent want of alacrity. Mademoiselle Veritassi smiled him welcome, and unconsciously he took his place beside her. Three carriages carried the elders, and the party of youthful riders nearly made the dozen. The air was blithe, the sun shone gloriously and struck the landscape lucid green. The young blood of the impressible Rudolph mounted to his head. The laughter of his companions imparted its contagion to his bereaved heart; on he rode with spring running music through his pulses, and caught by the mirth of the landscape.
The young people showed no destructive tendency to break into couples, but kept one gay and impregnable party, laughing, joking, careering in hearty rivalry to see who should out-distance the sedate carriage-folk, chattering nonsense and enjoying the hour with the frenzied intensity of unperturbed youth. Mademoiselle Veritassi made a delightful companion, with the charm of a well-bred boy, courteously brusque and quizzically candid.
Under the fire of her imperious glance the sundered, dolorous air dropped from Rudolph, the wine of life coursed vigorously through his veins, and he shouted laughter with the rest. They skirted the stations of upper and lower Patissia under the blue shadows of the Parnes mountains. The marble of Pentelicus, struck by the quivering sunbeams, broke the delicate mist afar. On either side, the long waste of olive plantations toned the joy of the scene by their sad colour, and brought out the contrast of the emerald grasses of the underwoods, and the variously-tinted reeds that edge the torrent of the river Cephissus. The little German village of Heraclion showed white and yellow, with solemn spaces of cypress, upon the sky of clear, unshadowed blue. Flocks of white and black sheep were like moving mounds upon the fields, and over all hung Pentelicus, a haze of grey heather and dismantled branches where its marbles were not a dazzle of whiteness. Rudolph was enchanted with everything—with the blurred hillsides and the murmuring streams that curled in soft swirls along by the hedges, with the goatherds following their capricious charges,—the villagers, burnt brown, in the glory of fustanella, scarlet fez and smart jackets, their long sleeves hanging back like idle wings,—with the boys and their donkeys, and the women in embroidered coats and muslin head-dresses.
At Kephissia it was obligatory to dismount and hunt for the grotto of nymphs, and then talk nonsense beneath its dripping rocks and curtains of maidenhair. It was even compulsory to taste of its water, and the French viscount made a gallant allusion, and quoted the inevitable line from Homer. Then on up the straight road to Tatoi, the arbutus in full fruit, and on either side exquisite varieties of shrub and leaf and winter flowers. The young ladies were eager to feed on the arbutus, and sent their escorts to gather this ethereal nourishment. And when they were replenished, and satisfied with the smirched and bramble-torn condition of the cavaliers, they decorated their bosoms with the berries, which showed like balls of blood upon their sombre habits. All this necessarily involved much explosive mirth and many inarticulate cries. And men and maidens rode on, convinced there is no delight to match a ride through winter Athenian landscape, when the heart is fresh, the eyes are clear, and the senses near the surface; when, above all, there is plenty of arbutus-fruit for the gathering, cavaliers to tear their gloves in its search through the bushes and brambles, and attractive maidens to wear and eat it.
What more potent than youth’s wild spirits? At dinner it was impossible to say whether the young people or the old, to whom they had communicated their irrepressible gaiety, were the more intoxicated. What amazing tact and calculation were displayed by the Baron and Baroness von Hohenfels! Well they understood the impressionable and susceptible temperament they had to deal with when they gathered together these gems of their society. Such brilliant eyes and laughing teeth gleaming above the flowers, such whiz of airy and unseizable nothings shot high on the wings of badinage, with the same intangible flavour as the foam of champagne which plentifully drowned them. All seemed specially conspiring to captivate the poor bereaved lover. And so well did they succeed, that he quite forgot Andromache. It was only after dinner, when Mademoiselle Veritassi was invited to sing, and selected something weakly sentimental in French, all about hearts and sighs and tears and parting, that the new-born babe, the infant Cupid, began to clamour and blubber within him. Then he turned aside to think of Andromache. He pressed his head against the window, and stared blankly out upon the hotel gardens drenched with moonlight, the flowers washed of all colour in their bath of silver.
The baron saw him in this doleful attitude, and coming up behind him, held one hand sentimentally upon his heart and the other stretched out, in frantic adjuration to the moon.
“Ma Photini, prépare ta toilette,” he sang.
Rudolph faced him angrily, barely able to restrain the strong exclamation that rushed to his lips.
“No, I have just made better, that is, more appropriate verses. Mademoiselle Natzelhuber is notorious for not greatly caring for dress. Then it is clearly an offence to mention it.”
Rudolph muttered the German equivalent for “bosh,” and walked away.
Has any philosopher deigned to discover the reason why, when a party of young folks start upon a boisterous expedition, and laugh until the woods resound with their mirth, the return to the domestic hearth is generally so silent and so depressed? They are bound to sigh, and look at the stars, or at themselves, in a forlorn and disappointed way, and wonder where and why all their wild enjoyment has vanished.
Rudolph rode in front with Mademoiselle Veritassi, and remembered not the existence of his companion, as his profound and troubled gaze rested solemnly upon the dark landscape. The wavy hilltops stood far out from the horizon, and the sky, instead of looking like a blue shield against them, shot away like a sea of infinite mist. The night air blew chilly round Athens, and the Viscount cheerfully suggested the visit of those intemperate blasts that howl down from the encircling hills with frantic force, and prove more than anything the exceeding greatness of that mass of broken pillars and temples upon the Acropolis that have resisted their destructive strength all these centuries.
But the next day, though cold, was not thought unfit for travelling, and, at an early hour, Rudolph was carried out of Athens to hear his uncle spout and quote upon the plain of Marathon, where the anemones were getting ready for their spring display. Pray, what did Rudolph care about Miltiades? Had he not an intended brother-in-law of the name worth ten such generals? Indeed, he hazarded the opinion that the old one was greatly overrated, upon which his diplomatic uncle smiled, as the wise smile upon the foolish—the smile of tolerant and good-humoured superiority.