CHAPTER VII.
Hovels deep sunk in the ground, moss-grown thatched roofs, here and there an old lime-tree or a tall pear-tree with crabbed branches standing out black and bare against the wintry sky, slimy puddles, a pond full to the brim in which three forlorn-looking geese are sadly paddling, a swampy road along which a procession of ploughs are splashing their way at the heels of the muddy, unkempt teams--in short, a Bohemian village, with a shabby manor-house beyond. Over the tumble-down gate-way, with a pigsty on one side and a dog-kennel on the other, hangs a coat of arms. The mansion--a square house with a steep shingle roof--stands, according to the unromantic custom of the country, with one side looking on to the farm-yard; and the drawing-room windows open exactly over an enormous dung heap which a party of women are in the very act of turning with pitch-forks, under the superintendence of a short stout man in a weather-beaten hunting-hat and shooting-coat with padded silk sleeves out of which the wadding is peeping at a hundred holes. He is smoking a pipe with a china bowl decorated with a mincing odalisque. His face is broad and red, his ears purple, and his aspect is anything rather than aristocratic as he stands giggling and jesting with the damsels of the steaming midden.
This is Baron Wolnitzky, a man who, like a good many others, got himself a good deal talked about in 1848 and then vanished from the scene without leaving a trace behind.
Often when we see some dry and barren tree shedding its sere and mouldy leaves in the autumn we find it hard to believe that it bore blossoms in the spring; and the baron was like such a tree. In the spring-tide of 1848--an over-teeming spring throughout Europe--his soul too had blossomed. He had had patriotic visions and had uttered them in rhyme, and his country had hailed him as a prophet--perhaps because it needed an idol, or perhaps because in those agitated times it could not tell black from white. In those days he had displayed himself in a magnificent national costume with sleeves of the most elaborate cut, had married a patriotic wife who always dressed in the Slav colors: blue, white, and red, and who got two young men, also dressed in Slav costume, to mount guard at the door of her house. He was descended from a Polish family that had immigrated many generations since and his connections were as far as possible from being aristocratic, while he owed his little fortune entirely to his father who had put no 'baron' before his name, and who had earned it honestly as a master baker. In feudal times it would hardly have occurred to him to furbish up this very doubtful patent of nobility; but in the era of liberty it might pass muster and prove useful. A very shy pedigree serves to shed glory on a democratic martyr.
During the insurrection of June he fled with his wife in picturesque disguise; at first to Dresden, and then to Switzerland where he lived for some time in a boarding-house at Geneva, receiving homage as a political refugee, and horrifying the mistress by his enormous appetite. At length he returned to Bohemia where the events of forty-eight and its picturesquely aparelled leaders had fallen into oblivion. He retired to his little estate and turned philosopher--philosophy, ever since the days of Diogenes, has been the acknowledged refuge of shipwrecked hopes and pretensions.
There he went out walking in his shirt sleeves, played cards with the peasants and grew more vulgar, fatter, and hungrier every day; and if he ever had an idea it was unintentionally, in a bad dream after eating too much of some national delicacy.
His wife, a robust and worthy soul, though full of absurdities, bore a strong resemblance to the mother of the Regent Orleans in as much as she had a sound understanding combined with a very sentimental nature, was utterly devoid of tact, bitter to the verge of cynicism, thoroughly indiscreet and a great chatterbox.
She resigned herself without demur to the new order of things and brought a new tribe of children into the world, most of whom died young. Three survived; two sons, who so far broke through the traditions of the family as to become infantry officers, and one daughter, in whom patriotic romance once more flickered into fanaticism. This girl had been christened Bohuslawa, a name which was commonly shortened into Slawa, which in the more important dialects of the Slav tongue means Fame. She, like her mother, was of stalwart build, but her features were regular though statuesque and heavy--she was said to be like the Apollo Belvedere. She had already had four suitors but neither of them had met her views and now at twenty--having been born in forty-eight--she was spending the winter, unmarried and sorely discontented, in the country, where she occupied herself with serious studies and accepted the attentions of a needy young Pole who was devoted to her and in whom she condescended to take some slight interest.
But Baron Wolnitzky is still standing by the midden; the great black dog, which till this moment has never ceased barking at the door of his kennel, now, to introduce some variety into the programme, jumps on to its roof, from which advantageous standpoint he still barks without pause. Everything is dripping from the recently-thawed snow, and the air is full of the splash and gurgle of dropping and trickling water; the grey February twilight sinks upon the world and everything looks dingy and soaked.
A sound of creaking wheels is heard approaching, and a dung-cart appears in the gate-way.
"Well, what is going on in the town?" says the baron to the man who comes up to him, wrapped in an evil-smelling sheepskin and with the ears of his fur cap tied under his chin, to kiss his master's elbow. "Have you brought the newspapers?"
"Yes, your Grace, my Lord Baron," says the man, "and a letter too." And he draws a packet tied up in a red and white handkerchief out of a pocket in his sheepskin. The baron looks at the documents. "Another letter from Rome already," he mutters, grinning; "I must take it in at once that the women may have something to talk about."
The women, that is to say his wife and daughter, were sitting in the dining-room at a long table covered with a flowered cloth, on which stood the tea things, a paraffine lamp, and a breadbasket of dull silver filagree work. The lamp was smoking and the table looked as uncomfortable and dingy as the village outside, half-buried in manure. The baroness, in a tan-colored loose gown, in which she looked squarer than ever, without a cap, her thin grey hair cut short, was hunting for the tenth time to-day, on and under every article of furniture, for the key of the storeroom. Bohuslawa, meanwhile sat still, with a volume of Mickiewicz in her hand, out of which she was reading aloud in rather stumbling Polish, with a harsh voice. A young man with a sharp-cut sallow face and long black hair, in a Polish braided coat, wide collar and olive-coloured satin cravat, corrected her pronunciation now and then. He was her Polish adorer. He was one of that familiar species, the teacher of languages with a romance in the background; he lived in the neighouring town and came every Saturday to the village, four railway stations off, to instruct Bohuslawa in Polish and spend Sunday with the family.
When the union of these two patriots--which had already been secretly discussed--was to take place, depended on a mysterious law-suit that the young Pole was carrying on against the Russian government. His name was Vladimir de Matuschowsky, his grandmother had been a Potocka, and when he was not giving lessons, he was meditating conspiracies.
"Is there nothing else for tea?" asked the baron, casting a doubtful eye on the stale-looking rolls in the bread-basket.
"No, the dogs have eaten up the cakes," replied the baroness coolly. She was at the moment on all-fours under the piano, hunting for the key behind the pedal.
"You will get an apoplexy," said Bohuslawa crossly but without anxiety, and without making the smallest attempt to assist the old lady. But at this instant a housemaid came in with the sought-for key on a bent and copper-colored britannia-metal waiter.
"Oh, thank Heaven!" cried the baroness, "where was the wretched thing?"
"In the dog kennel,--your grace, my lady baroness, the puppy had dragged it there."
In her love for dogs again the baroness resembled the Duchess of Orleans; she always had a litter of half a dozen puppies to bring up, and the kennel was a well-known hiding place for everything that could not be found in its right place.
"The little rascals!" she exclaimed, with an admiring laugh at the ingenious perversity of her mischievous pets. "Bring the sugar then, Clara."
"I have a surprise for you," growled her husband, "a letter from Rome," and he produced the document, with its mixed odors of patchouli and damp sheepskin, and pushed it across to his wife, while he took up the rum bottle to flavor his tea.
"From Rome!" exclaimed the baroness, "that is delightful. Where, oh where are my spectacles?" And she felt and patted herself all over till the superfluous substance shook like a jelly.
"Ah, here they are--I am sitting on them--now then, children," and she began to read the letter aloud.
"Dear Lotti, you must not take it ill that I so seldom write to you"--the baroness looked up over her spectacles--"so seldom!... she never in her life wrote to me so often as from Rome"--"but you cannot imagine the turmoil in which we live. A dinner-party every day, two evening parties and a ball. We are spending the carnival with the crême de la crême of Roman society. To-morrow we dine with Princess Vulpini--she was a Truyn and is the sister of Truyn of R. The next day we have theatricals, etc., etc. Zinka is an immense success. Nicki Sempaly among others--the brother of Prince Sempaly, the great landed proprietor--is very attentive to her...."
Here she was interrupted by her husband. "Well, I never thought the old goose was quite such a simpleton!" he exclaimed, drumming his fingers angrily on the red and white flowered cloth.
"I cannot imagine how Clotilde allows it!" cried the baroness--"and still less do I understand Cecil."
"Take my advice, Lotti, go to Rome," observed the baron ironically; "go and set their heads straight on their shoulders."
"With the greatest pleasure," replied his wife, taking his irony quite seriously, "but unfortunately we have not the money."
Then she read the letter to the end; like all Clotilde's epistles it ended with the words; "What a pity it is that you should not be here too; it would give us the greatest pleasure to have you with us."
Tea was done; the maid servant cleared the table with a great clatter of cups and spoons, the baron retired to play Bulka with his neighbors in the village inn-parlor; the three who were left sat in meditative mood.
"I must confess that I should like to go to Rome," said the baroness, as she swept the crumbs off her lap on to the floor, "and it would be pleasant, too, to have relations there--for their grand acquaintance I own I do not care a straw."
"I do not see why we should avoid all society if we were there," exclaimed Slawa hotly.
"Well, you could do as you liked about it, of course," said the baroness, who held her daughter in the deepest respect, "I could stay at home; you see, my dear Vladimir," she added almost condescendingly to her son-in-law in spe, "I am uncomfortable in any company where I cannot get into my slippers in the evening...."
"Mamma!" cried her daughter beside herself, "you really are!..."
The baroness sat abashed and silent--no one spoke. There was not a sound in the room but the crackling of the fire in the huge tiled stove and the snoring of the big hunting-dog that lay sleeping on the tail of his mistress's skirt.
"If we only could sell the Bernini!" murmured the baroness presently, resuming the thread of their conversation.
The Bernini was a bust of Apollo that the baroness had inherited from her mother's family--said to be an adaptation by Bernini from the head of the Apollo Belvedere. Whenever the Wolnitzkys were in any financial straits the Bernini was packed off to some dealer in objects of vertu, from which excursions it invariably returned unsold. Not many days previously the travelled Apollo--he had seen New York, London, and St. Petersburg--had come home from a visit to Meyer of Berlin.
"By the bye, Vladimir, you have not seen it yet," said Slawa, "I must show you the bust."
"Is it the head that is said to be so strikingly like you?--that will interest me greatly," said the young Pole, casting an adoring eye on Slawa.
"Bring the lamp, the bust is in the drawing-room."
Vladimir, carrying the lamp, led the way into the drawing-room, a large, scantily-furnished room which was never dusted more than once a month. There, on a marble plinth in a corner, stood the radiant god--a copy from the Belvedere Apollo no doubt--but by Bernini...?
"The likeness is extraordinary!" cried Vladimir ecstatically, and gazing alternately at the bust and at Slawa. "Oh, it is a gem, a masterpiece! you ought never to part with it."
"Well, but I must say I should very much like to go to Rome," sighed the baroness; but Slawa only bit her lips.