September has fairly begun. The harvest is gathered in, and the wind is blowing over the stubble,--a dry, oppressive wind, calling up clouds which float across the sky in fantastic masses every morning and vanish at noon without a trace. All nature manifests languor and thirst; the dry ground shows large cracks here and there, and vegetation is losing its last tinge of green.
Nowhere in all the country around are the effects of the drought more apparent than at Dobrotschau, where the soil is very poor. Not even in the park is there any freshness of verdure. The fountains refuse to play; the sward looks like a shabby, worn carpet; the leaves are withering on the trees.
Everything is longing for a storm, and yet all feel that relief, when it comes, will bring uproar with it; something must go to ruin and be shattered in the change. The great life of nature, spellbound and withheld in this sultry languor, will awake with some convulsion, angrily demanding a victim. It is inevitable; and one must take comfort in the thought that all else will flourish, refreshed and strengthened. Anything would be preferable to this wasting and withering, this perpetual hissing wind.
To-day it seems finally lulled to rest, for the barometer is falling, and livid blue clouds are piling up on the horizon, as distinct in outline as a range of mountains, and so darkly menacing that in old times men would have regarded them with terror. Now every one says, "At last! at last!"
But they mount no higher; the air is more sultry, and not a cooling drop falls.
In the shadiest part of the park there is a pond, bordered with rushes and surrounded by a scanty growth of underbrush, in the midst of which stand the black, skeleton trunks of several dead trees. During the winters preceding the coming to Dobrotschau of the Baroness Harfink, and shortly after the purchase of the estate, some of the most ancient of the trees--trees as old as the family whose downfall necessitated the sale of Dobrotschau--had died. Their lifeless trunks still pointed to the skies, tall and grim, as if in mute protest against the new ownership of the soil.
The pond, once a shining expanse of clear water, is almost dried up, and a net-work of water-plants covers its surface. Now, when the rosebuds are falling from their stems without opening, this marshy spot is gay with many-coloured blossoms.
At the edge of the pond lies an old boat, and in it Olga is sitting, dressed in white, with a red rose in her belt, one of the few roses which the drought has spared. She is gazing dreamily, with half-shut eyes, upon the shallow water which here and there mirrors the skies. An open book lies in her lap, Turgenieff's "A First Love," but she has read only a few pages of it. Her attitude expresses languor, and from time to time she shivers slightly.
"Why is Lato so changed to me? why does he avoid me? what have I done to displease him?" These are the thoughts that occupy her mind as she sits there, with her hands clasped in her lap, gazing down into the brown swamp, not observing that Fainacky, attracted by the light colour of her dress among the trees, has followed her to the pond and has been watching her for some time from a short distance.
"She loves," he says to himself, as he notices the dreamy expression of the girl's face; and his vanity adds, "She loves me!"