'O Thou, My Austria!'

by Ossip Schubin.

CHAPTER I.

A Ma.n.u.sCRIPT MISAPPROPRIATED.

"Krupitschka, is it going to rain?" Major von Leskjewitsch asked his servant, who had formerly been his corporal. The major was leaning out of a window of his pretty vine-wreathed country-seat, smoking a chibouque; Krupitschka, in the garden below, protected by a white ap.r.o.n, and provided with a dark-green champagne-bottle, was picking the Spanish flies from off the hawthorn-bushes. At his master's question, he looked up, gazed at a few clouds on the horizon, replied, "Don't know--maybe, and then again maybe not," and deftly entrapped three victims at once in the long neck of his bottle. A few days previous he had made a very satisfactory bargain with the apothecary of the neighbouring little town for Spanish flies.

"a.s.s! Have you just got back from the Delphic oracle?" the major exclaimed, angrily, turning away from the window.

At the words "Delphic oracle," Krupitschka p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. It annoyed him to have his master and the other gentlemen make use of words that he did not understand, and he determined to buy a foreign dictionary with the proceeds of the sale of his cantharides. Meanwhile, he noted down, in a dilapidated memorandum-book, "delphin wrackle,"

muttering the while, "What sort of team is that, I wonder?"

Unable to extort any prognosis of the weather from Krupitschka, the major turned to the barometer; but that stood, as it had done uninterruptedly for the past fortnight, at 'Changeable.'

"Blockhead!" growled the major, shaking the barometer a little to rouse it from its lethargy; and then, seating himself at the grand piano, he thundered away at a piece of music familiar to all the country round as "The Major's Triumphal March." All the country round was likewise familiar with the date of the origin of this effective work,--the spring of 1866.

At that time the major had composed this march with the patriotic intention of dedicating it to the victorious General Benedek, but the melancholy events of the brief summer campaign left him no desire to do so, and the march was never published; nevertheless, the major played it himself now and then, to his own immense satisfaction and to the horror of his really musical wife.

This wife, a Northern German by birth, fair and dignified in appearance, sat rocking comfortably in an American chair, reading the latest number of the _German Ill.u.s.trated News_, while her husband amused himself at the piano.

The major banged away at the keys in a fury of enthusiasm, until a black poodle, which had crept under the piano in despair, howled piteously.

"Ah, Paul," sighed Frau von Leskjewitsch, letting her paper drop in her lap, "are you determined to make my piano atone for the loss of the battle of Kniggratz?"

"Why do you have a foreign piano, then?" was the patriotic reply; and the major went on strumming.

"You make Mori wretched," his wife remarked; "that dog is really musical."

"A nervous mongrel--a genuine lapdog," the major muttered, contemptuously, without ceasing his performance.

"Your march is absolutely intolerable," Frau von Leskjewitsch said at last.

"But if it were only by Richard Wagner--" the major remarked, significantly: "of course you Wagnerites do not admit even the existence of any composer except your idol."

With this he left the piano, and, with his thumbs stuck into the armholes of his vest, began to pace the apartment to and fro.

There was quite s.p.a.ce enough for him to do so, for the room was large and its furniture scanty. Nowhere was he in any danger of stumbling over a plush table loaded with bric--brac, or a dwarf arm-chair, or any other of the ornaments of a modern drawing-room.

The stock of curios in the house--and it was by no means inconsiderable, consisting of exquisite figures and groups of Louisburg, Meissen, and old Viennese porcelain, of seventeenth-century fans, and of thoroughly useless articles of ivory and silver--was all arranged in two antique gla.s.s cabinets, standing in such extremely dark corners that their contents could not be seen even at mid-day without a candle.

Baroness Leskjewitsch hated everything, as she was wont to express herself, that was useless, that gathered dust, and that was in the way.

In accordance with the severe style of the furniture, perfect order reigned everywhere, except that in an arm-chair lay an object in striking contrast to the rest of the apartment,--a brown work-basket about as large as a common-sized portmanteau. It lay quite forlornly upon one side, like a sailing-vessel capsized by the wind.

The major paused, looked at the basket with an odd smile, and then could not resist the temptation to rummage in it a little.

His wife always maintained that he was something of a Paul Pry; and perhaps she was right.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, dragging to light a piece of embroidery upon j.a.panese canvas. "The first design for a cushion--the 17th is my birthday. What little red book is this?--'Maximes de La Rochefoucauld'--don't know him. And here--why, only look!" He pulled out a package tied with blue ribbon. "A ma.n.u.script! It seems that Zdena has leanings to authorship! H'm--h'm! When a girl like our Zdena takes to such ways, it is usually a sign that she feels impelled to confide in a roundabout way, to paper, something which nothing could induce her to confess frankly to any living being. H'm! I really am curious to know what goes on in that whimsical, childish brain.

"'My Memoirs!'" The major pulled aside the blue ribbon that held the package together. "A motto! Two mottoes!--a perfect _luxe_ of mottoes!"

he murmured, and then read out aloud,--

'Whether you marry or not, you will always repent it.'

Plato.

Then comes,--

'Should you marry, then be sure Life's sorest ills you must endure.'

Lermontow.

'L'amour, c'est le grand moteur de toutes les btises humaines.'

G. Sand.

I really should not have supposed that our Zdena had already pondered the marriage problem so deeply," he said, gleefully; then, contemplating with a smile the ma.s.s of wisdom scribbled in a bold, dashing handwriting, he added, "there seems to be more going on in that small brain than we had suspected. "What do you think, Rosel? may not Zdena possibly have a weakness for Harry?"

"Nonsense!" replied the Baroness. She was evidently somewhat annoyed,--first, because her husband had roused her from a pleasant nap, or, rather, disturbed her in the perusal of an article upon Grecian excavations, and secondly, because he had called her Rosel. Her real name was Rosamunda, a name of which she was very proud; she really could not, even after almost twenty years of married life, reconcile herself to her husband's thus robbing it of all its poetry. "Nonsense!"

she exclaimed, with some temper. "I have a very different match in view for her."

"I did not ask you what you had in view for Zdena," the major observed, contemptuously. "I know that without asking. I only wish to know whether during your stay in Vienna you did not notice that Zdena had taken a liking to----"

"Oh, Zdena is far too sensible, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, also too ambitious, to dream of marrying Harry. She knows that Harry would ruin his prospects by a marriage with her," Frau von Leskjewitsch continued. "There's no living upon love and air alone."

"Nevertheless there are always some people who insist upon trying it, although the impossibility has long been demonstrated, both theoretically and practically," growled the major.

"And, aside from all that, Harry is not at all the husband for your niece," Frau Rosamunda went on, didactically. "She is wonderfully well developed intellectually, for her age. And he--well, he is a very good fellow, I have nothing to say against him, but----"

"'A very good fellow'! I should like to know where you could find me a better," cried the major. "In the first place, he is as handsome as a man can be----"

"As if beauty in a man were of any importance!" Frau von Leskjewitsch remarked, loftily.

Paying no attention to this interruption, the major went on reckoning up his favourite's advantages, in an angry crescendo. "He rides like a centaur!" he declared, loudly, and the comparison pleased him so much that he repeated it twice,--"yes, like a centaur; he pa.s.sed his military examinations as if they had been mere play, and he is considered one of the most brilliant and talented officers in the army. He is a little quick-tempered, but he has the best heart in the world, and he has been in love with Zdena since he was a small boy; while she----"

"Let me advise you to lower your voice a little," said Frau Rosamunda, going to the window, which she partly closed.

"Stuff!" muttered her husband.

"As you please. If you like to make Zdena a subject for gossip, you are quite free to do so, only I would counsel you in that case to consult your crony Krupitschka. He has apparently not lost a single word of your harangue. I saw him from the window just now, staring up here, his mouth wide open, and the Spanish flies crawling out of his bottle and up his sleeves."