The Argonauts. Eliza OrzeszkowaЧитать онлайн книгу.
she whispered:
"This is the third time, or the fourth—it is unknown which time it is!" Darvid sprang toward her.
"You may remain! You know the prince—"
"Oh, no, father, I flee—I am not dressed!"
Her white robe with blue dots had the shape of a wrapper, and her hair was somewhat dishevelled. With the dog on her arm she ran to the door beyond which was darkness.
"Wait!" cried Darvid, and he took one of the candles which were burning on the desk in tall candlesticks. The prince was coming up the stairs slowly. "I will light you through the dark chambers."
Saying this he walked with her to the second chamber, and when passing through that, she, while going at his side with the dog on her arm, and with her short step, which gave her tall form the charm of childhood, repeated:
"This is the fourth time, perhaps—it is unknown how many times it will be in this way!"
"What will be in this way?"
"Just when I begin to talk with you. Paf! something hinders!"
"What is to be done?" answered he, with a smile; "since your father is not a hermit, nor a small person on this world's chessboard."
They went hurriedly, and passed through the second chamber. The flame of the candle which Darvid carried cast passing flashes on the gold and polish of the walls, and the furniture. These were like tricky gnomes, appearing and vanishing in the silence, darkness, and emptiness.
Darvid thought:
"How dark it is here, and deserted!" Cara divined this thought, as it were, and said:
"Mamma and Ira are invited to dine to-day at—"
She gave the name of one of the financial potentates, and added:
"After dinner they will come to dress for the theatre."
"And thou?" inquired Darvid.
"I? I do not go into society yet, and so far the doctor forbids me to go to the theatre. I will read or talk with Miss Mary, and amuse myself with Puff."
She stroked with her palm the silky head of the little dog. Darvid halted at the door of the third chamber, and gave Cara the light, from the weight of which her slight arm bent somewhat.
"Go on alone; I must hurry to the prince."
She bent down to his hands, covered them with hurried, ardent kisses. With the flame of the candle before her rosy face, with the dog at her breast, and the pale, golden hair pushed back on her shoulders, she advanced in the darkness. Darvid returned through that darkness in the opposite direction, and when he had passed the two spacious chambers hastily, he felt in the twinkle of an eye as if from behind, from that interior, some weight had been placed on his shoulders. He looked around. There was nothing but vacancy, obscurity, and silence.
"Stupid! I must have the house lighted!" thought Darvid, and he hurried into the study, where, with movements a little too vivacious, with a fondling smile, and with repeated declarations that he felt happy, he greeted the prince, a man of middle age, of agreeable exterior, affable and pleasant in speech. When they had sat down in armchairs, the prince declared the object of his visit, which was to invite Darvid to a hunt which was to take place soon on one of his estates. Darvid accepted the invitation with expressions of pleasure, a little too prompt and hearty. But he was never so well able to measure his words and movements in presence of those high-born people as in presence of others. He felt this himself, still he had not the power to refrain. In presence of them he found himself under the influence of one of his passions, and it carried him too far. The prince spoke of the sculptor, whose gifts he esteemed highly; the young man had gone directly from Darvid to him and told of all that he had heard, and what he had experienced.
"I was really affected by your kindness toward this youthful genius, and am delighted that he found in you a patron so magnanimous."
Darvid thought that in every case his arrows always struck the mark. To that act of his he was surely indebted for this unusual visit of the prince, and the invitation. With a smile, in which honey was overflowing, he said:
"That young man seems very ill. A visit to more favorable climates might save him. I must try that he does not reject the means which I shall offer him for that purpose. I foresee resistance, but I shall do what I can to overcome it, out of regard for art, and through good-will for a young man who, besides many sympathetic traits, has this on his side, that he rejoices in the exceptional favor of Prince Zeno."
Had he been able, Darvid would have kissed himself for that phrase, he felt so well satisfied with it; especially when the prince answered with animation:
"This, in the full sense of the words, means speaking and acting beautifully! You use the gifts of fortune in a manner truly noble."
"Not fortune, prince, not fortune!" exclaimed Darvid, "but iron labor."
"Such toilers as you are the knights of the contemporary world," answered the prince, with vivacity; "the Du Guesclins and Cids of the present century."
He rose and, while pressing the hand of that Cid, fixed again in his memory the date of the hunt, which was not distant. Prince Zeno was an aristocrat of the purest blood, possessing a wide popularity which was fairly well deserved.
Darvid was radiant. While accompanying the prince to the door of the antechamber he looked as if no coil of serpents had ever crawled up in his bosom, which was now beating with delight and with pride. The prince halted still a moment at the door, as if to recall something.
"Pardon me an indiscreet question, but this interests me immensely. Is there truth in the reports which are circulating in the city, that Baron Blauendorf is to have the honor in the near future of receiving the hand of your elder daughter?"
The expression of Darvid's face changed quickly, it became sharp and severe.
"Were there any truth in the report," answered he, "I should try to destroy it together with the report."
"And you would be right, perfectly right!" exclaimed the prince.
Then he bent his lips almost to Darvid's ear and whispered:
"There is no Pactolus which such a young buck as Baron Emil would not drink up. He is a genuine devourer of fortunes. He has swallowed one already and the half of another."
He laughed and added at once, with immense affability:
"I see your son frequently—that worthy Kranitski presented him a year ago to us; I and my wife are very, very thankful. He is sympathetic, handsome, and a highly intellectual young man, who does you honor."
He went out. Darvid stood at the round table sunk in thought, with pins of irony in his smile and his eyes, with a cloud of wrinkles between his brows. That young sculptor, the favorite of Prince Zeno, with clothing almost in tatters, brought consumption on himself unhindered, till a parvenu appeared with his money-bag and rescued the pocket of the aristocrat, receiving in return a visit and an invitation to hunt. "Behold the significance of money! Almost infinite power—ha! ha! ha!"
Internal laughter bore him away, and in his brain sounded the word: "Wretchedness! Wretchedness!"
What was it specially that he called wretchedness? He was not clearly conscious himself of this, but the feeling of it penetrated him. Again he heard the prince saying "that honest Kranitski," and a wave of blood rushed to his forehead. Everything that he had forgotten a moment earlier returned to his mind; the prince's voice roared in his ears: "That honest Kranitski." He repeated a number of times to himself, in a hissing whisper, "honest! honest!" And then he said:
"Wretchedness!"
That Baron Emil, the young buck capable of gulping down many a Pactolus! And he was to possess the hand of his daughter, with a considerable part of that fortune won by iron labor. Is Irene in love with him? But the baron is a vibrio and a monkey all in one. There is need to think over this family matter, lest a