Villa Rubein, and Other Stories

“Oh!” cried Rozsi; “but papa and – Margit!”

“That’s their look-out!” and he hurried her away.

She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed him gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour. He burned with a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh. He maintained a dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the door, she drew her hand away.

“You are angry!” she said.

“Angry,” muttered Swithin; “no! How d’you make that out?” He had a torturing desire to kiss her.

“Yes, you are angry,” she repeated; “I wait here for papa and Margit.”

Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall. Once or twice, for his sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look, and hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure. After five minutes Boleskey, Margit, and Kasteliz appeared. Seeing Rozsi they broke into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin, put his lips to her hand. Rozsi’s look said, “Wouldn’t you like to do that?” Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away.

V

All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time in his life. Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going to the glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously. After this he fell asleep, but had frightful dreams. His first thought when he woke was, ‘My liver’s out of order!’ and, thrusting his head into cold water, he dressed hastily and went out. He soon left the house behind. Dew covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes; the air was fresh and sweet. He had not been up so early since he was a boy. Why was he walking through a damp wood at this hour of the morning? Something intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him out. No fellow in his senses would do such a thing! He came to a dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back. Regaining the hotel, he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid – Rozsi – holding a broom, looked at him with mournful eyes. There seemed an unexplained need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things; and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk. He understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings, thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision. “No,” he muttered, “pack, and take them myself.” The housemaid turned suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a sore feeling in his heart.

His eye fell on his wet boots. The whole thing was scaring, and jumping up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks. It was twelve o’clock before he went down, and found his brother and Traquair still at the table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them by saying that he too was coming; and without further explanation set to work to eat. James had heard that there were salt-mines in the neighbourhood – his proposal was to start, and halt an hour or so on the road for their inspection; he said: “Everybody’ll ask you if you’ve seen the salt-mines: I shouldn’t like to say I hadn’t seen the salt-mines. What’s the good, they’d say, of your going there if you haven’t seen the salt-mines?” He wondered, too, if they need fee the second waiter – an idle chap!

A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his mind was set on larger affairs. Suddenly on the far side of the street Rozsi and her sister passed, with little baskets on their arms. He started up, and at that moment Rozsi looked round – her face was the incarnation of enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip thrust a little forward, her round neck curving back over her shoulder. Swithin muttered, “Make your own arrangements – leave me out!” and hurried from the room, leaving James beside himself with interest and alarm.

When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared. He hailed a carriage. “Drive!” he called to the man, with a flourish of his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left. He soon had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn round and round again. All day he drove about, far into the country, and kept urging the driver to use greater speed. He was in a strange state of hurry and elation. Finally, he dined at a little country inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance – the dinner was atrocious.

Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair. “Are you in your senses, man?” it asked; “we have no more time to waste idling about here. If you want to rejoin us, come on to Danielli’s Hotel, Venice.” Swithin chuckled when he read it, and feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.

VI

Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys’. He had spent a small fortune in the purchase of flowers. Margit would croon over them, but Rozsi, with a sober “Many tanks!” as if they were her right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her hair. Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they did. One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale, dishevelled-looking person.

“Our friend Mr. Forsyte – Count D…” said Boleskey.

Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the Count’s trousers, he thought: ‘Doesn’t look much like one!’ And with an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat. But when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps. Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round she saw him. Swithin caught her arm. She slipped away, and her face seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps, stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the stairs. Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.

‘What was she going to say to me?’ he kept thinking. During these three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window, his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring at the wall. ‘Enough of this!’ he thought every morning. Twice he packed fully – once he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following day. What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have said. He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face – she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very fetishes of his existence. And Boleskey! Whenever he looked at him he thought, ‘If he were only clean?’ and mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte. To talk with the fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day. Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!

‘Why can’t he settle down at some business,’ he thought, ‘instead of all this talk?’ Boleskey’s sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of despair, irritated him. “Morbid beggar!” he would mutter; “thank God I haven’t a thin skin.” And proud too! Extraordinary! An impecunious fellow like that! One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home drunk. Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep. ‘Too much of a good thing!’ he thought, ‘before his own daughters, too!’ It was after this that he ordered his travelling carriage. The other occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.

Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues – rows of half-heroic men carrying off half-distressful females – he would spend an hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual. It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and plums. When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi – “Good-morning,” he stammered; “you knew this was my seat then?”

Rozsi looked at the ground. “Yes,” she answered.

Swithin felt bewildered. “Do you know,” he said, “you treat me very funnily?”

To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his; then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away. It took him a minute to recover. There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said; “you shouldn’t have run away from me, you know.”

Rozsi laughed. Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her seized him. He walked some way before he said, “Will you have the goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?”

Rozsi flashed a look at him. “To-morrow is the fete,” she answered.

Swithin muttered, “Is that all?”

“If you do not take us, we cannot go.”

“Suppose I refuse,” he said sullenly, “there are plenty of others.”

Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along. “No,” she murmured, “if you do not go – I do not wish.”

Swithin drew her hand back within his arm. How round and soft it was! He tried to see her face. When she was nearly home he said goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her. He watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to the Mirabell Garden. When he came to where she had been sitting, he slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out remained there in the silent presence of the statues.

VII

A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found himself obliged to give the girls his arms. ‘Like a little Cockney clerk!’ he thought. His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked, they laughed, each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to go straight into their hearts. He eyed them ironically – their eager voices, and little coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar. In the thick of the crowd he slipped his arm out of Margit’s, but, just as he thought that he was free, the unwelcome hand slid up again. He tried again, but again Margit reappeared, serene, and full of pleasant humour; and his failure this time appeared to him in a comic light. But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent a thrill of longing through him. He was obliged to stand by while they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust. “Folly!” he muttered, as Rozsi held out her palm. The old woman mumbled, and shot a malignant look at him. Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed herself. ‘Folly!’ Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls’ arms, he hurried them away.

“What did the old hag say?” he asked.

Rozsi shook her head.

“You don’t mean that you believe?”

Her eyes were full of tears. “The gipsies are wise,” she murmured.

“Come, what did she tell you?”

This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the crowd. After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared, growled: “You shouldn’t do such things – it’s not respectable.”

On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was playing. For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin paid three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats. He ordered wine, too, watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured it out. The protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this medley. It was every man for himself, after all! The colour had deepened again in her cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips. Suddenly she put her glass aside. “Thank you, very much,” she said, “it is enough!”

Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, “Lieber Gott! is it not good-life?” It was not a question Swithin could undertake to answer. The band began to play a waltz. “Now they will dance. Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?” Lamps were flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies. There was a hum as from a gigantic beehive. Passers-by lifted their faces, then vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if their very going and coming were a delight.

The space was soon full of whirling couples. Rozsi’s head began to beat time. “O Margit!” she whispered.

Swithin’s face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression. A man raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit. She glanced back across her shoulder to reassure Swithin. “It is a friend,” she said.

Swithin looked at Rozsi – her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous. He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers. Then she flashed a look at him – appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed in it. Was she expecting him to dance? Did she want to mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of himself in this hurly-burly? A voice said, “Good-evening!” Before them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.

“You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?” (Miss Rozsi). “Let me, then, have the pleasure.” He held out his arm. Swithin stared in front of him. In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain as words: “Will you not?” But for answer he turned his eyes away, and when he looked again she was gone. He paid the score and made his way into the crowd. But as he went she danced by close to him, all flushed and panting. She hung back as if to stop him, and he caught the glistening of tears. Then he lost sight of her again. To be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances! It was too much! And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with Kasteliz – alone at night, and far from home. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘what do I care?’ and shouldered his way on through the crowd. It served him right for mixing with such people here. He left the fair, but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy. “A beggarly baron!” was his thought.

A figure came alongside – it was Boleskey. One look showed Swithin his condition. Drunk again! This was the last straw!

Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him. He seemed violently excited. “Where – where are my daughters?” he began.

Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm. “Listen – brother!” he said; “news of my country! After to-morrow…”

“Keep it to yourself!” growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free. He went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts. But in spite of all his anger, Rozsi’s supply-moving figure, with its pouting lips, and roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.

VIII