Villa Rubein

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UNIVERSITY

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Chapter I

"\ ^/"ALKING along the river wall at Botzen, Edmtmd Dawney said to Alois Harz:

"There's a family at Villa Rubein, the pink house — ^would you care to know them?"

Harz answered with a smile:

"Perhaps."

"Come with me then this afternoon?"

They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look, that stood by itself upon' the wall; Harz pushed the door.

"Come in," he said, "you don't want breakfast yet. I 'm going to paint the river to-day. "

He ran up the bare board stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely ; his thumbs hooked in the armhdles of his waistcoat, and his head thrown back.

In the attic which filled the whole top storey, Harz had pulled a canvas to the window. He was a young man of middle height, square-shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a strong, sharp chin. His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and his dark, unparted hair fitted like a cap. He wore the clothes of men who never give to clothes a second thought.

This room, which served him for a studio, a bed-room, and a sitting-room, was bare and dusty. Below the window the river in spring flood rushed down the valley, a stream of molten bronze. Harz dodged before the canvas like a fencer finding his distance ; Dawney took his seat upon a packingcase.

"The snows have gone with a rush this year, " he drawled. " The Talfer comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch and make it muddy green ;

a parable of the Spring for you, my painter."

Harz mixed his colours.

"I 've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything. If I could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian — ^Ah! he had a chance. Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day! All that struggle, and then' — ^just at the turn!"

He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh, but his smile was bright and kindly.

Dawney lit a cigarette.

"You painters," he said, "are better ofE than most of us. You can strike out your own line. Now if I choose to treat a case out of the ordinary way and the patient dies, I 'm ruined. "

"Ah! Doctor — if I don't paint what the public Ukes, I starve ; all the same I 'm going to paint in my own way, and in the end I shall come out on top."

" It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you 've made your name; after that do what you like, they'll lick your boots all right."

"Ah, you don't love your work."

Dawney answered slowly: " Never so happy as when my hands are full. But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good cigars, good wine. I hate discomfort. No, my boy, I must work it on the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it. One starts in life with some notion of the ideal — it 's gone by the board with me. I 've got to shove along until I 've made my name, and then, my little man — then "

"Then! You'll be soft! You pay for that first period!"

"Take my chance of that; I must; there 's no other way."

"Make one!"

"Humph!"

Harz poised his brush, as though to cast it like a spear:

"A man must do the best there is in him. If he has to suffer — ^let him suffer!"

Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come into his eyes.

"You're a tough little beggar!" he remarked.

"I've had to be tough."

Dawney rose ; tobacco smoke was wreathed around his dark unruffled hair.

"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you? It 's a mixed household, English mostly — very decent people. "

" No, thank you. I 'm going to paint all day. Have n't time to know the sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."

"As you like; I 'm off." And puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished through a blanket looped across the doorway.

Harz called after him.

"There's coffee here!"

Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit lamp, and cut himself a slice of bread. Through the window the freshness of the morning came ; the scent of sap and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and mountains freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds; all the odorous, enchanted, restless Spring.

Through the blanket looped across the doorway a white and rough-haired terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with tan and shaggy brows, suddenly appeared. He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites around his eyes, and uttered a peculiar bark. A young voice called :

"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!" Light footsteps on the stairs were heard; from the distance came a thin, high voice:

"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"

Through the blanket came slipping in a little girl, of twelve or so, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed hat.

Her blue eyes opened wide at Harz. her face flushed up with colour. That face was not too regular; its cheek-bones rather prominent, its nose flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical, yet shy.

"Oh!" she said.

Harz smiled: "Good-morning! This your dog?"

She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then nmning to the dog she seized him by the collar.

" Scr-mfiE ! Thou naughty dog — ^the baddest dog!" The ends of her hair fell all about him. " Is n't he bad ? ' ' She looked at Harz.

"Not at all! Let me give him bread. "

" Oh,*no ! You must not — I will beat him — and tell him he is bad; then he shall not do such things again. Now he is sulky; he looks so always when he is sulky. Is this your home?"

Harz laughed: "For the present; I am a visitor."

" But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."

"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."

"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much — ^because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister. Christian, is all English. Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very angry with me.

And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she looked ruefully at Harz.

There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow, ordered bands of claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel chain on her chest; nervously she turned her hands, clad in black kid gloves a little white about the seams.

Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown ; her mouth a trifle twisted at one comer; she held her brown face, kind-looking, but so long and narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of vexed apology. With her quick sentences, that sounded as if she kept them all on strings, and wanted to draw them back the moment she had let them out, she thus began:

"Greta, how can you do such things? I don't know what your father would say! I am sure I don't know how to — so extraordinary "

"Please!" said Harz.

" You must come at once — so very sorry — so awkward!"

They were standing in a ring; Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the little lady fidgeting her parasol; and Greta, flushed and pouting, her eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her fingers. The dog still sulked upon a bench.

"Oh, look!" cried Greta. The coffee had boiled over. Little brown streams trickled spluttering from the pan; and the dog, with ears laid back and tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room. A feeling of fellowship fell on them at once; and they began to talk.

"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff — so awkward, so unfortunate — ^we did not think any one lived here — ^the shutters are cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully. Have you been long in Botzen? Two months ? Fancy ! Does n't the rain come in ? You are not English? You are Tyrolese? But you speak English so well — there for seven years? Really? So fortunate! — It is Greta's day for English."

The little lady's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the crossing of the beams made so many heavy shadows; at the litter of the brushes, tools, knives, colours on a table made of packing-cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, flush with the lo Villa Rubein

floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain — relic of the time when the place had been a store-loft ; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfinished figure of the nude upon a canvas.

And all the time her governess was speaking, Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her finger in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz with a look as if continually she asked herself: "Shall I laugh, or shall I cry? Or shall I go and find out all about it?" And Harz thought: "I should like to paint her just like that. ' Forget-me-not.' "

He took his chalks to make a sketch. The action had an obvious effect upon his visitors.

"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.

"'Will,' Greta— 'will'; how often must I tell you? I think we should be going — it is very late — your father — so very kind of you, but I think we should be going. Scruff I" She gave the floor two taps. The terrier, barking, backed into a plaster cast which came down on his tail, and sent him flying

The Spring ii

through the doorway with a yelp. Greta followed swiftly, crying:

Miss Naylor crossed the room; and bowing sidelong, she murmured an apology, and also disappeared.

Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the fair hair and the eyes like two forget-me-nots, the little lady with the kindly gestures and the bird-like walk, the little terrier dog. He looked around him; the room seemed very empty. And gnawing his moustache, he muttered at the fallen cast; drank up his coffee, and threw down his sketch. Then taking up a paint brush, he stood again before his picture, smiling, frowning, smiling. Soon he had forgotten all the little matter in his work.

Chapter II

IT was early morning four days later, and ^ Harz had been out sketching. He was loitering homewards. The shadows of the clouds passed like breaths across the vines and vanished on the jumbled roofs and greentopped spires of the town. A strong sweet wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir in the branches of the trees, and flakes of the late blossom drifted by. Amongst the soft green pods of a kind of poplar chafers buzzed, and numbers of their little brown bodies were strewn about the path.

He passed a bench where a girl sat putting up her sketching things. A puff of wind whirled her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up. She took it from him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.

"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"

This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand, was slight and straight; and her face was earnest and serene. She gazed at Harz with large, clear, greenish eyes ; her lips and chin defiant, her forehead tranquil.

" I don't like it, that was why."

"Will you let me look at it? I am a painter."

"It isn't worth looking at, but — if you wish "

He put the two halves of the sketch together, and studied it.

"You see!" she said at last; "I told you so.

Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch. The girl frowned.

Harz asked her suddenly:

"Why do you paint?"

She coloured, and said:

"Show me what is wrong."

" I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong — but why do you paint?"

"I don't understand," she said.

Harz shrugged his shoulders.

"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; " I want to know."

Harz suddenly became excited.

"Your heart is not in it," he said.

She looked at him, startled; then her eyes once more grew thoughtful.

" Yes, I suppose that is it. There are so many other things "

"There should be nothing else," said Harz.

She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself. Suppose "

"Ah!" said Harz. "When you begin supposing!"

The girl confronted him, with her head bent down; her hands moved quickly tearing the sketch again.

"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it at all. I don't know if you are right — I think you are."

There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind them his three visitors of the other morning. Miss Naylor stepping forward offered him her hand; Greta who was flushed, and had a bunch of wild flowers in her hand, stared intently in his face. The terrier, who having sniffed decided that he knew this man, now put his muzzle up, and barked.

Miss Naylor broke a somewhat awkward silence.

"We wondered if you would still be here. Christian. I am sorry to interrupt you — I was not aware that you knew Mr. — Herr "

"Harz, my name is — ^we were just talking '■

" About my sketch," the girl put in. " Oh ! Greta, you do tickle!" for Greta had been whispering in her ear. "Will you come and have breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz? It 's our turn, you know."

Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.

But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come! Scruff likes you. It is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."

Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist. Harz hurriedly broke in:

"Thank you, I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being dirty?"

"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards I shall show you my rabbits."

Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird upon its perch, suddenly exclaimed:

"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal — ^the girls are so impulsive — such informal invitation; we shall be very glad — if you like porridge."

Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeves, and Christian, gathering her things, led on. The silence of anxiety had fallen on Miss Naylor.

Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his life before. He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, meeting the speculative innocence of Greta's eyes, he chuckled. After walking a few minutes they came to two great poplar trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of greenish slate. Over the door in faded crimson letters, "Villa Rubein" was written.

" That is to the stables, " said Greta, pointing down a path, where, on a wall, some pigeons sunned themselves. "Uncle Nic keeps his horses there: Countess and Cuckoo — his horses begin with C, because of Chris — they are quite beautiful. He says he could drive them to Kingdom-(iome and they would not turn their hair. Bow, and say * Good-morning ' to our house!"

Harz bowed.

"Father said all strangers should, and / think it brings good luck." From the doorstep, she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.

A broad and thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown, bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses across his thickish nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:

"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick — ^prrt! How goes it then this morning? A good walk, heinf" There was the sound of many loud and rapid kisses.

"Ha, Fraulein, good!" He became aware of Harz's figure standing in the doorway. "Und der Herrf" he said.

"Good! An artist! Kommen Sie herein, I am delight. You will breakfast? I too — yes, yes, my dears — I too breakfast with you this morning. I have the hunter's appetite."

Harz looking at him keenly now, perceived him to be of middle height and middle-aged and stout, dressed in a loose hoUand jacket, a very white, starched shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of excellent cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.

The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map on the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked legs with toes turned out, resembling two inflated frogs erect upon their hinder limbs. In one comer stood a cottage piano, and close to it a writing-table heaped with books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was somehow foreign to the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness. A table was laid for breakfast, and through the long French windows the sun-warmed air came in.

The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such spirits as at table. Words streamed from him. Conversing genially with Harz, he talked of Art in tones that seemed to say: "One does not claim to be a connoisseur — ^no, pas si bete — still, one has a little knowledge, que diable!" He recommended him a man in Town who sold cigars that were "not so very bad." He consumed much porridge, ate an omelette; and bending across to Greta gave her a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me quick!" — an expression he had picked up in a London music-hall, long years ago, and considered for some reason chic. He asked his daughters' plans, and held out porridge to the terrier, who refused it with a sniff.

"Well," he said, looking at Miss Naylor, " here 's a gentleman who has not even heard our names!"

The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.

"Good!" Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each other!" and, - brushing up the ends of his moustaches with his fingers, he carried Harz off into another room. This room had pipe-racks, prints of dancing-girls, spittoons, and easy chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke; it was also littered with French novels and with newspapers.

The household at this Villa seemed to Harz to be of mixed and curious nature. In fact, cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into four; each of which divisions had its separate inhabitants, an arrangement which had come about like this:

When old Nicholas Treffry had died, his estate, on the botmdary of Cornwall, had been sold and divided up among his three surviving children — Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-known firm of Forsyte & Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance, married to a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death engaged to the curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly afterwards became its rector. By his marriage with Margaret Treffry the rector had one child called Christian. Soon after this he came into some property, and died, leaving it unfettered to his widow. Three years went by, and when the child was six years old, Mrs. Devorell, still young and pretty, came to live in London with her brother Nicholas. It was there that she met Paul von Morawitz — ^the last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many hundred years on their estates near Budweiss. Paul had been left an orphan at the age of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre. Instead of acres, he inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von Morawitz. In later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at it, but it stayed quietly with him all the same. The absence of acres was of no great consequence, for through his mother, the dattghter of a banker at Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune. It befitted a von Morawitz that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for soldiering, he soon left the Service ; some said he had a difference with his Colonel upon the quality of food provided during some manoeuvres; others that he had retired because his chargers did not fit his legs, which indeed were rather rotind.

He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life suited him. He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way, in Vienna, Paris, London. He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he was as much at home in one as in another. He combined an exuberant vitality with fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the acquisition of a special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all things he was blessed with a wonderful digestion. He was thirty when he met with Mrs. Devorell; and she married him because he was so very different from anybody she had ever seen. People more dissimilar indeed were never mated. To Paul, — accustomed to stage doors, — ^freshness, a serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the baits; he had run through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact that she had money possibly attracted him. Be that as it may, he was manifestly fond of her- his heart was soft, and he developed a domestic side.

Greta was bom to them after a year of marriage. The instinct of the "freeman" was, however, not quite dead in Paul; he became a gambler. Retaining his digestion, he lost the other, quarter of his fortune without its very much disturbing him. When he began to lose the fortune of his wife things naturally became more difficult. Not too much remained when Nicholas Treff ry stepped in, and caused his sister to settle what was left upon her daughters, retaining the income for her life, and appointing it to Paul for his after her death. Paul, losing his supplies, had given up his cards. The instinct of the "freeman" was still however living in his breast; he took to drink. He was never grossly drunk, and rarely very sober. His wife sorrowed over this new passion; and her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke down. The doctors sent her to the Tyrol. She seemed to benefit by this, and settled down at Botzen. The following year, when Greta was just ten, she died. It was a shock to Paul. He gave up his excessive drinking; became a constant smoker, and lent ftill rein to domesticity. He was fond of both the girls, but did not understand them in the least ; Greta, his own daughter, was naturally his favourite. Villa Rubein remained their home ; it was cheap and roomy. Money, since Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce. It was about this time that Mrs. Decie, his Wife's sister, whose husband had died out in the East, returned to England; Paul wrote and invited her to come and live with them. She .came; she had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement suited Paul, — it was economically sound, and there was some one always there to take care of the girls. In truth he began to feel the instinct of the "freeman" rising once again within his heart; it was pleasant to run over to Vienna now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries, of which he was the shining light; in a word, to go a little "on the tiles. " One could not always mourn— ^ven if a woman were an angel; moreover, his digestion was as good as ever.

The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry, whose annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself. Between him and his young niece, Christian, there existed a rare sympathy however; one of those affections between the young and old, which, mysteriously bom like everything in life, seems the only end and aim to both, until another feeling speaks within the younger heart.

Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would appear at Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the Italian Riviera, where he spent the coldest months. He would stay till June before going back to London and his Club, and during all that time he let no day pass in which he did not growl at foreigners, their habits, food, drink, raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did no harm to any one. The illness had broken him down very much; he was seventy, and looked more; his servant, a Luganese, named Dominique, was devoted to him. Nicholas

Treffry had indeed found him overworked in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look — ^here, Dominique! I swear!" To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine, ironical, had replied: "Tres hien, M'sieu!"

Chapter III

T_f ARZ and his host sat in their leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed. Both were smoking, and they eyed each other furtively, as men of quite different stamp will do when thrown together first. To the young artist his host was something very new, and to be studied eagerly; but in spite of this alertness, perhaps indeed because of it, he seemed both shy and awkward. Hen- Paul, on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking indolently: " Good-looking yotmg fellow this — comes of the people, I expect, not at aU the manner of the world; wonder what he talks about."

Presently however Harz got up to look at a photograph that was hanging on the wall. "Ah!" said Herr Paul in German, "that was a woman! They are not to be found like that these days. She could dance, the little Coralie! Did you ever see such arms? Confess that she is beautiful, hein ? "

"She has individuality," said Harz. "A fine type!"

Herr Paul, blowing out a cloud of smoke, stared through it at the other.

"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!" He had dropped his eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with the little crowsfeet at the comers, wandered from his visitor to his cigar and back again.

And Harz thought: "He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't so clean. Put vine leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed, so!" He felt inclined to laugh.

"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in a rich and husky voice, "I generally expect the boots that bulge, an umbrella of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as they say in England; who will shave some days and some days will not shave ; who sometimes smells of india-rubber, and sometimes does not smell, which is discouraging!"

Harz said shortly: "You do not approve of individuality?"

"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not do, or think."

"And who are those who know better?"

"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle? Well, then — Society, men of birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a word, of reputation,"

Harz stood looking at him fixedly. "Men who are flat — ^who haven't the courage of their own ideas, not even the courage to smell of india-rubber; men who have no desires, and so can spend all their time in making themselves fiat!"

Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard. "I assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more respectable to be flat. Himmel! why not then be flat?"

"Like any common fellow?"

"Certes; like any common fellow — like me, par exemple!" and Herr Paul blandly so Villa Rubein

waved his hand. When he exercised unusual tact, he made use of a French expression.

Harz flushed. Herr Paul followed up his victory. "Come, come!" he said. "Pass me my men of repute! que diahle! we are not Socialists. Pass me my — Hein f " Growing crimson in the face, he slowly twisted his moustaches: "You laugh?"

"Pardon!" gasped Harz, struggling for gravity; "a thousand pardons! Very rude of me — it 's nothing — ^just a thought "

The door was opened, and a rumbling voice remarked: "Morning, Paul. Got a visitor?" Harz saw a tall and bulky figure in the doorway.

"Come in," called out Herr Paul. "Let me present to you a new acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz — Mr. Nicholas TrefEry. Psumm bumm! All this introducing is dry work." And going to the sideboard he poured out three glasses of a light and foaming beer,

Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said. "Wish I could! They won't let me look at it." And walking to the

Mr. Nicholas Treffiy 31

window with a heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down carefully. There was something in his gait and movements a little like the movements of the hind legs of an elephant. He was very tall (it was said, with the exaggeration of a family tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six feet in height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout. There was something vast about this unobtrusive personality.