Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online Page B

uncertainty as soon as possible. I am still under the nervous strain of fearing that someone in the officers’ mess, the café or some other place will start talking about my faux pas. “Now, do tell us about that evening in the Kekesfalvas’ house!” To which I can then reply coolly and with supercilious ease, “Delightful people! I was there again yesterday, taking tea.”Then, I think, everyone will see that I’ve had no trouble in making amends. Oh, to draw a line under the whole wretched affair, to get it over and done with! And in my nervous state I suddenly decide the very next day, Friday, while I am strolling on the promenade with my best friends Ferencz and Joszi, to pay my call at once. I abruptly take my leave of my slightly startled comrades.
    It really is not a particularly long way out there, a walk of half-an-hour at the most if you go at a good pace. Five tedious minutes through the town first, then along the rather dusty country road that also leads to our parade ground; when our horses go that way they know every stone and every bend, so that you can loosen the reins. About halfway along this road, where you come to a little chapel on a bridge, a narrow avenue shaded by old chestnut trees branches off to the left. This avenue is more or less private, with few people going along it either on foot or in a carriage, and a small stream winding its way at a comfortable pace runs beside it.
    But strange to say, the closer I come to the little castle, when the white wall around it with the ornamental iron gate are in sight, the more my courage fails me. Just as when you are approaching the dentist’s door you look for an excuse to turn back before ringing the bell, I now want to make my escape quickly. Did it really have to be today? Shouldn’t I consider that Fräulein von Kekesfalva’s letter had settled the whole embarrassing business for good? I instinctively slow down; there is still time for me to turn back. Making a detour is always a welcome notion when you shrink from arriving at your destination, so I leave the avenue and turn off into meadows, crossing the little stream on a rickety plank bridge. First I will make a circuit of the villa outside its wall.
    The house behind the high stone wall proves to be an extensive, single-storey late baroque building, painted Schönbrunn yellow in the old Austrian style, with green shutters at the windows. Separated from it by a yard, a few smaller buildings stand close together, obviously to accommodate the servants, the estate’s management staff and the stables. They extend a little way into the large park, of which I saw nothing on that first visit by night. Only now do I notice, looking through the oval bull’s-eye openings in the mighty wall, that the Kekesfalva house is not a modern villa, as the furnishing of the interior made me think at first, but a country house, a traditional gentleman’s residence, the kind of place I had seen now and then in Bohemia when I was riding past on manoeuvres. The most striking feature is its remarkable rectangular tower, slightly reminiscent in shape of an Italian campanile, rising as if it did not really belong here, perhaps all that remains of an old castle that may have stood here long ago. Now, in retrospect, I do remember seeing this strange watchtower quite often from the parade ground, although in the belief that it was the tower of some village church. Only now do I notice that it does not have the usual ornamental little topknot of churches in these parts, and the curious rectangle has a flat roof that may be used as a sun terrace or perhaps an observatory. However, the more aware I become of the old feudal nature of this landed estate, passed on from father to son, the less easy in my mind I feel. To think that I had to make such an unfortunate first appearance here of all places, where they must set great store by etiquette!
    But finally, after concluding my circuit of the house and finding myself