Erlach Court
by Ossip Schubin · English · Gutenberg #35541 · 485,836 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Erlach Court
Author: Ossip Schubin
Translator: A. L. Wister
Release date: March 10, 2011 [eBook #35541]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35541
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERLACH COURT ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
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2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
POPULAR WORKS FROM THE GERMAN,
Translated by MRS. A. L. WISTER.
* * * * *
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ERLACH COURT
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
OF
OSSIP SCHUBIN
BY
MRS. A. L. WISTER
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1889
* * * * *
Copyright, 1889, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.--Expected Guests.
II.--Baron Rohritz.
III.--The Arrival.
IV.--Stella.
V.--An Experiment.
VI.--A Ruined Life.
VII.--A Rainy Evening.
VIII.--A Love-Affair.
IX.--Found.
X.--Freddy's Birthday.
XI.--Crabbing.
XII.--Disaster.
XIII.--Idyllic.
XIV.--A Departure.
XV.--Scattered.
XVI.--Zalow.
XVII.--Winter.
XVIII.--Sophie Oblonsky.
XIX.--Paris.
XX.--Therese de Rohritz.
XXI.--An Austrian Host.
XXII.--French Inferiority.
XXIII.--Prince Zino Capito.
XXIV.--A Music-Lesson.
XXV.--A New Acquaintance?
XXVI.--Five-O'clock Tea.
XXVII.--A Change at Erlach Court.
XXVIII.--A Paris Letter.
XXIX.--A Storm and its Consequences.
XXX.--A Sleepless Night.
XXXI.--Glowing Embers.
XXXII.--Therese the Wise.
XXXIII.--Stella's Failure.
XXXIV.--Rohritz Dreams.
XXXV.--A Sprained Ankle.
XXXVI.--Lost Again.
XXXVII.--The Fanes' Ball.
XXXVIII.--Found at Last.
ERLACH COURT.
CHAPTER I.
EXPECTED GUESTS.
Erlach Court,--a vine-wreathed castle, not very imposing, on the
Save,--a pleasant dining-room, with wide-open windows through which
thousands of golden stars are seen twinkling in the dark blue of a July
sky, while the air is laden with the fragrance of acacia- and
linden-blossoms. Beneath a hanging lamp, around a table whereon are
finger-bowls and the remains of a luxurious dessert, are grouped six
persons,--the master of the house, Captain von Leskjewitsch, his wife,
and his seven-year-old son and heir, Freddy, a Fraeulein von
Gurlichingen, whose acquaintance Frau von Leskjewitsch had made twenty
years before and whom she had never since been able to shake off, and
two gentlemen, Baron Rohritz and General von Falk.
The general is the same youthful veteran whom we have all met
before in some Viennese drawing-room or in some watering-place in
Bohemia,--accredited throughout Austria from time immemorial as
excellent company, dreaded as an incorrigible gossip, and notorious as
a thorough idler. He often boasts that in thirty years he has never
once dined at home; he might add, nor at his own expense. He is never
positively invited anywhere, but since he has never been turned out of
doors he is met everywhere. Absolutely free from prejudice in his
social proclivities, he is equally at home in aristocratic society and
in the world of finance; in fact, he rather prefers the latter; the
dinners there are better, he maintains.
In spite of his seventy years, he is still as erect as a
fir-tree,--dressed in the most youthful style,--occasionally, although
with a half-ironical smile, alludes in conversation to 'us young men,'
and dances at balls with the agility of a boy.
Baron Rohritz, who is scarcely six-and-thirty, already ranks himself,
on the contrary, for the sake of his personal ease, with the old men.
Tall and slender, with delicate, clearly-cut features, he is a
remarkably distinguished figure, even in the circle to which he
belongs. Although his moustache is brown, his hair is already very
gray, which women find extremely interesting, especially since there is
said to be some connection between this premature change of colour and
an unfortunate love-affair. The finest thing about his face is his
deep-set blue eyes; but since he uses an eye-glass, is near-sighted,
and often nearly closes his eyes, there is something haughty in his
look, which produces a chilling effect. When he smiles his expression
is very attractive, but he smiles only rarely, and shows to the best
advantage in his treatment of dogs, horses, and children.
Fraeulein von Gurlichingen, commonly called Stasy,--the diminutive of
her baptismal name, Anastasia, and a play upon her perpetual state of
ecstatic excitement,--is an old maid, who was once accounted a great
beauty, and in consequence is fond of wearing golden bands around her
romantically frizzed curls. Her languishing, light-blue eyes were once
compared to forget-me-nots sprinkled with sugar, and her complexion is
suggestive of Swedish kid dusted with violet powder. She was young
twenty years since, and has forgotten to stop being so. She once nearly
married a prince of the blood, and has lately been jilted by an
infantry-officer. She has come to Erlach Court to recover from this
last blow, perhaps in hopes of eventually obtaining a recompense for
the loss of the captain.
Little Freddy is a very pretty, spoiled child, in a sailor suit, with
bare legs very much scratched; and the master and mistress of the house
are two genial people, who eight years previously, both having outlived
the bloom of their early illusions, although she was only six-and-twenty
and the captain thirty, had "patched together their tattered lives,"
which means that they had married each other, not so much in the hope of
being happy themselves, as in that of making two other fellow-beings
miserable.
Although, however, they had thus married for pique, and though each had
brought to the union nothing save a remnant of unfortunate love for
somebody else, although they quarrelled with each other continually,
they got along together not much worse than two-thirds of the married
people whose union has been the result of passionate attachment.
All were waiting for the after-dinner coffee, which the mistress of the
mansion, in dread of spots, never allowed to be served in the
drawing-room, except on state occasions. Its appearance was
unpardonably delayed to-day, and the famous Erlach Court sociability
was beginning to degenerate into yawning ennui.
With the exception of Baron Rohritz, who had been occupied the entire
time in gazing with half-closed eyes into the clouds of blue smoke from
his cigar, all present had done their best to enliven the prevailing
mood: the general had told anecdotes from the 'Fliegende Blaetter,'
Freddy had succeeded in producing a particularly charming noise by
running a wet forefinger around the rims of various wineglasses,
Fraeulein Stasy had suggested a poetic comparison between dry storms and
the tearless anguish of a stricken heart, and the married pair had
squabbled with special earnestness about the most diverse matters,
first about the potato-rot, then about a problematical constitution for
Poland; and yet the conversation had failed to become fluent.
For a few minutes an oppressive silence had prevailed; the husband and
wife, usually equal to any emergency in this direction, had ceased even
to quarrel. The ticking of the watches was almost audible, when the
servant brought in on a salver the contents of the post-bag which had
just arrived.
"While the captain hastily opened a newspaper, that he might read aloud
to the nervous Stasy, with a harrowing attention to details, the latest
cholera bulletins, Frau von Leskjewitsch leisurely opened two letters:
the first came from a Trieste tradesman and announced the arrival of a
late invoice of the best disinfectants, the second apparently contained
intelligence of some importance. After she had read it, Frau von
Leskjewitsch laid it, with a pleased expression, upon the table.
"Children," she exclaimed,--it was a habit of hers thus to apostrophize
people well on in years, for, except Freddy, who was not yet eight,
and the general, who dyed his hair, all present were more or less
gray-headed,--"children, our circle is about to receive an addition; my
sister-in-law has just written me that she accepts our invitation and
will arrive here to-morrow or the day after."
"Bravo!" exclaimed the captain, who on hearing this news quite forgot
to go on teasing Stasy, and suppressed three entire cholera-telegrams.
"I shall be delighted to see my little niece."
Freddy said, meditatively, "I should like to know what my aunt will
bring me."
The rest of the party received the joyful tidings without emotion,
partly because the long-looked-for coffee at that moment made its
appearance, and partly because of the other three Stasy alone had any
personal acquaintance with the Baroness Meineck--as the captain's
sister was called--or her daughter. After the coffee had been cleared
away, and whilst the master and mistress of the house were arguing
outside in the corridor, most uselessly and most energetically, as to
the train by which the expected guests would arrive, the general,
who was playing his usual evening game of tric-trac with Rohritz,
sighed,--
"Our comfort is all over."
Rohritz raised his eyebrows inquiringly: "Do you mean that in honour of
these fresh guests we shall be obliged to put on a dress-coat at dinner
every day?"
"Not exactly that," said the general; "the ladies themselves are not
too much given to elegance; but"--the general's face lengthened--"we
shall be obliged to be cautious in our conversation."
Rohritz smiled significantly. "Double sixes!" he exclaimed, throwing
the dice on the green cloth and moving his men with cunning calculation
on the backgammon-board.
Meanwhile, the garrulous general continued, without waiting to be
questioned: "Leskjewitsch is patient with his sister, and is
excessively fond of his niece, but, between ourselves,"--he chuckled to
himself,--"Leskjewitsch is a fool!"
If anything gave him more satisfaction than to live at the expense of
others, it was to be witty, or rather malicious, at their expense.
Rohritz thought this bad form, and was silent.
"I do not know the ladies personally," the general went on, rubbing his
hands, "but for originality"--here he tapped his forehead with his
forefinger--"neither mother nor daughter is far behind the captain. The
mother is an old blue-stocking, and has been travelling all over the
world for the last ten years, collecting materials for an historical
work upon the Medicines, or whatever you choose to call them----"
"The Medici, perhaps?" Rohritz interpolated.
"Very likely; I only know that there was an apothecary in the family,
and that there were pills in their scutcheon, and that the worthy
Baroness's work is to be eight volumes long," said the general.
Stasy, who had been leaning back in a luxurious arm-chair, moved to
tears for the hundredth time over the last chapter of 'Paul and
Virginia,' her favourite book,--the death of the heroine, she said,
touched her especially because she could so easily fancy herself in
Virginia's place,--now laid her book aside, since her tears seemed to
arouse no sympathy, and joined in the conversation:
"You are talking of the Meinecks?"
"Yes. Are you personally acquainted with the ladies?" asked the
general.
"Yes,--not very intimately, though. I always held myself a little aloof
from them, but last summer we were at the same country resort,--I was
with a sick friend at Zalow,--and I saw something and heard a great
deal of the Meinecks."
"And are all the strange things that are said of them true?" asked the
general.
"I really do not know what is said of them," replied Stasy, "but it
certainly would be difficult to exaggerate their peculiarities. The
Baroness, unfortunately too late in life, has arrived at the conclusion
that the continuance of the human species is a crime. One of her
manias consists in giving _a tort et a travers_, wherever she may
chance to be, short lectures, gratis, upon the American Shakers and
their system. But, with all her zeal, she has hitherto succeeded in
making but few proselytes. Even her elder daughter, who was for some
years a fanatical adherent of her mother's doctrines, lately married an
artillery-officer. Stella, the younger sister, whose acquaintance you
are to make, dislikes having a brother-in-law in the artillery. The
Baroness's distaste was not for the quality of her son-in-law, but for
marriage itself. She appeared at the wedding in deep mourning, and but
for the remonstrances of her relatives the invitations to the ceremony
would have been engraved upon black-edged paper, like notices of a
funeral."
"Ah! And the second daughter,--hm--I mean the one expected here?"
"She will not hear of marriage, and is studying for the stage."
"Indeed?" said Baron Rohritz.
The general moved a little nearer him, and, with a mischievous twinkle
of his green eyes, whispered, "Between ourselves, I would not trust any
girl under sixty--he-he-he!--in the matter of marriage. This Stella is
hardly an exception; she probably imagines she can make a very good
match from the stage--he-he!"
Rohritz shrugged his shoulders.
Stasy continued: "I really am sorry for Stella: under other
circumstances she might have been very nice, but as it is she is
dreadful. Two years ago she had a craze for horsemanship: she used to
tear about for hours every day upon an English blood-horse which she
had bought for a mere song because it was blind of one eye. Since
the Meineck finances did not, of course, warrant a groom, and the
Meineck arrogance could not accept the attendance of any one of the
young men of the place,--and I know from the best authority that
several kindly offered themselves as her escort,--she rode alone, and
in a habit--good heavens!--patched up by herself out of an old blue
cloth sofa-covering,--just fancy! One day the Baroness was more than
commonly in need of money, perhaps to publish a new volume of history
or to repair a tumble-down chimney,--who knows?--at all events the
horse was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood. Stella cried for a
week over her loss. Now the horse is quite blind, and draws an
ash-cart; and when the little goose sees him she kisses his forehead."
"Ah! _besoin d'aimer!_" chuckled the general. "Hm--hm!"
"Three times a week she goes to Prague, of course without any
chaperon,--and takes singing-lessons from a long-haired music-master
who predicts for her a career like Alboni's. Heaven knows what will be
the end of it. The Meineck temperament is sure sooner or later to show
itself in the child. Her father's mode of life scandalized even his
comrades, and her aunt----surely you know about Eugenie von Meineck,
the captain's old flame----"
She stopped short, for at this moment the captain himself entered the
room, and, turning to Rohritz, said, "I'm glad, old fellow, that your
stay in Erlach Court is to be brightened up a little."
"I assure you that no change is needed to make my visit to you most
agreeable," Rohritz rejoined, courteously.
The captain bowed: "Nevertheless you cannot deny that your pleasure may
be increased, and you are still young enough to enjoy the society of a
pretty and clever girl."
Rohritz bit his lip; he had a very decided, although quite excusable,
dislike for what are called clever young women. Stasy turned up her
nose.
"Do you think the little Meineck clever--_mais vraiment_ clever,
_spirituelle_?" she asked.
"She is full of bright, merry ideas, and what a pretty girl says is apt
to sound well," the captain replied, dryly.
"Do you think her pretty?" Stasy drawled; she never could make up her
mind to call any girl pretty.
"Pretty? She is charming, bewitching!" the captain declared, in an
angry crescendo.
Just then his wife appeared, much provoked at some particularly
shocking misdeed on the part of the maid to whom had been intrusted the
arrangement of the guest-chambers, and she asked, "What is the matter?"
"A difference of opinion with regard to your niece Stella, Katrine
dear," Anastasia said, sweetly, leaning back with a languishing air
among the cushions of her arm-chair and touching her fingertips
together. "Your husband thinks her so very beautiful."
"Oh, my husband always exaggerates," Frau von Leskjewitsch remarks.
"I never said very beautiful; I did not even say beautiful: I simply
said charming," the captain shouts.
"She is pretty. There is something very attractive about her," his wife
assents, "and my husband finds her especially charming because she
looks like his old flame, Eugenie Meineck. For my part, this
resemblance is the only thing about Stella that I do not like. I am
sorry that even in her features alone she should remind one of her
aunt."
"A rather indelicate allusion on your part," growls the captain, whose
brown cheeks had flushed at his wife's words.
As his wife always declared, he had never got out of roundabouts, which
suited him but ill, for he was an unusually tall, broad-shouldered man,
with very handsome, clear-cut features, and a face tanned and worn by
war, wind and weather, but recognizable as far as it could be seen as
that of a southern Slav.
"Extremely indelicate," he repeats, with emphasis.
"I think it ridiculous never to outlive disappointments," says Frau von
Leskjewitsch, who ever since she was a girl of eighteen had assumed the
air of a matron of vast worldly experience,--"extremely ridiculous,"
she adds, with comic mimicry of her husband's reproachful intonation.
As she spoke she slightly threw back her head crowned with luxuriant
hair gathered into a simple knot behind, half closed her eyes, and
stuck one thumb in the buff leather belt that confined her dark-blue
linen blouse at the waist. Baron Rohritz, an experienced connoisseur of
the female sex, had stuck his eye-glass in his eye, and was gazing at
her without a shadow of impertinent obtrusiveness, but with very
evident interest. Without being handsome, or taking the slightest pains
to appear so, she nevertheless produced a most agreeable impression.
According to the Baron's computation, she was about thirty-four years
old, and yet her tall slender figure had all the pliancy of early
youth. Her every motion was characterized by a certain energy and
determination that possessed an attraction in spite of being foreign to
the generally received opinion as to what constitutes feminine grace.
The eyes, shadowed by long black lashes, that looked forth from her
pale, oval face were full of intelligence and constantly varying
expression, her features were fine but not regular, and her laugh was
charming.
"Yes," she repeated, "I insist upon it, there is nothing more
ridiculous than the inability to have done with one's disappointments.
Good heavens! I freely confess to myself, and to the world at large,
that the worthy man with whom I was wretchedly in love for four years
was one of the vainest, most insignificant, most egotistical and
uninteresting geese that ever lived."
"You were not in love with him," declared the captain, who did not seem
to be quite free from a certain retrospective jealousy. "You were
simply under the domination of an _idee fixe_."
"As if the passion of love were ever anything save an _idee fixe_ of
the heart!" retorted Frau von Leskjewitsch; "and an _idee fixe_ is a
disease; while it lasts it is well to be patient with it, but when it
is over one ought to thank God and get rid of the traces of it as
quickly as possible. That you never did, Jack: you were always like the
belles of society, who cannot make up their minds to burn up their old
ball-dresses and other trophies or simply to throw them away. They
stuff their trunks full of such rubbish, until there is no room left
for their honest every-day clothes. Throw it away, and the sooner the
better!"
"What has once been dear to me is forever sacred in my eyes," said the
captain, solemnly.
"Yes, and consequently you drag about with you through life such a heap
of old, dusty, battered illusions that I really cannot see where you
find the strength to hold fast to one healthy vital sensation. Bah!
painful as it is, one must bury one's dead in time!"
"I prefer to embalm mine," the captain rejoined, with dignity.
"Let me congratulate you upon your collection of mummies," said his
wife.
"You have no capacity for veneration," the captain declared.
"Because I disapprove of whining _ad infinitum_ as homage to a vanished
enthusiasm,--ridiculous!" said Katrine.
"Don't quarrel, my doves!" Stasy entreated, clasping her hands after a
child-like fashion.
"We have no idea of doing so," the mistress of the house replied,
good-humouredly. "We never quarrel. Our complaint is a chronic
difference of opinion. What were we really talking about?"
"About illusions," remarked Baron Rohritz.
"Oh, that was merely a side-issue,--only an after-piece," said Frau von
Leskjewitsch, bethinking herself. "What was the starting-point of our
discussion?--Oh, yes: we were speaking of my little niece."
"Perhaps you can show us a photograph of her," said Anastasia.
"Yes, yes." And Frau von Leskjewitsch began an eager search in a small
gilt cottage which had once been a bonbonniere and now served as a
receptacle for photographs. In vain. Upon a closer examination several
of the photographs were found to be missing. Little Freddy confessed
with a repentant face that he had cut them up to make winders for
twine. His mother laughed, kissed his sleepy, troubled eyes, and sent
him to bed. Thus Baron Rohritz was left to draw from fancy a possible
likeness of Stella Meineck.
CHAPTER II.
BARON ROHRITZ.
Stasy had vented so much malice upon Stella that Rohritz had
involuntarily begun to think well of her. After he had retired, in the
watches of the night, and was trying in vain to be interested in a
volume of Tauchnitz, his thoughts were still busied with her. "Poor
thing," he reflected, "there must be something attractive about her, or
Les and his wife would not be so devoted to her. And, after all, what
did that venomous old maid's accusations amount to?--that she has an
antipathy for artillery-officers,"--Rohritz as a former cavalry-man
shrugged his shoulders indulgently at this weakness,--"and that she
wants to go upon the stage. That, to be sure, is bad. I know nothing in
the world more repulsive than girls of what are called the better
classes who are studying for the stage."
And Rohritz recalled a certain officer's daughter whom he had once met
at an evening entertainment, and who in proof of her distinguished
talent had declaimed various 'selections.' He had been quite unable to
detect her talent, and had spoken of her contemptuously as an
hysterical tree-frog. The appellation had met with acceptance and had
been frequently repeated.
The remembrance of the officer's bony daughter lay heavy on his soul.
"Yes, if Stella should remind me in the least of that hysterical
tree-frog, I really could not stay here much longer," he thought, with
a shudder. "And in any case I cannot but regret these last pleasant
days. That old dandy and the faded beauty were bad enough, but they
could be ignored; while a young girl--and a relative, too, of the
family---- Pshaw! at all events I can take my leave."
With which he put out his candle and went to bed.
What it was that was dear to him in the sleepy and very uninteresting
life at Erlach Court it would be difficult to say. Perhaps he prized it
as chiming in so admirably with the precious ennui which he had brought
home from America ten years previously, and which had since been his
inseparable companion. It was such a finished, elegant ennui; it never
yawned and looked about for amusement, never in fact felt the least
desire for it, but looked down in self-satisfied superiority upon those
childish mortals who were actually capable of being irritated or
entertained upon this old exhausted globe.
He was proud of this kind of moral ossification, which was gradually
paralyzing all his really noble qualities.
"'Tis a pity!" said Leskjewitsch, whose youth was still warm in his
veins, and who declared that he had never been bored for half an hour
in his life, except upon a pitch-dark night in winter at some lonely
outpost when he had been delayed on the march; and although the honest
captain was a demi-savage and "still in roundabouts," we cannot help
repeating his words with reference to Rohritz, "'Tis a pity!"
Yes, a pity! Who that saw Edgar von Rohritz--his mother had bestowed
upon him his melodramatic name in a fit of enthusiasm for Walter Scott
and Donizetti,--who that saw him to-day could believe that in his
youth, under a thin disguise of aristocratic nonchalance, he was far
more sentimentally inclined than his former comrade Leskjewitsch? But
sentiment had fared ill with him. After having overcome, not without a
hard struggle, the pain of a very bitter disappointment, his demands
upon existence were of the most moderate description, and this partly
to spare himself useless pain and partly from caution lest he should
make himself ridiculous. He kept his heart closely shut; and if at
times sentiment, now fallen into disgrace with him, softly appealed to
it, entreating admission, he refused to listen. He was no longer at
home for sentiment.
About twenty years since he had begun his military career in the
same regiment of dragoons with Jack Leskjewitsch, and when hardly
five-and-twenty he had left the service and travelled round the world,
perhaps because change of air is as beneficial for diseases of the
heart as for other maladies.
For years now he had made his home in Graetz, whence he took frequent
flights to Vienna. He was but moderately addicted to society, so
called. He never danced; at balls he played whist, and dryly criticised
the figures and the toilettes of the dancers. He had the reputation of
being a woman-hater, and accordingly all the young married women
thought him excessively interesting. He was held to be one of the best
matches in Graetz, wherefore he was exposed to persecution by all
mothers blest with marriageable daughters.
Wearied of this varied homage, he had gradually withdrawn from society,
and had even relinquished his game of Boston, when one day a report was
circulated that he had suddenly lost almost all his property through
the negligence of an agent. All that was left him--so it was said--was
a mere pittance. Since he never contradicted this report, it was
thought to be confirmed. The mothers of marriageable daughters
discovered that he had a disagreeable disposition, and that it would be
very difficult to live with him. One week after this sad report had
been in circulation, he observed with a peculiar smile that during this
space of time he had received at least half a dozen fewer invitations
to dinners and balls than usual. Shortly afterwards meeting a friend in
the street who offered him his sincere condolence, he replied, with a
twirl of his moustache,--
"Do not, trouble yourself about me: I assure you that it is sometimes
very comfortable to be poor!"
The news of his sadly-altered circumstances penetrated even to the
secluded Erlach Court, and Captain Leskjewitsch, who learned it from a
casual mention of it in a postscript to a letter from a comrade, was
exceedingly agitated by it. He ran to his wife with the open letter in
his hand, exclaiming, "Ah ca, Katrine, read that. Rohritz has lost
every penny! Under such circumstances he must need entire change of
scene for a time. We must invite him here immediately,--immediately,
that is, if you have no objection."
For a wonder, the quarrelsome couple were perfectly at one on this
point.
"I shall be delighted to see him," replied Katrine. "Invite him at
once; that is, if you are not afraid of his making love to me."
The captain's face took on an odd expression. "There is no danger of
your allowing a stranger to make love to you," he muttered. "Your
disagreeable characteristic is that you will not allow even me to make
love to you."
Katrine raised her eyebrows: "I have an aversion for _rechauffees_."
The captain took instant advantage of his opportunity: "You certainly
cannot expect to be the first woman who I--hm!--thought had fine eyes?"
But Katrine was very busy with her household accounts, and consequently
she had no time at present to indulge in her favourite amusement, a
lively discussion.
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear," she rejoined, "but go and write a
beautiful letter to Rohritz; and do it quickly, that it may go by
to-day's post. Shall I compose it for you?"
"Thanks, I think I am equal to that myself," the captain replied, with
a laugh. "Upon my word, a poor dragoon has to put up with a deal from
so cultivated a woman."
As he turned to go, Katrine called after him: "I warn you beforehand
that I have a weakness for Rohritz. All the rest is your affair. I wash
my hands of it."
Nothing so aroused Katrine Leskjewitsch's sarcasm as the problematical
conscientiousness of those young wives who combine a decided love for
flirtation with a determination to cast all the blame for it upon their
husbands, posing in the eyes of the world as suffering angels at the
side of black-hearted monsters. Her ridicule of such women was sharp
and plentiful.
"A deuce of a woman!" the captain murmured as he betook himself to his
library and--rare effort for a dragoon--indited a letter four pages
long to his old comrade.
His friend's epistle, strange to say, touched Rohritz. It was so
cordial, so frank, and so warmly sympathetic, such a contrast to the
formal assurances of sympathy which he met with elsewhere, that he
accepted the invitation extended to him, and made his appearance at
Erlach Court a week afterwards.
He had been here now for three weeks, and had been really content,
especially during the early period of his visit, when he had been alone
with his host and hostess. The arrival of the general and Stasy had
somewhat annoyed him, and the news of the approach of another
detachment of guests consisting, moreover, of a mother and daughter
positively irritated him. Good heavens! another mother, another
daughter! Was there then no spot upon the face of the globe where one
could be safe from mothers and daughters?
CHAPTER III.
THE ARRIVAL.
A telegram had finally announced the arrival of the Meinecks by the
10.30 morning train at H----, the nearest railroad-station, tolerably
distant from Erlach Court.
It is almost noon; the captain and Freddy have driven over to the
station to meet the guests, and the rest of the family are on the
terrace outside of the dining-room. The hostess, dressed as usual with
puritanic simplicity in some kind of dark linen stuff, deliciously
fresh and smelling of lavender, is leaning back in a garden-chair,
diligently crochetting a red-and-white afghan for her little son's bed.
The general, in a very youthful felt hat adorned with a feather, is
chuckling in a corner over a novel of Zola's. Anastasia is fluttering
gracefully hither and thither, fancying the while that she looks like a
Watteau. In pursuance of her lamentable custom of wearing her shabby
old evening-gowns in the country in the daytime, she has donned a
much-worn sky-blue silk with dilapidated tulle trimming, and is
surprised that her faded splendour appears to fail to dazzle those
present.
"Life is pleasant here, is it not?" asks Katrine, looking up from her
crochetting at Rohritz, who faces her as he leans against the
balustrade of the terrace. "I am trying my best to induce my husband to
leave the service and retire to this place. He is still hesitating."
"Hm! Do you not think that for a man of his temperament existence at
Erlach Court would be a trifle monotonous?" is Rohritz's reply.
"He can occupy himself," Katrine makes answer, shrugging her shoulders.
"If I mistake not, you have rented the farm at Erlach Court?"
"Yes, thank heaven!" Frau von Leskjewitsch admits, with a smile.
"Farming is usually a very costly taste for dilettanti. But he has
entire control over the forests and the vineyards; they would give him
plenty to do; and then he is an enthusiastic horseman, and the roads
are very fine."
Rohritz is silent, and thoughtfully knocks off the ashes from his cigar
with the long nail of his little finger. He cannot help thinking that
Katrine Leskjewitsch, exemplary as she may be as a mother, has her
faults as a wife. Jack Leskjewitsch is not yet eight-and-thirty, and
she is prescribing for him a life suited to a man of sixty.
"It is certainly a pity to cut short his career," Rohritz remarks,
after a while, "especially since he passed so brilliant an examination
for advanced rank last year."
"Yes, his talent is indubitable," Katrine assents: "one would hardly
think it of him. He devotes but little attention to study, as I can
testify, and I certainly did not coach him, as did the wife of an
unfortunate captain who passed the same examination." The corners of
Katrine's mouth twitched. "What do you think was the end of the united
efforts of husband and wife? Two weeks after barely and laboriously
passing his examination the worthy man was a maniac. In fact, no fewer
than seven of my husband's fellow-students in that course lost their
reason. 'Tis odd how much ambitious incapacity one encounters in this
world! Jack does not belong in that category, however. He adores the
service, but he has not a particle of ambition."
All this is uttered with a seemingly woful lack of interest.
"'Tis a pity that she does not sympathize more fully with Les," Rohritz
thinks to himself; but all he says is, "And yet you would have him
relinquish his career?"
"A cavalry-man who looks forward to a career ought not to marry,"
Katrine maintains. "Probably you can recall the delights of a military,
nomadic existence for a family, particularly in those holes in Hungary.
Such hovels!--a stagnant swamp in front, a Suabian regiment installed
in the rooms, and no sooner have you got things into a civilized
condition than you have to break up to the sound of boot and saddle. In
one year I changed my abode three times. I could have borne it all so
far as I was concerned, but there was the child. Freddy became subject
to attacks of fever, so I bundled him up and brought him here. He
recovered immediately, and I wrote to my husband that he must choose
between his family and the army."
"That was to the point, at least," said Rohritz.
"Yes. He was apparently offended, and did not answer my letter for a
month. Then he was seized with a longing for--for the child. He
alighted in the midst of our solitude like a bomb at Sevastopol. Of
course we were charmed to see him, and he was so delighted with Erlach
Court that he was quite ready to turn his back on the service. I,
however, do not approve of hasty decisions, and so I advised him to
postpone his change of vocations----"
"His resignation of a vocation," Baron Rohritz interpolated.
"What a hair-splitting humour you are in today!" Katrine rejoined, with
a shrug, "to postpone for a while his resignation, if that pleases you.
So he obtained leave of absence for a year. Hm!--I am afraid he is
beginning to be bored. I cannot understand it. You must admit that we
are charmingly situated here."
"Indeed you are."
"The estate is in good order," Katrine went on, "and we have no
neighbours."
"A great advantage."
"So it seems to me. One of the most disagreeable sides of an army life
was always, in my opinion, the being forced into association with so
many unpleasant people. Most of my husband's comrades were very
agreeable, unusually kindly, pleasant men, but to be forced to accept
them all, and their wives into the bargain without liberty to show any
preference,--it was simply odious. I am a fanatic for solitude; the
usual human being I dislike; but you cannot throw everybody over,
however you may desire to do so,"--with a glance over her shoulder
towards Stasy and the general. "I beg you will make no application to
yourself of my remark."
"Much obliged." Rohritz bowed. "I confess I began----"
"No need of fine phrases," Katrine interrupted him. "You know I like
you. And in proof of it--you may have heard that we want to pass the
winter here; it will be delightful! entirely lonely,--shut off from
civilization by a wall of snow,--Christmas in the country,--the
children from three villages to provide with gifts,--the castle quite
empty, except for our three selves and Freddy! Well, in proof of my
genuine friendship I invite you to share with us this charming
solitude. Will you come? Say you will." Dropping her work in her lap,
she offers him both her hands.
"A curious creature! She treats me like an aged man, and moreover
considers herself sufficiently elderly to dispense with caution in her
intercourse with the other sex. An odd illusion for a woman still
extremely pretty," Rohritz thinks; and, occupied with these
reflections, he does not immediately reply.
"You decline?" she asks, merrily. "I shall not throw away such an
invitation upon you a second time."
"They are coming! they are coming!" Stasy exclaims, clapping her hands
childishly and tripping to and fro in much excitement.
"I do not hear the carriage," Katrine rejoins, looking at her watch.
"Besides, it is not time for them yet."
"But I hear something in the avenue---- Ah, please come, dear Edgar,"
Stasy entreats.
Rohritz does not stir.
"Baron Rohritz!" in an imploring tone.
"What can I do for you, Fraeulein Stasy?"
"Your opera-glass--be quick!" And, while Rohritz reluctantly rises to
go for the desired optical aid, Stasy lisps, "Not at all over-polite;
quite like a brother: just what I enjoy."
"It is they," Katrine exclaims. "The carriage is just turning into the
avenue. Let me have it for a moment,"--taking from his hand the glass
which Rohritz has just brought. "Yes, now I see them quite distinctly."
A few minutes later the rattle of approaching wheels is heard. The two
ladies and the general hasten down to receive the guests. Rohritz
discreetly withdraws to his apartment, and from behind his half-drawn
curtains watches the arrival. The carriage stops, the captain springs
out to aid two ladies to alight. At first Rohritz hears nothing but a
hubbub of glad voices, sees nothing but a confused group, the general
standing on one side with a polite grin on his face, and Freddy giving
vent to his joyous excitement by performing a war-dance around the
party.
When the situation at last becomes clear, he perceives a very handsome
old lady in a close black travelling-hat, a pair of blue spectacles
shielding her eyes from the dust, and wearing a dust-cloak which may
once have been black, while beside her--he adjusts his eye-glass in his
eye--assuredly Stella does not remind him of the 'hysterical tree-frog'
of frightful memory, but of some one else, for the life of him he
cannot remember whom. He looks and looks, sees two serious dark eyes in
a gentle childlike face beneath the broad brim of a Kate-Greenaway hat,
a half-wayward, half-shy smile, charming dimples appearing by turns in
the cheeks and at the corners of the mouth, a delicately-chiselled
nose, a very short and rather haughty upper lip, beneath which gleam
rows of pearly teeth, and for the rest, the figure of a sylph, rather
tall, still a little too thin, and with a foot peeping from beneath her
skirt that Taglioni might covet.
He looks and looks. No, Stella certainly does not remind him of the
'hysterical tree-frog,' but as certainly she recalls to his mind
something, some one--who is it? who can it be?
An unpleasant surmise occurs to him, but before it can take actual
shape in his brain the impetuous entrance of the captain has banished
it.
"Come to the drawing-room, Rohritz, and be presented to the ladies," he
calls out. "By the way, what means this wretched idea of which Stasy
informs me? She says that you are going back to Graetz immediately."
"The fact is, my lawyer has summoned me," Rohritz replies; "but--hm!--I
fancy the matter can be settled by letter. At any rate, I will try to
have it so disposed of."
"Bravo!"
CHAPTER IV.
STELLA.
Freddy has been terribly disappointed; instead of the bonbonniere, the
snap-pistol, or the storybook, among which three articles he has
allowed his expectant imagination to rove, his aunt has brought him
Sanders's German Dictionary.
"I hope you will like it," Stella remarks, with emphasis, depositing
the voluminous gift upon the school-room table. "We had to pay for at
least five pounds of extra weight of luggage in the monster's behalf,
and moreover it has crushed flat my only new summer hat. 'Tis a great
pity."
Freddy, who, although hitherto rather puny and delicate in body, is
mentally, thanks to clever qualities inherited from both his parents,
far in advance of his age, and already thinks Voss's translation of the
Odyssey entertaining, turns over the leaves of the three volumes of the
Dictionary without finding them attractive.
"I put in a good word for the child," Stella says, with a laugh,
to the captain, who with his friend Rohritz happens to be in Freddy's
school-room, "but mamma insists that it is of no consequence; if it
does not please him now, it will be very useful to him in future. Never
mind, my darling," she adds, turning to her little cousin, who, with a
sigh and not without much physical effort, is putting the colossal
Sanders on his bookshelves; "it certainly presents an imposing
spectacle, and I have a foolish thing for your birthday, the very
finest my limited means could afford." As she speaks she strokes the
little fellow's brown curls affectionately.
"Stella, Stella, where are you loitering?" a deep voice calls at this
moment, and the girl replies,--
"In a moment, mamma, I am coming!--I have to write a letter to a Berlin
publisher," she says by way of explanation to the two men, as she
leaves the room.
* * * * *
The evening has come. Dinner is over. All are sitting in more or less
comfortable garden-chairs on the terrace before the castle, beneath the
spreading boughs of a linden, now laden with fragrant blossoms.
The stars are not yet awake, but the moon has risen full, though giving
but little light, and looking in its reddish lustre like a candle
lighted by day; the heavens are of a pale, greenish blue, with
opalescent gleams on the horizon. The sun has set, twilight has mingled
lights and shadows, the colours of the flowers are dull and faded.
Around the castle reigns a sweet, peaceful silence, that most precious
of all the luxuries of a residence in the country. The evening wind
murmurs a dreamy duo with the ripple of the stream running at the foot
of the garden, and now and then is heard the heavy foot-fall of a
peasant returning from his work to the village.
Baroness Meineck is holding forth to her hostess, who listens
patiently, or at least silently, upon the subject of the
cholera-bacilli and the latest discoveries of Pasteur. To Rohritz, who,
will he nill he, has had to place his hands at the disposal of the arch
Stasy as a reel for her crewel, the Baroness's voice partly recalls a
sentinel and partly a tragic actress; she always talks in fine rounded
periods, as if she suspected a stenographer concealed near. While the
quondam beauty, with a thousand superfluous little arts, winds an
endless length of red worsted upon a folded playing-card, he glances
towards the spot where Stella is telling stories to Freddy, and
involuntarily listens.
Since the Baroness, perhaps because she has reached some rather
delicate details in her medical treatise, sees fit to lower slightly
her powerful voice, he can hear almost every word spoken by Stella. If
he is especially susceptible in any regard, it is in that of a
beautiful mode of speech. What Stella says he is quite indifferent to,
but the delightful tone of her soft, clear, bird-like voice touches his
soul with an indescribably soothing charm.
"Now that's enough. I do not know any more stories," he hears her say
at last in reply to an entreaty from her little cousin for "just one
more."
"No more at all?" Freddy asks, in dismay, and with all the earnestness
of his age.
"No more to-day," Stella says, consolingly. "I shall know another
to-morrow." She kisses him on the forehead. "You look tired, my
darling! Is it your bedtime?"
"No," the captain answers for him, "but he could not sleep last night
for delight in the coming of our guests, and he is paying for it now.
Shall I carry you up-stairs--hey, Freddy?"
But Freddy considers it quite beneath his dignity to go to bed with the
chickens, and prefers to clamber upon his father's knee.
"You are growing too big a fellow for this," the captain says, rather
reprovingly: nevertheless he puts his arm tenderly about the boy,
saying to Stella, by way of excuse, "We spoil him terribly: he was not
very strong in the spring, and he still enjoys all the privileges of a
convalescent,--hey, my boy?" By way of reply the little fellow nestles
close to his father with some indistinct words expressive of great
content, and while the captain's moustache is pressed upon the child's
soft hair, Stella takes a small scarlet wrap from her shoulders and
folds it about his bare legs.
"'Tis good to sleep so, Freddy, is it not? Ah, where are the times gone
when I could climb up on my father's knees and fall asleep on his
shoulder?--they were the happiest hours of my life!" the girl says,
with a sigh.
"But, Baron Rohritz, pray hold your hands a little quieter," the
wool-winding Stasy calls out to her victim. "You twitch them all the
time."
"If you only knew how glad I am to see you all again, and to spend a
few days in the country," Stella begins afresh after a while.
"Why, do you not come directly from the country?" the captain asks,
surprised.
"From the country?--we come from Zalow," Stella replies: "the
difference is heaven-wide. Yes, when mamma thirty years ago bought
the mill where we live now,--without the miller and his wife, 'tis
true,--because it was so picturesque, it really was in the country, or
at least in a village, where besides ourselves there were only a few
peasants, and one other person, a misanthropic widow who lived at the
very end of the hamlet in a one-story house concealed behind a screen
of chestnut-trees. I have no objection to peasant huts, particularly
when their thatched roofs are overgrown with green moss, and
misanthropic widows are seldom in one's way. But ten years ago a
railway was built directly through Zalow, and villas shot up out of the
ground in every direction like mushrooms. And such villas, and such
proprietors! All _nouveaux riches_ and pushing tradesfolk from Prague.
A stocking-weaver built two villas close beside us,--one for his own
family, and the other to rent; he christened the pair Girofle-Girofla,
and declares that the name alone is worth ten thousand guilders. He
also maintains that the architecture of his villas is the purest
classic: each has a Greek peristyle and a square belvedere. It would be
deliciously ridiculous if one were not forced to have the monsters
directly before one's eyes all the time. The worst of it is that one
really gets used to them! Dear papa's former tailor has built himself a
hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First directly on the road,
behind a gilded iron fence and without a tree near it for fear of
obscuring its splendour. Like all retired tradesfolk, the tailor is
sentimental. Only lately he complained to me of the difficulty
experienced by cultivated people in finding a fitting social circle."
"Do you know him personally, then?" the captain asks, with an air of
annoyance.
"Oh, yes, we know every one to bow to," says Stella. "In a little
while we shall exchange calls: I am looking forward to that with great
pleasure."
"What do you think of such talk, Baron?" Stasy asks under her breath.
Baron Rohritz makes no reply: perhaps such talk is to his taste.
Meanwhile, Stella goes on in the same satirical tone: "As soon as some
one of these aesthetic proprietors has come to a decision as to where
the piano is to stand, we shall certainly be invited to admire the new
furniture. Then mamma will look up from her books and say, 'I have no
time; but if you want to go, pray do as you please.' Mamma never cares
what I do or where I go." Stella's soft voice trembles; she shakes her
head, passes her hand over her eyes, and runs on: "Even the walks are
spoiled; one is never sure of not encountering a picnic-party. They are
always singing by turns 'Dear to my heart, thou forest fair,' and
'Gaudeamus,' and when they leave it the 'forest fair' is always
littered with cold victuals, greasy brown paper, and tin cans. It is
horrible! I detest that railway. It snatched from us the prettiest part
of our garden; there is scarcely room enough left for 'pussy wants a
corner,' and now mamma has rented half of it and the ground-floor of
the mill to a family from Prague for a summer residence."
"I do not understand Lina," the captain says, with irritation. "You
surely are not reduced to the necessity of renting part of your small
house for lodgings."
"Mamma wanted just two hundred guilders to buy Littre's
Dictionary,--the fine complete edition. Moreover, I think you are under
a mistake with regard to our resources. I detest the railway, but if it
had not bought of us, two years ago, a piece of land on which to build
a shop, I hardly know what we should be living upon now. Ah, if poor
papa could see how we live! He could not imagine a household without a
butler or a lady's-maid. Mamma dismissed the butler at first upon
strictly moral grounds----"
Anastasia von Gurlichingen casts down her eyes. "Did you ever hear
anything like that, Baron Rohritz," she asks, "from a young girl?"
Rohritz shrugs his shoulders impatiently, and Stella goes on quite at
her ease:
"He was always making love to the cook, and the lady's-maid was jealous
and complained of it. Then the lady's-maid was dismissed, for pecuniary
reasons; then the cook, for sanitary considerations: one fine day she
nearly poisoned us all with verdigris, her copper kettles were so badly
scoured. Her place was never filled, for in the interim, that is, while
we were looking for a new _cordon bleu_, mamma discovered that a cook
was a very costly article and that we could get along without one. Our
last maid-of-all work was a dwarf not quite four feet tall, who had to
mount on a stool to set the table. Mamma engaged her because she
thought that her ugliness would put a stop to love-making----" Stella
breaks the thread of her discourse to laugh gently; her laugh is like
the ripple of a brook. "But real talent defies all obstacles. Mamma's
experiment made her richer by one sad experience: she knows now that
not even a large hump can make its possessor impervious to Cupid's
arrows."
The captain laughs. Stasy's disapprobation has reached its climax; she
twitches impatiently at the worsted she is winding from Rohritz's
hands.
"What would papa say if he could see it all?" Stella says, in a changed
voice.
"Do you still grieve so for your poor father, mouse?" the captain asks,
kindly, perceiving that the girl with difficulty restrains her tears at
the mention of her dead father.
"You would not ask that, uncle, if you knew what a life I lead," she
replies, in a choked voice. "Yes, it is amusing enough to tell of, but
to live---- There is no use in thinking of it!" She bends slightly
above her little cousin, whose head is resting quietly upon his
father's shoulder. "He is sound asleep," she whispers, brushing away a
fluttering night-moth from Freddy's pretty face,--"poor little man!"
"It is growing cool," Katrine declares, glancing anxiously towards
Freddy in the midst of the Baroness's interesting discourse upon the
latest achievements of medical science, and then, rising, she leaves
her sister-in-law to go to her little son, saying, "Give me the boy,
Jack. I will carry him up-stairs."
"What! drag up-stairs with this heavy boy? Nonsense!" says the captain.
Whereupon Freddy wakes, rubs his eyes, is a little cross at first,
after the fashion of sleepy children, but finally says good-night to
all and goes off, his little hand clasped in his mother's.
"Here is some one else asleep too!" says Katrine, as she passes the
general, who is sitting with his arms crossed and his head sunk on his
breast.
"Can you tell me, Jack, whether mummies ever have the rheumatism?" she
asks. "Indeed, you had better waken him. I will have the whist-table
set out.--And you, sweetheart," she says to Stella, "might unpack your
music and sing us something."
While Stella amiably rises to go with her aunt, and the Baroness makes
ready to follow them, murmuring that she must unpack the music herself,
or her manuscripts will be all disarranged, Stasy turns to Rohritz:
"What do you say to it all? Did you ever hear such talk from a
well-born girl? Such a conversation! Some allowance, to be sure, must
be made for her."
But Rohritz simply murmurs, "Poor girl!"
"Yes, she is greatly to be pitied; her training has been deplorable!"
sighs Stasy, and then, lowering her voice a little, she adds, "The
colonel----"
"What Meineck was he?" Rohritz interrupts her, impatiently. "There are
four or five in the army,--sons of a field-marshal, if I am not
mistaken. Was he in the dragoons or the Uhlans?"
"Franz Meineck, of the ---- Hussars," says Jack.
"The one, then, who distinguished himself at Solferino and got the
Theresa cross?" Rohritz asks.
"The same," replies the captain.
"I do not know why I imagined that it must have been Heinrich Meineck.
It was Franz, then." He adds, with some hesitation, "I did not know him
personally, but I have heard a great deal of him. He must have been a
charming officer and a delightful comrade, besides being one of the
bravest men in the army----"
"He was particularly distinguished as a husband," Stasy exclaims, with
her usual frank malice.
"We will not speak of that, Fraeulein Stasy," says the captain. "My
sister's marriage was certainly an insane, overwrought affair, and
Franz gave his wife abundant cause for leaving him; but of the two
lives his was the ruined one."
CHAPTER V.
AN EXPERIMENT.
Yes, of the two lives the colonel's was the ruined one; wherefore, in
spite of all the evident and great fault on his side, the sympathies of
every one were in his favour,--that is, of all his fellows who knew
life and the world, and who were ready to give their regard and their
sympathy to men as they are, instead of, like certain great
philosophers, reserving their entire store of commiseration for those
exquisitely correct creatures, men as they should be.
When they made each other's acquaintance in Lemberg at Lina's father's,
General Leskjewitsch's, Franz Meineck was twenty-six and Lina
Leskjewitsch thirty-two years old. Nevertheless the world--the world
that was familiar with these two people--wondered far more at her fancy
for him than at his falling a prey to her fascinations.
She had from her earliest years been an exceptionally interesting girl,
and a position as such had always been accorded her without any effort
on her part to obtain it, for in spite of all her whims and
eccentricities no one could detect in her a spark of affectation or
pretension. She was altogether too indifferent to what people said of
her ever to pose for the applause of the crowd. Her egotism, fed as it
was by the homage of those around her, led her to yield to the
prompting of every caprice, and since she was very beautiful, and could
be excessively fascinating when she chose,--since, moreover, her father
held a distinguished office under government,--she was dubbed original
and a genius where other girls would have been condemned as eccentric
and unmaidenly.
Always keenly alive to intellectual interests, she was, by the time she
had reached her twenty-fifth year, a confirmed blue-stocking; she
studied Sanskrit, and was in correspondence with half the scientific
men in Europe. Moreover, she was by no means 'sicklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought,' but full of wit and spirit. She swam like a
fish, venturing alone far out upon river or lake, and rode with the
boldness of a trained equestrian, without even a groom as escort. She
had always disdained to dance; at the only ball she had ever been
induced to attend she had been merely an on-looker. She could not
comprehend how there could be any pleasure in dancing, she remarked,
with a contemptuous glance towards the whirling couples: it was either
ridiculous, or childish, or else positively disgusting.
Her contempt for love-making was as pronounced as for dancing. The
homage of the young exquisites of society bored her inexpressibly; it
was absolutely odious to her. She often boasted that in her life she
had had but three loves,--Buonaparte, Lord Byron, and Machiavelli.
All her acquaintance, more especially the feminine portion of it, were
astounded when a report was suddenly circulated that she was smitten
with Franz Meineck, a simple, fair-haired hussar, with nothing to
recommend him save his handsome face and his fine chivalric bearing.
It was easy to see what attracted him in her,--her rich brunette
beauty, and, in strange contrast with it, the cold, defiant bluntness
of her air and manner, the nimbus of originality that surrounded her,
the fact that towards all other men her indifference was well-nigh
discourtesy, while to him she was amiability itself. But what she, she
of all girls in the world, could find to attract her in him,--this was
what puzzled the brains of all the wiseacres in Lemberg.
But that he pleased her no one could deny, least of all she herself.
Once, after a dinner at which Meineck had been her neighbour, a very
cultivated and interesting friend asked her how she could possibly find
any entertainment in that superficial hussar. She replied, with a
shrug, that she found it much more amusing to hear a superficial hussar
talk than to see a distinguished philosopher masticate his food, which
according to her experience was the only entertainment afforded by
great scientific lights at a dinner.
While, however, Meineck's love for her was, from the very beginning,
of an enthusiastic, passionate nature, the inclination she felt for him
was at first very gentle in character.
For her he was but a child; the idea that her relations with him could
end in marriage would have seemed more mad and improbable to her than
to any one else. Her demeanour towards him was always friendly; she
would rally him good-humouredly, and anon treat him with a kindliness
that was almost maternal. There was nothing in her manner to suggest
her being in love with him.
Towards the end of February, when some treacherously mild weather
heralded, as all prophesied, a cold windy March, Lina allowed her
youthful adorer to be her escort in long rides on horseback. Here he
was in his element, and greatly her superior in spite of her Amazonian
skill. It was after one of these expeditions, when she reached home
with eyes sparkling and cheeks slightly flushed, that she suddenly had
an attack of terror. She knew that, accustomed as she had been for so
long to absolute freedom, she must sooner or later find any fetters
galling; she did not wish to marry.
The next day, without informing any one save her nearest of kin of her
intention, she left Lemberg and retired to a small estate near Prague,
where after her independent fashion she was often wont to stay for
months alone with an old gardener and her maid.
It was a pretty, romantic spot, formerly a mill. A venerable
weeping-willow stood beside it, its branches trailing above the
antiquated mansard roof; a little brook rippled past it, gurgling and
sobbing between banks of forget-me-nots and jonquils on its way to
the larger stream. In this particular March, however, jonquils and
forget-me-nots were still sleeping soundly beneath the snow, and the
brook was silent. The February prophets were right: March was terribly
cold. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the mill, almost reaching its
windows, and the weeping-willow was clad in a fairy-like robe of
glistening snow.
Lina sat from morning until evening like a kind of feminine Doctor
Faust among bookcases, retorts, and globes in a spacious, dreary room,
trying to work and longing 'to recover herself.' Then one day Meineck
made his appearance at the mill. She received him with a great show of
gay indifference, sitting at her writing-table and playing with her pen
by way of intimating that any prolongation of his visit was
undesirable. He perceived this. Embarrassed, confused by the sight of
the scientific apparatus that surrounded him on all sides, he sat
leaning forward, his sabre between his knees, in an arm-chair from
which he had been obliged to remove a Greek lexicon and two volumes of
the 'Revue,' and stammering all sorts of childish nonsense while he
gazed at her with adoring eyes. She wore a perfectly plain gown of
dark-green cloth fitting her like a riding-habit, and her hair, which
curled naturally, was combed back behind her ears and cut short. He
found this mode of dressing her hair charming, and his heart throbbed
fast as he noted the magnificent fall of her shoulders. In his eyes she
was incomparably beautiful; hers was the majestic loveliness of the
unattainable. He often saw her thus afterwards in his dreams, and in
his death-agony her image hovered before him again, noble, undefaced,
as it was impressed upon his heart at this interview.
Later on he wondered how he found courage to speak, but he found it. He
sued for her hand, he wooed her passionately with words that could not
but move her. She refused him. He would not accept her refusal. She
stood her ground bravely, frankly confessing to him that it cost her an
effort to repulse him, but that she must do it to insure the peace of
mind of both. Apart from her dislike of resigning the freedom of her
existence, she thought it unprincipled to give heed to the pleading of
a poor exaggerated lad who was led away in a moment of romantic
enthusiasm to offer his hand to a woman so much his elder.
There were such full, warm, cordial tones in her deep voice! Sight and
hearing failed him. He knelt before her, kissed the hem of her garment,
and promised at last to be content for the present if she would allow
him to speak again at the end of six months. By that time it would be
manifest that his love was not merely momentary romantic enthusiasm.
She laid her beautiful slender hands upon his shoulders, and said,
kindly, "Dear lad, if after six months you are still so insane as to
covet an elderly bride, we will discuss the matter again. And now
adieu!"
He pressed his lips upon her hand so passionately that she suddenly
withdrew it, and the colour mounted to her cheeks; he had never seen
them flush so before. His eyes fathomed the depths of her own: she
turned her head away.
"_Au revoir!_" he said, and withdrew, bowing gravely and profoundly.
There was something of triumph in the rhythm of his retreating
footsteps; at least so it seemed to her as she listened to the sound as
it died away in the distance. He walked as though his feet were shod
with victory. Indignation possessed her. Her strong nature defended
itself vigorously against the influence of this beguiling insidious
force which had taken captive her heart and threatened to subdue her
reason. In vain! The hand which his lips had pressed burned, and
suddenly there glided through her veins, dreamily, lullingly, a
something inexpressibly sweet, something she had never experienced
before,--a delicious yet paralyzing sense of weariness. She started,
and sat upright; then, gathering together the papers on her
writing-table, she tried to work. In vain! The pen dropped from her
fingers. She rose hastily and went to take a long walk. Her feet sank
deep in the melting snow; the air was warm, and the south wind rustled
among the trees and shrubbery, whispering mysteriously along the
crackling surface of the frozen brook. Her weariness increased; she
had to retrace her steps.
She went to bed earlier than usual that evening, and tried to think of
grave subjects; but sweet, long-forgotten melodies haunted her heart
and brain: she could not think; and at last she fell asleep to the
sound of that fairy-like music within her soul.
Tu the middle of the night she awoke. The moon shone through her window
directly upon her bed. She listened. What sound was that? A merry
uproar like the triumphal note of spring--the swift rushing of the
brook--ascended to her windows. The ice was broken.
And in slow, monotonous cadence the falling of the drops from the
melting snow on the roof struck upon her ear.
"Ah," she sighed, "the spring has come!"
* * * * *
He constantly wrote her letters full of chivalric fire and enthusiastic
devotion. She never answered them. Then the war of 1859 broke out. One
of her brothers informed her that Meineck had had himself transferred
from the show-regiment--one but little adapted to service in the
field--to which he had hitherto belonged to another which had been
ordered to the front. A short time afterwards she received from the
young hussar the following note:
"In spite of the horror with which the loss of life inseparable from
every campaign inspires me, I rejoice in the war. I rejoice in the
opportunity of proving to you at last that I am worth something in the
world. Grant me one favour: send me a line or two, or only a curl of
your hair, or some little trinket that you have worn,--anything
belonging to you that I can take with me into action. I kiss your dear
hands, and am, as ever, with profound esteem and intense devotion,
"Your F. Meineck."
She clasped her hands before her face and sobbed bitterly. And she, who
all her life long had jeered at such sentimentality, cut off one of her
curls, enclosed it in a small golden locket, and sent it to him with
the following words:
"Dear Lad,--
"You burden me with a great responsibility. There was no need for you
to plunge neck and heels into this campaign to prove to me that you
were worth something. I send you herewith the trifle for which you ask:
may it carry a blessing with it! God bring you safe home, is the
earnest prayer of your faithful friend,
"Karoline Leskjewitsch."
June passed. The earth languished beneath the burning sun. Pale,
feverish, and sleepless, Karoline Leskjewitsch dragged through the
endless summer days, scraping lint,--she felt unfit for any other
occupation,--and reading with hot, dry eyes the lists of the dead and
wounded.
One day she found his name in the list of the dead. She was crushed,
utterly annihilated. A few hours afterwards, however, she received a
letter from her brother, stating that the report of Meineck's death was
a mistake; he was in Venice, severely wounded. She could not tell how
it was, but on the same evening, almost without luggage, without
telling any one of her plans, she started off with her old maid, and
two days later arrived in Venice and was conducted by her brother to
the room where the wounded man lay.
Pale, wasted, with dishevelled hair and sunken features, he lay back
among the pillows. Too weak to stir, he could only greet her with a
blissful smile.
She wore a black Spanish hat with large nodding feathers. As she
entered she took it off, and, going to his bedside, she said, "I did
not come merely to see you, but as a Sister of Charity, and I shall
stay with you until you are well again."
He replied, in a voice so weak as to be scarce audible, "To make me
well a single word will suffice: say it!"
She hesitated for a moment, and then, stooping over him, she pressed
her lips to his.
Who that saw them together ten years later could have believed it? No
marriage was ever more romantic than theirs at first. His case was
considered hopeless. The two physicians whom she questioned as to his
condition declared his recovery impossible. Resolutely setting aside
all opposition, she was married to him immediately, that she might
nurse him devotedly and be enabled to support him in the dark hour of
the death-struggle.
At the end of ten weeks the physicians acknowledged that they had been
mistaken. Not only was he out of danger, but he had well-nigh recovered
his former strength and vigour. Early in October the pair took their
wedding-trip to Bohemia. In matters of sentiment Franz was a poet to
his fingertips, and he scorned the idea of the usual journey with his
bride from one hotel to another. They spent their honeymoon in the old
mill at Zalow.
On many a fresh, dewy, autumnal morning the peasants saw the two tall
figures strolling through the forest where the leaves were rapidly
falling. She who had hitherto carried herself so erect now walked with
bent head and with shoulders slightly bowed, as if scarcely able to
bear the weight of her great happiness.
They would wander unweariedly about the country for hours: they
ransacked all the old peasant dwellings for antiquities, and they chose
the spot for their graves in a picturesque, romantic churchyard. And
when the light faded and they returned home, they would sit beside each
other in the twilight in the spacious room where he had wooed her, and
where now all the literary and scientific apparatus had given place to
huge bouquets of autumn flowers filling the vases in every corner. The
bouquets slowly changed colour, the cornflowers paled and the poppies
grew black, in the darkening night; and something like profound
melancholy would possess the lovers,--the sacred melancholy of
happiness. With her hand in his, the wife would tell her husband of the
mild March night in which the joyous sobbing of the brook had wakened
her, calling to her that spring had come.
"Believe it or not, as you please," Meineck was wont to say, often with
a very bitter smile, in after-years, "I am really that fabulous
individual, hitherto sought for in vain, the man who never, during the
entire period of his honeymoon, w as bored for a single quarter of an
hour."
He took up his profession again; she would not hear of his resigning
from the army for her sake. When he proposed it she clasped her arm
tenderly about his neck and said, "Inactivity would ill become you, and
I want to be proud indeed of my husband. I have but one duty now in
life, to make you happy," she gently added.
He was fairly dizzy with bliss. Was it possible, he sometimes asked
himself, that an angel had actually descended from heaven to nestle in
his heart and to conjure up for him a Paradise on earth? Her caresses
gained in value from the fact that she was not so softly docile as
other women, that now and then he had to overcome in her a certain
acerbity and harshness.
"A woman and a horse must both be possessed of amiable possibilities of
obstinacy, or we take no pleasure in them," he declared.
She bloomed afresh after her marriage. Her features, which were rather
marked, grew softer, and had the freshness of those of a girl of
eighteen. Her hair, which at his request she allowed to grow, curled in
soft rings about her brow. Every one noticed how very beautiful she had
grown; and he too, they said, had gained much since his marriage. His
moral and intellectual stand-point was loftier. She refused to have an
interest which he did not share; she expended an immense amount of
acuteness in discovering what would arrest his attention in whatever
she was reading, and either repeated it to him or read it aloud.
The idea of playing the love-sick girl at her age was odious to
her,--ridiculous; she wished to be his friend, his trusty comrade; but
withal she spoiled him by a thousand delicate attentions far more than
the youngest wife would have done. She exhausted her ingenuity in
rendering his life delightful. She was not fond of going much into
society; therefore she made his home attractive to his comrades. The
entire regiment adored her, from the colonel to the youngest ensign.
The women alone hated her. It was intolerable, they thought, that a
blue-stocking should presume to eclipse them with the other sex.
What became of all this bliss? It vanished little by little, as the
snow slowly subsides, filtering into the ground.
* * * * *
"I know myself," she had said to him when he wooed her; "I know myself:
my paralyzing weakness will pass away, as will your intoxication."
But his intoxication, after all, lasted longer than her weakness.
After they had been married about five years, their second daughter,
Estella, was born. The mother's health was terribly undermined for a
while. Franz surrounded her with the most loving care, but she no
longer took any pleasure in it. The fitful, unnatural glow kindled
so late in her heart slowly died away; her illusions faded, her
passion cooled. Nothing was left of the young spring deity of her
imagination who had roused her heart from its cold wintry sleep, save a
good-humoured, ordinary man whose society offered her no attraction and
whose tenderness wearied her.
Then came the campaign of '66. When he left her she contrived to shed a
couple of tears, and during the fray in Bohemia her conscience pricked
her terribly, but when the truce was proclaimed she was quite
indifferent as to the length of his absence; it might have been
prolonged _ad infinitum_, for all she cared. When he came home at the
end of half a year his conscience was laden with a first infidelity.
She had written an essay upon Don John of Austria.
From this moment the downward course was rapid.
If he could but have had a comfortable attractive home, he might
perhaps have clung to it; he might have felt that he had something to
live for, something to prevent, as he afterwards expressed it, his
'going to the devil.'
But he daily felt more and more of a stranger beneath his own roof, and
his wife did nothing now to induce him to stay there; on the contrary,
his presence bored her,--a fact which she did not always conceal.
For a little while he restrained himself, and then----
All the brutal instincts of his nature asserted themselves, and he took
no pains to subdue them.
* * * * **
One joy, however, was his all through this dreadful time, his youngest
daughter. He never took much pleasure in the elder of the two: she had
inherited all her mother's caprice, without any of her talent.
But little Stella was indeed a darling.
When she was between one and two years old, at a time when his
comrades, although but rarely, still met at his house at gay little
suppers, he would go up to the nursery, where the child lay in bed, and
if she happened to be awake and laughing at his approach he would take
her in his arms just as she was in her little white night-gown and cap
and carry her down-stairs to display her. She would obediently give her
hand to every guest, but was not to be induced to unclasp the other arm
from her father's neck. He petted and caressed her while his friends
praised his pretty little daughter.
When she had grown larger, she was always the first to run to meet him
on his return home from parade. Often in winter when his cloak was
covered with snow she would shrink away with a laugh, exclaiming, "Oh,
papa, how cold! I cannot touch you."
"Come here," he would say to her, and, opening his cloak, he would
gather her up in his arms. "'Tis warm enough here, mouse, is it not?"
And as she clung to him he would close the cloak about her, and she
would thrust her hands through the opening in front and peep out,
supremely happy.
She often remembered in after-years how delicious it had been to nestle
against her father's broad chest, protected in the darkness, and look
out into the world through a narrow crack.
He it was who gave her her first alphabet-blocks, more as a toy than by
way of instruction. She ran after him continually to show him the words
she had spelled out with them, taking especial delight in long learned
expressions of which she did not understand a syllable. One of the
first words she put together upon his writing-table as she sat upon his
knee was 'phosphorescence.'
He laughed, and told the officers of it at the riding-school. Poor
fellow! He was secretly ashamed of his wretched home and his
matrimonial failure, as well as of the miserable part he played in his
household. As he could not speak of anything else, he talked of his
child.
* * * * *
His wife's article upon Don John of Austria appeared meanwhile in 'The
Globe,' and, unfortunately, attracted considerable attention. One
critic compared the author's brilliant style to that of Macaulay. From
that moment she lost the last remnant of interest in her house and
family.
The praise which her article received went to her head; she recalled
how when a young girl she had been called a genius, and how it had been
said that if she only chose to take the slightest pains she could excel
George Sand as an author, Clara Schumann as a pianiste, and Rachel as
an actress. Yes, if she only chose! Now she did choose. She tried her
hand in every department of literature, devised plots for tragedies and
romances, and wrote essays upon every imaginable social problem,
without achieving any really finished or useful result. She herself was
quite dissatisfied with her efforts, but she never ascribed their
imperfection to any want of capacity, but always to the fact that the
free flight of her fancy was cramped by her domestic cares. Possessed
by the demon of ambition, she turned aside from everything that could
absorb her time or hinder her in the mad pursuit of her chimera. Social
enjoyment did not exist for her: she secluded herself entirely from,
society. If her husband wished to see his comrades he could find them
at the club.
Her household went to ruin. It was long before Meineck ventured to
remonstrate with his highly-gifted wife; but at last scarcely a day
passed without crimination and recrimination between the pair. In spite
of his faults and aberrations from the right path, he was exquisitely
fastidious in his personal requirements and a martinet in his love of
order; his wife's slovenly habits and the disorder of her household
disgusted him.
"Good heavens! who," he sometimes asked, angrily, "could put up with
such untidy rooms?--all the doors ajar, the drawers half open and their
contents tossed in like hay; the servants dirty and ill trained, and
the meals served in a way to destroy the finest appetite! Even the
children are neglected."
There came at last to be terrible scenes, in which Meineck would shout
and swear and now and then shatter to pieces some chair or ottoman that
stood in his way, while his wife sat motionless at her writing-table,
now and then uttering some cold, cutting phrase, her pen suspended over
her paper, longing for the moment when she should be left alone 'to
work.'
Yet at intervals there were still moments when she would seize the helm
of her neglected household, would set things straight, and would
preside in tasteful attire at a well-ordered table. Her inborn elegance
upon such occasions could not but excite admiration, and for a few
hours, sometimes for a couple of days, she would expend her talent upon
what alone employed it worthily, in promoting the comfort of those
about her.
Upon such occasions Meineck would torment himself with self-reproach,
would take upon himself the entire fault of her shortcomings, and
would, so far as she would permit him, show her the most devoted
attention. Scarcely, however, did he begin to have faith in the
sunshine when it vanished.
Moreover, these seasons of wondrous amiability on Karoline's part grew
rarer and briefer,--particularly when she could not but acknowledge
that her literary career by no means developed so brilliantly as she
had hoped from the success of her Don John of Austria. She sought the
cause of this, as has been said, not in the insufficiency of her own
talent, but in the cramping nature of her domestic circumstances.
* * * * *
One evening--Stella was about eleven years--old Meineck came home
intoxicated. Chance willed that both his wife and his daughters saw him
in this condition.
The next day at the mid-day meal he was rather uncomfortable in their
presence, and consequently talked more and faster than usual, assuming
that air of bravado which some men are sure to adopt when they are
particularly embarrassed. His affected self-possession vanished very
soon, however. His wife merely bestowed upon him a cold greeting, and
then entered into an absorbing conversation with Franziska, the elder
daughter, upon some abstruse point of English law. She and the girl
both avoided looking at him, and sat bolt upright, with virtuous
indignation expressed in every feature.
He turned from them to his loving little Stella. She was sitting, pale
and with downcast eyes, before an empty plate. Poor little Stella! she
too had been affected by the scene of the evening before. What business
was it of hers? Was he the only man in the world who had ever been so
overcome? Was that chit to school him? For the first time in her life
he spoke harshly to her: "What is the matter with you? Why do you not
eat? Are you ill?" And, beckoning to the servant, he put something upon
her plate.
She took up her knife and fork obediently, but she could not swallow a
morsel, and the big tears fell upon her plate. He saw them perfectly
well, although he pretended not to look at her.
When the others had retired and he sat alone at the comfortless board,
his head leaning on his right hand, his left drumming a tattoo on the
table, as he reflected upon his squandered life, suddenly a little arm
stole around his neck and two tender childish lips were pressed to his
temple. He started: it was Stella! He took her on his knee and covered
her head, her neck, even her little hands, with kisses, and his tears
fell upon her brow. Neither of them ever forgot that moment.
* * * * *
Soon after this the husband and wife agreed so far as to find their
life together intolerable, and they parted by mutual consent. Of course
the mother took the children; what could Meineck have done with them?
The legal divorce, with which she threatened him if he did not accede
to a voluntary separation, would undoubtedly have assigned them to her.
He was to be allowed to spend two weeks of every year beneath her roof
to see the children. These arrangements concluded, she set out for
Florence to collect materials for a history of the Medici,--which she
never wrote.
In the spring he went to her at Meran. His position in her household
was so painful, however, that he did not stay all the allowed time: he
felt disgraced even in his little Stella's eyes; she seemed estranged
from him.
He never came to be with them again. He often sent his daughters
beautiful presents, and wrote them long, affectionate letters, but he
made no further attempt to see them.
Years passed. Meineck had risen to the rank of colonel; his wife
meanwhile had tramped all over the map with her daughters, from Madrid
to Constantinople, to collect historical material for all sorts of
projected essays. She was now at her mill in Zalow, partly because her
finances were at a low ebb, and partly because she intended at last to
begin her great work. This work upon which she had settled definitively
was 'The Part assigned to Woman in the Development of Universal
History.'
Franziska, who, oddly enough, could no longer agree with her mother,
was lodging in Prague with the widow of a government official who
rented a few rooms to teachers and bachelors, and preparing herself in
a bleak little apartment to pass her final examinations. Poor Stella,
who had meanwhile shot up into a tall miss of eighteen, went to Prague
by railway three times a week in summer and winter, always alone, to
take lessons, read everything she could lay hold of, from Milton's
'Paradise Lost' to Hauff's 'Man in the Moon,'--and tramped about the
country escorted by a very savage white wolf-hound.
It was in November, and the ground was covered with snow, when a letter
arrived from the colonel in Venice to his wife and daughters. He had
been ordered to a southern climate on account of an affection of the
lungs which had not yielded to a course of treatment at Gleichenberg,
and he had now been in Venice for a month. If his daughters would
consent, the letter went on to say, to come to cheer his loneliness for
a while, he would do his best to make their stay in Venice agreeable to
them.
Franziska declared that she could not possibly interrupt her studies at
this time; Stella announced that she was ready to set off on the
instant. Her mother hesitated to allow her to travel alone, and looked
about for a suitable escort for her, but Stella declared that she
needed none. Had she not been to Prague continually alone by the
railway? and where was the difference in going to Venice, except that
it was farther off? Moreover, there were carriages for ladies only. It
never occurred to this valiant young person, trained to economy as she
had been by her learned mother, that she could travel otherwise than
second-class.
Her mother enjoined it upon her not to waste her time in Venice, and
instead of a luncheon stuffed a 'Histoire de Venise' into her
travelling-bag. The girl bought her ticket, attended to her
luggage herself, and then mounted cheerily into a much overheated
railway-carriage and was borne away.
CHAPTER VI.
A RUINED LIFE.
How she rejoiced in the prospect of seeing him again, looking forward
to the joy of nestling tenderly in his arms and telling him how she had
longed for him during the many, many years, and how she had lain awake
many a night telling herself stories of him,--that is, recalling every
little incident in her memory with which he was connected!
She did not recall him as she had last seen him, old before his time,
with dark rings around his bloodshot eyes and deep wrinkles at the
corners of his mouth, gray and worn; no, she saw him with fair curls
and a merry, kindly look, sometimes in his dazzling hussar-uniform, but
oftener in his blue undress-coat with breast-pockets. She could not
possibly call him up in her memory without an accompaniment of the
rattle of spurs and sabre. She saw his shapely, carefully-tended hands;
she distinctly remembered the fragrance of Turkish tobacco, mingled
with the odour of jasmine, with which all his belongings were
saturated.
For her he was always the brilliant young officer who had muffled her
in his cloak when she ran to meet him.
How long the journey seemed to her at first! Then she was suddenly
assailed by a strange timidity: when the conductor took her ticket and
announced that the next station was Venice she began to tremble.
The train stopped; the conductor opened the door. With her heart
throbbing up in her throat, she looked out, but saw no one whom she
knew. No, her father had evidently not come to meet her! Could he have
failed to receive her telegram? She noticed a gray-haired man in
civilian's dress, with a crush-hat, and delicately chiselled features
wasted by illness, and large hollow eyes, peering about as if he were
looking for some one. A cold, paralyzing pang shot through her: his
look met her own. While he had lived in her memory as a brilliant
young officer, she had always been for him the undeveloped child of
twelve, with tightly-stretched red stockings, and a short shapeless
gown,--something that could be taken on his lap and caressed. But this
daughter advancing towards him was a young lady, who could pass
judgment upon, him, a judgment that could not be bribed, like that of a
child, by caresses. He asked himself, with a shudder, how much she knew
of his life, and whether she were capable of forgiving it, forgetting,
in his dread, that a woman will forgive everything in the man whom
she loves, be he husband, brother, or father, save cowardice and
dishonour,--and as far as regarded the _point d'honneur_ the colonel's
worst enemy could find nothing of which to accuse him.
"Papa!"
"Stella!" Instead of clasping her in his arms, he kissed her hand. "How
are they all at home?" he asked, embarrassed. "Is your mother well? and
Franzi?"
"Oh, yes! They both gave me all sorts of kind messages for you.
Franziska, unfortunately, could not come with me, for she could not
interrupt her studies at this time."
What frightfully correct German she spoke! Had they robbed him of his
little Stella? His annoyance increased.
"Where is your maid?" he asked.
"Maid? I have none. Oh, we have not had a maid for a long time."
"You came all the way alone?" the colonel exclaimed, in dismay,--"all
alone?"
"Yes. You have no idea how independent and practical I am."
The colonel frowned; he would rather have found his daughter spoiled
and helpless; but he said nothing, only asked about her luggage to hand
it over to the porter of the Hotel Britannia, and then offered her his
arm to conduct her to the gondola which was waiting for them. Arrived
at the hotel, they got into the elevator to be taken to the third
story, and they had as yet scarcely exchanged three words with each
other.
The pretty little _salon_ into which he conducted her looked out upon
the Grand Canal and past the church of Santa Maria della Salute upon
the Lido. The room was pleasantly warm, and in the centre a table was
invitingly spread, the teakettle singing merrily, flanked by a flask of
golden Marsala and a bottle of Bordeaux. A prismatic ray of sunshine
fell across the neat creases of the snowy table-cloth.
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Stella, and her eyes sparkled, while in her
delicate and softly-rounded cheek appeared the dimple for which her
father had hitherto looked in vain.
"I had a little breakfast made ready for you, thinking that you might
perhaps have had nothing very good to eat upon your journey," said he.
"I have eaten nothing since I left home but biscuit, because I disliked
going to the railway restaurants," she declared.
And the colonel rejoined, "_Tiens!_ not entirely a strong-minded female
yet, I see," and as he spoke he helped her take off her long brown
paletot. "If I am not mistaken," he said, examining the clumsy article
of dress, "this is an old army-cloak."
"Indeed it is, papa," she replied, proudly, "one of your old cloaks: I
had it altered by our tailor in Zalow, because it reminds me of old
times." And this was all she could bring herself to say of the myriad
charming and loving phrases she had prepared. "It is a great success,
my coat. Do you not like it?" she asked.
"Candidly, no;" he made reply. "Nevertheless I am greatly obliged to it
for proving to me that, even in the clumsiest and ugliest garment ever
devised by human hands to disfigure one of God's creatures, my daughter
is still charming."
She cast down her eyes with a little blush and was suddenly ashamed of
her threadbare adaptation of which she had been so proud. Kindly, but
still with some hesitation, he put his hand upon her shoulder and said,
"You will let me look a little more closely at my daughter."
A warm wave of affection suddenly surged up in her heart.
"Do not look at me, papa; only love me," she exclaimed, and, throwing
her arm around his neck, she nestled close to him. "You cannot imagine
how rejoiced I was to come to you."
And the poor wretch reverently bent his sad, weary head above his
child's golden curls, and repentantly acknowledged to himself that he
had not deserved so great mercy.
* * * * *
When daylight had faded and the lanterns at the base of the old palaces
flared up, casting reddish reflections to break and glimmer upon the
surface of the lagunes, the colonel lit the lamp and put paper and
writing-materials upon the table before Stella.
"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for
sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to
her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand.
At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a
very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's
finances?"
"Low," said Stella, laconically.
"Hm! I really do not know how much is necessary to maintain two
daughters; perhaps I do not send her enough for you. She ought to
have let me know. I do not wish that my children should be pinched,
as--as----"
"As they seem to be from the looks of my shabby wardrobe," Stella said,
with a laugh. "Well, we are not quite so badly off, after all. If it be
a question of buying books or curios, we can always scrape the money
together; but if one wants a pair of new boots, the purse is empty."
The colonel tugged discontentedly at his moustache.
"I beg you to write to Franzi and ask her if she needs money," he began
afresh. "I am, to be sure, living now upon my capital, but your share
is secured to you, and I shall not last long."
At first his meaning escaped her; she gazed at him with wide eyes;
then, as she comprehended at last, the pen fell from her fingers, and
she burst into a flood of tears.
"Hush, hush, my darling; do not torment yourself beforehand. Perhaps I
describe my condition to you as worse than it really is," he said,
leaning tenderly over her, and, putting his hand beneath her chin, he
looked deep into her dark eyes. "If sunshine can make a man well I am
all right."
* * * * *
No, it was too late,--too late! His physical strength could never be
restored, his lungs nothing could heal; but with his child beside him
his soul and heart gained health and strength. Since those first fair
years of his married life, he had never been so happy as now, although
he seldom quite forgot that he stood on the brink of the grave.
Once, on a damp muggy November evening in a Viennese suburb he had seen
a drunkard staggering along the wall in a narrow street, quite unable
to find his way. A policeman was just about to take him into custody,
when a little girl, muffled in rags and with a pale wizened face,
suddenly appeared beside him out of the darkness, seized him by his
red, trembling, swollen hand, and called in a hoarse, anxious voice,
without impatience or harshness, but not without authority, 'Father,
come home!' And the drunkard, who had paid no heed to the jeers of the
passers-by, nor to the admonition of the policeman, hung his head, and
without a word followed the weak, helpless little creature like a lamb.
The colonel had stood and looked after them until the darkness
swallowed them up. He recalled distinctly the girl's thin yellow
braids, her long chin, the sordid red-and-black plaid shawl which she
wore about her shoulders, and the worn old laced boots, far too big for
her little feet and coming half-way up her naked little blue legs, and
continually in her way as she walked.
The little episode had made a painful impression upon him for a time,
and then he had forgotten it. Now it arose in his memory, but
transfigured, and as, clasping his daughter's hand, he went on to his
grave, he compared himself in his secret soul with the drunkard led
home by the child.
* * * * *
He was very ill. Unaccustomed to spare himself, and without any real
pleasure in life, he had increased his malady by months of entire want
of care and nursing, until his physicians had insisted that a summer
should be spent at a sanitarium in Gleichenberg. Partially restored, he
had immediately, in direct opposition to all advice, re-entered the
service. The autumn man[oe]uvres had brought on an inflammation of the
lungs. How very ill he was never entered his mind, in spite of his
speech to Stella. He thought he should live a couple of years longer,
and his great dread was lest he should be pensioned off before the time
because of his invalid condition. The pains that he took to maintain an
upright military bearing aggravated all the evils of his case.
There were a number of distinguished Austrians in the Hotel Britannia,
some few of them invalids, most of them gay and pleasure-loving and
well pleased to spend a few weeks amid picturesque surroundings and in
pleasant society. The colonel was beloved by all, and they eagerly
welcomed his pretty daughter,--even the ladies, whom the colonel
consulted as to the necessary reform in the girl's wardrobe. She sat
with her father in the midst of them all at the upper end of the table,
the lower end, where the other inmates of the hotel were crowded
together, being the subject of much merry scorn and stigmatized as 'the
menagerie.' Compassion for the daughter of the dying man deepened the
sympathy called forth by the young girl's grace and charm. Old
gentlemen rallied her upon her conquests, and the young men paid her
devoted attention. She had a special friend in the handsome black-eyed
prince Zino Capito, who had an unusual share of time to bestow upon her
since the latest mistress of his affections, the famous Princess
Oblonsky, had just departed for Petersburg to take possession of the
effects of her husband, suddenly deceased. He daily sent Stella
magnificent flowers with which to adorn the hotel apartments for her
father. "Invalids are so fond of flowers," he would say, with a smile
that displayed his brilliant white teeth. And when the weather was fine
and the colonel felt well enough, he would invite them to take a sail
in his cutter upon the blue Adriatic.
The colonel often spoke of his wife, longing to see her. The last
_liaison_--that which had been the cause of a definite separation
between himself and his wife, had robbed him of his self-respect, had
disgraced him in his children's eyes, and had snatched from him every
vestige of peace of mind--had dissolved itself more than two years
before. The recollection of it disgusted him, but, like all men who
have no future, he gladly allowed his thoughts to stray into the
distant past. The wife from whom he had parted, elderly, learned, with
her slovenliness and irritability, he had forgotten; his memory
preserved the bride, in her light dress, bending above his couch of
pain; he saw her on his marriage-day in the flood of sunlight which
streaming through the tall window of his sick-room invested with a
glorious halo the golden cross upon the improvised altar.
One sunny day, as he was sailing in the Grand Canal in a gondola with
Stella, he pointed to a beautiful old palazzo.
"There is where I lay wounded in '59, when your mother came to nurse
me. Those windows there were mine."
In the evening of the same day, while Stella was writing to her mother
and he lay half dozing on a lounge, he suddenly said, "Stella, do you
think your mother could make up her mind to come to Venice with Franzi
for a few weeks? She need not be in the same house with us, if that
would bore her, but---- Tell her how much it would please me to see
her; and," he added, with an embarrassed smile, "tell her I am really
very ill: perhaps that may induce her to come."
He awaited the reply to this letter with feverish eagerness. In a week
there arrived a package of rather insignificant notices of a work of
his wife's, just published at her own expense; two weeks later the
answer to the letter appeared.
"Well, what does your mother say?" asked the colonel, as he observed
Stella deciphering the almost illegible document. "Read it aloud to
me," he insisted: "you know everything that goes on at home interests
me. Is she coming?"
But Stella, with tears in her eyes, and a burning blush, stammered, "A
letter must have been lost. This one never even mentions our plan!"
The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India
steamship.
"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should
have liked to ask her forgiveness."
* * * * *
Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken
continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death,
from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference
to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and
would drink a glass of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant
exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose
condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew
less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an
operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly,
and sent Stella out of the room.
"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier,
and not afraid to die."
"Under the circumstances, a couple of months."
"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their
course. It is all right."
That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his
writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what
he had written.
"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry,
darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all.
I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property
is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any
partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be,
do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in
Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the
churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket.
"Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in
the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they
lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"
She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but
perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.
"Yes, papa."
* * * * *
The next day was her birthday.
He gave her a golden bracelet to which was attached a crystal locket
containing a four-leaved clover.
"I cannot show you any partiality in my will," said he, "but wear that
for my sake, darling. And if ever heaven sends you some great joy, say
to yourself that your poor father prayed the dear God that it might
fall to your share!"
* * * * *
One day the colonel received a letter bearing a Paris post-mark which
seemed to depress him greatly. All day after receiving it he was
thoughtful and taciturn. In the evening he wrote a long letter, pausing
from time to time to cough sadly. As he folded it, Stella observed that
he enclosed money in it. After apparently reflecting for a while, he
drew from a case in his pocket a photograph of Stella which had been
taken in Venice, gazed at it lovingly for a moment, seemed to hesitate,
and finally enclosed it also in the envelope with the letter. Looking
up, he became aware of his daughter's curious gaze, and suddenly grew
confused. He sealed his epistle with unnecessary care, and then all at
once reached both hands across the table and clasped Stella's between
them, saying,--
"You are wondering to whom I am sending my darling's picture? To my
youngest sister, your aunt Eugenie. Do you remember her? Yes? You used
to love her, did you not?"
"Very much, papa; but--I thought she was dead."
The colonel turned away his head; after a moment he drew Stella towards
him, and said, softly, "She is not dead: I cannot tell you about her,
do not ask me. But do not be hard to her, and if you should ever meet
her, speak a kind word to her, for my sake."
* * * * *
He still went daily below-stairs in the lift to take his meals, but he
now dined at a small table alone with Stella, after the _table-d'hote_
in the spacious, lonely dining-hall. His frequent attacks of coughing
made him shun society. He dreaded annoying others.
"I am no longer fit to mingle with my kind, Stella," he would say. "My
poor little butterfly, it is tiresome to have such a father, is it
not?"
She, apparently, did not find it so. She desired nothing beyond the
privilege of taking care of him, although she could be little more than
a weak, helpless child. By day she cheered him with her lively talk,
and at night if he stirred she was beside his bed in an instant in her
long dressing-gown, her little bare feet thrust into slippers,
supporting him in her arms if he coughed. Outside the moon shone full
above the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Up from the garden was
wafted the odour of roses and syringas, while above the swampy
atmosphere of the lagunes, and mingling with the plash of waters at the
base of the old palaces, floated sweet, sad melodies,--the songs of the
evening minstrels of Venice,--
"Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"
and
"Penso alla prima volta in cui volgesti
Lo sguardo soave in sino a me!"
Sometimes she would fall asleep sitting beside his bed, her head
resting on his pillow.
* * * * *
She grew to look like a shadow, so pale and worn did she become. He did
all that he could to prevent her from coming to him at night, even
threatening to employ a nurse, but the threat was never fulfilled.
In fact, he needed very little care but such as her affection insisted
upon giving him; he was never confined to bed, only grew more and more
inclined to rest on a lounge during the day. He was very thoughtful of
others, and required but little service at their hands up to the very
last, only seldom demanding any assistance in dressing. He grew nervous
and restless, longed for change, yearned for his home with the fervent
desire of a dying man. Before his mental vision hovered the picture of
the old mill, with its old-fashioned garden, the small sparse forest
with feathery underbrush at the foot of the knotty oaks, and the gray
waters of the stream that wound through the autumn mist between bald
stony banks. He felt an insane desire to see it all once more. For a
long time he endured this yearning in silence, not venturing to express
it; his wife had repulsed all advances of his too decidedly. But, good
heavens! he needed so little room, he would not trouble her much; and
then, besides, he was an old man, ill unto death: his demands upon her
personally were restricted to a kind word now and then, a sympathetic
pressure of the hand!
Meanwhile, he grew worse and worse. Other complications heightened the
peril in which he stood from the original disease. He complained that
he could no longer endure the food at the hotel. His physician, who,
like all physicians at health-resorts, avoided as far as possible the
annoyance of having his patients die on his hands, strongly advised a
change of air.
Utterly dejected, his face turned away from her, the dying man begged
Stella to ask her mother if he might come home.
But Stella had already asked, and shortly afterwards an answer was
received. The Baroness wrote that now, as ever, she was prepared to do
her duty,--to receive him, and take care of him. The mill was always
open to him.
How he rejoiced in the prospect of home! He tried to help in the
packing, but he was too languid. From his lounge he looked on while
Stella managed it all, and now and then with a smile he would call her
to him, only to stroke her hands and look into her dear, loving eyes.
At last they set out. It was Easter Monday, in the latter half of
April; the bells were all ringing solemnly, and dazzling sunshine lay
upon the dark waters of the lagunes.
All their acquaintance at the hotel surrounded the father and daughter
as they stepped into their gondola. The little vessel was filled with
flowers, farewell tokens to Stella, and from the balconies of the hotel
many a white kerchief waved adieu to the travellers.
* * * * *
At first they journeyed by short stages, sometimes taking a roundabout
route for the sake of better lodgings at night, stopping at Villach and
at Graetz. Then the colonel grew anxiously eager to be at home; he could
no longer restrain his impatience. From Graetz he insisted upon making
one journey of it, during which they had to change conveyances
frequently. Every one was kind, showing all manner of attention, to the
sick man and his pretty, loving, tender daughter. With every hour he
became more weak and miserable. The last change they made he could
scarcely manage to descend from the railway-carriage: two porters were
obliged to help him into the other coupe.
It was one of those first-class half-coupes for three occupants. Stella
had not been able to procure for him, as hitherto, an entire carriage,
and we all know how deceptive is the ease of those half-coupes.
The girl propped her father up with rugs and cushions so that he found
his position tolerable, and he fell asleep. The afternoon passed, and
twilight came on. Greenish-yellow tints coloured the horizon, and a
small white crescent gleamed above the darkening earth. Through the
open window of the coupe came the warm, balmy air of the spring.
Sometimes there mingled with the acrid, searching odour of the
undeveloped foliage the full, sweet fragrance of some blossoming
fruit-tree. A scarcely perceptible breeze swept gently and caressingly
over the meadows, and lightly rippled the surface of the large quiet
pond past which the train rushed. Here and there the level landscape
was dotted by a village,--long barns and hay-ricks covered with
blackened straw, grouped irregularly about some little church or castle
among trees white with blossoms or pale green with opening leaf-buds.
The colonel slept on. Suddenly Stella perceived that she had lost her
bracelet,--the one with the four-leaved clover. She moved with a sudden
start. The colonel awoke.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"In an hour we shall be at home: it is only three stations off," she
said, soothingly, with a beating heart.
He bent his head, folded his hands, and prepared to wait patiently. But
it was impossible: a deadly anguish assailed him. He looked round in
despair like some trapped animal.
"I am ill!" he cried. "I cannot tell what ails me. I never felt so
before!"
He coughed convulsively, but briefly, then tried to move the cushions
so that his head might find a more comfortable resting-place.
"Take more room, papa; lay your head in my lap," Stella entreated,
tenderly.
He did so. He laid his head on her knees, and, taking her hand in his,
held it against his cheek. The feverish unrest which had hitherto
throbbed throughout his frame subsided, giving place to a delicious
desire to sleep. For the last time the vision rose upon his mind of the
drunken father being led home by his little girl; then all grew
indistinct. He dreamed; he thought he was staggering painfully through
a bog, when some one took him by the hand and led him across a narrow
bridge beneath which gleamed dark, slowly-flowing water. He looked
down; it was Stella who was leading him, but Stella as a little
three-year-old child, with her simple little white night-cap tied
beneath her chin, her rosy little bare feet showing beneath the hem of
her white night-gown. The bridge creaked beneath him; he started and
awoke.
"Are we at home?" he asked, scarce audibly.
"Almost, papa."
He pressed her hand to his lips.
The twilight deepened; a dark transparent mist seemed to veil the sky;
the heavens showed as if through thin mourning crape; the broad shining
edges of the ponds and pools were dim; the crescent moon grew brighter.
The train whizzed along faster than ever, swaying from side to side on
the sleepers. Suddenly Stella felt her father start violently; then he
heaved a brief sigh, like that which one gives when surprised by
anything unexpectedly delightful, or when one is suddenly relieved of a
heavy burden. Then all was quiet,--quiet,--still as death! She bent
over him and listened. In vain! She felt his hand grow cold and stiff
in her own. A sudden anguish took possession of her. She was afraid in
the darkness. Meanwhile, the lamp in the coupe was lighted. Its crude,
yellow light fell upon the colonel's face.
Was he asleep, or---- She held her own breath to listen for his. Her
heart beat as though it would break; no longer able to control her
distress, she called, "Papa!" then louder, "Papa! Papa!" He did not
answer.
The night-moths fluttered in through the open window and circled about
the lamp; the fragrance of the blossoming cherry-trees filled the air;
a cracked church-bell in the distance hoarsely tolled the Ave Maria.
In an undertone Stella prayed 'Our Father;' but in the midst of it she
burst into a convulsive fit of sobbing: she stroked and caressed the
cold cheeks, the thin gray hair, of the dead. She knew that before many
minutes were over he would be taken from her, and with him everything
dear to her in life.
Onward rushed the train. The fiery sparks flew like rain past the
windows; there was a shrill whistle, then a stop. The journey's end was
reached.
* * * * *
Her mother and sister had come to the station to meet them. When the
conductor opened the door, Stella sat motionless, her father's head
resting upon her knees.
It was dark. The stars gleamed in the blue-black heavens.
Mute and pale as the dead, the Baroness walked with Franziska and
Stella behind her husband's corpse the short distance between the
station and the mill. Some awkwardness on the part of the bearers
released one arm of the dead man, and the hand fell and trailed on the
earth. With a quick impetuous movement his wife took it in her own,
pressed the cold, dead hand to her lips, and held it clasped in hers
the rest of the way.
They laid the body in the fresh, white bed, fragrant with lavender and
orris, which had been prepared for the sick man in the corner room he
had so loved, and in which the Baroness had placed a bouquet of white
hawthorn in honour of his arrival.
Two candles were burning at the head of the bed.
Stella, who had, as it were, turned to marble, moving and speaking like
an automaton, suddenly grew restless. She seemed to have forgotten
something, and then looked for and found the locket which the colonel
had given her for her mother, and which she had ever since worn around
her neck. Very distinctly and monotonously she repeated the dying man's
message and request as she handed the locket to her mother.
"He begs you will hang this around his neck before they lay him in the
grave; and once he said he should have liked once more to ask your
forgiveness."
The Baroness took the little case from her child's hand. She grew paler
than ever, and her eyes were those of one startled by an inward vision
of a long-forgotten past. The hawthorn shed a delicious fragrance;
outside, the breeze of spring sighed among the weeping-willows, the
brook gurgled and sobbed.
All in an instant the old, gray-haired woman's hands began to tremble
violently.
"Leave me alone with him for a moment," she softly entreated; and
Stella slipped away.
In the terrible week ensuing upon that wretched evening the Baroness
treated Stella with an unvarying and altogether pathetic tenderness; in
that week Stella learned to comprehend what an irresistible charm this
woman had been able to exercise,--learned to understand how longing for
her, even after years of separation, had gnawed at the heart of the
dying man.
Then, to be sure, everything ran its old course, with the sole
exception that the widow never uttered in the presence of her children
one unkind word with regard to their father, but often alluded before
them to his fine qualities.
CHAPTER VII.
A RAINY EVENING.
It has been raining all the afternoon,--it is raining still. The
inmates of Erlach Court are house-bound. Freddy, because of
disobedience, and in consequence of his sneezing thrice during the
afternoon, has been sent to bed early and sentenced to a dose of
elder-flower tea. His elders, instead of spending the evening, as
usual, in the open air, are assembled in the drawing-room.
Stasy has for the twentieth time finished 'Paul and Virginia,' and is
now devoting herself to another kind of literature, Zola's 'Joie de
vivre,'--of course only that she may testify to the horror with which
such a book must inspire her. Every few minutes she utters an indignant
'no!' in an undertone, or holds out the book to Katrine, one hand over
her blushing face, with "That is really too bad!" Katrine, however,
shows no inclination to participate in her horror; she waves the book
aside, saying, "I do not care to read everything," and goes on
crochetting at the afghan which is to be ready for Freddy's approaching
birthday.
The Baroness Meineck, meanwhile, is playing chess, the only game which
she does not despise, with the general; and the captain is idling.
Hitherto Stella has been singing to her own accompaniment, for the
entertainment of the company, the pretty Italian songs she caught from
the gondoliers on the Canal. She is still sitting at the piano, but she
has stopped singing. Her slender hands touch the keys of the
instrument, playing softly now and then a couple of bars from a Chopin
mazourka, as she looks up at Rohritz, who, with both elbows on the top
of the piano, leans towards her, talking.
"How interested Rohritz seems in his talk with Stella! he is quite
transformed," Leskjewitsch remarks.
"He must answer when he is addressed," Stasy rejoins, sharply, looking
up from her 'Joie de vivre.'
"If he does not like to talk to the girl he can go away," the captain
observes. "She has not nailed him to the piano."
"He-he! she nails him with her eyes. Do you not see how she ogles him?"
Stasy replies, with a giggle. "I wonder what he is telling her."
"He is talking of Mexico, and of the phosphorescence of the tropical
seas," the captain says, curtly.
"Indeed? nothing more sentimental and personal than that? Since, then,
it is not indiscreet, I think I will listen." And, clapping to her
book, Anastasia stretches her long thin neck to hear.
It is very quiet in the large apartment; except for the monotonous drip
of the rain outside, and the click made by setting down the pieces on
the chess-board, there is nothing to interfere with those who wish to
listen to the conversation at the piano.
"Knowing only the poor little sparks which you have seen twinkling
through our Northern ocean on warm September evenings, you can form no
idea of the gleaming splendour of the tropical seas, Fraeulein Meineck.
The nights I spent on the deck of the Europa on my Mexican voyage I
never can forget," says Rohritz.
Stella, who has hitherto shown a genuine interest in all he has told
her, suddenly assumes a whimsically wise air, and, striking a dissonant
chord, asks, "How old were you then?"
"I really do not understand----" he remarks, in some surprise.
"Oh, there is no necessity for your understanding,--only for replying,"
she rejoins, very calmly.
"Twenty-four."
It is one of her peculiarities, the result of her desultory and
imperfect training, that she often plunges into a discussion of topics
which every well-trained girl should carefully avoid.
"Twenty-four," she repeats, thoughtfully; then, pursuing her inquiries,
"And were you in love?"
He laughs in some confusion.
"You are putting me through an examination."
"I allow you the same privilege," she declares, magnanimously. "Your
answer sounds evasive. Apparently you were in love. I merely wanted to
know, that I might judge how large a percentage of romance I must
deduct from your description. All things considered, I can no longer
accord any genuine faith to your account of the phosphorescence of the
tropical seas; when people are in love they see everything as by a
Bengal light."
This sententious remark of course induces Rohritz to put the laughing
inquiry, "Do you speak from experience, Baroness Stella?"
"Certainly," she replies, with a convincing absence of embarrassment.
"I have been through it all with my sister: she saw her
artillery-officer by a Bengal light, or she never would have left
science in the lurch for his sake, for, heaven knows, he was just like
all the rest, except that in addition--he played the piano. Just fancy!
an artillery-officer playing the piano!--Wagner, of course! Two dogs
and a cat of ours went mad at the sight. But Franzi assured me that her
artillery-officer's touch reminded her of Rubinstein. So you see how
trustworthy your descriptions are."
Rohritz laughs good-humouredly, then says, "Even if I admit that on
board the Europa I still had a little touch of the disease you mention,
I must maintain that the delirious period had passed."
"Hm! one thing more," says Stella, pursuing still more boldly the
devious path upon which she has entered. "I must know this precisely.
Were you in love with a married woman? _Un homme qui se respecte_ is
never in love except with a married woman,--at least in all the
novels."
"Stella!" Stasy calls, horrified.
Even Rohritz, who has hitherto listened very patiently to Stella's
nonsense, seems unpleasantly affected by this speech of hers. He looks
penetratingly into the young girl's eyes, and becomes aware that he is
gazing into depths of innocence. Before he has time to say anything,
Stasy calls out, in a shocked tone,--
"Stella, you are frivolous to a degree----"
Stella blushes crimson; her eyes fill with tears; she makes awkward
little motions with her hands upon the keys, and plays a couple of bars
from Thalberg's Etude in Cis-moll.
"Frivolous?--frivolous? But, Anastasia, I was only jesting," she
murmurs, and, turning to Rohritz as if for protection, she adds, "It
needed very little logic to guess that, for if you had been in love
with a young girl there would have been no need for you to be unhappy
and to go sailing about on tropical seas to distract your mind: you
could simply have married her."
"But suppose the young girl would not have him?" the captain asks,
merrily.
Stella looks first at Rohritz, then at her uncle, and murmurs, "That
never occurred to me."
A burst of laughter from the captain--laughter in which Katrine joins
heartily and Stasy ironically--is the reply to this confession.
"Acknowledge the compliment, Rohritz; come, acknowledge it,"
Leskjewitsch exclaims in the midst of his laughter.
But Rohritz maintains unmoved his serious, kindly expression of
countenance.
"It is not given to even the greatest minds to contemplate all possible
contingencies," he says, dryly.
The Baroness Meineck, absorbed in her game, has heard little,
meanwhile, of what has been going on about her; she now suddenly
remembers that it is incumbent upon her to attend to her daughter's
training.
"I suppose you have been uttering some stupidity again, Stella," she
observes, coldly; "you are incorrigible!"
"Poor mamma, she really is to be pitied," Stella sighs, her sense of
humour asserting itself in spite of her; "she has no luck with her
children. Her clever daughter _commits_ stupidities, and her silly
daughter _utters_ them. Which is the worse?"
CHAPTER VIII.
A LOVE-AFFAIR.
It rains the entire ensuing night, and far into the forenoon of the
next day. The hollows worn in the stone pavement of the terrace are
filled with water, and form little brown ponds. The buff-coloured
castle has become orange-coloured, and looks quite worn with weeping.
The lawns reek with moisture, and the Malmaison roses are pale and
draggled. Drowned butterflies float on the surface of the pools, and
fantastic wreaths of mist curl about the foot of the mountains on the
farther side of the Save. No sun is to be seen amid the gray-brown rack
of clouds.
At last the rain falls more slowly; the chirp of a bird makes itself
heard now and then; a white watery spot in the gray skies shows where
the sun is hiding; slowly it draws aside the veil from its beaming
face, and between the torn and flying masses of cloud the heavens laugh
out once more, blue and brilliant.
Tempted forth by the delightful change in the weather, Katrine, Stasy,
and Stella venture out to take their daily bath in the Neuring. In its
normal condition the Neuring is a clear, sparkling stream, flowing
freely over its pebbly bed in constant angry attack upon diverse
fragments of rock which look in magnificent disdain upon its impotent
assaults. A bath in the current between the largest of these fragments
of rock, where for the convenience of the bathers a stout pole has been
fixed, is a great favourite among the delights of Erlach Court.
One shore of the stream slopes, flower-strewn and verdant, nearly to
the water's edge, and here stands a roughly-constructed bath-house,
from which wooden steps lead down into the water.
Stella is sitting, in a very faded bathing-suit of black serge trimmed
with white braid, on the lowest of these steps, gazing sadly into the
stream.
"I certainly did behave with unpardonable stupidity yesterday," she
says, twisting her golden hair into a thick knot and fastening it up at
the back of her head with a rather dilapidated tortoise-shell comb.
"When do you mean?" asks Stasy. "At lunch, or in the evening, or early
this morning?"
"Yesterday evening, in the drawing-room," Stella replies, somewhat
impatiently.
"That talk with Rohritz was a little reprehensible," Katrine says, with
a laugh.
"In your place, after having been guilty of such a breach of decorum, I
could not make up my mind to look him in the face," Stasy declares.
She slips into the water before the others, and is now trying, holding
by the pole between the rocks, to tread the waves. The water hisses and
foams, as if resenting her trampling it down.
"Was it really so bad, Aunt Katrine?" Stella asks, changing colour.
Katrine leans towards her, gives her a kindly pat on the shoulder,
lifts her chin caressingly, and says,--
"Well, your remarks were certainly not extraordinarily pertinent, but I
hardly think that Rohritz took them ill. 'Tis hard to take things ill
of such a pretty, stupid, golden butterfly as you."
With which Katrine cautiously sets her slender foot among the yellow
irises and white water-lilies on the edge of the water.
"It was terrible, then,--it must have been terrible if even you thought
it so!" says Stella, as the tears rush to her eyes, and drop into the
stream at her feet.
"Don't be a child," Katrine consoles her: "the matter was of no great
consequence."
"Certainly not," Stasy adds, rather out of breath from her exertions.
"What he thinks can make no kind of difference to you, and he assuredly
will not report elsewhere your very strange remarks. Probably they
interest him so little that he will soon forget all about them."
"Come and take your bath; you are wonderfully averse to the water
to-day," Katrine calls out to the girl, who still sits sadly upon the
wooden step, lost in reflection. "Indeed you need not take your
stupidity so much to heart: it would have been nothing at all, if there
had not been rather an odd story connected with Rohritz's sudden voyage
across the ocean."
"Ah!" exclaims Stella, paddling through the water to her aunt, who,
clinging to the pole, is now enjoying the current. "Really, something
romantic?" she asks, curiously.
"There was nothing romantic in the affair save his way of taking it,"
Katrine says, with a dry smile, "and therefore the remembrance of this
piece of his past may be particularly distasteful to him."
"Ah, but it was a married woman, was it not? Do tell me!" Stella
entreats, burning with curiosity.
"No, Solomon," Katrine replies: "it was a young, unmarried woman, not
so very young either, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, well born, a
Baroness von Foehren, a Livonian with Russian blood in her veins, poor,
ambitious, prudent, and just clever enough to entertain a man without
frightening him. I saw her once, and but once, at the theatre; she was
very beautiful, and I took an extraordinary dislike to her. I am always
ready to applaud Judic in _opera-bouffe_, and on _grand prix_ day in
the Bois it interests me exceedingly to observe the _dames aux
camellias_ through my opera-glass; but nothing in this world so
disgusts me as demi-monde graces in a woman who ought to be a lady."
"I think you are a little severe in your judgment of Sonja. She was not
irreproachable in her conduct," Stasy, who has for years maintained a
kind of friendship with the person under discussion, here interposes,
"not irreproachable, but----"
In all that touches her extremely strict ideas of propriety and
fitness, Katrine understands no jesting.
"Her conduct was not only 'not irreproachable,' it was revolting!" she
exclaims. "If she interests you, Stella, I can show you her photograph;
at one time you could buy it everywhere. She was made to turn a young
fellow's head. With regard to women men really have such wretched
taste."
"Oho, Katrine! That sounds as if you said it _par depit_," Stasy says,
archly.
"I do not in the least care how it sounds," Katrine rejoins.
"Ah, tell me about Baroness Foehren," Stella entreats.
"There is not much to tell. He had a love-affair with her----"
"A love-affair!" The words fall instantly from Stella's lips, as one
drops a burning coal from the hand.
"Yes," Katrine goes on. "It happened in Baden-Baden, where the Foehren
was staying with a relative of hers. Rohritz paid her attention, and
something or other gave occasion for a scandalous report. In despair at
having compromised the lady of his affections, Rohritz instantly
proposed to her, and informed his father of his determination to marry
her. The old Baron, a man of unstained honour, and imbued with a strong
feeling of responsibility in maintaining the dignity of the Rohritz
family, was rather shocked by this hasty resolve, and, viewing the
affair from a far less romantic and far more sensible point of view
than that taken by his son, made inquiries into the reputation of the
lady in question, and--I cannot exactly explain it to you, Stella, but
the result of his investigations was that he informed Edgar that he
need be troubled by no conscientious scruples on behalf of this
adventuress, and that he positively refused his consent to the
marriage."
"And then?" asks Stella.
"I do not know precisely what happened," says Katrine. "Jack told me
all about it lately with characteristic indignation, but I did not pay
much attention. The affair dragged on for a while. Edgar, who was then
most romantically inclined, would not resign the Foehren, corresponded
with her,--how I should have liked to read those letters!--finally
fought a duel with one of her slanderers, and was severely wounded.
When he recovered at last after several dreary months of
convalescence, he learned that the Foehren was married to a wealthy
Russian."
"How detestable!" exclaims Stella.
"Good heavens! she had a practical mind," Stasy interposes. "I, to be
sure, would on occasion have married a tinker for love, but the young
women of the present day are not ashamed to declare that their choice
in marriage is influenced by a box at the theatre, brilliant equipages,
and toilets from Worth. Old Rohritz would have disinherited Edgar, or
at all events allowed him a very inadequate income, while Prince
Oblonsky----"
"Prince Oblonsky!" Stella hastily exclaims. "Did you say Oblonsky?"
"Yes; that was her husband's name, Boris Oblonsky. Now she is a widow,
and still perfectly beautiful."
"Perfectly beautiful. I saw her in Venice at the Princess Giovanelli's
ball," says Stella, "'with brilliant and far-gazing eyes.' So that was
she!" And with a slight anxiety she wonders to herself, "A love-affair!
What is the real meaning of a love-affair?"
CHAPTER IX.
FOUND.
A sleepy afternoon quiet broods over Erlach Court. Anastasia is sitting
in the shade of an arbour, embroidering a strip of fine canvas with
yellow sunflowers and red chrysanthemums. At a little distance the
Baroness Meineck, who has volunteered to superintend Freddy's education
during her stay at Erlach Court, is giving the boy a lesson in
mathematics, making such stupendous demands upon his seven-year-old
capacity that, ambitious and intelligent though the young student be,
he is beginning to grow confused with his ineffectual attempts to
follow the lofty flight of his teacher's intellect. Stella, with whom
mental excitement is always combined with musical thirst, is all alone
in the drawing-room, playing from the 'Kreisleriana.' Her fingers glide
languidly over the keys. "A love-affair! What is the real meaning of a
love-affair?" The question presents itself repeatedly to her mind, and
her veins thrill with a mixture of curiosity, desire, and dread.
Lacking all intimacy with girls of her own age or older than herself,
who might have enlightened her on such points, she has the vaguest
ideas as to much that goes on in the world. A love-affair is for her
something connected with rope ladders and peril to life, like the
interviews of Romeo and Juliet, something that she cannot fancy to
herself without moonlight and a balcony. Her innocent curiosity
flutters to and fro, spellbound, about the Baden-Baden episode in
Rohritz's youth, as a butterfly flutters above a dull pool the pitiful
muddiness of which is disguised by brilliant sunshine, the blue
reflection of the skies, and a net-work of pale water-lilies.
She could not tear her thoughts from Baden-Baden, which she knew partly
from Tourganief's 'Smoke,' partly in its present shorn condition from
her own experience,--Baden-Baden, which when the Foehren and Rohritz
were together there might have been described as a bit of Paradise
rented to the devil.
"I wonder if she called him Edgar when they were alone?" the girl asked
herself.
Her heart beat fast. It was as if she had by chance read a page of some
forbidden book negligently left lying open. Not for the world would she
have turned the leaf to read on, for, in common with every pure, young
girl, when she approached the great mystery of love she was possessed
by a sacred timidity almost amounting to awe.
"I wonder if he was very unhappy?" she asks herself. "Yes, he must have
been;" Katrine had told her that he grew gray with suffering. A great
wave of sympathy and pity wells up in her innocent heart. "Yes, she was
very beautiful!" she says to herself.
She perfectly remembers her at the Giovanelli ball, leaning rather
heavily on her partner's arm, her eyes half closed, her head inclined
towards his shoulder, and again in a solitary little anteroom before a
marble chimney-piece, below which a fire glowed and sparkled, lifting
both hands to her head, an attitude that brought into strong relief the
magnificent outline of her shoulders and bust. While thus busied with
arranging her hair, she smiled over her shoulder at a young man who
was leaning back in an arm-chair near, his legs crossed, holding his
crush-hat in both hands, regarding her with languid looks of
admiration.
This was Stella's friend, black-eyed Prince Zino Capito. All Venice was
then talking of the Prince's adoration of the beautiful Livonian.
"What is it about her that makes every man fall in love with her?"
Stella asks herself. And a sudden pang of something like envy assails
her innocent heart. Ah, she would like just one taste of the wondrous
poison of which all the poets sing. "Will any one ever be in love with
me?" she asks herself. "Ah, it must be delicious,--delicious as music
and the fragrance of flowers in spring; and I should so like to be
happy for once in my life, even were it for only a single hour.
But----" Her eyes fill with tears: what has she to do with happiness?
it is not for her; of that she has been convinced from the moment when
on that last melancholy journey with her father she found she had lost
her little amulet. Poor papa! he would gladly have bestowed happiness
upon her from heaven, and instead he had taken her happiness down with
him into the grave. Poor, dear papa!
The breath of the roses outside steals in through the closed blinds,
sweet and oppressive. Among the flowers below awakened to fresh beauty,
the bees hum loudly, plunging into the honeysuckles, and gently as if
with reverence touching the pale refined beauty of the Malmaison roses,
while above the acacias and lindens they are swarming.
* * * * *
Rohritz has been occupied in writing his usual quarterly duty-letter to
his married brother. As with all men of his stamp, a letter is for him
a great undertaking, accomplished wearily from a strict sense of duty.
Seated at the writing-desk of carved rosewood bestowed upon him long
since by an aunt and provided with many secret drawers and with all
kinds of silver-gilt and ivory utensils of mysterious uselessness, he
covers four pages of English writing-paper with his formal, regular
handwriting, and then looks for his seal wherewith to seal his epistle.
Rummaging in the various drawers and receptacles of the desk, he comes
across a small bracelet,--a delicate circlet to which is suspended a
crystal locket containing a four-leaved clover.
For a moment he cannot recall how he became possessed of the trifle.
Could it have been the gift of some sentimental female friend? In vain
he taxes his memory: no, it certainly is no memento of the kind. He
swings it to and fro upon his finger, letting the sunshine play upon
it, and then first perceives a cipher graven on the crystal, a Roman S,
surmounting a star. Involuntarily he murmurs below his breath,
"Stella!" and suddenly remembers where he found the bracelet,--on the
red velvet seat of a first-class coupe, three years before, towards the
end of April.
He had advertised it in the Viennese and Graetz newspapers, doing his
best to restore the _porte-bonheur_ to its owner, but in vain.
"In fact----" In an instant he recalls what Leskjewitsch had told him
of Stella's sad journey with her father. He smiles, leaves his letter
unsealed, goes to the window, looks down, into the garden, sees Stasy
busy with her chrysanthemums, hears, proceeding from a garden-tent at a
little distance, decorated with red tassels, the contralto tones of the
Baroness Meineck and the depressed and weeping replies of her pupil.
Through the languid summer air glide the harsh, forced modulations of
the 'Kreisleriana.'
"Ah!" He wends his way to the drawing-room. There, in the romantic
half-light that prevails, all the blinds and shades being closed to
shut out the hot July sun, he sees a light figure seated at the piano.
At his entrance she turns her golden head.
"Are you looking for any one?" she asks, in the midst of No. 6 of the
'Kreisleriana,' rather confused by his entrance, and trying furtively
to brush away the tears that still show upon her cheeks.
"Yes; I was looking for you, Baroness Stella."
"For me?" she asks, in surprise.
"Yes; I wanted to ask you something."
"Well?" She takes her hand from the keys and turns round towards him,
without rising.
"Three years ago I found a bracelet in a railway-coupe. Coming across
it by chance to-day, I perceive that it is marked with your cipher.
Does it belong----"
But Stella does not allow him to finish; deadly pale, and trembling in
every limb, she has sprung up and taken the bracelet from his hand.
"Oh, you cannot tell all you restore to me with this bracelet!" she
exclaims, and in her inexpressible delight she holds out to him both
her hands.
Are they so absorbed in each other as not to observe the apparition
which presents itself for an instant at the drawing-room door, only to
glide away immediately?
Meanwhile, in the garden a thrilling drama is being enacted. So
thoroughly bewildered at last by the Baroness's system of instruction
that his brain refuses to respond to even the small demands which her
growing contempt for his capacity permits her to make upon it, poor
Freddy feels so thoroughly ashamed of his inability that he lifts up
his voice and weeps aloud. When his mother hastens to him to learn what
has so distressed her son, he throws his arms around her waist and
cries out, in a tone of heart-breaking despair, "Mamma, mamma, what
will become of me? I am so stupid,--so very stupid!"
Katrine finds this beyond a jest. "I must entreat you not to trouble
yourself further with my boy's education, if this is the only result
you achieve, Lina," she says, provoked, whereupon the Baroness replies,
angrily,--
"I certainly shall not insist upon continuing my lessons, especially as
never in my life have I found any one so obtuse of comprehension in the
simplest matters as your son."
"Ah, you insinuate that my boy is a blockhead. Let me assure you,
however----"
In what mutual amenities the conversation of the sisters-in-law would
have culminated must remain a subject of conjecture; for at this moment
Stasy comes tripping along, saying, with an affected smile,--
"How wonderfully one can be mistaken as to character in others! Yes,
yes, still waters--still waters. Ha! ha!"
"What do you mean with your still waters?" Katrine asks,
contemptuously.
"Hush!" And Stasy archly lays her finger on her lip with a significant
glance towards the boy, who with his arms still about his mother's
waist is drying his tears upon her sleeve.
"Run into the house, Freddy, and bathe your eyes, and then we will take
a walk," Katrine says to her little son. "What is the matter?" she then
asks, coldly, turning to Stasy.
"Rohritz--aha!--we all thought him an extinct volcano. I, notoriously
reserved as I am, permitted myself to tease him slightly now and then,
thinking him entirely harmless. And now, now I find him in the yellow
drawing-room, _tete-a-tete_ with Stella, both her hands in his, gazing
into her lifted eyes, deep in a flirtation,--a flirtation _a
l'Americaine_,--quite beyond what is permissible. Really perilous!"
"If you thought the situation perilous for Stella, I really do not
understand why you did not interrupt the _tete-a-tete_," says Katrine,
severely.
"It was no affair of mine," Stasy replies. "How was I to know that so
sentimental an interview would not end in an offer of marriage?
Improbable, to be sure, for Rohritz is too cautious for that,--even
although he allows himself on a summer afternoon to be so far carried
away as to kiss the hand of a pretty girl in a _tete-a-tete_ with her."
Her eyes sparkling with anger, the Baroness hurries into the castle and
up-stairs to the drawing-room.
"Stella, what are you about here? Have you nothing to do? Come with
me!"
In terror Stella follows her mother as she strides on to their
apartments. There the Baroness closes the door behind her, and, seizing
her daughter by the arm, says,--
"Must I endure the disgrace of having my child conduct herself so
shamelessly in a strange house that strangers inform me that she is
flirting _a l'Americaine_ with young men?"
"I, mother! I----" exclaims Stella, her eyes riveted upon her mother's
angry face. "But I assure you---- Mother, mother, how can you say such
dreadful things to me?" And the girl bursts out sobbing. "It is Stasy
that has accused me. How can you attach any importance to what she
says?"
"No matter what Stasy says. Your conduct is extraordinary."
"But, mother, mother----"
"What have you to do with _tete-a-tetes_ with young men?" the Baroness
asks, with dramatic effect, the same Baroness who sent her child
to a singing-teacher three times a week without an escort. "It is
improper,--very improper. What must Rohritz think of you? You will come
to be like your aunt Eugenie!"
CHAPTER X.
FREDDY'S BIRTHDAY.
It is not to be denied that Stella's behaviour is always unconventional
and sometimes very thoughtless. On the whole, however, her little
indiscretions do not detract from her great natural charm. The
Baroness, not having taken any pains with her education, never of
herself notices these little indiscretions. But if a stranger alludes
to them her maternal ambition is profoundly outraged, and the
inevitable result is the bursting of a thunder-storm above Stella's
innocent head, a storm always sure to culminate in the fearful words,
"You will come to be like your aunt Eugenie!"
The real meaning of these words Stella never understands, since no one
has ever told her what has become of her aunt Eugenie, but she knows
that their significance must be terrible. Cowed and unhappy, she glides
about after every such explosion as if guilty of some crime, until her
bright animal spirits gain the upper hand and she begins afresh to talk
and to be thoughtless.
Her mother's last indignant remonstrance puts an end to all the kindly
freedom of her intercourse with Rohritz. She avoids him so evidently,
is so stiff and monosyllabic with him, that he at last questions the
captain as to the cause of this change, and receives from his friend a
distinct explanation.
"It is indeed no great bliss to be my sister's daughter," the captain
concludes. "Beneath her mother's intermittent care Stella seems to
me like a noble, sensitive horse beneath a very bad rider. I hate to
look on at such cruelty to animals, and I should be heartily glad to
find a good husband for her before her mother entirely ruins her. He
will have to be a good, noble-hearted fellow, clever and gentle at
once, with a firm, light hand, and plenty of money, for the child has
nothing,--more's the pity."
* * * * *
The time never flies faster than in summer: with no hurry, but with
graceful celerity, the lovely July days glide past in their rich robes
of dark green and sky-blue. The genii of summer play about us, fling
roses at our feet, and strew the grass with diamonds. They offer us
happiness, show it to us, whisper insinuatingly, "Take it,--ah, take
it." And some of us would gladly obey, but their hands are bound, and
others, remember how they once, on just such enchanting summer days,
stretched out their hands in eager longing for the roses, and at their
touch the roses vanished, leaving only the thorns in their grasp, and
they turn away with a mistrustful sigh. Others, again, examine the
offered joy hesitatingly, critically, refuse to decide, linger and
wait, and before they are aware the beneficent genii have vanished;
autumnal blasts have driven them away with the roses and the foliage.
The sun shines no longer, the skies are gray, and a cold wind sings a
shrill song of scorn in their ears.
'Passing!--passing!' One week, two weeks have passed since the Meinecks
arrived at Erlach Court. Each day Rohritz has found Stella more
charming, each day he has paid her more attention, but his real
intimacy with her has increased not one whit.
To-day is Freddy's birthday. Stella has presented him with a gorgeous
paint-box; he has received all sorts of gifts and toys from his parents
and relatives, and he has, of course, been more than usually petted and
caressed by his father and mother. His delight is extreme when he
learns that a picnic has been arranged for the day in his honour.
None of the older inmates of the castle take any special pleasure in
picnics; least of all has Katrine any liking for these complicated
undertakings. But Freddy adores them; and what would Katrine not do to
give her darling a delight?
It is Sunday. A gentle wind murmurs melodiously through the dewy grass,
and sighs among the thick foliage of the lindens like a dreamy echo of
the sweet monotonous tolling of bells that comes from the gleaming
white churches and chapels on the mountain-slopes on the other side of
the Save. From the open windows of the dining-room can be seen across
the low wall of the park the brown peasant-women, with pious,
expressionless faces, and huge square white headkerchiefs knotted at
the back of the neck, marching along the road to church. Above, in the
dark-blue sky myriads of fleecy clouds are flying, and swarms of airy
blue and yellow butterflies are fluttering about the Malmaison roses
and over the beds of heliotrope and mignonette in front of the castle.
There has been rain during the previous night, but not much, and the
whole earth seems decked in fresh and festal array. The sun shines
bright and golden, but the barometer is falling,--a depressing fact
which Baron Rohritz announces to all present at the birthday-breakfast.
Freddy's face grows long, and Katrine exclaims, hastily, "Your
barometer is intolerable!" She has no idea of sacrificing her child's
enjoyment to the whims of an impertinent barometer.
"Yes, Edgar, your barometer is a great bore," the captain remarks.
Whoever presumes to express an unpleasant or even inconvenient truth is
sure to be regarded as a great bore.
Meanwhile, Katrine has stepped out upon the terrace and convinced
herself that the weather is superb. Annihilating by a glance Rohritz
and his warning, she orders the servant who has just brought in a plate
of hot almond-cakes to have the horses harnessed immediately.
Rohritz placidly twirls his moustache, and remarks, as he rises from
table, that he will strap up his mackintosh. A few minutes afterwards
the carriages, a light-built drag and a solid landau, are announced. To
the drag are harnessed a couple of fiery young nags, while in default
of the carriage-horses, which have been ailing for a few days, the
landau is drawn by a pair of hacks, by no means spirited or
prepossessing in appearance.
The guests stand laughing and talking on the sweep before the castle.
Katrine's voice is heard giving orders; Stella is busy helping the
captain to pack away in the carriages the plentiful store of
provisions.
Swathed in airy clouds of muslin, sweetly suffering, but resisting the
united entreaties of all the rest that she will stay at home, Anastasia
leans against the vine-wreathed balustrade of the terrace, a
vinaigrette held to her nose.
Before Katrine has quite finished issuing her commands, the captain
with Stella mounts upon the front seat of the drag, the general taking
his place beside Freddy on the back seat. Want of room obliges the
captain to act as driver himself. He gathers up the reins, and his
steeds start off gaily. The rest of the company settle themselves as
best they can in the landau, the Baroness and Fraeulein von Gurlichingen
on the back seat, Rohritz with Katrine opposite them. A few anxious
moments ensue, in which every one asks the rest if they have not
forgotten something. The servants bring the due quantity of rugs,
plaids, umbrellas, and opera-glasses, and the coachman is bidden to
drive off. The hacks sadly stretch out their long, skinny legs, and
trot laboriously after the brisk drag.
In Reierstein, at the foot of a romantic ruin,--no picnic is
conceivable without a ruin,--a _dejeuner a la fourchette_ is to be
spread in the open air. Dinner, which has been postponed from six to
seven, is to be taken in Erlachhof on the return of the party.
Katrine is right: the day is superb, a fact of which she frequently
reminds the possessor of the odious barometer.
"Wait until evening before declaring the day fine," Rohritz rejoins,
sententiously. "The sun's rays sting like harvest-flies: that is a bad
sign."
"Oh, you are always foreboding evil," Katrine says, with irritation.
Rohritz bows, and silence ensues. Katrine looks preoccupied, wondering
whether the mayonnaise has not been forgotten at the last moment. Stasy
flourishes her vinaigrette languishingly, and the Baroness, who has
been hitherto absorbed in her own reflections, suddenly arouses
sufficiently to utter in her deepest tones an astounding observation
upon the imperfections of creation and the superfluity of human
existence, whereupon Rohritz agrees with her, seconding her views with
great ability in a Schopenhauer duet in which she maintains the
principal part. She asserts that marriage, since it is a means for the
continuance of the human species, should be avoided by all respectable
people, while Rohritz suggests the invention of a tremendous dynamite
machine which shall shatter the entire globe, as a fitting problem for
the wits of future engineers.
Meanwhile, the sunbeams gleam warm and golden upon the luxuriant July
foliage, and tremble upon the clear ripples of the trout-stream
plashing merrily along by the roadside. In the white cups of the wild
vines that drape with tender grace the willows and elders on the banks
of the little stream, prismatic drops of dew are shining. The tall
grasses wave dreamily, and at their feet peep out pink, yellow, and
blue wild flowers, while the air is filled with the melody of birds.
Our two pessimists, however, take no note whatever of these trifles.
The road grows stony and steep; the hacks drag along more and more
wearily and at last come to a stand-still. Anastasia becomes greener
and greener of hue, and sinks back half fainting. "Ah, I feel as if I
should die!"
In hopes of lightening the carriage and of avoiding the sight of
Fraeulein von Gurlichingen's distress, Rohritz proposes to alight and
pursue on foot the shorter path to Reierstein, with which he is
familiar.
CHAPTER XI.
CRABBING.
Meanwhile, the captain's spirited steeds have long since reached the
appointed spot. Horses and carriage have been disposed of at the inn of
a neighbouring village. It is an excellent hostelry, and would have
been a very pleasant place in which to take lunch, but, since the
delight of a picnic culminates, as is well known, in preparing hot,
unappetizing viands at a smoky fire in the open air and in partaking of
excellent cold dishes in the most uncomfortable position possible, the
party immediately leave the village, and Stella, Freddy, and the two
gentlemen, with the help of a peasant-lad hired for the purpose, drag
out the provisions to the ruin, where the table is to be spread, in the
shade of a romantic old oak.
Directly across the meadow flows the stream, now widened to a
considerable breadth, which had rippled at intervals by the roadside.
While Leskjewitsch and the general, both resigned martyrs to picnic
pleasure, set about collecting dry sticks for the fire, Freddy, who has
instantly divined crabs in the brook, having first obtained his
father's permission, pulls off his shoes and stockings and wades about
among the stones and reeds in the water.
"You look, little one, as if you wanted to go crabbing too," says the
captain to Stella, noting the longing looks which the girl is casting
after the boy.
"Indeed I should like to," she replies, nodding gravely; "but would it
be proper, uncle?"
"Whom need you regard?--me, or that old fellow," indicating over his
shoulder the general, "who is half blind?"
Stella laughs merrily.
"I certainly should not mind him; but"--she colours a little--"suppose
the rest were to come."
"Ah! you're thinking of Rohritz," says the captain. "Make your mind
easy: if I know those steeds, it will take them one hour longer to drag
the carriage up here, and by the time they arrive you can have caught
thirty-six Laybrook crabs. As soon as I hear the carriage coming I will
warn you by whistling our national hymn. So away with you to the water,
only take care not to cut your feet."
A minute or two later, Stella, without gloves, the sleeves of her gray
linen blouse rolled up above her elbows over her shapely white arms,
and gathering up her skirts with her left hand, while with the right
she feels for her prey, is wading in the sun-warmed water beside
Freddy, moving with all the attractive awkwardness of a pretty young
girl whose feet are cautiously seeking a resting-place among the sharp
stones, and who, although extremely eager to capture a great many
crabs, has a decided aversion to any spot that looks green and slimy.
The treacherous luck of all novices at any game is well known. Stella's
success in her first essay at crabbing is marvellous. She goes on
throwing more and more of the crawling, sprawling monsters into the
basket which Freddy holds ready. Her hat prevented her from seeing
clearly, so she has tossed it on the bank, and her hair, instead of
being neatly knotted up, hangs in a mass of tangled gold at the back of
her neck, nearly upon her shoulders, the sunbeams bringing out all
sorts of glittering reflections in its coils. She is just waving a
giant crustacean triumphantly on high, with, "Look, Freddy, did you
ever see such a big one!" when the blood rushes to her cheeks, her
brown eyes take on a tragic expression of dismay, and, utterly
confused, she drops the crab and her skirts.
"Am I intruding?" asks the new arrival, Rohritz, smiling as he notices
her confusion.
In her hurry to get out of the brook, she forgets to look where she is
stepping, and suddenly an expression of pain appears in her face, and
the water about her feet takes on a crimson tinge.
"You have cut your foot," Rohritz calls, seriously distressed, helping
her to reach the shore, where she sits down on the stump of a tree. The
captain and the general are both out of sight, and the blood runs
faster and faster from a considerable cut in the girl's foot. "We must
put a stop to that," says Rohritz, with anxiety that is almost
paternal, as he dips his handkerchief in the brook. But with a deep
blush Stella hides her foot beneath the hem of her dress, now, alas!
soiled and muddy. "Be reasonable," he insists, adopting a sterner tone:
"there should be no trifling with such things. Remember my gray hair: I
might be your father." And he kneels down, takes her foot in his hands,
and bandages the wound carefully and skilfully. In spite of his boasted
gray hair, however, it must be confessed that he experiences odd
sensations during this operation, the foot is so pretty, slender, but
not bony, soft as a rose-leaf, and so small withal that it almost fits
into the hollow of his hand.
Still more beautiful than her foot is her fair dishevelled head, so
turned that he sees only a vague profile, just enough to show him how
the blood has mounted to her temples, colouring cheek and neck crimson.
"Thanks!" she says, in a somewhat defiant tone, drawing the foot up
beneath her dress after he has finished bandaging it. Then, looking at
him with a lofty, rather mistrustful air, she asks, "How old are you,
really?"
"Thirty-seven," he replies, so accustomed to her strange questions that
they no longer surprise him.
"How could you say that you might be my father? You are at least five
years too young!" she exclaims, angrily. "And why did you appear so
suddenly?"
"I repent my intrusion with all my heart," Rohritz assures her. "The
horses seemed so tired that I thought three people a sufficient burden
for them, and so I alighted and came by the path across the fields."
At this moment shrill and clear across the meadow from the forest
bordering it come the notes of 'God save our Emperor!' and immediately
afterwards is heard the slow rumble of the approaching carriage.
"There, you see!" says Stella, still out of humour. "My uncle promised
me to whistle that as soon as the carriage could be heard; but no one
expected you on foot, and you came just twenty minutes too soon!"
CHAPTER XII.
DISASTER.
All that the Baroness says when she hears of Stella's mishap is, "I
cannot lose sight of you for an instant that you are not in some
mischief!"
Stella only sighs, "Poor mamma!" while Stasy, still livid as to
complexion, finds herself strong enough to glance with great
significance first at Stella and then at Rohritz. When she hears that
it is Rohritz that bandaged Stella's foot she vibrates between fainting
and a fit of laughter. She calls Rohritz nothing but 'my dear surgeon,'
accompanying the exquisite jest with a sly glance from time to time.
His enjoyment of this brilliant wit may be imagined.
The general grins; the Baroness looks angry; the captain and Katrine
are the only ones who observe nothing of Rohritz's annoyance or
Anastasia's jest; they are entirely absorbed in reproaching each other
for the absence of the corkscrew, which has been forgotten.
Yet, in spite of the double mischance thus attending the beginning of
the _dejeuner sur l'herbe_, all turns out pleasantly enough. The
general remembers that his pocket-knife is provided with a corkscrew;
the married pair recover their serenity; the crabs, in spite of
many obstacles, are half cooked at the fire, and--for Freddy's
sake--pronounced excellent; the cold capon and the _pate de foie gras_
leave nothing to be desired; the mayonnaise has not been forgotten, and
the champagne is capital.
Hilarity is so fully restored that when the carriages, ordered at five
o'clock, make their appearance, the company is singing in unison
'Prince Eugene, that noble soldier,' to an exhilarating accompaniment
played by the general with the back of a knife on a plate.
Baron Rohritz, who is not familiar with 'Prince Eugene,' and who
consequently listens in silence to that inspiring song, glances
critically at a small point of purple cloud creeping up from behind the
mountains.
"My barometer----" he begins; but Katrine interrupts him irritably:
"Ah, do spare us with your barometer!"
A foreign element suddenly mingles with the merry talk. A loud blast of
wind howls through the mighty branches of the old oak, tearing away a
handful of leaves to toss them as in scorn in the dismayed faces of the
party; a tall champagne-bottle falls over, and breaks two glasses.
"It is late; we have far to go, and the hacks are scarcely
trustworthy," the captain remarks. "I think we had better begin to pack
up."
Preparations to return are made hurriedly. The general begs for a place
in the landau, as his backbone is sorely in need of some support, and
Freddy also, who is apt to catch cold, is taken into the carriage from
the open conveyance.
No one expresses any anxiety with regard to Stella; she slips into her
brown water-proof and is helped up upon the box of the drag, where the
captain takes his place beside her, while Rohritz gets into the seat
behind them. They set off. Once more the sun breaks forth from among
the rapidly-darkening masses of clouds, but the air is heavy and in the
distance there is a faint mutter of thunder.
Wonderful to relate, the hired steeds follow the sorrels with the most
praiseworthy rapidity, due perhaps to the fact that the coachman makes
the whip whistle uninterruptedly about their long ears. Katrine, who is
sitting with her back to the horses, sees nothing of this, but rejoices
to find the pace of the hacks so much improved. Suddenly Stasy in a
panic exclaims, "Katrine!"
"What is the matter?"
"The driver--oh, look----"
Frau von Leskjewitsch turns, and sees the fat driver from the village
swaying to and fro on his seat like a pendulum. The carriage bumps
against a stone, the ladies scream, Freddy, who had fallen asleep
between the Baroness and Anastasia, wakens and asks in a piteous voice
what is the matter; the general springs up, tries to take the reins
from the driver, and roars as loud as his old lungs will permit,
"Leskjewitsch!"
The captain does not hear.
"Papa!" "Jack!" "Captain!" echo loud and shrill, until the captain,
told by Rohritz to turn and look, gives the reins to his old comrade,
jumps down from the drag, and runs to the assistance of his family. An
angry scene ensues between him and the driver, who tries to withhold
from him the reins,--is first violent, then maudlin, stammering in his
peasant-patois asseverations of his entire sobriety, until the captain
actually drags him down from the box and with a volley of abuse flings
him into a ditch. Katrine is attacked by a cramp in the jaw from
excitement. The Baroness ponders upon the etymological derivation of a
word in the patois of the country which she has fished out of the
captain's torrent of invective, and repeats it to herself in an
undertone. The general folds his hands over his stomach with
resignation, and sighs, "Dinner is ordered for seven o'clock." Freddy's
blue eyes sparkle merrily in the general confusion, and Stasy, since
there is positively no audience for her affectation, conducts herself
in a perfectly sensible manner. In the midst of the excitement, one of
the hacks deliberately lies down, and thus diverts the captain's
attention from the driver.
"By Jove, our case is bad,--worse than might be supposed. These screws
can scarcely stir," he exclaims: "that drunken scoundrel has beaten
them half to death. How we are to get home God knows: these brutes
cannot possibly drag this four-seated Noah's ark. We had better change
horses. Ho! Rohritz?"
"What is the matter?"
"Unharness those horses!"
In a short time the exchange is effected. The sorrels in their gay
trappings are harnessed to the heavy landau, the long-legged hacks to
the drag.
It is beginning to rain, and to grow dark.
Freddy is nearly smothered in plaids by his anxious mamma. The captain
mounts on the box of the four-seated vehicle, and calls to Rohritz,--
"Drive to Wolfsegg, the village across the ferry. We will await you
with fresh horses, at the inn there. Adieu."
And the captain gives his steeds the rein, and trots gaily past the
drag.
"_Tiens!_ Stella is left _tete-a-tete_ with Rohritz," Stasy whispers.
"And what of that?" Katrine says, rather crossly. "He will not kill
her."
"No, no; but people might talk."
"Pshaw! because of an hour's drive!"
"Wait and see how punctual they are," Stasy giggles maliciously.
"Anastasia, you are outrageous!" Katrine declares.
"Wait and see," Anastasia repeats; "wait and see."
CHAPTER XIII.
IDYLLIC.
"Are you well protected, Fraeulein Stella?" Rohritz asks his young
companion, after a long silence.
"Oh, yes," says Stella, contentedly wrapping herself in her shabby,
thin, twenty-franc water-proof and pulling the hood over her fair head,
"I am quite warm. It was a good thing that you gave us warning, or I
should certainly have left my water-proof at home."
"You see an 'old bore,' as Les called my barometer, can be of use under
certain circumstances."
"Indeed it can," Stella nods assent; "but it would have been a pity to
give up the picnic at the bidding of your weather-prophet, for, on the
whole, it was a great success."
"Are you serious?" Rohritz asks, surprised.
"Why should you doubt it?"
"Why, you have had less cause than any of us to enjoy the day. You have
cut your foot, have spoiled a very pretty gown, and are in danger, if
it goes on pouring thus, of being wet to the skin in spite of your
water-proof."
"That is of no consequence," she declares from out the brown hood, her
fair dripping face laughing up at him through the rain and the
gathering darkness. "Where is the harm in getting a little wet? It is
quite delightful."
He is silent. She is to be envied for her gay, happy temperament, and
she looks wonderfully pretty in spite of her grotesque wrap.
Not the faintest breath of wind diverts from the perpendicular the
downfall of rain. The road leads between two steep wooded heights,
whence are wafted woodland odours both sweet and acrid. Intense
peace--an unspeakably beneficent repose--reigns around; in grave
harmonious accord blend the rushing of the brook, the falling of the
rain, and the low whisper and murmur of the dripping leaves, informing
the silence with a sense of enjoyment.
"How beautiful! how wonderfully beautiful!" Stella exclaims; her soft
voice has a strange power to touch the heart, and in its gayest tones
there always trembles something like suppressed tears.
"Yes, it is beautiful," Rohritz admits, "but"--with a glance of
mistrust at the wretched hacks--"when we shall reach Wolfsegg heaven
alone knows!"
Is he so very anxious to reach Wolfsegg? To be frank, no! He feels
unreasonably comfortable in this rain-drenched solitude, beside
this pretty fair-haired child; he cannot help rejoicing in this
_tete-a-tete_. Since the day when Stella thanked him with perhaps
exaggerated warmth for returning her locket, she has never seemed so
much at her ease with him as now.
The desire assails him to probe her pure innocent nature without her
knowledge,--to learn something of her short past, of her true self.
Meanwhile, he repeats, "But it is beautiful,--wonderfully beautiful!"
The wretched horses drag along more and more laboriously. Rohritz has
much ado to prevent their drooping their gray noses to the ground to
crop the dripping grass that clothes each side of the road in emerald
luxuriance.
"Delightful task, the driving of these lame hacks!" he exclaims. "I can
imagine only one pleasure equal to it,--waltzing with a lame partner.
This last I know, of course, only from hearsay."
"Did you never dance?" asks Stella.
"No, never since I left the Academy. Have you been to many balls?"
"Never but to one, in Venice, at the Princess Giovanelli's," Stella
replies. "After the first waltz I became so ill that I would not run
the risk of fainting and making myself and my partner ridiculous. My
enjoyment then consisted in sitting for half an hour between two old
ladies on a sofa, and eating an ice to restore me. At twelve o'clock
punctually I hurried back, moreover, to the Britannia, for I knew that
my poor sick father would sit up to be regaled with an account of my
conquests. He was firmly convinced that I should make conquests. Poor
papa! You must not laugh at his delusion! The next day the other girls
in the hotel pitied me for not having had any partner for the cotillon;
they displayed their bouquets to me, as the Indians after a battle show
the scalps they have taken. They told me of their adorers, and of the
_passions funestes_ which they had inspired, and asked me what I had
achieved in that direction. And I could only cast down my eyes, and
reply, 'Nothing.' And to think that to-day, after all these years, I
must give the same answer to the same question,--'Nothing!'"
"You have never danced, then!" Rohritz says, thoughtfully.
Strange, how this fact attracts him. Stella seems to him like a fruit
not quite ripened by the sun, but gleaming among cool, overshadowing
foliage in absolute, untouched freshness. Such dewy-fresh fruit is
wonderfully inviting; he feels almost like stretching out his hand for
it. But no, it would be folly,--ridiculous; he is an old man, she a
child; it is impossible. And yet----
Both are so absorbed in their thoughts that they do not observe how
very dark it has grown, how threatening is the aspect of the skies.
Leaving the ravine, the road now leads along the bank of the Save. The
pools on each side grow deeper, the mud splashes from the wheels on
Stella's knees: she does not notice it.
"Your last remark was a little bold," Rohritz now says, bending towards
her.
"Bold?" Stella repeats, in dismay: 'bold,' for her, means pert,
aggressive,--in short, something terrible.
"Yes," he continues, smiling at her agitation; "you asserted something
that seems to me incredible,--that you never have inspired any one with
a----"
He hesitates.
A brilliant flash quivers in the sky; by its light they see the Save
foaming along in its narrow bed, swollen to overflowing by the recent
torrents of rain. Then all is dark as night; a loud peal of thunder
shakes the air, and the blast of the storm comes hissing as if with
repressed fury from the mountains.
The horses tremble, one of them stumbles and falls, the traces break,
and down goes the carriage.
"Now we are done for!" Rohritz exclaims, as he jumps down to
investigate the extent of the damage.
Further progress is out of the question. He succeeds by a violent
effort in dragging to his feet the exhausted horse, then unharnesses
both animals and ties them as well as he can to a picket-fence, the
accident having occurred close to an isolated cottage with an adjacent
garden. Rohritz knocks at its doors and windows in vain; no one
appears. In the deep recess of one of the doors is a step affording a
tolerable seat. He spreads a plaid over it, and then, going to Stella,
he says, "Allow me to lift you down; I must drag the carriage aside
from the road. There! you are not quite sheltered yet from the rain;
move a little farther into the corner,--so."
"Oh, I don't in the least mind getting wet," Stella assures him; "but
what shall we do? We cannot sit here all night long in hopes that some
chance passers-by may fish us out of the wet."
"If you could walk, there would be no difficulty. The inn this side of
the ferry is only a quarter of a mile off, and we could easily hire a
couple of horses there. Can you stand on your foot?"
"It gives me a great deal of pain to stand, and, since Uncle Jack has
my other shoe in his pocket, how am I to walk?"
"That is indeed unfortunate."
"You had better go for help to the inn of which you speak," Stella
proposes.
"Then I should have to leave you here alone," says Rohritz, shaking his
head.
"I am not afraid," she declares, with the hardihood of utter
inexperience.
"But I am afraid for you; I cannot endure the thought of leaving you
here alone on Sunday, when all the men about are intoxicated. One of
the roughest of them might chance to pass by."
"In all probability no one will pass," says Stella. "Go as quickly as
you can, that we may get away from here."
"In fact, she is right," Edgar says to himself. He turns to go, then
returns once more, and, taking his mackintosh from his shoulders, wraps
it about her.
He is gone. How slowly time passes when one is waiting in the dark!
With monotonous force, in a kind of grand rhythmical cadence the rain
pours down to the accompaniment of the swirling Save. No other sound is
to be heard. Stella looks round at the horses, which she can dimly
discern. One is lying, all four legs stretched out, in the mud, in the
position in which artists are wont to portray horses killed on a
battle-field; the other is nibbling with apparent relish at some
greenery that has grown across the garden fence. From time to time a
flash of lightning illumines the darkness. Stella takes out her watch
to note the time by one of these momentary illuminations. It must have
stopped,--no, it is actually only a quarter of an hour since Edgar's
departure.
Hark! the rolling of wheels mingles with the rush of the Save and the
plash of the rain. The sound of a human voice falls upon the girl's
ear. She listens, delighted. Is it Rohritz? No, that is not his voice:
there are several voices, suspiciously rough, peasants rolling past in
a small basket-wagon, trolling some monotonous Slav melody. By a red
flash of lightning the rude company is revealed, the driver mercilessly
plying his whip upon the back of a very small horse, that is galloping
through the mire with distended nostrils and fluttering mane.
Stella's heart beats, her boasted courage shrivels up to nothing. A few
more minutes pass, and now she hears steps. Is he coming? No; the steps
approach from the opposite direction, stumbling, dragging steps,--those
of a drunkard.
A nameless, unreasoning dread takes possession of her. Ah! she hears
the quick firm rhythm of an elastic tread.
"Baron Rohritz!" she screams, as loud as she can. "Baron Rohritz!"
The step quickens into a run, and a moment later Rohritz is beside her.
"For God's sake, what is the matter?" he says, much distressed.
"Oh, nothing, nothing,--only a drunken man. My courage oozed away
pitifully. Heaven knows whether, if you had not appeared, I might not
have plunged into the Save from sheer cowardice. But all is well now.
Is a vehicle coming?"
"Unfortunately, there was none to be had. I could only get a
peasant-lad to take care of the horses. If there was the slightest
dependence to be placed upon these confounded brutes I could put you on
the least broken-down of them and lead him slowly to the inn. But,
unfortunately, I am convinced that the beast could not carry you: he
would fall with you in the first pool in the road. With all the desire
in the world to help you, I cannot. You must try to walk as far as the
inn. I have brought you one of the ferryman's wife's shoes."
And while Stella is putting the huge patent-leather shoe on her
bandaged foot, Rohritz directs the peasant-lad to fish his plaid and
rugs out of the mud and to lead the horses slowly to the inn. As he
walks away with Stella they hear the boy's loud drawling 'Hey!' 'Get
up,' with which he seeks to inspirit the miserable brutes.
Leaning on the arm of her escort, Stella does her best to proceed
without yielding to the pain which every minute increases, but her
movements grow slower and more laboured, and finally a low moan escapes
her lips.
"Let me rest just one moment," she entreats, piteously, ashamed of a
helplessness of which a normally constituted woman would have made
capital.
"Do not walk any farther," he rejoins, and, bending over her, he says,
with decision, "I pray you put your right arm around my neck, clasp it
well: treat me absolutely as a _porte-faix_."
"But, Baron----"
"Do not oppose me, I entreat: at present _I_ am in command." His tone
is very kind, but also very authoritative.
She obeys, half mechanically. He carries her firmly and securely,
without stumbling, without betraying the slightest fatigue. At first
her sensations are distressing; then slowly, gradually, a pleasant
sense of being shielded and cared for overcomes her: her thoughts stray
far, far into the past,--back to the time when her father hid her
against his breast beneath his cavalry cloak, and she looked out
between its folds from the warm darkness upon the world outside. The
minutes fly.
"We are here!" Rohritz says, very hoarsely.
She looks up. A reddish light is streaming out into the darkness from
the windows of a low, clumsy building. He puts her down on the
threshold of the inn.
"Thanks!" she murmurs, without looking at him. He is silent.
The inn parlour is empty. A bright fire is burning in the huge tiled
stove; the fragrance of cedar-berries slowly scorching on its ledge
neutralizes in part the odour of old cheese, beer, and cheap tobacco
plainly to be perceived in spite of the open window. In a broad cabinet
with glazed doors are to be seen among various monstrosities of glass
and porcelain two battered sugar ships with paper pennons, and a bridal
wreath with crumpled white muslin blossoms and arsenic-green leaves.
The portraits of their Majesties, very youthful in appearance, dating
from their coronation, hang on each side of this piece of furniture.
Among the various tables covered with black oil-cloth there is one of
rustic neatness provided with a red-flowered cover, and set with
greenish glasses, blue-rimmed plates, and iron knives and forks with
wooden handles.
The hostess, a colossal dame, who looks like a meal-sack with a string
tied around its middle, makes her appearance, to receive the
unfortunates and to place her entire wardrobe at Stella's disposal.
"Can we not go on, then?" Stella asks, in dismay.
"Unfortunately, no. I have sent to the nearest village for some sort of
conveyance, and my messenger cannot possibly return in less than an
hour. And I must prepare you for another unfortunate circumstance: we
shall be forced to go by a very long and roundabout road; the Groeblach
bridge is carried away, and the Save is whirling along in its current
the pillars and ruins, making the ferry impracticable for the present."
"Oh, good heavens!" sighs Stella, who has meanwhile taken off her
dripping water-proof and wrapped about her shoulders a thick red shawl
loaned her by the hostess. "Well, at least we are under shelter."
Thereupon the hostess brings in a grass-green waiter on which are
placed a dish of ham and eggs and a can of beer.
"I ordered a little supper, but I cannot vouch for the excellence of
the viands," Rohritz says, in French, to Stella. "I should be glad if
you would consent to eat something warm. It is the best preventive
against cold."
Stella shows no disposition to criticise what is thus set before her.
"How pleasant!" she exclaims, gaily, taking her seat at the table. "I
am terribly hungry, and I had not ventured to hope for anything to eat
before midnight."
It is a pleasure to him to sit opposite to her, looking at her pretty,
cheerful face,--a pleasure to laugh at her gay sallies.
Would it not be charming to sit opposite to her thus daily at his own
table,--to lavish care and tenderness upon the poor child who had been
so neglected and thrust out into the world,--to spoil and pet her to
his heart's content? "Grasp your chance,--grasp it!" the heart in his
bosom cries out: "her lot is hard, she is grateful for a little
sympathy, will she not smile on you in spite of your gray hair?" But
reason admonishes: "Forbear! she is only a child. To be sure, if, as
she has avowed, her heart be really untouched, why then----"
Whilst he, absorbed in such careful musings, grows more and more
taciturn, she chatters away gaily upon every conceivable topic,
devouring with an appetite to be envied the frugal refection he has
provided.
"It is delightful, our improvised supper," she declares, "almost as
charming as the little suppers at the Britannia which papa used to have
ready for me when I came home from parties in Venice, as terribly
hungry as one always is on returning from a Venetian soiree, where one
is delightfully entertained but gets nothing to eat."
"It seems, then, that the Giovanelli ball was not your only glimpse of
Venetian society?" Rohritz remarks, with a glance that is well-nigh
indiscreetly searching.
"Before papa grew so much worse I very often went out: papa insisted
upon it. The Countess L---- chaperoned me. And at Lady Stair's evenings
in especial I enjoyed myself almost as much as I was bored at the
Giovanelli ball. I cannot, 'tis true, dance; but talk,"--she laughs
somewhat shyly, as if in ridicule of her talkativeness,--"I _can_
talk."
"That there is nothing to eat at a Venetian soiree I know from
experience," Rohritz says, rather ill-humouredly, "but how one can find
any enjoyment there I am absolutely unable to understand. Venetian
society is terrible: the men especially are intolerable."
"I did not find it so," Stella declares, shaking her head with her
usual grave simplicity in asserting her opinion; "not at all."
"But you must confess that Italians are usually low-toned; that----"
"But I did not meet Italians exclusively; I met Austrians, English,
Russians; although in fact"--she pauses reflectively, then says, with
conviction--"the nicest of all, my very particular friend, was an
Italian, Prince Zino Capito."
"He calls himself an Austrian," Rohritz interposes.
"He was born in Rome," Stella rejoins.
"I see you know all about him," Rohritz observes.
"We saw a great deal of each other," Stella chatters on easily. "We
were in the same hotel, papa and I, and the Prince. His place at table
was next to mine, and in fine weather he used to take us to sail in his
cutter. He often came in the evenings to play bezique with papa. He was
very kind to papa."
"Evidently," Rohritz observes.
"You seem to dislike him!" Stella says, in some surprise.
"Not at all. We always got along very well together," Rohritz coldly
assures her. "I know him intimately; my oldest brother married his
sister Therese."
"Ah! is she as handsome as he?" Stella asks, innocently.
"Very graceful and distinguished in appearance; she does not resemble
him at all." And with a growing sharpness in his tone Rohritz adds,--
"Do you think him so very handsome?"
The hostess interrupts them by bringing in a dish of inviting
strawberries. Stella thanks her kindly for her excellent supper, the
woman says something to Rohritz in the peasant patois, which Stella
does not understand, and he fastens his eye-glass in his eye, a sign
with him of a momentary access of ill humour.
After the woman has withdrawn he remarks, with an odd twinkle of his
eyes, "How many years too young did you say I was, Baroness Stella, to
be your father? four or five, was it not? _Eh bien_, our hostess thinks
differently: she has just congratulated me upon my charming daughter."
But Stella has no time to make reply: her eyes are riveted in horror
upon the clock against the wall. "Is it really half-past ten?" she
exclaims. "No, thank heaven; the clock has stopped. What o'clock is it,
Baron Rohritz?"
"A quarter after eleven," he says, startled himself, and rather
uncomfortable. "I do not understand why the messenger is not here with
the conveyance."
"Good heavens!" Stella cries, in utter dismay. "What will mamma say?"
"Be reasonable. Your mother cannot blame you in this case; she must be
informed that it was impossible to cross the ferry," he says, anxious
himself about the matter, however.
"Certainly; but while she does not know of our break-down she will
think we have had plenty of time to reach Wolfsegg by the longest way
round. You certainly acted for the best, but it would have been better,
much better, if Uncle Jack had stayed with me. He knows all about the
country, and he has a decided way of making these lazy peasants do as
he pleases."
"I do not believe that with all his knowledge of the country, and his
decision of character, he could have succeeded in procuring you a
conveyance," Rohritz says, with growing irritation.
"If the ferry is useless, perhaps we might cross in a skiff," Stella
says, almost in tears.
"I will see what is to be done," he rejoins. "At all events it shall
not be my fault if your mother's anxiety is not fully appeased in the
course of the next half-hour."
With this he leaves the room. Shortly afterwards the hostess makes her
appearance.
"Where has the Herr Papa gone?" she asks.
"He has gone out to see if we cannot cross the Save in a boat."
"He cannot do it to-night," the woman asserts. "He would surely not
think of----" Without finishing her sentence she puts down the plate of
cheese she has just brought, and hurries away.
Stella is perplexed. What does he mean to do? What is the hostess so
foolishly afraid of? She limps to the open window, and sees Rohritz on
the bank of the stream, talking in the Slavonic dialect, which she does
not understand, with a rough-looking man. The rain has ceased, the
clouds are rent and flying, and from among them the moon shines with a
bluish lustre, strewing silver gleams upon the quiet road with its
net-work of pools and ruts, upon the wildly-rushing Save with its
foaming billows, upon the black roof of the hut which serves as a
shelter for the ferrymen, and upon a rocking skiff which is fastened to
the shore. A sudden dread seizes upon Stella, a dread stronger by far
than her childish fear of her mother's harsh words. The hostess enters.
"Not a bit will the gentleman heed,--stiff-necked he is, the water
boiling, and not a man will risk the rowing him: he be's to sail alone
to Wolfsegg, and ne'er a one can hinder him."
Stella sees Rohritz get into the skiff, sees the fisherman take hold of
the chain that fastens it to the shore. Not even conscious of the pain
in her wounded foot, she rushes out, and across the muddy road to the
bank, where the fisherman has already unfastened the chain and is
preparing to push the boat out of the swamp into the rushing current.
"Good heavens! are you mad?" she calls aloud to Rohritz. "What are you
about?"
Rohritz turns hastily; their eyes meet in the moonlight. "After what
you said to me there is nothing for me to do save to shield your
reputation at all hazards.--Push off!" he orders the fisherman.
"No," she calls: "it never occurred to me to consider my reputation. I
was only a coward, and afraid of mamma."
The fisherman hesitates. Rohritz takes the oars. "Push off!" he orders,
angrily.
"Do so, if you choose," Stella cries, "but you will take me with you!"
Whereupon she jumps into the boat, and, striking her poor wounded foot
against a seat, utterly breaks down with the pain. "I was a coward;
yes, yes, I was afraid of mamma; but I would rather have her refuse to
speak to me than have you drowned," she sobs.
Her streaming eyes are riveted in great distress upon his face, and her
soft, trembling hands try to clasp his arm. About the skiff the waves
plash, "Grasp it, grasp it; your happiness lies at your feet!"
His whole frame is thrilled. He stoops and lifts her up. "But, Stella,
my poor foolish angel----" he begins.
At this moment there is a rattle of wheels, and then the captain's
voice: "Rohritz! Rohritz!"
"All's right now!" says Rohritz, drawing a deep breath.
As it now appears, the captain has come by the long roundabout road,
with a borrowed vehicle, to the relief of the unfortunates. The
general, who, whatever disagreeable qualities he may possess, is a
'gentleman coachman' of renown, has declared himself quite ready to
conduct the landau with its spirited span of horses to Erlach Court.
"What have you been about? What has happened to you?" the captain
repeats, and he shakes his head, claps his hands, and laughs by turns,
as with mutual interruptions and explanations the tale of disaster is
unfolded to him.
Then Stella is packed inside the little vehicle, Rohritz takes his
place beside her, and the captain is squeezed up on the front seat.
Before fifteen minutes are over Stella is sound asleep. Rohritz wraps
his plaid about her shoulders without her knowledge.
"She is tired out," he whispers. "I only hope her foot is not going to
give her trouble. Were you very anxious?"
"My wife was almost beside herself. My sister took the matter, on the
contrary, very quietly, until finally Stasy put some ridiculous ideas
of impropriety into her head, and then she talked nonsense, alternately
scolding you and the child, marching up and down the common room at the
Wolfsegg inn like a bear in a cage, until I could bear it no longer,
but left the entire party on the general's shoulders to be driven home,
and set out in search of you. How did Stella behave herself? Did she
give you any trouble?"
"No; she was very quiet."
"She is a dear girl, is she not? Poor child! she really has had too
much to bear. Of course I would not confess it to Stasy, but it is a
fact that if any other man had been in your place I should have been
excessively annoyed."
"My gray hair has been of immense advantage to your niece," Rohritz
assured him. "The hostess at the ferry persisted in taking me for her
father."
"Nonsense!"
"Nonsense which at least showed me at the right moment precisely where
I stood," Rohritz murmured. "And, between ourselves,--never allude to
it again,--it was necessary."
* * * * *
The captain, who naturally enough sees nothing in his friend's words
but an allusion to his altered circumstances, sighs, and thinks, "What
a pity!"
CHAPTER XIV.
A DEPARTURE.
When the three wanderers arrive, at Erlach Court a little after
midnight, they find the rest in the dining-room, still sitting around
the remains of a very much over-cooked dinner. Stasy, in a pink
peignoir, hails Rohritz upon his entrance with, "I have won my
bet,--six pair of Jouvin's gloves from Katrine. I wagered you would be
late--ha! ha!"
"A fact easy to foresee, in view of the condition of the horses and the
roads," Rohritz rejoins, frowning.
The affair, so far as it concerns Stella, who approaches her mother
with fear and trembling, turns out fairly well. As the Baroness's
natural feeling of maternal anxiety for her daughter's safety has only
been temporarily disturbed by Stasy's insinuations, she forgets to
scold Stella, in her joy at seeing her safe and sound. That she may not
give way to an outburst of anger upon further consideration, and that
an end may be put to Stasy's jests, the captain instantly plunges into
a detailed account of all the mishaps that have befallen Stella and her
escort.
Katrine meanwhile searches for a telegram that has arrived for Rohritz,
finally discovering it under an old-fashioned decanter on the
sideboard.
"What is the matter?" she asks, kindly, seeing him change colour upon
reading it.
"Moritz, an apoplectic stroke, come immediately.
Ernestine."
he reads aloud. "'Tis from my eldest sister. Poor Tina!" he murmurs. "I
must leave to-morrow by the seven-o'clock train from Gradenik. Can you
let me have a pair of horses, Les?"
The captain sends instantly to have everything in readiness.
Shortly afterwards Rohritz takes leave of the ladies; he does not, of
course, venture to expect that after the fatigues of the day they will
rise before six in the morning for his sake. Stella's hand he retains a
few seconds longer than he ought, and he notices that it trembles in
his own.
So summary is his mode of preparation that his belongings are all
packed in little more than half an hour, and he then disposes himself
to spend the rest of the night in refreshing slumber. But sleep is
denied him: a strange unrest possesses him. Happiness knocks at the
door of his heart and entreats, 'Ah, let me in, let me in!' But Reason
stands sentinel there and refuses to admit her.
He tossed to and fro for hours, unable to compose himself. Towards
morning he had a strange dream. He seemed to be walking in a lovely
summer night: the moon shone bright through the branches of an old
linden, and lay in arabesque patterns of light on the dark ground
beneath. Suddenly he perceived a small dark object lying at his feet,
and when he stooped to see what it was he found it was a little bird
that had fallen out of the nest and now looked up at him sadly and
helplessly from large dark eyes. He picked it up and warmed it against
his breast. It nestled delightedly into his hand. He pressed his lips
to the warm little head; an electric thrill shot through his veins.
"Stella, my poor, dear, foolish child!" he murmured.
Rat-tat-tat--rat-tat-tat! He started and awoke. The servant was
knocking at his door to arouse him. "The Herr Baron's hot
shaving-water."
When, half an hour later, he appears, dressed with his usual fastidious
care, in the dining-room, he finds both the master and the mistress of
the house already there to do the honours of what he calls, with
courteous exaggeration, 'the last meal of the condemned.' Shortly
afterwards Stasy appears. The general, through a servant, makes a
back-ache a plea for not rising at so early an hour.
The carriage is announced; Rohritz kisses Katrine's hand and thanks her
for some delightful weeks. She and the captain accompany him to the
carriage, while Stasy contents herself with kissing her hand to him
from the terrace. At the last moment Rohritz discovers that he has no
matches, and a servant is sent into the house to get him some.
"It is settled between us, now," Katrine begins, "that whenever you are
fairly tired out with mankind in general----"
"I shall come to Erlach Court to learn to prize it in particular; most
certainly, madame," Rohritz replies, his glance roving restlessly among
the upper windows of the castle. "_Au revoir_ at Christmas!"
The morning is cool; the cloudless skies are pale blue, the turf silver
gray with dew; the carriage makes deep ruts in the moist gravel of the
sweep; the blossoms have fallen from the linden and are lying by
thousands shrivelled and faded at its feet, while the rustle of the
dripping dew among its mighty branches can be distinctly heard.
The servant brings the matches. Rohritz still lingers.
"Do not forget, madame, to bid the Baroness Meineck----" he begins,
when the sound of a limping foot-fall strikes his ear. He turns
hastily: it is Stella,--Stella in a white morning gown, her hair
loosely twisted up, very pale, very charming, her eyes gazing large and
grave from out her mobile countenance.
"Have you, too, made your appearance at last, you lazy little person?
'Tis
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