Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of the castle, tolling restlessly.
Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion, the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.
She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left alone with the body.
Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed, Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and this they laid beneath her head.
Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.
He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.
Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it knock against the wall at a sharp turn.
She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.
Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train. Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and kind to all.
It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.
Through the new life strode death.
Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long procession with large eyes of wonder.
The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.
His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice. With very little trouble he deciphered them: "My last will."
He frowned. "So she has made a fresh will," he said to himself. In spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed envelope inscribed "My last will." Strachinsky slipped the document into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.
At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter. Although the day was warm and sunshiny, she looked cold, and in all her movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to creep away and hide himself. The resolute attitude she had been wont to maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul seemed alike crushed.
"What do you want here?" Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.
She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain passed through her. "What should I want?" she murmured, in a hoarse whisper. "I want to go to my mother!" She said it to herself, not to him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.
No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will. Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud. It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields, the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.
Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal document of the kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she constituted him her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be distinctly developed.
Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and strong, had been clouded of late years.
So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the seal of the will.
Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in his own eyes both himself and his motives.
Whilst reading the document he changed colour several times. When he had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: "Poor Emma!" Then, after pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, "She would be indeed distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!" A flood of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily, overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last will.
And then, without the slightest pricking of conscience, he betook himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed an act of exalted devotion.
"No need, dearest Emma," he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait which hung above his couch, "to say that I never shall let your child want. No legal document is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!" And, remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period of his existence, he moaned, drearily, "Oh, what a noble mind was there o'erthrown!"
When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt it incumbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, "Poor little Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that you still have a father."
Weeks passed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded all the servants, without assigning any grounds for his displeasure. No one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.
With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by asking her to play something upon the piano.
During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of the gravest anxiety.
At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever required to show what progress she had made.
Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. "I see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive! And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess could claim, while you--you do nothing!" And then would follow a long dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, "What is to become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?" Then he would bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to betake himself to his sofa.
The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical as a housekeeper, but prone to fall in love with every man, and to find a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her morbid and distorted sentimentality.
During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite attention from the other sex. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons, in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.
She sang. Her répertoire was limited, consisting principally of the soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet "I would that my love could silently flow in a single word," which she shrieked out as a solo, and in Schumann's "I'll not complain,"--which last always caused her to shed copious tears.
At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm passed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of patience.
Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.
At first the master of the house took but little heed of these demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for him "The Tyrolean and his Child," and also to repeat "May Breezes," she was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their meaning.
The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from his favourite hero "Pelham," he asked her as she stood before him,--
"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"
She nodded.
He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction. His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said, "Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"
He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the perusal of his novel.
From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.
Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his dressing-room.
This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a tragic turn.
One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician, summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.
Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence, recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many personal attractions.
Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.
When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'
All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter, followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone. Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the servants to pass the time; another, again, might have married the bailiff out of sheer ennui: assuredly any one else would have grown stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.
She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes, before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the neighboring country.
But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the least alteration in her circumstances, the poor child began to be impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a pianist?
On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written document, but when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed at last. "Lenzdorff," she repeated, thoughtfully,--"Lenzdorff." What possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter stranger--explaining her circumstances? Would it not be much better to turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his relatives. Why?
Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter, but never of those of her first husband.
"Lenzdorff." She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do something for her; but----
Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, "VonLenzdorff?" her mother had replied, sternly, "What is that to you? It is of no consequence whatever."
Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have done so.
If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any business discussion or explanation with them would have been most distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's maintenance cost him little or nothing.
Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor awaited her.
A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.
In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.
"What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?" she asked, irritably, suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.
"A foreign gentleman."
"Old or young?"
"An elderly gentleman."
"Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him," she murmured, "I can go just as I am." She knew from books, whence she derived all her worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.
"What in the world can he want of me?"
She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.
Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various pecuniary embarrassments, to the Jew broker of the village.
Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would be snatched from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had been dear to him, as she was to all around her.
She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his affection to stand in the way of his ease.
In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which looked comical.
The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in bearing, rose to receive her.
"May I beg you to present me to the Countess?" he said, turning to Strachinsky.
"Countess!" It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?
"Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter," with a wave of the hand.
"Your step-daughter," the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.
"I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead in their early youth," said the other; and he was right, for he had taken very little interest in his own children. "You know that, my child," he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his flabby warm touch.
Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.
Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual "Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr Doctor!"
Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy? Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with thrilling fascination.
Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest physical exertion.
Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered her a place on the sofa, assumed a dignified air, or what she supposed to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger. Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.
He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the while.
Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.
"A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!" he ordered the young girl, forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and falling into his usual tone.
"Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account," Doctor Herbegg interposed. "I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch the next train for Berlin."
"Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a glass of Tokay," Strachinsky persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add, "Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it." He arose, and as he was leaving the room he went on, "The Herr Doctor will inform you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects."
The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about the glass of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a short time had explained matters to her.
The title of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her, apparently because in the circumstances in which she was forced to educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help, was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate devolved upon his grand-daughter.
The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves to be upon the defensive with the entire male sex. She carried a waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.
"One little glass, Herr Doctor,--one little glass!" cried Strachinsky.
The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the glass distrustfully with his lips.
"The Tokay is excellent," he remarked, in evident surprise at finding anything of Strachinsky's genuine.
"Yes, yes," his host declared; "you can't get such a glass of wine as that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--les restes des grandeurs passées, my dear Doctor."
After a first glass Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he patted the lawyer on the shoulder. "Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg; you'll not easily find another glass of such Tokay."
Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his second glass. He looked at his watch and said, "Unfortunately, Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish. Where and with whom have you been educated?"
"At home, and with my mother."
"Exclusively with your mother?"
"Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano."
She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.
"My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's," Strachinsky interposed.--"Play something to the Doctor; be quick!" he ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again hisrôleof tender parent. His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.
She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother. Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her performance.
"Magnificent, Countess!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards her as she left the piano.
"Very well; but you missed that last chord once," Strachinsky said, pompously.
Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. "Now I am forced to go," he said to the young girl; "and you must not smile, Countess, if I tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an untrained village girl."
Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. "My grandmother had no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind."
He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light. "Forgive me," he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then, turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.
His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech. "You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"
"Extremely original," the lawyer assented.
On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began, bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she provided for her daughter's future?"
Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible degree of embarrassment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.
Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in writing a few days before her death.
Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary document would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she die I should care for her daughter as for my own."
"H'm!" the Doctor ejaculated. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"
"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."
The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess Lenzdorff of your wife's death."
Strachinsky assumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly, but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"
"But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your step-daughter's destiny," Doctor Herbegg observed.
"My wife considered me the guardian of her child," Strachinsky declared, with pathos. "Another man might have refused to accept a burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----"
"Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train," said the Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.
Strachinsky ran after him with astonishing celerity, expatiating upon his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.
His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out, "Now we shall lack for nothing!" Then, turning to Erika, he continued, "I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to free Luzano from its weight of debt."
This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second glass of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, "The affair has greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to wait upon fortune so long---!"
He had settled it with himself that he was the person principally interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at most the means to an end. But circumstances shaped themselves after what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fashion. Erika received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with him whatever.
By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky, formally advising him to resign his guardianship voluntarily. Should he comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal means for relieving herself of such interference.
Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with gnashing his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he assumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter, but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.
On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time, and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields towards the river.
Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor such as she had never before experienced.
Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart began to throb wildly.
She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.
At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, "Rika! where are you?"
She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly and went her way.
When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the court-yard,--a huge, green, glass coach, that clattered and jingled at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.
Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on her bonnet.
"Hurry, hurry!" Minna called up from below.
She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with pompous formality. "I shall not accompany you to the station," he said. "I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!" He had nothing more affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows. They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.
On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the room, in contrast with the prevailing fashion, were light and cheerful. The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.
At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall, broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of remarkable beauty,--the head, noble in every line, of an old woman who has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred, and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is, without requiring from it the impossible.
Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.
After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupassant, but a degree of mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large picture hanging on the opposite wall.
It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated with depth of sunshine. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange group,--two nymphs sporting with a shaggy brown faun. The picture was by Böcklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could not be pronounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.
It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture; she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls, so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach all sorts of considerations to the picture.
Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy whiskers, entered and announced, "Herr von Sydow."
"I am very glad," the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced, whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.
"You come just at the right time, Goswyn," she said, cordially, extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then, in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of light of the lamp.
"How can I serve you, Countess?" he asked.
"You are acquainted with my small gallery," she began, looking around the large airy room with some pride.
"I have frequently enjoyed your works of art," the young officer replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.
"Rather antiquated in expression, your reply," the old lady rejoined. "My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that is not the question at present. You know my Böcklin?"
"Yes, Countess."
"What do you think of it?"
He fixed his eyes upon it. "What could I think of it? It is a masterpiece."
"H'm! that all the world admits," the old lady murmured, impatiently, as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; "but is it a picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn."
Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. "That would depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter," he said, frowning slightly. "If she were a young girl brought up in the world and accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I should say no."
The old lady sighed. "I knew it!" she said. "My Böcklin is doomed. Ah!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. "Pray, Goswyn,"--she treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from early childhood,--"press that button beside you."
The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a very long arm and pressed the button.
The footman immediately appeared. "Lüdecke, call Friedrich to help you take down that picture."
"Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency," Lüdecke permitted himself to remark.
"Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always be so now," sighed the Countess.
"I will help you take down the picture, Lüdecke," Herr von Sydow said, quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall where the Böcklin had hung.
Lüdecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.
"Bring in tea," the Countess called after him. "You will take a cup of tea with me, Goswyn?"
"Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?" Sydow asked, rather timidly.
"Oh, she will not be here before midnight. I don't know why Friedrich has gone at this hour to the station; probably he is in love with the young person at the railway restaurant; else I cannot understand his hurry. However, I thank you for your admonition."
"But, my dear Countess----" exclaimed the young man.
"No need to excuse yourself," she cut short what he was about to say. "I am not displeased: you have never displeased me, except by not having arranged matters so as to come into the world as my son. Moreover, I should seriously regret the loss of your good opinion. Pray forgive me for not driving myself to the railway station to meet my grand-daughter and to edify the officials with a touching and effective scene. Consider, this is my last comfortable evening."
"Your last comfortable evening," Goswyn von Sydow repeated, thoughtfully.
"Now you disapprove of me again," the old Countess complained, ironically.
"Disapprove!" he repeated, with an ineffective attempt to laugh at the word. "Really, Countess, if I did not know how kind-hearted you are, I should be sorry for your grand-daughter."
Ho cleared his throat several times as he spoke; he always became a little hoarse when speaking directly from his heart.
"Kind-hearted,--kind-hearted," the old lady murmured, provoked; "pray don't put me off with compliments. What sort of word is 'kind-hearted'? One has weak nerves just as one has an aching tooth, and one does all that one can to spare them; all the little woes one perceives one relieves, if possible,--of course it is very disagreeable not to relieve them,--but the intense misery with which the world is filled one simply forgets, and is none the worse for so doing. You know it is not my fashion to deceive myself as to the beauty of my own character. You are sorry for my grand-daughter."
He would have assured her that he spoke conditionally, but she would not allow him to do so. "Yes, you are sorry for my grand-daughter," she said, decidedly, "but are you not at all sorry for me?"
"Upon that point you must allow me to express myself when I have made acquaintance with the young Countess."
"That has very little to do with it," rejoined the old lady. "Let us take it for granted that she is charming. Doctor Herbegg says she is a jewel of the purest water, lacking nothing but a little polish; between ourselves, I do not altogether believe him. He exaggerated my grand-daughter's attractions a little to make it easy for me to receive her. He is a good man, but, like two-thirds of the men who are worth anything,"--with a significant side-glance at Sydow,--"a little of a prig. But let us take for granted that my grand-daughter is the phœnix he describes, it is none the less true that on her account I must, in my old age, alter my comfortable mode of life, and subject myself to the thousand petty annoyances which the presence of a young girl in my house is sure to bring with it. Do you know how I felt when my indispensable old donkey"--the Countess Lenzdorff was wont frequently to designate thus her old footman Lüdecke--"carried out my Böcklin?" She fixed her eyes sadly upon the bare place on the wall. "I felt as if he were dragging out with it all the comforts of my daily life! Ah, here is the tea."
"It has been here for some time," Sydow said, smiling. "I was just about to call your attention to the kettle, which is boiling over."
She made the tea with extreme precision. It was delightful to see the beautiful old lady presiding over the old-fashioned silver tray with its contents. She wore on this evening a white tulle cap tied beneath the chin, and over it an exquisite little black lace scarf. A refined Epicurean nature revealed itself in her every movement,--in the delicate grace with which she handled the transparent teacups and measured the tea from its dainty caddy,--in the gusto with which she inhaled the aroma of this very choice brand of tea.
"There!" she said, handing the young officer a cup, "you may not agree with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it with sugar."
She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and had, as she said, "thought the world of him." This could not but please any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.
Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on the contrary, she rather liked to do so.
When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, "None of your namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?"
"Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about," Goswyn observed.
"Let us hope so," she said, with a laugh; "but who knows? For three years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library."
"Oh, Countess!"
"What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before her marriage she had read all Belot."
"She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever," replied Goswyn, slowly.
"H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your sister-in-law," the old lady said, archly menacing him with her forefinger.
"Indeed? I should like to know upon what my aunt Brock founds her assertion," the young man rejoined, coldly.
"Why, upon the intense dislike you always parade for your pretty sister-in-law," the Countess said, with a laugh.
"I do not parade it at all."
"But you feel it."
Goswyn von Sydow had risen from his chair. "It is very late," he said, picking up his cap.
"I have not driven you away with my poor jests?" the old lady inquired, as she also rose.
"No," he replied,--"at least not for long: if you will permit me, my dear Countess, I will call upon you in the autumn."
"And until then----?"
"I shall not have that pleasure, unfortunately; I leave with the General to-morrow for Kiel, and came to-night only to bid you good-bye. When I return I shall hardly find you still in Berlin."
"Indeed? I am sorry," she replied, "first because I really like to see you from time to time, although you entertain antiquated views of life and always disapprove of me, and secondly because I had hoped you would help me a little in my grand-daughter's education. Of course if she has already perused all Belot----"
"It would suit you precisely, Countess," he said, rallying her, "for then you could--h'm--hang up your Böcklin in its old place."
"What an idea!" cried the Countess. "But you are quite mistaken: I should be furious if my grand-daughter should be found to have read all Belot's works."
"Indeed?"
"Of course; because then there would be absolutely no hope of your taking the child off my hands."
He frowned.
"Do you understand me?" the old lady asked, gaily.
"Partly."
"Unfortunately, you seem to have very little desire for matrimony."
"I confess that for the present it is but faint."
"Let us hope that this mysterious Erika will be charming enough to----"
Suddenly she turned her head: a carriage was rolling along Bellevue Street, already deserted at this hour because of the lateness of the season. It stopped before the house. The old lady started, grew visibly paler, and compressed her lips.
The hall door opened; the servants ran down the staircase.
"Good night, Countess!" Goswyn touched the delicate old hand with his lips and hurried away.
On the staircase he encountered a tall slender girl in the most unbecoming mourning attire that he had ever seen a human being wear, and with gloves so much too short that they revealed a pair of slightly-reddened wrists. He touched his cap, and bowed profoundly.
He carried into the street with him an impression in his heart of something pale, slender, immature, pathetic, concealing the germ of great beauty.
He could not forget the distress in the eyes that had looked out from the pale oval face. He recalled the coldly-sneering old woman in the room he had left, with her disdain of all emotion. He knew how she would be repelled by the red wrists and the disfiguring gown. "Poor thing!" he said to himself.
In thoughtful mood he walked along a path in the Thiergarten. All around reigned silence. The sweet vigour of the spring-time was wafted from the soil, from the trees, from every tender soft unfolding leaf. In the gentle light of countless sparkling stars the feathery young foliage gleamed with a ghostly pallor; here and there a lantern shone, a spot of yellow light in the dimness, colouring the grass and leaves about it arsenic-green.
No people were here who had anything to do; only here and there a pair of lovers were strolling in the warm shade of the spring night.
The insistent rhythm of some popular dance interrupted the yearning music of spring which was sighing through the half-open leaves and blossoms. The noise annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of the cynicism with which unsuccessful men are wont to vaunt the bitterness of their existence.
He had walked far out of his way, into the midst of the Thiergarten.
More lovers; another pair,--and still another.
Except for them the place was deserted, silent: above were the glimmering stars, and on the earth below them the tall trees full of life, striving upward to the light; everywhere breathed the fragrance of fresh young growth, mingled with the aroma of last year's decaying leaves; the thrill of life around, with the echo in the distance of the vulgar dance-music.
He could not have told how or why it was, but Sydow was more than ever conscious to-night of the discord sounding through creation, vainly seeking, as it has done for centuries, for its solution.
And in the midst of his discontent there arose within him the memory of the haunting distress in the young girl's large eyes, and he was filled with warm, eager compassion for the poor, forlorn creature for whom there was no one to care. He would have liked to take the child in his arms and soothe her distress as one would have petted a bird fallen from the nest, or a truant, beaten dog.