The next forenoon Erika was sitting in the low-ceilinged drawing-room. She was alone in the house. Lord Langley had announced his arrival during the forenoon, and the Countess Anna had gone out, to avoid being present at the meeting of the betrothed couple. The young girl's pulses throbbed to her fingertips; her eyes burned, her whole body felt sore and bruised, as if she had had a fall. For an hour she sat listening breathlessly. Would Goswyn come before Lord Langley arrived? Should she have a moment in which to speak to him? Ah, how she longed for it! She wanted to explain to him---- At last she heard a step on the stair: of course it was Lord Langley. No, no! Lord Langley's step was neither so quick nor so light: it was Goswyn; she could hear him speaking with Lüdecke, and the old servant, with the garrulous want of tact at which she had so often laughed, was explaining to him that her Excellency had gone out, but that the Countess Erika had stayed at home to receive Lord Langley.
Erika listened, and heard Goswyn say, in a clear, cold tone, "In that case I will not disturb the Countess. Tell her----"
She could endure it no longer, but, opening the door, called, "Goswyn!"
"Countess!" He bowed formally.
"Come in for one moment, I entreat you," she begged, involuntarily clasping her hands. Of course he could not but obey.
They confronted each other, she trembling in every limb, he erect and unbending as she had never before seen him. In his hand he held a small packet.
"There, Countess," he said, "I am convinced that these are all the letters which this Herr von Strachinsky ever received from your mother: some of the epistles with which he edified my amiable aunt and her guests were the productions of his own pen. But you may rest assured that while I live he will not be guilty of any further indiscretion in that direction." There was such a look of determination in his eyes as he spoke that Erika easily guessed by what means he had contrived to intimidate Strachinsky.
She was filled with the warmest gratitude towards him, but there was something so repellent in his air that, instead of any extravagant expression of it, she stood before him without being able to utter a word of thanks. Instead, she fingered in an embarrassed way the packet which he had given her, a very little packet, wrapped in a sheet of paper and sealed with a huge coat of arms. In her confusion she fixed her eyes upon this seal.
"The arms of the Barons von Strachinsky," Goswyn explained. "Pray observe the delicacy with which the very letters read aloud for the entertainment of Heaven only knows how many gossiping old women are sealed up carefully lest I should read them."
Erika smiled faintly. "It is hardly necessary that you should be understood by Strachinsky," she said. "Men always judge from their own point of view. You judged me by yourself, and consequently estimated me more highly than I deserved. Sit down for a moment, I pray you."
"I do not wish to intrude," he said, bluntly, almost discourteously.
"How could you intrude? You never can intrude."
"Not even when you are expecting your betrothed?" He looked her full in the face.
She blushed scarlet; a burning desire to regain his esteem took possession of her.
"You take an entirely false view of my position," she exclaimed. "Mine is not the betrothal of a sentimental school-girl. I--I" and she burst into a short, nervous laugh that shocked even herself--"I do not marry Lord Langley for love."
There was a pause. Goswyn bowed his head; then, suddenly raising it, he looked straight into Erika's eyes in a way which made her very uncomfortable, and said, "I guessed that; but why, then, do you marry him,--you, a young, pure, gifted girl, and a man with such a past as Lord Langley's? I know that no man is worthy of such a girl as you are; but, good God, there is some difference---- Why, why do you marry him?"
"Why? why?" She tried to collect herself and to answer him truly. "I marry him because the position he offers me suits me,--because one is condemned to marry at a certain age, if one would not be sneered at and ridiculed; I marry him because he is an old man and will not require of me any warmth of affection, and because I have determined that there shall be nothing romantic in my marriage. Ah," with a glance at the small packet in her hand, "after all that you know of my wretched experience, you ought to understand why I do not choose to marry for love."
A long silence followed. He looked at her as he had never hitherto done, searchingly, inquiringly. Suddenly his glance grew tender: it expressed intense pity. "I understand that you talk of love and marriage as a blind man talks of colours," he said, slowly. "I understand that you unwittingly contemplate the commission of a crime against yourself, and that you should be prevented from it."
He ceased speaking on a sudden, and bit his lip. A voice was heard in the hall,--the characteristic voice of an old Englishbon viveurwith a Continental training. "Is the Countess at home?"
"What am I doing here?" Goswyn exclaimed, and, without touching the hand extended to him, he turned on his heel and was gone.
Outside the door stood an old gentleman with a tall white hat and a dark-blue cravat spotted with white. One glance of rage and curiosity Goswyn darted at the correct florid profile and white whiskers, and then he rushed down-stairs like one possessed.
Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was the same Englishman whom he had once seen at Monaco with a most disreputable train. Then he was travelling under an assumed name,--Mr. Steyne: his English regard for appearances forbade him in such society to profane his title and his social dignity.
Goswyn's blood fairly boiled in his veins.
When, some time afterwards, Countess Lenzdorff entered the drawing-room, after her walk, Lord Langley, rather redder in the face than usual, and with a baffled, puzzled expression of countenance, was sitting in an arm-chair; Erika, very pale, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, strikingly beautiful, and evidently tingling in every nerve, was in another on the other side of a table between the pair, upon which was an open jewel-case containing a diamond necklace. The Countess suspected that some kind of disagreement had arisen between the couple, and, as soon as she had returned Lord Langley's greeting, asked, carelessly, what it had been.
"Oh, nothing to speak of," he replied. "My queen was a little ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there is some caprice to subdue."
Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked, dryly, "If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to 'The Sun.'"
The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement. It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling, clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern art.
The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time: unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.
Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front of the royal boxes.
At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.
The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity, nothing to distract the attention from the stage.
Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve, and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty restrain her tears.
All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable, the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the starry heavens.
Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "Voyons, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" she asked, discontentedly. "Ce n'est rien; une ressemblance qui me frappe," he replied, in the weary tone of annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of jealous women.
A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just rolling up.
Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those dark, searching eyes before?
The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes; she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them; the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty.
The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly, mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish, and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic purity of the boy-chorus,--
"Made wise by pity,The pure in heart----"
"Made wise by pity,The pure in heart----"
"No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat. Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first act.
"I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,' and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her shoulders and makes no reply.
"She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather embarrassed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after you, Erika."
The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass towards the restaurant to refresh itself.
Close behind the Lenzdorffs walks the Russian Princess B----, who hires an entire suite of rooms for every season and attends every representation. She is dressed in embroidered muslin, and from the broad brim of her white straw hat hangs a Brussels lace veil partially concealing her face, which was once very handsome.
She addresses the old Countess: "Êtes-vous touchée de la grâce, ma chère Anne?"
Countess Anna shakes her head emphatically: "No; the music is too highly spiced and peppered for me. It bas made me quite thirsty. I long for a draught of prosaic beer and some Mozart."
The Russian smiles, and immediately begins to tell of how she had once reproved Rubinstein when he ventured to say something derogatory with regard to Wagner.
A stout tradesman, whose poetically-inclined wife has apparently brought him to Bayreuth against his will, exclaims, "What a humbug it is!" to which his wife rejoins, "You cannot understand it the first time: you must hear 'Parsifal' frequently." "Very possibly," he declares; "but I shall never hear it again."
The Lenzdorffs and Lord Langley take their seats at a table in the airy balcony of the restaurant, to drink a cup of tea: table and tea have been reserved for them by Lüdecke's watchful care. The greater part of the assemblage can scarcely find a chair upon which to sit down, or a glass of lemonade for refreshment. The consequence is that there is much unseemly pushing and crowding.
Erika eats nothing. Lord Langley complains, as do all Englishmen, of the German food, and the old Countess complains of the shrill music.
Meanwhile, a tall, striking woman advances to the table where the three are sitting, and where there is a fourth chair, unoccupied. "Vous pardonnez!" she exclaims: "je tombe de fatigue!"
Erika gazes at her: it is the companion of the man who had turned to look at her in the theatre during the prelude. A disgust for which she cannot account possesses her: it is as if she were aware of the presence of something impure, repulsive; and yet she could not possibly explain why the stranger should excite such a sensation: she is undeniably handsome, well formed, with regularly-chiselled features, and fair hair dressed with great care and knotted behind beneath the brim of her broad Leghorn hat. A red veil is tied tightly over her face. There is nothing else to excite disapproval in her dress, and inexperienced mortals would pronounce her age to be scarcely thirty. It would require great familiarity with Parisian arts of the toilette to perceive that her whole face is painted and that she is at least forty years old. Everything about her is exquisitely fresh and neat, and from her person is wafted the peculiar aroma of those women whose chief occupation in life is to take care of their bodies. Her air is respectable, and somewhat affected.
Lord Langley, to whom her unbidden presence seems especially annoying, is about to intimate this to her, when her escort approaches, and, hastily whispering to her, obliges her to leave her place, which she does unwillingly and even crossly. Courteously lifting his hat, the young man utters an embarrassed "Excuse me," and retires. She can be heard reproaching him petulantly as they walk away, and their places in the theatre remain unoccupied during the other acts of the drama.
"Disgusting!" mutters Lord Langley. "Do you know who it was?" he asks, turning to the Countess Anna. "Lozoncyi, the young artist who created such a sensation a couple of years ago. She was his mistress. I remember her in Rome."
Although upon Erika's account the words are spoken in an undertone, she hears them, and the blood rushes to her cheeks.
And now 'Parsifal' is over, the second act, with its fluttering flower-girl scene, in rather frivolous contrast with the serious motive of the work, its crude inharmonious decorations, and its wonderful dramatic finale; the third act too is over, with its sadly-sweet sunrise melody, its Good Friday spell resolving itself into the angelic music of the spheres.
With the hovering harp-arpeggio of the final scene still thrilling in their souls, Erika and her grandmother with Lord Langley drive back to town, leaving behind them the melancholy rustle of the forest, and hearing around them the rolling of wheels, the cracking of whips, and the footsteps of hundreds of pedestrians.
Life throbs in Erika's veins more warmly than it is wont to do; she is filled with a vague foreboding unknown to her hitherto. She seems to herself to be confronting the solution of a great secret, beside which she has pursued her thoughtless way, and around which the entire world circles.
At the door of their lodgings Lord Langley takes his leave of the ladies: with a lover's tenderness he slips down the glove from his betrothed's white wrist and imprints upon it two ardent kisses, as he whispers, "I trust that my charming Erika will be in a more gracious mood to morrow."
The disagreeable sensation caused by his warm breath upon her cheek was persistent; she could not rid herself of it.
She sent away her maid, and whilst she was undressing took from her pocket the packet of letters which Goswyn had left with her. She had carried it with her all day long, without finding a moment in which to destroy the papers. Now she removed their outside envelope, merely to assure herself that they were her mother's letters. Yes, she recognized the handwriting,--not the strong, almost masculine characters which had distinguished her mother's writing in the latter years of her life, but the long, slanting, faded hand which Erika could remember in the old exercise-books of her school-days. Nothing could have tempted the girl to read these letters: she kissed the poor yellow sheets twice, sadly and reverentially, and then she held them one by one in the flame of her candle.
Her heart was very heavy; a yearning for tenderness, for sympathy, possessed her, and she felt sore and discouraged. The wailing music, the shuddering alluring strains of sinful worldly desire, still haunted her soul with the glance of the stranger who seemed to her no stranger.
She felt a choking sensation at the thought of his companion. Never before had she come in contact with anything of the kind.
She lay down, but could not sleep. How sultry, even stifling, was the atmosphere! The windows of the little room were wide open, but the air that came in from without was heavy and inodorous: it brought no refreshment.
The tread of a belated pedestrian echoed in the street below, and there was the sound of laughter and song from some inn in the neighbourhood. Suddenly the door opened, and the old Countess entered, in a white dressing-gown and lace night-cap. She had a small lamp in her hand, which she put down on a table, and then, seating herself on the edge of the bed, she scanned the young girl with penetrating eyes.
"Is anything troubling you, my child?" she began, after a while.
Erika tried to say no, but the word would not pass her lips. Instead of replying, she turned away her face.
"What was the difficulty between Lord Langley and yourself to-day?" the grandmother went on to ask.
Erika was mute.
"Tell me the simple truth," the old Countess insisted. "Did you not have some dispute this morning?"
"Oh, it was nothing," Erika replied, impatiently; "only--he attempted to play the lover, and I thought it quite unnecessary. Such folly is very unbecoming in a man of his age; and, besides, I cannot endure anything of the kind."
A strange expression appeared upon the grandmother's face,--the same that Goswyn had worn when his indignation had suddenly been transformed into pity for the girl. She cleared her throat once or twice, and then remarked, dryly, "How then do you propose to live with Lord Langley?"
Erika stared at her in dismay. "Good heavens! I have thought very little about it. You know well that I do not wish to marry for love. That is why I accepted an old man instead of a young one,--because I supposed he would refrain from all lover-like folly. You have always told me that you married my grandfather without love, and that it turned out very well."
Her grandmother was silent for a while before she rejoined, "In the first place, constituted as you are, I should wish for you a less prosaic companion for life than your grandfather; but, at the same time, the torture which, with your exaggerated sensitiveness, awaits you in marrying Lord Langley bears no comparison with the simple tedium of my married life. We married in compliance with a family arrangement; and if I did so with but a small amount of esteem for him, he for his part brought to the match no devouring passion for me,--which I should have found most annoying. But the case is entirely different with Lord Langley. He is as desperately in love with you as an old fool can be whose passion is stimulated by the consciousness of his age."
Something in the horrified face of the inexperienced young girl must have intensified the old Countess's pity for her. "My poor child, I had no idea of your innocence and inexperience. I have lived on from day to day without in the least comprehending the young creature beside me."
She kissed the girl with infinite tenderness, put out the light, and left her alone, her burning face buried in the pillows and sobbing convulsively, a picture of despair.
The next day Erika broke her engagement to Lord Langley.
Erika's betrothal to Lord Langley had produced a sensation in society, but it had been regarded as a very sensible arrangement. The girl had been envied, and all had declared that her ambition had achieved its aim in a marriage with an English peer. Malice had not been silent: she had been credited with heartlessness,--but then she had done vastly well for herself. The announcement that the engagement was dissolved gave rise to all sorts of reports. No one knew the real reason of the breach, and had it been known it would not have been credited.
The belief steadily gained ground that Lord Langley had been the first to withdraw, dismayed by the discovery of Erika's objectionable relative Strachinsky, and shocked by the girl's heartless treatment of him.
Countess Brock furnished the material for this report, the Princess Dorothea detailed it with various additions, and in the eyes of Berlin society Erika was nothing more than an ambitious blunderer who had experienced a tremendous rebuff. It was edifying to hear Dorothea descant upon this theme, winding up her remarks with, "I do not pity Erika,--I never liked her,--but poor old Countess Lenzdorff. She has always been one of Aunt Brock's friends."
There had been an apparent change in the Princess Dorothea from the day when she had publicly insulted Goswyn von Sydow in Charlottenburg Avenue. The story had been told greatly to her discredit, and not only had her cousin Prince Helmy forsworn his allegiance to her, but the other men who had been present at that memorable interview had since held aloof from her. She found herself compelled to attract a fresh circle of admirers,--which she did at the sacrifice of every remnant of good taste which she yet possessed.
After this for a while she pursued her madly gay career; but for a year past there had been a change. The number of her admirers had greatly diminished,--was reduced, indeed, to a Prince Orbanoff, who was now her shadow. She boasted of her good resolutions, went to church every Sunday, was shocked at the women who read French novels, and was altogether rather a prudish character.
Society held itself on the defensive, and did not put much faith in her boasted virtue. But when she calumniated Erika society believed her; at least this was the case with the society of envious young beauties whom she met every Friday at the 'wicked fairy's,' where they made clothes for the poor.
When, late in the autumn, the Lenzdorffs returned to Berlin, supposing that the little episode of Erika's betrothal was already forgotten by society, they were met on all sides by a malicious show of sympathy.
Erika regarded all this with utter indifference, and withdrew from all gaiety as far as she could, but the old Countess fretted and fumed with indignation.
She could not comprehend why all the world could not view Erika from her own point of view; and her exaggerated defence of the girl contributed to make Erika's position still more disagreeable. Moreover, age was beginning to cast its first shadows over the Countess's clear mind. She was especially annoyed, also, by Goswyn's holding aloof. He had replied courteously, but with extreme reserve, to the Countess's letter informing him, not without exultation, of the breaking of Erika's engagement. This was as it should be; but when the answer to a second letter written much later was quite as reserved, the old Countess was vexed and impatient. Erika insisted upon reading this second epistle herself. Her hands trembled as she held it, and when she had finished it she laid it on the table without a word, and left the room as pale as ashes.
To the grandmother, whose heart was filled with tenderness, all the more intense because it had been first aroused in her old age, her grand-daughter's evident pain was intolerable. After a while she went to her in her room. The girl was sitting at the window, erect and pale. She had a book in her hand, and the Countess observed that she held it upside down.
"Erika," she said, tenderly laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, "I only wanted to tell you----"
Erika arose, cold and courteous. "You wanted to tell me--what?" she asked, as she laid aside her book.
"That--that----" Erika's dry manner embarrassed her a little, but after a pause she went on: "I wanted to tell you not to take any fancies into your head with regard to Goswyn."
"Fancies? Of what kind?" Erika asked, calmly, becoming absorbed in the contemplation of her almond-shaped nails.
"You would do him great injustice by supposing that his regard for you is one whit less than it ever was."
"Indeed! I should do him injustice?" Erika questioned in the same unnaturally quiet tone. "I think not. It is not my fashion to deceive myself. I know perfectly well that--that I have sunk in Goswyn's esteem; it is a very unpleasant conviction, I confess; and, to be frank, I would rather you did not mention the subject again."
"But, Erika, if you would only listen," the old Countess persisted. "He adores you. His pride alone keeps him from you: you are too wealthy; your social position is too brilliant."
Erika waved aside this explanation of affairs. "Say no more," she cried. "I know what I know! But you must not waste your pity upon me: my vanity is wounded, not my heart. I value Goswyn highly, and it troubles me that he no longer admires me as he did, but, I assure you, I have not the slightest desire to marry him. I pray you to believe this: at least it may prevent you, perhaps, from throwing me at his head a second time, without my knowledge. If you do it, I declare to you, I will reject him." As she uttered the last words, the girl's self-command forsook her, her voice had a hard metallic ring in it, and her eyes flashed angrily.
Her grandmother turned and left the room with bowed head.
Scarcely had the sound of her footsteps died away when Erika locked her door, threw herself upon her bed, buried her face in the pillows, and burst into tears.
What she had declared to her grandmother was in a measure true: she herself supposed it to be entirely true. She really had no wish to marry, and there was in her heart no trace of passionate sentiment for Goswyn, but she was bruised and sore, and she longed for the tender sympathy he had always shown her. At times she would fain have fled to him from the cold judgment and scrutiny of the world.
After she had relieved herself by tears, she understood herself more clearly. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her handkerchief crushed into a ball in her hand, she said, half aloud, "I have lied to my grandmother. If he had come I would have married him,--yes, without loving him; but it would have been wrong: no one has a right to marry such a man as Goswyn out of sheer despair because one does not know in what direction to throw away one's life. But why think of it? He does not care for me. Why, why did my grandmother write to him? I cannot bear it!"
A few days afterwards the Lenzdorffs left Berlin, to spend the winter in Rome, where Erika, incited thereto by her grandmother, went into society perpetually, without taking the least pleasure in it. And she made no secret of her indifference, her discontent. The bark of her existence, once so safe and sure in its course, seemed to have lost its bearings: she saw no aim in life worthy the effort to pursue it.
She indulged in fits of causeless melancholy; yet all the while her beauty bloomed out into fuller perfection, and all unconsciously to herself life throbbed within her and demanded its right. The old Countess, who did not understand her condition, looked upon it as a morbid crisis in the girl's life; but she never dreamed how fraught with danger the crisis was.
Thus she utterly failed to appreciate or to sympathize with her grand-daughter; and, whether because of her exaggerated admiration for her, or because her age was beginning to tell upon her powers of perception, she did not suspect the slow approach of the fever which had begun to undermine the young creature's existence.
Towards the end of February, just at the close of the Carnival, Erika told her grandmother that she was heartily tired of Rome, and wished to see Italy from some other point of view.
After much deliberation, Venice was chosen for their next abode; and here the old Countess refused to follow the usual custom of foreigners and rent a palazzo: she declared that in Venice true comfort was to be found only in a hotel. So a suite of rooms was hired in the Hotel Britannia,--four airy apartments, in which their predecessor had been a crowned head, and two of which looked out upon the church of Santa Maria della Salute, whilst the other two had a view of the small garden of the hotel, and, across its low wall, of the Grand Canal.
Of course they had a gondola for their own private use; but Erika was not fond of availing herself of it. The rocking motion, the monotonous plash of the water, excited still further her irritated nerves; she preferred taking long walks,--at first, out of deference to her grandmother's wishes, accompanied by the maid Marianne. She soon tired, however, of such uncongenial companionship, and induced her grandmother to allow her to pursue alone her investigations of the corners and by-ways of Venice. She explored the curiosity-shops, spent whole days in the galleries, and made wonderful discoveries in the way of bargains in old stuffs and artistic antiquities, until her little salon became a museum of such treasures. In one corner stood a grand piano, seated at which at times she poured out her soul in all that is most beautiful and most tragic in music.
The old Countess left her to pursue her own path, and occupied herself very differently.
In spite of her original and independent view of life, and her readiness to criticise frankly all that was artificial and conventional, she lovedles chemins battus. She went the way of the multitude,--saw nothing of Venetian by-ways, but devoted her time to museums and works of art, being indefatigable in her daily round of sight-seeing. And yet, although her health seemed as robust as ever, and she could apparently endure far more fatigue than her grand-daughter, she was no longer what she had been.
Her extraordinary memory began to fail, and the interest which formerly had been excited only by affairs of some moment was now ready to be aroused in petty concerns. She took pleasure in gossip, allowed Marianne to detail to her scraps of the Venetianchronique scandaleusepicked up from the couriers in the hotel, and, worst of all, the fine edge of her moral sentiment seemed in a degree blunted.
She would repeat to Erika, without the slightest idea of the pain she was inflicting, stories and reports of a nature to offend the girl's sense of morality and delicacy.
Nothing any longer shocked her: love and hatred of her kind seemed blunted under the influence of a low estimate of human nature which she called a philosophic view of life.
She simply never observed how Erika's cheeks burned when she suddenly disclosed to her the lapse from virtue, hidden from the superficial world, of some woman whom they had met in society; she never perceived the girl's feverish agitation upon hearing her grandmother calmly advance all sorts of excuses for the so-called indiscretion. She did not suppose her revelations could affect Erika disagreeably; although Erika did not always allow her to talk on without interruption; she would sometimes bluntly declare that she could not believe what her grandmother thus told her.
Then the old Countess would reply, "I really cannot see what reason you have to disbelieve it. You cannot alter human nature by shutting your eyes to its defects."
Whereupon Erika would say, with annihilating emphasis, "If human nature really is what you describe it, I cannot understand your pleasure in frequenting society, since you must despise unutterably those who compose it."
"Despise!" her grandmother repeated, shaking her head. "I despise no one. Knowing, as I do, how mankind struggles under the burden of animal instincts, I wonder to see it ever rise above them, and I am forced to esteem men in spite of everything."
Erika only repeated, angrily, "Esteem! esteem!" Her grandmother's mode of esteeming mankind was certainly extraordinary.
The Princess Dorothea was pacing her salon restlessly to and fro. From time to time she gazed out of the window into the dreary Berlin March weather, upon the heaps of dirty snow shovelled up on each side of the street and slowly melting beneath the falling rain.
The Princess was annoyed. She had been left out in the invitation to a court ball. Usually she would have ascribed the omission to an oversight of the authorities, but to-day the matter disturbed her: instead of an oversight she suspected the omission to have been an intentional slight, and her steps as she walked to and fro were short and impatient.
Why were they so frightfully moral in Berlin, so aggressively moral? she asked herself. Everywhere else people might do as they chose, if only appearances were preserved.
What had she done, after all? Long ago in Florence Feistmantel had explained to her that marriage, as arranged in civilized countries, was entirely unnatural. The Princess, still pure, in spite of the degradation about her, had laughed aloud at the philosophic view thus advanced by her companion and guide. Years afterwards she had recalled this theory that it might serve to justify herself to herself; and lately--only yesterday--Feistmantel, who was established in Berlin and gave music-lessons in the most aristocratic circles, had enunciated the same views at a breakfast to which Dorothea had invited her, and the Princess had contradicted her positively, had been rude to her, had nearly turned her out of doors, but at the last moment had apologized almost humbly and had finally dismissed her with a handsome present.
She had suspected behind Feistmantel's assertion of her philosophic view a mean attempt to ingratiate herself with her hostess. "As if Feistmantel could suspect anything! No human being can suspect anything," she repeated several times. "And, after all, there is scarcely a woman, beautiful and admired, who is not worse than I."
In the midst of all her superficiality and moral recklessness, she had always been characterized by a certain frankness, which at times had passed the bounds of decorum; now she writhed under a burden of hypocrisy which weighed most heavily upon her.
And why was this so?
It had all been the gradual result of the tedium of the life she led. A man more coarse and rough than any of her other admirers had paid court to her in a way that flattered her vanity; he amused her, he brought some variety into her life; his lavishness was astounding. Once when he had lost a wager to her he brought her a diamond necklace in an Easter egg.
She knew that this was wrong, but she had been wont as a girl to accept presents from men, and then she had an almost morbid delight in diamonds. And what stones these were!--a chain of dew-drops glittering in the morning sun! And he had so careless a way of throwing the costly gift into her lap, as if it had been the merest trifle.
She could not resist wearing the necklace once at the next court ball,--explaining to her husband, who understood nothing of such things, that she had purchased it for a mere song at a sale of old jewelry.
She intended to return it; but she did not return it. From that moment he had her in his power. He lured her on as a serpent lures a bird, extorting from her one innocent concession after another, until one day---- Good God! if she could but obliterate the memory of that day!
To call the torment which she suffered from that time stings of conscience would be to invest it with ideality. No, she felt no stings of conscience; her moral sense was entirely blunted; but she was enraged with herself for having fallen into the snare; her pride was humbled in the dust, and she was in mortal dread of discovery. She was a coward to the core. What would she not have given to be free? She would have broken with her lover ten times, but that she feared him more than she did her husband.
He was a Russian, fabulously wealthy, and notorious in the Parisian demi-monde which he habitually frequented. Orbanoff was his name, and outside of his own country he was credited with princely rank to which he had no title,--a man with no moral sense, brutal on occasion, with no idea of the laws of honour prevailing in Western Europe, but of an undoubted physical courage, which helped him to maintain his present position.
Princess Dorothea was convinced that should she break with him he would commit some reckless, impossible crime.
Oh, if he would only release her! She began to build castles in the air. Never, never again would she be concerned in such an adventure. All the romances that she had read were lies: there was nothing in the world more hateful than just this. Only once in her life had she been conscious of any real preference for a man, and that had been for her cousin Helmy; now of all men her own clumsy, thoroughly honourable and intensely good-natured husband was the dearest. He was at present on his estate in Silesia, where he was much happier than in the society of the capital. Dorothea had made him so uncomfortable in Berlin that he always stayed as long as possible in Silesia.
To-day she longed for him; she wanted him to take her on his knee and soothe her like a tired child, and then to have him carry her in his strong arms down the broad staircase of his old castle in Kossnitz, as he used to do when they were first married. Yes, she longed for his strong supporting arm.
Ah, if she were only free! She would turn her back on Berlin and go with him to Kossnitz. She positively hungered for Kossnitz,--for the odour of stone and whitewash in the broad corridors, for the airy, bare rooms, for the farm-yard with the brown farm-buildings. How picturesque it must all look now in the snow!--for the snow was still deep in Silesia. They would go sleighing: oh, how delicious it would be to rush along, warmly wrapped up, with only her face exposed to the fresh wintry breeze, the sleigh-bells ringing merrily, the horses mad with their exciting gallop, the snow-clad forest gleaming silvery white around them!
And how delicious would be the supper when they got home!--she would have done with all fashionable division of the day: they would dine at one, and she would have potatoes in their skins at supper-time,--she had not had them since she was a child,--and black bread, and sour milk:--how she liked sour milk!
One hope she had. Was it not Orbanoff whom she had seen last night in the background of the box of a young actress? It was not his habit to conceal himself on such occasions: probably he had been thus discreet on her account. An idea suddenly occurred to her. What an opportunity this might afford her to recover her freedom! All she had to do was to feign furious jealousy, and break with her dangerous lover without wounding his vanity.
On the instant she felt relieved, and even gay, in the light of this hope.
The clock struck five,--the hour of her appointment with Orbanoff. Without ringing for her maid, she dressed herself in the plainest of walking-costumes and left the house. She walked for some distance, then hired a droschky and was driven to a shop in Potsdam Street, where she dismissed the vehicle, bought some trifle, and walked on still farther before hiring another conveyance.