Three weeks had passed since Minona von Rattenfels had so effectively given vent to her languishing love-plaints.
A striking change was evident in Erika. She was much more cheerful, or, at least, more accessible; she no longer withdrew from the world in morbid misanthropy, but went into society whenever her grandmother requested her to do so. Wherever she went she was fêted and admired. Since her first season in Berlin she had never received so much homage. It seemed to give her pleasure, and, what was still more remarkable, she seemed to exert herself somewhat--a very little--to obtain it.
Wherever she went she met Lozoncyi,--Lozoncyi, who scarcely took his eyes off her, but who made no attempt to approach her in any way that could attract notice. His bearing towards her was not only exemplary, but touching. Always at hand to render her any little service,--to procure her an ice, to relieve her of an empty teacup, to find her missing fan or gloves,--he immediately retired to give place to her other admirers. Among these Prince Helmy Nimbsch was foremost: the entire international society of Venice were daily expecting the announcement of a betrothal, and one afternoon, at a lawn-tennis party at Lady Stairs's, he had given Erika unmistakable proofs of his intentions. She was a little startled, and, while she was endeavouring to lead the conversation with him away from the perilously sentimental tone it had assumed, her eyes accidentally encountered Lozoncyi's.
Shortly afterwards she managed to get rid of the Prince; and as, after a last game of lawn-tennis, she was retiring from the field, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling from the exercise, Lozoncyi came up to her to relieve her of her racket. "You see how right the poor painter was, not to venture to approach his little fairy," he murmured. The words, his tone, aroused her sympathy and compassion, but before she could reply he had vanished. He did not come near her again that afternoon, but she could not help perceiving that his looks sought herself and Prince Nimbsch alternately, at first inquiringly, and afterwards with an expression of relief.
Dinner has been over for some time. The lamps are gleaming red along the Grand Canal, and their broken reflections quiver in long streaks upon the waters of the lagoon. The little drawing-room is but dimly lighted, and Erika is seated at the piano, playing bits of 'Parsifal,' her fingers gliding into the motive of sinful, worldly pleasure.
The old Countess enters, and, after wandering aimlessly about the room for a moment, goes, after her fashion, directly to the point. She pauses beside Erika, and observes, "Prince Nimbsch is courting you. People are talking about it."
"Nonsense!" Erika rejoins, running her fingers over the keys. "He is only amusing himself."
"H'm! he seems to me to be very much in earnest," murmurs the old lady; "and there is no denying that it would be a brilliant match."
Erika drops her hands in her lap. "Grandmother!" she exclaims, half laughing, "what are you thinking of? He is a mere boy!"
"A boy? He is full four years older than you; and I need not remind you that you are no child. At all events, you must consider well----"
"Before I enter into another engagement," Erika interrupts her. "I promise you I will; nay, more than that, I promise you solemnly that I will not engage myself to Prince Nimbsch."
"In fact, I must confess that I do not think him your equal." There is a certain relief in the old lady's tone, although she adds, with some hesitation, "But the position is tempting, very tempting."
"Ah, grandmother!" Erika exclaims, with reproach in her tone, as, rising, she puts her arm around the old Countess's shoulder and kisses her gray head, "do you know me so little?"
Her grandmother returns her caress with emotion, murmuring the while, as if talking to herself, "As if you knew yourself, my poor, dear child!"
"I know myself so far," Erika declares, "as to be sure that after my first unfortunate mistake I am cured of all worldly ambition."
"Oh, that was quite another thing!" her grandmother sighs. "Your marriage with Lord Langley would have been positively unnatural; but Prince Helmy Nimbsch is a fine, gallant young fellow."
"It all amounts to the same thing: old or young, he is a man whom I do not love, and never could love."
The old lady shakes her head impatiently: "Are you beginning upon that? Love? I thought you had more sense. Love!--love! Heaven preserve you from that disease! The only sound foundations for a happy marriage are unbounded esteem and warm sympathy: anything more is an evil."
Erika is silent, and the old Countess continues: "No respectable woman should indulge in passion. Passion is an intoxication, and nausea is sure to follow upon intoxication. Therefore a respectable woman, who can at the most indulge but once in such intoxication, condemns herself, after a short period of bliss, to nausea for the rest of her life. Only the unprincipled woman who cures her nausea by a fresh passion can permit herself such indulgence. It is all nonsense for one of us."
During this long speech the Countess has seated herself in an arm-chair with a volume of Taine's 'Les Origines de la France' open in her lap, and to lend emphasis to her words she taps the book from time to time with a large Japanese paper-knife.
Erika stands near her, leaning upon the piano, tall and graceful in her white gown. "And what am I to infer from your preachment? That I must marry Helmy Nimbsch, even without love?"
"Helmy Nimbsch? Who is talking of him?" The old lady almost starts from her chair.
"I thought you were, grandmother," Erika says, with a mischievous smile. "If I am not mistaken, he was the subject of our conversation."
"Nonsense! Helmy Nimbsch!Ce n'est pas serieux!"
"Of whom, then, are you talking?" Erika asks, looking her grandmother full in the face.
"Oh, of no one: I was talking in general," her grandmother replies, with some irritation, adding, still more petulantly, after a pause, "If you have unbounded esteem and warm sympathy for young Nimbsch, why, marry him, by all means."
Instead of replying, Erika begins to arrange the sheets of music on the piano.
A long pause ensues. From below come the murmur of voices, the ringing of bells, and the moving of trunks,--in short, all the bustle consequent upon the arrival of fresh guests at a large hotel. Countess Lenzdorff takes the opportunity to complain of so much noise, and to declare, "In fact, I am quite tired of this wandering about from place to place."
"What, grandmother? Why, you were so delighted here! Only yesterday you told me how 'refreshing' you considered your Venetian life."
"Yes, yes; but it has lasted too long for me. While you were playing lawn-tennis this afternoon with Constance Mühlberg, I went to see Hedwig Norbin. She arrived yesterday, and is at the 'Europe;' but she is only stopping for a day or so on her way home. 'Tis a pity."
"And she gave you such an alluring description of Berlin that you are anxious to fold your tent and fly back to Bellevue Street now, in the midst of this wondrous Southern spring?" Erika asks, coldly.
"Oh, spring is lovely everywhere!--lovelier in Berlin than in Venice: there is nothing more beautiful than the Thiergarten in May. And then I find there all my old habits, my old friends."
"I have no friends in Berlin," says Erika, with a strange emphasis, "and that is why I beg you to stay away from Berlin for a while longer. Next autumn you may do with me what you please. Have a little patience with me."
"Patience! patience!" The old Countess taps her book more energetically than ever.
After a while Erika begins: "Did Frau von Norbin tell you anything about Dorothea von Sydow? How is her position regarded by society?"
"How?" her grandmother exclaims. "How should society regard the critical position of a woman who has never shown the slightest consideration for any one, never conferred a benefit upon any one, scarcely even treated any one with courtesy, but lived only for her own frivolous gratification? Society acknowledges a woman in her position only when it would lose something by dropping her. Who would lose anything if Dorothea were stricken from its list? A couple of young men, perhaps; and they would be at liberty to make love to her outside of the ranks of society. The world has turned its back upon her: Hedwig tells me that she is positively shunned."
"And how does she accommodate herself to her destiny?" asks Erika.
"As poorly as possible. One would suppose that she would have left Berlin. For my part, I never imagined that she cared so much for her social position; but she appears to be clutching it in a kind of panic."
"How unpleasant for--for the dead man's brother!" says Erika. Several months have passed since she has spoken Goswyn's name: it would seem as if her lips refused to utter it.
"For Goswyn!" her grandmother exclaims, in a tone of sincere distress. "Terrible! They say he is altered almost beyond recognition. I did not know he was so devoted to Otto. But, to be sure, the circumstances attendant upon his death were frightful. Goswyn always found fault with me, but, after all, since his mother's death I have stood nearest to him in this world. I know he would be glad to pour out his heart to me."
Erika draws a long breath; her large clear eyes flash. "Ah!" she exclaims, "this, then, is your reason for wishing to go to Berlin,--that you may console Herr Goswyn von Sydow? I always knew that he was dear to you: I learn now for the first time that he is dearer to you than I am!"
"Oh, Erika!--dearer than you!" The old lady rises and strokes the girl's arm tenderly. "I am often sorry that I cannot love you both together!" she adds, half timidly, in an undertone.
But this time Erika repulses almost angrily the caress usually so dear to her. "I cannot understand you!" she says: "it is a positive mania of yours. You are always reproaching me for not having married Goswyn, or hinting that I ought to marry him,--a man who has not wasted a thought upon me for years!"
"Oh, Erika! how can you talk so? Remember Bayreuth."
"What if I do remember Bayreuth? Yes, he still thought of me then; that is, he remembered the young girl with whom he had ridden in the Thiergarten, and he brought her memory with him to Bayreuth; but he discovered it did not fit with what he found there: that was the end of it all!" Erika silently paces the room to and fro once or twice, then, pausing before her grandmother, she continues: "It stings me whenever you speak of Goswyn and lose yourself in the contemplation of his measureless magnanimity. Magnanimity! Yes, but it is a cold, sterile, arrogant magnanimity! He is a thoroughly just man, but he is a man who never forgives a weakness, because none ever beset him,--none, at least, of which he is conscious. He---- Oh, yes----,"--the girl's voice grows hoarse, she catches her breath and goes on with increasing volubility,--"I have no doubt that he would spring into the water at any moment to save the life, at the risk of his own, of any worthless wretch, but as soon as he brought him to land he would turn his back upon him and march away with his head proudly erect, without even casting a look upon the man he had rescued, let alone giving him a kind word. Witness his behaviour towards me. I refer to it expressly that we may correct once for all your painful and humiliating misapprehension. He did, as you know, do me a service in Bayreuth which I could not have expected of any one else. Granted. But he has never forgiven me for being betrothed for six or eight weeks to Lord Langley. Good heavens! it was a mistake of mine, a stupidity, the result of vanity and ambition on my part. But it was nothing more; and yet it was enough to cause--to cause Herr von Sydow to banish me from grace forever. This is your wonderful Goswyn. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me: I take not the slightest interest in him, thank God! If I had been interested in him I might have fretted myself nearly to death; but, as it is, I am merely vexed that I should have overrated him,--that is all."
Her grandmother listened in amazement. She had never before seen Erika so excited, had never imagined that her voice was capable of such intonations. At times it was the voice of a stubborn, angry child, and anon that of a proud, passionate woman.
"Why, Erika!" she exclaimed when the girl paused, "this is all nonsense,--cleverly-invented nonsense, the worst of all kinds. There is not one word of truth in it. I know that he adores you just as he always did."
"You have a lively imagination," Erika said, sarcastically. "It is remarkable that Goswyn has had nothing to say about his adoration all this time."
"My dear child," replied her grandmother, "that is quite another thing. In certain respects Goswyn is petty: I have always told you so. His poverty and your wealth have always been of too much consequence in his eyes. It is a folly which may have cost him the happiness of his life. Say what you will, I am convinced that his poverty alone has prevented him from renewing his suit."
"Indeed!" said Erika, tossing her head disdainfully. "Well, his poverty is at an end!"
"Oh, Erika, with your wonderful sensibility you ought to understand that a man like Goswyn cannot bring himself all in a moment to profit by his brother's death,--a death, too, so terrible in its attendant circumstances."
Erika was silent for a minute; her lips quivered; then she said, in a low tone, "True, grandmother; it would be odious of him to renew his suit instantly; but, you see, if such a misfortune as has befallen him had happened to me, I should long to carry my pain to those who were nearest my heart. You are ready to return to Berlin for his sake. If all that you fancy were true, he would have come to Venice: he could easily have obtained a leave. And now we have done with this subject once for all. Fortunately, I do not care for him in the least,--not in the least. I tell you all this only that you may not request me to ride posthaste with you to Berlin, that the world there, already so predisposed in my favour, may say, 'She is running after Goswyn von Sydow, now that he has inherited the family estates.'"
The grandmother laid her hands on Erika's shoulders, then drew the proud young head towards her, and kissed her on the forehead. At that moment Lüdecke, the indispensable, entered and presented a visiting-card.
"Paul von Lozoncyi," Countess Lenzdorff read from the card, and then dropped it upon the salver again. "Are you in the mood to receive strangers?"
"Yes. Why not?" asked Erika.
Shortly afterwards Lozoncyi entered Erika's pretty little boudoir, now illuminated by a couple of shaded lamps.
Erika received him most amiably. The old Countess, on the other hand, was at first rather formal in her manner towards him. She was not accustomed to have young men delay so long in taking advantage of an invitation extended by herself to visit her. But before Lozoncyi had been five minutes in the room her displeasure melted like snow in sunshine.
Without the slightest attempt to excuse his dilatoriness, the artist was at pains to impress his hostesses with his delight in having at last found the way to them. "How charming!" he said, looking around the room and rubbing his slender hands, after his characteristic fashion. "One never would dream that this was a hotel."
"This is my grand-daughter's sanctum," said the old Countess. "My own reception-room is several shades barer."
"Indeed? Ah, I know it does not become me, the first time I am permitted to enjoy this privilege, to stare about at your treasures like the private agent of some dealer in antiquities, but we artists delight in the pride of the eye. It is remarkable how well you have suited the frame to the picture. Look, your Excellency."
He drew the old lady's attention to the picture formed at that moment by her grand-daughter, who was sitting in a negligent attitude in a high-backed antique chair, the gilt leather covering of which made a charming background for her auburn hair.
"It is enchanting, the white figure against the golden gleam of the leather, and with that vase of jonquils beside it. If one could only perpetuate it!" He sighed.
"You will embarrass the child," the grandmother admonished him, although in her heart she was delighted. "Instead of turning the Countess Erika's head, tell us why you have been so long finding your way hither."
He raised his eyes, looked her full in the face, and then dropped them again, as he said, in a low tone, "Rather ask me why I have come at all."
"No, I ask you expressly why you did not come before," the old lady persisted, laughing.
"Why?" He hesitated a moment, and then replied, calmly, "Because I have no wish to be the last among the Countess Erika's adorers to drag her triumphal car. Now you know. Such plain questions provoke plain answers." He looked at the old lady as he spoke, to see if he had gone too far. No, he was one of those favoured individuals to whom thrice as much is forgiven as to other men. Something in the intonation of his gentle, cordial voice, his frank yet melancholy glance, and especially his smile, his charming insinuating smile, instantly prepossessed people in his favour. It was the same smile with which as a lad of seventeen he had beguiled little Erika's tender heart, the merry, careless smile which he must have inherited from an amiable, light-hearted mother.
The old lady only laughed at his confession, and then asked, mockingly, "And now you are content to be the very last, etc., etc.?"
He shook his head: "Now it has occurred to me that perhaps I can offer the Countess Erika a small pleasure which none other among her adorers can give her, and I come to ask if she will give me leave to do so."
Erika was silent. Countess Lenzdorff said, "Herr von Lozoncyi, you speak in riddles."
Lozoncyi turned from one to the other of the ladies with a look calculated to go directly to their hearts, and then, addressing the younger one, said, "You perhaps remember that I am in your debt, Countess Erika?"
"Yes; I once lent you five guilders."
"Five guilders," he repeated. "It seems a trifle; but then it was much for me. Without those five guilders I should probably never have been able to reach my aunt Illona in Munich, and I might have starved in a ditch. You see that I owe you much; and in consideration of this fact I have come to ask if you will allow me to paint your portrait."
Erika gazed at him blankly.
"For five guilders?" exclaimed the old Countess, with comical emphasis. Every one knew how difficult it was to persuade Lozoncyi to paint a portrait, and what a fabulous price he asked when induced to do so.
"I entreat you not to refuse me, Countess Erika," he begged, with clasped hands.
"I advise you to accept the offer," said her grandmother: "it will hardly be made a second time."
"You shall not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience," he went on to Erika, "except that of being bored for a few hours. I know that you do not, as a rule, like my pictures, and therefore I promise you that I will burn this one if it does not please you, even though I should consider it a masterpiece. But should I succeed in pleasing you, the picture may serve to remind you sometimes of a poor fellow who----"
The sentence was cut short by the entrance of several visitors, and much talk and laughter ensued.
Lozoncyi stayed until all the rest had gone.
"When shall I have the first sitting?" he asked.
"Whenever you please," Erika made reply.
"To-morrow?"
"To-morrow? No; to-morrow will not do; but the day after to-morrow, in the forenoon, if you like."
His eyes sparkled. "About eleven?"
She assented.
"There goes another man whose head you have turned, Erika," remarked the old Countess, as the door closed behind the artist. She laughed as she said it. Good heavens! what did it matter?
At the appointed time Lüdecke carried down to the gondola the portmanteau containing the gown in which Lozoncyi had seen Erika at Frau von Neerwinden's, and in which he had wished to immortalize her. The two ladies were not accompanied even by a maid, Erika declaring that she needed no help in arranging her toilette for the portrait.
The sky was cloudless, the air warm but not oppressive. The gondoliers rowed merrily and quickly.
Lozoncyi's studio was back of the Rialto, on one of the narrower water-ways to the left of the Grand Canal. In about a quarter of an hour the gondola stopped before a light-green door with an iron lion's head in the centre of it. One of the gondoliers knocked with the ring depending from the lion's mouth.
Lozoncyi himself opened the door. He wore a faded linen blouse, and appeared greatly elated. "To the very last moment I was afraid of an excuse, and here you are, only a quarter of an hour late!" he cried, in a tone of cordial welcome; then, taking the portmanteau from the attendant gondolier, he called loudly, "Lucrezia! Lucrezia!" "You must excuse me, ladies," he said: "my house does not boast electric bells."
From a passage at the head of the stone staircase there appeared an old Venetian woman, with large earrings in her ears, and thick waving gray hair brushed back from her temples and coiled in a knot at the back of her head, the antique style of which suited admirably her regular classic features. She smiled a welcome to the ladies, thereby displaying a double row of dazzling white teeth, while Lozoncyi in fluent Italian ordered her to take the portmanteau to the dressing-room and unpack it.
Along the narrow passage leading directly through the house from the water, they walked into the garden, a tangle of luxuriant growth. The bushes were already clothed in tender green, and here and there through the young leaves could be seen a spray of white hawthorn.
"Oh, how charming!" exclaimed Erika.
"Is it not?" said the painter. "I came here for the sake of the garden. A spot of earth is so precious in this watery Venice."
"Do not forget your Lucrezia: her beauty exceeds that of your garden," the old Countess remarked.
"My old factotum? Yes, she has a fine face, magnificent features. I cannot endure anything ugly about me. But did you notice how short and stout she is?" He asked the question with so genuine an air of annoyance that the old Countess could not help laughing.
"What of that? Is it a crime in your eyes?"
"No," he said, thoughtfully, "but it makes her useless for artistic purposes. I tried to pose her the other day,--in vain. She might do for Juliet's nurse, or for a modern fortune-teller, but that is not my line. I find plenty of handsome faces among these Venetians, and fine shoulders, too, but nothing more. Their bodies are too long, their legs too short; there are no sweeping lines, no grace of movement. And when one finds a model whose limbs are long enough, she is like a stork. I have a deal of trouble in this respect. When I was painting 'Spring,'--the picture that Countess Erika does not like,--I was in despair because I could find no model for my female figure. Then one day on the Rialto I found a person, no longer young, rouged, but magnificently formed,--as tall as Countess Erika, only not----"
He broke off and grew very red. A moment afterwards, however, he had forgotten his embarrassment in a new inspiration. At the door of the studio Erika lifted her arm to pluck a spray of wistaria.
"Stay just as you are, for one instant, Countess!" he cried, and, rushing into his studio, he returned instantly with a sketch-book and a basket-chair. The latter he placed in the shade for the old Countess, and then began to sketch rapidly.
"Only look at that curve!" he exclaimed to the grandmother. "It is music! And the line of the hips!"
His manner of unceasingly dwelling upon the beauty or ugliness of the human body, the exact analysis which he was perpetually making of its structure, in connection with his profession, was at times offensive. But neither of the ladies took exception to it, Erika partly from inexperience and partly from flattered vanity, the old Countess because her sensitiveness in this respect had become dulled of late, and also because Lozoncyi expressed himself in so naïve a fashion that he seemed at the worst to be merely guilty of a breach of good taste. One had to know him very intimately to discover what a profound impression upon his inmost nature this perpetual study of the human figure had produced.
"How thoroughly you understand how to dress yourself!" he exclaimed, continuing to look fixedly at the girl, who wore a gown of some white woollen stuff, with a large straw hat trimmed with heavy old Venetian lace.
"I have half a mind to paint you thus, instead of in evening dress," he murmured. "But no; your portrait should be in full dress. Only, be generous; we will begin the portrait to-morrow, give me an hour for myself to-day: I want to make a water-colour sketch of you. Does it tire you too much to stretch your arm out so far?"
"A woman does not grow tired when she is conscious of being admired," the old Countess declared; "but the situation is less entertaining for me. Have you not some book to give me?"
Erika grew weary at last, in spite of the admiration lavished upon her by Lozoncyi while he sketched. The painter improvised a lunch for his guests beneath a mulberry-tree, upon a little rickety table. It was excellently prepared and delicately served, and he enjoyed seeing the ladies do ample justice to it. Lucrezia had just served the coffee, and was standing with a smiling face and arms akimbo, listening to the old Countess's praise of her skill in cookery, when there came a knock at the door.
"Confound it!" muttered Lozoncyi, "not a visitor, I trust."
It was no visitor, but a letter brought by Lozoncyi's gondolier, a handsome dark-skinned lad in a sailor dress, with a red scarf about his waist. Involuntarily Erika glanced at the letter. The address was in a feminine hand; the post-mark was Paris.
Lozoncyi gave an impatient shrug at sight of the handwriting; then, crushing the letter in his hand, he slipped it unopened into his pocket. "Will you not look into my workshop?" he asked the ladies.
"I was just about to ask you to show us your studio," replied the old Countess. "I am curious with regard to your 'Bad Dreams.'"
"Yes,"--he shivered,--"'bad dreams,'--that is the word!"
The atelier, which they entered from the garden by a glass door, was an unusually high and spacious apartment, but very plainly furnished, and in dusty confusion,--the workshop of a very nervous artist, who can endure no 'clearing up,' who cannot do without the rubbish of his art. Erika's gaze was instantly attracted by a remarkable and horrible picture.
A single figure in a close, clinging garment of undecided hue, the head thrust forward, the arms stretched out, the whole form expressing yearning, torturing desire, was groping its way towards a swamp above which hovered a will-o'-the-wisp. Above in the dark heavens gleamed the pure light of the stars. It was all a marvel of tone and expression,--the sad harmony of colour, the star-lit sky, the dreary swamp, and above all the figure, its every feature, every fingertip, every fold even of its garment, expressing desire.
"What did you mean it to represent?" asked the old Countess.
"Can you not guess?"
No, she could not guess; but Erika instantly exclaimed, "Blind Love!"
He looked at her more curiously than he had done hitherto, and then asked, "How did you know?"
"I see how the figure is creeping towards the will-o'-the-wisp, not heeding the stars sparkling above it. Look how it is sinking into the swamp, grandmother. It is horrible!"
"Blind Love," her grandmother repeated, thoughtfully. The subject did not appeal to her.
"Yes," said Lozoncyi, "blind love,--the misery of debasing passion." With a bitter smile he added, "Well, the only comfort is that one can sometimes attain to the will-o'-the-wisp, though he can never reach the stars, however he may gaze up at them."
"No," Erika exclaimed, indignantly, "that is no comfort. Rather--a thousand times rather--reach up in vain for the stars, and expand and grow in longing for the unattainable, than stoop to a happiness to be found only in a swamp!"
He made an inclination towards her, and said, half aloud, "What you say is very beautiful; but you do not understand."
"Well, you certainly have turned that poor fellow's head," Countess Lenzdorff remarked, leaning back comfortably among the cushions of the gondola as she and Erika were being rowed home. "It will do him no harm: on the contrary, it is good for such young artists, too apt to be self-indulgent, to reach after the unattainable; it enlarges their minds." Then after a while she went on: "I wonder whom the letter that so provoked him was from. Perhaps from that blonde who was with him at Bayreuth."
Erika did not reply; she looked down at a spray of wistaria he had plucked for her as she took leave of him. Suddenly she started: a large black caterpillar crept out from among the fragrant blossoms. With a little cry of disgust she flung the spray into the water.
At the same time Lozoncyi was standing in his studio, looking at the water-colour sketch he had made of Erika.
"A glorious creature," he muttered to himself; "glorious! I do not remember ever to have seen anything more beautiful, and, with all her distinction, and that pallor too, thoroughly healthy, fully developed, nothing maimed or deformed about her. She must be at least twenty-four. How is it that she is not married? Some unhappy love-affair? Hardly. She seems entirely fancy free, as if she had never in her life cared for a lover. How proudly she carries her head! Her kind is entirely unknown to me. Well, there are always women enough to do the dirty work of life; some there must be to guard the Holy Grail." He turned to the door of the studio that led out into the garden. A light vapour was rising from the earth, enveloping the blossoms in mist. He smiled strangely and not very pleasantly. "The spring cares not a whit for the Holy Grail. It goes on its way; it goes on its way."
At first she had been repelled by him; then he had flattered her vanity; by and by he interested her, but from the very beginning he had excited her imagination as no other man had ever done. And this in spite of the fact that his views of life, which he scarcely concealed, aroused within her painful indignation. She was quite aware that there were dark recesses in his soul which she might not explore, and that, courteous and faultless as was his behaviour towards women like her grandmother and herself, he respected them as curious specimens of the sex, interesting, because not often encountered. Upon all this she pondered, sick at heart, as she turned her head to and fro upon her pillow, so many nights, seeking the refreshment of sleep.
The outcome of it was a strange, pathetic, foolishly ambitious project. She set herself the task of converting him to nobler views of life.
How many unfortunates have been ruined in their zeal for conversion!
That Erika should unconsciously play with fire was not astonishing, but that her grandmother should look on in smiling indifference while her grand-daughter was thus occupied was amazing.
There are learned fanatics who in their determination to establish some theory of their own lavish all their powers in an effort to elaborate it, shutting their eyes to any light which may steal in upon them, while thus engaged, from an opposite quarter.
At first the portrait progressed with great rapidity; but now weeks had gone by, and it seemed as if Lozoncyi were unable to finish it.
It was life-size, a three-fourths figure, and, in order not to fatigue Erika, she was taken sitting in an antique chair, her lap heaped with pale-lilac wistaria blossoms. There was no straining for effect, not a trace of conventionality.
"Take the position that you find most comfortable," he had instructed his beautiful model. "You can take none that will not be lovely."
The long spring days glided slowly by. When the two ladies first went to Lozoncyi's studio the gray stone of the garden wall was easily seen behind the vines and bushes; now the green alone showed everywhere,--the roses were in bloom, and the hawthorn had nearly faded.
The studio, too, was changed. When they first came, it had been absolutely bare of all decoration; now when they came, which was three or four times a week, it was filled with the loveliest flowers.
When they left he heaped up all of these that had not been touched by the heat in their gondola, which sometimes returned alone to the Hotel Britannia, laden with the flowers, while Lozoncyi escorted his guests to their home by some picturesque roundabout way.
It was a great pleasure to walk with him. No one knew as he did how to call attention to some artistic effect, some bit of colour that might have easily escaped one less sensitive to picturesque detail.
"Good heavens!" said the old Countess, "I have been through these alleys a hundred times, but you make me feel as if I never had been here before. You have a special gift for teaching one the beauty of life."
"Indeed? Have I?" he murmured. "It is a gift, then, for teaching what I cannot learn myself."
By degrees Erika came to see with his eyes, and sometimes more quickly than he was wont to do. She was especially pleased when she could first call his attention to some artistic effect that had escaped him, and he always exaggerated the value of these discoveries of hers, assuring her that he had never seen a woman with so keen a sense of the beautiful, and rallying her upon her artistic skill. Once when the old Countess asked what they were talking about, Lozoncyi replied, "The Countess Erika and I are teaching each other to find life beautiful." And once he turned to Erika and said, sadly, "It is a pity that it must all come to an end so soon."
All the sentences abruptly broken off which just touched the brink of a declaration of love, but were never really such, Erika naturally interpreted in one way: "He loves me, but dares not venture to hope for a return of his affection: he is convinced that I am too far above him."
At first she was proud of having inspired a man so rare, so gifted, so flattered, with so profound a sentiment; then----
"To what can this lead?"
For the hundredth time Lozoncyi asked himself this question.
"To what can this lead?"
He was standing in his studio before Erika's unfinished portrait--unfinished!
"It must be finished at the next sitting. For the last ten days I have simply put off its completion from one sitting to the next, and all because I cannot tell how I can endure seeing her no more. And, yet, to what can it all lead?"
He was very pale, and the moisture stood upon his forehead. He would have turned away from the portrait, but was drawn towards it as by a spell. "A glorious creature!" he murmured; "and not only beautiful, but absolutely unique. It raises a man's moral standard to be with such a creature. H'm! before I knew her I was not aware that I had a moral standard." He laughed bitterly, and continued to gaze at the picture. "She is beautiful!" he muttered between his teeth. "It is folly for a being like her to be so beautiful,--a waste,--a contradiction of nature!" He stamped his foot, vexed that any but the purest thoughts should intrude upon his admiration of Erika. "A strange creature! What eyes!--so clear, so deep, so penetrating!" He could think of nothing save of her; his nerves thrilled with passion for her.
Strive as he might, his artist imagination could not force itself from the contemplation of her beauty.
He loved her; he had known that for some time. But hitherto his love for her had been a tender, noble sentiment, something of which he had not supposed himself capable, something that exalted him in his own estimation. He had been refreshed, revived, by her presence, by intercourse with her. But that was past.
"The charm of love is the dream that precedes it," he murmured. The dream was over: what now?
Then an insane idea occurred to him: "She is unlike all others: there is a magnanimous, exaggerated strain in her composition, which exalts her above all pettiness. If she loved me, could she ever have been induced to marry me?"
He shivered. "No! no! it is worse than folly to imagine it. In spite of all her enthusiasm, in spite of her immense power of compassion, she is too much the Countess to ever dream of such a possibility."
His lips were dry; an iron hand seemed clutching his throat. He turned his back to the picture and went out into the garden. The skies were covered with gray clouds: the flowers drooped; there was a distant mutter of thunder.
"Yet if it could be!" he murmured.
Erika was sitting by the window in her boudoir. Although outside the night had not yet fallen upon the earth, it was too dark to read. Her window looked out upon the hotel-garden,--which at this season of the year was like one huge bed of roses intersected by a narrow gravel path. The sweet breath of the roses was wafted in at the window, but with it there mingled always the sickening odour of the lagoon.
A couple of distant clocks were striking the hour, and the water was lapping the feet of the old palaces.
Lost in thought the girl sat there. The mission in life for which she had so yearned was revealed to her in the noblest, most attractive form.
She could not doubt that Lozoncyi loved her. Mistrustful as she usually was concerning the sentiments she was wont to arouse, there could be no uncertainty in this case.
The future lay before her bright and alluring. How could she have despaired in this wonderful life of ours? She seemed to have always known that she was foreordained for some special service.
Why had he never yet made a direct confession of his sentiments? Her pride replied to this question, "He dare not venture."
It was for her to take one step to meet him. Reserved as she was, the mere thought of so doing sent the blood to her cheeks, but she took herself sternly to task, admonishing herself that cowardice on her part would be paltry in the extreme.
It would surely be possible to allow him to read her heart, without any indelicate frankness on her part.
Thus far her thoughts had led her, when Marianne brought her a card: "Herr von Lozoncyi."
"Did you tell him I was at home?"
"No; I said I would see. When her Excellency is away I never say anything decided," replied the maid.
The old Countess had gone out a little while before, to pay a short visit in the neighbourhood; Lüdecke had accompanied her.
Erika hesitated a moment, then turned up the electric light and told Marianne to show in the visitor. Immediately afterwards he entered, and she arose to receive him. She was startled as she looked at his face, it was so pale and wan.
"Are you ill?" she exclaimed; "or have you come to tell us of some misfortune that has befallen you?" The sympathy expressed in her tone agitated him still further.
"Neither is the case," he replied, trying to assume an easy air. "I came only to----" There he paused. Why had he come? The thought that she might entertain a warmer sentiment for him--a thought that had occurred to him to-day for the first time--would not be banished. He had dragged the sweet, racking uncertainty about with him for an hour through the loneliest streets of Venice, without being able to rid himself of it. He would see her,--would have certainty; and then----
Ah, he could not gain that certainty: he could only long for her.
He had invented some explanation of his visit, but he could not remember it; instead he said, "You are very kind to receive me in Countess Lenzdorff's absence, and I will show my appreciation of your kindness by making my visit a short one."
"On the contrary," she rejoined, "I hope you will spend the evening with us. My grandmother will be here in a few minutes, and will be very glad to find you here."
How soft and sweet her voice was! Could it be--could it be----?
His agitation became almost intolerable. He knew that he ought not to stay, but he could not bring himself to leave.
The evening minstrels of Venice were beginning their rounds, and in the distance they sang "Io son felice--t'attendo in ciel!"
"Bring your present expression to the studio tomorrow!" Lozoncyi said, hoarsely: "I will transfer it to the canvas as well as I can, in memory of the noblest creature I have ever met. You are coming to-morrow?"
"Certainly. The portrait is almost finished, is it not?"
"Yes; I think to-morrow will be the last sitting; and then----"
"And then----?" she repeated.
"Then it will all be over!"
There was a pause. He turned his head aside. Suddenly a low sweet voice, that went directly to his heart, said, softly, "Then you will wish to know nothing more of me!"
He started as if from an electric shock; the room swam before his eyes, when----the door opened, the Countess Mühlberg appeared, and Lozoncyi arose to take leave, thanking Heaven for this unexpected interruption.
"Will you not wait until my grandmother returns?" Erika asked.
"Unfortunately, it is impossible."
"Adieu, then. To-morrow at eleven," she called after him. He made no reply.