As she crossed a narrow canal by a small bridge, the singers' gondola came directly towards her. She saw it close at hand. The soprano was a faded, hollow-cheeked woman, the men were quite ragged.
Was that the phantom that had lured her on all through the spring?
The guttering candles in the gondola were burned almost into the sockets. One of the paper lanterns took fire. The boat glided beneath the bridge. When it emerged on the other side the lights were extinguished, the singers silent. The gondola floated drearily on, a black formless spot in the moonlight.
Shortly afterwards Erika found a gondola in which she reached the hotel.
In consequence of the arrival of a large number of fresh guests, the hotel was brilliantly lighted, all the doors were open, and Erika went up the staircase to her room without attracting special notice.
"Perhaps," she thought, "my grandmother has not yet returned: I may be able to recover my letter before she has read it." She went instantly to her bedroom. Light issued from the chink of the door: she was too late. She opened the door. There, beside her bed, sat her grandmother in an arm-chair, erect and stiff, her eyes looking unnaturally large in her ashy-pale face, where the last few hours had graven deeper furrows than had been made by all the other experiences of her seventy years.
A strange cry escaped the old Countess's lips when she perceived the wan, sad apparition in the door-way. Half rising from her seat, her hands grasping the arms of the chair, she gazed at the girl as if she had been a corpse newly risen from the tomb. Trembling in every limb, "Erika!" she stammered. She tried to walk towards her grandchild, and could not. Erika's strength barely sufficed to carry her to the bedside, where she sank at her grandmother's feet and laid her head in her lap.
Neither could speak for a while. The old lady only stroked the girl's hair with her delicate hand, which grew warmer every minute. The girl sobbed. After some minutes the grandmother bent over her and murmured, "Erika, tell me how you have been rescued at the eleventh hour. Where have you been?"
Erika lifted her head, and in a faint voice told all that had occurred until the moment when she had gone down into the garden to take leave of Lozoncyi. There she hesitated.
Her grandmother listened breathlessly, and in an instant the girl began afresh: "I had forgotten myself. I would have done more for him than was ever done for man before; I would have borne him aloft to the stars. And he--the way was too hard; he had no heart for it; he would have dragged me down into the mire from which I would fain have rescued him. And when at last I understood, I fled----" A fit of convulsive sobbing interrupted her: she could not go on.
Her grandmother understood it all. She said not a word, only gently stroked the poor head in her lap. After a while she persuaded Erika to lie down, helped her to undress, and smoothed the pillow in which the poor child hid her tear-stained face.
She sat at the bedside until the dull weariness sure to follow upon intense nervous agitation produced its effect and the girl slept. The grandmother still sat there, motionless, until far into the morning.
About nine o'clock Marianne softly opened the door of the room. Erika awoke. She had forgotten everything,--when her glance fell upon a small black travelling-bag in the maid's hand.
"Please, your Excellency, a gondolier has just brought this bag," Marianne explained. "He says the Countess Erika left it in the gondola yesterday after the accident,--after the fright, I mean: he told me all about it. Poor Countess Erika! what a terrible thing for her! But it was fortunate, too, because she was able to save the poor woman. The gondolier has come for the hundred lire which the Countess promised him for getting the woman out of the water."
The old Countess drew a deep breath. Everything was turning out more favourably for Erika than she had dared to hope. The adventure, which would of course be discussed freely by all the hotel servants, would explain Erika's long absence and strange return.
"Is the Countess Erika ill?" asked the faithful Marianne, with an anxious glance at the young girl, whose cheeks were flushed with fever.
"Only suffering from the effects of agitation," said Countess Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile brought the money and given it to the maid.
"No wonder! Poor Countess Erika!" the servant murmured as she withdrew.
Weary and wretched, Erika again closed her eyes. When she opened them she saw her grandmother at the writing-table, her head resting on her hand, and a blank sheet of paper before her.
"To whom are you writing, grandmother?"
"I want to write to Goswyn," the old Countess replied, in a low tone. "I must answer his letter; and--I am not sure----" She hesitated.
Upon Erika's mind flashed the remembrance of the letter she had written the previous day to Goswyn. She had forgotten it.
"Of course I must tell him not to come," said her grandmother.
Erika sighed. Must she give her grandmother that pain too? At last she managed to say, in a voice that was scarce audible, "He will not come: he----"
Startled by a terrible suspicion, her grandmother looked at her in dismay. Erika's face was turned away from her.
"Well?" asked the old Countess.
"I wrote to him yesterday," poor Erika stammered, "telling him what I was about to do. I thought he must hear of it sooner or later, and I wished that he should hear it in a way that would give him least pain."
"Oh, Erika! Erika!"
But Erika lay still, her head turned away from her grandmother. After a while she said, almost in a whisper, "Grandmother, please write to him that"--she buried her face in the pillow--"that---- Oh, grandmother, tell him--that--he need not despise me!"
Her grandmother made no reply. For a while absolute silence reigned in the room. Then Erika suddenly heard a low sob. She looked round. The Countess had covered her face with her hands, and was weeping.
It was the first time since Erika had known her that she had seen her shed tears.
No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hôtel Britannia is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic of typhus fever.
Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at thetable-d'hôteof the Hôtel Britannia, and the small table appropriated to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.
Nevertheless the Lenzdorffs have not left the hotel; but Erika is ill, stricken down by malarial fever, and the old Countess does not leave her bedside.
The attack was sudden,--sudden so far as could be seen by those in daily intercourse with her, but pronounced very gradual by the physician, who maintained that the disease had long been latent in the girl's system.
In the afternoon of the day after that upon which Erika had, as by a miracle, escaped the most terrible peril of her life, she had, by her grandmother's desire, donned a charming gown and had gone with the old Countess to pay a round of farewell visits. She had gone patiently in the gondola from one palazzo to another, and with a pale, calm face had answered question after question as to the terrible catastrophe which her timely presence had been the means of preventing.
There were various versions concerning the reasons for Frau Lozoncyi's attempt at suicide: thanks to the jealousy of Lozoncyi's numerous feminine adorers, none of these versions approached even distantly the truth, for none of his adorers would have admitted that the artist had ever bestowed a serious thought upon Erika.
In the evening she had dressed for dinner, and then, overcome by fatigue, she had lain down upon her bed to rest for a quarter of an hour. She did not rise from it for weeks.
Now the disease has left her. The physician has not only allowed but advised her to leave her bed. Every forenoon at eleven o'clock Marianne and the old Countess dress her,--ah, how tenderly and carefully!--and then, leaning heavily upon her grandmother's arm, she walks slowly about the room.
It is nearly six o'clock. The intense heat has somewhat abated, and Erika is sitting in the most comfortable arm-chair to be had in the hotel, her head resting upon a pillow, her hands in her lap. And what hands they are!--so slender, so white and helpless! To please her grandmother, she has swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup,--without the slightest desire to eat,--as if it had been medicine.
"Are you comfortable, my darling? Shall I not get you another pillow?" her grandmother asks. The old Countess is hardly to be recognized, her treatment of her grand-daughter is so humbly tender, so pathetically anxious. Her force and rigour have vanished: she can only pet and spoil Erika; she cannot incite her to any interest in life.
"Ah, grandmother dear, everything is most comfortable," Erika replies. As if a pillow more or less could procure her ease!
"Shall I read aloud to you, my child?"
"If you will be so kind."
Her grandmother makes choice of a new novel of Norris's. As she reads, she looks across the book at Erika: the girl is not listening. The old Countess stops, and drops the book in her lap. Erika is not aware that she has ceased to read.
After a while she looks up. "Grandmother," she asks, gently, "did no letters come while I was ill?"
"Of course," her grandmother replies. "I had letters every day from various friends and acquaintances, asking how you were. Hedwig Norbin is with her married daughter in Via Reggia, and I had to send her bulletins reporting your condition three times a week."
Erika's thin cheeks flush slightly. "And--did no letters come from Berlin?" she asks, with averted face.
Her grandmother hesitates for a moment, and then says, "I do not correspond with any one in Berlin. I have written as few letters as possible during your illness."
Erika's head droops. "How ashamed my grandmother must be for me, if she has not even told Goswyn that I am ill!" she thinks.
For a while there is silence; then Erika whispers, "Grandmother, I am very tired. I should like to lie down."
Her grandmother leads her to a lounge, where she lies down, with her face turned to the wall. She is very quiet. Is she sleeping?
The old Countess softly leaves the room.
In Erika's boudoir she walks to and fro a couple of times, then sits down and takes up a book, but it soon drops in her lap unread. For weeks she has felt no interest in the comfortless philosophy of the books which were formerly her favourites. The book slips to the floor; she does not stoop to pick it up; with hands clasped in her lap she ponders upon many things that had not been wont to occupy her thoughts. She never notices a bustle in the hotel most unusual at this, the dull season, until Lüdecke opens the door and announces, "Your Excellency, Herr von Sydow wishes to know if he may come up, or if your Excellency----"
She starts. "Herr von Sydow!" she repeats. "Show him up,--very softly, of course: Countess Erika is asleep."
A moment afterwards he enters the room.
At first she hardly recognizes him. His features are sharper; the hair about his temples is gray.
"My dear child, you here?" she says, cordially, rising and advancing a few steps to meet him.
He kisses her hand. "I learned only three days ago that she is ill. How is she?"
"Erika?"
"Who else could it be?" he replies, impatiently.
"The disease is cured; but she does not get well. She gains no strength. She has not improved in the last ten days; she has no appetite, takes no interest in anything. She is always weary."
"What does her physician say?" Goswyn is sitting beside his old friend, leaning forward and listening eagerly to every word that falls from her lips. Both speak very softly.
"The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of life----"
"No love of life! Nonsense!" exclaims Goswyn. "Life must be made dear again for her."
Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.
What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in Berlin?
"Goswyn," she stammers, gazing at him, "you here? What are you doing here?"
He goes to her and takes her hand. "I heard that you were ill, and I came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home."
Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her forehead.
A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck, and murmurs, "Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the pain I have given you?"
He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. "What!" he cries, "do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your illness began weeks before it did for the physicians."
Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which, exhausted as she is, she sinks down.
"I must make one confession to you, Erika," he whispers. "I was almost out of my senses in that terrible twenty-four hours after I received your letter and before I received your grandmother's; my gray temples bear witness to that; but then--then I took delight in your letter,--yes, in that terrible letter. For I learned from it what I had never ventured to hope,--that you cared for me a little, Erika."
"Ah, Goswyn, you always were, of all men in this world, the most indispensable one to me!"
How fair life can be! For a while the lovers, hand clasped in hand, talk blissfully; then Erika looks round for her grandmother. But the old Countess has vanished: they do not need her at this moment. She is sitting in her own room, delighting in her two young people, recalling her far-distant past, as she says to herself that under certain circumstances love may be a beautiful thing, and when it is beautiful----