A telegram had finally announced the arrival of the Meinecks by the 10.30 morning train at H----, the nearest railroad-station, tolerably distant from Erlach Court.
It is almost noon; the captain and Freddy have driven over to the station to meet the guests, and the rest of the family are on the terrace outside of the dining-room. The hostess, dressed as usual with puritanic simplicity in some kind of dark linen stuff, deliciously fresh and smelling of lavender, is leaning back in a garden-chair, diligently crochetting a red-and-white afghan for her little son's bed. The general, in a very youthful felt hat adorned with a feather, is chuckling in a corner over a novel of Zola's. Anastasia is fluttering gracefully hither and thither, fancying the while that she looks like a Watteau. In pursuance of her lamentable custom of wearing her shabby old evening-gowns in the country in the daytime, she has donned a much-worn sky-blue silk with dilapidated tulle trimming, and is surprised that her faded splendour appears to fail to dazzle those present.
"Life is pleasant here, is it not?" asks Katrine, looking up from her crochetting at Rohritz, who faces her as he leans against the balustrade of the terrace. "I am trying my best to induce my husband to leave the service and retire to this place. He is still hesitating."
"Hm! Do you not think that for a man of his temperament existence at Erlach Court would be a trifle monotonous?" is Rohritz's reply.
"He can occupy himself," Katrine makes answer, shrugging her shoulders.
"If I mistake not, you have rented the farm at Erlach Court?"
"Yes, thank heaven!" Frau von Leskjewitsch admits, with a smile. "Farming is usually a very costly taste for dilettanti. But he has entire control over the forests and the vineyards; they would give him plenty to do; and then he is an enthusiastic horseman, and the roads are very fine."
Rohritz is silent, and thoughtfully knocks off the ashes from his cigar with the long nail of his little finger. He cannot help thinking that Katrine Leskjewitsch, exemplary as she may be as a mother, has her faults as a wife. Jack Leskjewitsch is not yet eight-and-thirty, and she is prescribing for him a life suited to a man of sixty.
"It is certainly a pity to cut short his career," Rohritz remarks, after a while, "especially since he passed so brilliant an examination for advanced rank last year."
"Yes, his talent is indubitable," Katrine assents: "one would hardly think it of him. He devotes but little attention to study, as I can testify, and I certainly did not coach him, as did the wife of an unfortunate captain who passed the same examination." The corners of Katrine's mouth twitched. "What do you think was the end of the united efforts of husband and wife? Two weeks after barely and laboriously passing his examination the worthy man was a maniac. In fact, no fewer than seven of my husband's fellow-students in that course lost their reason. 'Tis odd how much ambitious incapacity one encounters in this world! Jack does not belong in that category, however. He adores the service, but he has not a particle of ambition."
All this is uttered with a seemingly woful lack of interest.
"'Tis a pity that she does not sympathize more fully with Les," Rohritz thinks to himself; but all he says is, "And yet you would have him relinquish his career?"
"A cavalry-man who looks forward to a career ought not to marry," Katrine maintains. "Probably you can recall the delights of a military, nomadic existence for a family, particularly in those holes in Hungary. Such hovels!--a stagnant swamp in front, a Suabian regiment installed in the rooms, and no sooner have you got things into a civilized condition than you have to break up to the sound of boot and saddle. In one year I changed my abode three times. I could have borne it all so far as I was concerned, but there was the child. Freddy became subject to attacks of fever, so I bundled him up and brought him here. He recovered immediately, and I wrote to my husband that he must choose between his family and the army."
"That was to the point, at least," said Rohritz.
"Yes. He was apparently offended, and did not answer my letter for a month. Then he was seized with a longing for--for the child. He alighted in the midst of our solitude like a bomb at Sevastopol. Of course we were charmed to see him, and he was so delighted with Erlach Court that he was quite ready to turn his back on the service. I, however, do not approve of hasty decisions, and so I advised him to postpone his change of vocations----"
"His resignation of a vocation," Baron Rohritz interpolated.
"What a hair-splitting humour you are in today!" Katrine rejoined, with a shrug, "to postpone for a while his resignation, if that pleases you. So he obtained leave of absence for a year. Hm!--I am afraid he is beginning to be bored. I cannot understand it. You must admit that we are charmingly situated here."
"Indeed you are."
"The estate is in good order," Katrine went on, "and we have no neighbours."
"A great advantage."
"So it seems to me. One of the most disagreeable sides of an army life was always, in my opinion, the being forced into association with so many unpleasant people. Most of my husband's comrades were very agreeable, unusually kindly, pleasant men, but to be forced to accept them all, and their wives into the bargain without liberty to show any preference,--it was simply odious. I am a fanatic for solitude; the usual human being I dislike; but you cannot throw everybody over, however you may desire to do so,"--with a glance over her shoulder towards Stasy and the general. "I beg you will make no application to yourself of my remark."
"Much obliged." Rohritz bowed. "I confess I began----"
"No need of fine phrases," Katrine interrupted him. "You know I like you. And in proof of it--you may have heard that we want to pass the winter here; it will be delightful! entirely lonely,--shut off from civilization by a wall of snow,--Christmas in the country,--the children from three villages to provide with gifts,--the castle quite empty, except for our three selves and Freddy! Well, in proof of my genuine friendship I invite you to share with us this charming solitude. Will you come? Say you will." Dropping her work in her lap, she offers him both her hands.
"A curious creature! She treats me like an aged man, and moreover considers herself sufficiently elderly to dispense with caution in her intercourse with the other sex. An odd illusion for a woman still extremely pretty," Rohritz thinks; and, occupied with these reflections, he does not immediately reply.
"You decline?" she asks, merrily. "I shall not throw away such an invitation upon you a second time."
"They are coming! they are coming!" Stasy exclaims, clapping her hands childishly and tripping to and fro in much excitement.
"I do not hear the carriage," Katrine rejoins, looking at her watch. "Besides, it is not time for them yet."
"But I hear something in the avenue---- Ah, please come, dear Edgar," Stasy entreats.
Rohritz does not stir.
"Baron Rohritz!" in an imploring tone.
"What can I do for you, Fräulein Stasy?"
"Your opera-glass--be quick!" And, while Rohritz reluctantly rises to go for the desired optical aid, Stasy lisps, "Not at all over-polite; quite like a brother: just what I enjoy."
"It is they," Katrine exclaims. "The carriage is just turning into the avenue. Let me have it for a moment,"--taking from his hand the glass which Rohritz has just brought. "Yes, now I see them quite distinctly."
A few minutes later the rattle of approaching wheels is heard. The two ladies and the general hasten down to receive the guests. Rohritz discreetly withdraws to his apartment, and from behind his half-drawn curtains watches the arrival. The carriage stops, the captain springs out to aid two ladies to alight. At first Rohritz hears nothing but a hubbub of glad voices, sees nothing but a confused group, the general standing on one side with a polite grin on his face, and Freddy giving vent to his joyous excitement by performing a war-dance around the party.
When the situation at last becomes clear, he perceives a very handsome old lady in a close black travelling-hat, a pair of blue spectacles shielding her eyes from the dust, and wearing a dust-cloak which may once have been black, while beside her--he adjusts his eye-glass in his eye--assuredly Stella does not remind him of the 'hysterical tree-frog' of frightful memory, but of some one else, for the life of him he cannot remember whom. He looks and looks, sees two serious dark eyes in a gentle childlike face beneath the broad brim of a Kate-Greenaway hat, a half-wayward, half-shy smile, charming dimples appearing by turns in the cheeks and at the corners of the mouth, a delicately-chiselled nose, a very short and rather haughty upper lip, beneath which gleam rows of pearly teeth, and for the rest, the figure of a sylph, rather tall, still a little too thin, and with a foot peeping from beneath her skirt that Taglioni might covet.
He looks and looks. No, Stella certainly does not remind him of the 'hysterical tree-frog,' but as certainly she recalls to his mind something, some one--who is it? who can it be?
An unpleasant surmise occurs to him, but before it can take actual shape in his brain the impetuous entrance of the captain has banished it.
"Come to the drawing-room, Rohritz, and be presented to the ladies," he calls out. "By the way, what means this wretched idea of which Stasy informs me? She says that you are going back to Grätz immediately."
"The fact is, my lawyer has summoned me," Rohritz replies; "but--hm!--I fancy the matter can be settled by letter. At any rate, I will try to have it so disposed of."
"Bravo!"
Freddy has been terribly disappointed; instead of the bonbonnière, the snap-pistol, or the storybook, among which three articles he has allowed his expectant imagination to rove, his aunt has brought him Sanders's German Dictionary.
"I hope you will like it," Stella remarks, with emphasis, depositing the voluminous gift upon the school-room table. "We had to pay for at least five pounds of extra weight of luggage in the monster's behalf, and moreover it has crushed flat my only new summer hat. 'Tis a great pity."
Freddy, who, although hitherto rather puny and delicate in body, is mentally, thanks to clever qualities inherited from both his parents, far in advance of his age, and already thinks Voss's translation of the Odyssey entertaining, turns over the leaves of the three volumes of the Dictionary without finding them attractive.
"I put in a good word for the child," Stella says, with a laugh, to the captain, who with his friend Rohritz happens to be in Freddy's school-room, "but mamma insists that it is of no consequence; if it does not please him now, it will be very useful to him in future. Never mind, my darling," she adds, turning to her little cousin, who, with a sigh and not without much physical effort, is putting the colossal Sanders on his bookshelves; "it certainly presents an imposing spectacle, and I have a foolish thing for your birthday, the very finest my limited means could afford." As she speaks she strokes the little fellow's brown curls affectionately.
"Stella, Stella, where are you loitering?" a deep voice calls at this moment, and the girl replies,--
"In a moment, mamma, I am coming!--I have to write a letter to a Berlin publisher," she says by way of explanation to the two men, as she leaves the room.
The evening has come. Dinner is over. All are sitting in more or less comfortable garden-chairs on the terrace before the castle, beneath the spreading boughs of a linden, now laden with fragrant blossoms.
The stars are not yet awake, but the moon has risen full, though giving but little light, and looking in its reddish lustre like a candle lighted by day; the heavens are of a pale, greenish blue, with opalescent gleams on the horizon. The sun has set, twilight has mingled lights and shadows, the colours of the flowers are dull and faded. Around the castle reigns a sweet, peaceful silence, that most precious of all the luxuries of a residence in the country. The evening wind murmurs a dreamy duo with the ripple of the stream running at the foot of the garden, and now and then is heard the heavy foot-fall of a peasant returning from his work to the village.
Baroness Meineck is holding forth to her hostess, who listens patiently, or at least silently, upon the subject of the cholera-bacilli and the latest discoveries of Pasteur. To Rohritz, who, will he nill he, has had to place his hands at the disposal of the arch Stasy as a reel for her crewel, the Baroness's voice partly recalls a sentinel and partly a tragic actress; she always talks in fine rounded periods, as if she suspected a stenographer concealed near. While the quondam beauty, with a thousand superfluous little arts, winds an endless length of red worsted upon a folded playing-card, he glances towards the spot where Stella is telling stories to Freddy, and involuntarily listens.
Since the Baroness, perhaps because she has reached some rather delicate details in her medical treatise, sees fit to lower slightly her powerful voice, he can hear almost every word spoken by Stella. If he is especially susceptible in any regard, it is in that of a beautiful mode of speech. What Stella says he is quite indifferent to, but the delightful tone of her soft, clear, bird-like voice touches his soul with an indescribably soothing charm.
"Now that's enough. I do not know any more stories," he hears her say at last in reply to an entreaty from her little cousin for "just one more."
"No more at all?" Freddy asks, in dismay, and with all the earnestness of his age.
"No more to-day," Stella says, consolingly. "I shall know another to-morrow." She kisses him on the forehead. "You look tired, my darling! Is it your bedtime?"
"No," the captain answers for him, "but he could not sleep last night for delight in the coming of our guests, and he is paying for it now. Shall I carry you up-stairs--hey, Freddy?"
But Freddy considers it quite beneath his dignity to go to bed with the chickens, and prefers to clamber upon his father's knee.
"You are growing too big a fellow for this," the captain says, rather reprovingly: nevertheless he puts his arm tenderly about the boy, saying to Stella, by way of excuse, "We spoil him terribly: he was not very strong in the spring, and he still enjoys all the privileges of a convalescent,--hey, my boy?" By way of reply the little fellow nestles close to his father with some indistinct words expressive of great content, and while the captain's moustache is pressed upon the child's soft hair, Stella takes a small scarlet wrap from her shoulders and folds it about his bare legs.
"'Tis good to sleep so, Freddy, is it not? Ah, where are the times gone when I could climb up on my father's knees and fall asleep on his shoulder?--they were the happiest hours of my life!" the girl says, with a sigh.
"But, Baron Rohritz, pray hold your hands a little quieter," the wool-winding Stasy calls out to her victim. "You twitch them all the time."
"If you only knew how glad I am to see you all again, and to spend a few days in the country," Stella begins afresh after a while.
"Why, do you not come directly from the country?" the captain asks, surprised.
"From the country?--we come from Zalow," Stella replies: "the difference is heaven-wide. Yes, when mamma thirty years ago bought the mill where we live now,--without the miller and his wife, 'tis true,--because it was so picturesque, it really was in the country, or at least in a village, where besides ourselves there were only a few peasants, and one other person, a misanthropic widow who lived at the very end of the hamlet in a one-story house concealed behind a screen of chestnut-trees. I have no objection to peasant huts, particularly when their thatched roofs are overgrown with green moss, and misanthropic widows are seldom in one's way. But ten years ago a railway was built directly through Zalow, and villas shot up out of the ground in every direction like mushrooms. And such villas, and such proprietors! Allnouveaux richesand pushing tradesfolk from Prague. A stocking-weaver built two villas close beside us,--one for his own family, and the other to rent; he christened the pair Giroflé-Girofla, and declares that the name alone is worth ten thousand guilders. He also maintains that the architecture of his villas is the purest classic: each has a Greek peristyle and a square belvedere. It would be deliciously ridiculous if one were not forced to have the monsters directly before one's eyes all the time. The worst of it is that one really gets used to them! Dear papa's former tailor has built himself a hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First directly on the road, behind a gilded iron fence and without a tree near it for fear of obscuring its splendour. Like all retired tradesfolk, the tailor is sentimental. Only lately he complained to me of the difficulty experienced by cultivated people in finding a fitting social circle."
"Do you know him personally, then?" the captain asks, with an air of annoyance.
"Oh, yes, we know every one to bow to," says Stella. "In a little while we shall exchange calls: I am looking forward to that with great pleasure."
"What do you think of such talk, Baron?" Stasy asks under her breath.
Baron Rohritz makes no reply: perhaps such talk is to his taste.
Meanwhile, Stella goes on in the same satirical tone: "As soon as some one of these æsthetic proprietors has come to a decision as to where the piano is to stand, we shall certainly be invited to admire the new furniture. Then mamma will look up from her books and say, 'I have no time; but if you want to go, pray do as you please.' Mamma never cares what I do or where I go." Stella's soft voice trembles; she shakes her head, passes her hand over her eyes, and runs on: "Even the walks are spoiled; one is never sure of not encountering a picnic-party. They are always singing by turns 'Dear to my heart, thou forest fair,' and 'Gaudeamus,' and when they leave it the 'forest fair' is always littered with cold victuals, greasy brown paper, and tin cans. It is horrible! I detest that railway. It snatched from us the prettiest part of our garden; there is scarcely room enough left for 'pussy wants a corner,' and now mamma has rented half of it and the ground-floor of the mill to a family from Prague for a summer residence."
"I do not understand Lina," the captain says, with irritation. "You surely are not reduced to the necessity of renting part of your small house for lodgings."
"Mamma wanted just two hundred guilders to buy Littré's Dictionary,--the fine complete edition. Moreover, I think you are under a mistake with regard to our resources. I detest the railway, but if it had not bought of us, two years ago, a piece of land on which to build a shop, I hardly know what we should be living upon now. Ah, if poor papa could see how we live! He could not imagine a household without a butler or a lady's-maid. Mamma dismissed the butler at first upon strictly moral grounds----"
Anastasia von Gurlichingen casts down her eyes. "Did you ever hear anything like that, Baron Rohritz," she asks, "from a young girl?"
Rohritz shrugs his shoulders impatiently, and Stella goes on quite at her ease:
"He was always making love to the cook, and the lady's-maid was jealous and complained of it. Then the lady's-maid was dismissed, for pecuniary reasons; then the cook, for sanitary considerations: one fine day she nearly poisoned us all with verdigris, her copper kettles were so badly scoured. Her place was never filled, for in the interim, that is, while we were looking for a newcordon bleu, mamma discovered that a cook was a very costly article and that we could get along without one. Our last maid-of-all work was a dwarf not quite four feet tall, who had to mount on a stool to set the table. Mamma engaged her because she thought that her ugliness would put a stop to love-making----" Stella breaks the thread of her discourse to laugh gently; her laugh is like the ripple of a brook. "But real talent defies all obstacles. Mamma's experiment made her richer by one sad experience: she knows now that not even a large hump can make its possessor impervious to Cupid's arrows."
The captain laughs. Stasy's disapprobation has reached its climax; she twitches impatiently at the worsted she is winding from Rohritz's hands.
"What would papa say if he could see it all?" Stella says, in a changed voice.
"Do you still grieve so for your poor father, mouse?" the captain asks, kindly, perceiving that the girl with difficulty restrains her tears at the mention of her dead father.
"You would not ask that, uncle, if you knew what a life I lead," she replies, in a choked voice. "Yes, it is amusing enough to tell of, but to live---- There is no use in thinking of it!" She bends slightly above her little cousin, whose head is resting quietly upon his father's shoulder. "He is sound asleep," she whispers, brushing away a fluttering night-moth from Freddy's pretty face,--"poor little man!"
"It is growing cool," Katrine declares, glancing anxiously towards Freddy in the midst of the Baroness's interesting discourse upon the latest achievements of medical science, and then, rising, she leaves her sister-in-law to go to her little son, saying, "Give me the boy, Jack. I will carry him up-stairs."
"What! drag up-stairs with this heavy boy? Nonsense!" says the captain.
Whereupon Freddy wakes, rubs his eyes, is a little cross at first, after the fashion of sleepy children, but finally says good-night to all and goes off, his little hand clasped in his mother's.
"Here is some one else asleep too!" says Katrine, as she passes the general, who is sitting with his arms crossed and his head sunk on his breast.
"Can you tell me, Jack, whether mummies ever have the rheumatism?" she asks. "Indeed, you had better waken him. I will have the whist-table set out.--And you, sweetheart," she says to Stella, "might unpack your music and sing us something."
While Stella amiably rises to go with her aunt, and the Baroness makes ready to follow them, murmuring that she must unpack the music herself, or her manuscripts will be all disarranged, Stasy turns to Rohritz:
"What do you say to it all? Did you ever hear such talk from a well-born girl? Such a conversation! Some allowance, to be sure, must be made for her."
But Rohritz simply murmurs, "Poor girl!"
"Yes, she is greatly to be pitied; her training has been deplorable!" sighs Stasy, and then, lowering her voice a little, she adds, "The colonel----"
"What Meineck was he?" Rohritz interrupts her, impatiently. "There are four or five in the army,--sons of a field-marshal, if I am not mistaken. Was he in the dragoons or the Uhlans?"
"Franz Meineck, of the ---- Hussars," says Jack.
"The one, then, who distinguished himself at Solferino and got the Theresa cross?" Rohritz asks.
"The same," replies the captain.
"I do not know why I imagined that it must have been Heinrich Meineck. It was Franz, then." He adds, with some hesitation, "I did not know him personally, but I have heard a great deal of him. He must have been a charming officer and a delightful comrade, besides being one of the bravest men in the army----"
"He was particularly distinguished as a husband," Stasy exclaims, with her usual frank malice.
"We will not speak of that, Fräulein Stasy," says the captain. "My sister's marriage was certainly an insane, overwrought affair, and Franz gave his wife abundant cause for leaving him; but of the two lives his was the ruined one."
Yes, of the two lives the colonel's was the ruined one; wherefore, in spite of all the evident and great fault on his side, the sympathies of every one were in his favour,--that is, of all his fellows who knew life and the world, and who were ready to give their regard and their sympathy to men as they are, instead of, like certain great philosophers, reserving their entire store of commiseration for those exquisitely correct creatures, men as they should be.
When they made each other's acquaintance in Lemberg at Lina's father's, General Leskjewitsch's, Franz Meineck was twenty-six and Lina Leskjewitsch thirty-two years old. Nevertheless the world--the world that was familiar with these two people--wondered far more at her fancy for him than at his falling a prey to her fascinations.
She had from her earliest years been an exceptionally interesting girl, and a position as such had always been accorded her without any effort on her part to obtain it, for in spite of all her whims and eccentricities no one could detect in her a spark of affectation or pretension. She was altogether too indifferent to what people said of her ever to pose for the applause of the crowd. Her egotism, fed as it was by the homage of those around her, led her to yield to the prompting of every caprice, and since she was very beautiful, and could be excessively fascinating when she chose,--since, moreover, her father held a distinguished office under government,--she was dubbed original and a genius where other girls would have been condemned as eccentric and unmaidenly.
Always keenly alive to intellectual interests, she was, by the time she had reached her twenty-fifth year, a confirmed blue-stocking; she studied Sanskrit, and was in correspondence with half the scientific men in Europe. Moreover, she was by no means 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,' but full of wit and spirit. She swam like a fish, venturing alone far out upon river or lake, and rode with the boldness of a trained equestrian, without even a groom as escort. She had always disdained to dance; at the only ball she had ever been induced to attend she had been merely an on-looker. She could not comprehend how there could be any pleasure in dancing, she remarked, with a contemptuous glance towards the whirling couples: it was either ridiculous, or childish, or else positively disgusting.
Her contempt for love-making was as pronounced as for dancing. The homage of the young exquisites of society bored her inexpressibly; it was absolutely odious to her. She often boasted that in her life she had had but three loves,--Buonaparte, Lord Byron, and Machiavelli.
All her acquaintance, more especially the feminine portion of it, were astounded when a report was suddenly circulated that she was smitten with Franz Meineck, a simple, fair-haired hussar, with nothing to recommend him save his handsome face and his fine chivalric bearing.
It was easy to see what attracted him in her,--her rich brunette beauty, and, in strange contrast with it, the cold, defiant bluntness of her air and manner, the nimbus of originality that surrounded her, the fact that towards all other men her indifference was well-nigh discourtesy, while to him she was amiability itself. But what she, she of all girls in the world, could find to attract her in him,--this was what puzzled the brains of all the wiseacres in Lemberg.
But that he pleased her no one could deny, least of all she herself. Once, after a dinner at which Meineck had been her neighbour, a very cultivated and interesting friend asked her how she could possibly find any entertainment in that superficial hussar. She replied, with a shrug, that she found it much more amusing to hear a superficial hussar talk than to see a distinguished philosopher masticate his food, which according to her experience was the only entertainment afforded by great scientific lights at a dinner.
While, however, Meineck's love for her was, from the very beginning, of an enthusiastic, passionate nature, the inclination she felt for him was at first very gentle in character.
For her he was but a child; the idea that her relations with him could end in marriage would have seemed more mad and improbable to her than to any one else. Her demeanour towards him was always friendly; she would rally him good-humouredly, and anon treat him with a kindliness that was almost maternal. There was nothing in her manner to suggest her being in love with him.
Towards the end of February, when some treacherously mild weather heralded, as all prophesied, a cold windy March, Lina allowed her youthful adorer to be her escort in long rides on horseback. Here he was in his element, and greatly her superior in spite of her Amazonian skill. It was after one of these expeditions, when she reached home with eyes sparkling and cheeks slightly flushed, that she suddenly had an attack of terror. She knew that, accustomed as she had been for so long to absolute freedom, she must sooner or later find any fetters galling; she did not wish to marry.
The next day, without informing any one save her nearest of kin of her intention, she left Lemberg and retired to a small estate near Prague, where after her independent fashion she was often wont to stay for months alone with an old gardener and her maid.
It was a pretty, romantic spot, formerly a mill. A venerable weeping-willow stood beside it, its branches trailing above the antiquated mansard roof; a little brook rippled past it, gurgling and sobbing between banks of forget-me-nots and jonquils on its way to the larger stream. In this particular March, however, jonquils and forget-me-nots were still sleeping soundly beneath the snow, and the brook was silent. The February prophets were right: March was terribly cold. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the mill, almost reaching its windows, and the weeping-willow was clad in a fairy-like robe of glistening snow.
Lina sat from morning until evening like a kind of feminine Doctor Faust among bookcases, retorts, and globes in a spacious, dreary room, trying to work and longing 'to recover herself.' Then one day Meineck made his appearance at the mill. She received him with a great show of gay indifference, sitting at her writing-table and playing with her pen by way of intimating that any prolongation of his visit was undesirable. He perceived this. Embarrassed, confused by the sight of the scientific apparatus that surrounded him on all sides, he sat leaning forward, his sabre between his knees, in an arm-chair from which he had been obliged to remove a Greek lexicon and two volumes of the 'Revue,' and stammering all sorts of childish nonsense while he gazed at her with adoring eyes. She wore a perfectly plain gown of dark-green cloth fitting her like a riding-habit, and her hair, which curled naturally, was combed back behind her ears and cut short. He found this mode of dressing her hair charming, and his heart throbbed fast as he noted the magnificent fall of her shoulders. In his eyes she was incomparably beautiful; hers was the majestic loveliness of the unattainable. He often saw her thus afterwards in his dreams, and in his death-agony her image hovered before him again, noble, undefaced, as it was impressed upon his heart at this interview.
Later on he wondered how he found courage to speak, but he found it. He sued for her hand, he wooed her passionately with words that could not but move her. She refused him. He would not accept her refusal. She stood her ground bravely, frankly confessing to him that it cost her an effort to repulse him, but that she must do it to insure the peace of mind of both. Apart from her dislike of resigning the freedom of her existence, she thought it unprincipled to give heed to the pleading of a poor exaggerated lad who was led away in a moment of romantic enthusiasm to offer his hand to a woman so much his elder.
There were such full, warm, cordial tones in her deep voice! Sight and hearing failed him. He knelt before her, kissed the hem of her garment, and promised at last to be content for the present if she would allow him to speak again at the end of six months. By that time it would be manifest that his love was not merely momentary romantic enthusiasm.
She laid her beautiful slender hands upon his shoulders, and said, kindly, "Dear lad, if after six months you are still so insane as to covet an elderly bride, we will discuss the matter again. And now adieu!"
He pressed his lips upon her hand so passionately that she suddenly withdrew it, and the colour mounted to her cheeks; he had never seen them flush so before. His eyes fathomed the depths of her own: she turned her head away.
"Au revoir!" he said, and withdrew, bowing gravely and profoundly.
There was something of triumph in the rhythm of his retreating footsteps; at least so it seemed to her as she listened to the sound as it died away in the distance. He walked as though his feet were shod with victory. Indignation possessed her. Her strong nature defended itself vigorously against the influence of this beguiling insidious force which had taken captive her heart and threatened to subdue her reason. In vain! The hand which his lips had pressed burned, and suddenly there glided through her veins, dreamily, lullingly, a something inexpressibly sweet, something she had never experienced before,--a delicious yet paralyzing sense of weariness. She started, and sat upright; then, gathering together the papers on her writing-table, she tried to work. In vain! The pen dropped from her fingers. She rose hastily and went to take a long walk. Her feet sank deep in the melting snow; the air was warm, and the south wind rustled among the trees and shrubbery, whispering mysteriously along the crackling surface of the frozen brook. Her weariness increased; she had to retrace her steps.
She went to bed earlier than usual that evening, and tried to think of grave subjects; but sweet, long-forgotten melodies haunted her heart and brain: she could not think; and at last she fell asleep to the sound of that fairy-like music within her soul.
Tu the middle of the night she awoke. The moon shone through her window directly upon her bed. She listened. What sound was that? A merry uproar like the triumphal note of spring--the swift rushing of the brook--ascended to her windows. The ice was broken.
And in slow, monotonous cadence the falling of the drops from the melting snow on the roof struck upon her ear.
"Ah," she sighed, "the spring has come!"
He constantly wrote her letters full of chivalric fire and enthusiastic devotion. She never answered them. Then the war of 1859 broke out. One of her brothers informed her that Meineck had had himself transferred from the show-regiment--one but little adapted to service in the field--to which he had hitherto belonged to another which had been ordered to the front. A short time afterwards she received from the young hussar the following note:
"In spite of the horror with which the loss of life inseparable from every campaign inspires me, I rejoice in the war. I rejoice in the opportunity of proving to you at last that I am worth something in the world. Grant me one favour: send me a line or two, or only a curl of your hair, or some little trinket that you have worn,--anything belonging to you that I can take with me into action. I kiss your dear hands, and am, as ever, with profound esteem and intense devotion,
"Your F. Meineck."
She clasped her hands before her face and sobbed bitterly. And she, who all her life long had jeered at such sentimentality, cut off one of her curls, enclosed it in a small golden locket, and sent it to him with the following words:
"Dear Lad,--
"You burden me with a great responsibility. There was no need for you to plunge neck and heels into this campaign to prove to me that you were worth something. I send you herewith the trifle for which you ask: may it carry a blessing with it! God bring you safe home, is the earnest prayer of your faithful friend,
"Karoline Leskjewitsch."
June passed. The earth languished beneath the burning sun. Pale, feverish, and sleepless, Karoline Leskjewitsch dragged through the endless summer days, scraping lint,--she felt unfit for any other occupation,--and reading with hot, dry eyes the lists of the dead and wounded.
One day she found his name in the list of the dead. She was crushed, utterly annihilated. A few hours afterwards, however, she received a letter from her brother, stating that the report of Meineck's death was a mistake; he was in Venice, severely wounded. She could not tell how it was, but on the same evening, almost without luggage, without telling any one of her plans, she started off with her old maid, and two days later arrived in Venice and was conducted by her brother to the room where the wounded man lay.
Pale, wasted, with dishevelled hair and sunken features, he lay back among the pillows. Too weak to stir, he could only greet her with a blissful smile.
She wore a black Spanish hat with large nodding feathers. As she entered she took it off, and, going to his bedside, she said, "I did not come merely to see you, but as a Sister of Charity, and I shall stay with you until you are well again."
He replied, in a voice so weak as to be scarce audible, "To make me well a single word will suffice: say it!"
She hesitated for a moment, and then, stooping over him, she pressed her lips to his.
Who that saw them together ten years later could have believed it? No marriage was ever more romantic than theirs at first. His case was considered hopeless. The two physicians whom she questioned as to his condition declared his recovery impossible. Resolutely setting aside all opposition, she was married to him immediately, that she might nurse him devotedly and be enabled to support him in the dark hour of the death-struggle.
At the end of ten weeks the physicians acknowledged that they had been mistaken. Not only was he out of danger, but he had well-nigh recovered his former strength and vigour. Early in October the pair took their wedding-trip to Bohemia. In matters of sentiment Franz was a poet to his fingertips, and he scorned the idea of the usual journey with his bride from one hotel to another. They spent their honeymoon in the old mill at Zalow.
On many a fresh, dewy, autumnal morning the peasants saw the two tall figures strolling through the forest where the leaves were rapidly falling. She who had hitherto carried herself so erect now walked with bent head and with shoulders slightly bowed, as if scarcely able to bear the weight of her great happiness.
They would wander unweariedly about the country for hours: they ransacked all the old peasant dwellings for antiquities, and they chose the spot for their graves in a picturesque, romantic churchyard. And when the light faded and they returned home, they would sit beside each other in the twilight in the spacious room where he had wooed her, and where now all the literary and scientific apparatus had given place to huge bouquets of autumn flowers filling the vases in every corner. The bouquets slowly changed colour, the cornflowers paled and the poppies grew black, in the darkening night; and something like profound melancholy would possess the lovers,--the sacred melancholy of happiness. With her hand in his, the wife would tell her husband of the mild March night in which the joyous sobbing of the brook had wakened her, calling to her that spring had come.
"Believe it or not, as you please," Meineck was wont to say, often with a very bitter smile, in after-years, "I am really that fabulous individual, hitherto sought for in vain, the man who never, during the entire period of his honeymoon, w as bored for a single quarter of an hour."
He took up his profession again; she would not hear of his resigning from the army for her sake. When he proposed it she clasped her arm tenderly about his neck and said, "Inactivity would ill become you, and I want to be proud indeed of my husband. I have but one duty now in life, to make you happy," she gently added.
He was fairly dizzy with bliss. Was it possible, he sometimes asked himself, that an angel had actually descended from heaven to nestle in his heart and to conjure up for him a Paradise on earth? Her caresses gained in value from the fact that she was not so softly docile as other women, that now and then he had to overcome in her a certain acerbity and harshness.
"A woman and a horse must both be possessed of amiable possibilities of obstinacy, or we take no pleasure in them," he declared.
She bloomed afresh after her marriage. Her features, which were rather marked, grew softer, and had the freshness of those of a girl of eighteen. Her hair, which at his request she allowed to grow, curled in soft rings about her brow. Every one noticed how very beautiful she had grown; and he too, they said, had gained much since his marriage. His moral and intellectual stand-point was loftier. She refused to have an interest which he did not share; she expended an immense amount of acuteness in discovering what would arrest his attention in whatever she was reading, and either repeated it to him or read it aloud.
The idea of playing the love-sick girl at her age was odious to her,--ridiculous; she wished to be his friend, his trusty comrade; but withal she spoiled him by a thousand delicate attentions far more than the youngest wife would have done. She exhausted her ingenuity in rendering his life delightful. She was not fond of going much into society; therefore she made his home attractive to his comrades. The entire regiment adored her, from the colonel to the youngest ensign. The women alone hated her. It was intolerable, they thought, that a blue-stocking should presume to eclipse them with the other sex.
What became of all this bliss? It vanished little by little, as the snow slowly subsides, filtering into the ground.
"I know myself," she had said to him when he wooed her; "I know myself: my paralyzing weakness will pass away, as will your intoxication."
But his intoxication, after all, lasted longer than her weakness.
After they had been married about five years, their second daughter, Estella, was born. The mother's health was terribly undermined for a while. Franz surrounded her with the most loving care, but she no longer took any pleasure in it. The fitful, unnatural glow kindled so late in her heart slowly died away; her illusions faded, her passion cooled. Nothing was left of the young spring deity of her imagination who had roused her heart from its cold wintry sleep, save a good-humoured, ordinary man whose society offered her no attraction and whose tenderness wearied her.
Then came the campaign of '66. When he left her she contrived to shed a couple of tears, and during the fray in Bohemia her conscience pricked her terribly, but when the truce was proclaimed she was quite indifferent as to the length of his absence; it might have been prolongedad infinitum, for all she cared. When he came home at the end of half a year his conscience was laden with a first infidelity. She had written an essay upon Don John of Austria.
From this moment the downward course was rapid.
If he could but have had a comfortable attractive home, he might perhaps have clung to it; he might have felt that he had something to live for, something to prevent, as he afterwards expressed it, his 'going to the devil.'
But he daily felt more and more of a stranger beneath his own roof, and his wife did nothing now to induce him to stay there; on the contrary, his presence bored her,--a fact which she did not always conceal.
For a little while he restrained himself, and then----
All the brutal instincts of his nature asserted themselves, and he took no pains to subdue them.
One joy, however, was his all through this dreadful time, his youngest daughter. He never took much pleasure in the elder of the two: she had inherited all her mother's caprice, without any of her talent.
But little Stella was indeed a darling.
When she was between one and two years old, at a time when his comrades, although but rarely, still met at his house at gay little suppers, he would go up to the nursery, where the child lay in bed, and if she happened to be awake and laughing at his approach he would take her in his arms just as she was in her little white night-gown and cap and carry her down-stairs to display her. She would obediently give her hand to every guest, but was not to be induced to unclasp the other arm from her father's neck. He petted and caressed her while his friends praised his pretty little daughter.
When she had grown larger, she was always the first to run to meet him on his return home from parade. Often in winter when his cloak was covered with snow she would shrink away with a laugh, exclaiming, "Oh, papa, how cold! I cannot touch you."
"Come here," he would say to her, and, opening his cloak, he would gather her up in his arms. "'Tis warm enough here, mouse, is it not?" And as she clung to him he would close the cloak about her, and she would thrust her hands through the opening in front and peep out, supremely happy.
She often remembered in after-years how delicious it had been to nestle against her father's broad chest, protected in the darkness, and look out into the world through a narrow crack.
He it was who gave her her first alphabet-blocks, more as a toy than by way of instruction. She ran after him continually to show him the words she had spelled out with them, taking especial delight in long learned expressions of which she did not understand a syllable. One of the first words she put together upon his writing-table as she sat upon his knee was 'phosphorescence.'
He laughed, and told the officers of it at the riding-school. Poor fellow! He was secretly ashamed of his wretched home and his matrimonial failure, as well as of the miserable part he played in his household. As he could not speak of anything else, he talked of his child.
His wife's article upon Don John of Austria appeared meanwhile in 'The Globe,' and, unfortunately, attracted considerable attention. One critic compared the author's brilliant style to that of Macaulay. From that moment she lost the last remnant of interest in her house and family.
The praise which her article received went to her head; she recalled how when a young girl she had been called a genius, and how it had been said that if she only chose to take the slightest pains she could excel George Sand as an author, Clara Schumann as a pianiste, and Rachel as an actress. Yes, if she only chose! Now she did choose. She tried her hand in every department of literature, devised plots for tragedies and romances, and wrote essays upon every imaginable social problem, without achieving any really finished or useful result. She herself was quite dissatisfied with her efforts, but she never ascribed their imperfection to any want of capacity, but always to the fact that the free flight of her fancy was cramped by her domestic cares. Possessed by the demon of ambition, she turned aside from everything that could absorb her time or hinder her in the mad pursuit of her chimera. Social enjoyment did not exist for her: she secluded herself entirely from, society. If her husband wished to see his comrades he could find them at the club.
Her household went to ruin. It was long before Meineck ventured to remonstrate with his highly-gifted wife; but at last scarcely a day passed without crimination and recrimination between the pair. In spite of his faults and aberrations from the right path, he was exquisitely fastidious in his personal requirements and a martinet in his love of order; his wife's slovenly habits and the disorder of her household disgusted him.
"Good heavens! who," he sometimes asked, angrily, "could put up with such untidy rooms?--all the doors ajar, the drawers half open and their contents tossed in like hay; the servants dirty and ill trained, and the meals served in a way to destroy the finest appetite! Even the children are neglected."
There came at last to be terrible scenes, in which Meineck would shout and swear and now and then shatter to pieces some chair or ottoman that stood in his way, while his wife sat motionless at her writing-table, now and then uttering some cold, cutting phrase, her pen suspended over her paper, longing for the moment when she should be left alone 'to work.'
Yet at intervals there were still moments when she would seize the helm of her neglected household, would set things straight, and would preside in tasteful attire at a well-ordered table. Her inborn elegance upon such occasions could not but excite admiration, and for a few hours, sometimes for a couple of days, she would expend her talent upon what alone employed it worthily, in promoting the comfort of those about her.
Upon such occasions Meineck would torment himself with self-reproach, would take upon himself the entire fault of her shortcomings, and would, so far as she would permit him, show her the most devoted attention. Scarcely, however, did he begin to have faith in the sunshine when it vanished.
Moreover, these seasons of wondrous amiability on Karoline's part grew rarer and briefer,--particularly when she could not but acknowledge that her literary career by no means developed so brilliantly as she had hoped from the success of her Don John of Austria. She sought the cause of this, as has been said, not in the insufficiency of her own talent, but in the cramping nature of her domestic circumstances.
One evening--Stella was about eleven years--old Meineck came home intoxicated. Chance willed that both his wife and his daughters saw him in this condition.
The next day at the mid-day meal he was rather uncomfortable in their presence, and consequently talked more and faster than usual, assuming that air of bravado which some men are sure to adopt when they are particularly embarrassed. His affected self-possession vanished very soon, however. His wife merely bestowed upon him a cold greeting, and then entered into an absorbing conversation with Franziska, the elder daughter, upon some abstruse point of English law. She and the girl both avoided looking at him, and sat bolt upright, with virtuous indignation expressed in every feature.
He turned from them to his loving little Stella. She was sitting, pale and with downcast eyes, before an empty plate. Poor little Stella! she too had been affected by the scene of the evening before. What business was it of hers? Was he the only man in the world who had ever been so overcome? Was that chit to school him? For the first time in her life he spoke harshly to her: "What is the matter with you? Why do you not eat? Are you ill?" And, beckoning to the servant, he put something upon her plate.
She took up her knife and fork obediently, but she could not swallow a morsel, and the big tears fell upon her plate. He saw them perfectly well, although he pretended not to look at her.
When the others had retired and he sat alone at the comfortless board, his head leaning on his right hand, his left drumming a tattoo on the table, as he reflected upon his squandered life, suddenly a little arm stole around his neck and two tender childish lips were pressed to his temple. He started: it was Stella! He took her on his knee and covered her head, her neck, even her little hands, with kisses, and his tears fell upon her brow. Neither of them ever forgot that moment.
Soon after this the husband and wife agreed so far as to find their life together intolerable, and they parted by mutual consent. Of course the mother took the children; what could Meineck have done with them? The legal divorce, with which she threatened him if he did not accede to a voluntary separation, would undoubtedly have assigned them to her. He was to be allowed to spend two weeks of every year beneath her roof to see the children. These arrangements concluded, she set out for Florence to collect materials for a history of the Medici,--which she never wrote.
In the spring he went to her at Meran. His position in her household was so painful, however, that he did not stay all the allowed time: he felt disgraced even in his little Stella's eyes; she seemed estranged from him.
He never came to be with them again. He often sent his daughters beautiful presents, and wrote them long, affectionate letters, but he made no further attempt to see them.
Years passed. Meineck had risen to the rank of colonel; his wife meanwhile had tramped all over the map with her daughters, from Madrid to Constantinople, to collect historical material for all sorts of projected essays. She was now at her mill in Zalow, partly because her finances were at a low ebb, and partly because she intended at last to begin her great work. This work upon which she had settled definitively was 'The Part assigned to Woman in the Development of Universal History.'
Franziska, who, oddly enough, could no longer agree with her mother, was lodging in Prague with the widow of a government official who rented a few rooms to teachers and bachelors, and preparing herself in a bleak little apartment to pass her final examinations. Poor Stella, who had meanwhile shot up into a tall miss of eighteen, went to Prague by railway three times a week in summer and winter, always alone, to take lessons, read everything she could lay hold of, from Milton's 'Paradise Lost' to Hauff's 'Man in the Moon,'--and tramped about the country escorted by a very savage white wolf-hound.
It was in November, and the ground was covered with snow, when a letter arrived from the colonel in Venice to his wife and daughters. He had been ordered to a southern climate on account of an affection of the lungs which had not yielded to a course of treatment at Gleichenberg, and he had now been in Venice for a month. If his daughters would consent, the letter went on to say, to come to cheer his loneliness for a while, he would do his best to make their stay in Venice agreeable to them.
Franziska declared that she could not possibly interrupt her studies at this time; Stella announced that she was ready to set off on the instant. Her mother hesitated to allow her to travel alone, and looked about for a suitable escort for her, but Stella declared that she needed none. Had she not been to Prague continually alone by the railway? and where was the difference in going to Venice, except that it was farther off? Moreover, there were carriages for ladies only. It never occurred to this valiant young person, trained to economy as she had been by her learned mother, that she could travel otherwise than second-class.
Her mother enjoined it upon her not to waste her time in Venice, and instead of a luncheon stuffed a 'Histoire de Venise' into her travelling-bag. The girl bought her ticket, attended to her luggage herself, and then mounted cheerily into a much overheated railway-carriage and was borne away.