How she rejoiced in the prospect of seeing him again, looking forward to the joy of nestling tenderly in his arms and telling him how she had longed for him during the many, many years, and how she had lain awake many a night telling herself stories of him,--that is, recalling every little incident in her memory with which he was connected!
She did not recall him as she had last seen him, old before his time, with dark rings around his bloodshot eyes and deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, gray and worn; no, she saw him with fair curls and a merry, kindly look, sometimes in his dazzling hussar-uniform, but oftener in his blue undress-coat with breast-pockets. She could not possibly call him up in her memory without an accompaniment of the rattle of spurs and sabre. She saw his shapely, carefully-tended hands; she distinctly remembered the fragrance of Turkish tobacco, mingled with the odour of jasmine, with which all his belongings were saturated.
For her he was always the brilliant young officer who had muffled her in his cloak when she ran to meet him.
How long the journey seemed to her at first! Then she was suddenly assailed by a strange timidity: when the conductor took her ticket and announced that the next station was Venice she began to tremble.
The train stopped; the conductor opened the door. With her heart throbbing up in her throat, she looked out, but saw no one whom she knew. No, her father had evidently not come to meet her! Could he have failed to receive her telegram? She noticed a gray-haired man in civilian's dress, with a crush-hat, and delicately chiselled features wasted by illness, and large hollow eyes, peering about as if he were looking for some one. A cold, paralyzing pang shot through her: his look met her own. While he had lived in her memory as a brilliant young officer, she had always been for him the undeveloped child of twelve, with tightly-stretched red stockings, and a short shapeless gown,--something that could be taken on his lap and caressed. But this daughter advancing towards him was a young lady, who could pass judgment upon, him, a judgment that could not be bribed, like that of a child, by caresses. He asked himself, with a shudder, how much she knew of his life, and whether she were capable of forgiving it, forgetting, in his dread, that a woman will forgive everything in the man whom she loves, be he husband, brother, or father, save cowardice and dishonour,--and as far as regarded thepoint d'honneurthe colonel's worst enemy could find nothing of which to accuse him.
"Papa!"
"Stella!" Instead of clasping her in his arms, he kissed her hand. "How are they all at home?" he asked, embarrassed. "Is your mother well? and Franzi?"
"Oh, yes! They both gave me all sorts of kind messages for you. Franziska, unfortunately, could not come with me, for she could not interrupt her studies at this time."
What frightfully correct German she spoke! Had they robbed him of his little Stella? His annoyance increased.
"Where is your maid?" he asked.
"Maid? I have none. Oh, we have not had a maid for a long time."
"You came all the way alone?" the colonel exclaimed, in dismay,--"all alone?"
"Yes. You have no idea how independent and practical I am."
The colonel frowned; he would rather have found his daughter spoiled and helpless; but he said nothing, only asked about her luggage to hand it over to the porter of the Hotel Britannia, and then offered her his arm to conduct her to the gondola which was waiting for them. Arrived at the hotel, they got into the elevator to be taken to the third story, and they had as yet scarcely exchanged three words with each other.
The pretty littlesaloninto which he conducted her looked out upon the Grand Canal and past the church of Santa Maria della Salute upon the Lido. The room was pleasantly warm, and in the centre a table was invitingly spread, the teakettle singing merrily, flanked by a flask of golden Marsala and a bottle of Bordeaux. A prismatic ray of sunshine fell across the neat creases of the snowy table-cloth.
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Stella, and her eyes sparkled, while in her delicate and softly-rounded cheek appeared the dimple for which her father had hitherto looked in vain.
"I had a little breakfast made ready for you, thinking that you might perhaps have had nothing very good to eat upon your journey," said he.
"I have eaten nothing since I left home but biscuit, because I disliked going to the railway restaurants," she declared.
And the colonel rejoined, "Tiens!not entirely a strong-minded female yet, I see," and as he spoke he helped her take off her long brown paletot. "If I am not mistaken," he said, examining the clumsy article of dress, "this is an old army-cloak."
"Indeed it is, papa," she replied, proudly, "one of your old cloaks: I had it altered by our tailor in Zalow, because it reminds me of old times." And this was all she could bring herself to say of the myriad charming and loving phrases she had prepared. "It is a great success, my coat. Do you not like it?" she asked.
"Candidly, no;" he made reply. "Nevertheless I am greatly obliged to it for proving to me that, even in the clumsiest and ugliest garment ever devised by human hands to disfigure one of God's creatures, my daughter is still charming."
She cast down her eyes with a little blush and was suddenly ashamed of her threadbare adaptation of which she had been so proud. Kindly, but still with some hesitation, he put his hand upon her shoulder and said, "You will let me look a little more closely at my daughter."
A warm wave of affection suddenly surged up in her heart.
"Do not look at me, papa; only love me," she exclaimed, and, throwing her arm around his neck, she nestled close to him. "You cannot imagine how rejoiced I was to come to you."
And the poor wretch reverently bent his sad, weary head above his child's golden curls, and repentantly acknowledged to himself that he had not deserved so great mercy.
When daylight had faded and the lanterns at the base of the old palaces flared up, casting reddish reflections to break and glimmer upon the surface of the lagunes, the colonel lit the lamp and put paper and writing-materials upon the table before Stella.
"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand. At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's finances?"
"Low," said Stella, laconically.
"Hm! I really do not know how much is necessary to maintain two daughters; perhaps I do not send her enough for you. She ought to have let me know. I do not wish that my children should be pinched, as--as----"
"As they seem to be from the looks of my shabby wardrobe," Stella said, with a laugh. "Well, we are not quite so badly off, after all. If it be a question of buying books or curios, we can always scrape the money together; but if one wants a pair of new boots, the purse is empty."
The colonel tugged discontentedly at his moustache.
"I beg you to write to Franzi and ask her if she needs money," he began afresh. "I am, to be sure, living now upon my capital, but your share is secured to you, and I shall not last long."
At first his meaning escaped her; she gazed at him with wide eyes; then, as she comprehended at last, the pen fell from her fingers, and she burst into a flood of tears.
"Hush, hush, my darling; do not torment yourself beforehand. Perhaps I describe my condition to you as worse than it really is," he said, leaning tenderly over her, and, putting his hand beneath her chin, he looked deep into her dark eyes. "If sunshine can make a man well I am all right."
No, it was too late,--too late! His physical strength could never be restored, his lungs nothing could heal; but with his child beside him his soul and heart gained health and strength. Since those first fair years of his married life, he had never been so happy as now, although he seldom quite forgot that he stood on the brink of the grave.
Once, on a damp muggy November evening in a Viennese suburb he had seen a drunkard staggering along the wall in a narrow street, quite unable to find his way. A policeman was just about to take him into custody, when a little girl, muffled in rags and with a pale wizened face, suddenly appeared beside him out of the darkness, seized him by his red, trembling, swollen hand, and called in a hoarse, anxious voice, without impatience or harshness, but not without authority, 'Father, come home!' And the drunkard, who had paid no heed to the jeers of the passers-by, nor to the admonition of the policeman, hung his head, and without a word followed the weak, helpless little creature like a lamb. The colonel had stood and looked after them until the darkness swallowed them up. He recalled distinctly the girl's thin yellow braids, her long chin, the sordid red-and-black plaid shawl which she wore about her shoulders, and the worn old laced boots, far too big for her little feet and coming half-way up her naked little blue legs, and continually in her way as she walked.
The little episode had made a painful impression upon him for a time, and then he had forgotten it. Now it arose in his memory, but transfigured, and as, clasping his daughter's hand, he went on to his grave, he compared himself in his secret soul with the drunkard led home by the child.
He was very ill. Unaccustomed to spare himself, and without any real pleasure in life, he had increased his malady by months of entire want of care and nursing, until his physicians had insisted that a summer should be spent at a sanitarium in Gleichenberg. Partially restored, he had immediately, in direct opposition to all advice, re-entered the service. The autumn manœuvres had brought on an inflammation of the lungs. How very ill he was never entered his mind, in spite of his speech to Stella. He thought he should live a couple of years longer, and his great dread was lest he should be pensioned off before the time because of his invalid condition. The pains that he took to maintain an upright military bearing aggravated all the evils of his case.
There were a number of distinguished Austrians in the Hotel Britannia, some few of them invalids, most of them gay and pleasure-loving and well pleased to spend a few weeks amid picturesque surroundings and in pleasant society. The colonel was beloved by all, and they eagerly welcomed his pretty daughter,--even the ladies, whom the colonel consulted as to the necessary reform in the girl's wardrobe. She sat with her father in the midst of them all at the upper end of the table, the lower end, where the other inmates of the hotel were crowded together, being the subject of much merry scorn and stigmatized as 'the menagerie.' Compassion for the daughter of the dying man deepened the sympathy called forth by the young girl's grace and charm. Old gentlemen rallied her upon her conquests, and the young men paid her devoted attention. She had a special friend in the handsome black-eyed prince Zino Capito, who had an unusual share of time to bestow upon her since the latest mistress of his affections, the famous Princess Oblonsky, had just departed for Petersburg to take possession of the effects of her husband, suddenly deceased. He daily sent Stella magnificent flowers with which to adorn the hotel apartments for her father. "Invalids are so fond of flowers," he would say, with a smile that displayed his brilliant white teeth. And when the weather was fine and the colonel felt well enough, he would invite them to take a sail in his cutter upon the blue Adriatic.
The colonel often spoke of his wife, longing to see her. The lastliaison--that which had been the cause of a definite separation between himself and his wife, had robbed him of his self-respect, had disgraced him in his children's eyes, and had snatched from him every vestige of peace of mind--had dissolved itself more than two years before. The recollection of it disgusted him, but, like all men who have no future, he gladly allowed his thoughts to stray into the distant past. The wife from whom he had parted, elderly, learned, with her slovenliness and irritability, he had forgotten; his memory preserved the bride, in her light dress, bending above his couch of pain; he saw her on his marriage-day in the flood of sunlight which streaming through the tall window of his sick-room invested with a glorious halo the golden cross upon the improvised altar.
One sunny day, as he was sailing in the Grand Canal in a gondola with Stella, he pointed to a beautiful old palazzo.
"There is where I lay wounded in '59, when your mother came to nurse me. Those windows there were mine."
In the evening of the same day, while Stella was writing to her mother and he lay half dozing on a lounge, he suddenly said, "Stella, do you think your mother could make up her mind to come to Venice with Franzi for a few weeks? She need not be in the same house with us, if that would bore her, but---- Tell her how much it would please me to see her; and," he added, with an embarrassed smile, "tell her I am really very ill: perhaps that may induce her to come."
He awaited the reply to this letter with feverish eagerness. In a week there arrived a package of rather insignificant notices of a work of his wife's, just published at her own expense; two weeks later the answer to the letter appeared.
"Well, what does your mother say?" asked the colonel, as he observed Stella deciphering the almost illegible document. "Read it aloud to me," he insisted: "you know everything that goes on at home interests me. Is she coming?"
But Stella, with tears in her eyes, and a burning blush, stammered, "A letter must have been lost. This one never even mentions our plan!"
The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India steamship.
"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should have liked to ask her forgiveness."
Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death, from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and would drink a glass of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly, and sent Stella out of the room.
"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier, and not afraid to die."
"Under the circumstances, a couple of months."
"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their course. It is all right."
That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what he had written.
"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry, darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all. I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be, do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket. "Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"
She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.
"Yes, papa."
The next day was her birthday.
He gave her a golden bracelet to which was attached a crystal locket containing a four-leaved clover.
"I cannot show you any partiality in my will," said he, "but wear that for my sake, darling. And if ever heaven sends you some great joy, say to yourself that your poor father prayed the dear God that it might fall to your share!"
One day the colonel received a letter bearing a Paris post-mark which seemed to depress him greatly. All day after receiving it he was thoughtful and taciturn. In the evening he wrote a long letter, pausing from time to time to cough sadly. As he folded it, Stella observed that he enclosed money in it. After apparently reflecting for a while, he drew from a case in his pocket a photograph of Stella which had been taken in Venice, gazed at it lovingly for a moment, seemed to hesitate, and finally enclosed it also in the envelope with the letter. Looking up, he became aware of his daughter's curious gaze, and suddenly grew confused. He sealed his epistle with unnecessary care, and then all at once reached both hands across the table and clasped Stella's between them, saying,--
"You are wondering to whom I am sending my darling's picture? To my youngest sister, your aunt Eugenie. Do you remember her? Yes? You used to love her, did you not?"
"Very much, papa; but--I thought she was dead."
The colonel turned away his head; after a moment he drew Stella towards him, and said, softly, "She is not dead: I cannot tell you about her, do not ask me. But do not be hard to her, and if you should ever meet her, speak a kind word to her, for my sake."
He still went daily below-stairs in the lift to take his meals, but he now dined at a small table alone with Stella, after thetable-d'hôtein the spacious, lonely dining-hall. His frequent attacks of coughing made him shun society. He dreaded annoying others.
"I am no longer fit to mingle with my kind, Stella," he would say. "My poor little butterfly, it is tiresome to have such a father, is it not?"
She, apparently, did not find it so. She desired nothing beyond the privilege of taking care of him, although she could be little more than a weak, helpless child. By day she cheered him with her lively talk, and at night if he stirred she was beside his bed in an instant in her long dressing-gown, her little bare feet thrust into slippers, supporting him in her arms if he coughed. Outside the moon shone full above the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Up from the garden was wafted the odour of roses and syringas, while above the swampy atmosphere of the lagunes, and mingling with the plash of waters at the base of the old palaces, floated sweet, sad melodies,--the songs of the evening minstrels of Venice,--
"Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"
"Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"
and
"Penso alla prima volta in cui volgestiLo sguardo soave in sino a me!"
"Penso alla prima volta in cui volgestiLo sguardo soave in sino a me!"
Sometimes she would fall asleep sitting beside his bed, her head resting on his pillow.
She grew to look like a shadow, so pale and worn did she become. He did all that he could to prevent her from coming to him at night, even threatening to employ a nurse, but the threat was never fulfilled.
In fact, he needed very little care but such as her affection insisted upon giving him; he was never confined to bed, only grew more and more inclined to rest on a lounge during the day. He was very thoughtful of others, and required but little service at their hands up to the very last, only seldom demanding any assistance in dressing. He grew nervous and restless, longed for change, yearned for his home with the fervent desire of a dying man. Before his mental vision hovered the picture of the old mill, with its old-fashioned garden, the small sparse forest with feathery underbrush at the foot of the knotty oaks, and the gray waters of the stream that wound through the autumn mist between bald stony banks. He felt an insane desire to see it all once more. For a long time he endured this yearning in silence, not venturing to express it; his wife had repulsed all advances of his too decidedly. But, good heavens! he needed so little room, he would not trouble her much; and then, besides, he was an old man, ill unto death: his demands upon her personally were restricted to a kind word now and then, a sympathetic pressure of the hand!
Meanwhile, he grew worse and worse. Other complications heightened the peril in which he stood from the original disease. He complained that he could no longer endure the food at the hotel. His physician, who, like all physicians at health-resorts, avoided as far as possible the annoyance of having his patients die on his hands, strongly advised a change of air.
Utterly dejected, his face turned away from her, the dying man begged Stella to ask her mother if he might come home.
But Stella had already asked, and shortly afterwards an answer was received. The Baroness wrote that now, as ever, she was prepared to do her duty,--to receive him, and take care of him. The mill was always open to him.
How he rejoiced in the prospect of home! He tried to help in the packing, but he was too languid. From his lounge he looked on while Stella managed it all, and now and then with a smile he would call her to him, only to stroke her hands and look into her dear, loving eyes.
At last they set out. It was Easter Monday, in the latter half of April; the bells were all ringing solemnly, and dazzling sunshine lay upon the dark waters of the lagunes.
All their acquaintance at the hotel surrounded the father and daughter as they stepped into their gondola. The little vessel was filled with flowers, farewell tokens to Stella, and from the balconies of the hotel many a white kerchief waved adieu to the travellers.
At first they journeyed by short stages, sometimes taking a roundabout route for the sake of better lodgings at night, stopping at Villach and at Grätz. Then the colonel grew anxiously eager to be at home; he could no longer restrain his impatience. From Grätz he insisted upon making one journey of it, during which they had to change conveyances frequently. Every one was kind, showing all manner of attention, to the sick man and his pretty, loving, tender daughter. With every hour he became more weak and miserable. The last change they made he could scarcely manage to descend from the railway-carriage: two porters were obliged to help him into the other coupé.
It was one of those first-class half-coupés for three occupants. Stella had not been able to procure for him, as hitherto, an entire carriage, and we all know how deceptive is the ease of those half-coupés.
The girl propped her father up with rugs and cushions so that he found his position tolerable, and he fell asleep. The afternoon passed, and twilight came on. Greenish-yellow tints coloured the horizon, and a small white crescent gleamed above the darkening earth. Through the open window of the coupé came the warm, balmy air of the spring. Sometimes there mingled with the acrid, searching odour of the undeveloped foliage the full, sweet fragrance of some blossoming fruit-tree. A scarcely perceptible breeze swept gently and caressingly over the meadows, and lightly rippled the surface of the large quiet pond past which the train rushed. Here and there the level landscape was dotted by a village,--long barns and hay-ricks covered with blackened straw, grouped irregularly about some little church or castle among trees white with blossoms or pale green with opening leaf-buds.
The colonel slept on. Suddenly Stella perceived that she had lost her bracelet,--the one with the four-leaved clover. She moved with a sudden start. The colonel awoke.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"In an hour we shall be at home: it is only three stations off," she said, soothingly, with a beating heart.
He bent his head, folded his hands, and prepared to wait patiently. But it was impossible: a deadly anguish assailed him. He looked round in despair like some trapped animal.
"I am ill!" he cried. "I cannot tell what ails me. I never felt so before!"
He coughed convulsively, but briefly, then tried to move the cushions so that his head might find a more comfortable resting-place.
"Take more room, papa; lay your head in my lap," Stella entreated, tenderly.
He did so. He laid his head on her knees, and, taking her hand in his, held it against his cheek. The feverish unrest which had hitherto throbbed throughout his frame subsided, giving place to a delicious desire to sleep. For the last time the vision rose upon his mind of the drunken father being led home by his little girl; then all grew indistinct. He dreamed; he thought he was staggering painfully through a bog, when some one took him by the hand and led him across a narrow bridge beneath which gleamed dark, slowly-flowing water. He looked down; it was Stella who was leading him, but Stella as a little three-year-old child, with her simple little white night-cap tied beneath her chin, her rosy little bare feet showing beneath the hem of her white night-gown. The bridge creaked beneath him; he started and awoke.
"Are we at home?" he asked, scarce audibly.
"Almost, papa."
He pressed her hand to his lips.
The twilight deepened; a dark transparent mist seemed to veil the sky; the heavens showed as if through thin mourning crape; the broad shining edges of the ponds and pools were dim; the crescent moon grew brighter.
The train whizzed along faster than ever, swaying from side to side on the sleepers. Suddenly Stella felt her father start violently; then he heaved a brief sigh, like that which one gives when surprised by anything unexpectedly delightful, or when one is suddenly relieved of a heavy burden. Then all was quiet,--quiet,--still as death! She bent over him and listened. In vain! She felt his hand grow cold and stiff in her own. A sudden anguish took possession of her. She was afraid in the darkness. Meanwhile, the lamp in the coupé was lighted. Its crude, yellow light fell upon the colonel's face.
Was he asleep, or---- She held her own breath to listen for his. Her heart beat as though it would break; no longer able to control her distress, she called, "Papa!" then louder, "Papa! Papa!" He did not answer.
The night-moths fluttered in through the open window and circled about the lamp; the fragrance of the blossoming cherry-trees filled the air; a cracked church-bell in the distance hoarsely tolled the Ave Maria.
In an undertone Stella prayed 'Our Father;' but in the midst of it she burst into a convulsive fit of sobbing: she stroked and caressed the cold cheeks, the thin gray hair, of the dead. She knew that before many minutes were over he would be taken from her, and with him everything dear to her in life.
Onward rushed the train. The fiery sparks flew like rain past the windows; there was a shrill whistle, then a stop. The journey's end was reached.
Her mother and sister had come to the station to meet them. When the conductor opened the door, Stella sat motionless, her father's head resting upon her knees.
It was dark. The stars gleamed in the blue-black heavens.
Mute and pale as the dead, the Baroness walked with Franziska and Stella behind her husband's corpse the short distance between the station and the mill. Some awkwardness on the part of the bearers released one arm of the dead man, and the hand fell and trailed on the earth. With a quick impetuous movement his wife took it in her own, pressed the cold, dead hand to her lips, and held it clasped in hers the rest of the way.
They laid the body in the fresh, white bed, fragrant with lavender and orris, which had been prepared for the sick man in the corner room he had so loved, and in which the Baroness had placed a bouquet of white hawthorn in honour of his arrival.
Two candles were burning at the head of the bed.
Stella, who had, as it were, turned to marble, moving and speaking like an automaton, suddenly grew restless. She seemed to have forgotten something, and then looked for and found the locket which the colonel had given her for her mother, and which she had ever since worn around her neck. Very distinctly and monotonously she repeated the dying man's message and request as she handed the locket to her mother.
"He begs you will hang this around his neck before they lay him in the grave; and once he said he should have liked once more to ask your forgiveness."
The Baroness took the little case from her child's hand. She grew paler than ever, and her eyes were those of one startled by an inward vision of a long-forgotten past. The hawthorn shed a delicious fragrance; outside, the breeze of spring sighed among the weeping-willows, the brook gurgled and sobbed.
All in an instant the old, gray-haired woman's hands began to tremble violently.
"Leave me alone with him for a moment," she softly entreated; and Stella slipped away.
In the terrible week ensuing upon that wretched evening the Baroness treated Stella with an unvarying and altogether pathetic tenderness; in that week Stella learned to comprehend what an irresistible charm this woman had been able to exercise,--learned to understand how longing for her, even after years of separation, had gnawed at the heart of the dying man.
Then, to be sure, everything ran its old course, with the sole exception that the widow never uttered in the presence of her children one unkind word with regard to their father, but often alluded before them to his fine qualities.
It has been raining all the afternoon,--it is raining still. The inmates of Erlach Court are house-bound. Freddy, because of disobedience, and in consequence of his sneezing thrice during the afternoon, has been sent to bed early and sentenced to a dose of elder-flower tea. His elders, instead of spending the evening, as usual, in the open air, are assembled in the drawing-room.
Stasy has for the twentieth time finished 'Paul and Virginia,' and is now devoting herself to another kind of literature, Zola's 'Joie de vivre,'--of course only that she may testify to the horror with which such a book must inspire her. Every few minutes she utters an indignant 'no!' in an undertone, or holds out the book to Katrine, one hand over her blushing face, with "That is really too bad!" Katrine, however, shows no inclination to participate in her horror; she waves the book aside, saying, "I do not care to read everything," and goes on crochetting at the afghan which is to be ready for Freddy's approaching birthday.
The Baroness Meineck, meanwhile, is playing chess, the only game which she does not despise, with the general; and the captain is idling.
Hitherto Stella has been singing to her own accompaniment, for the entertainment of the company, the pretty Italian songs she caught from the gondoliers on the Canal. She is still sitting at the piano, but she has stopped singing. Her slender hands touch the keys of the instrument, playing softly now and then a couple of bars from a Chopin mazourka, as she looks up at Rohritz, who, with both elbows on the top of the piano, leans towards her, talking.
"How interested Rohritz seems in his talk with Stella! he is quite transformed," Leskjewitsch remarks.
"He must answer when he is addressed," Stasy rejoins, sharply, looking up from her 'Joie de vivre.'
"If he does not like to talk to the girl he can go away," the captain observes. "She has not nailed him to the piano."
"He-he! she nails him with her eyes. Do you not see how she ogles him?" Stasy replies, with a giggle. "I wonder what he is telling her."
"He is talking of Mexico, and of the phosphorescence of the tropical seas," the captain says, curtly.
"Indeed? nothing more sentimental and personal than that? Since, then, it is not indiscreet, I think I will listen." And, clapping to her book, Anastasia stretches her long thin neck to hear.
It is very quiet in the large apartment; except for the monotonous drip of the rain outside, and the click made by setting down the pieces on the chess-board, there is nothing to interfere with those who wish to listen to the conversation at the piano.
"Knowing only the poor little sparks which you have seen twinkling through our Northern ocean on warm September evenings, you can form no idea of the gleaming splendour of the tropical seas, Fräulein Meineck. The nights I spent on the deck of the Europa on my Mexican voyage I never can forget," says Rohritz.
Stella, who has hitherto shown a genuine interest in all he has told her, suddenly assumes a whimsically wise air, and, striking a dissonant chord, asks, "How old were you then?"
"I really do not understand----" he remarks, in some surprise.
"Oh, there is no necessity for your understanding,--only for replying," she rejoins, very calmly.
"Twenty-four."
It is one of her peculiarities, the result of her desultory and imperfect training, that she often plunges into a discussion of topics which every well-trained girl should carefully avoid.
"Twenty-four," she repeats, thoughtfully; then, pursuing her inquiries, "And were you in love?"
He laughs in some confusion.
"You are putting me through an examination."
"I allow you the same privilege," she declares, magnanimously. "Your answer sounds evasive. Apparently you were in love. I merely wanted to know, that I might judge how large a percentage of romance I must deduct from your description. All things considered, I can no longer accord any genuine faith to your account of the phosphorescence of the tropical seas; when people are in love they see everything as by a Bengal light."
This sententious remark of course induces Rohritz to put the laughing inquiry, "Do you speak from experience, Baroness Stella?"
"Certainly," she replies, with a convincing absence of embarrassment. "I have been through it all with my sister: she saw her artillery-officer by a Bengal light, or she never would have left science in the lurch for his sake, for, heaven knows, he was just like all the rest, except that in addition--he played the piano. Just fancy! an artillery-officer playing the piano!--Wagner, of course! Two dogs and a cat of ours went mad at the sight. But Franzi assured me that her artillery-officer's touch reminded her of Rubinstein. So you see how trustworthy your descriptions are."
Rohritz laughs good-humouredly, then says, "Even if I admit that on board the Europa I still had a little touch of the disease you mention, I must maintain that the delirious period had passed."
"Hm! one thing more," says Stella, pursuing still more boldly the devious path upon which she has entered. "I must know this precisely. Were you in love with a married woman?Un homme qui se respecteis never in love except with a married woman,--at least in all the novels."
"Stella!" Stasy calls, horrified.
Even Rohritz, who has hitherto listened very patiently to Stella's nonsense, seems unpleasantly affected by this speech of hers. He looks penetratingly into the young girl's eyes, and becomes aware that he is gazing into depths of innocence. Before he has time to say anything, Stasy calls out, in a shocked tone,--
"Stella, you are frivolous to a degree----"
Stella blushes crimson; her eyes fill with tears; she makes awkward little motions with her hands upon the keys, and plays a couple of bars from Thalberg's Étude in Cis-moll.
"Frivolous?--frivolous? But, Anastasia, I was only jesting," she murmurs, and, turning to Rohritz as if for protection, she adds, "It needed very little logic to guess that, for if you had been in love with a young girl there would have been no need for you to be unhappy and to go sailing about on tropical seas to distract your mind: you could simply have married her."
"But suppose the young girl would not have him?" the captain asks, merrily.
Stella looks first at Rohritz, then at her uncle, and murmurs, "That never occurred to me."
A burst of laughter from the captain--laughter in which Katrine joins heartily and Stasy ironically--is the reply to this confession.
"Acknowledge the compliment, Rohritz; come, acknowledge it," Leskjewitsch exclaims in the midst of his laughter.
But Rohritz maintains unmoved his serious, kindly expression of countenance.
"It is not given to even the greatest minds to contemplate all possible contingencies," he says, dryly.
The Baroness Meineck, absorbed in her game, has heard little, meanwhile, of what has been going on about her; she now suddenly remembers that it is incumbent upon her to attend to her daughter's training.
"I suppose you have been uttering some stupidity again, Stella," she observes, coldly; "you are incorrigible!"
"Poor mamma, she really is to be pitied," Stella sighs, her sense of humour asserting itself in spite of her; "she has no luck with her children. Her clever daughtercommitsstupidities, and her silly daughteruttersthem. Which is the worse?"
It rains the entire ensuing night, and far into the forenoon of the next day. The hollows worn in the stone pavement of the terrace are filled with water, and form little brown ponds. The buff-coloured castle has become orange-coloured, and looks quite worn with weeping. The lawns reek with moisture, and the Malmaison roses are pale and draggled. Drowned butterflies float on the surface of the pools, and fantastic wreaths of mist curl about the foot of the mountains on the farther side of the Save. No sun is to be seen amid the gray-brown rack of clouds.
At last the rain falls more slowly; the chirp of a bird makes itself heard now and then; a white watery spot in the gray skies shows where the sun is hiding; slowly it draws aside the veil from its beaming face, and between the torn and flying masses of cloud the heavens laugh out once more, blue and brilliant.
Tempted forth by the delightful change in the weather, Katrine, Stasy, and Stella venture out to take their daily bath in the Neuring. In its normal condition the Neuring is a clear, sparkling stream, flowing freely over its pebbly bed in constant angry attack upon diverse fragments of rock which look in magnificent disdain upon its impotent assaults. A bath in the current between the largest of these fragments of rock, where for the convenience of the bathers a stout pole has been fixed, is a great favourite among the delights of Erlach Court.
One shore of the stream slopes, flower-strewn and verdant, nearly to the water's edge, and here stands a roughly-constructed bath-house, from which wooden steps lead down into the water.
Stella is sitting, in a very faded bathing-suit of black serge trimmed with white braid, on the lowest of these steps, gazing sadly into the stream.
"I certainly did behave with unpardonable stupidity yesterday," she says, twisting her golden hair into a thick knot and fastening it up at the back of her head with a rather dilapidated tortoise-shell comb.
"When do you mean?" asks Stasy. "At lunch, or in the evening, or early this morning?"
"Yesterday evening, in the drawing-room," Stella replies, somewhat impatiently.
"That talk with Rohritz was a little reprehensible," Katrine says, with a laugh.
"In your place, after having been guilty of such a breach of decorum, I could not make up my mind to look him in the face," Stasy declares.
She slips into the water before the others, and is now trying, holding by the pole between the rocks, to tread the waves. The water hisses and foams, as if resenting her trampling it down.
"Was it really so bad, Aunt Katrine?" Stella asks, changing colour.
Katrine leans towards her, gives her a kindly pat on the shoulder, lifts her chin caressingly, and says,--
"Well, your remarks were certainly not extraordinarily pertinent, but I hardly think that Rohritz took them ill. 'Tis hard to take things ill of such a pretty, stupid, golden butterfly as you."
With which Katrine cautiously sets her slender foot among the yellow irises and white water-lilies on the edge of the water.
"It was terrible, then,--it must have been terrible if even you thought it so!" says Stella, as the tears rush to her eyes, and drop into the stream at her feet.
"Don't be a child," Katrine consoles her: "the matter was of no great consequence."
"Certainly not," Stasy adds, rather out of breath from her exertions. "What he thinks can make no kind of difference to you, and he assuredly will not report elsewhere your very strange remarks. Probably they interest him so little that he will soon forget all about them."
"Come and take your bath; you are wonderfully averse to the water to-day," Katrine calls out to the girl, who still sits sadly upon the wooden step, lost in reflection. "Indeed you need not take your stupidity so much to heart: it would have been nothing at all, if there had not been rather an odd story connected with Rohritz's sudden voyage across the ocean."
"Ah!" exclaims Stella, paddling through the water to her aunt, who, clinging to the pole, is now enjoying the current. "Really, something romantic?" she asks, curiously.
"There was nothing romantic in the affair save his way of taking it," Katrine says, with a dry smile, "and therefore the remembrance of this piece of his past may be particularly distasteful to him."
"Ah, but it was a married woman, was it not? Do tell me!" Stella entreats, burning with curiosity.
"No, Solomon," Katrine replies: "it was a young, unmarried woman, not so very young either, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, well born, a Baroness von Föhren, a Livonian with Russian blood in her veins, poor, ambitious, prudent, and just clever enough to entertain a man without frightening him. I saw her once, and but once, at the theatre; she was very beautiful, and I took an extraordinary dislike to her. I am always ready to applaud Judic inopéra-bouffe, and ongrand prixday in the Bois it interests me exceedingly to observe thedames aux camelliasthrough my opera-glass; but nothing in this world so disgusts me as demi-monde graces in a woman who ought to be a lady."
"I think you are a little severe in your judgment of Sonja. She was not irreproachable in her conduct," Stasy, who has for years maintained a kind of friendship with the person under discussion, here interposes, "not irreproachable, but----"
In all that touches her extremely strict ideas of propriety and fitness, Katrine understands no jesting.
"Her conduct was not only 'not irreproachable,' it was revolting!" she exclaims. "If she interests you, Stella, I can show you her photograph; at one time you could buy it everywhere. She was made to turn a young fellow's head. With regard to women men really have such wretched taste."
"Oho, Katrine! That sounds as if you said itpar dépit," Stasy says, archly.
"I do not in the least care how it sounds," Katrine rejoins.
"Ah, tell me about Baroness Föhren," Stella entreats.
"There is not much to tell. He had a love-affair with her----"
"A love-affair!" The words fall instantly from Stella's lips, as one drops a burning coal from the hand.
"Yes," Katrine goes on. "It happened in Baden-Baden, where the Föhren was staying with a relative of hers. Rohritz paid her attention, and something or other gave occasion for a scandalous report. In despair at having compromised the lady of his affections, Rohritz instantly proposed to her, and informed his father of his determination to marry her. The old Baron, a man of unstained honour, and imbued with a strong feeling of responsibility in maintaining the dignity of the Rohritz family, was rather shocked by this hasty resolve, and, viewing the affair from a far less romantic and far more sensible point of view than that taken by his son, made inquiries into the reputation of the lady in question, and--I cannot exactly explain it to you, Stella, but the result of his investigations was that he informed Edgar that he need be troubled by no conscientious scruples on behalf of this adventuress, and that he positively refused his consent to the marriage."
"And then?" asks Stella.
"I do not know precisely what happened," says Katrine. "Jack told me all about it lately with characteristic indignation, but I did not pay much attention. The affair dragged on for a while. Edgar, who was then most romantically inclined, would not resign the Föhren, corresponded with her,--how I should have liked to read those letters!--finally fought a duel with one of her slanderers, and was severely wounded. When he recovered at last after several dreary months of convalescence, he learned that the Föhren was married to a wealthy Russian."
"How detestable!" exclaims Stella.
"Good heavens! she had a practical mind," Stasy interposes. "I, to be sure, would on occasion have married a tinker for love, but the young women of the present day are not ashamed to declare that their choice in marriage is influenced by a box at the theatre, brilliant equipages, and toilets from Worth. Old Rohritz would have disinherited Edgar, or at all events allowed him a very inadequate income, while Prince Oblonsky----"
"Prince Oblonsky!" Stella hastily exclaims. "Did you say Oblonsky?"
"Yes; that was her husband's name, Boris Oblonsky. Now she is a widow, and still perfectly beautiful."
"Perfectly beautiful. I saw her in Venice at the Princess Giovanelli's ball," says Stella, "'with brilliant and far-gazing eyes.' So that was she!" And with a slight anxiety she wonders to herself, "A love-affair! What is the real meaning of a love-affair?"