When the three wanderers arrive, at Erlach Court a little after midnight, they find the rest in the dining-room, still sitting around the remains of a very much over-cooked dinner. Stasy, in a pink peignoir, hails Rohritz upon his entrance with, "I have won my bet,--six pair of Jouvin's gloves from Katrine. I wagered you would be late--ha! ha!"
"A fact easy to foresee, in view of the condition of the horses and the roads," Rohritz rejoins, frowning.
The affair, so far as it concerns Stella, who approaches her mother with fear and trembling, turns out fairly well. As the Baroness's natural feeling of maternal anxiety for her daughter's safety has only been temporarily disturbed by Stasy's insinuations, she forgets to scold Stella, in her joy at seeing her safe and sound. That she may not give way to an outburst of anger upon further consideration, and that an end may be put to Stasy's jests, the captain instantly plunges into a detailed account of all the mishaps that have befallen Stella and her escort.
Katrine meanwhile searches for a telegram that has arrived for Rohritz, finally discovering it under an old-fashioned decanter on the sideboard.
"What is the matter?" she asks, kindly, seeing him change colour upon reading it.
"Moritz, an apoplectic stroke, come immediately.
Ernestine."
he reads aloud. "'Tis from my eldest sister. Poor Tina!" he murmurs. "I must leave to-morrow by the seven-o'clock train from Gradenik. Can you let me have a pair of horses, Les?"
The captain sends instantly to have everything in readiness.
Shortly afterwards Rohritz takes leave of the ladies; he does not, of course, venture to expect that after the fatigues of the day they will rise before six in the morning for his sake. Stella's hand he retains a few seconds longer than he ought, and he notices that it trembles in his own.
So summary is his mode of preparation that his belongings are all packed in little more than half an hour, and he then disposes himself to spend the rest of the night in refreshing slumber. But sleep is denied him: a strange unrest possesses him. Happiness knocks at the door of his heart and entreats, 'Ah, let me in, let me in!' But Reason stands sentinel there and refuses to admit her.
He tossed to and fro for hours, unable to compose himself. Towards morning he had a strange dream. He seemed to be walking in a lovely summer night: the moon shone bright through the branches of an old linden, and lay in arabesque patterns of light on the dark ground beneath. Suddenly he perceived a small dark object lying at his feet, and when he stooped to see what it was he found it was a little bird that had fallen out of the nest and now looked up at him sadly and helplessly from large dark eyes. He picked it up and warmed it against his breast. It nestled delightedly into his hand. He pressed his lips to the warm little head; an electric thrill shot through his veins. "Stella, my poor, dear, foolish child!" he murmured.
Rat-tat-tat--rat-tat-tat! He started and awoke. The servant was knocking at his door to arouse him. "The Herr Baron's hot shaving-water."
When, half an hour later, he appears, dressed with his usual fastidious care, in the dining-room, he finds both the master and the mistress of the house already there to do the honours of what he calls, with courteous exaggeration, 'the last meal of the condemned.' Shortly afterwards Stasy appears. The general, through a servant, makes a back-ache a plea for not rising at so early an hour.
The carriage is announced; Rohritz kisses Katrine's hand and thanks her for some delightful weeks. She and the captain accompany him to the carriage, while Stasy contents herself with kissing her hand to him from the terrace. At the last moment Rohritz discovers that he has no matches, and a servant is sent into the house to get him some.
"It is settled between us, now," Katrine begins, "that whenever you are fairly tired out with mankind in general----"
"I shall come to Erlach Court to learn to prize it in particular; most certainly, madame," Rohritz replies, his glance roving restlessly among the upper windows of the castle. "Au revoirat Christmas!"
The morning is cool; the cloudless skies are pale blue, the turf silver gray with dew; the carriage makes deep ruts in the moist gravel of the sweep; the blossoms have fallen from the linden and are lying by thousands shrivelled and faded at its feet, while the rustle of the dripping dew among its mighty branches can be distinctly heard.
The servant brings the matches. Rohritz still lingers.
"Do not forget, madame, to bid the Baroness Meineck----" he begins, when the sound of a limping foot-fall strikes his ear. He turns hastily: it is Stella,--Stella in a white morning gown, her hair loosely twisted up, very pale, very charming, her eyes gazing large and grave from out her mobile countenance.
"Have you, too, made your appearance at last, you lazy little person? 'Tis very good of you, highly praiseworthy," the captain says, with a laugh to annul the effect of Stella's innocent eagerness.
A burst of laughter comes from the terrace.
"I hope you are duly gratified, Baron," a discordant voice calls out. "When our little girl gets up at six o'clock it must be for a very grand occasion!"
Blushing painfully, Stella with difficulty restrains her tears; she says not a word, but stands there absolutely paralyzed with embarrassment.
"I thank you from my heart for your kindness," Rohritz says, hastily approaching her. "I should have regretted infinitely not seeing you to say good-bye."
"You had a great deal of trouble with me yesterday, and were very patient," she manages to stammer. "Except Uncle Jack, no one has been so kind to me as you, since papa died, and I wanted to thank you for it."
He takes her soft, warm little hand in his and carries it to his lips.
"God guard you!" he murmurs.
"Hurry, or you will be too late!" the captain calls to him. He is going to accompany him to the station, and he fairly drags him away to the carriage.
The driver cracks his whip, the horses start off, Rohritz waves his hat for a last farewell, and the carriage vanishes behind the iron gates of the park.
"Poor Stella! poor Stella!" Stasy screams from the terrace, fairly convulsed with laughter. "Delightful fellow, Rohritz: he knows what he's about!"
But Stella covers her burning face with her hands. "I will go into a convent," she says; "there at least I shall be able to conduct myself properly."
Meanwhile, Rohritz and the captain roll on towards the station. They are both silent.
"He is desperately in love with her," thinks the captain. "Is he really too poor to marry, I wonder?"
Yes, it is true Rohritz is desperately in love with her; she hovers before his eyes in all her loveliness like a vision. He would fain stretch out his arms to her, but he is perpetually tormented by the persistent question, "Whom does she resemble?" Suddenly he knows. The knowledge almost paralyzes him!
Beside the pure, fresh vision of Stella he sees leaning over a black-haired, vagabond-looking man at the roulette-table at Baden-Baden the hectic ruin of a woman who has been magnificently beautiful, a woman with painted cheeks and with deep lines about her eyes and mouth,--otherwise the very image of Stella.
Twelve years since he had seen her thus, and upon asking who she was had been told that she was the mistress of the Spanish violinist Corrèze, and that she was little by little sacrificing her entire fortune to gratify the artist's love of gaming. His informant added that she was a woman of birth and position, and that she had left her husband and child in obedience to the promptings of passion. He did not know her husband's name: she called herself then Madame Corrèze.
Why do all Stasy's malicious remarks about Stella's unpleasant connections, and about the Meineck temperament, crowd into his mind?
There is no denying that Stella is lacking in a certain kind of reserve.
While he is waiting with the captain beneath the vine-wreathed shed of the station for the train which has just been signalled, these hateful thoughts refuse to be banished. He suddenly asks his friend, who stands smoking; in silence beside him,--
"What is the story about your sister's sister-in-law to which Fräulein von Gurlichingen so often alludes? Was she the same Eugenie Meineck to whom you were once devoted?"
"Yes," the captain makes reply, half closing his eyes, "and she was a charming, enchanting creature; Stella reminds me of her. No one has a good word for her now, but there was a time when it was impossible to pet and praise her enough."
"What became of her?"
"She fell into bad--or rather into incapable--hands. She married an elderly man who did not know how to manage her. Good heavens! the best horse stumbles under a bad rider, and----"
"Well, and----?"
"She had not been married long when she ran off with a Spanish musician, a coarse fellow, who beat her, and ran through her property. He was quite famous. His name was--was----" The captain snaps his fingers impatiently.
"Corrèze?" Rohritz interposes.
"Yes, that is it,--Corrèze!"
At this moment the train arrives.
"All kind messages to the ladies at Erlach Court, and many thanks for your hospitality, Jack!" Rohritz says, jumping into the coupé.
"I hope we shall see you soon again, old fellow; but--hm!--have you no message for my foolish little Stella?" asks the captain.
"I hope with all my heart that she may soon fall into good hands!" Rohritz says, with emphasis, in a hard vibrant voice.
And the train whizzes away.
"The deuce!" thinks the captain; "there's but a slim chance for the poor girl. Good heavens! if I loved Stella and my circumstances did not allow of my marrying, I'd take up some profession. But Rohritz is too fine a gentleman for that."
Meanwhile, Rohritz leans back discontentedly in the corner of an empty coupé.
"A charming, bewitching creature,--Stella resembles her," he murmurs to himself. "She married an elderly man from pique, and so on." He lights a cigar and puffs forth thick clouds of smoke. "She might not have married me from pique, but from loneliness, from gratitude for a little sympathy. And if Zino had come across her later on---- I was on the point of losing my head. Thank God it is over!"
He sat still for a while, his head propped upon his hand, and then found that his cigar had gone out. With an impatient gesture he tossed it out of the window.
"I could not have believed I should have had such an attack at my years," he muttered. He set his teeth, and his face took on a resolute expression. "It must he," he said to himself.
Outside the wind sighed among the trees and in the tall meadow-grass.
It sounded to him like the sobbing of his rejected happiness.
Summer has gone. The birds are silent; brown leaves cover the green grass, falling thicker and thicker from the weary trees; long, white gossamers float in the damp, oppressive air: the autumn is weaving a shroud for the dying year.
Scared by the whistling blasts and the floods of rain, the swallows have assembled in dark flocks; they are seen in long rows on the telegraph-wires in eager twittering discussion of their approaching flight, and then, the next morning, early, before the lingering autumn sun has opened its drowsy eyes, the heavens are black with their flying squadrons.
But the final death-struggle is not yet over, the warmth in all vegetation is not yet chilled; bright flowers still bloom at the feet of the fast-thinning trees, and, shaking the falling leaves from their cups, laugh up at the blue skies.
The little company which at the beginning of this simple story we found assembled at Erlach Court is now dispersed to all quarters of the world: the general is 'grazing,' as Jack Leskjewitsch expresses it, with somebody in Southern Hungary; Stasy is fluttering, with sweet smiles and covert malice, from friend to friend, seeming at present on the lookout for a fixed engagement for the winter; Rohritz is off on his wonted autumnal hunting-expedition, and more than usually bored by it; and the Leskjewitsches are still at Erlach Court, where Freddy is in perpetual conflict with his new tutor, a spare, lank philosopher lately imported for him from Bohemia, and Katrine quaffs full draughts of her beloved solitude, without experiencing the great degree of rapture she had anticipated from it; there is a cloud upon her brow, and her annoyance is principally due to the fact that the captain begins to show unmistakable signs of a lapse from his former manly energy of character; he scarcely holds himself as erect as was his wont, and the only occupation which he pursues with any notable degree of self-sacrifice and devotion is the breaking of a pair of very young and very fiery horses. This praiseworthy pursuit, however, absorbs only a few hours at most of each day, and he kills the rest of the time as best he can, irritating by his idleness his wife, who is always occupied with most interesting matters. In addition he reads silly novels, and greatly admires the 'Maître de Forges.'
"How can any man admire the 'Maitre de Forges'?" Katrine asks, indignantly.
The Baroness and Stella have been back in their mill-cottage at Zalow for many weeks, and Stella is, as usual, left entirely to herself.
In addition to the daily scribbling over of various sheets of foolscap, the Baroness, instead of bestowing any attention upon her daughter, is mainly occupied with superintending the carrying out of all the governmental prophylactic measures which are to secure to Zalow entire immunity from the cholera. She has come off victorious in many a battle with the culpably negligent village authority, and, to the immense edification of the inmates of the various villas, already somewhat accustomed to the vagaries of the Baroness Meineck, she now goes from one manure-heap to another of the place, at the head of a battalion of barefooted village children provided with watering-pots filled with a disinfectant, the due apportionment of which she thus oversees herself.
It was long an undecided question whether this winter, like the last, should be spent in Zalow. Finally the Baroness decided that it was absolutely necessary for herself as well as for Stella that the cold season of the year should be passed in Paris, for herself that she might have access to much information needed for the completion of her 'work,' for Stella that a final polish might be given to her singing and that she might be definitively prepared for the stage.
Every one who has ever had anything to do with Lina Meineck knows that if she once takes any scheme into her head it is sure to be carried out: therefore, having made up her mind to go to Paris, she will go, although no one among all her relatives has an idea of where the requisite funds are to come from.
It does not occur to any one that she could lay hands upon the small fortune belonging to Stella, who has lately been declared of age.
It is a mild autumn afternoon; Stella, just returned from a visit to her sister, who has lately been blessed by the arrival of a little daughter, has taken a seat with some trifling piece of work in her mother's study to tell her about the pretty child and Franzi's household, but at her first word her mother calls out to her from her writing-table,--
"Not now,--not now, I beg; do not disturb me."
And the girl, silenced and mortified, bends over the tiny shirt which she has begun to crochet for her little niece, and keeps all that she had hoped to tell to herself.
The autumn sun shines in at the window, and its crimson light gleams upon a large tin box standing on the floor in a corner, the box in which the deceased colonel had kept all the letters he ever received from his wife. Tied up with ribbon, and methodically arranged according to their dates, they are packed away here just as they were sent to his wife from his old quarters at Enns. She has never looked at them, has not even taken the trouble to destroy them, but has simply pushed them aside as useless rubbish.
Stella had rummaged among them, with indescribable sensations in deciphering these yellow documents with their faint odour of lavender and decay, for here were letters full of ardour and passion, letters in which Lina Meineck wrote to her husband, for instance, when he was away during the Schleswig campaign,--
"The weather is fine to-day, and every one is praising the lovely spring; but it is always winter for me in your absence; with you away my thermometer always stands at ten degrees below zero!"
With a shudder Stella put back these relics of a dead love in their little coffin. It was as if she had heard a corpse speak.
Since then she has often wished to burn the letters, out of affectionate reverence for the dead who held them sacred, but she has never summoned up sufficient courage to ask her mother's permission.
The little shirt is finished; with a sigh Stella folds it together, and is just wondering what she shall do next to occupy the rest of the afternoon, when the Baroness says,--
"Have you nothing to do, Stella?"
"No, mamma."
"Well, then, you can run over to Schwarz's and buy me a couple of quires of paper; my supply is exhausted, and I will, meanwhile, have tea brought up."
Donning her hat and gloves, Stella sets forth. Herr Schwarz is the only shopkeeper in the village, and his shop contains a more heterogeneous collection of articles than the biggest shop in Paris. He often boasts that he has everything for sale, from poison for rats, and dynamite bombs, to paper collars and scented soap. His shop is at the other end of the village from the mill, and to reach it Stella must pass the most ornate of the villas.
Most of the summer residents have left Zalow; only a few special enthusiasts for country air have been induced by the exceptionally fine autumn weather to prolong their stay. In the garden of the tailor who built himself a hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First a group of people are disputing around a croquet-hoop in the centre of a very small lawn, and in the Giroflé Villa some one is practising Schumann's 'Études symphoniques' with frantic ardour. Stella smiles; the last sound that fell upon her ears before she went to Erlach Court with her mother was the 'Études symphoniques,' the first that greeted her upon her return in the middle of August was the 'Études symphoniques.' She knows precisely who is so persistently given over to these rhapsodies,--an odd creature, a woman named Fuhrwesen, who has been a teacher of the piano for some years in Russia, and who, now over forty, still hopes for a career as an artist.
Stella's little commission is soon attended to. As she hands her mother the paper on her return, their only servant, a barefooted girl from the village, with a red-and-black checked kerchief tied about her head, brings the tea into the room.
"A letter has come for you," the Baroness says to her daughter,--"a letter from Grätz. I do not know the hand. Who can be writing to you from Grätz? Where did I put it?"
And while her mother is rummaging among her papers for the letter, Stella repeats, with a throbbing heart, "From Grätz. Who can be writing to me from Grätz?" and she covertly kisses the four-leaved clover on her bracelet which is to bring her good fortune, and proceeds instantly to build a charming castle in the air.
Her uncle has told her of Edgar's loss of property and his consequent inability to think of marriage at present. Perhaps Uncle Jack told her this to comfort her. That Edgar loves her she has, with the unerring instinct of total inexperience of the world, read, not once, but hundreds of times, in his eyes, and consequently she has spent many a long autumn evening in wondering whether he is looking for a position--some lucrative employment--to enable him to marry. He is not lacking in attainments; he could work if he would. "And he will for my sake," the heart of this foolish, fantastic young person exults in thinking.
From day to day she has been hoping that he would send her--perhaps through Jack or Katrine--some message, hitherto in vain. But now at last he has written himself; for from whom else could this letter from Grätz be? She knew no human being there save himself.
"Here is the letter," her mother says, at last.
Stella opens it hastily, and starts.
"Whom is it from?" asks the Baroness. She uses the hour for afternoon tea to rest from her literary labours; with her feet upon the round of a chair in front of her, a volume of Buckle in her lap, a pile of books beside her, a number of the 'Revue des deux Mondes' in her left hand, and her teacup in her right, she partakes alternately of the refreshing beverage and of an article upon Henry the Eighth. "Whom is the letter from?" she asks, absently, laying her cup aside to take up a volume of Froude.
"From Stasy," Stella replies.
"Ah! what does she want?"
"She asks me to send her from Rumberger's, in Prague, three hundred napkins or so, upon approbation, that she may oblige some friend of hers whom I do not know, and for whom I do not care."
"Positively insolent!" remarks the Baroness. "And does she say nothing else?"
"Nothing of any consequence," says Stella, reading on and suddenly changing colour.
"Ah!" The Baroness marks the Revue with her pencil. When she looks up again, Stella has left the room. Without wasting another thought upon her, the student goes on with her reading.
Stella, meanwhile, is lying on the bed in her little room, into which the moon shines marking the floor with the outlines of the window-panes. Her face is buried among the pillows, and she is crying as if her heart would break.
'Nothing of any consequence'! True enough, of no consequence for the Baroness, that second sheet of Stasy's, but for Stella of great, of immense consequence.
"Guess whom I encountered lately at Steinbach?" writes the Gurlichingen. "Edgar Rohritz. Of course we talked of our dear Erlach Court, and consequently of you. He spoke very kindly of you, only regretting that in consequence of your odd education, or of a certain exaggeration of temperament, you lacked reserve,tenue, a defect which might be unfortunate for you in life. Of course I defended you. They say everywhere that he is betrothed to Emmy Strahlenheim.
"Have you heard the news,--the very latest? Rohritzisa sly fellow indeed. All that loss of property of which we heard so much was only a fraud. The report originated in some trifling depreciation of certain bank-stock. He did not contradict the report, allowing himself to be thought impoverished that he might escape the persecutions of the mothers and daughters of Grätz. Max Steinbach let out the secret a while ago. Is it not the best joke in the world? I am glad no one can accuse me of ever making the slightest advances to him."
The death-struggle of the year is over,--past are the treacherous gleams of sunlight among falling leaves and smiling flowers,--past, past! Cold and grave like a hired executioner, mute and secret like a midnight assassin, the first hard frost has fallen upon the earth in the previous night and completed its great work of destruction.
It is All Souls'; the Meinecks leave for Paris in the evening, and in the morning Stella goes to mass in the little church on the mountain-side at the foot of which is the churchyard,--the churchyard in which the colonel lies buried. The flames of the thick wax candles on the altar, the flames of the candles thick and thin lighted everywhere in memory of the dead, flicker dull and red in the gray daylight.
In one of the carved seats beside the altar sits the priest's sister, her prayer-book bound in red velvet, and a large yellow rose in her new winter hat. She nods kindly to Stella when she enters, and gathers her skirts aside to make room for her.
In the body of the long narrow church are cowering on the benches all kinds of dilapidated figures, men and women, almost all old, frail, and crippled,--those able to work have no time to pray. It is very cold; their breath comes as vapour from their lips; the outlines of their blue wrinkled faces show vaguely behind clouds of yellowish-gray smoke; the odour of damp stone and damp clothes mingles with the smell of incense and wax; the sputter of the candles, the dripping of the wax, the rattle of beads, mingle with the monotonous chant of the priest at the altar.
When mass is over, and she has taken leave of the priest's kindly sister, Stella goes out into the churchyard,--a miserable place, with neglected graves, scarcely elevated in mounds above the ground, with iron crosses upon which rust has eaten away the inscriptions, or wooden ones which the wind has blown down to lie rotting on the ground. The colonel's grave is beneath a weeping-willow at the extreme end of the churchyard, whence one can look directly down upon the broad shining stream. Tended like a garden-bed by Stella, cherished as the very apple of her eye, it yet looks dreary enough to-day: the leaves are hanging black and withered from the stalks of the chrysanthemums which Stella planted with her own hands only a few weeks ago, their pretty flowers, which but yesterday stood forth red and yellow against the blue of the sky, now colourless and faded beyond recognition. A wreath of fresh flowers lies among the chrysanthemums, but these too are beginning to fade. Stella kneels down on the gray rimy grass beside the grave and kisses fervently the hard frozen ground.
"Adieu, papa," she murmurs, and then adds, "But why say adieu to you? You are always with me everywhere I go; you are beside me, a loving guardian angel seeking for happiness for me. Do not grieve too much that you cannot find it: open your arms and take me to you; I am all ready."
Then the mill is closed; the keys are left with the pastor, and the Meinecks go to Prague, which on the same evening they leave by the train for the west. As far as Furth they are alone, but when they change coupés after the examination of their luggage they are unable, in spite of bribing the officials, to exclude strangers. At the last moment, just as the train is about to start, a lady with two handbags, a travelling-case, a shawl-strap, and a bandbox steps into their compartment and hopes she does not disturb them. Much vexed, Stella scans the lady, who wears a water-proof adorned with as many tassels as bedeck the trappings of an Andalusian mule, and with a red pompon in her hat, fastened in its place with a bird's claw four inches long. Stella instantly recognizes her as Fräulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, the same pianist who has been spending her holidays upon the 'Études symphoniques;' she recognizes Stella at the same moment, and, although until now she never has exchanged four words with her, hails her as an old acquaintance and enters into conversation; that is, without waiting for replies from the young girl she imparts to her the story of her entire life.
In the course of her experience as teacher of the piano in Russia, of which mention has already been made, she has learned much of the rude nature of Russian social life and the amiability of young Russian princes; at present she is on her way to Paris, whence she is to make a tour with an impresario through South America and Australia, by the way of Uruguay and Tasmania. Apart from the artistic laurels she expects to win, she anticipates furthering greatly the advance of civilization among the savage aborigines by her musical efforts.
She asks Stella several times why she is so silent, and when the girl excuses herself on the plea of a headache she says she had better eat something, and produces from her travelling-case, embroidered with red and white roses, and from between a flannel dressing-sacque and various toilet articles, a bulky brown package containing the remains of a cold capon.
Stella thanks her, and declines the tempting delicacy, saying that she will try to sleep.
Fräulein Fuhrwsen of course attributes Stella's reserve to the notorious arrogance of the Meinecks, who will have nothing to say to a poor pianist, and, mortally offended, she likewise takes refuge in silence.
Stella dozes.
The conductor opens the door to tell the ladies that the next station is Nuremberg, whereupon the artiste takes a comb and a tangled braid of false hair out of her travelling-case and begins to dress her hair.
The train puffs and whizzes through the grayish light of the late autumn morning and stops with a shrill whistle at Nuremberg.
Stella and her mother through the pillars of the railway-station catch a glimpse, among the picturesque gables and roofs of the old town, of ugly new houses pretentious in style, looking as if built of pasteboard; they partake of a miserable breakfast, buy a package of gingerbread and a volume of Tauchnitz, get into another train, and are whirled away, on--on--through yellow and brown harvest-fields, through small bristling forests of pines and barren meadows, past villages, churchyards, and little towns that look positively dead. Late in the afternoon the Rhine comes in sight: gray, shrouded in mist, not at all like itself, without sunshine, without merriment, without Englishmen, almost without steamers, it grumbles and groans as if vexed by some evil, melancholy dream, while a thousand sad sighs tremble through the red-and-yellow vineyards on its shores,--the shores where folly grows.
Away--on--on! More dead towns, with dreamy old names that fall upon the ear like echoes of ancient legends. Everything is drowsy; gray shadows cover the earth; the night falls; green and red lanterns gleam through the darkness.
Cologne!
Cologne, where one can sup, and dress, and at all events see the cathedral in the dark.
Stella and her mother have finished their supper. The Baroness, who has exhausted her entire stock of literary food provided for the journey, is at the book-stall, looking for more reading-matter; she examines the counterfeit presentments on exhibition there of the great German heroes, the Emperor Wilhelm, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, among which distinguished personages chance has slipped in the portrait of Mademoiselle Zampa. Suddenly, under a pile of books that seem to have been pushed out of the way, she discovers a green pamphlet which she instantly recognizes as a child of her own, an essay entitled 'Is Woman to be Independent?' Of course she buys the book, and, betaking herself to the small 'ladies' parlour' adjoining the spacious waiting-room, takes a seat opposite Stella, and, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, is soon absorbed in the study of her work.
Meanwhile, Stella has vainly tried to become interested in the English novel purchased at Nuremberg; she leaves the lovers, after their twenty-second reconciliation, beneath a blossoming hawthorn, and, closing the book with a slight yawn, sits up and looks about her. At the other end of the room, as far as possible from Stella, sits the pianist, writing a letter: from time to time she looks up to bestow upon Stella a hostile glance. On the other side of the same table two ladies are engaged in partaking of the best supper that the restaurant of the railway-hotel can afford,--a supper withfoie gras, mayonnaise of lobster, and a bottle of champagne. One of them, with the figure and face of a Juno, her costly furs falling gracefully from her full shoulders, is so perfumed that even the atmosphere about Stella reeks withpeau d'Espagne. Eyebrows, lips--her entire face is painted; and yet she does not look in the least like a travelling prima donna.
"Can that be the Princess Oblonsky?" Stella says to herself, with a start. "No doubt of it: it is."
And there beside the Princess, on Stella's side of the table, but with her back to her,--who is that?
Jack Leskjewitsch always used to declare that Stasy's shoulders were shaped like a champagne-bottle. Stella wonders whether anywhere in the world can be found a pair of more sloping shoulders than those which that fur-trimmed circular fails to conceal. Both ladies devote their entire attention for a time to their supper; at last the Princess pushes away her plate with a certain impatience, and with an odd smile says, "Where did you first know him?"
"Whom?" asks the other.
It is Stasy, of course; there may be another woman in the world with those same sloping shoulders, but there can be none with such a thin, affected voice.
"Why, him, my chevaliersans peur et sans reproche," says the Princess.
"Edgar? Oh, I spent a long time in the same house with him last summer," Stasy declares. "He is still one of the most interesting men I have ever met. Such a profile! such eyes! and so attractive in manner!"
The ladies speak French, the Princess with perfect fluency but a rather hard accent, Stasy somewhat stumblingly.
"Strange!" the Oblonsky murmurs.
"What is strange?" asks Stasy.
"Why, that you have seen him," the Princess replies; "that he is yet alive; in fact, that he ever did live, and that we loved each other. I was wont for so many years to regard that episode at Baden-Baden as a dream that at last I forgot that the dream had any connection with reality." The words fall from the beautiful woman's lips slowly, softly, with veiled richness and intense melancholy. After a pause she goes on: "I seem to have read there in Baden-Baden a romance which enthralled my entire being! It was on a lovely summer day, and the roses were in bloom all about me, while delicious music in the distance fell dreamily and softly on my ear, and the fragrance of roses and the charm of melody mingled with the poem I was reading. Suddenly, and before I had read to the end, the romance slipped from my hands, and since then I have sought it in vain! But it still seems to me more charming than all the romances in the world; and I cannot cease from searching for it, that I may read the last chapter." Then, suddenly changing her tone, she shrugs her shoulders and says, "Who can tell what disappointment awaits me?--how Edgar may have changed? How does he seem? Is he gay, contented with his lot?"
"No, Sonja, that he is not," Stasy assures her, sentimentally. "To be sure, he is too proud to parade his grief; in society he bears himself coldly, indifferently; but there is an inexpressible melancholy in his look. Oh, he has not forgotten!"
Stella's eyes flash angrily.
"She lies!" the heart in her breast cries out; "she lies!"
Meanwhile, the friends clasp each other's hands sympathetically.
"He never knew how I suffered," the Princess sighs. "Does he suppose that I accepted Oblonsky's hand with any thought of self? No,--a thousand times no! I determined to free Edgar from the martyrdom he was enduring from his family because of me. I took upon myself the burden of a joyless, loveless marriage, I had myself nailed to the cross, for his sake!"
"She lies!" Stella's heart cries out again; "she lies!"
But Stasy sighs, "I always understood you, Sonja." After a pause she adds, "You know, I suppose, that he grew gray immediately after that sad affair,--after your marriage,--almost in a single night?"
"Gray!" murmurs the Princess; "gray! And he had such beautiful dark-brown hair. He must have heard much evil of me; perhaps he believed it: it pleases men to think evil of the women who have caused them suffering. Well, you know how innocent were all the little flirtations with which I tried in vain to fill the dreary vacuum of my existence, from the artists whom I patronized, to Zino Capito, with whom I trifled. If only some one could explain it all to him!--or if"--the Princess's eyes gleam with conscious power,--"if I could only meet him myself, then----"
"Then what?" says Stasy, threatening her friend archly with her forefinger; "then you would turn his head again, only to leave him to drag out a still drearier existence than before."
"You are mistaken," the Princess whispers. "There is many a strain of music that beginning in a minor key changes to major only to close softly and sweetly in minor tones. Anastasia, my first marriage was a tomb in which I was buried alive----"
"And would you be buried alive for the second time?" Stasy asks.
"No; I long for a resurrection."
A cold shiver of dread thrills Stella from head to foot. The Baroness looks up from her pamphlet and exclaims, "I really must read you this, Stella. I do not understand how this brochure did not attract more notice. To be sure, when one lives so entirely withdrawn from all intercourse with the literary world, and has no connection at all with the journals, one may expect----"
Stasy turns around. "My dear Baroness!" she exclaims, with effusion. "And you too, Stella! What a delightful surprise! I must introduce you: Baroness Meineck and her daughter,--Princess Oblonsky."
With the extreme graciousness which all great ladies whose social position is partly compromised testify towards their thoroughly respectable sisters, the Princess rises and offers her hand to both Stella and her mother. The Baroness smiles absently; Stella does not smile, and barely touches with her finger-tips the hand extended to her. Meanwhile, Stasy has recognized in Fräulein Fuhrwesen an old acquaintance from Zalow.
"Good-day, Fräulein Bertha!"--"Fräulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, a very fine pianist,"--to the Princess; then to the Meinecks, "You are already acquainted with her." And while the Princess talks with much condescension to the pianist of her adoration for music, Stasy whispers to Stella, "Don't be so stiff towards Sonja: you might almost be supposed to be jealous of her."
"Ridiculous!" Stella says angrily through her set teeth, and blushing to the roots of her hair.
Stasy taps her on the cheek with her forefinger, with a pitying glance that takes in her entire person, from her delicate--almost too delicate--pale face to her shabby travelling-dress, the identical brown army-cloak which she had worn on the journey to Venice three years before, and rejoins,--
"Ridiculous indeed--most ridiculous--to dream of rivalling Sonja. Wherever she appears, we ordinary women are nowhere."
"Verviers--Paris--Brussels!" the porter shouts into the room.
All rise, and pick up plaids and travelling-bags; the porters hurry in; a lanky footman and a sleepy-looking maid wait upon the Princess Oblonsky, who nods graciously as they all crowd out upon the railway-platform. The Meinecks enter a coupé where an American whose trousers are too short, and his wife whose hat is too large, have already taken their seats. The pianist looks in at the door, but as soon as she perceives Stella starts back with horror in her face.
"I seem to have made an enemy of that woman," Stella thinks, negligently. What does it matter to her? Poor Stella! Could she but look into the future!
The train starts; while the Baroness, neglectful of the simplest precautions with regard to her eyes, continues to peruse her masterpiece by the yellow light of the coupé lamp, the American goes to sleep, hat and all, upon her companion's shoulder, and Stella sits bolt upright in the cool draught of night air by the window, repeating to herself alternately, "I long for a resurrection!" and "Wherever Sonja appears, we ordinary women are nowhere!"
She, then, is the enchantress who has ruined the happiness of his life,--she the---- She is indeed beautiful; but how hollow,--how false! Everything about her--soul, heart, and all--is painted, like her face. Could he possibly be her dupe a second time? Suddenly the girl feels the blood rush to her cheeks.
"What affair is it of mine? What do I care?" she asks herself, angrily. "He too is false, vain, and heartless; he too can act a part."