"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark," Edgar von Rohritz says to himself, looking out of his window at Erlach Court upon the snow-covered garden below.
Six days ago he arrived at the castle to spend Christmas, as had been agreed upon. The Christmas festivities are at an end. The children from the three villages upon whom Katrine had showered gifts have all, as well as Freddy, become accustomed to their new possessions, but the giant Christmas-tree, robbed, it is true, of its sugarplums, still stands with its candle-stumps and gilt ornaments in the corridor, and from the brown frames of the engravings in the dining-room a few evergreen boughs are still hanging, remnants of the Christmas decorations.
Rohritz has enjoyed celebrating the lovely festival in the country,--everything was bright and gay; but there is a change of atmosphere at Erlach Court; the social charm for which it used to be renowned is lacking.
Edgar's reception both by husband and by wife was most cordial: the captain is gay, talkative,--almost gayer and more talkative than in summer; but there is a cloud on Katrine's brow.
Instead of the frank but thoroughly good-humoured tone in which she was wont to deride the captain's exaggerated outbreaks, she now passes them by in silence. She never quarrels with him, she is decidedly displeased with him, and--what surprises Rohritz more than all else--the captain seems to care very little for her displeasure.
To-day Rohritz asked Katrine if it was quite decided that the captain was to leave the army and retire once for all to the country. Whereupon Katrine's fine eyes sparkle angrily, and with a slight quiver of her delicate nostril she replies, "So it seems. He will not listen to any suggestion of resuming the hard duties of the service, but has accustomed himself entirely to the lazy life of a landed proprietor." And when Rohritz remains silent, she exclaims, angrily, "I know what you are thinking: that I gave him no choice save to resign his career or his domestic life,--which is no choice at all with men of his stamp, whose love of domesticity is very pronounced, and who have no ambition! But when I acted so I thought he would lead a country life, without deteriorating; I thought he would occupy himself,--would devote his energies to politics, to Slavonic agricultural interests----"
"Indeed?" Rohritz asks. "Did you really expect that of Les?"
"Yes," Katrine exclaims, "I did expect that of Jack; and I had a right to expect it, for he lacks neither energy nor sense."
"He was always considered one of the keenest and most gifted officers in the army," says Rohritz.
"And with justice," Katrine confirms his words. "You have no idea of the energy with which he devoted himself to the service. Were you ever in Hungary?"
"Yes, madame, I served as captain for two years in W----."
"Then you are familiar with the fearful heat of the Hungarian summers. To order dinner and to sit upright at table exhausted my capacity; whilst he, although he rose at four that he might get through riding-school before the terrible heat of the day, scarcely ever lay down for half an hour. He continually had something to arrange, to decide, to command; he occupied himself with the individual concerns of every soldier in his squadron; he never took a moment's rest from morning until night; while now--now he does nothing, nothing but sleigh, mend a toy for the boy now and then, and read silly novels."
Rohritz is spared the necessity of replying, for at this moment the quiet drawing-room where this conversation is going on is invaded by the sharp clear tinkle of large sleigh-bells. Katrine turns her head hastily and walks to the window.
"So soon again!" she exclaims, as a fair, stout, pretty woman, wrapped in furs, allows herself, with much loud talking, to be helped out of the sleigh by the captain. Whilst Katrine, with a very gloomy face, takes her seat in an arm-chair to await the stranger's appearance, Rohritz withdraws, under the pretext of an obligation to answer immediately an important letter.
But he writes no letter; he does not even sit down at his writing-desk, but stands at his window looking out at the snow. In town he had quite forgotten how pure and white snow originally is. He gazes at it as at some curiosity which he is beholding for the first time. On the rose-beds, the bushes, the old linden,--everywhere it lies thick,--thick!
Here and there some branch thrusts forth a black point from the white covering, and the trunks of the trees are all divided in halves, a black half and a white one.
He reflects upon the domestic drama about to be enacted close at hand.
He is sorry for Katrine, although he lays at her door the blame for all the annoyances of which she has spoken to him, petty, provoking annoyances, which under certain circumstances may be the forerunners of actual misfortune.
"One more who has thrust aside happiness," he murmurs, bitterly, adding on the instant, "If we could only recognize our happiness at the right time! If it could only say to us, 'Here I am, clasp me close!' But the truest, finest happiness is never self-asserting: it walks beside us mute and modest, warming and rejoicing our hearts, while we know not whence come the warmth and the delight."
As the stout blonde whom Leskjewitsch helped out of the sleigh not only remains to lunch, but also takes afternoon tea and dinner at Erlach Court, Rohritz has abundant opportunity to observe her. That, like all sirens who disturb domestic serenity, she should be inferior in every respect to the wife whose peace of mind she threatens, was to have been expected; but that she should be so immeasurably inferior to Katrine,--for that Rohritz was not prepared.
Anywhere else save in the country, and moreover in a world-forgotten corner of Ukrania, where the foxes bid one another good-night, and human beings are consequently easier to be induced than in civilized countries to bid one another good-day in spite of stupid social prejudices, any intercourse between this lady and the family at Erlach Court would have been impossible.
The daughter of a lucifer-match manufacturer in P----, with a moderate degree of education and a strong passion for hunting, three years ago she had married the son of a riding-teacher, a certain Herr Ruprecht, who had been first a cavalry-officer, then a circus manager in America, and finally a newspaper-man in Vienna. After these various experiences with her promising husband, they had shortly before taken up their abode in a villa not far from Erlach Court, on the opposite bank of the Save. As the husband spent most of his time with a pretty actress, the young wife passed her days in dreary solitude. The country-people called her the grass-widow.
"I need not assure you that I am not in the least jealous," Katrine remarks to Rohritz in the drawing-room, while the grass-widow with Freddy and the captain is playing billiards in the library, "but I frankly confess that I find the pleasure which Jack takes in the society of that common creature--that fat goose--incomprehensible. It irritates me. Moreover, she is ugly!"
Rohritz receives this outburst of Katrine's precisely as he receives all her outbursts,--in thoughtful, courteous silence. Frau Ruprecht certainly is common and silly; ugly she is not. She has a dazzling complexion, a magnificent bust, and a regular profile, although with lips that are too thick, a double chin, and light eyelashes. She speaks in a common, Viennese dialect, has never read a sensible book in her life, uses perfumes in excess, and has no taste whatever in dress.
But she drives like a Viennese hackman, she rides like a jockey, and her knowledge of sporting-matters would do honour to a professional trainer. She allows Leskjewitsch the utmost freedom of speech, and is ready to laugh at his worst jokes.
She disgusts Edgar Rohritz quite as much as she disgusts Katrine; nevertheless he understands what there is about her to attract Leskjewitsch.
A few days after the appearance at Erlach Court of the grass-widow, the mail brings Rohritz a letter with the Paris post-mark. Edgar recognizes his sister-in-law's hand, opens it not without haste, and reads it not without interest. It runs thus:
"Eh bien, my dear Edgar,j'espere que vous serez content de moi," Thérèse always writes to her brother in a jargon of French, Italian, German, and English, which, out of regard for the pedantry of modern purists, we translate into as good English as we are able to command: "I hope you will be pleased with me. I frankly confess to you, what you probably guessed from my last postal card, that your request to me to try to brighten their life in Paris for two of your countrywomen did not afford me much pleasure. As a rule, compatriots so recommended are an unmitigated bore, from the pianists whose three hundred--no, that's too few--five hundred tickets we must dispose of, and who then, when you ask them to a soirée, are too grand to play the smallest mazourka of Chopin, to the Baronesses Wolnitzka, who request you to introduce them to Parisian society because they never have an opportunity to see any one at home. The pianists are bad enough, but the Wolnitzkas--oh! In one respect they are precisely alike: they are always offended. If you invite themen famillethey are offended because they suppose you are ashamed of them; if you invite them to a ball they are offended because you pay them no particular attention. The upshot is that you always have to refuse them something,--to lend a thousand francs to the genius when he already owes you five hundred,--to procure for the Wolnitzkas an invitation to some ball at the embassy; then ensues a quarrel, and they draw down the corners of their mouths and look the other way when they meet you in the street.
"Only at the repeated request of your brother, who wherever anything Austrian is concerned is the personification of self-sacrificing devotion, did I make up my mind to call upon your acquaintance at the 'Negroes.'
"The hôtel is--very plain, but I believe very respectable,--which is more than one has a right to expect of just such furnished lodgings in Paris. The staircase, a narrow crooked flight of steps with slippery sloping stairs, creaked beneath my feet; I was afraid it would break down as I mounted to the Meinecks'appartement. One final, depressing, menacing memory of the Wolnitzkas assailed me. Justin rings, the door opens, and all my prejudices vanish like snow before the sun. The daughter alone was at home. I fell in love with her on the instant,--so deeply in love that before I left I called her Stella and kissed her cheek. She is enchanting.
"It is not only that she is exquisitely beautiful; she combines the most innocent simplicity with the greatest distinction, a combination never found except in Austrian women. You see I know how to value your countrywomen when they are really worth it.
"Her face, her entire air, seemed created to banish all sadness from her presence; and yet there was a pathos in her look, in her smile, that went to my heart. But she must be happy. I mean to search for happiness for her; and I shall find it.
"Ce que femme le veut y Dieu le veut!When I do anything I do it thoroughly. What do you think? It took me three weeks to resolve to call upon the Meinecks. I invited them to dine without waiting for them to return my visit. You know my way. We passed a charming evening together, strictly informal, to become acquainted with one another. The mother was as little eccentric as is possible for a blue-stocking to be, and in the course of four hours had only two attacks of absence of mind, which does her honour. What a handsome face! Edmund, who is a connoisseur in such matters, maintains that she must have been more beautiful than her daughter,--high praise, since the daughter, by the way, pleases him as much as she does me. And then what wealth of learning behind that brow with its white hair! Wells of knowledge! a walking encyclopædia!
"Although the fashion of her gown was that of twenty years ago, she is still a thoroughgrande dame; and that is saying much in consideration of the evident dilapidation of their finances.
"As a mother she may have her disagreeable side; she is too original,--too egotistic. She neglects her lovely daughter frightfully. All the time not absorbed by her literary labours she devotes to the study of Paris; and what mode of pursuing this study with the due amount of thoroughness do you suppose she has invented? She drives about for a certain number of hours daily on the tops of the various omnibuses.
"Fancy!--on the top of an omnibus! A day or two ago, coming home from the Bon-Marché, as I was detained by a crowd of vehicles in the Rue du Bac I saw her comfortably installed upon the dizzy height of an omnibus-top. She wore a short black velvet cloak frayed at all the seams, the fur trimming eaten away by moths, pearl-gray gloves (her hands are ridiculously small), such as were worn twenty years ago upon state occasions, a black straw bonnet, and no muff. She sat between two vagabonds in white blouses, with whom she was talking earnestly, and looked like--well, like a queen dowager in disguise. As it was just beginning to rain, I sent my servant to beg her to alight, and took her home in my carriage.
"A lady on the top of an omnibus! It is frightful; it is impossible. But still more impossible is a young girl who wishes to go upon the stage; and Stella wishes to go upon the stage.
"Nevertheless my relations with the Meinecks grow daily more intimate. Heroic conduct on my part, is it not?
"Poor little Stella! I feel an infinite pity for her. I have no faith in her career. Pshaw! Stella Meineck on the stage! 'Tis ridiculous! She does not know what she is talking about.
"Meanwhile, I have impressed upon her that she is to tell no one of her artistic plans, which may come to naught. It might do her an injury. And I have a scheme! Ah, leave it to me. What I do I do well. Before the season is over Stella will be married. To establish a young girl with no money is difficult nowadays, particularly in Paris, where every man has a fixed price; but there are bargains to be had occasionally.
"She is beautiful, she is lovely, and if the Meinecks do not date precisely from the Crusades the name sounds fine enough to impress some wealthy citizen who writes on his card the name of his estate in the country after his own, in hopes of thus manufacturing a title for himself.
"I see you curl your haughty Austrian lip; you regard all these pseudo-aristocrats with sovereign contempt. You are wrong. Good heavens! why should not a man call himself after his castle if it has a prettier name than his own? Do we not find it more agreeable to present him to our acquaintances as Monsieur de Hauterive than as Monsieur Cabouat? Now 'tis out! There is a certain Monsieur Cabouat de Hauterive whom I have in my eye for Stella. He is very rich, has frequented the society of gentlemen from childhood, and has been received during the last few years by everybody; he loves music, has one of the finest private picture-galleries in Paris, and is in the prime of life,--barely forty-two,--quite young for a man: in short, he seems made for Stella. Last summer he laughingly challenged me to find a wife for him, expressly stating that he desired no dowry. At that time he was longing for repose and a home. I heard lately, however, that he had become entangled in aliaisonwith S----, of the Opéra-Bouffe. That would be frightful.
"Moreover, I have two other men in view for Stella,--an Englishman, forty-five years old, rather shy in consequence of deafness, of very good family, an income of six thousand pounds sterling, and of good trustworthy character; and a Dutchman whose ears were cut off in Turkey, wherefore he is compelled to wear his hair after the fashion of the youthful Bonaparte; but these are trifles.
"Poor melancholy little Stella will be glad to shelter her weary head beneath any respectable roof. The only thing that troubles me is that Zino knew her three years ago in Venice, and is perfectly bewitched by her. Can I prevent him from making love to her? It would be dreadful. Not that it would ever occur to him to be wanting in respect for her, but he might turn her head, and that would ruin all my plans. She might then conceive the idea of marrying only a man with whom she is in love,--perfect nonsense in her position: there is none such for her. Love is an article of supreme luxury in marriage, and exists for wealthy people and day-labourers only.
"Yes, when I do anything I do it well! I do not write to you for two years, but then I give you twenty pages at once. Have you had the patience to read all this? If you have, let me entreat you to take to heart what follows.
"Give us the pleasure of a visit from you. You do not know our new home, and I am burning with desire to show it to you. In the first story of our little house there is a room all ready for you, very comfortable, and, I give you my word, the chimney does not smoke. If you cannot be induced to come to us, let Edmund take rooms for you wherever you please. Only come! I shall else fancy that you have never forgiven me for once being bold enough to want to marry you off. Adieu! I promise you faithfully not to try to lasso you again. With kindest messages from us all,
"Your affectionate sister,
"Thérèse."
An extra slip of paper accompanied this succinct document. Its contents were as follows:
"Paris, 27th December.
"How forgetful I am! The enclosed letter has been lying for a week in my portfolio. Although it is an old story now, I send it, because it will inform you of all that has been going on.
"Two words more. Since I wrote it I have invited Stella and Hauterive to dinner once, and have had them another evening in our box at the opera. They both dislike Wagner: that is something. Moreover, he thinks her enchanting, and she does not think him very disagreeable,--which is about all that can be expected in amariage de conveyance. Everything is working along smoothly; the betrothal is a mere question of time. What do you say now to my energy and capacity?"
He says nothing. He is very pale, and his hands tremble as he folds the letter and puts it away in his desk. A distressing, paralyzing sensation overpowers him. For a moment he sits motionless at his writing-table, his elbows resting upon it, his head in his hands. Suddenly he springs to his feet.
"'Tis a crime! I must prevent it!" The next moment he slays his zeal with a smile. He prevent? And how? Shall he, like his namesake in the opera, rush in at the moment when the betrothal is going on and shout out his veto? And what is it to him if Stella chooses to lead a wealthy, brilliant existence beside an unloved husband? No one forces her to do so.
Meanwhile, the door of his room opens, and with the familiarity of an old comrade the captain enters.
"Will you not play a game of billiards with me, Edgar, before I drive out?" he asks.
Rohritz declares himself ready for a game.
The billiard-table is in the library, a long, narrow room, with a vast deal of old-fashioned learning enclosed in tall, glazed bookcases. In a metal cage between the windows swings a gray parrot with a red head, screaming monotonously, "Rascal! rascal!" The afternoon sun gleams upon the glass of the bookcases; the whole room is filled with blue-gray smoke, and looks very comfortable. The gentlemen are both excellent billiard-players, only Edgar is a little out of practice. Leaning on his cue, he is just contemplating with admiration a bold stroke of his friend's, when Freddy, quite beside himself, rushes into the room and into his father's arms.
"Why, what is it? what is the matter, old fellow?" the captain says, stroking his cheek kindly.
"Os--ostler Frank----" Freddy begins, but without another word he bursts into a fresh howl.
Startled by such sounds of woe from her son, Katrine hurries in, to find the captain seated in a huge leather arm-chair, the boy between his knees, vainly endeavouring to soothe him. Rohritz stands half smiling, half sympathetically, beside them, chalking his cue, while the parrot rattles at the bars of his cage and tries to out-shriek Freddy.
"What has happened? Has he hurt himself? What is the matter?" Katrine asks, in great agitation.
"N--n--no!" sobs Freddy, his fingers in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth terribly depressed; "but os--ostler Frank----"
Ostler Frank is the second coachman and Freddy's personal friend.
"Ostler Frank is an ass!" exclaims the captain, beginning to trace the connection of ideas in his son's mind; "an ass. You must not let him frighten you."
"What did he tell you?" asks Katrine, standing beside her husband. "How did he frighten you? He has not dared to tell you a ghost-story? I expressly forbade it."
"Oh, no, Katrine: 'tis all about some stupid nonsense, not worth speaking of," replies the captain,--"a mere nothing."
"I should like to know what it is, however," Katrine says, growing more uneasy.
"He--told--me--papa must fight a duel; and when--they--fight a duel--they are killed!" Freddy screams, in despair, nearly throttling his father in his affection and terror.
"I should really be glad to have some intelligible explanation of the matter," Katrine says, with dignity.
"Oh, it is the merest trifle," the captain rejoins, changing colour, and tugging at his moustache.
"The affair is very simple, madame," Rohritz interposes. "Les felt it his duty, lately,--the day before yesterday, in fact,--to chastise an impertinent scoundrel in Hradnyk, and has conscientiously kept at home since, awaiting the fellow's challenge,--of course in vain. What he should have done would have been to emphasize in a note the box on the ear he administered."
"Yes, that's true," says the captain: "it is a pity that it did not occur to me."
Freddy has gradually subsided. As during his tearful misery he has done a great deal of rubbing at his eyes with inky fingers, his cheeks are now streaked with black, and he is sent off by his mother with a smile, in charge of a servant, to be washed.
"Might I be informed," she asks, after the door has closed upon the child, and with a rather mistrustful glance at her husband, "what the individual at Hradnyk did to provoke the chastisement in question?"
"'Tis not worth the telling, Katrine," stammers the captain. "Why should you care to know anything about it?"
"You are very wrong, Les, to make any secret of it," Rohritz interposes. "The scoundrel undertook to use certain expressions which irritated Les, with regard to you, madame."
"With regard to me?" Katrine exclaims, with a contemptuous curl of her lip. "What could any one say about me?"
"What, indeed?" the captain repeats. "Well, I will tell you all about it some time when we are alone, if you insist upon it. It was a silly affair altogether, but I took the matter to heart."
"You Hotspur!" Katrine laughs.
Rohritz has just turned to slip out of the room and leave the pair to a reconciliatorytête-à-tête, when the door opens, and a servant announces that the sleigh is ready.
"Where are you going?" Katrine asks, hastily, in an altered tone, as the servant withdraws.
"I was going to Glockenstein, to take the 'Maître de Forges' to the grass-widow; she asked me for it yesterday; but if you wish, Katrine, I will stay at home."
"If I wish," Katrine coldly repeats. "Since when have I attempted to interfere in any way with your innocent amusements?"
"I only thought----you have sometimes seemed to me a little jealous of the grass-widow."
Rohritz could have boxed his friend's ears for his want of tact. Katrine's aristocratic features take on an indescribably haughty and contemptuous expression.
"Jealous?--I?" she rejoins, with cutting severity, adding, with a shrug, "on the contrary, I am glad to have another woman relieve me of the trouble of entertaining you."
Tame submission to such words from his wife, and before a witness, is not the part of a hot-blooded soldier like Jack Leskjewitsch.
"Adieu, Rohritz!" he says, and, with a low bow to his wife, he leaves the room.
For an instant Katrine seems about to run after him and bring him back. She takes one step towards the door, then pauses undecided. The sharp, shrill sound of sleigh-hells rises from without through the wintry silence: the sleigh has driven off. Katrine goes to the window to look after it. With lightning speed it glides along, the centre of a bluish, sparkling cloud of snow-particles whirled aloft by the trampling horses. It is out of sight almost immediately.
Her head bent, Katrine turns from the window, and leaves the room with lagging steps.
Themenufor dinner comprises the captain's favourite dish of roast pheasants, but six o'clock strikes and the master of the house has not yet arrived at home.
"Would it not be better to postpone the dinner a little for to-day?" Katrine asks Rohritz, for form's sake. They wait one hour,--two hours: the captain does not appear. At last Katrine orders dinner to be served. Unable to eat a morsel, she sits with an empty plate before her, hardly speaking a word.
The meal is over, coffee has been served, Freddy has played three games of cards with his tutor and then disappeared with a very sleepy face.
Katrine and Rohritz sit opposite each other, each taking great pains to appear unconcerned. One quarter of an hour after another passes without a word exchanged between them. Suddenly Katrine rises, goes to the window, opens first the inner shutter and then the peep-hole in the other.
"Listen how the wind roars!" she says, in a hoarse, subdued voice, to Rohritz. "And the snow is falling as if a feather bed had been cut in two."
Rohritz is really unable to smile, as he would have been tempted to do at any other time, at the contrast between Katrine's deeply tragic air and her very commonplace comparison: he is rather anxious himself.
"Hark! just hark how the wind whistles! I hope Jack has not got wedged in a snow-drift."
Rohritz makes some reply which Katrine does not heed. In increasing agitation she paces the room to and fro.
"The worst place is the bit of road near the quarry," she murmurs to herself. "If he goes a hand's-breadth too far on one side, then----"
"Les has a remarkable sense of locality, and is the best whip I know," Rohritz remarks, soothingly.
She is silent, compresses her lips, listens at the window, hearkens to the raging wind, which drives the snow-flakes against the shutters and tears and rattles at the boughs of the giant linden until they shriek from out their long winter sleep.
How much we are able to forgive a man when we are anxious about him!
"I would rather send some one to meet him," she stammers. "I am exceedingly anxious."
She reaches out her hand for the bell-rope, when suddenly from the far distance, like mocking, elfin laughter, comes the tinkle of sleigh-bells. Katrine holds her breath, listens. The sleigh approaches, draws up before the door. Rohritz goes out into the hall. Katrine hears a man stamping the snow from his boots, hears the captain's fresh, cheery voice as he answers his friend's questions. Her anxiety is converted into a sensation of great bitterness. She cannot rally herself too much for her childish anxiety, cannot forgive herself for behaving so ridiculously before Rohritz. Whilst she has been fancying her husband lost in a snow-drift, he beyond all doubt has been admirably entertained with the grass-widow.
The door opens; the captain appears alone, without his comrade.
"Still up, Katrine?" he asks, in a gentle undertone, approaching his wife, and with an uncertain, half-embarrassed smile he adds, "Rohritz told me you were anxious about--about me." As he speaks he tries to take his wife's hand to draw her towards him; but Katrine avoids him.
"Rohritz was mistaken," she rejoins, very dryly. "For a moment I thought you might have fallen into the quarry, because I could not see any apparent reason for your late return. But as for anxiety----" Without finishing the sentence, she shrugs her shoulders.
The captain smiles bitterly, and passes his hand across his forehead.
"Yes, he was evidently mistaken; it was an attempt to bring us together," he murmurs; "his sentimental representation did at first seem rather incredible to me. But what one wishes to believe one does believe so easily! I was foolish enough to delight in the hope of a kindly welcome from you; but, in fact, in comparison with the reception you have vouchsafed me the weather outside is genial."
He seats himself astride of a low chair, and begins to drum impatiently upon the back of it.
"It seems to me quite late enough to go to bed," says Katrine, taking a silver candlestick from the mantel-piece. "It is a quarter-past ten."
Suddenly the captain grasps her by the wrist. "Stay!" he says, sternly.
"You have come back in a very bad humour," Katrine remarks, with a contemptuous smile. "The grass-widow must have proved unkind. Your delay in returning led me to suppose the contrary."
The captain looks at his wife with an odd expression. Was it possible she could take sufficient interest in him to be jealous?
"I have not seen the grass-widow," he rejoins, after a short pause.
"That is, you did not find her at home? How very sad!"
"I did not go to Glockenstein."
"Ah, indeed! I thought----"
"You are quite right," he said, with an air of bravado. "After the very kind and choice words with which in the presence of an auditor you dismissed me, I certainly whipped up the horses in order to reach Glockenstein with all speed. When angels will have nothing to do with us, we are fain to go for consolation to the devil: he is sure to be at hand. Frau Ruprecht would have received me with open arms; I am by no means"--with a forced laugh--"so insignificant in her eyes; for her I am quite a hero, and what would you have? she is stupid, but she is pretty and young, and an amount of consideration from any woman flatters a poor fellow who is never without the consciousness of his inferiority in the eyes of his clever wife at home."
"Ah! really?" Katrine sneers. "May I beg you to make a little haste with your explanations?--the lamp is beginning to burn dimly."
"It burns quite well enough for what I have to say," replies the captain. "I whipped up my horses, as I said,--I was positively in a hurry to fall at the Ruprecht's feet; but, just at the last moment, so many different things occurred to me! Glockenstein was in sight, but I turned aside, and then drove over to Reitzenberg's to settle with him about the wood."
"Ah! It seems to have been a very protracted business discussion."
"I took supper with Reitzenberg, and played a game of cards afterwards."
"Hm! Since, then, you have perhaps sufficiently explained the reason of your delay, will you permit me to withdraw?" Katrine asks.
"Apparently you do not believe me. And yet you ought to know that falsehood is not to be reckoned among my bad qualities."
"True; but"--Katrine shrugs her shoulders--"no man hesitates to improvise a little when there's a lady in the case. I should like to know, however, why you take so much trouble in the present instance for me, who have so little interest in such things." And, taking the candlestick once more from the chimney-piece, she asks, "Can I go now? Have you finished?"
"No," he exclaims, angrily, "I have not finished, and you will hearken to me. Matters are come to a worse pass than you fancy; our whole existence is at stake. You know how my sister Lina's marriage turned out, and you are in a fair way to plunge me into the same misery into which Franz Meineck was thrust by his wife."
"Your comparison of me to your sister seems to me rather forced," Katrine replies. "I know it is not pleasant to hear one's relatives criticised by another, however we may disapprove of them ourselves, but I must defend myself. Your sister neglected her household and her children, giving herself over to a ridiculous ambition; whilst I----" She hesitates, deterred from proceeding by something in the captain's look:
"Whilst you----" he begins. "I know perfectly well what you would say. Your household is perfectly attended to, you are an ideal mother, and daintily neat. In a word, you would have been for me the ideal wife if you had ever shown me a particle of affection."
"I have always done my duty by you."
"Your hard, prescribed, bounden duty."
"You could not expect anything more of me. When we married it was agreed between us that each should be satisfied with a sensible amount of friendship."
He has risen, and is gazing at her keenly, searchingly.
"That is true; you are right," he says, bitterly. "The sad thing about it is that I had forgotten it!"
"I cannot understand how you--I must say I never have observed--that you----"
"Indeed? You never have observed that I have long ceased to keep my part of our compact!" the captain exclaims. "Really? Women are fabulously blind when they do not choose to see. Do you suppose I should have allowed the reins to be taken from my hands, do you suppose I should have resigned my authority over you, have lost the right of disposing of my own child, and have abandoned my profession, if--if I had not fallen in love with you like a very school-boy! There! now despise me doubly for my confession, and until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck, console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by me."
He makes her a profound bow, then turns and leaves the room.
"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck, console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by me."
Strange how deeply these words are impressed upon Katrine's soul! She does not sleep during the night following upon the captain's explanation, no, not for a quarter of an hour.
She tosses about restlessly in bed; a moonbeam which has contrived to slip through a crack in her shutters points at her with uncanny persistency, like an accusing ghostly finger. The little clock on her writing-table strikes twelve; the sixth of January is past, the seventh of January has begun. The seventh of January! It was her wedding-day. On the seventh of January nine years before, without a spark of love for Jack Leskjewitsch, but with the angry memory of humiliation suffered at another's hands, she had donned her gown of bridal white and her bridal wreath had been placed upon her head. In her inmost soul she had compared her bridal robes to a shroud, and so cold, so white, so stern, had she looked on that day that those who helped to dress her for the sacred ceremony had often said later that they had seemed to themselves to be preparing a corpse for burial, while all who witnessed the marriage declared that no funeral could have been sadder.
She had first known Jack on her father's, the Freiherr von Rinsky's, estate in M----. Quartered at the castle, Jack had soon ingratiated himself with its gouty old master. Katrine did not dislike him,--nay, she rather liked him. Her pride, which had been suffering from the destruction of her illusions ever since the winter she had spent with her aunt in Pesth three years before, turned with a bitterness that bordered on disgust from all the homage paid her by men. Jack Leskjewitsch had always been attentive to her without ever making love to her,--which attracted her. When he asked her to marry him he did it in so dry, odd a way that from sheer surprise she did not at once say no.
She replied that she would take his offer into consideration. Living beneath the same roof with a young stepmother whom she did not like, and who ruled her father, the suit of a wealthy, thoroughly honourable man was not to be lightly rejected. Yet if he had wooed her passionately and tenderly she would surely have refused to listen to him. This, however, he did not do.
When she confessed to him that a bitter disappointment had paralyzed all the sentiment she had ever possessed, that he was not to expect any love from her, he received the confession with the utmost calmness, and replied that he too had nothing to offer her save cordial friendship.
"Those of my friends who married for love are one and all wretched now. Let us try it after another fashion," he had said to her. And thus, almost with a laugh, without the slightest emotion, they had been betrothed on a gray, rainy November day, when the winds were raging as if they had sworn to blow out the sun's light in the skies, while the last field-daisies were hanging their heads among the faded meadow-grass as if tired of life.
Six weeks afterwards they were married, and took the usual trip to Rome and from one hotel to another.
The pale moonbeam still pointed at her like an accusing finger; its silver light fell upon her past and revealed many things which she had heedlessly forgotten during the nine years which now lay behind her.
She had married poor, very poor, had brought her husband nothing save her trousseau.
All the material comfort of her existence came from him. To show him any special gratitude for that would indeed have been petty; but, putting it aside, with how much consideration he had always treated her! how carefully he had removed from her path all need for trouble and exertion, with the tenderness which rude soldiers alone know how to lavish upon their wives. She had complained of the inconveniences of the nomadic life of the army; but who had drained all those inconveniences to the dregs? He! He had taken all trouble upon himself. In their wanderings she and the child had been cared for like the most frail and precious treasures, upon the transportation of which it was impossible to bestow too much thought. It had always been, "Spare yourself, and look out for the boy!" and either "It is too hot," or "It is too cold: you might be ill, or you might take cold; but do not stir. I will see to it; rely upon me!"
Yes, she had indeed relied upon him; he looked after everything, without any words, without annoying her with restlessness, quietly, simply, and as if it could not have been otherwise.
And what had she done for him in return for all his care and consideration? She had kept his home in order, had treated him with more or less friendliness, had never flirted in the least with any other man, and had presented him with a charming child.
But no; she had not even presented him with it: she had jealously kept it for herself, had grudged him every caress which the boy bestowed upon his father; she had spoiled the child in order that she might hold the first place in his heart. Yet, oddly enough, in spite of all her indulgence the boy was fonder of his fiery, irritable, good-humoured, but strict papa whose nod he obeyed, than of herself, whom the young gentleman could wind around his finger. She confessed this to herself, not without bitterness.
When, the previous autumn, Erlach Court had come to her by inheritance from a grand-uncle, she was filled with a desire to break off all connection with an army life. Without the slightest consideration for her husband, she had left him and forced him for her sake to adopt an existence that was contrary to all his habits and tastes. The moonbeam still penetrated into her room: it grew brighter and brighter, and at last lit up the most secluded corner of her heart.
"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck, console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by me."
Again and again the words echoed through her soul.
"I have done my duty by him," she repeated to herself, with the obstinacy with which we are wont to clutch a self-illusion that threatens to vanish. "I have done my duty."
Suddenly she trembles from head to foot, and, hiding her face in the pillow, she bursts into tears.
The boundless egotism, in all its petty childishness, which has informed her intercourse with her husband flashes upon her conscience.
How is it that she has never perceived that he has long since ceased to perform his part of their agreement? Little tokens of affection full of a timid poetry hitherto heedlessly overlooked now occur to her. Why had she not understood them? Why had she never felt a spark of love for him? Her cheeks burn. She had continually reproached her husband with never being done with his illusions, and she---- In a secret drawer of her writing-table there is at this very moment, shrivelled and faded, a gardenia which she has never been able to bring herself to destroy. She springs up, lights a candle, hastens to her writing-table, finds the ugly brown relic,--and burns it. When she lies down in bed again the admonitory moonbeam has vanished, but through the cold black of the winter night filters the first weak shimmer of the dawn. The dreamy ding-dong of a church bell among the mountains ringing for early mass has the peaceful sound of a sacred morning serenade as it floats into her room.
It is barely six o'clock. She folds her hands, a fervent prayer rises to her lips, and, with a still more fervent, unspoken prayer in her heart, her brown head sinks back upon the cool white pillow, and she falls asleep.