Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 10

"My wife considered me the guardian of her child," Strachinsky declared, with pathos. "Another man might have refused to accept a burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----"

"Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train," said the Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.

Strachinsky ran after him with astonis.h.i.+ng celerity, expatiating upon his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.

His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out, "Now we shall lack for nothing!" Then, turning to Erika, he continued, "I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to free Luzano from its weight of debt."

This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second gla.s.s of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, "The affair has greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to wait upon fortune so long---!"

He had settled it with himself that he was the person princ.i.p.ally interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at most the means to an end. But circ.u.mstances shaped themselves after what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fas.h.i.+on. Erika received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with him whatever.

By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky, formally advising him to resign his guardians.h.i.+p voluntarily. Should he comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal means for relieving herself of such interference.

Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he a.s.sumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter, but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.

On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time, and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields towards the river.

Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor such as she had never before experienced.

Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart began to throb wildly.

She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.

At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, "Rika! where are you?"

She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly and went her way.

When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the court-yard,--a huge, green, gla.s.s coach, that clattered and jingled at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.

Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on her bonnet.

"Hurry, hurry!" Minna called up from below.

She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with pompous formality. "I shall not accompany you to the station," he said.

"I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!" He had nothing more affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows.

They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.

CHAPTER IV.

On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the room, in contrast with the prevailing fas.h.i.+on, were light and cheerful.

The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.

At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall, broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of remarkable beauty,--the head, n.o.ble in every line, of an old woman who has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred, and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is, without requiring from it the impossible.

Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.

After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupa.s.sant, but a degree of mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large picture hanging on the opposite wall.

It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated with depth of suns.h.i.+ne. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange group,--two nymphs sporting with a s.h.a.ggy brown faun. The picture was by Bocklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could not be p.r.o.nounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.

It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture; she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls, so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach all sorts of considerations to the picture.

Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy whiskers, entered and announced, "Herr von Sydow."

"I am very glad," the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced, whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.

"You come just at the right time, Goswyn," she said, cordially, extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then, in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of light of the lamp.

"How can I serve you, Countess?" he asked.

"You are acquainted with my small gallery," she began, looking around the large airy room with some pride.

"I have frequently enjoyed your works of art," the young officer replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.

"Rather antiquated in expression, your reply," the old lady rejoined.

"My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that is not the question at present. You know my Bocklin?"

"Yes, Countess."

"What do you think of it?"

He fixed his eyes upon it. "What could I think of it? It is a masterpiece."

"H'm! that all the world admits," the old lady murmured, impatiently, as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; "but is it a picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn."

Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. "That would depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter," he said, frowning slightly. "If she were a young girl brought up in the world and accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I should say no."

The old lady sighed. "I knew it!" she said. "My Bocklin is doomed. Ah!"

she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. "Pray, Goswyn,"--she treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from early childhood,--"press that b.u.t.ton beside you."

The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a very long arm and pressed the b.u.t.ton.

The footman immediately appeared. "Ludecke, call Friedrich to help you take down that picture."

"Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency," Ludecke permitted himself to remark.

"Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always be so now," sighed the Countess.

"I will help you take down the picture, Ludecke," Herr von Sydow said, quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall where the Bocklin had hung.

Ludecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.

"Bring in tea," the Countess called after him. "You will take a cup of tea with me, Goswyn?"

"Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?" Sydow asked, rather timidly.