Erlach Court Part 19

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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 gra.s.s 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 coupes 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 ta.s.sels 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 Fraulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, the same pianist who has been spending her holidays upon the 'etudes 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 antic.i.p.ates 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.

Fraulein 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 sh.o.r.es,--the sh.o.r.es 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.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SOPHIE OBLONSKY.

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 ent.i.tled 'Is Woman to be Independent?' Of course she buys the book, and, betaking herself to the small 'ladies' parlour' adjoining the s.p.a.cious 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 with _foie 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 with _peau 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 chevalier _sans 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 a.s.sures 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 Fraulein Fuhrwesen an old acquaintance from Zalow.