Erlach Court Part 7

"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand.

At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's finances?"

"Low," said Stella, laconically.

"Hm! I really do not know how much is necessary to maintain two daughters; perhaps I do not send her enough for you. She ought to have let me know. I do not wish that my children should be pinched, as--as----"

"As they seem to be from the looks of my shabby wardrobe," Stella said, with a laugh. "Well, we are not quite so badly off, after all. If it be a question of buying books or curios, we can always sc.r.a.pe the money together; but if one wants a pair of new boots, the purse is empty."

The colonel tugged discontentedly at his moustache.

"I beg you to write to Franzi and ask her if she needs money," he began afresh. "I am, to be sure, living now upon my capital, but your share is secured to you, and I shall not last long."

At first his meaning escaped her; she gazed at him with wide eyes; then, as she comprehended at last, the pen fell from her fingers, and she burst into a flood of tears.

"Hush, hush, my darling; do not torment yourself beforehand. Perhaps I describe my condition to you as worse than it really is," he said, leaning tenderly over her, and, putting his hand beneath her chin, he looked deep into her dark eyes. "If suns.h.i.+ne can make a man well I am all right."

No, it was too late,--too late! His physical strength could never be restored, his lungs nothing could heal; but with his child beside him his soul and heart gained health and strength. Since those first fair years of his married life, he had never been so happy as now, although he seldom quite forgot that he stood on the brink of the grave.

Once, on a damp muggy November evening in a Viennese suburb he had seen a drunkard staggering along the wall in a narrow street, quite unable to find his way. A policeman was just about to take him into custody, when a little girl, m.u.f.fled in rags and with a pale wizened face, suddenly appeared beside him out of the darkness, seized him by his red, trembling, swollen hand, and called in a hoa.r.s.e, anxious voice, without impatience or harshness, but not without authority, 'Father, come home!' And the drunkard, who had paid no heed to the jeers of the pa.s.sers-by, nor to the admonition of the policeman, hung his head, and without a word followed the weak, helpless little creature like a lamb.

The colonel had stood and looked after them until the darkness swallowed them up. He recalled distinctly the girl's thin yellow braids, her long chin, the sordid red-and-black plaid shawl which she wore about her shoulders, and the worn old laced boots, far too big for her little feet and coming half-way up her naked little blue legs, and continually in her way as she walked.

The little episode had made a painful impression upon him for a time, and then he had forgotten it. Now it arose in his memory, but transfigured, and as, clasping his daughter's hand, he went on to his grave, he compared himself in his secret soul with the drunkard led home by the child.

He was very ill. Unaccustomed to spare himself, and without any real pleasure in life, he had increased his malady by months of entire want of care and nursing, until his physicians had insisted that a summer should be spent at a sanitarium in Gleichenberg. Partially restored, he had immediately, in direct opposition to all advice, re-entered the service. The autumn man[oe]uvres had brought on an inflammation of the lungs. How very ill he was never entered his mind, in spite of his speech to Stella. He thought he should live a couple of years longer, and his great dread was lest he should be pensioned off before the time because of his invalid condition. The pains that he took to maintain an upright military bearing aggravated all the evils of his case.

There were a number of distinguished Austrians in the Hotel Britannia, some few of them invalids, most of them gay and pleasure-loving and well pleased to spend a few weeks amid picturesque surroundings and in pleasant society. The colonel was beloved by all, and they eagerly welcomed his pretty daughter,--even the ladies, whom the colonel consulted as to the necessary reform in the girl's wardrobe. She sat with her father in the midst of them all at the upper end of the table, the lower end, where the other inmates of the hotel were crowded together, being the subject of much merry scorn and stigmatized as 'the menagerie.' Compa.s.sion for the daughter of the dying man deepened the sympathy called forth by the young girl's grace and charm. Old gentlemen rallied her upon her conquests, and the young men paid her devoted attention. She had a special friend in the handsome black-eyed prince Zino Capito, who had an unusual share of time to bestow upon her since the latest mistress of his affections, the famous Princess Oblonsky, had just departed for Petersburg to take possession of the effects of her husband, suddenly deceased. He daily sent Stella magnificent flowers with which to adorn the hotel apartments for her father. "Invalids are so fond of flowers," he would say, with a smile that displayed his brilliant white teeth. And when the weather was fine and the colonel felt well enough, he would invite them to take a sail in his cutter upon the blue Adriatic.

The colonel often spoke of his wife, longing to see her. The last _liaison_--that which had been the cause of a definite separation between himself and his wife, had robbed him of his self-respect, had disgraced him in his children's eyes, and had s.n.a.t.c.hed from him every vestige of peace of mind--had dissolved itself more than two years before. The recollection of it disgusted him, but, like all men who have no future, he gladly allowed his thoughts to stray into the distant past. The wife from whom he had parted, elderly, learned, with her slovenliness and irritability, he had forgotten; his memory preserved the bride, in her light dress, bending above his couch of pain; he saw her on his marriage-day in the flood of sunlight which streaming through the tall window of his sick-room invested with a glorious halo the golden cross upon the improvised altar.

One sunny day, as he was sailing in the Grand Ca.n.a.l in a gondola with Stella, he pointed to a beautiful old palazzo.

"There is where I lay wounded in '59, when your mother came to nurse me. Those windows there were mine."

In the evening of the same day, while Stella was writing to her mother and he lay half dozing on a lounge, he suddenly said, "Stella, do you think your mother could make up her mind to come to Venice with Franzi for a few weeks? She need not be in the same house with us, if that would bore her, but---- Tell her how much it would please me to see her; and," he added, with an embarra.s.sed smile, "tell her I am really very ill: perhaps that may induce her to come."

He awaited the reply to this letter with feverish eagerness. In a week there arrived a package of rather insignificant notices of a work of his wife's, just published at her own expense; two weeks later the answer to the letter appeared.

"Well, what does your mother say?" asked the colonel, as he observed Stella deciphering the almost illegible doc.u.ment. "Read it aloud to me," he insisted: "you know everything that goes on at home interests me. Is she coming?"

But Stella, with tears in her eyes, and a burning blush, stammered, "A letter must have been lost. This one never even mentions our plan!"

The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India steams.h.i.+p.

"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should have liked to ask her forgiveness."

Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death, from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and would drink a gla.s.s of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly, and sent Stella out of the room.

"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier, and not afraid to die."

"Under the circ.u.mstances, a couple of months."

"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their course. It is all right."

That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what he had written.

"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry, darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all.

I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be, do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket.

"Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"

She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.

"Yes, papa."

The next day was her birthday.

He gave her a golden bracelet to which was attached a crystal locket containing a four-leaved clover.

"I cannot show you any partiality in my will," said he, "but wear that for my sake, darling. And if ever heaven sends you some great joy, say to yourself that your poor father prayed the dear G.o.d that it might fall to your share!"

One day the colonel received a letter bearing a Paris post-mark which seemed to depress him greatly. All day after receiving it he was thoughtful and taciturn. In the evening he wrote a long letter, pausing from time to time to cough sadly. As he folded it, Stella observed that he enclosed money in it. After apparently reflecting for a while, he drew from a case in his pocket a photograph of Stella which had been taken in Venice, gazed at it lovingly for a moment, seemed to hesitate, and finally enclosed it also in the envelope with the letter. Looking up, he became aware of his daughter's curious gaze, and suddenly grew confused. He sealed his epistle with unnecessary care, and then all at once reached both hands across the table and clasped Stella's between them, saying,--

"You are wondering to whom I am sending my darling's picture? To my youngest sister, your aunt Eugenie. Do you remember her? Yes? You used to love her, did you not?"

"Very much, papa; but--I thought she was dead."

The colonel turned away his head; after a moment he drew Stella towards him, and said, softly, "She is not dead: I cannot tell you about her, do not ask me. But do not be hard to her, and if you should ever meet her, speak a kind word to her, for my sake."

He still went daily below-stairs in the lift to take his meals, but he now dined at a small table alone with Stella, after the _table-d'hote_ in the s.p.a.cious, lonely dining-hall. His frequent attacks of coughing made him shun society. He dreaded annoying others.

"I am no longer fit to mingle with my kind, Stella," he would say. "My poor little b.u.t.terfly, it is tiresome to have such a father, is it not?"

She, apparently, did not find it so. She desired nothing beyond the privilege of taking care of him, although she could be little more than a weak, helpless child. By day she cheered him with her lively talk, and at night if he stirred she was beside his bed in an instant in her long dressing-gown, her little bare feet thrust into slippers, supporting him in her arms if he coughed. Outside the moon shone full above the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Up from the garden was wafted the odour of roses and syringas, while above the swampy atmosphere of the lagunes, and mingling with the plash of waters at the base of the old palaces, floated sweet, sad melodies,--the songs of the evening minstrels of Venice,--

"Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"