Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 27

The next forenoon Erika was sitting in the low-ceilinged drawing-room.

She was alone in the house. Lord Langley had announced his arrival during the forenoon, and the Countess Anna had gone out, to avoid being present at the meeting of the betrothed couple. The young girl's pulses throbbed to her fingertips; her eyes burned, her whole body felt sore and bruised, as if she had had a fall. For an hour she sat listening breathlessly. Would Goswyn come before Lord Langley arrived? Should she have a moment in which to speak to him? Ah, how she longed for it! She wanted to explain to him---- At last she heard a step on the stair: of course it was Lord Langley. No, no! Lord Langley's step was neither so quick nor so light: it was Goswyn; she could hear him speaking with Ludecke, and the old servant, with the garrulous want of tact at which she had so often laughed, was explaining to him that her Excellency had gone out, but that the Countess Erika had stayed at home to receive Lord Langley.

Erika listened, and heard Goswyn say, in a clear, cold tone, "In that case I will not disturb the Countess. Tell her----"

She could endure it no longer, but, opening the door, called, "Goswyn!"

"Countess!" He bowed formally.

"Come in for one moment, I entreat you," she begged, involuntarily clasping her hands. Of course he could not but obey.

They confronted each other, she trembling in every limb, he erect and unbending as she had never before seen him. In his hand he held a small packet.

"There, Countess," he said, "I am convinced that these are all the letters which this Herr von Strachinsky ever received from your mother: some of the epistles with which he edified my amiable aunt and her guests were the productions of his own pen. But you may rest a.s.sured that while I live he will not be guilty of any further indiscretion in that direction." There was such a look of determination in his eyes as he spoke that Erika easily guessed by what means he had contrived to intimidate Strachinsky.

She was filled with the warmest grat.i.tude towards him, but there was something so repellent in his air that, instead of any extravagant expression of it, she stood before him without being able to utter a word of thanks. Instead, she fingered in an embarra.s.sed way the packet which he had given her, a very little packet, wrapped in a sheet of paper and sealed with a huge coat of arms. In her confusion she fixed her eyes upon this seal.

"The arms of the Barons von Strachinsky," Goswyn explained. "Pray observe the delicacy with which the very letters read aloud for the entertainment of Heaven only knows how many gossiping old women are sealed up carefully lest I should read them."

Erika smiled faintly. "It is hardly necessary that you should be understood by Strachinsky," she said. "Men always judge from their own point of view. You judged me by yourself, and consequently estimated me more highly than I deserved. Sit down for a moment, I pray you."

"I do not wish to intrude," he said, bluntly, almost discourteously.

"How could you intrude? You never can intrude."

"Not even when you are expecting your betrothed?" He looked her full in the face.

She blushed scarlet; a burning desire to regain his esteem took possession of her.

"You take an entirely false view of my position," she exclaimed. "Mine is not the betrothal of a sentimental school-girl. I--I" and she burst into a short, nervous laugh that shocked even herself--"I do not marry Lord Langley for love."

There was a pause. Goswyn bowed his head; then, suddenly raising it, he looked straight into Erika's eyes in a way which made her very uncomfortable, and said, "I guessed that; but why, then, do you marry him,--you, a young, pure, gifted girl, and a man with such a past as Lord Langley's? I know that no man is worthy of such a girl as you are; but, good G.o.d, there is some difference---- Why, why do you marry him?"

"Why? why?" She tried to collect herself and to answer him truly. "I marry him because the position he offers me suits me,--because one is condemned to marry at a certain age, if one would not be sneered at and ridiculed; I marry him because he is an old man and will not require of me any warmth of affection, and because I have determined that there shall be nothing romantic in my marriage. Ah," with a glance at the small packet in her hand, "after all that you know of my wretched experience, you ought to understand why I do not choose to marry for love."

A long silence followed. He looked at her as he had never hitherto done, searchingly, inquiringly. Suddenly his glance grew tender: it expressed intense pity. "I understand that you talk of love and marriage as a blind man talks of colours," he said, slowly. "I understand that you unwittingly contemplate the commission of a crime against yourself, and that you should be prevented from it."

He ceased speaking on a sudden, and bit his lip. A voice was heard in the hall,--the characteristic voice of an old English _bon viveur_ with a Continental training. "Is the Countess at home?"

"What am I doing here?" Goswyn exclaimed, and, without touching the hand extended to him, he turned on his heel and was gone.

Outside the door stood an old gentleman with a tall white hat and a dark-blue cravat spotted with white. One glance of rage and curiosity Goswyn darted at the correct florid profile and white whiskers, and then he rushed down-stairs like one possessed.

Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was the same Englishman whom he had once seen at Monaco with a most disreputable train. Then he was travelling under an a.s.sumed name,--Mr. Steyne: his English regard for appearances forbade him in such society to profane his t.i.tle and his social dignity.

Goswyn's blood fairly boiled in his veins.

When, some time afterwards, Countess Lenzdorff entered the drawing-room, after her walk, Lord Langley, rather redder in the face than usual, and with a baffled, puzzled expression of countenance, was sitting in an arm-chair; Erika, very pale, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, strikingly beautiful, and evidently tingling in every nerve, was in another on the other side of a table between the pair, upon which was an open jewel-case containing a diamond necklace. The Countess suspected that some kind of disagreement had arisen between the couple, and, as soon as she had returned Lord Langley's greeting, asked, carelessly, what it had been.

"Oh, nothing to speak of," he replied. "My queen was a little ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there is some caprice to subdue."

Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked, dryly, "If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to 'The Sun.'"

CHAPTER XIV.

The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement.

It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling, clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern art.

The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time: unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.

Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front of the royal boxes.

At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.

The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity, nothing to distract the attention from the stage.

Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve, and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty restrain her tears.

All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable, the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it cannot pa.s.s,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the starry heavens.

Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "_Voyons, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_" she asked, discontentedly. "_Ce n'est rien; une ressemblance qui me frappe_," he replied, in the weary tone of annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of jealous women.

A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just rolling up.

Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those dark, searching eyes before?

The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes; she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them; the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and then musical phrases of n.o.ble and poetic beauty.

The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly, mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish, and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic purity of the boy-chorus,--

"Made wise by pity, The pure in heart----"

"No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat.

Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first act.

"I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,'

and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her shoulders and makes no reply.

"She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather embarra.s.sed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after you, Erika."

The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the gra.s.s towards the restaurant to refresh itself.