Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 37

"Not to-night. I must go to-night to the Rambouillet of Venice."

"Oh! to the Neerwinden?"

"Yes. Why do you ladies never go there?"

"To speak frankly, I had no idea that one ought to go," the Countess says, laughing.

"Why not? Because of the Countess's reputation? Let me a.s.sure you that all ruins are the fashion in Venice. You are quite wrong to stay away from the Salon Neerwinden: it is an historical curiosity, and, to me, more interesting than the Doge's palace."

"But even if I should go to the Neerwinden I could not take this child with me!"

"Why not? The Salon Neerwinden is by no means such a pest-house of infectious moral disease as you seem to think. And then nothing could harm the Countess Erika: her life is a charmed one."

At this moment a thick-set, gray-bearded individual enters the dining-hall, very affected, and very anxious to induce his eye-gla.s.s to fit into the hollow of his right eye. He is a Viennese banker, Schmidt--he spells it Schmytt--von Werdenthal. Bowing with ease to the ladies, he approaches Treurenberg. "Do I intrude, Hans?" he asks.

"You always intrude."

The banker smiles at the jest: awkward as he may be, he displays a certain agility in ignoring a rude remark. "You know, Hans, we must go first to the Gregoriewitsch; and we shall be late."

"Confound the fellow!" murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of farewell. "Countess Erika," he says, with a final glance of admiration, "if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been of no use," he adds, turning to the grandmother; "but there's no knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his glory----"

"But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting," Schmytt interposes.

"I am coming." And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks after him with a smile.

"I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner,"

she says. "He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--_fin de siecle_, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now: what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?"

"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his glory?" asks Erika.

CHAPTER XX.

Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed them that "my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work."

To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Muhlberg accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.

Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old Countess and Constance Muhlberg were extremely entertained. And Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock, and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to receive almost empty.

The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan, beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ign.o.ble, but were hard and unattractive.

She received the Countess Lenzdorff with effusive cordiality, referred to several youthful reminiscences which they possessed in common, and was quite gracious to both the younger ladies. After several commonplace remarks, she dashed boldly into a discourse upon the final destiny of the earth and the adjacent stars.

She had just informed her guests that she was privately engaged upon the improvement of the electric light, and should soon have completed a system of universal religion, when a sudden influx of guests caused her to stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving her hearers in doubt as to whether the catechism of the new faith was to be printed in Volapuk or in French, in which latter language most of the Baroness's intellectual efforts were given to the world.

Erika was obliged to leave her place beside the hostess and to mingle in the crowd that now rapidly filled the three reception-rooms.

She found very few acquaintances, and made the rather annoying discovery that, with the exception of a couple of flat-chested English girls, she was the only young girl present. If Count Treurenberg had not made his appearance to play cicerone, she must have utterly failed to understand what was going on around her.

The masculine element was the more strongly represented, but the feminine contingent was undoubtedly the more aristocratic. It consisted chiefly of very beautiful and distinguished women of rank who almost without exception had by some fatality rendered their reception at court impossible. Most of them were divorced, although upon what grounds was not clear.

The strictly orthodox Venetian and Austrian families avoided these entertainments, not so much upon moral grounds as because it was embarra.s.sing to meet _decla.s.sees_ of their own rank, and because, besides, they believed this salon to be a hotbed of the rankest radicalism, both in morals and in politics.

In this they were not altogether wrong. There was nothing here of the Kapilavastu system of which the old Countess was wont to complain in Berlin; no, every imaginable topic was discussed, and after the most heterogeneous fashion. Consequently the salon was in its way an amusing one, its tiresome side being the determination on the part of the hostess not to allow her guests to amuse themselves, but always to offer them a _plat de resistance_ in some shape or other.

On this evening this _plat_ was Fraulein Minona von Rattenfels; and in the midst of Count Treurenberg's most amusing witticisms the guests were all bidden to a.s.semble for the reading in the largest of the three rooms.

Here she sat, with her ma.n.u.script already open, and the conventional gla.s.s of water on a spindle-legged table beside her.

She was about fifty years old, large-boned, stout, and very florid, dressed in a red gown shot with black, which gave her the appearance of a half-boiled lobster, and with strings of false coin around her neck and in her hair.

Before the performance began, the electric lights were turned off, and the only illumination proceeded from two wax candles with pink shades on the table beside Minona. The literary essay was preceded by a musical prologue rendered by the pianist G----, who happened to be in Venice at the time.

He played a paraphrase of Siegmund's and Sieglinda's love-duet, gradually gliding into the motive of Isolde's death, all of which naturally increased the receptive capacity of the audience for the coming treat. The last tone died away. Minona von Rattenfels cleared her throat.

"Tombs!" She hurled the word, as it were, in a very deep voice into the midst of her audience. This was the pleasing t.i.tle of her latest collection of love-songs.

It consisted of two parts, 'Love-Life' and 'Love-Death.' In the first part there was a great deal said about Dawn and Dew-drops, and in the second part quite as much about Worms and Withered Flowers, while in both there was such an amount of ardent pa.s.sion that one could not but be grateful to the Baroness for her Bayreuth fashion of darkening the auditorium, thus veiling the blushes of certain sensitive ladies, as well as the sneering looks of others.

Of course Minona's delivery was highly dramatic. She screamed until her voice failed her, she rolled her eyes until she fairly squinted, and Count Treurenberg offered to wager an entire set of her works that one of her eyes was gla.s.s.

In most of her verses the lover was cold, hard, or faithless, but now and then she revelled in an 'oasis in the desert of life.' Then she became unutterably grotesque, the only distinguishable word in a languishing murmur being "L--o--ve!"

Suddenly in the midst of this extraordinary performance was heard the clicking of a couple of steel knitting needles, and shortly afterwards the reading came to an end.

Again the room was flooded with light. In the silence that reigned the clicking needles made the only sound. Erika looked to see whence the noise proceeded, and perceived an elderly lady with gray hair brushed smoothly over her temples, and a shrewd--almost masculine--face, sitting very erect, and dressed in a charming old-fashioned gown. Her brows were lifted, and her face showed unmistakably her decided disapproval of the performance. In the midst of the heated atmosphere she produced the impression of a stainless block of ice.

"Who is that?" Erika asked the Countess Muhlberg, who sat beside her.

"Fraulein Agatha von Horn. Shall I present you?"

Erika a.s.sented, and the Countess led her to the lady in question, who, still knitting, was seated on a sofa with three young, very shy artists, and overshadowed by a tall fan-palm.

The Countess presented Erika. The artists rose, and the two ladies took their seats on the sofa beside Fraulein von Horn.

The Fraulein sighed, and conversation began.

"If I am not mistaken, you are a dear friend of the gifted lady whom we have to thank this evening for so much pleasure," said Constance Muhlberg.

"We travel together, because it is cheaper," Fraulein von Horn replied, calmly, "but; as with certain married couples, we have nothing in common save our means of living."

"Indeed?" said Constance. "I am glad to hear it; for in that case we can express our sentiments freely with regard to the poetess."

"Quite freely."