Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 39

Three weeks had pa.s.sed since Minona von Rattenfels had so effectively given vent to her languishing love-plaints.

A striking change was evident in Erika. She was much more cheerful, or, at least, more accessible; she no longer withdrew from the world in morbid misanthropy, but went into society whenever her grandmother requested her to do so. Wherever she went she was feted and admired.

Since her first season in Berlin she had never received so much homage.

It seemed to give her pleasure, and, what was still more remarkable, she seemed to exert herself somewhat--a very little--to obtain it.

Wherever she went she met Lozoncyi,--Lozoncyi, who scarcely took his eyes off her, but who made no attempt to approach her in any way that could attract notice. His bearing towards her was not only exemplary, but touching. Always at hand to render her any little service,--to procure her an ice, to relieve her of an empty teacup, to find her missing fan or gloves,--he immediately retired to give place to her other admirers. Among these Prince Helmy Nimbsch was foremost: the entire international society of Venice were daily expecting the announcement of a betrothal, and one afternoon, at a lawn-tennis party at Lady Stairs's, he had given Erika unmistakable proofs of his intentions. She was a little startled, and, while she was endeavouring to lead the conversation with him away from the perilously sentimental tone it had a.s.sumed, her eyes accidentally encountered Lozoncyi's.

Shortly afterwards she managed to get rid of the Prince; and as, after a last game of lawn-tennis, she was retiring from the field, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling from the exercise, Lozoncyi came up to her to relieve her of her racket. "You see how right the poor painter was, not to venture to approach his little fairy," he murmured. The words, his tone, aroused her sympathy and compa.s.sion, but before she could reply he had vanished. He did not come near her again that afternoon, but she could not help perceiving that his looks sought herself and Prince Nimbsch alternately, at first inquiringly, and afterwards with an expression of relief.

Dinner has been over for some time. The lamps are gleaming red along the Grand Ca.n.a.l, and their broken reflections quiver in long streaks upon the waters of the lagoon. The little drawing-room is but dimly lighted, and Erika is seated at the piano, playing bits of 'Parsifal,'

her fingers gliding into the motive of sinful, worldly pleasure.

The old Countess enters, and, after wandering aimlessly about the room for a moment, goes, after her fashion, directly to the point. She pauses beside Erika, and observes, "Prince Nimbsch is courting you.

People are talking about it."

"Nonsense!" Erika rejoins, running her fingers over the keys. "He is only amusing himself."

"H'm! he seems to me to be very much in earnest," murmurs the old lady; "and there is no denying that it would be a brilliant match."

Erika drops her hands in her lap. "Grandmother!" she exclaims, half laughing, "what are you thinking of? He is a mere boy!"

"A boy? He is full four years older than you; and I need not remind you that you are no child. At all events, you must consider well----"

"Before I enter into another engagement," Erika interrupts her. "I promise you I will; nay, more than that, I promise you solemnly that I will not engage myself to Prince Nimbsch."

"In fact, I must confess that I do not think him your equal." There is a certain relief in the old lady's tone, although she adds, with some hesitation, "But the position is tempting, very tempting."

"Ah, grandmother!" Erika exclaims, with reproach in her tone, as, rising, she puts her arm around the old Countess's shoulder and kisses her gray head, "do you know me so little?"

Her grandmother returns her caress with emotion, murmuring the while, as if talking to herself, "As if you knew yourself, my poor, dear child!"

"I know myself so far," Erika declares, "as to be sure that after my first unfortunate mistake I am cured of all worldly ambition."

"Oh, that was quite another thing!" her grandmother sighs. "Your marriage with Lord Langley would have been positively unnatural; but Prince Helmy Nimbsch is a fine, gallant young fellow."

"It all amounts to the same thing: old or young, he is a man whom I do not love, and never could love."

The old lady shakes her head impatiently: "Are you beginning upon that?

Love? I thought you had more sense. Love!--love! Heaven preserve you from that disease! The only sound foundations for a happy marriage are unbounded esteem and warm sympathy: anything more is an evil."

Erika is silent, and the old Countess continues: "No respectable woman should indulge in pa.s.sion. Pa.s.sion is an intoxication, and nausea is sure to follow upon intoxication. Therefore a respectable woman, who can at the most indulge but once in such intoxication, condemns herself, after a short period of bliss, to nausea for the rest of her life. Only the unprincipled woman who cures her nausea by a fresh pa.s.sion can permit herself such indulgence. It is all nonsense for one of us."

During this long speech the Countess has seated herself in an arm-chair with a volume of Taine's 'Les Origines de la France' open in her lap, and to lend emphasis to her words she taps the book from time to time with a large j.a.panese paper-knife.

Erika stands near her, leaning upon the piano, tall and graceful in her white gown. "And what am I to infer from your preachment? That I must marry Helmy Nimbsch, even without love?"

"Helmy Nimbsch? Who is talking of him?" The old lady almost starts from her chair.

"I thought you were, grandmother," Erika says, with a mischievous smile. "If I am not mistaken, he was the subject of our conversation."

"Nonsense! Helmy Nimbsch! _Ce n'est pas serieux!_"

"Of whom, then, are you talking?" Erika asks, looking her grandmother full in the face.

"Oh, of no one: I was talking in general," her grandmother replies, with some irritation, adding, still more petulantly, after a pause, "If you have unbounded esteem and warm sympathy for young Nimbsch, why, marry him, by all means."

Instead of replying, Erika begins to arrange the sheets of music on the piano.

A long pause ensues. From below come the murmur of voices, the ringing of bells, and the moving of trunks,--in short, all the bustle consequent upon the arrival of fresh guests at a large hotel. Countess Lenzdorff takes the opportunity to complain of so much noise, and to declare, "In fact, I am quite tired of this wandering about from place to place."

"What, grandmother? Why, you were so delighted here! Only yesterday you told me how 'refreshing' you considered your Venetian life."

"Yes, yes; but it has lasted too long for me. While you were playing lawn-tennis this afternoon with Constance Muhlberg, I went to see Hedwig Norbin. She arrived yesterday, and is at the 'Europe;' but she is only stopping for a day or so on her way home. 'Tis a pity."

"And she gave you such an alluring description of Berlin that you are anxious to fold your tent and fly back to Bellevue Street now, in the midst of this wondrous Southern spring?" Erika asks, coldly.

"Oh, spring is lovely everywhere!--lovelier in Berlin than in Venice: there is nothing more beautiful than the Thiergarten in May. And then I find there all my old habits, my old friends."

"I have no friends in Berlin," says Erika, with a strange emphasis, "and that is why I beg you to stay away from Berlin for a while longer.

Next autumn you may do with me what you please. Have a little patience with me."

"Patience! patience!" The old Countess taps her book more energetically than ever.

After a while Erika begins: "Did Frau von Norbin tell you anything about Dorothea von Sydow? How is her position regarded by society?"

"How?" her grandmother exclaims. "How should society regard the critical position of a woman who has never shown the slightest consideration for any one, never conferred a benefit upon any one, scarcely even treated any one with courtesy, but lived only for her own frivolous gratification? Society acknowledges a woman in her position only when it would lose something by dropping her. Who would lose anything if Dorothea were stricken from its list? A couple of young men, perhaps; and they would be at liberty to make love to her outside of the ranks of society. The world has turned its back upon her: Hedwig tells me that she is positively shunned."

"And how does she accommodate herself to her destiny?" asks Erika.

"As poorly as possible. One would suppose that she would have left Berlin. For my part, I never imagined that she cared so much for her social position; but she appears to be clutching it in a kind of panic."

"How unpleasant for--for the dead man's brother!" says Erika. Several months have pa.s.sed since she has spoken Goswyn's name: it would seem as if her lips refused to utter it.

"For Goswyn!" her grandmother exclaims, in a tone of sincere distress.

"Terrible! They say he is altered almost beyond recognition. I did not know he was so devoted to Otto. But, to be sure, the circ.u.mstances attendant upon his death were frightful. Goswyn always found fault with me, but, after all, since his mother's death I have stood nearest to him in this world. I know he would be glad to pour out his heart to me."

Erika draws a long breath; her large clear eyes flash. "Ah!"

she exclaims, "this, then, is your reason for wishing to go to Berlin,--that you may console Herr Goswyn von Sydow? I always knew that he was dear to you: I learn now for the first time that he is dearer to you than I am!"

"Oh, Erika!--dearer than you!" The old lady rises and strokes the girl's arm tenderly. "I am often sorry that I cannot love you both together!" she adds, half timidly, in an undertone.

But this time Erika repulses almost angrily the caress usually so dear to her. "I cannot understand you!" she says: "it is a positive mania of yours. You are always reproaching me for not having married Goswyn, or hinting that I ought to marry him,--a man who has not wasted a thought upon me for years!"

"Oh, Erika! how can you talk so? Remember Bayreuth."

"What if I do remember Bayreuth? Yes, he still thought of me then; that is, he remembered the young girl with whom he had ridden in the Thiergarten, and he brought her memory with him to Bayreuth; but he discovered it did not fit with what he found there: that was the end of it all!" Erika silently paces the room to and fro once or twice, then, pausing before her grandmother, she continues: "It stings me whenever you speak of Goswyn and lose yourself in the contemplation of his measureless magnanimity. Magnanimity! Yes, but it is a cold, sterile, arrogant magnanimity! He is a thoroughly just man, but he is a man who never forgives a weakness, because none ever beset him,--none, at least, of which he is conscious. He---- Oh, yes----,"--the girl's voice grows hoa.r.s.e, she catches her breath and goes on with increasing volubility,--"I have no doubt that he would spring into the water at any moment to save the life, at the risk of his own, of any worthless wretch, but as soon as he brought him to land he would turn his back upon him and march away with his head proudly erect, without even casting a look upon the man he had rescued, let alone giving him a kind word. Witness his behaviour towards me. I refer to it expressly that we may correct once for all your painful and humiliating misapprehension.