Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 4

Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. "Emma," he said, tenderly, "have you written to Franks and Ziegler?"

"Yes," she replied, and her voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. "There lie the letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish."

"Not at all," her husband exclaimed, gaily. "I have implicit confidence in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amus.e.m.e.nt."

"Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?" Emma asked, with some bitterness.

Strachinsky immediately a.s.sumed an injured air. "You are irritable again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good heavens! it is hard enough, but--circ.u.mstances will have it so." He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of great dignity.

She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, "That eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed."

"I cannot. I am not sleepy," she replied, plying her needle; "and, moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it." She bent over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.

Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging footsteps.

When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.

The song was still informing the silence.

At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were heard pa.s.sing along the road. The reapers were going home. They pa.s.sed by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. "How happy they look! and why?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.

And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to unloose the latchet of her shoe!

Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted, enthusiastic, p.r.o.ne to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for affection had wrought her ruin.

Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most ill.u.s.trious of the native Bohemian n.o.bility; he was of doubtful descent. She had always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the annoyances of life.

He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was, previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he joined a Jager corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.

She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold, unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her formal marriage inspired her with horror.

Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever shown her any pa.s.sionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.

The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages: a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming, and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with pa.s.sionate declarations of love.

Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, "And you believe the c.o.xcomb?"

The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. "And why should I not believe him?" she asked, sharply. "Because, perhaps, you think me incapable of inspiring a man with affection?"

"Nonsense!" replied the sensible mother-in-law. "You could inspire affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy."

"Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my money?" Emma exclaimed, indignantly.

"No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition.

Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers itself, and he embraces it: _voila tout_. He is not to blame, but his suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by it."

When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.

The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating.

Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.

Eight years had pa.s.sed since then. First came a few months during which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's unsparing predictions.

His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest garrison, were habitues of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased, and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced.

Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they remained until the next night.

But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the room, dictating amounts to her.

In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished friends.

Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any depressing consciousness of his position.

Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already a.s.sembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to economize, and especially not to put too much b.u.t.ter on their bread, afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'

To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated n.o.bility of character.

This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don Quixote.

Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through.

None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst of ruin to insure his own personal ease.

But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all that was really n.o.ble in him.

In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong that no loosening of it was possible.

She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness, became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so adored her even during their honeymoon.

Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she had no right to.

But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have screamed. No, no, she would not see!

There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.

CHAPTER II.

Full four years had pa.s.sed by since Erika had kissed the young artist.

She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight and a vague sense of shame.

Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize.

Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years.

A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the sense of an impending catastrophe.