Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 46

Her voice, always soft and full of that quality which goes straight to the heart, was veiled and vibrating; her hands were clasped upon her breast, her head was proudly erect, and her eyes seemed larger than usual from the ecstasy that shone in them. She was supernaturally lovely, and never had the chaste purity peculiar to her beauty been more distinctly stamped upon her face than at this moment when she--she, Erika Lenzdorff--was voluntarily proposing to follow a married man through the world as his mistress.

"Erika!" There was boundless exultation in his voice; he took one step towards her to clasp her in his arms and to press the first kiss upon her lips. But she repulsed him, overcome, it seemed, by sudden distress and dread, and when he repeated, in a tone of dismay and reproach, "Erika!" she pa.s.sed her hand across her brow, and murmured, "My entire life belongs to you. Do not grudge me a few hours of reflection and preparation."

He smiled at her reserve, and contented himself with pressing his lips tenderly again and again upon her hand, as he said, caressingly, "Preparation? Oh, my darling, my darling! Meet me to-night at the railway-station at ten, and we will start for Florence. Leave all the rest to me."

"To-night it would be impossible," she said: "it is our reception evening. I could not leave without giving rise to a search for me."

"Then to-morrow?" he persisted, speaking very quickly in his beguiling, irresistible voice. Everything about him betrayed the feverish insistence of a man who suddenly gives free rein to a pa.s.sion which he has. .h.i.therto with difficulty held in check.

"To-morrow," she repeated, anxiously,--"to-morrow----"

"Do not delay, Erika, if you are really resolved."

"To-morrow be it, then!" The words came syllable by syllable from her lips in a kind of dull staccato.

"Erika!" His eyes shone, his whole being seemed transfigured.

"Yes," she went on, "Constance Muhlberg has arranged an excursion to Chioggia to-morrow in a steamer she has chartered. My grandmother is to chaperon the party. At the last moment I will refuse to accompany her, and I shall then be free. When shall I come?"

They decided upon taking the train leaving between eight and nine in the evening for Vienna. Then other necessary details were arranged, a process unutterably distasteful to Erika, to whom it seemed like making the business arrangements for a funeral. She suffered intensely in thus descending to blank, prosaic reality from the visionary heights to which she had soared.

At last everything had been discussed: there was nothing more to be said. A great dread then stole over her: she grew very silent.

"I cannot believe in my bliss," he murmured. "You stand there in your white robes so chaste and grave, with that holy light in your eyes, more like a martyr awaiting death than a loving woman ready to break through all barriers to----"

There was something in this description of the situation that offended her,--offended her so deeply that with what was almost harshness she interrupted him, saying, "And now, I pray you, go!"

He looked at her in some dismay. She cast down her eyes, and with flaming cheeks stammered, "My grandmother will return in a few moments: I should not like to see you in her presence."

"You are right," he said, changing colour. "Your grandmother has always been so kind to me, and now----"

"Ah, go!"

"May I not come to see you at some time during the day to-morrow?"

"No."

"In the evening, then,--at eight?"

She looked him full in the face, stern resolve in her eyes. "I shall be punctual," she said.

"To-morrow at eight," he whispered.

"To-morrow at eight," she repeated.

A minute afterwards he stood alone in the sunlit s.p.a.ce behind the hotel.

He rubbed his eyes, seeming to waken slowly from a lovely and most improbable dream.

At first he felt only exhilaration, the joy of a near approach to a long-desired but unhoped-for goal.

"To-morrow at eight," he whispered to himself several times. Then on a sudden the keen edge of his delight was blunted; his joy seemed to slip through his fingers; he could not retain it.

He recalled the entire scene through which he had just pa.s.sed. He saw the girl's expression of face, he heard the sound of her voice. It was all lovely, exquisitely lovely, but, after all, there was something inharmonious, unnatural in it. This very girl who had of her own free impulse proposed to fly with him had never, during their long consultation, been impelled to utter one word of affection for him, and he himself was conscious that he could not have demanded it of her. She had been gentle, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,--yes, self-sacrificing even to fanaticism. Self-sacrificing! he repeated the word to himself in an undertone: it had seized hold of his imagination as portraying precisely her att.i.tude and bearing. Self-sacrificing,--yes, but not the slightest evidence had she given him of warm, pa.s.sionate affection. He frowned, as he walked on thoughtfully.

"How does she picture to herself the future, I wonder?" Distinctly in his memory rang her words, "I know that I resign all intercourse with my fellow-beings, saving with yourself; that my only refuge on earth will be at your side; I know that I shall be a lost creature in the eyes of the world; and yet, if I can only cherish the conviction that I can thereby redeem your shattered existence, that I can purify and enn.o.ble your life, I am ready."

How ravishing she had been whilst uttering these words! and beautiful, pathetic words they were; but----

He shivered, in spite of the Venetian May sunshine. Some chord of overwrought feeling suddenly snapped; a stifling sensation of ungrateful and almost angry rebellion against an undeserved happiness a.s.sailed him. How could this be? He was paralyzed by a cowardly dread.

He was ashamed of this revulsion of feeling, and struggled against it with angry self-contempt, but he could not shake it off. He had a vague consciousness that he must always be thus shamed in Erika's presence.

To avoid being so he should have to incite himself to a degree of high-souled enthusiasm which was unnatural and inconvenient. "Purify and enn.o.ble his life!" What did that mean? "Purify? enn.o.ble?"

CHAPTER XXIV.

When by a long and roundabout way he at last reached his home on foot, and walked through the stone-paved, whitewashed corridor, looking absently before him, he perceived sitting beneath a mulberry-tree, the lower boughs of which were covered with the blossoms of a climbing rose, an attractive female figure, whose golden hair gleamed in the sunlight. She was sitting in a basket chair, and was engaged upon a piece of delicate crochet-work. She wore a gown of some white woollen stuff, very simply made, and confined at the waist by a belt of russet leather; the sleeves, which were rather short, left exposed not only the wrists, but part of a plump arm, white and smooth as polished marble, and the finely-formed throat rose as white and polished from the turn-down sailor collar, beneath which a dark-blue cravat was loosely knotted. How deft and skilful, as she worked, was every movement of her rather large but faultlessly-shaped hands!

She was somewhat stout, but there was a certain charm in that. The broad full shoulders gave an impression of vigour that nothing could subdue. Lozoncyi could not but admire them. He was amazed. Yesterday there had been shrieks and screams, torn clothes and broken furniture, while to-day, after a scene that would have made any other woman ill, there was not a trace of fatigue, no dark shade beneath the steel-blue eyes, not a wrinkle about the rather large mouth. What a fund of inexhaustible vitality the woman possessed! what triumphant, healthy vigour! Not a sign of nervousness, of useless agitation; no breath of exaggeration.

Ah, she had her good side,--there was no denying it. He sighed, and, hearing himself sigh, was startled by the turn his thoughts were taking. Was it possible that after a forced companionship of scarcely two days--a companionship of which, when he could not avoid it, he had taken advantage to hurl in the woman's face his hatred and contempt for her--old habits were a.s.serting their rights?

She went on crocheting. The sunlight crept down from among the climbing roses and glittered upon her crochet-needle. At last it shone in her eyes: she moved her chair to avoid the dazzling glare, and, looking up, saw him. Instead of the dark looks she had given him yesterday, she smiled slowly, blinking her strange cat-like eyes in the sunshine, and by her smile disclosing a row of pearly teeth. He pa.s.sed her sullenly, as if she had taken an unjustifiable liberty with him, and went into the studio, wishing to persuade himself that he had a horror of her, that she repelled him. He hoped to feel that disgust for her with which the thought of her had inspired him since love for Erika had filled his heart; but he did not feel the disgust.

He lingered for less time than usual before Erika's portrait, which occupied a large easel in the most conspicuous place in the studio, and went to his writing-table. Several business letters awaited him there; he opened them with an impatient sigh. They were for the most part requests for answers to letters received by him weeks previously. Since he had been in Venice his business correspondence--in fact, his business affairs generally--had fallen into terrible disorder.

He opened the latest letter: it contained columns of figures. It was the account from his picture-dealer. He snapped his fingers, and, sitting down, tried to comprehend it. In vain! The figures danced before his eyes. Involuntarily he looked up. Through the gla.s.s door of the studio a pair of greenish eyes were gazing at him with an expression of good-humoured raillery. His heart began to beat fast.

Formerly she had conducted his entire correspondence for him,--with what perfect regularity and skill! Before she had taken up the trade of model in consequence of a love-affair with an artist, she had been a _dame de comptoir_; she was as skilled in accounts as a bank-clerk. He needed but to speak the word, and she would reduce all these provoking affairs to perfect order; but he would ask no favour of her. Then she opened the studio door, and, entering softly, laid a warm strong hand upon his shoulder. He tried to persuade himself that he disliked the touch of this hand. But he did not dislike it: it had a soothing effect upon his excited nerves. Nevertheless he forced himself to shake it off.

The woman laughed, a low, gentle laugh,--the laugh of a cynic. She lighted a cigarette and handed it to him, saying, "_Pauvre bebe_, try to rest instead of settling those accounts: I will do it all for you in the twinkling of an eye, while it would take you until next week."

This time she did not lay her hand upon his shoulder, but stroked his head gently. "_Voyons, Seraphine!_" he said, crossly, shaking her off.

She laughed again, good-humouredly, carelessly, with unconscious cynicism. Before three minutes had pa.s.sed, she was seated in his stead at the writing-table, and he, with the cigarette which she had offered him between his lips, was standing lost in thought before Erika's portrait.

How long he had been standing thus he could not have told, when he heard a deep voice beside him say, "_C'est rudement fort, tu sais.

Sapristi!_ Shall you exhibit it?"

"I have not made up my mind," he replied, absently, and then he was vexed with himself for answering her.

"She is pretty, there's no denying it," Seraphine confessed. "I am really sorry to have interfered with your amus.e.m.e.nt, but nothing could have come of it. If I am not mistaken, you had gone as far as was possible. She is one of those who give nothing for nothing, and who never invest their capital except in good securities. I am sorry I cannot resign these securities to her; _je suis bon garcon, moi_, but, _mon Dieu, lorsqu'il y a un homme dans la question--sapristi, chaque femme pour elle!_"