Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 8

Weeks pa.s.sed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded all the servants, without a.s.signing any grounds for his displeasure. No one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.

With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by asking her to play something upon the piano.

During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of the gravest anxiety.

At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever required to show what progress she had made.

Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. "I see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive!

And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess could claim, while you--you do nothing!" And then would follow a long dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, "What is to become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?" Then he would bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to betake himself to his sofa.

The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical as a housekeeper, but p.r.o.ne to fall in love with every man, and to find a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her morbid and distorted sentimentality.

During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite attention from the other s.e.x. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons, in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.

She sang. Her repertoire was limited, consisting princ.i.p.ally of the soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet "I would that my love could silently flow in a single word," which she shrieked out as a solo, and in Schumann's "I'll not complain,"--which last always caused her to shed copious tears.

At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm pa.s.sed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of patience.

Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.

At first the master of the house took but little heed of these demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for him "The Tyrolean and his Child," and also to repeat "May Breezes," she was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their meaning.

The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from his favourite hero "Pelham," he asked her as she stood before him,--

"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"

She nodded.

He pa.s.sed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and he went on playing the English n.o.bleman to his own entire satisfaction.

His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said, "Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"

He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the perusal of his novel.

From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.

Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his dressing-room.

This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a tragic turn.

One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician, summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.

Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence, recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many personal attractions.

Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.

When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'

All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter, followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone.

Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the servants to pa.s.s the time; another, again, might have married the bailiff out of sheer ennui: a.s.suredly any one else would have grown stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.

She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes, before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the neighboring country.

But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the least alteration in her circ.u.mstances, the poor child began to be impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a pianist?

On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written doc.u.ment, but when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed at last. "Lenzdorff," she repeated, thoughtfully,--"Lenzdorff." What possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter stranger--explaining her circ.u.mstances? Would it not be much better to turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his relatives. Why?

Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter, but never of those of her first husband.

"Lenzdorff." She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do something for her; but----

Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, "_Von_ Lenzdorff?" her mother had replied, sternly, "What is that to you? It is of no consequence whatever."

Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have done so.

If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any business discussion or explanation with them would have been most distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's maintenance cost him little or nothing.

Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor awaited her.

A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.

In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.

"What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?" she asked, irritably, suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.

"A foreign gentleman."

"Old or young?"

"An elderly gentleman."

"Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him," she murmured, "I can go just as I am." She knew from books, whence she derived all her worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.

"What in the world can he want of me?"

She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.

Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various pecuniary embarra.s.sments, to the Jew broker of the village.

Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would be s.n.a.t.c.hed from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had been dear to him, as she was to all around her.

She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his affection to stand in the way of his ease.

In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which looked comical.

The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in bearing, rose to receive her.