Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 9

"May I beg you to present me to the Countess?" he said, turning to Strachinsky.

"Countess!" It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?

"Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter," with a wave of the hand.

"Your step-daughter," the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.

"I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead in their early youth," said the other; and he was right, for he had taken very little interest in his own children. "You know that, my child," he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his flabby warm touch.

Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.

Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual "Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr Doctor!"

Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy?

Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with thrilling fascination.

Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest physical exertion.

Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered her a place on the sofa, a.s.sumed a dignified air, or what she supposed to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger.

Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.

He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the while.

Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.

"A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!" he ordered the young girl, forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and falling into his usual tone.

"Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account," Doctor Herbegg interposed. "I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch the next train for Berlin."

"Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a gla.s.s of Tokay," Strachinsky persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add, "Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it." He arose, and as he was leaving the room he went on, "The Herr Doctor will inform you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects."

The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about the gla.s.s of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a short time had explained matters to her.

The t.i.tle of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her, apparently because in the circ.u.mstances in which she was forced to educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help, was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate devolved upon his grand-daughter.

The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves to be upon the defensive with the entire male s.e.x. She carried a waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.

"One little gla.s.s, Herr Doctor,--one little gla.s.s!" cried Strachinsky.

The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the gla.s.s distrustfully with his lips.

"The Tokay is excellent," he remarked, in evident surprise at finding anything of Strachinsky's genuine.

"Yes, yes," his host declared; "you can't get such a gla.s.s of wine as that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--_les restes des grandeurs pa.s.sees_, my dear Doctor."

After a first gla.s.s Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he patted the lawyer on the shoulder. "Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg; you'll not easily find another gla.s.s of such Tokay."

Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his second gla.s.s. He looked at his watch and said, "Unfortunately, Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish.

Where and with whom have you been educated?"

"At home, and with my mother."

"Exclusively with your mother?"

"Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano."

She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.

"My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's,"

Strachinsky interposed.--"Play something to the Doctor; be quick!" he ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again his _role_ of tender parent.

His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.

She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother.

Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her performance.

"Magnificent, Countess!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards her as she left the piano.

"Very well; but you missed that last chord once," Strachinsky said, pompously.

Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. "Now I am forced to go," he said to the young girl; "and you must not smile, Countess, if I tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an untrained village girl."

Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. "My grandmother had no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind."

He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light.

"Forgive me," he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then, turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.

His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech.

"You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"

"Extremely original," the lawyer a.s.sented.

On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began, bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written doc.u.ment by which she provided for her daughter's future?"

Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible degree of embarra.s.sment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in writing a few days before her death.

Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary doc.u.ment would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she die I should care for her daughter as for my own."

"H'm!" the Doctor e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"

"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."

The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess Lenzdorff of your wife's death."

Strachinsky a.s.sumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly, but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"

"But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your step-daughter's destiny," Doctor Herbegg observed.