Erlach Court Part 18

The little company which at the beginning of this simple story we found a.s.sembled at Erlach Court is now dispersed to all quarters of the world: the general is 'grazing,' as Jack Leskjewitsch expresses it, with somebody in Southern Hungary; Stasy is fluttering, with sweet smiles and covert malice, from friend to friend, seeming at present on the lookout for a fixed engagement for the winter; Rohritz is off on his wonted autumnal hunting-expedition, and more than usually bored by it; and the Leskjewitsches are still at Erlach Court, where Freddy is in perpetual conflict with his new tutor, a spare, lank philosopher lately imported for him from Bohemia, and Katrine quaffs full draughts of her beloved solitude, without experiencing the great degree of rapture she had antic.i.p.ated from it; there is a cloud upon her brow, and her annoyance is princ.i.p.ally due to the fact that the captain begins to show unmistakable signs of a lapse from his former manly energy of character; he scarcely holds himself as erect as was his wont, and the only occupation which he pursues with any notable degree of self-sacrifice and devotion is the breaking of a pair of very young and very fiery horses. This praiseworthy pursuit, however, absorbs only a few hours at most of each day, and he kills the rest of the time as best he can, irritating by his idleness his wife, who is always occupied with most interesting matters. In addition he reads silly novels, and greatly admires the 'Maitre de Forges.'

"How can any man admire the 'Maitre de Forges'?" Katrine asks, indignantly.

The Baroness and Stella have been back in their mill-cottage at Zalow for many weeks, and Stella is, as usual, left entirely to herself.

In addition to the daily scribbling over of various sheets of foolscap, the Baroness, instead of bestowing any attention upon her daughter, is mainly occupied with superintending the carrying out of all the governmental prophylactic measures which are to secure to Zalow entire immunity from the cholera. She has come off victorious in many a battle with the culpably negligent village authority, and, to the immense edification of the inmates of the various villas, already somewhat accustomed to the vagaries of the Baroness Meineck, she now goes from one manure-heap to another of the place, at the head of a battalion of barefooted village children provided with watering-pots filled with a disinfectant, the due apportionment of which she thus oversees herself.

It was long an undecided question whether this winter, like the last, should be spent in Zalow. Finally the Baroness decided that it was absolutely necessary for herself as well as for Stella that the cold season of the year should be pa.s.sed in Paris, for herself that she might have access to much information needed for the completion of her 'work,' for Stella that a final polish might be given to her singing and that she might be definitively prepared for the stage.

Every one who has ever had anything to do with Lina Meineck knows that if she once takes any scheme into her head it is sure to be carried out: therefore, having made up her mind to go to Paris, she will go, although no one among all her relatives has an idea of where the requisite funds are to come from.

It does not occur to any one that she could lay hands upon the small fortune belonging to Stella, who has lately been declared of age.

CHAPTER XVI.

ZALOW.

It is a mild autumn afternoon; Stella, just returned from a visit to her sister, who has lately been blessed by the arrival of a little daughter, has taken a seat with some trifling piece of work in her mother's study to tell her about the pretty child and Franzi's household, but at her first word her mother calls out to her from her writing-table,--

"Not now,--not now, I beg; do not disturb me."

And the girl, silenced and mortified, bends over the tiny shirt which she has begun to crochet for her little niece, and keeps all that she had hoped to tell to herself.

The autumn sun shines in at the window, and its crimson light gleams upon a large tin box standing on the floor in a corner, the box in which the deceased colonel had kept all the letters he ever received from his wife. Tied up with ribbon, and methodically arranged according to their dates, they are packed away here just as they were sent to his wife from his old quarters at Enns. She has never looked at them, has not even taken the trouble to destroy them, but has simply pushed them aside as useless rubbish.

Stella had rummaged among them, with indescribable sensations in deciphering these yellow doc.u.ments with their faint odour of lavender and decay, for here were letters full of ardour and pa.s.sion, letters in which Lina Meineck wrote to her husband, for instance, when he was away during the Schleswig campaign,--

"The weather is fine to-day, and every one is praising the lovely spring; but it is always winter for me in your absence; with you away my thermometer always stands at ten degrees below zero!"

With a shudder Stella put back these relics of a dead love in their little coffin. It was as if she had heard a corpse speak.

Since then she has often wished to burn the letters, out of affectionate reverence for the dead who held them sacred, but she has never summoned up sufficient courage to ask her mother's permission.

The little shirt is finished; with a sigh Stella folds it together, and is just wondering what she shall do next to occupy the rest of the afternoon, when the Baroness says,--

"Have you nothing to do, Stella?"

"No, mamma."

"Well, then, you can run over to Schwarz's and buy me a couple of quires of paper; my supply is exhausted, and I will, meanwhile, have tea brought up."

Donning her hat and gloves, Stella sets forth. Herr Schwarz is the only shopkeeper in the village, and his shop contains a more heterogeneous collection of articles than the biggest shop in Paris. He often boasts that he has everything for sale, from poison for rats, and dynamite bombs, to paper collars and scented soap. His shop is at the other end of the village from the mill, and to reach it Stella must pa.s.s the most ornate of the villas.

Most of the summer residents have left Zalow; only a few special enthusiasts for country air have been induced by the exceptionally fine autumn weather to prolong their stay. In the garden of the tailor who built himself a hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First a group of people are disputing around a croquet-hoop in the centre of a very small lawn, and in the Girofle Villa some one is practising Schumann's 'etudes symphoniques' with frantic ardour. Stella smiles; the last sound that fell upon her ears before she went to Erlach Court with her mother was the 'etudes symphoniques,' the first that greeted her upon her return in the middle of August was the 'etudes symphoniques.'

She knows precisely who is so persistently given over to these rhapsodies,--an odd creature, a woman named Fuhrwesen, who has been a teacher of the piano for some years in Russia, and who, now over forty, still hopes for a career as an artist.

Stella's little commission is soon attended to. As she hands her mother the paper on her return, their only servant, a barefooted girl from the village, with a red-and-black checked kerchief tied about her head, brings the tea into the room.

"A letter has come for you," the Baroness says to her daughter,--"a letter from Gratz. I do not know the hand. Who can be writing to you from Gratz? Where did I put it?"

And while her mother is rummaging among her papers for the letter, Stella repeats, with a throbbing heart, "From Gratz. Who can be writing to me from Gratz?" and she covertly kisses the four-leaved clover on her bracelet which is to bring her good fortune, and proceeds instantly to build a charming castle in the air.

Her uncle has told her of Edgar's loss of property and his consequent inability to think of marriage at present. Perhaps Uncle Jack told her this to comfort her. That Edgar loves her she has, with the unerring instinct of total inexperience of the world, read, not once, but hundreds of times, in his eyes, and consequently she has spent many a long autumn evening in wondering whether he is looking for a position--some lucrative employment--to enable him to marry. He is not lacking in attainments; he could work if he would. "And he will for my sake," the heart of this foolish, fantastic young person exults in thinking.

From day to day she has been hoping that he would send her--perhaps through Jack or Katrine--some message, hitherto in vain. But now at last he has written himself; for from whom else could this letter from Gratz be? She knew no human being there save himself.

"Here is the letter," her mother says, at last.

Stella opens it hastily, and starts.

"Whom is it from?" asks the Baroness. She uses the hour for afternoon tea to rest from her literary labours; with her feet upon the round of a chair in front of her, a volume of Buckle in her lap, a pile of books beside her, a number of the 'Revue des deux Mondes' in her left hand, and her teacup in her right, she partakes alternately of the refreshing beverage and of an article upon Henry the Eighth. "Whom is the letter from?" she asks, absently, laying her cup aside to take up a volume of Froude.

"From Stasy," Stella replies.

"Ah! what does she want?"

"She asks me to send her from Rumberger's, in Prague, three hundred napkins or so, upon approbation, that she may oblige some friend of hers whom I do not know, and for whom I do not care."

"Positively insolent!" remarks the Baroness. "And does she say nothing else?"

"Nothing of any consequence," says Stella, reading on and suddenly changing colour.

"Ah!" The Baroness marks the Revue with her pencil. When she looks up again, Stella has left the room. Without wasting another thought upon her, the student goes on with her reading.

Stella, meanwhile, is lying on the bed in her little room, into which the moon shines marking the floor with the outlines of the window-panes. Her face is buried among the pillows, and she is crying as if her heart would break.

'Nothing of any consequence'! True enough, of no consequence for the Baroness, that second sheet of Stasy's, but for Stella of great, of immense consequence.

"Guess whom I encountered lately at Steinbach?" writes the Gurlichingen. "Edgar Rohritz. Of course we talked of our dear Erlach Court, and consequently of you. He spoke very kindly of you, only regretting that in consequence of your odd education, or of a certain exaggeration of temperament, you lacked reserve, _tenue_, a defect which might be unfortunate for you in life. Of course I defended you.

They say everywhere that he is betrothed to Emmy Strahlenheim.

"Have you heard the news,--the very latest? Rohritz _is_ a sly fellow indeed. All that loss of property of which we heard so much was only a fraud. The report originated in some trifling depreciation of certain bank-stock. He did not contradict the report, allowing himself to be thought impoverished that he might escape the persecutions of the mothers and daughters of Gratz. Max Steinbach let out the secret a while ago. Is it not the best joke in the world? I am glad no one can accuse me of ever making the slightest advances to him."

CHAPTER XVII.

WINTER.

The death-struggle of the year is over,--past are the treacherous gleams of sunlight among falling leaves and smiling flowers,--past, past! Cold and grave like a hired executioner, mute and secret like a midnight a.s.sa.s.sin, the first hard frost has fallen upon the earth in the previous night and completed its great work of destruction.

It is All Souls'; the Meinecks leave for Paris in the evening, and in the morning Stella goes to ma.s.s in the little church on the mountain-side at the foot of which is the churchyard,--the churchyard in which the colonel lies buried. The flames of the thick wax candles on the altar, the flames of the candles thick and thin lighted everywhere in memory of the dead, flicker dull and red in the gray daylight.