Erlach Court Part 30

But he writes no letter; he does not even sit down at his writing-desk, but stands at his window looking out at the snow. In town he had quite forgotten how pure and white snow originally is. He gazes at it as at some curiosity which he is beholding for the first time.

On the rose-beds, the bushes, the old linden,--everywhere it lies thick,--thick!

Here and there some branch thrusts forth a black point from the white covering, and the trunks of the trees are all divided in halves, a black half and a white one.

He reflects upon the domestic drama about to be enacted close at hand.

He is sorry for Katrine, although he lays at her door the blame for all the annoyances of which she has spoken to him, petty, provoking annoyances, which under certain circ.u.mstances may be the forerunners of actual misfortune.

"One more who has thrust aside happiness," he murmurs, bitterly, adding on the instant, "If we could only recognize our happiness at the right time! If it could only say to us, 'Here I am, clasp me close!' But the truest, finest happiness is never self-a.s.serting: it walks beside us mute and modest, warming and rejoicing our hearts, while we know not whence come the warmth and the delight."

As the stout blonde whom Leskjewitsch helped out of the sleigh not only remains to lunch, but also takes afternoon tea and dinner at Erlach Court, Rohritz has abundant opportunity to observe her. That, like all sirens who disturb domestic serenity, she should be inferior in every respect to the wife whose peace of mind she threatens, was to have been expected; but that she should be so immeasurably inferior to Katrine,--for that Rohritz was not prepared.

Anywhere else save in the country, and moreover in a world-forgotten corner of Ukrania, where the foxes bid one another good-night, and human beings are consequently easier to be induced than in civilized countries to bid one another good-day in spite of stupid social prejudices, any intercourse between this lady and the family at Erlach Court would have been impossible.

The daughter of a lucifer-match manufacturer in P----, with a moderate degree of education and a strong pa.s.sion for hunting, three years ago she had married the son of a riding-teacher, a certain Herr Ruprecht, who had been first a cavalry-officer, then a circus manager in America, and finally a newspaper-man in Vienna. After these various experiences with her promising husband, they had shortly before taken up their abode in a villa not far from Erlach Court, on the opposite bank of the Save. As the husband spent most of his time with a pretty actress, the young wife pa.s.sed her days in dreary solitude. The country-people called her the gra.s.s-widow.

"I need not a.s.sure you that I am not in the least jealous," Katrine remarks to Rohritz in the drawing-room, while the gra.s.s-widow with Freddy and the captain is playing billiards in the library, "but I frankly confess that I find the pleasure which Jack takes in the society of that common creature--that fat goose--incomprehensible. It irritates me. Moreover, she is ugly!"

Rohritz receives this outburst of Katrine's precisely as he receives all her outbursts,--in thoughtful, courteous silence. Frau Ruprecht certainly is common and silly; ugly she is not. She has a dazzling complexion, a magnificent bust, and a regular profile, although with lips that are too thick, a double chin, and light eyelashes. She speaks in a common, Viennese dialect, has never read a sensible book in her life, uses perfumes in excess, and has no taste whatever in dress.

But she drives like a Viennese hackman, she rides like a jockey, and her knowledge of sporting-matters would do honour to a professional trainer. She allows Leskjewitsch the utmost freedom of speech, and is ready to laugh at his worst jokes.

She disgusts Edgar Rohritz quite as much as she disgusts Katrine; nevertheless he understands what there is about her to attract Leskjewitsch.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A PARIS LETTER.

A few days after the appearance at Erlach Court of the gra.s.s-widow, the mail brings Rohritz a letter with the Paris post-mark. Edgar recognizes his sister-in-law's hand, opens it not without haste, and reads it not without interest. It runs thus:

"_Eh bien_, my dear Edgar, _j'espere que vous serez content de moi_,"

Therese always writes to her brother in a jargon of French, Italian, German, and English, which, out of regard for the pedantry of modern purists, we translate into as good English as we are able to command: "I hope you will be pleased with me. I frankly confess to you, what you probably guessed from my last postal card, that your request to me to try to brighten their life in Paris for two of your countrywomen did not afford me much pleasure. As a rule, compatriots so recommended are an unmitigated bore, from the pianists whose three hundred--no, that's too few--five hundred tickets we must dispose of, and who then, when you ask them to a soiree, are too grand to play the smallest mazourka of Chopin, to the Baronesses Wolnitzka, who request you to introduce them to Parisian society because they never have an opportunity to see any one at home. The pianists are bad enough, but the Wolnitzkas--oh!

In one respect they are precisely alike: they are always offended. If you invite them _en famille_ they are offended because they suppose you are ashamed of them; if you invite them to a ball they are offended because you pay them no particular attention. The upshot is that you always have to refuse them something,--to lend a thousand francs to the genius when he already owes you five hundred,--to procure for the Wolnitzkas an invitation to some ball at the emba.s.sy; then ensues a quarrel, and they draw down the corners of their mouths and look the other way when they meet you in the street.

"Only at the repeated request of your brother, who wherever anything Austrian is concerned is the personification of self-sacrificing devotion, did I make up my mind to call upon your acquaintance at the 'Negroes.'

"The hotel is--very plain, but I believe very respectable,--which is more than one has a right to expect of just such furnished lodgings in Paris. The staircase, a narrow crooked flight of steps with slippery sloping stairs, creaked beneath my feet; I was afraid it would break down as I mounted to the Meinecks' _appartement_. One final, depressing, menacing memory of the Wolnitzkas a.s.sailed me. Justin rings, the door opens, and all my prejudices vanish like snow before the sun. The daughter alone was at home. I fell in love with her on the instant,--so deeply in love that before I left I called her Stella and kissed her cheek. She is enchanting.

"It is not only that she is exquisitely beautiful; she combines the most innocent simplicity with the greatest distinction, a combination never found except in Austrian women. You see I know how to value your countrywomen when they are really worth it.

"Her face, her entire air, seemed created to banish all sadness from her presence; and yet there was a pathos in her look, in her smile, that went to my heart. But she must be happy. I mean to search for happiness for her; and I shall find it.

"_Ce que femme le veut y Dieu le veut!_ When I do anything I do it thoroughly. What do you think? It took me three weeks to resolve to call upon the Meinecks. I invited them to dine without waiting for them to return my visit. You know my way. We pa.s.sed a charming evening together, strictly informal, to become acquainted with one another. The mother was as little eccentric as is possible for a blue-stocking to be, and in the course of four hours had only two attacks of absence of mind, which does her honour. What a handsome face! Edmund, who is a connoisseur in such matters, maintains that she must have been more beautiful than her daughter,--high praise, since the daughter, by the way, pleases him as much as she does me. And then what wealth of learning behind that brow with its white hair! Wells of knowledge! a walking encyclopaedia!

"Although the fashion of her gown was that of twenty years ago, she is still a thorough _grande dame_; and that is saying much in consideration of the evident dilapidation of their finances.

"As a mother she may have her disagreeable side; she is too original,--too egotistic. She neglects her lovely daughter frightfully.

All the time not absorbed by her literary labours she devotes to the study of Paris; and what mode of pursuing this study with the due amount of thoroughness do you suppose she has invented? She drives about for a certain number of hours daily on the tops of the various omnibuses.

"Fancy!--on the top of an omnibus! A day or two ago, coming home from the Bon-Marche, as I was detained by a crowd of vehicles in the Rue du Bac I saw her comfortably installed upon the dizzy height of an omnibus-top. She wore a short black velvet cloak frayed at all the seams, the fur tr.i.m.m.i.n.g eaten away by moths, pearl-gray gloves (her hands are ridiculously small), such as were worn twenty years ago upon state occasions, a black straw bonnet, and no m.u.f.f. She sat between two vagabonds in white blouses, with whom she was talking earnestly, and looked like--well, like a queen dowager in disguise. As it was just beginning to rain, I sent my servant to beg her to alight, and took her home in my carriage.

"A lady on the top of an omnibus! It is frightful; it is impossible.

But still more impossible is a young girl who wishes to go upon the stage; and Stella wishes to go upon the stage.

"Nevertheless my relations with the Meinecks grow daily more intimate.

Heroic conduct on my part, is it not?

"Poor little Stella! I feel an infinite pity for her. I have no faith in her career. Pshaw! Stella Meineck on the stage! 'Tis ridiculous! She does not know what she is talking about.

"Meanwhile, I have impressed upon her that she is to tell no one of her artistic plans, which may come to naught. It might do her an injury.

And I have a scheme! Ah, leave it to me. What I do I do well. Before the season is over Stella will be married. To establish a young girl with no money is difficult nowadays, particularly in Paris, where every man has a fixed price; but there are bargains to be had occasionally.

"She is beautiful, she is lovely, and if the Meinecks do not date precisely from the Crusades the name sounds fine enough to impress some wealthy citizen who writes on his card the name of his estate in the country after his own, in hopes of thus manufacturing a t.i.tle for himself.

"I see you curl your haughty Austrian lip; you regard all these pseudo-aristocrats with sovereign contempt. You are wrong. Good heavens! why should not a man call himself after his castle if it has a prettier name than his own? Do we not find it more agreeable to present him to our acquaintances as Monsieur de Hauterive than as Monsieur Cabouat? Now 'tis out! There is a certain Monsieur Cabouat de Hauterive whom I have in my eye for Stella. He is very rich, has frequented the society of gentlemen from childhood, and has been received during the last few years by everybody; he loves music, has one of the finest private picture-galleries in Paris, and is in the prime of life,--barely forty-two,--quite young for a man: in short, he seems made for Stella. Last summer he laughingly challenged me to find a wife for him, expressly stating that he desired no dowry. At that time he was longing for repose and a home. I heard lately, however, that he had become entangled in a _liaison_ with S----, of the Opera-Bouffe. That would be frightful.

"Moreover, I have two other men in view for Stella,--an Englishman, forty-five years old, rather shy in consequence of deafness, of very good family, an income of six thousand pounds sterling, and of good trustworthy character; and a Dutchman whose ears were cut off in Turkey, wherefore he is compelled to wear his hair after the fashion of the youthful Bonaparte; but these are trifles.

"Poor melancholy little Stella will be glad to shelter her weary head beneath any respectable roof. The only thing that troubles me is that Zino knew her three years ago in Venice, and is perfectly bewitched by her. Can I prevent him from making love to her? It would be dreadful.

Not that it would ever occur to him to be wanting in respect for her, but he might turn her head, and that would ruin all my plans. She might then conceive the idea of marrying only a man with whom she is in love,--perfect nonsense in her position: there is none such for her.

Love is an article of supreme luxury in marriage, and exists for wealthy people and day-labourers only.

"Yes, when I do anything I do it well! I do not write to you for two years, but then I give you twenty pages at once. Have you had the patience to read all this? If you have, let me entreat you to take to heart what follows.

"Give us the pleasure of a visit from you. You do not know our new home, and I am burning with desire to show it to you. In the first story of our little house there is a room all ready for you, very comfortable, and, I give you my word, the chimney does not smoke. If you cannot be induced to come to us, let Edmund take rooms for you wherever you please. Only come! I shall else fancy that you have never forgiven me for once being bold enough to want to marry you off. Adieu!

I promise you faithfully not to try to la.s.so you again. With kindest messages from us all,

"Your affectionate sister,

"Therese."

An extra slip of paper accompanied this succinct doc.u.ment. Its contents were as follows:

"Paris, 27th December.

"How forgetful I am! The enclosed letter has been lying for a week in my portfolio. Although it is an old story now, I send it, because it will inform you of all that has been going on.

"Two words more. Since I wrote it I have invited Stella and Hauterive to dinner once, and have had them another evening in our box at the opera. They both dislike Wagner: that is something. Moreover, he thinks her enchanting, and she does not think him very disagreeable,--which is about all that can be expected in a _mariage de conveyance_. Everything is working along smoothly; the betrothal is a mere question of time.

What do you say now to my energy and capacity?"