Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 17

"Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who sat beside her.

The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child praised: her appet.i.te for compliments was inappeasable.

When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus, appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a brilliant success.

Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger women p.r.o.nounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating.

She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish fas.h.i.+on, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible.

Countess Muhlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young _debutante_ much kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its manifestation.

She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea.

He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side.

Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy'

maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother.

Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among the Prussian country gentry.

He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most s.p.a.cious, is too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking in her grace and beauty.

Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree, and aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation, with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed, and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless adorers declared it enchanting.

However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for two years, and would brook no rival near her throne.

The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before satisfying their own appet.i.tes. Some of them performed this duty with skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and gla.s.ses and invariably dropped something.

Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely pa.s.sed its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion, but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who, attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness.

Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most fas.h.i.+onable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of cuira.s.siers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had remarkably good appet.i.tes and talked incessantly. In their midst sat Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an a.s.semblage of women in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near relative.

Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff, who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek.

Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity, was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting.

She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it.

Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy, scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-gla.s.s which she held to her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion.

He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman.

Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than himself in this brilliant a.s.semblage.

This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of the t.i.tle which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual, and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman who had pa.s.sed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto.

After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to remember as she looked to-night. "The dew will be brushed off so soon,"

he said to himself, adding, "Oh, the pity of it!" He could not find her anywhere. "Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of detestable admirers!" he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt to explain.

The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's'

reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm.

Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the homage of her va.s.sals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl, exclaimed, "Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can any one have offended you?" His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion.

"Ah, no, no!" she sobbed.

"Shall I go for your grandmother?"

"No--no!"

He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked, "Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?"

She took the handkerchief from her eyes and a.s.sured him frankly and cordially, "Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me,"

adding, rather shyly, "Pray sit down."

Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem impolite to a friend of her grandmother's.

"She treats me exactly like an old man," the young captain said to himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her invitation, and took a seat near her.

"It will soon be over," she said, trying to dry her tears. But they would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite unnerved by the excitement of her _debut_, poor thing!

"Oh, heavens," she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself, "I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people should see me!"

Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and "those people." He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent, and then he said, kindly, "Countess Erika, would you rather keep your sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?"

His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow; she only s.h.i.+vered slightly from time to time.

"Ah, it was not a sorrow," she explained,--"only a distress,--something like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart.

You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of it; you have breathed this air from your childhood."

"I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika," he interposed. "I can understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it all."

"I felt as if I hated the people," she went on, her large melancholy eyes flas.h.i.+ng angrily, "and then--then, amidst all this elegance and arrogance,"--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way, as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--"the thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look at me so again. And then"--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet handkerchief--"to think that my mother belonged of right to all this bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that I have---- My heart seemed breaking." She paused, breathless.

"Poor Countess Erika!" he murmured, very gently. "It is one of the miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can upon the living."

"But whom have I to bestow my love upon?" Erika cried, with such an innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly suppress a smile. "I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not know what I meant, and would simply think me ill."

"But in fact," he said, now openly amused, "it is not to be supposed that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love."

"You mean that----" She looked at him in sudden dismay.

"I mean that--that----"

The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano.

His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless.

Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. "Ah, here you are, Erika!" she exclaimed. "This I call pretty conduct. I have been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers, to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it, Hedwig?" This last to Frau von Norbin.

"It was only Goswyn," the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice.