Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 25

"If you choose," her grandmother, already halfway up the staircase, replied.

With no thought of ill, Erika turned the corner of the nearest street.

She walked slowly, gazing up at the antique house-fronts on either side of her. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her call "Rika! Rika!"

She turned, and started as if stunned by a flash of lightning. Before her, his whiskers brushed straight out from his cheeks, rather more florid than of yore, in a very dandified plaid suit, with an eye-gla.s.s stuck in his eye, stood--Strachinsky.

"Rika, my dear little Rika!" he cried, holding out his hand. "What a surprise, and what a pleasure, to find you here, and without the Cerberus who always has barred our meeting! Fate will yet avenge it upon her."

Erika trembled with indignation, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Try as she might, she could not reply. A senseless, childish panic mastered her, as terrible as it would have been had this man still had power over her and been able to s.n.a.t.c.h her from her present surroundings and carry her back to the dreary life at Luzano.

"You are quite speechless," he went on, having meanwhile seized her hand and carried it to his lips. "No wonder, it is so long since we have seen each other. That jealous old drag----"

"I must beg you not to allude to my grandmother in that way!" she exclaimed, conscious of a benumbing, nervous pain at the remembrance of her terrible, sordid existence with this man.

"You are under the old woman's influence," Strachinsky declared, "and nothing else was to be expected; but now all will be different: when you are once married, more cordial relations will be established between us. I bear no malice; I forgive everything: I was always too forgiving,--it was my only fault. My poor wife always called me an idealist, a Don Quixote,--my poor, idolized Emma,--I never can forget her." And he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes.

"I must go home: my grandmother is expecting me," Erika murmured.

"I should think you could consent to bestow a few minutes upon your old father, if only out of regard for your mother's memory," Strachinsky observed, a.s.suming his loftiest expression.

Regard for her mother's memory! Certainly, she would not let him starve or suffer absolute want. "Do you need anything?" she asked.

"No," he replied, curtly, with a show of wounded feeling.

Then followed a pause. She looked round, ignorant of where she was, for during this most unwelcome interview she had continued to walk on without observing whither she was going.

"Will you show me the way to Maximilian Street?" she asked him.

"To the left, here," he replied, laconically; then, with lifted eyebrows, he observed, "Unpractical idealist that I am, I was disposed to forget and forgive the outrageous ingrat.i.tude with which you have treated me in these latter years,--nay, always. I had even resolved to call upon your betrothed; although that would have been to reverse the order of affairs. But I perceive that your arrogance and pride are greater than ever. No matter! I only hope you may not be punished for them too severely!" With these words, he touched his hat with grotesque dignity and was gone before she could collect herself to reply.

CHAPTER XII.

Meanwhile, the sky had become overcast; a keen wind began to blow, and large drops of rain were falling before Erika reached the door of the lodgings in Maximilian Street.

As she mounted the staircase she heard her grandmother's voice in the drawing-room and recognized the cordial tone which she used when speaking to the few people in the world with whom she was in genuine sympathy. Nevertheless, agitated by her late interview, Erika inwardly deplored the arrangement of their apartments which made it impossible that she should reach her bedroom without pa.s.sing through the drawing-room. She opened the door: her grandmother was seated on the sofa, and near her, in an arm-chair, with his back to the cas.e.m.e.nt window, was a man in civilian's dress. He arose, looking so tall that it seemed to Erika he must strike his head against the low ceiling of the room. She did not instantly recognize him, as he stood with his back to the light, but before he had advanced a step she exclaimed, "Goswyn!" and ran to him with both hands extended. When, with rather formal courtesy, he kissed one of the hands thus held out as if seeking succour, and then dropped it without any very cordial pressure, she was a.s.sailed by a certain embarra.s.sment: she remembered that she should have called him Herr von Sydow, and that it became her to receive her rejected suitor with a more measured dignity. But she was not self-possessed today. The shock of meeting her step-father had unstrung her nerves; the numbness which had of late paralyzed sensation began to depart; her youthful heart throbbed almost as loudly as it had done when she had first ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase in Bellevue Street, as strongly as upon that brilliant Thursday at the Countess Brock's, when, suddenly overcome by the memory of her unhappy mother, she had fled from the crowd of her admirers to sob out her misery in some lonely corner.

Lord Langley's worldly-wise, self-possessed betrothed had vanished, and in her stead was a shy, emotional young person, oppressed by a sense of her exaggerated cordiality towards the guest. She now seated herself as far as possible from him in one of the red plush arm-chairs.

"How long have you been in Bayreuth, Herr von Sydow?" she asked, in a timid little voice, which thrilled the young officer's heart like an echo of by-gone times.

Erika, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkened light of the room, noted that he smiled,--his old kind smile. His features looked more sharply chiselled than formerly; he had grown very thin, and had lost every trace of the slight clumsiness which had once characterized him.

"I came several days ago: my musical feast is already a thing of the past," he replied.

"Indeed! And what then keeps you in Bayreuth?" Erika asked.

He laughed a little forced laugh, and then blushed after his old fas.h.i.+on, but replied, very quietly, "I learned from your factotum Ludecke, whom I met the day before yesterday, that you were coming, and so I determined to await your arrival."

She longed to say something cordial and kind to him, but the words would not come. Instead her grandmother spoke.

"It was kind of you to stay in this tiresome old hole just to see us. I call it very kind," she a.s.sured him, and Erika added, meekly, "So do I."

A pause ensued, broken finally by Goswyn: "Let me offer you my best wishes on the occasion of your betrothal, Countess Erika." He uttered the words very bravely, but Erika could not respond: she suddenly felt that she had cause to be ashamed of herself, although what that cause was she did not know.

"Are you acquainted with Lord Langley, Goswyn?" the old Countess asked, in the icy tone which she always a.s.sumed when any allusion was made to her grand-daughter's engagement.

"No. You can imagine how eager I am to hear about him."

"He is one of the most entertaining Englishmen I have ever met,--a very clever man," the Countess declared, as if discussing some one in whom she took no personal interest.

"It was not to be supposed that the Countess Erika would sacrifice her freedom to any ordinary individual," said Goswyn, with admirable self-control.

For all reply the Countess raised the clumsy teacup before her to her lips.

With every word thus spoken Erika's sense of shame deepened, and she was seized with an intense desire to be frank with Goswyn, and to dispel any illusion he might entertain as to her betrothal. "Lord Langley is no longer young," she said, hurriedly. "I will show you his photograph."

She went into the adjoining room and brought thence the photograph in its case, which she opened herself before handing it to Goswyn. He looked at the picture, then at her, and then again at the picture. His broad shoulders twitched; without a word he closed the case, and put it upon a table, beside which Erika had taken her seat.

An embarra.s.sing silence ensued. The sound of rolling vehicles was heard distinctly from below, and one stopped before the dark door-way. Soon afterwards the staircase creaked beneath a heavy tread. Ludecke opened the low door of the old-fas.h.i.+oned apartment, and announced, "Frau Countess Brock."

The 'wicked fairy' unconsciously had a novel experience: her appearance was a relief.

As usual, she bowed and nodded on all sides, but, as she was unable for the moment to find her eye-gla.s.s, she saw n.o.body, and fell into the error of supposing a tall india-rubber tree in a tub before a window to be her particular friend the chamberlain Langefeld. Not until Goswyn discovered the eye-gla.s.s hanging by its slender cord among the jet ornaments and fringes with which her mantle was trimmed and humanely handed it to her, did she find out her mistake. Goswyn was about to withdraw after having rendered her this service, but she tapped him reproachfully on the shoulder and begged him to stay a moment with his old aunt. He might have resisted her request; but when Countess Lenzdorff added that he would please her by remaining, he complied, and seated himself again, although with something of the awkwardness apt to be shown by an officer when in civilian's dress.

The 'wicked fairy' established herself beside the Countess Anna upon the sofa behind the round table, and accepted from Erika's hand a cup of tea, which she drank in affected little sips. She was clad, as usual, in trailing mourning robes, although no one could have told for whom she wore them, and the Countess Anna's first question was, "Do you not dislike wandering about Bayreuth as the Queen of Night?"

"On the contrary," replied the 'wicked fairy,' rubbing her hands, "I like it. Awhile ago one of my friends declared that I appeared in Bayreuth as the mourning ghost of cla.s.sic music. Was it not charming?--but not at all appropriate, for I adore Wagner!" And she began to hum the air of the flower-girl scene, "trililili lilili----"

"What do you think of 'Parsifal'?" Countess Anna asked, turning to Goswyn. "One of the greatest humbugs of the century, eh? They howl as if possessed by an evil spirit, and call it joy,--call it song!"

"At the risk of falling greatly in your esteem, I must confess that 'Parsifal' made a profound impression upon me, Countess," Goswyn replied.

"Et tu, Brute!" his old friend exclaimed.

"I do not entirely approve of it, if that is anything in my favour," he rejoined.

"Ah, there is nothing like Wagner! there is but one G.o.d,--and one Wagner!" The 'wicked fairy' went on humming, closing her eyes, and waving her hands affectedly in the air.

"The scene containing the air which you are humming is not one of my favourites," Goswyn remarked.

"Oh, it charmed us most of all,--Dorothea and me," the 'wicked fairy'

declared. "Those hovering little temptresses, so seductive, and Parsifal, the chaste, in their midst!" She clasped her hands in an ecstasy. "The other evening at Frau Wagner's we met Van Dyck. He is rather strong in his mode of speech. Dorothea seemed much entertained by him, but afterwards she thought him shocking."

"Your niece seems to have a positive mania just now for thinking everything 'shocking,'" Countess Anna said, dryly. "She sings no more music-hall ditties, and casts down her eyes modestly when she sees a French novel in a book-shop. Such a transformation is, to say the least, startling. Oh, I beg pardon, Goswyn; I always forget that Dorothea is your sister-in-law."