Читать книгу Countess Erika's Apprenticeship - Ossip Schubin - Страница 4

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Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room, recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by the natural result.

He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at peace.

This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.

His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her husband's brilliant scheme.

"It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances," sighed the Baron when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.

It was near the end of August, and the asters were beginning to bloom. Cheerful industry reigned throughout the village. The Baron indeed complained of the failure of the harvest, but this he did of every harvest the proceeds of which were insufficient to cover the interest of his numerous debts: the peasantry, who by no means exacted so high a rate of profit from their meadows and pasture-lands, were happy and content, and the stubble-fields were already dotted with hayricks.

Outside in the garden a little girl in a worn and faded frock was playing funeral: she was interring her canary, which she had found dead in its cage. She was very sad: the bird had been her best friend. No one paid her any attention. Her mother was away, and the Englishwoman whose duty it was to superintend her education was just now occupied in company with the bailiff, an ambitious young man desirous of improving his knowledge of languages, in studying the working of a new mowing-machine. From time to time the child glanced through the open door of the principal entrance to the castle into a rather bare hall, its floor paved with red tiles and its high vaulted walls whitewashed and adorned with stags' horns of all sizes. The Baron von Strachinsky had bought these last in one lot at an auction, but he had long cherished the conviction that they all came from his forest. He had a decided taste for fine, high-sounding expressions, always designating his wood as his 'forest,' his estate as his 'domain,' and his garden as his 'park.'

A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden bucket beside her.

The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly, when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.

A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen, and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most only two or three times in a lifetime.

The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.

The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary pretext.

She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said, "What is it?"

"Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace."

With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von Strachinsky came out into the hall.

He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with red facings and buttons.

"What do you want?" he roared, in a rage at being disturbed for so slight a cause.

The young fellow shrank from him, murmuring in a hoarse, tremulous voice, the voice of a very young man growing fast and but scantily nourished, "I am on my way home."

"What's that to me?" Strachinsky thundered, not without some excuse for his indignation.

The youth flushed scarlet. Shyly and awkwardly he held out his portfolio to the sleepy Baron. Evidently it contained drawings, which he would like to sell but had not the courage to show.

"Give him an alms!" Herr von Strachinsky shouted to the cook, who, hearing the noise, had hurried into the hall; then, turning to the scrubbing-woman, who was standing beside her steaming bucket, her toothless jaws wide open in dismay, he went on: "If you ever again dare for the sake of a wretched vagabond of a house-painter's apprentice to deprive me of the few moments of repose which I contrive to snatch from my wretched and tormented existence, I'll dismiss you on the spot!" With which he retired to his room, banging to the door behind him.

The cook offered the lad two kreutzers. His hand--a long, slender, boyish hand, almost transparent--shook, as he angrily threw the money upon the floor and departed.

The little girl in the garden had been watching the scene attentively. Her delicate frame trembled with indignation, as she rose, and, with arms hanging at her sides and small fists clinched in a somewhat dramatic attitude, fixed her eyes upon the door behind which the Baron had disappeared. She had very bright eyes for a child of nine years, and a very penetrating glance, a glance by no means friendly to the Baron. Thus she stood for a minute gazing at the door, then put her arms akimbo, frowned, and reflected. Before long she shrugged her shoulders with an air of precocious intelligence, deserted the newly-made grave, and hurried into the house, and to the pantry.

The door was open. She looked about her. By strict orders of the Baron, in his wife's absence all remains of provisions were hoarded in the pantry, although they were seldom of any use. As a consequence of this sordid housekeeping the child found a great store of dishes and bowls filled with scraps of meat and fish, stale cakes, and fermenting stewed apricots. It took her some time to discover what satisfied her,--a cold roast pheasant, and some pieces of tempting almond-cake left over from the last meal. These she packed in a basket with a flask of wine that had been opened, a tumbler, knife and fork, and a clean napkin. She decorated the basket with pink asters, and hurried out of the back door, intent upon playing the part of beneficent fairy.

Deep down in her heart there was a vein of romance which contrasted oddly with the keen good sense already gleaming in her bright childish eyes.

She ran until she was quite out of breath, searching vainly for her handsome vagabond. Should she inquire of some one if a young man with a portfolio under his arm had passed along the road? Her heart beat; she felt a little shy. From a distance the warm summer breeze wafted towards her the notes of a foreign air clearly whistled, and she directed her steps towards the spot whence it seemed to proceed.

There! yes, there----

Beside the road rippled a little brook on its way to the rushing stream beyond the village, a brook so narrow that a twelve-year-old school-boy could easily have jumped across it. Nevertheless the Baron von Strachinsky had thought best to span it with a magnificent three-arched stone bridge. In the shade thrown by this monumental structure, for the erection of which the Baron had vainly hoped to be decorated by his sovereign, the lad was crouching. He was even paler than before, and there were traces of tears on his cheeks, but all the same he whistled on with forced gaiety, as one does whistle when one has nothing to eat and hopes to forget his hunger.

The little girl felt like crying. He looked up and directly at her. Overcome by sudden shyness, she stood for a moment as if rooted to the spot; then, awkwardly offering her basket, she stammered, "Will you have it?" When he did not answer she simply set the basket down before him, and in her confusion would have avoided all explanations by running away.

But a warm young hand detained her firmly and kindly. "Did you come from there?" the lad asked, pointing to the castle. "Who sent you?"

His voice was agreeable, and his address that of a well-born youth.

"No one knows that I came," she answered, in confusion, and seeing that he frowned discontentedly at this, she added hastily, by way of excuse, "But if mamma had been at home she certainly would have sent me; she never lets a beggar leave the house without giving him something to eat."

At the word 'beggar' he turned away, whereupon she began to cry loudly, so loudly that he had to laugh. "But what are you crying for?" he asked; and she replied, in desperation, "I am crying because you will not eat anything."

"Indeed! is that all you are crying for?"

"Yes. Oh, do eat something,--do!" she sobbed.

"Well, since it is to gratify you so hugely," he replied, in a bantering tone; "but sit down beside me and help me." He looked full into her eyes with his careless, merry smile, then took her tiny hand in his and pressed his full, warm lips upon it twice.

She was greatly pleased by this courteous homage, and perhaps by the caress, for it was seldom that anything of the kind fell to her share. She had fully decided that the young fellow was no mechanic, but a prince in disguise, and in this exhilarating conviction she sat down upon the grass beside him and unpacked her basket. How he seemed to enjoy its contents, and how white his teeth were! There were also various indications of refinement and good breeding about his manner of eating, which would have given a more experienced observer than the little enthusiast beside him matter for reflection with regard to his rank in life. His portfolio lay beside him. She thrust a slender forefinger between its pasteboard covers tied together with green cotton strings, and whispered, gravely, "May I look into it?"

"If you would like to," he replied.

With great precision, as if the matter in hand were the unveiling of a sacred relic, she untied the strings and opened the portfolio. Her eyes opened wide, and an "Oh!" of enthusiastic admiration escaped her lips. A wiser critic than the little girl of nine would scarcely have accorded the sketches so much approval. They were undoubtedly stiff and unfinished. Nevertheless, no genuine lover of art would have passed them by without notice, for they indicated a high degree of talent. The hand was unskilled, but the lad had eyes to see.

The little girl gazed in rapt admiration. After a while she looked gravely up at her new friend, her compassion converted into awe. "Now I know what you are,--an artist!"

"Do you think so?" the lad rejoined, flattered by the reverential tone in which the word was uttered: meanwhile, he had finished the pheasant, and was considerably less pale than before.

"Can you paint everything you see?" she asked, after a short pause.

"I cannot paint anything," he answered, with a sort of merry discontent which, now that his hunger was satisfied, characterized his every look and movement. "I cannot paint anything," he repeated, with a little nod, "but I try to paint everything that I like."

They looked in each other's eyes, he suppressing a laugh, she in some distress. At last she blurted out, "Do you not like me at all, then?"

"Shall I paint you?"

She nodded.

"What will you give me for it?"

She put her hand in her pocket, and took out a very shabby porte-monnaie, a superannuated possession of Herr von Strachinsky's which he had given her in a moment of unwonted generosity, and in which were five bright silver guilders. "Is that enough?" she asked.

"I will not take money," he replied.

She had been guilty of another stupidity. She was bitterly conscious of it, and so, to justify herself, she put on an air of great wisdom. "You are a very queer artist," she admonished him, "not to take money for your pictures. No wonder you nearly starve."

He took the hand which held the five despised silver coins, and kissed it three times.

"I do take money for my pictures," he declared, "but not from you: I will draw your picture with all my heart."

"For nothing?"

"No: you must give me a kiss for it. Will you?" He watched her without seeming to look at her. Again the insinuating, roguish smile hovered upon his lips,--a charming smile, which he must have inherited from some kind, light-hearted woman.

She was not quite sure of the rectitude of her conduct, her heart throbbed almost as if she were on the verge of some compact with Satan, but finally, "If you will not do it without," she said, with a sigh, plucking at her hands,--very pretty hands, neglected though they were.

He nodded gaily. "All right."

Then he made her sit down on the grass opposite him, unpacked his tin colour-case, fastened a piece of rough gray paper upon the cover of his portfolio, and began.

She sat very still, very grave, her feet stretched out straight in front of her, supporting herself upon both hands. Around them breathed the soft August air, the glowing summer sunshine sparkled on the translucent waters of the little brook above which the stone bridge displayed its pompous proportions, while upon the banks grew hundreds of blue forget-me-nots, and yellow water-lilies bloomed among the trunks of the old willows, which here and there showed gaping wounds in their bark, from which meadow daisies were sprouting and, with the silvery willow leaves, showing softly gray against the green background of the gentle ascent of the pasture-land. The brook murmured dreamily, and from the distance came the rhythmic beat of the threshers' flails. Steam threshing-machines were not then in general use.

Both were mute,--he in the warmth of his youthful artistic enthusiasm, she with expectation.

Suddenly the shrill tinkle of a bell broke the quiet. "That is the dinner-bell!" the little girl exclaimed, springing up with an impatient shrug. She knew that there could be no more pleasure and liberty for her; she would be missed, looked for, and found.

"I must go home," she cried. "Have you finished it?"

"Very nearly, yes."

She ran and looked over his shoulder, breathless with astonishment at what she saw upon the gray paper,--a little girl in a very short, faded gown, and long red stockings, also much faded, a very slender figure, a little round face, a delicate little nose, two grave bright eyes that looked out into the world with a startled expression, a short upper lip, a round chin, a very fair skin, and shining reddish-brown hair which waved long and silky about the narrow childish shoulders and was tied at the back of the head with a blue ribbon.

He had unfastened the sketch from the portfolio, and she held it in her hands, examining it narrowly. "Is it like?" she asked, and then, looking down at herself, she added, "The gown is like, and the stockings are like, but the face,--is that like?" She looked up at him eagerly.

"I cannot do it any better," he replied, rather ambiguously.

"Oh, you must not be vexed," she made haste to say. "I only wanted to know if--how can I tell--if--well, it looks too pretty to me, this picture of yours."

He gave her a comical side-glance. "Every artist must flatter a little if he wishes to please a lady," was his reply.

"And you give me the picture?" she asked, shyly, after a little pause.

"Why, you ordered it," he replied.

"I--I--thank you," she stammered, then turned away and would have run off.

But he was by no means inclined to let her off so easily. "And my pay?" he cried, catching her in his arms and clasping her so tightly that her little feet were lifted off the daisy-sprinkled turf. "Traitress!" he exclaimed, reproachfully.

She blushed scarlet, although she was but just nine years old; she put her arm around his neck and kissed him directly upon the mouth; his lips were still the lips of a girl. Then she walked away, but she could not hasten from the spot; something seemed to stay her steps. She paused and looked back.

The lad was busied with packing up his small belongings: all the gaiety had vanished from his face, he looked pale and sad again. With her heart swelling with pity, she ran back to him.

"You come for your basket," he said, good-naturedly, holding it out to her.

"No, it isn't that," she replied, shaking her head, as she put down the basket on a willow stump and came close up to him.

In some surprise he smiled down at her. "Something else to ask, my little princess?"

"No,--that is----" She plucked him by the sleeve. "See here," she began, confused and yet coaxingly, "do not be vexed,--only--I thought just now how bad it would be if before you get home you should be treated by somebody else as that man treated you,"--she pointed to the castle,--"and then--and then--oh, I know so well how dreadful it is to have no money. I--please take the guilders: when you are a great artist you can give them back to me." And before he knew what she was doing she had slipped the porte-monnaie into his coat-pocket.

The tears stood in his eyes; he put his arm around her, and looked at her as if to learn her face by heart.

"It might be," he muttered; "perhaps you will bring me luck; I may still come to be something; and if you then should be as dear and pretty as you are now----" He kissed her upon both eyes.

"Rika!" a shrill voice called from a distance.

"Is that your name?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And what is your last name?"

"My step-father's is Strachinsky. I do not know mine."

"Rika!" the shrill tones sounded nearer.

"And what is your name?" she asked him.

Before he could reply, the fluttering skirts of the English governess came in sight: suddenly aroused to a consciousness of her neglected duties, she was looking along the road for her charge.

The little girl clasped her picture close and fled.

When she reached the house she ran up-stairs to put her precious portrait safely away, and then she allowed a clean apron to be put on over her faded frock by the agitated Englishwoman,--whose name was in fact Sophy Lange, and who had been born in Hamburg of honest German parents,--after which she presented herself in the dining-room with an assured air as if unconscious of the slightest wrong-doing.

Her step-father received her with a stern reproof, and instantly inquired where she had been. She replied, curtly, "To the village;" upon which he read her a tremendous lecture upon the enormity of idly wandering about the country, addressing at the same time a few annihilating remarks to the Englishwoman from Hamburg. He had exchanged his bright-blue morning coat for a light summer suit, in which he presented a much better appearance. But he was no more pleasing to his step-daughter in his light-brown costume than in the blue coat with red facings. She paid very little attention to his discourse, but quietly went on eating. Miss Sophy, however, shed tears. The Baron von Strachinsky impressed her greatly; nay, more, she honoured him as a being from a higher sphere. He was popular with women of all ranks, from the lowest to the highest,--why, it would be difficult to tell. He possessed a certain amount of personal magnetism, but it had no effect upon his step-daughter.

They were extraordinarily antipathetic, Strachinsky and his clear-eyed little step-daughter. What she took exception to in him was of so complex and delicate a nature as to defy explanation in words. What annoyed him in her was principally the fact that, in spite of her tender age, she saw through him, was quite free of all illusions with regard to him.

It always increases our regard for our neighbour if he will but view us with flattering eyes. Some few illusions in our behalf we require from those around us; they are absolutely necessary to the pleasure of daily intercourse. But the demands of Herr von Strachinsky in this respect were beyond all reason, while his step-daughter's capacity to comply with them was unusually limited.

Dinner progressed as usual: the gentleman continued to admonish, Miss Sophy to weep, and little Rika to maintain strict silence, until dessert, when Herr von Strachinsky, for whom eating was one of the most important occupations in life, inquired after an almond-cake of which, as he assured the servant, five pieces had been left from breakfast,--yes, five pieces and a little broken one: he had counted them.

The servant repaired to the kitchen for information: the cook could give none, save that she herself had put the cake away in the pantry, whence it had vanished, without a trace, since the morning. Herr von Strachinsky was indignant; he accused every servant in the establishment of the theft, from the foremost of those employed in the house to the lowest stable-boy, and talked of having bars put up at the windows. Little Rika let him give full sweep to his anger; she fairly gloated over his irritation; at last she remarked, indifferently, "What would be the use of bars on the windows, when any one can walk in at the door? It is never locked."

"Silence! what do you know about it?" thundered her step-father.

"Oh, I know all about it," the child quietly replied, "and I know what became of the cake."

"What?"

"I took it. I carried it out to the painter whom you turned out of the house."

Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at this confession. "You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the road?" he asked, with a gasp at each word.

"Yes," the child replied, composedly; "and he was not a house-painter fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all the same if he had been a house-painter fellow."

"Indeed! And why?" he asked, with a sneer.

She looked him full in the face. "Why? Because you treated him so badly, and I was sorry for him."

For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, "My step-daughter is a positive torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys."

The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a prominent part.

Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.

The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl; moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother say, "And where is Rika?"

Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's arms.

"You look finely, darling," the mother exclaimed, patting her little daughter's cheeks. "Have you been a good girl?"

Rika made no reply. Frau von Strachinsky's face took on a sad, troubled expression. Strachinsky frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. His wife looked from him to the child, who had taken her hand and was about to kiss it. "What has she been doing now?" she asked, turning to her husband.

"Not to speak of her behaviour towards myself,--behaviour that is perfectly unwarrantable,--I repeat, unwarrantable," said Strachinsky,--"not to speak of that, the girl has again so far forgotten herself as----well, I will tell you about it by and by."

"Tell now!" the child exclaimed. "I'd rather you would tell now!"

"Hush, Miss Impertinence!" Strachinsky ordered her; then, turning to his wife, he asked, "Do you bring good news? Is your uncle willing?"

Fran von Strachinsky shook her head sadly. "Unfortunately, no,--not quite," she murmured; "but he was very kind; he was enchanted with Bobby." Bobby was Rika's step-brother, whom the poor mother had carried with her upon her distressing journey, perhaps as some consolation for herself, perhaps to soften the hearts of her relatives. He did, indeed, seem admirably adapted to this latter purpose, for he was a charming little fellow, with a lovely pink-and-white face crowned by brown curls, and plump bare arms. His hands at present were filled with toys, which he carried to his sister to console her, since he instantly perceived that she was in disgrace.

"I cannot understand that," Strachinsky murmured. "I should have credited Uncle Nick with a more generous spirit." And he looked sternly at his wife, as if she were responsible for the ill success of her mission.

She laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "You are an incorrigible idealist, my poor Nello: you judge all men by yourself."

And Strachinsky passed his hand over his eyes, and sighed forth sentimentally, "Yes, I am an idealist, an incorrigible idealist, a perfect Don Quixote."

The rest of the afternoon was passed by the pair in the large drawing-room, trying to obtain some clear understanding of the state of Strachinsky's financial affairs,--a very difficult task.

She, pencil in hand, did the reckoning. He paced the room to and fro with a tragic air, and smoked cigarettes. From time to time he uttered some effective sentence, such as, "I am unfit for this world!" or, "Of course a Marquis Posa like myself!"

She sat quietly contemplating the figures with which the sheet before her was filled. Her face grow sad, while her husband's, on the contrary, brightened. Since he was succeeding in casting all his cares upon her shoulders, he felt quite cheerful.

"I never had the least idea of this ten thousand guilders which you tell me you owe," the tortured woman exclaimed, in a sudden access of anger.

"No?" her husband rejoined, with easy assurance. "I surely wrote you about it; or could the trifle have slipped my memory? Yes, now I remember you were with the children at Johannisbad. Löwy came and pestered me with its being such a splendid chance,--told me I had no right to hold back; and so I bought a hundred shares of Schönfeld.' Good heavens! what do I understand of business?--how is such knowledge possible for a gentleman? In the army one never learns anything of the kind, and what can one do save follow advice? I trust others far too readily,--you have always told me so; it is the natural result of the magnanimity of my nature. I blame myself for it. I am an Egmont,--a perfect Egmont. Poor Egmont! There is nothing left for me but to sigh with him, 'Ah, Orange! Orange!'"

Strachinsky imagined that this confession, uttered with an indescribably tragic emphasis, would quite reconcile his wife to his unfortunate speculation. But, to his great surprise, the anticipated result did not ensue. Frau von Strachinsky pushed her thick dark hair back from her temples, and exclaimed, "I cannot understand you; you promised me so faithfully not to speculate in stocks again."

"But, my dear Emma, the opportunity seemed to me so brilliant a one, that I should have thought myself a very scoundrel not to try at least----"

"And you see the result."

"When a man acts conscientiously and with the best intentions, he should not be reproached, even although his efforts result in failure," he said, pompously. "No, my dear Emma, not a word; do not speak now: you will only be sorry for it by and by."

But Emma Strachinsky was not on this occasion to be thus silenced: she was indignant, and almost in despair. "You have always acted with the 'best intentions'!" she exclaimed, hoarse with agitation, "and the result of your good intentions will be to beggar my children. Can you take it ill if I withhold from you my few farthings, that there may be some provision for the children in the future?"

Jagello von Strachinsky looked her over from head to foot. "Your few farthings!" he said, with annihilating severity. "What indelicacy! Well, I shall steer my course accordingly. Do as you choose in future. I have nothing more to say." And, with head haughtily erect, cavalier and martyr every inch of him, he stalked from the room.

She looked after him: she had gone too far; again her impulsiveness had led her astray. Her heart throbbed; she felt sore with agitation, shame, and remorse.

When Erika, towards evening, was playing hide-and-seek with her little brother in the garden, she saw her mother and her step-father strolling affectionately along the gravel path between the hawthorn bushes. He was already rather bald; his limbs were loosely knit; he wore full whiskers, and there was a languishing glance in his eyes, but he was still handsome, in spite of a dissipated air; she was tall, slender, and erect, with large dark eyes, and a pale, noble countenance, that could never, however, have been beautiful. They walked close together, and to a casual observer presented an ideal picture of happy wedded life. And yet when one observed more narrowly--his arm was thrown around her shoulder, and he leaned upon her instead of supporting her; the swing of his heavy frame, the languishing, sentimental expression of his face, everything about him, bespoke a self-satisfied, luxurious temperament; while she----in her eyes there was restless anxiety, and her figure looked as though it were slowly being bowed to the ground by a burden which she was either unable or afraid to shake off.

She walked with a patiently regular step beneath her heavy load. Suddenly she seemed uneasy: she shivered.

"What is it, darling?" Strachinsky asked her, clinging still closer to her.

"Nothing," she murmured, "nothing," and walked on.

They were passing the spot where the little brother and sister were playing, and in the gathering twilight Emma Strachinsky became aware of a pair of clear dark-brown childish eyes that seemed to ask, "How can she love that man?"

Those childish eyes were positively uncanny!

The child's dislike dated from far in the past; it was in fact the first clearly formulated emotion of her little heart. During the first years of her second marriage the mother, prompted by an exaggerated tenderness, had concealed from her little daughter as long as possible the fact that Strachinsky was not her own father: the child had learned the truth by accident. When she rushed to her mother to have what she had heard confirmed, she was received with the tenderest caresses, as though she were to be consoled for a great grief, while she was entreated not to be sad, and was told that "'papa' was far too good and kind to make any difference between herself and his own children, that he loved her dearly," etc.

The mother's caresses were highly prized by the child, all the more that they were rather rare, but on this occasion she could not even seem to enjoy them, since she could not endure to be pitied and soothed for what brought her in reality intense relief.

Her mother perceived this, and it angered her, although at the same time the child's evident though silent dislike made a deep impression upon her. Perhaps the consciousness of its existence in so frank and childish a mind first gave occasion to distrust of the terrible infatuation to which the gifted woman's entire existence had fallen a sacrifice.

Frau von Strachinsky was wont to go herself every evening to see that all was as it should be in the large airy apartment where both the children slept. She hovered noiselessly from one bed to the other, signing the cross upon the brow of each,--an old-fashioned custom to which she still clung although she had long since adopted very philosophical views with regard to religion,--and giving each sleeping child a tender good-night kiss.

The evening after her return she went to the nursery at the usual hour, but lingered only by the crib of the sleeping boy, passing her daughter's bed with averted face. Rika sat up and looked after her; her mother had reached the door without once looking back. This the child could not endure. She sprang out of bed, ran to her mother, and seized her by her skirt. "Mother! mother!" she cried, in a frenzy, "you will not go without bidding me good-night?"

"Let go of my gown," Frau von Strachinsky replied, in a cold voice, which nevertheless trembled with emotion.

"But what have I done, mother?" the child cried, clinging to her passionately.

"Can you ask?" her mother rejoined, sternly.

"Why should I not ask? How should I know what he has told you? I was not by when he accused me."

"Erika! is that the way to speak of your father?" her mother said, angrily.

The little girl frowned. "He is not my father," she declared, defiantly.

Frau von Strachinsky sighed. "Your ingratitude is shocking," she exclaimed, and then, controlling herself with an effort, she added, "But that I cannot alter: you are an unnatural, hard-hearted, stubborn child. I cannot soften your heart, but I can insist that you conduct yourself with propriety, and I forbid you once for all to run after vagabonds in the street. And now go to bed."

"I will not go to bed until you bid me good-night!" cried the child. She stood there with naked little feet, in her white night-gown, over which her long reddish-brown hair hung down. "And I was not so naughty as you think. You ought not to condemn me without giving me time to defend myself."

The child was so desperately reasonable, her mother could not think her wrong, in spite of her momentary anger. She paused. An idea evidently occurred to the little girl. "Only wait one minute!" she exclaimed, as she flew across the room to a drawer where she kept her toys, and, returning with her protégé's water-colour sketch, held it up triumphantly before her mother's eyes. "Look at that!" she cried.

Involuntarily Emma looked. "Where did that come from?" she exclaimed, forgetting her vexation in freshly-aroused interest.

"Do you know who it is?" asked Erika, stretching her slender neck out of the embroidered ruffle of her night-gown.

"Of course; it is your picture. It is charming. Who did it?"

"The vagabond whom I ran after, the house-painter fellow," Erika replied. "At least you can see he was not that, but a young artist."

Her mother was silent.

"Ah, if you had only been at home!" the child's bare feet were growing colder, and her cheeks hotter with excitement, "you would have done just as I did. If you had only seen him! He was very handsome, and so pale and thin and weary with hunger,--why, I could have knocked him down,--and he never begged,--he was too proud,--only held out the portfolio to papa, and his hand trembled----" Suddenly the excitable temperament which the girl had inherited from her mother asserted itself, and she began to sob, her whole childish frame quivering with emotion. "And papa turned him out of doors, and told the cook--to give--to give him two kreutzers. He threw them away--and then--then I ran after him!"

Frau von Strachinsky had grown very pale; the child's agitated story had evidently made an impression upon her, but she did her best to preserve a severe demeanour. "But it is very improper to run after strangers in the street; you are too old."

Erika hung her head, ashamed. "But I should not have done it if papa had not abused him," she declared, by way of excuse. "I did it out of pity for him."

"Pity is a very poor counsellor." Her mother said these words with an emphasis which Erika never forgot, and which was to echo in her soul years afterwards. Then she extricated herself from the child's embrace and left the room, closing the door behind her.

A few minutes afterwards she reopened the door. Little Erika was still standing where she had left her.

"Go to bed," said her mother, in a far more gentle tone, stooping down to kiss her, "and be a better girl another time."

The child clasped her slender little arms tightly about her mother's neck in a strangling embrace, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, you do love me still?" The pale woman did not answer the question, save by a kiss; she waited until the little girl had crept back to bed, and then tucked in the coverlet about her shoulders, and once more left the room.

Erika, precocious child that she was, was a prey to emotions of a very mingled character. She had won a great victory over her step-father,--of this she was well aware,--but then she had grieved her mother sorely. All at once she was seized with profound remorse in recalling to-day's stroke of genius. Beneath her mother's severity she had been sure of having right on her side; now a great uncertainty possessed her. "It is very improper to run after strangers in the street; you are too old," she repeated, meekly, and she grew hot. "What would my mother think if she knew that I had kissed him?"

In the midst of her distress she was overpowered by intense fatigue: her eyelids drooped above her eyes, and with her nightly prayer still on her lips she fell asleep.

Emma von Strachinsky did not sleep; she sat in the bare room adjoining the nursery, the room where she taught Erika her lessons. She wrote two very difficult letters to her husband's creditors, and then proceeded to sew upon a gown for her daughter. She was proud of the child's beauty as only the mother can be who has all her life long been conscious of being obliged to forego the gift of beauty for herself. She loved her daughter idolatrously,--the daughter whom she often treated with a severity verging upon injustice, and whom she sometimes avoided for days because the glance of those clear eyes troubled her.

The windows of the room were open, and looked out upon the road. The fragrance of ripened grain was wafted in from the earth outside, resting from its summer fruitfulness and saturated with the August sunshine. A song floated up through the silent night: the reapers were working by moonlight. The low murmur of the brook accompanied the song, and now and then could be heard the soft swish of the grain falling beneath the scythe. A cricket chirped.

Emma dropped her hands in her lap and gazed into vacancy.

Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. "Emma," he said, tenderly, "have you written to Franks and Ziegler?"

"Yes," she replied, and her voice sounded hoarse. "There lie the letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish."

"Not at all," her husband exclaimed, gaily. "I have implicit confidence in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amusement."

"Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?" Emma asked, with some bitterness.

Strachinsky immediately assumed an injured air. "You are irritable again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good heavens! it is hard enough, but--circumstances will have it so." He passed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of great dignity.

She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, "That eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed."

"I cannot. I am not sleepy," she replied, plying her needle; "and, moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it." She bent over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.

Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging footsteps.

When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.

The song was still informing the silence.

At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were heard passing along the road. The reapers were going home. They passed by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. "How happy they look! and why?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.

And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to unloose the latchet of her shoe!

Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted, enthusiastic, prone to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for affection had wrought her ruin.

Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most illustrious of the native Bohemian nobility; he was of doubtful descent. She had always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the annoyances of life.

He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was, previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he joined a Jäger corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.

She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold, unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her formal marriage inspired her with horror.

Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever shown her any passionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.

The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages: a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming, and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with passionate declarations of love.

Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, "And you believe the coxcomb?"

The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. "And why should I not believe him?" she asked, sharply. "Because, perhaps, you think me incapable of inspiring a man with affection?"

"Nonsense!" replied the sensible mother-in-law. "You could inspire affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy."

"Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my money?" Emma exclaimed, indignantly.

"No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition. Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers itself, and he embraces it: voilà tout. He is not to blame, but his suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by it."

When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.

The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating. Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.

Eight years had passed since then. First came a few months during which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's unsparing predictions.

His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest garrison, were habitués of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased, and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced. Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they remained until the next night.

But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the room, dictating amounts to her.

In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished friends.

Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any depressing consciousness of his position.

Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already assembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to economize, and especially not to put too much butter on their bread, afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'

To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated nobility of character.

This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don Quixote.

Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through. None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst of ruin to insure his own personal ease.

But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all that was really noble in him.

In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong that no loosening of it was possible.

She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness, became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so adored her even during their honeymoon.

Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she had no right to.

But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have screamed. No, no, she would not see!

There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.