Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 20

First she congratulated herself that they were now a _partie carree_; it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned across to Goswyn and asked, "Which of the gentlemen will appropriate Feistmantel?"

"That is for the ladies to decide," Goswyn replied, laughing.

"Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot," said Dorothea, "for I prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow," p.r.o.nouncing the name with mock pathos,--"yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not pretty?"

Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the ring.

That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.

Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the question.

The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.

It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate in Silesia, she developed an astonis.h.i.+ng degree of tenderness, but she could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous.

Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day!

how she longed for it all!

At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had a.s.sumed the conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in her new life.

In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.

"She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he was obliged to be content.

But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea would never be led astray through pa.s.sion; but at the thought of the devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward, Otto von Sydow shuddered.

Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such thoughts with regard to his wife.

CHAPTER VIII.

A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fas.h.i.+onable artist Riedel permission to paint her grand-daughter as "Heather Blossom." The truth as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse, people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was their affair.

As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as "Heather Blossom," of course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily, seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.

The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair, something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's "Gretchen at her Wheel."

Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she had not expected anything better.

"A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel," she said of him: "he flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in them."

She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them, jeering _coram publico_ at the beautifying salve which the model members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life pa.s.ses for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.

The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight cowardly and when she alluded to the fas.h.i.+onable world usually designated it briefly as "Kapilavastu."

Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Kapilavastu is the name of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped to s.h.i.+eld him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!"

Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, "Oh, what a world it is!"

All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fas.h.i.+on,' which did not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked being aught but 'a great lady.'

When Riedel had completed his picture of "Heather Blossom" to his own satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'

Permission was accorded him,--of course with the proviso that the name of the model should be strictly concealed.

Whether the picture were the 'sentimental daub' which the old Countess dubbed it, or the exquisite work of art which Riedel's numerous admirers p.r.o.nounced it, certain it is that it attracted a great deal of attention,--so much, indeed, that the Countess Anna was one day seized with a desire to witness for herself the effect produced by it upon a gaping public.

It was a fair, suns.h.i.+ny day in March when she walked to the end of the Thiergarten with Erika, slowly followed by her carriage. It was a pleasure to her to observe the undisguised admiration excited by her grand-daughter. And the girl was worthy of it. Tall, distinguished in air and bearing, faultlessly dressed in dark-gray cloth with a long boa of blue-fox fur and a black hat and feathers, she walked with an air and a bearing that a young queen might have envied.

"Every one looks after you, as if you were the Empress herself," said her grandmother, with a laugh, as she espied a young officer of dragoons, who with his hand at his cap saluted the grandmother but looked at the grand-daughter.

"Goswyn! this is lucky," she exclaimed, beckoning to him. "We are on our way to Schulte's to look at Erika's portrait. Will you come with us?"

"If you will let me," he replied. "But you will probably not see the portrait," he went on, smiling,--"only a great crowd of people. At least that was almost all I could see the last time I was there."

"Oh, you have been there?" said the old Countess, with a merry twinkle of her eye. "Then, of course, you do not care to go again."

"No, certainly not to see the picture; but you cannot get rid of me now, Countess."

Beneath the lindens on one side of the way stood a crippled boy with a huge hump, playing the accordion. The squeaking tones of the miserable instrument were but little in harmony with the splendour of the Thiergarten at this hour. A lady, as she pa.s.sed the child, turned away with a shudder, and tears started in the boy's eyes and rolled down his pale, precocious face, as he retreated into still deeper shade.

Without interrupting what he was saying to the old Countess, Goswyn gave the boy some money. On a sudden Countess Lenzdorff noticed that Erika was not beside her. "Where is the child?" she exclaimed, looking round. Erika had fallen behind to stroke the little cripple's thin cheeks.

When she perceived that she was observed, she hastily left the child.

Her own cheeks were flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Why, Erika!" her grandmother cried out, in dismay, "what are you about?"

"I could not help it," the girl replied: "it was so hateful of that woman to show the boy her disgust at the sight of him." She could scarcely restrain her tears.

"But, Erika,"--her grandmother put her hand on the girl's arm, and spoke very gently,--"you might catch some disease."

"And if I did," Erika murmured, still under the influence of strong emotion, "I should not be half so wretched as that child. Why should I have everything and he nothing?"

To this no reply could be made; even the Countess's talent for repartee failed her, and the three walked on together silently. The Countess Anna glanced towards Goswyn. Never before had she seen him so gravely impressed; and on a sudden the despair that had possessed her in view of the unjust arrangement of human affairs was converted into pride and joy.

When they reached the picture-dealer's they found the portrait in an inner room, surrounded, in fact, by quite a crowd of people, although it was not great enough to satisfy the old Countess's pride: it could hardly have been that, indeed. Still, she did not express her disappointment in words, but ridiculed the a.s.semblage.

The words 'Heather Blossom' were carved in the very effective frame of the portrait, and on one side could be traced a coronet.

"A beggar-girl and a coronet! nothing could appeal more strongly to these plebeians," the old lady exclaimed; and then she whispered to Erika, "Thank G.o.d, no one could recognize you from that daub, or we should have the whole rabble around us. What do you think of the picture, Goswyn?"

"Miserable," Goswyn replied, with a frown. "Between ourselves, I cannot understand your allowing the fellow to exhibit it."

"What could I do?" said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders: "he talked of the effect it would produce upon people generally, and in fact he seems to have been right. The Archd.u.c.h.ess Geroldstein has already ordered her portrait of him. I cannot understand it. To me Riedel is absolutely uninteresting. If he has a really fine model he seems to lose even the power to flatter, upon which his reputation is chiefly based. Erika is ten times more beautiful than that picture."

This was Goswyn's opinion also, but he remained silent, asking himself whether it could be that the absent old Countess had actually forgotten her granddaughter's presence. Such, however, was not the case. It simply had never occurred to her to regard Erika's beauty as a secret to be confided to all the world except to the girl herself: she would as soon have thought of concealing from her the amount of her yearly income.