Countess Erika's Apprenticeship Part 49

"My dear, faithful Friend,"--she began,--"Do not come to Venice. When this letter reaches you I shall have vanished from the world in which you live. I could not endure to have you hear from strangers of the step I am about to take, and so I write to you myself. Yes, when you read this letter I shall have broken with all that has const.i.tuted my life hitherto, and shall have fled with--with a married man. How grieved you will be when you read this! My whole soul cries out with pain as I think of it.

"You will not understand it. 'Erika Lenzdorff fled with a married man!'

It sounds incredible, does it not?

"You know that I am not light-minded, nor corrupt, and so you will believe me when I tell you that the reasons which have induced me to take so terrible a step are unanswerable in my mind.

"I can redeem the life of a n.o.ble and gifted man. His moral nature is deteriorating, he suffers frightfully, and I cannot avoid the conviction that without me he must go to destruction.

"He hoped to be able to procure a divorce from his wife. It was impossible. Without hesitation I resolved of my own accord to follow him. In the midst of the agony which it has cost me to break with all my former a.s.sociations, I am sustained by a sense of right.

"It is grand and beautiful to suffer for a n.o.ble and highly-gifted fellow-being,--beautiful to be able to say, 'Providence has chosen me to shed light into his darkened soul.' I do not waste a thought upon what I resign in thus fulfilling my mission, but the consciousness of the pain I shall cause my dear grandmother and you weighs me to the earth. She will forgive me, and you, my poor friend, you will forget me. I would gladly find consolation in this conviction; but no, it does not comfort me. Of all that I must give up with my old life, your friends.h.i.+p is what I shall lack most painfully.

"Goswyn! for G.o.d's sake do not judge me falsely and harshly! What I do, I do in the absolute conviction that it is right. If this conviction should ever fail me, then---- But I cannot harbour that idea!--it would be too terrible. I cannot be mistaken!

"I have a fearful attack of cowardice as I write to you, and a sudden dread takes possession of me. Am I equal to the task I have undertaken?

Will he always be content to live apart from the world with me alone?

"I am prepared for that also. If his feeling for me should wane, my task will be done, he will need me no longer. Then I will vanish from his life, and from life itself, like a poor taper that is extinguished when the sun rises. I shall have the courage to extinguish it; it will be a trifle in comparison with what I am now doing. Oh, G.o.d! how hard it is! Goswyn, adieu! One thing more, and this I tell you because this is my farewell to you. Whether it will console you, or add one more pang to your sorrow, I cannot tell, but I am constrained to lay bare my heart before you: these are as it were the words of a dying woman. If last autumn you had said one kind word to me, I should now have been your wife, and you should not have repented it! All that is over. Fate had another destiny in store for me.

"Once more, farewell!

"Forgive me for causing you pain, and sometimes think of your poor friend,

"Erika Lenzdorff."

Now all was done. She put on her travelling-dress, a plain dark suit in which she was wont to pay visits to the poor.

She looked at the clock--seven! One half-hour more, and she must go; and she could not go without something to lend her physical strength.

She rang for a cup of tea, swallowed it hastily, and for the last time walked through the four rooms occupied by her grandmother and herself.

Then she took her travelling-bag, which she had packed with a few necessaries, put on her straw hat, and went.

It was half-past seven: the servants were at their evening meal. No one noticed her departure at so unusual an hour. How often she had been seen leaving the hotel in the same dress to visit her poor people!

She walked for some distance, and dropped her letter to Goswyn into the nearest post-box, feeling as she did so that she was casting her whole life thus far into a dark gulf whence it could never be recovered. Then she hired a gondola, an open one,--she could find no other,--and it pushed off with her.

She was very weary; with her eyes fixed on vacancy, she leaned back among the black cus.h.i.+ons.

The tragic wretchedness of the situation no longer impressed her. She only felt that she was about to undertake a journey. If it were but over! Sssh--sssh--the strokes of the oars sounded monotonously in her ears: the gondola glided rapidly over the water.

The garish daylight had faded; the spring twilight, with its incomparably poetic charm, was casting its transparent veil over Venice. The gondola glided on.

Erika's battle was fought. She leaned back, pale and still, with gleaming eyes. The sound of the church-bells droned in her ears. Dulled to all that lay behind her, she was conscious of nothing save of the enthusiasm of a young hero ready to brave death for a sacred cause.

Around her was the breath of the waning spring, and beneath her was the sobbing of the waves.

It was later by about an hour and a half. The old Countess, who had felt it her duty to be present at the fete, had not thought herself obliged to remain until its close. She was very uneasy about Erika, and had gratefully accepted Prince Nimbsch's offer to take her home in his cutter, leaving Constance Muhlberg and her guests, with the Hungarian band that had been telegraphed for from Vienna for their amus.e.m.e.nt, to return to Venice in the steamer.

With the velocity of a skimming swallow the little vessel shot through the water. Prince Nimbsch, leaving the management of the sail entirely to his sailors, leaned back beside the old lady among his very new velvet cus.h.i.+ons, and made good-humoured, although futile, efforts to entertain her. She was absent: her thoughts were occupied with Erika's altered appearance.

"Poor child!" she thought, "I was foolish. It was my fault; but how could I suspect it? She seemed so strong, so unsusceptible. It is the same folly, the same disease that attacks us all once in a lifetime. I had it myself: I can hardly remember it now. It hurts,--it hurts very much. But she has a strong character and a clear head. I am very sorry; I might have prevented it, if I had only known. My poor, proud Erika!

What shall I write to Goswyn? Of course that he must come. I think she will be glad to see him: this cannot go very deep; but I am very sorry."

Venice lay before them, gray and shadowy, a reflection of the pale summer sky, whence the sun had long disappeared, and where the stars were not yet visible.

They reached the hotel, and the old Countess looked up at Erika's windows. "She is not in her boudoir," she said to herself. "Perhaps she is asleep."

"Tell Countess Erika how stupid the _fete_ was, thanks to her absence,"

the young Austrian said as he took his leave, "and how we all anathematized that headache for depriving us of her society. I shall call to-morrow, and hope to find her quite well again."

He kissed the old lady's hand, and she hurried upstairs to her rooms.

She softly entered Erika's apartments. The boudoir was dark, as she had seen from below. She gently opened the door of the bedroom; that was dark also. Had the poor child gone to bed? She approached the bed very softly, not to disturb her, and stooped above it. There was no one there.

A foreboding of something terrible instantly took possession of her.

For a moment she lost her head: she grew dizzy, and would have screamed and alarmed the house, but her voice died in her throat. Suddenly something fluttered down from the table upon which she leaned to support herself. She stooped to pick it up: it was a letter. She turned on the electric light and read it through. After the first few lines, half blind with grief, she would have tossed it aside,--what could it contain that she did not now know?--but at last she read it through, read every word to the very end, feeding her pain with each tender, loving expression of the unhappy, mistaken girl.

Not for one moment did she blame Erika for what had happened: she blamed herself alone. She accused herself of plunging Erika into wretchedness, as years before she had done with her daughter-in-law.

She had required of both of them that they should accede to her materialistic views. She had never allowed them to entertain any idealistic conception of life. She had never understood that such idealism was a necessity of their existence, and that if deprived of it in one shape they would take refuge in some exaggeration which might s.h.i.+eld them from a life of coldly-calculating egotism. Her daughter-in-law's unhappiness had not affected her much; her grand-daughter's misery would blot the sun from her sky.

She was so clear-sighted: ah, why was she so, when she could see nothing but what agonized her?

For a creature like Erika it was as impossible to disregard the dictates of morality as it would be to breathe in the moon with lungs constructed for the atmosphere of the earth.

There were women capable of braving the opinions of the world and of quietly going on their way, women for whom the pillory was converted into a pedestal as soon as they stood in it. But Erika was not one of these. Before the stars in their courses had twice appeared in the heavens she would writhe in misery. She had none of that self-exalting quality which must veil the moral lack of which she would surely be made conscious. Yes, she would then find no other name for the sacrifice she had made to the wretch who had been willing to receive it at her hands than the one which the world has given to it for centuries when it has been made to men by worthless women, inspired by no lofty desire. In her own eyes she would be a fallen woman.

The moisture stood upon the old Countess's forehead. "My Erika! my proud, glorious Erika!" she murmured. She knew that the peril of a woman's fall must be measured by the moral height from which she falls.

And Erika had fallen from a very lofty height. Her life was ruined.

Once more she opened Erika's letter and read the line, "You will have to choose between the world and me." Choose! As if there could be any question of choice. Of course she was ready to open her arms to her and do for her what she alone could; but what could she do?

Suddenly a picture arose in her memory,--a terrible picture.

In the waiting-room of a railway-station she had once seen among some emigrants a poor woman with a child, a boy about six or seven years old. His face was frightfully disfigured by scars. All the pa.s.sers-by stared at him, and some nudged one another and whispered together. The child first grew scarlet, then very restless, and finally burst into a pa.s.sion of tears; whereupon the mother sat down upon a bench and hid the poor face in her lap.

A quarter of an hour later, when the Countess pa.s.sed the same spot the woman was still there with the child's face in her lap. She sat stiffly erect, glaring at the unfeeling crowd whose cruel curiosity had so hurt the boy, and with her rough hand she gently stroked his short light hair. The sight had made a profound impression upon the Countess. "She cannot sit there always, concealing in her lap her child's deformity,"

she said to herself: "sooner or later she must again expose the poor creature to the gaze of the crowd."

What now recalled this poor, powerless mother to her mind?

She could do no more for Erika than hide her head in her lap from the contemptuous curiosity of the world. So entirely did this thought take possession of her imagination that she seemed to feel the warm weight of the poor humiliated head upon her knee; she raised her hand to stroke it, when with a start she awoke to consciousness. "Ah, even that will be denied me," she thought. "As soon as Erika comes to herself, she will cast away her life. Yes, all is over,--all,--all!"

Marianne came into the room. She waved her away without a word. She never thought of inventing a reason to the maid for Erika's absence.

She sat there mute and motionless, looking into the future. A vast misfortune seemed to have engulfed the world, and she alone was left to suffer, she alone was to blame.