"I imagine that if you had seriously desired to find me it would not have been difficult."
He does not speak for a moment, and then he begins afresh: "You are right,--and you do me injustice. When I learned that my dear little poorly-clad princess had become a great lady, I did, it is true, make no attempt to approach her; but before then---- Do you care to hear of my unfortunate pilgrimage?"
"Most a.s.suredly I do."
"Well, eight years after our childish interview I had my first couple of hundred marks in my pocket. I bought a new suit of clothes--yes, smile if yon choose,--a new suit, which I admired exceedingly--and journeyed to Bohemia. I found the village, the brook, and the bridge, and likewise the castle; but all had gone who had once lived there,--even the amiable Herr von Strachinsky,--and no one knew anything of my little princess. I was very sad,--too sad for a fellow of three-and-twenty."
He pauses.
"And was that the end of your efforts?" asks the old Countess, whose sharp ears have lost nothing of the story, and who now turns to the pair with a laugh. "You showed no amount of persistence to boast of."
"When, overtaken by the rain, I took refuge in the parsonage of the nearest village," he continues, "I made inquiries there for my little friend. The priest gave me more information than I had been able to procure elsewhere. He told me that one fine day some one had come from Berlin to carry little Rika away,--that she was now a very grand lady----"
"And then----?" the old lady persists.
"I sought no further: the bridge between my sphere in life and that of my princess was destroyed. I quietly returned to Munich. I was very unhappy: the goal to which I had looked forward seemed to have been suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from me."
"Oho!" exclaims the old Countess, "you can be sentimental too, then?
You are truly many-sided."
"That was years ago. I have changed very much since then."
After which Count Treurenberg contrives to interest the old lady in the latest piece of Venetian gossip.
"You understand now why I did not appear before you, Countess Erika?"
But Erika shook her head: "I do not understand at all. I think you were excessively foolish to avoid me for such a reason."
"Erika is quite right," the grandmother called back over her shoulder in the midst of one of Count Treurenberg"s most interesting anecdotes.
"Your failing to seek us out only proves that you must have thought us a couple of geese; otherwise you would have been quite sure of a friendly reception."
"No, it proves only that I had been hardly treated by fate, that I was a well-whipped young dog," said Lozoncyi. "Now I have no doubt that I should have been graciously received by both of you; but it would not have amounted to much. You would soon have tired of me. A very young artist is sadly out of place in a drawing-room; I was like all the rest of the race."
"That I find hard to believe," the old Countess said, kindly, still over her shoulder; then, turning again to Count Treurenberg, "Go on, Count. You were saying----"
"I shall say nothing more," Treurenberg exclaimed, provoked. "I have had enough of this: at the most interesting part of my story you turn and listen to what Lozoncyi is saying to your grand-daughter. The fact is that when Lozoncyi is present no one else can claim a lady"s attention." The words were spoken half in jest, half in irritation.
"Count Treurenberg is skilled in rendering me obnoxious in society,"
Lozoncyi murmurs.
"Oh, I never pay any attention to him," the old Countess a.s.sures him.
"I should like to know what you did after you learned that Erika had----"
"Had become a grand lady?" Lozoncyi interrupts her. "Oh, I packed up my belongings and went to Rome."
"And then?"
"There I had an attack of Roman fever," he says, slowly, and his face grows dark. He looks around for Erika, but she is no longer at his side: she has lingered behind, and has fallen into conversation with a tall, dignified monk. She now calls out to the rest, "Has no one any desire to see the tree beneath which Lord Byron used to write poems?"
They all follow her as the monk leads the way to the very sh.o.r.e of the island and there with pride points to a table beneath a tree, where he a.s.sures them Lord Byron used often to sit and write.
His hospitality culminates at last in regaling his guests with fragrant black coffee, after which he leaves them.
They sit and sip their coffee under the famous tree. Lozoncyi expresses a modest doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the table. Count Treurenberg relates an anecdote, at which Erika frowns, and gazes up into the blue sky showing here and there among the branches of the old tree.
Suddenly an affected voice is heard to say, "_Enfin le voila_."
They look up, and see two ladies: one is no other than Frau von Geroldstein, very affected, and looking about, as usual, for fine acquaintances; the other is very much dressed, rouged, and very pretty.
Frau von Geroldstein is enthusiastically glad to see her Berlin friends, and presents her companion,--the Princess Gregoriewitsch.
The old Countess, however, is not very amiably disposed towards the new-comers. "Do not let us keep you from your friends," she says to the artist: "it is late, and we must go. Adieu. I should be glad if you could find time to come and see us."
Count Treurenberg conducts the grandmother and grand-daughter to their gondola. Lozoncyi remains with his two admirers.
"Who was that queer Princess?" Countess Anna asks of Count Treurenberg, in a rather depreciative tone, just before they reach their gondola.
"Oh, one of Lozoncyi"s thousand adorers. She has a huge palace and entertains a great deal. A pretty woman, but terribly stupid. Lozoncyi is tied to a different ap.r.o.n-string every day."
The _table-d"hote_ is long past: the Lenzdorffs are dining in a small island of light at one end of the large dining-hall.
They are unusually late to-night. After their return from the Armenian monastery both ladies have dressed for the evening, before coming to table. At the old Countess"s entreaty, Erika has consented to go into society this evening,--that is, to the Countess Muhlberg, who has been legally separated from her husband for some time and is living very quietly at Venice, where she receives a few friends every Wednesday.
The old Countess is unusually gay; Erika scarcely speaks.
The gla.s.s door leading from the dining-hall into the garden has been left open for their special benefit. The warm air brings in an odour of fresh earth, mossy stones, and the faintly impure breath of the lagoons, which haunts all the poetic beauty of Venice like an unclean spirit. The soft plash of the water against the walls of the old palaces, the creaking of the gondolas tied to their posts, a monotonous stroke of oars, the distant echo of a street song, are the mingled sounds that fall upon the ear.
When the meal is ended the old Countess calls for pen and ink, and writes a note at the table where they have just dined. Erika walks out into the garden. With head bare and a light wrap about her shoulders, she strolls along the gravel path, past the monthly roses that have scarcely ceased to bloom throughout the winter, past the taller rose-trees in which the life of spring is stirring. From time to time she turns her head to catch the distant melody more clearly, but it comes no nearer. Above her arches the sky, no longer pale as it had been to-day amid the boughs of the historic tree, but dark blue, and twinkling with countless stars.
She has walked several times up and down the garden as far as the breast-work that separates it from the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Now as she nears the dining-room she hears voices: her grandmother is no longer alone; beside the table at which she is writing stands Count Treurenberg. He is speaking: ""Tis a pity! he really is a very clever fellow with men, but the women spoil him. Just now he is the plaything of all the women who think themselves art-critics in Venice."
Erika pauses to listen. "Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me," her grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: "He is the very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible to the other s.e.x."
"You are complimentary, Count!" Erika calls into the dining-hall.
He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking full at the speaker.
Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, "Pray remember that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with regard to the weaker s.e.x have no reference to you. When I talk of your s.e.x in general I never think of you: you are an exception."
"We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?" her grandmother says, laughing.
"But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?" asks Treurenberg, changing the subject. "It is the first time that I have had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress."
"Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me," the old Countess explains. "I told her that, thanks to her pa.s.sion for retirement, it would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Muhlberg."
"I should have gone to Constance Muhlberg at all events, only I should not have chosen her reception-day for my visit," Erika declares, taking a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table, and resting her chin on her clasped hands.
Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes off her. "When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are, Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it," he declares.
She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, "Shall we see you at Countess Muhlberg"s, Count?"