At last the rain falls more slowly; the chirp of a bird makes itself heard now and then; a white watery spot in the gray skies shows where the sun is hiding; slowly it draws aside the veil from its beaming face, and between the torn and flying ma.s.ses of cloud the heavens laugh out once more, blue and brilliant.
Tempted forth by the delightful change in the weather, Katrine, Stasy, and Stella venture out to take their daily bath in the Neuring. In its normal condition the Neuring is a clear, sparkling stream, flowing freely over its pebbly bed in constant angry attack upon diverse fragments of rock which look in magnificent disdain upon its impotent a.s.saults. A bath in the current between the largest of these fragments of rock, where for the convenience of the bathers a stout pole has been fixed, is a great favourite among the delights of Erlach Court.
One sh.o.r.e of the stream slopes, flower-strewn and verdant, nearly to the water"s edge, and here stands a roughly-constructed bath-house, from which wooden steps lead down into the water.
Stella is sitting, in a very faded bathing-suit of black serge trimmed with white braid, on the lowest of these steps, gazing sadly into the stream.
"I certainly did behave with unpardonable stupidity yesterday," she says, twisting her golden hair into a thick knot and fastening it up at the back of her head with a rather dilapidated tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb.
"When do you mean?" asks Stasy. "At lunch, or in the evening, or early this morning?"
"Yesterday evening, in the drawing-room," Stella replies, somewhat impatiently.
"That talk with Rohritz was a little reprehensible," Katrine says, with a laugh.
"In your place, after having been guilty of such a breach of decorum, I could not make up my mind to look him in the face," Stasy declares.
She slips into the water before the others, and is now trying, holding by the pole between the rocks, to tread the waves. The water hisses and foams, as if resenting her trampling it down.
"Was it really so bad, Aunt Katrine?" Stella asks, changing colour.
Katrine leans towards her, gives her a kindly pat on the shoulder, lifts her chin caressingly, and says,--
"Well, your remarks were certainly not extraordinarily pertinent, but I hardly think that Rohritz took them ill. "Tis hard to take things ill of such a pretty, stupid, golden b.u.t.terfly as you."
With which Katrine cautiously sets her slender foot among the yellow irises and white water-lilies on the edge of the water.
"It was terrible, then,--it must have been terrible if even you thought it so!" says Stella, as the tears rush to her eyes, and drop into the stream at her feet.
"Don"t be a child," Katrine consoles her: "the matter was of no great consequence."
"Certainly not," Stasy adds, rather out of breath from her exertions.
"What he thinks can make no kind of difference to you, and he a.s.suredly will not report elsewhere your very strange remarks. Probably they interest him so little that he will soon forget all about them."
"Come and take your bath; you are wonderfully averse to the water to-day," Katrine calls out to the girl, who still sits sadly upon the wooden step, lost in reflection. "Indeed you need not take your stupidity so much to heart: it would have been nothing at all, if there had not been rather an odd story connected with Rohritz"s sudden voyage across the ocean."
"Ah!" exclaims Stella, paddling through the water to her aunt, who, clinging to the pole, is now enjoying the current. "Really, something romantic?" she asks, curiously.
"There was nothing romantic in the affair save his way of taking it,"
Katrine says, with a dry smile, "and therefore the remembrance of this piece of his past may be particularly distasteful to him."
"Ah, but it was a married woman, was it not? Do tell me!" Stella entreats, burning with curiosity.
"No, Solomon," Katrine replies: "it was a young, unmarried woman, not so very young either, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, well born, a Baroness von Fohren, a Livonian with Russian blood in her veins, poor, ambitious, prudent, and just clever enough to entertain a man without frightening him. I saw her once, and but once, at the theatre; she was very beautiful, and I took an extraordinary dislike to her. I am always ready to applaud Judic in _opera-bouffe_, and on _grand prix_ day in the Bois it interests me exceedingly to observe the _dames aux camellias_ through my opera-gla.s.s; but nothing in this world so disgusts me as demi-monde graces in a woman who ought to be a lady."
"I think you are a little severe in your judgment of Sonja. She was not irreproachable in her conduct," Stasy, who has for years maintained a kind of friendship with the person under discussion, here interposes, "not irreproachable, but----"
In all that touches her extremely strict ideas of propriety and fitness, Katrine understands no jesting.
"Her conduct was not only "not irreproachable," it was revolting!" she exclaims. "If she interests you, Stella, I can show you her photograph; at one time you could buy it everywhere. She was made to turn a young fellow"s head. With regard to women men really have such wretched taste."
"Oho, Katrine! That sounds as if you said it _par depit_," Stasy says, archly.
"I do not in the least care how it sounds," Katrine rejoins.
"Ah, tell me about Baroness Fohren," Stella entreats.
"There is not much to tell. He had a love-affair with her----"
"A love-affair!" The words fall instantly from Stella"s lips, as one drops a burning coal from the hand.
"Yes," Katrine goes on. "It happened in Baden-Baden, where the Fohren was staying with a relative of hers. Rohritz paid her attention, and something or other gave occasion for a scandalous report. In despair at having compromised the lady of his affections, Rohritz instantly proposed to her, and informed his father of his determination to marry her. The old Baron, a man of unstained honour, and imbued with a strong feeling of responsibility in maintaining the dignity of the Rohritz family, was rather shocked by this hasty resolve, and, viewing the affair from a far less romantic and far more sensible point of view than that taken by his son, made inquiries into the reputation of the lady in question, and--I cannot exactly explain it to you, Stella, but the result of his investigations was that he informed Edgar that he need be troubled by no conscientious scruples on behalf of this adventuress, and that he positively refused his consent to the marriage."
"And then?" asks Stella.
"I do not know precisely what happened," says Katrine. "Jack told me all about it lately with characteristic indignation, but I did not pay much attention. The affair dragged on for a while. Edgar, who was then most romantically inclined, would not resign the Fohren, corresponded with her,--how I should have liked to read those letters!--finally fought a duel with one of her slanderers, and was severely wounded.
When he recovered at last after several dreary months of convalescence, he learned that the Fohren was married to a wealthy Russian."
"How detestable!" exclaims Stella.
"Good heavens! she had a practical mind," Stasy interposes. "I, to be sure, would on occasion have married a tinker for love, but the young women of the present day are not ashamed to declare that their choice in marriage is influenced by a box at the theatre, brilliant equipages, and toilets from Worth. Old Rohritz would have disinherited Edgar, or at all events allowed him a very inadequate income, while Prince Oblonsky----"
"Prince Oblonsky!" Stella hastily exclaims. "Did you say Oblonsky?"
"Yes; that was her husband"s name, Boris Oblonsky. Now she is a widow, and still perfectly beautiful."
"Perfectly beautiful. I saw her in Venice at the Princess Giovanelli"s ball," says Stella, ""with brilliant and far-gazing eyes." So that was she!" And with a slight anxiety she wonders to herself, "A love-affair!
What is the real meaning of a love-affair?"
CHAPTER IX.
FOUND.
A sleepy afternoon quiet broods over Erlach Court. Anastasia is sitting in the shade of an arbour, embroidering a strip of fine canvas with yellow sunflowers and red chrysanthemums. At a little distance the Baroness Meineck, who has volunteered to superintend Freddy"s education during her stay at Erlach Court, is giving the boy a lesson in mathematics, making such stupendous demands upon his seven-year-old capacity that, ambitious and intelligent though the young student be, he is beginning to grow confused with his ineffectual attempts to follow the lofty flight of his teacher"s intellect. Stella, with whom mental excitement is always combined with musical thirst, is all alone in the drawing-room, playing from the "Kreisleriana." Her fingers glide languidly over the keys. "A love-affair! What is the real meaning of a love-affair?" The question presents itself repeatedly to her mind, and her veins thrill with a mixture of curiosity, desire, and dread.
Lacking all intimacy with girls of her own age or older than herself, who might have enlightened her on such points, she has the vaguest ideas as to much that goes on in the world. A love-affair is for her something connected with rope ladders and peril to life, like the interviews of Romeo and Juliet, something that she cannot fancy to herself without moonlight and a balcony. Her innocent curiosity flutters to and fro, spellbound, about the Baden-Baden episode in Rohritz"s youth, as a b.u.t.terfly flutters above a dull pool the pitiful muddiness of which is disguised by brilliant sunshine, the blue reflection of the skies, and a net-work of pale water-lilies.
She could not tear her thoughts from Baden-Baden, which she knew partly from Tourganief"s "Smoke," partly in its present shorn condition from her own experience,--Baden-Baden, which when the Fohren and Rohritz were together there might have been described as a bit of Paradise rented to the devil.
"I wonder if she called him Edgar when they were alone?" the girl asked herself.
Her heart beat fast. It was as if she had by chance read a page of some forbidden book negligently left lying open. Not for the world would she have turned the leaf to read on, for, in common with every pure, young girl, when she approached the great mystery of love she was possessed by a sacred timidity almost amounting to awe.
"I wonder if he was very unhappy?" she asks herself. "Yes, he must have been;" Katrine had told her that he grew gray with suffering. A great wave of sympathy and pity wells up in her innocent heart. "Yes, she was very beautiful!" she says to herself.
She perfectly remembers her at the Giovanelli ball, leaning rather heavily on her partner"s arm, her eyes half closed, her head inclined towards his shoulder, and again in a solitary little anteroom before a marble chimney-piece, below which a fire glowed and sparkled, lifting both hands to her head, an att.i.tude that brought into strong relief the magnificent outline of her shoulders and bust. While thus busied with arranging her hair, she smiled over her shoulder at a young man who was leaning back in an arm-chair near, his legs crossed, holding his crush-hat in both hands, regarding her with languid looks of admiration.