A VISIT.
Meanwhile, Treurenberg is riding along the road to X----.
The landscape is dreary. Autumn is creeping over the fields, vainly
seeking the summer, seeking luxuriant life to kill, or exquisite beauty
to destroy. In vain; the same withering drought rests upon everything
like a curse, and in the midst of the brown monotony bloom succory and
field-poppies.
Treurenberg gazes to the right and left without really seeing anything.
His eyes have a glassy, fixed look, and about his mouth there is a hard
expression, almost wicked, and quite foreign to him. He is not the same
man who an hour ago sought his wife to entreat her to begin a new life
with him; not the same man who at dawn was so restless in devising
schemes for a better future.
His restlessness has vanished with his last gleam of hope; sensation is
benumbed, the burning pain has gone. Something has died within him. He
no longer reflects upon his life,--it is ended; he has drawn a black
line through it. All that he is conscious of is intense, paralyzing
weariness, the same that had overcome him in the early morning, only
more crushing. After the scene with his wife he had been assailed by a
terrible languor, an almost irresistible desire to lie down and close
his eyes, but he could not yield to it, he had something to do. That
poor lad must be rescued; the suffering the boy was enduring was
wholesome, but he must be saved.
Fainacky's assertion that Treurenberg was in the habit of borrowing
from his friends had been a pure fabrication; he had borrowed money of
no one save of Harry, with whom he had been upon the footing of a
brother from early boyhood, and of Abraham Goldstein, upon whose
secrecy he had supposed he could rely. It would have wounded him to
speak to any stranger of the painful circumstances of his married life.
Now all this was past; Selina could thank herself that it was so. He
could not let the boy go to ruin, and, since Selina would not take pity
upon him, he must turn to some one else; there was no help for it.
For a moment he thought of Harry; but he reflected that Harry could
hardly have so large a sum of ready money by him, and, as time was an
important item in the affair, there was nothing for it but to apply for
aid to Wodin, the husband of his cousin and former flame.
The trees grow scantier, their foliage rustier, and the number of
ragged children on the highway greater. Now and then some young women
are to be seen walking along the road, usually in couples, rather oddly
dressed, evidently after the plates in the journals of fashion, and
with an air of affectation. Then come a couple of low houses with
blackened roofs reaching almost to the ground, manure-heaps, grunting
swine wallowing in slimy green pools, hedges where pieces of linen are
drying, gnarled fruit-trees smothered in dust, an inn, a carters'
tavern, with a red crab painted above the door-way, whence issues the
noise of drunken quarrelling, then a white wall with some trees showing
above it, the town-park of X----. Lato has reached his goal. On the
square before the barracks he halts. A corporal takes charge of his
horse, and he hurries up the broad, dirty steps, along the still
dirtier and ill-smelling corridor, where he encounters dragoons in
spurs and clattering sabres, where the officers' overworked servants
are brushing their masters' coats and their mistresses' habits, to the
colonel's quarters, quarters the luxurious arrangement of which is in
striking contrast to the passages by which they are reached. Count
Wodin is not at home, but is expected shortly; the Countess, through a
servant, begs Lato to await him. He resolves to do so, and pays his
respects meanwhile to his cousin, whom he finds in a spacious, rather
low-ceilinged apartment, half smoking-room, half drawing-room,
furnished with divans covered with Oriental stuff's, pretty buhl chairs
and tables, and Japanese cabinets crowded to excess with all sorts of
rare porcelain. An upright piano stands against the wall between two
windows; above it hangs a miniature gondola, and beside it, on the
floor, is a palm in a huge copper jar evidently procured from some
Venetian water-carrier. Two china pugs, the size of life, looking like
degenerate chimeras, gnash their teeth at all intruders in life-like
hideousness. The door-ways are draped with Eastern rugs; the walls are
covered with a dark paper, and two or three English engravings
representing hunting-scenes hang upon them. In the midst of these
studies in black and white hangs a small copy of Titian's Venus.
The entire arrangement of the room betrays a mingling of vulgarity and
refinement, of artistic taste and utter lack of it; and in the midst of
it all the Countess reclines on a lounge, dressed in a very long and
very rumpled morning-gown, much trimmed with yellowish Valenciennes
lace. Her hair is knotted up carelessly; she looks out of humour, and
is busy rummaging among a quantity of photographs. She is alone, but
from the adjoining room come the sound of voices, as Treurenberg
enters, and the rattle of bezique-counters.
The Countess gives him her hand, presses his very cordially, and says,
in a weary, drawling tone, "How are you after yesterday, Lato?"
"After what?"
"Why, our little orgie. It gave me a headache." She passes her hand
across her forehead. "How badly the air tastes! Could you not open
another window, Lato?"
"They are all open," he says, looking round the room.
"Ah! You have poisoned the atmosphere with your wine, your cigars, your
gambling excitement. I taste the day after a debauch, in the air."
He nods absently.
"I admire people who never suffer the day after," she sighs, and waves
her hand towards the door of the next room, through which comes a
cheerful murmur of voices. Lato moves his head a little, and can see
through the same door a curious couple,--the major's wife, stout,
red-cheeked, her hair parted boldly on one side, and dressed in an old
gown, enlarged at every seam, of the Countess's, while opposite her
sits a young man in civilian's clothes, pale, coughing from time to
time, his face long and far from handsome, but aristocratic in type,
his chest narrow, and his waistcoat buttoned to the throat.
"Your brother," Lato remarks, turning to the Countess.
"Yes," she rejoins, "my brother, and my certificate of respectability,
which is well, for there is need of it. _A propos_, do you know that in
the matter of feminine companionship I am reduced to that stout Liese?"
The Countess laughs unpleasantly. "I have tried every day to bring
myself to the point of returning your wife's call. I do not know why I
have not done so. But the ladies at Dobrotschau are really very
amiable,--uncommonly amiable,--they have invited me to the betrothal
_fete_ in spite of my incivility. _A propos_, Lato, will any one be
there,--any one whom one knows?"
"I have had nothing to do with the list of guests," he murmurs,
listening for Wodin's step outside.
"I should like to know. It would be unpleasant to meet any of my
acquaintances,--they treat me so strangely. You know how it is." Again
she laughs in the same unpleasant way. "But if I could be sure of
meeting no one I would go to your _fete_, I have a new gown from Worth:
I should like to display it somewhere; dragging my trains through these
smoky rooms becomes monotonous after a while. I think I will come."
The voices in the next room sound louder, and there is a burst of
hearty laughter. Lato can see the major's wife slap her forehead in
mock despair.
"Easily entertained," the Countess says, crossly. "They are playing
bezique for raisins. It makes a change for my brother; his physician
has sent him to the country for the benefit of the air and a regular
mode of life. He has come to the right place, eh?" Again she laughs;
her breath fails her; she closes her eyes and leans back, white as a
corpse.
Lato shudders at the sight, he could hardly have told why. His youth
rises up before him. There was a time when he loved that woman with
enthusiasm, with self-devotion. That woman! He scans her now with a
kind of curiosity. She is still beautiful, but the wan face has fallen
away, the complexion all that can be seen of it beneath its coating of
violet powder--is faded, the delicate nose is too thick at the tip, the
nostrils are slightly reddened, the small mouth is constantly distorted
in an affected smile, the arms from which the wide sleeves of the
morning-gown have fallen back are thin, and the nails upon the long,
slender hands remind one of claws. Even the white gown looks faded,
crushed, as by the constant nervous movement of a restless,
discontented wearer. Her entire personality is constrained, feverish.
Involuntarily Lato compares this woman with Olga. He sees with his
mind's eye the young girl, tall and slender as a lily, her white gowns
always so pure and fresh, sees the delicately-rounded oval of her
girlish face, her clear, large eyes, the innocent tenderness of her
smile. And Selina could malign that same Olga! His blood boils. As if
Olga were to blame for the wretched, guilty passion in his breast! His
thoughts are far away from his present surroundings.
"Seven thousand five hundred," the triumphant voice of the major's wife
calls out in the next room. "If this goes on, Count Franz, I shall soon
stop playing for raisins! Ah!" as, turning her head, she perceives
Treurenberg; "you have a visitor, Lori."
"Yes," Countess Lori replies, "but do not disturb yourselves, nor us."
The rattle of the counters continues.
"I must speak with your husband," Lato says presently; "if you know
where he is----"
"He will be here in ten minutes; you need have no fear, he is never
late," Lori says. "_A propos_, do you know what I was doing when you
came in? Sorting my old photographs." She hands him a picture from the
pile beside her. "That is how I looked when you fell in love with me."
He gazes, not without interest, at the pale little picture, which
represents a tall, slender, and yet well-developed young girl with
delicate, exquisitely lovely features, and with eyes, full of gentle
kindliness, looking out curiously, as it were, into the world from
beneath their arched eyebrows. An old dream floats through the wretched
man's mind.
"It was very like," he says.
"Was it not? I was a comical-looking thing then, and how badly dressed!
Look at those big sleeves and the odd skirt. It was a gown of my elder
sister's made over. Good heavens! that gown had a part in my resolve to
throw you over. Do you remember?"
"Yes, Lori."
"Only faintly, I think," she laughs. "And yet you seemed to take it
sadly to heart then. I was greatly agitated myself. But what else was
to be done? I was tired of wearing my sister's old gowns. Youth longs
for splendour; it is one of its diseases, and when it has it--pshaw!
you need not look so, Lato: I have no intention of throwing myself at
your head. I know that old tale is told for both of us. And we never
were suited for each other. It was well that I did not marry you, but,
good heavens, I might have waited for some one else! It need not have
been just that one--that----" with a hasty gesture of disgust she
tosses aside a photograph of Count Wodin which she has just drawn from
the heap. "What would you have? If a tolerably presentable man appears,
and one knows that he can buy one as many gowns, diamonds, and horses
as one wants, why, one forgets everything else and accepts him. What
ideas of marriage one has at seventeen! And our parents take good care
not to enlighten us. 'She will get used to it,' say father and mother,
and the mother believes it because she wants to, and both rejoice that
their daughter is provided for; and before one is aware the trap has
fallen. I bore you, Lato."
"No," he replies; "you grieve me."
"Oh, it is only now and then that I feel thus," she murmurs. "Shall I
tell you the cause of my wretched mood?"
"Utter fatigue, the natural consequence of yesterday's pleasures."
"Not at all. I accidentally came upon the picture of my cousin Ada
to-day. Do you remember her? There she is." She hands him a photograph.
"Exquisitely beautiful, is it not?"
"Yes," he says, looking at the picture; "the eyes are bewitching, and
there is such womanly tenderness, such delicate refinement, about the
mouth."
"Nothing could surpass Ada," says Countess Lori; "she was a saint,
good, self-sacrificing, not a trace in her of frivolity or
selfishness."
"And yet she married Hugo Reinsfeld, if I am not mistaken?" says Lato.
"I have heard nothing of her lately. News from your world rarely
reaches me."
"No one mentions her now," Lori murmurs. "She married without
love; not from vanity as I did, but she sacrificed herself for her
family,--sisters unprovided for, father old, no money. She was far
better than I, and for a long time she honestly tried to do her
duty,----and so she finally had to leave her husband!"
The Countess stops; a long pause ensues. The steps of the passers-by
sound through the languid September air; an Italian hurdy-gurdy is
grinding out the lullaby from "Trovatore," sleepy and sentimental. The
clatter from the barracks interrupts it now and then. A sunbeam slips
through the window-shade into the half-light of the room and gleams
upon the buhl furniture.
"Well, she had the courage of her opinions," the Countess begins
afresh at last. "She left her husband and lives with--well, with
another man,--good heavens! you knew him too, Niki Gladnjik, in
Switzerland; they live there for each other in perfect seclusion. He
adores her; the world--our world, the one I do not want to meet at your
ball--ignores Ada, but I write to her sometimes, and she to me. I have
been reading over her letters to-day. She seems to be very happy,
enthusiastically happy, so happy that I envy her; but I am sorry for
her, for--you see, Niki really loves her, and wants to marry her--they
have been waiting two years for the divorce which her husband opposes;
and Niki is consumptive; you understand, if he should die before----"
Lato's heart throbs fast at his cousin's tale. At this moment the door
opens, and Count Wodin enters.