A RUINED LIFE.
How she rejoiced in the prospect of seeing him again, looking forward
to the joy of nestling tenderly in his arms and telling him how she had
longed for him during the many, many years, and how she had lain awake
many a night telling herself stories of him,--that is, recalling every
little incident in her memory with which he was connected!
She did not recall him as she had last seen him, old before his time,
with dark rings around his bloodshot eyes and deep wrinkles at the
corners of his mouth, gray and worn; no, she saw him with fair curls
and a merry, kindly look, sometimes in his dazzling hussar-uniform, but
oftener in his blue undress-coat with breast-pockets. She could not
possibly call him up in her memory without an accompaniment of the
rattle of spurs and sabre. She saw his shapely, carefully-tended hands;
she distinctly remembered the fragrance of Turkish tobacco, mingled
with the odour of jasmine, with which all his belongings were
saturated.
For her he was always the brilliant young officer who had muffled her
in his cloak when she ran to meet him.
How long the journey seemed to her at first! Then she was suddenly
assailed by a strange timidity: when the conductor took her ticket and
announced that the next station was Venice she began to tremble.
The train stopped; the conductor opened the door. With her heart
throbbing up in her throat, she looked out, but saw no one whom she
knew. No, her father had evidently not come to meet her! Could he have
failed to receive her telegram? She noticed a gray-haired man in
civilian's dress, with a crush-hat, and delicately chiselled features
wasted by illness, and large hollow eyes, peering about as if he were
looking for some one. A cold, paralyzing pang shot through her: his
look met her own. While he had lived in her memory as a brilliant
young officer, she had always been for him the undeveloped child of
twelve, with tightly-stretched red stockings, and a short shapeless
gown,--something that could be taken on his lap and caressed. But this
daughter advancing towards him was a young lady, who could pass
judgment upon, him, a judgment that could not be bribed, like that of a
child, by caresses. He asked himself, with a shudder, how much she knew
of his life, and whether she were capable of forgiving it, forgetting,
in his dread, that a woman will forgive everything in the man whom
she loves, be he husband, brother, or father, save cowardice and
dishonour,--and as far as regarded the _point d'honneur_ the colonel's
worst enemy could find nothing of which to accuse him.
"Papa!"
"Stella!" Instead of clasping her in his arms, he kissed her hand. "How
are they all at home?" he asked, embarrassed. "Is your mother well? and
Franzi?"
"Oh, yes! They both gave me all sorts of kind messages for you.
Franziska, unfortunately, could not come with me, for she could not
interrupt her studies at this time."
What frightfully correct German she spoke! Had they robbed him of his
little Stella? His annoyance increased.
"Where is your maid?" he asked.
"Maid? I have none. Oh, we have not had a maid for a long time."
"You came all the way alone?" the colonel exclaimed, in dismay,--"all
alone?"
"Yes. You have no idea how independent and practical I am."
The colonel frowned; he would rather have found his daughter spoiled
and helpless; but he said nothing, only asked about her luggage to hand
it over to the porter of the Hotel Britannia, and then offered her his
arm to conduct her to the gondola which was waiting for them. Arrived
at the hotel, they got into the elevator to be taken to the third
story, and they had as yet scarcely exchanged three words with each
other.
The pretty little _salon_ into which he conducted her looked out upon
the Grand Canal and past the church of Santa Maria della Salute upon
the Lido. The room was pleasantly warm, and in the centre a table was
invitingly spread, the teakettle singing merrily, flanked by a flask of
golden Marsala and a bottle of Bordeaux. A prismatic ray of sunshine
fell across the neat creases of the snowy table-cloth.
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Stella, and her eyes sparkled, while in her
delicate and softly-rounded cheek appeared the dimple for which her
father had hitherto looked in vain.
"I had a little breakfast made ready for you, thinking that you might
perhaps have had nothing very good to eat upon your journey," said he.
"I have eaten nothing since I left home but biscuit, because I disliked
going to the railway restaurants," she declared.
And the colonel rejoined, "_Tiens!_ not entirely a strong-minded female
yet, I see," and as he spoke he helped her take off her long brown
paletot. "If I am not mistaken," he said, examining the clumsy article
of dress, "this is an old army-cloak."
"Indeed it is, papa," she replied, proudly, "one of your old cloaks: I
had it altered by our tailor in Zalow, because it reminds me of old
times." And this was all she could bring herself to say of the myriad
charming and loving phrases she had prepared. "It is a great success,
my coat. Do you not like it?" she asked.
"Candidly, no;" he made reply. "Nevertheless I am greatly obliged to it
for proving to me that, even in the clumsiest and ugliest garment ever
devised by human hands to disfigure one of God's creatures, my daughter
is still charming."
She cast down her eyes with a little blush and was suddenly ashamed of
her threadbare adaptation of which she had been so proud. Kindly, but
still with some hesitation, he put his hand upon her shoulder and said,
"You will let me look a little more closely at my daughter."
A warm wave of affection suddenly surged up in her heart.
"Do not look at me, papa; only love me," she exclaimed, and, throwing
her arm around his neck, she nestled close to him. "You cannot imagine
how rejoiced I was to come to you."
And the poor wretch reverently bent his sad, weary head above his
child's golden curls, and repentantly acknowledged to himself that he
had not deserved so great mercy.
* * * * *
When daylight had faded and the lanterns at the base of the old palaces
flared up, casting reddish reflections to break and glimmer upon the
surface of the lagunes, the colonel lit the lamp and put paper and
writing-materials upon the table before Stella.
"Write a few lines to your mother, my darling, and thank her for
sending you to me." Then, while Stella was writing, he sat opposite to
her for a while in silence, his head thoughtfully leaning on his hand.
At last he began: "Stella, I have an impression that you live now in a
very modest way at home. Do you know the state of your mother's
finances?"
"Low," said Stella, laconically.
"Hm! I really do not know how much is necessary to maintain two
daughters; perhaps I do not send her enough for you. She ought to
have let me know. I do not wish that my children should be pinched,
as--as----"
"As they seem to be from the looks of my shabby wardrobe," Stella said,
with a laugh. "Well, we are not quite so badly off, after all. If it be
a question of buying books or curios, we can always scrape the money
together; but if one wants a pair of new boots, the purse is empty."
The colonel tugged discontentedly at his moustache.
"I beg you to write to Franzi and ask her if she needs money," he began
afresh. "I am, to be sure, living now upon my capital, but your share
is secured to you, and I shall not last long."
At first his meaning escaped her; she gazed at him with wide eyes;
then, as she comprehended at last, the pen fell from her fingers, and
she burst into a flood of tears.
"Hush, hush, my darling; do not torment yourself beforehand. Perhaps I
describe my condition to you as worse than it really is," he said,
leaning tenderly over her, and, putting his hand beneath her chin, he
looked deep into her dark eyes. "If sunshine can make a man well I am
all right."
* * * * *
No, it was too late,--too late! His physical strength could never be
restored, his lungs nothing could heal; but with his child beside him
his soul and heart gained health and strength. Since those first fair
years of his married life, he had never been so happy as now, although
he seldom quite forgot that he stood on the brink of the grave.
Once, on a damp muggy November evening in a Viennese suburb he had seen
a drunkard staggering along the wall in a narrow street, quite unable
to find his way. A policeman was just about to take him into custody,
when a little girl, muffled in rags and with a pale wizened face,
suddenly appeared beside him out of the darkness, seized him by his
red, trembling, swollen hand, and called in a hoarse, anxious voice,
without impatience or harshness, but not without authority, 'Father,
come home!' And the drunkard, who had paid no heed to the jeers of the
passers-by, nor to the admonition of the policeman, hung his head, and
without a word followed the weak, helpless little creature like a lamb.
The colonel had stood and looked after them until the darkness
swallowed them up. He recalled distinctly the girl's thin yellow
braids, her long chin, the sordid red-and-black plaid shawl which she
wore about her shoulders, and the worn old laced boots, far too big for
her little feet and coming half-way up her naked little blue legs, and
continually in her way as she walked.
The little episode had made a painful impression upon him for a time,
and then he had forgotten it. Now it arose in his memory, but
transfigured, and as, clasping his daughter's hand, he went on to his
grave, he compared himself in his secret soul with the drunkard led
home by the child.
* * * * *
He was very ill. Unaccustomed to spare himself, and without any real
pleasure in life, he had increased his malady by months of entire want
of care and nursing, until his physicians had insisted that a summer
should be spent at a sanitarium in Gleichenberg. Partially restored, he
had immediately, in direct opposition to all advice, re-entered the
service. The autumn man[oe]uvres had brought on an inflammation of the
lungs. How very ill he was never entered his mind, in spite of his
speech to Stella. He thought he should live a couple of years longer,
and his great dread was lest he should be pensioned off before the time
because of his invalid condition. The pains that he took to maintain an
upright military bearing aggravated all the evils of his case.
There were a number of distinguished Austrians in the Hotel Britannia,
some few of them invalids, most of them gay and pleasure-loving and
well pleased to spend a few weeks amid picturesque surroundings and in
pleasant society. The colonel was beloved by all, and they eagerly
welcomed his pretty daughter,--even the ladies, whom the colonel
consulted as to the necessary reform in the girl's wardrobe. She sat
with her father in the midst of them all at the upper end of the table,
the lower end, where the other inmates of the hotel were crowded
together, being the subject of much merry scorn and stigmatized as 'the
menagerie.' Compassion for the daughter of the dying man deepened the
sympathy called forth by the young girl's grace and charm. Old
gentlemen rallied her upon her conquests, and the young men paid her
devoted attention. She had a special friend in the handsome black-eyed
prince Zino Capito, who had an unusual share of time to bestow upon her
since the latest mistress of his affections, the famous Princess
Oblonsky, had just departed for Petersburg to take possession of the
effects of her husband, suddenly deceased. He daily sent Stella
magnificent flowers with which to adorn the hotel apartments for her
father. "Invalids are so fond of flowers," he would say, with a smile
that displayed his brilliant white teeth. And when the weather was fine
and the colonel felt well enough, he would invite them to take a sail
in his cutter upon the blue Adriatic.
The colonel often spoke of his wife, longing to see her. The last
_liaison_--that which had been the cause of a definite separation
between himself and his wife, had robbed him of his self-respect, had
disgraced him in his children's eyes, and had snatched from him every
vestige of peace of mind--had dissolved itself more than two years
before. The recollection of it disgusted him, but, like all men who
have no future, he gladly allowed his thoughts to stray into the
distant past. The wife from whom he had parted, elderly, learned, with
her slovenliness and irritability, he had forgotten; his memory
preserved the bride, in her light dress, bending above his couch of
pain; he saw her on his marriage-day in the flood of sunlight which
streaming through the tall window of his sick-room invested with a
glorious halo the golden cross upon the improvised altar.
One sunny day, as he was sailing in the Grand Canal in a gondola with
Stella, he pointed to a beautiful old palazzo.
"There is where I lay wounded in '59, when your mother came to nurse
me. Those windows there were mine."
In the evening of the same day, while Stella was writing to her mother
and he lay half dozing on a lounge, he suddenly said, "Stella, do you
think your mother could make up her mind to come to Venice with Franzi
for a few weeks? She need not be in the same house with us, if that
would bore her, but---- Tell her how much it would please me to see
her; and," he added, with an embarrassed smile, "tell her I am really
very ill: perhaps that may induce her to come."
He awaited the reply to this letter with feverish eagerness. In a week
there arrived a package of rather insignificant notices of a work of
his wife's, just published at her own expense; two weeks later the
answer to the letter appeared.
"Well, what does your mother say?" asked the colonel, as he observed
Stella deciphering the almost illegible document. "Read it aloud to
me," he insisted: "you know everything that goes on at home interests
me. Is she coming?"
But Stella, with tears in her eyes, and a burning blush, stammered, "A
letter must have been lost. This one never even mentions our plan!"
The colonel turned away and looked out of the window at the East India
steamship.
"'Tis a pity!" he sighed, in an undertone, after a while. "I should
have liked to ask her forgiveness."
* * * * *
Although upon Stella's arrival, when he felt better, he had spoken
continually and with apparent satisfaction of his approaching death,
from the time when he began to decline rapidly he avoided all reference
to his condition. The doctor visited him daily, sometimes oftener, and
would drink a glass of sherry with him while recounting his brilliant
exploits in the way of restoration to health of patients whose
condition was even worse than the colonel's. But after a while he grew
less confident, and at last towards the end of April he proposed an
operation for the relief of the lungs. The colonel eyed him fixedly,
and sent Stella out of the room.
"How long a time do you give me?" he asked. "Be frank. I am a soldier,
and not afraid to die."
"Under the circumstances, a couple of months."
"I understand. Say nothing to my daughter, but let matters take their
course. It is all right."
That evening he sat writing for an hour, never stirring from his
writing-table. Suddenly he grew restless, and ended by tearing up what
he had written.
"Stella, come here!" he called; and as she came to him, "Don't cry,
darling,--it distresses me so that I lose my wits; and I need them all.
I wanted to write out my will; but it is useless. Your little property
is secure, and you must divide the rest: I cannot show you any
partiality. It is terrible to think of dying here, but, if it must be,
do not leave me in Venice, in a strange country. Bury me near you in
Zalow,--your mother knows the spot; she will bear with me in the
churchyard." He took a little golden locket from his breast-pocket.
"Take care of that," he said: "it is the locket your mother sent me in
the campaign of '59, and she must hang it around my neck before they
lay me in the grave. Beg her to do this. Do you understand, Stella?"
She sat opposite him at the little round table, very pale, but
perfectly upright and without a tear, just as he would have had her.
"Yes, papa."
* * * * *
The next day was her birthday.
He gave her a golden bracelet to which was attached a crystal locket
containing a four-leaved clover.
"I cannot show you any partiality in my will," said he, "but wear that
for my sake, darling. And if ever heaven sends you some great joy, say
to yourself that your poor father prayed the dear God that it might
fall to your share!"
* * * * *
One day the colonel received a letter bearing a Paris post-mark which
seemed to depress him greatly. All day after receiving it he was
thoughtful and taciturn. In the evening he wrote a long letter, pausing
from time to time to cough sadly. As he folded it, Stella observed that
he enclosed money in it. After apparently reflecting for a while, he
drew from a case in his pocket a photograph of Stella which had been
taken in Venice, gazed at it lovingly for a moment, seemed to hesitate,
and finally enclosed it also in the envelope with the letter. Looking
up, he became aware of his daughter's curious gaze, and suddenly grew
confused. He sealed his epistle with unnecessary care, and then all at
once reached both hands across the table and clasped Stella's between
them, saying,--
"You are wondering to whom I am sending my darling's picture? To my
youngest sister, your aunt Eugenie. Do you remember her? Yes? You used
to love her, did you not?"
"Very much, papa; but--I thought she was dead."
The colonel turned away his head; after a moment he drew Stella towards
him, and said, softly, "She is not dead: I cannot tell you about her,
do not ask me. But do not be hard to her, and if you should ever meet
her, speak a kind word to her, for my sake."
* * * * *
He still went daily below-stairs in the lift to take his meals, but he
now dined at a small table alone with Stella, after the _table-d'hote_
in the spacious, lonely dining-hall. His frequent attacks of coughing
made him shun society. He dreaded annoying others.
"I am no longer fit to mingle with my kind, Stella," he would say. "My
poor little butterfly, it is tiresome to have such a father, is it
not?"
She, apparently, did not find it so. She desired nothing beyond the
privilege of taking care of him, although she could be little more than
a weak, helpless child. By day she cheered him with her lively talk,
and at night if he stirred she was beside his bed in an instant in her
long dressing-gown, her little bare feet thrust into slippers,
supporting him in her arms if he coughed. Outside the moon shone full
above the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Up from the garden was
wafted the odour of roses and syringas, while above the swampy
atmosphere of the lagunes, and mingling with the plash of waters at the
base of the old palaces, floated sweet, sad melodies,--the songs of the
evening minstrels of Venice,--
"Vorrei baciar i tuoi capelli neri,"
and
"Penso alla prima volta in cui volgesti
Lo sguardo soave in sino a me!"
Sometimes she would fall asleep sitting beside his bed, her head
resting on his pillow.
* * * * *
She grew to look like a shadow, so pale and worn did she become. He did
all that he could to prevent her from coming to him at night, even
threatening to employ a nurse, but the threat was never fulfilled.
In fact, he needed very little care but such as her affection insisted
upon giving him; he was never confined to bed, only grew more and more
inclined to rest on a lounge during the day. He was very thoughtful of
others, and required but little service at their hands up to the very
last, only seldom demanding any assistance in dressing. He grew nervous
and restless, longed for change, yearned for his home with the fervent
desire of a dying man. Before his mental vision hovered the picture of
the old mill, with its old-fashioned garden, the small sparse forest
with feathery underbrush at the foot of the knotty oaks, and the gray
waters of the stream that wound through the autumn mist between bald
stony banks. He felt an insane desire to see it all once more. For a
long time he endured this yearning in silence, not venturing to express
it; his wife had repulsed all advances of his too decidedly. But, good
heavens! he needed so little room, he would not trouble her much; and
then, besides, he was an old man, ill unto death: his demands upon her
personally were restricted to a kind word now and then, a sympathetic
pressure of the hand!
Meanwhile, he grew worse and worse. Other complications heightened the
peril in which he stood from the original disease. He complained that
he could no longer endure the food at the hotel. His physician, who,
like all physicians at health-resorts, avoided as far as possible the
annoyance of having his patients die on his hands, strongly advised a
change of air.
Utterly dejected, his face turned away from her, the dying man begged
Stella to ask her mother if he might come home.
But Stella had already asked, and shortly afterwards an answer was
received. The Baroness wrote that now, as ever, she was prepared to do
her duty,--to receive him, and take care of him. The mill was always
open to him.
How he rejoiced in the prospect of home! He tried to help in the
packing, but he was too languid. From his lounge he looked on while
Stella managed it all, and now and then with a smile he would call her
to him, only to stroke her hands and look into her dear, loving eyes.
At last they set out. It was Easter Monday, in the latter half of
April; the bells were all ringing solemnly, and dazzling sunshine lay
upon the dark waters of the lagunes.
All their acquaintance at the hotel surrounded the father and daughter
as they stepped into their gondola. The little vessel was filled with
flowers, farewell tokens to Stella, and from the balconies of the hotel
many a white kerchief waved adieu to the travellers.
* * * * *
At first they journeyed by short stages, sometimes taking a roundabout
route for the sake of better lodgings at night, stopping at Villach and
at Graetz. Then the colonel grew anxiously eager to be at home; he could
no longer restrain his impatience. From Graetz he insisted upon making
one journey of it, during which they had to change conveyances
frequently. Every one was kind, showing all manner of attention, to the
sick man and his pretty, loving, tender daughter. With every hour he
became more weak and miserable. The last change they made he could
scarcely manage to descend from the railway-carriage: two porters were
obliged to help him into the other coupe.
It was one of those first-class half-coupes for three occupants. Stella
had not been able to procure for him, as hitherto, an entire carriage,
and we all know how deceptive is the ease of those half-coupes.
The girl propped her father up with rugs and cushions so that he found
his position tolerable, and he fell asleep. The afternoon passed, and
twilight came on. Greenish-yellow tints coloured the horizon, and a
small white crescent gleamed above the darkening earth. Through the
open window of the coupe came the warm, balmy air of the spring.
Sometimes there mingled with the acrid, searching odour of the
undeveloped foliage the full, sweet fragrance of some blossoming
fruit-tree. A scarcely perceptible breeze swept gently and caressingly
over the meadows, and lightly rippled the surface of the large quiet
pond past which the train rushed. Here and there the level landscape
was dotted by a village,--long barns and hay-ricks covered with
blackened straw, grouped irregularly about some little church or castle
among trees white with blossoms or pale green with opening leaf-buds.
The colonel slept on. Suddenly Stella perceived that she had lost her
bracelet,--the one with the four-leaved clover. She moved with a sudden
start. The colonel awoke.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"In an hour we shall be at home: it is only three stations off," she
said, soothingly, with a beating heart.
He bent his head, folded his hands, and prepared to wait patiently. But
it was impossible: a deadly anguish assailed him. He looked round in
despair like some trapped animal.
"I am ill!" he cried. "I cannot tell what ails me. I never felt so
before!"
He coughed convulsively, but briefly, then tried to move the cushions
so that his head might find a more comfortable resting-place.
"Take more room, papa; lay your head in my lap," Stella entreated,
tenderly.
He did so. He laid his head on her knees, and, taking her hand in his,
held it against his cheek. The feverish unrest which had hitherto
throbbed throughout his frame subsided, giving place to a delicious
desire to sleep. For the last time the vision rose upon his mind of the
drunken father being led home by his little girl; then all grew
indistinct. He dreamed; he thought he was staggering painfully through
a bog, when some one took him by the hand and led him across a narrow
bridge beneath which gleamed dark, slowly-flowing water. He looked
down; it was Stella who was leading him, but Stella as a little
three-year-old child, with her simple little white night-cap tied
beneath her chin, her rosy little bare feet showing beneath the hem of
her white night-gown. The bridge creaked beneath him; he started and
awoke.
"Are we at home?" he asked, scarce audibly.
"Almost, papa."
He pressed her hand to his lips.
The twilight deepened; a dark transparent mist seemed to veil the sky;
the heavens showed as if through thin mourning crape; the broad shining
edges of the ponds and pools were dim; the crescent moon grew brighter.
The train whizzed along faster than ever, swaying from side to side on
the sleepers. Suddenly Stella felt her father start violently; then he
heaved a brief sigh, like that which one gives when surprised by
anything unexpectedly delightful, or when one is suddenly relieved of a
heavy burden. Then all was quiet,--quiet,--still as death! She bent
over him and listened. In vain! She felt his hand grow cold and stiff
in her own. A sudden anguish took possession of her. She was afraid in
the darkness. Meanwhile, the lamp in the coupe was lighted. Its crude,
yellow light fell upon the colonel's face.
Was he asleep, or---- She held her own breath to listen for his. Her
heart beat as though it would break; no longer able to control her
distress, she called, "Papa!" then louder, "Papa! Papa!" He did not
answer.
The night-moths fluttered in through the open window and circled about
the lamp; the fragrance of the blossoming cherry-trees filled the air;
a cracked church-bell in the distance hoarsely tolled the Ave Maria.
In an undertone Stella prayed 'Our Father;' but in the midst of it she
burst into a convulsive fit of sobbing: she stroked and caressed the
cold cheeks, the thin gray hair, of the dead. She knew that before many
minutes were over he would be taken from her, and with him everything
dear to her in life.
Onward rushed the train. The fiery sparks flew like rain past the
windows; there was a shrill whistle, then a stop. The journey's end was
reached.
* * * * *
Her mother and sister had come to the station to meet them. When the
conductor opened the door, Stella sat motionless, her father's head
resting upon her knees.
It was dark. The stars gleamed in the blue-black heavens.
Mute and pale as the dead, the Baroness walked with Franziska and
Stella behind her husband's corpse the short distance between the
station and the mill. Some awkwardness on the part of the bearers
released one arm of the dead man, and the hand fell and trailed on the
earth. With a quick impetuous movement his wife took it in her own,
pressed the cold, dead hand to her lips, and held it clasped in hers
the rest of the way.
They laid the body in the fresh, white bed, fragrant with lavender and
orris, which had been prepared for the sick man in the corner room he
had so loved, and in which the Baroness had placed a bouquet of white
hawthorn in honour of his arrival.
Two candles were burning at the head of the bed.
Stella, who had, as it were, turned to marble, moving and speaking like
an automaton, suddenly grew restless. She seemed to have forgotten
something, and then looked for and found the locket which the colonel
had given her for her mother, and which she had ever since worn around
her neck. Very distinctly and monotonously she repeated the dying man's
message and request as she handed the locket to her mother.
"He begs you will hang this around his neck before they lay him in the
grave; and once he said he should have liked once more to ask your
forgiveness."
The Baroness took the little case from her child's hand. She grew paler
than ever, and her eyes were those of one startled by an inward vision
of a long-forgotten past. The hawthorn shed a delicious fragrance;
outside, the breeze of spring sighed among the weeping-willows, the
brook gurgled and sobbed.
All in an instant the old, gray-haired woman's hands began to tremble
violently.
"Leave me alone with him for a moment," she softly entreated; and
Stella slipped away.
In the terrible week ensuing upon that wretched evening the Baroness
treated Stella with an unvarying and altogether pathetic tenderness; in
that week Stella learned to comprehend what an irresistible charm this
woman had been able to exercise,--learned to understand how longing for
her, even after years of separation, had gnawed at the heart of the
dying man.
Then, to be sure, everything ran its old course, with the sole
exception that the widow never uttered in the presence of her children
one unkind word with regard to their father, but often alluded before
them to his fine qualities.