No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hotel Britannia
is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves
and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is
stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The
hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the
watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic
of typhus fever.
Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at the
_table-d'hote_ of the Hotel Britannia, and the small table appropriated
to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.
Nevertheless the Lenzdorffs have not left the hotel; but Erika is ill,
stricken down by malarial fever, and the old Countess does not leave
her bedside.
The attack was sudden,--sudden so far as could be seen by those in
daily intercourse with her, but pronounced very gradual by the
physician, who maintained that the disease had long been latent in the
girl's system.
In the afternoon of the day after that upon which Erika had, as by a
miracle, escaped the most terrible peril of her life, she had, by her
grandmother's desire, donned a charming gown and had gone with the old
Countess to pay a round of farewell visits. She had gone patiently in
the gondola from one palazzo to another, and with a pale, calm face had
answered question after question as to the terrible catastrophe which
her timely presence had been the means of preventing.
There were various versions concerning the reasons for Frau Lozoncyi's
attempt at suicide: thanks to the jealousy of Lozoncyi's numerous
feminine adorers, none of these versions approached even distantly the
truth, for none of his adorers would have admitted that the artist had
ever bestowed a serious thought upon Erika.
In the evening she had dressed for dinner, and then, overcome by
fatigue, she had lain down upon her bed to rest for a quarter of an
hour. She did not rise from it for weeks.
Now the disease has left her. The physician has not only allowed but
advised her to leave her bed. Every forenoon at eleven o'clock Marianne
and the old Countess dress her,--ah, how tenderly and carefully!--and
then, leaning heavily upon her grandmother's arm, she walks slowly
about the room.
It is nearly six o'clock. The intense heat has somewhat abated, and
Erika is sitting in the most comfortable arm-chair to be had in the
hotel, her head resting upon a pillow, her hands in her lap. And what
hands they are!--so slender, so white and helpless! To please her
grandmother, she has swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup,--without the
slightest desire to eat,--as if it had been medicine.
"Are you comfortable, my darling? Shall I not get you another pillow?"
her grandmother asks. The old Countess is hardly to be recognized, her
treatment of her grand-daughter is so humbly tender, so pathetically
anxious. Her force and rigour have vanished: she can only pet and spoil
Erika; she cannot incite her to any interest in life.
"Ah, grandmother dear, everything is most comfortable," Erika replies.
As if a pillow more or less could procure her ease!
"Shall I read aloud to you, my child?"
"If you will be so kind."
Her grandmother makes choice of a new novel of Norris's. As she reads,
she looks across the book at Erika: the girl is not listening. The old
Countess stops, and drops the book in her lap. Erika is not aware that
she has ceased to read.
After a while she looks up. "Grandmother," she asks, gently, "did no
letters come while I was ill?"
"Of course," her grandmother replies. "I had letters every day from
various friends and acquaintances, asking how you were. Hedwig Norbin
is with her married daughter in Via Reggia, and I had to send her
bulletins reporting your condition three times a week."
Erika's thin cheeks flush slightly. "And--did no letters come from
Berlin?" she asks, with averted face.
Her grandmother hesitates for a moment, and then says, "I do not
correspond with any one in Berlin. I have written as few letters as
possible during your illness."
Erika's head droops. "How ashamed my grandmother must be for me, if she
has not even told Goswyn that I am ill!" she thinks.
For a while there is silence; then Erika whispers, "Grandmother, I am
very tired. I should like to lie down."
Her grandmother leads her to a lounge, where she lies down, with her
face turned to the wall. She is very quiet. Is she sleeping?
The old Countess softly leaves the room.
In Erika's boudoir she walks to and fro a couple of times, then sits
down and takes up a book, but it soon drops in her lap unread. For
weeks she has felt no interest in the comfortless philosophy of the
books which were formerly her favourites. The book slips to the floor;
she does not stoop to pick it up; with hands clasped in her lap
she ponders upon many things that had not been wont to occupy her
thoughts. She never notices a bustle in the hotel most unusual at this,
the dull season, until Luedecke opens the door and announces, "Your
Excellency, Herr von Sydow wishes to know if he may come up, or if your
Excellency----"
She starts. "Herr von Sydow!" she repeats. "Show him up,--very softly,
of course: Countess Erika is asleep."
A moment afterwards he enters the room.
At first she hardly recognizes him. His features are sharper; the hair
about his temples is gray.
"My dear child, you here?" she says, cordially, rising and advancing a
few steps to meet him.
He kisses her hand. "I learned only three days ago that she is ill. How
is she?"
"Erika?"
"Who else could it be?" he replies, impatiently.
"The disease is cured; but she does not get well. She gains no
strength. She has not improved in the last ten days; she has no
appetite, takes no interest in anything. She is always weary."
"What does her physician say?" Goswyn is sitting beside his old friend,
leaning forward and listening eagerly to every word that falls from her
lips. Both speak very softly.
"The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire
relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of
life----"
"No love of life! Nonsense!" exclaims Goswyn. "Life must be made dear
again for her."
Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom
opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white
dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.
What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that
suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the
staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in
Berlin?
"Goswyn," she stammers, gazing at him, "you here? What are you doing
here?"
He goes to her and takes her hand. "I heard that you were ill, and I
came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home."
Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and
then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to
have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her
forehead.
A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all
desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck,
and murmurs, "Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the
pain I have given you?"
He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been
dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of
little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps
at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. "What!" he cries,
"do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your
illness began weeks before it did for the physicians."
Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which,
exhausted as she is, she sinks down.
"I must make one confession to you, Erika," he whispers. "I was
almost out of my senses in that terrible twenty-four hours after I
received your letter and before I received your grandmother's; my gray
temples bear witness to that; but then--then I took delight in your
letter,--yes, in that terrible letter. For I learned from it what I had
never ventured to hope,--that you cared for me a little, Erika."
"Ah, Goswyn, you always were, of all men in this world, the most
indispensable one to me!"
How fair life can be! For a while the lovers, hand clasped in hand,
talk blissfully; then Erika looks round for her grandmother. But the
old Countess has vanished: they do not need her at this moment. She is
sitting in her own room, delighting in her two young people, recalling
her far-distant past, as she says to herself that under certain
circumstances love may be a beautiful thing, and when it is
beautiful----
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin