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Countess Erika's Apprenticeship

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<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hôtel 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'hôte of the Hôtel 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 Lüdecke 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---- <h3>THE END.</h3> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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