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Countess Erika's Apprenticeship

<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2> For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses, while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in fact, an ideal groom. Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and "Is it all right, Countess Erika?" "Yes, Herr von Sydow." And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent Thiergarten. At the close of the season Countess Lenzdorff had declared that her grand-daughter looked ill and needed exercise. At first she prescribed a course of riding-lessons in the Imperial School; but Erika found this very irksome, and Goswyn was intrusted with the task of procuring her a riding horse and of teaching her to ride. Under his guidance she made astonishing progress, and then--she looked so lovely on horseback. When she began, the Thiergarten was cold and bare,--it was towards the end of March: now it was the end of April, and there was spring everywhere. On the tall old trees the foliage, young and tender, drenched with sunlight, showed golden green, gleaming brown, and rosy red, shading off into transparency in the gradations of colour native to early spring, and in the midst of this harmonious variety here and there a grave dark fir would show its dark boughs not yet decorated with the slender green fingers in the gift of May. Among the trees the smooth surface of a pond would reflect the myriad tones of colour of the spring; the long shadows of morning stretched dark across the level sunlit sward of the openings in the woodland. The air was fresh and filled with the fragrance of cool moist earth and young vegetation, but mingling with its invigorating breath there was suddenly wafted a languid odour, intoxicatingly sweet, but with something sickening in its essence, and as the riders looked for its source they perceived among the spring greenery, covered to the tip of every bough with gleaming white blossoms, the luxuriant wild cherry. Erika inhaled its heavy breath with eager delight, while Goswyn's dislike of it amounted almost to disgust. Every day they rode thus together along the avenues of the Thiergarten, until they became familiar with every pond, every statue,--yes, even with the appearance of every rider. At times they would meet a couple of cavalry officers and exchange greetings; or a few infantry officers, much-enduring warriors, who seemed to find riding the most difficult duty required of them; or some gentleman in trade testing upon a hired steed his skill in horsemanship and pale with terror if he happened to lose a stirrup. Squadrons of young girls under the guardianship of a riding-master would come cantering along the smooth drive, some overflowing with youthful vitality, others evidently taking the exercise by order of a physician. Of course Countess Lenzdorff had requested Goswyn's supervision for only the few first efforts in horsemanship made by her grand-daughter, never dreaming that he would sacrifice two hours of each day in trotting about the Thiergarten with the young girl. But week followed week and he was still riding daily with Erika. In themselves there could have been but little pleasure in these excursions always along the same familiar avenues,--longer flights into the surrounding country with only a groom as escort would have been thought indecorous,--and yet the two morning hours thus passed were more to the young dragoon than the whole day beside. The girl was in such harmony with the early, fresh nature about them. She was still but a child; but just as she was, with her unblunted sensibilities, her eager warm-heartedness, he would fain have clasped her in his arms, and have claimed the right to cherish and nurture to their glorious development all the fine qualities now dormant within her, before she should be wounded and sore from the thorns that beset her pathway. That her sentiments towards him bore no comparison with those he cherished for her he was perfectly aware; but what of that? Passion too easily aroused on her part would not have pleased him, and she frankly showed her preference for him among all the men of her acquaintance. The old Countess did all that she could to further his wooing: if he had not been in love he would have thought that she did too much. It was foolish to delay. The leaves had lost their first tender beauty and were full-grown, strong, and shining, as they rode one day along one of the narrowest bridle-paths in the Thiergarten,--a path where here and there a huge tree, which those who had laid out the park had not had the heart to sacrifice, almost obstructed the way. They trotted along briskly, like all beginners. Erika preferred a very swift pace, at which Goswyn sometimes demurred. On a sudden the girl's horse shied, violently startled by a wayfarer who had fallen asleep in the shade by the side of the path. Very calmly, with no thought of danger, Erika not only kept her seat in the saddle, but quickly succeeded in soothing her horse. All the more was Goswyn terrified, and no sooner was he convinced that Erika did not need his assistance than he turned angrily and soundly berated the unfortunate man, who was apparently intoxicated. Then, somewhat ashamed of his outburst, he rejoined Erika, who awaited him with a smile of surprise. He frowned; his cheeks were flushed. "Pardon me, Countess; I am very sorry," he said. "I could think of nothing but that you might have been thrown,---that tree--if you had lost your presence of mind----" He shuddered. She shrugged her shoulders. "And what if I had? You were by." At these words his face cleared. "Do you really feel such confidence in me?" he asked. "I?" She looked at him in utter surprise. Why should he ask a question to which the reply was so self-evident? His grave, manly face took on an expression of almost boyish embarrassment, and suddenly she became aware of his sentiments,--for the first time. She made a nervous effort to devise something that should hinder his confession, something that should spare him humiliation and herself pain: she could invent nothing. In vain did she search her mind for some, even the smallest, sensible evasive phrase, and at last she murmured, "The trees are very green for the time of year. Do you not think so?" He smiled in spite of his agitation and confusion, and then said, in the slightly hoarse tone which always with him betokened intense earnestness, "Countess Erika, beyond a certain point twilight, lovely as it is, becomes intolerable; one longs for light." He paused, looked full in her face, and cleared his throat. "You must long have been aware of how I regard you?" But she interrupted him hurriedly: "No, no; I have been aware of nothing,--nothing at all." She trembled violently, and turned into a broad road, where a gay cavalcade came cantering towards her,--the Princess Dorothea and her train of several gentlemen. "Turn to the right," called Goswyn, and the cavalcade passed, the dust raised by their horses enveloping everything like a misty cloud. Erika coughed slightly. "Good heavens! perhaps he understood, and will save me from replying," she thought. But no, he did not save her from replying. "Well, Countess Erika?" he began, after a short pause, gently, but very firmly. "Wha--what?" she stammered. "Will you be my wife?" She gasped for breath: never could she have believed that she should find it so hard to refuse an offer. But accept it--no; something within her rebelled against the thought--she could not. "N--no. I am very sorry," she stammered, every pulse throbbing wildly. She was terribly agitated as she glanced timidly up at him. Not a muscle in his face moved. "I was prepared for this," he murmured. "Thank God, he does not care very much!" she thought, taking a long breath; and the next moment--nay, even that very moment--she was vexed that he did 'not care very much.' They had reached the railway bridge, beneath which they were wont to turn into the grand avenue for a final gallop. For a moment she contemplated sacrificing to her rejected suitor this gallop, the crown and glory of their daily ride. She reined in her horse. "No gallop?" he asked, as if nothing had passed between them, except that his voice was still a little hoarse. "Oh, if you will. I only thought----" she stammered. He replied with the chivalric courtesy with which he always treated her, "I am entirely at your service." For a moment she hesitated; then, with a touch of the whip on her steed's right shoulder, she started. "Oh, how glorious!" she exclaimed, as they turned just before reaching the pavement. "Shall we not have one more?" And so they rode twice up and down the grand avenue. The air was clear and cool, and there was in it the fragrance of freshly-planed wood, coming from a large shed that was being erected on one side of the avenue for an exhibition of horses. Years afterwards Erika could never recall that ride and her miserable cruelty without again perceiving that peculiar fragrance. The young man was in direful plight. Whatever he might say, he had not been prepared for this. The last few days had been passed by him in a state of blissful agitation in which, try as he might, he could not torment himself with doubts. He had fallen from an immense height, and he was terribly bruised. In spite of all his self-control, he began to show it. Erika grew more and more depressed, glancing sympathizingly aside at him from time to time. Now she would far rather that he had not cared so much. Evidently she did not herself know what she really wished. They trotted along side by side; then just as they turned into Bellevue Street he heard a low distressed voice say,-- "Herr von Sydow--I would not have you think that--that--I--intended to say that to you. I so value your friendship--I should be so very sorry to lose it--and--and----" She threw back her head slightly, and, looking him in the face from beneath the stiff brim of her riding-hat, she said, with a charming little smile, "Tell me that all shall be just as it has been between us." "As you please, Countess Erika," he replied, unable to restrain a smile at this novel way of treating a rejected suitor. When he lifted her from her horse shortly afterwards, he just touched her gray riding-glove with his lips; she looked kindly at him, and as he gazed after her from the hall as she ascended the staircase she turned her head to give him a friendly little nod. His heart grew lighter; he would not take too seriously her rejection of his suit; it was not final. "After all," he thought, "in spite of her precocious intelligence she is but a charming, innocent child; and that is what makes her so bewitching." The sunlight gleamed on the gilded tops of the iron railings of the front gardens in Bellevue Street, upon the leaves of the trees, and upon the long line of red-painted watering-carts stretching away in perspective like the beads of a huge rosary. The heat was already rather oppressive in Berlin. But Goswyn was robust, and sensitive neither to heat nor to cold. His ride with Erika was but the beginning of his daily exercise, and he trotted off to finish it. In the Charlottenburg Avenue he encountered the same cavalcade he had seen before in the Thiergarten in the midst of his declaration to Erika. Thanks to her agitation, the girl had recognized none of the party, but he had bowed to his sister-in-law and her esquires. Now she beckoned to him from a distance, and called, "Goswyn!" She was considerably taller and more slender than Erika, but she looked well in the saddle. Her gray-green eyes sparkled with malicious mockery from beneath the brim of her tall hat. "Goswyn," she cried, speaking with her accustomed rapidity in her high piercing voice and with her strange lisp, "you were just now made the subject of a wager." "But, Thea," Prince Nimbsch interrupted his cousin, "we none of us agreed to wager with you." "What was it about?" asked Goswyn, with a most uncomfortable presentiment that some annoyance threatened him. The three men with Dorothea looked at one another; Dorothea giggled. At last Prince Nimbsch said, "My cousin wished to wager that the Countess Erika would be wooed and won this spring." "Oh, no," Dorothea interrupted him; "that was not it at all. I wagered that you had been refused by Erika this morning in the Thiergarten, Gos. Helmy would not believe me; but I have sharp eyes." She said it still giggling, with the wayward insolence of a spoiled child, not consciously cruel, who for very wantonness pulls a beetle to pieces. "Am I not right?" she persisted. The men turned away as men of feeling would turn away from beholding an execution. There was a red cloud before Goswyn's eyes, but he maintained his outward composure perfectly. "Yes, Dorothea, I have been rejected," he said, and the words sounded oddly distinct in the midst of the absolute silence of the little group, surrounded as it was by the bustle and noise of the capital. "May I ask what possible interest this can have for you?" "Oh," she laughed still more insolently, ready as she always was to exaggerate her ill-breeding when she was tempted to be ashamed of it,--"oh, I only wanted to make sure I was right. Helmy contradicted me so positively, declaring that a man like you never could be rejected. Aha, Helmy! Well, the other Berlin men will be glad!" "And why?" Goswyn asked, with the unfortunate persistence in pursuing a disagreeable subject often shown by strong men who would fain establish their lack of sensitiveness. "Why? Because you are a dangerous rival, Goswyn," cried Dorothea. "Do you suppose that you are the only one to covet the hand of the heiress?" For a moment Goswyn felt as if a naming torch had been hurled in his face. He grew giddy, but, still maintaining his self-control, he simply rejoined, "Dorothea, there are circumstances in which your sex is an immense protection," and then, turning with a bow to the three men, he galloped off in an opposite direction. Dorothea still giggled, but she turned very pale; her companions, on the other hand, were scarlet. "Ride home with whomsoever you please: I am ashamed to be seen with you!" Prince Nimbsch said, angrily; and he hurried after Sydow. But when he overtook him the two men looked at each other and were silent. At last Nimbsch began, "I only wanted to say----" Goswyn interrupted him: "There is nothing to be said;" and there was a hoarse tone in his voice that pained the young Austrian. "I know you to be a gentleman, Prince, and that you consider me one. There is nothing to be said." Before the Prince could say another word, Goswyn was well-nigh out of sight. Two hours afterwards Goswyn von Sydow might have been seen on a horse covered with foam galloping over the sandy hilly tracts of land by which Berlin is surrounded. He had never bestowed a thought upon Erika's wealth: now he felt that he never could forget it. He had been robbed of all ease in her society. It was all over. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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