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Countess Erika's Apprenticeship

<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement. It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling, clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern art. The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time: unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth. Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front of the royal boxes. At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth. The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity, nothing to distract the attention from the stage. Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve, and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty restrain her tears. All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable, the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the starry heavens. Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "Voyons, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" she asked, discontentedly. "Ce n'est rien; une ressemblance qui me frappe," he replied, in the weary tone of annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of jealous women. A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just rolling up. Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those dark, searching eyes before? The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes; she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them; the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty. The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly, mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish, and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic purity of the boy-chorus,-- <div class="poem"> "Made wise by pity, The pure in heart----" </div> "No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat. Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first act. "I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,' and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her shoulders and makes no reply. "She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather embarrassed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after you, Erika." The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass towards the restaurant to refresh itself. Close behind the Lenzdorffs walks the Russian Princess B----, who hires an entire suite of rooms for every season and attends every representation. She is dressed in embroidered muslin, and from the broad brim of her white straw hat hangs a Brussels lace veil partially concealing her face, which was once very handsome. She addresses the old Countess: "Êtes-vous touchée de la grâce, ma chère Anne?" Countess Anna shakes her head emphatically: "No; the music is too highly spiced and peppered for me. It bas made me quite thirsty. I long for a draught of prosaic beer and some Mozart." The Russian smiles, and immediately begins to tell of how she had once reproved Rubinstein when he ventured to say something derogatory with regard to Wagner. A stout tradesman, whose poetically-inclined wife has apparently brought him to Bayreuth against his will, exclaims, "What a humbug it is!" to which his wife rejoins, "You cannot understand it the first time: you must hear 'Parsifal' frequently." "Very possibly," he declares; "but I shall never hear it again." The Lenzdorffs and Lord Langley take their seats at a table in the airy balcony of the restaurant, to drink a cup of tea: table and tea have been reserved for them by Lüdecke's watchful care. The greater part of the assemblage can scarcely find a chair upon which to sit down, or a glass of lemonade for refreshment. The consequence is that there is much unseemly pushing and crowding. Erika eats nothing. Lord Langley complains, as do all Englishmen, of the German food, and the old Countess complains of the shrill music. Meanwhile, a tall, striking woman advances to the table where the three are sitting, and where there is a fourth chair, unoccupied. "Vous pardonnez!" she exclaims: "je tombe de fatigue!" Erika gazes at her: it is the companion of the man who had turned to look at her in the theatre during the prelude. A disgust for which she cannot account possesses her: it is as if she were aware of the presence of something impure, repulsive; and yet she could not possibly explain why the stranger should excite such a sensation: she is undeniably handsome, well formed, with regularly-chiselled features, and fair hair dressed with great care and knotted behind beneath the brim of her broad Leghorn hat. A red veil is tied tightly over her face. There is nothing else to excite disapproval in her dress, and inexperienced mortals would pronounce her age to be scarcely thirty. It would require great familiarity with Parisian arts of the toilette to perceive that her whole face is painted and that she is at least forty years old. Everything about her is exquisitely fresh and neat, and from her person is wafted the peculiar aroma of those women whose chief occupation in life is to take care of their bodies. Her air is respectable, and somewhat affected. Lord Langley, to whom her unbidden presence seems especially annoying, is about to intimate this to her, when her escort approaches, and, hastily whispering to her, obliges her to leave her place, which she does unwillingly and even crossly. Courteously lifting his hat, the young man utters an embarrassed "Excuse me," and retires. She can be heard reproaching him petulantly as they walk away, and their places in the theatre remain unoccupied during the other acts of the drama. "Disgusting!" mutters Lord Langley. "Do you know who it was?" he asks, turning to the Countess Anna. "Lozoncyi, the young artist who created such a sensation a couple of years ago. She was his mistress. I remember her in Rome." Although upon Erika's account the words are spoken in an undertone, she hears them, and the blood rushes to her cheeks. And now 'Parsifal' is over, the second act, with its fluttering flower-girl scene, in rather frivolous contrast with the serious motive of the work, its crude inharmonious decorations, and its wonderful dramatic finale; the third act too is over, with its sadly-sweet sunrise melody, its Good Friday spell resolving itself into the angelic music of the spheres. With the hovering harp-arpeggio of the final scene still thrilling in their souls, Erika and her grandmother with Lord Langley drive back to town, leaving behind them the melancholy rustle of the forest, and hearing around them the rolling of wheels, the cracking of whips, and the footsteps of hundreds of pedestrians. Life throbs in Erika's veins more warmly than it is wont to do; she is filled with a vague foreboding unknown to her hitherto. She seems to herself to be confronting the solution of a great secret, beside which she has pursued her thoughtless way, and around which the entire world circles. At the door of their lodgings Lord Langley takes his leave of the ladies: with a lover's tenderness he slips down the glove from his betrothed's white wrist and imprints upon it two ardent kisses, as he whispers, "I trust that my charming Erika will be in a more gracious mood to morrow." The disagreeable sensation caused by his warm breath upon her cheek was persistent; she could not rid herself of it. She sent away her maid, and whilst she was undressing took from her pocket the packet of letters which Goswyn had left with her. She had carried it with her all day long, without finding a moment in which to destroy the papers. Now she removed their outside envelope, merely to assure herself that they were her mother's letters. Yes, she recognized the handwriting,--not the strong, almost masculine characters which had distinguished her mother's writing in the latter years of her life, but the long, slanting, faded hand which Erika could remember in the old exercise-books of her school-days. Nothing could have tempted the girl to read these letters: she kissed the poor yellow sheets twice, sadly and reverentially, and then she held them one by one in the flame of her candle. Her heart was very heavy; a yearning for tenderness, for sympathy, possessed her, and she felt sore and discouraged. The wailing music, the shuddering alluring strains of sinful worldly desire, still haunted her soul with the glance of the stranger who seemed to her no stranger. She felt a choking sensation at the thought of his companion. Never before had she come in contact with anything of the kind. She lay down, but could not sleep. How sultry, even stifling, was the atmosphere! The windows of the little room were wide open, but the air that came in from without was heavy and inodorous: it brought no refreshment. The tread of a belated pedestrian echoed in the street below, and there was the sound of laughter and song from some inn in the neighbourhood. Suddenly the door opened, and the old Countess entered, in a white dressing-gown and lace night-cap. She had a small lamp in her hand, which she put down on a table, and then, seating herself on the edge of the bed, she scanned the young girl with penetrating eyes. "Is anything troubling you, my child?" she began, after a while. Erika tried to say no, but the word would not pass her lips. Instead of replying, she turned away her face. "What was the difficulty between Lord Langley and yourself to-day?" the grandmother went on to ask. Erika was mute. "Tell me the simple truth," the old Countess insisted. "Did you not have some dispute this morning?" "Oh, it was nothing," Erika replied, impatiently; "only--he attempted to play the lover, and I thought it quite unnecessary. Such folly is very unbecoming in a man of his age; and, besides, I cannot endure anything of the kind." A strange expression appeared upon the grandmother's face,--the same that Goswyn had worn when his indignation had suddenly been transformed into pity for the girl. She cleared her throat once or twice, and then remarked, dryly, "How then do you propose to live with Lord Langley?" Erika stared at her in dismay. "Good heavens! I have thought very little about it. You know well that I do not wish to marry for love. That is why I accepted an old man instead of a young one,--because I supposed he would refrain from all lover-like folly. You have always told me that you married my grandfather without love, and that it turned out very well." Her grandmother was silent for a while before she rejoined, "In the first place, constituted as you are, I should wish for you a less prosaic companion for life than your grandfather; but, at the same time, the torture which, with your exaggerated sensitiveness, awaits you in marrying Lord Langley bears no comparison with the simple tedium of my married life. We married in compliance with a family arrangement; and if I did so with but a small amount of esteem for him, he for his part brought to the match no devouring passion for me,--which I should have found most annoying. But the case is entirely different with Lord Langley. He is as desperately in love with you as an old fool can be whose passion is stimulated by the consciousness of his age." Something in the horrified face of the inexperienced young girl must have intensified the old Countess's pity for her. "My poor child, I had no idea of your innocence and inexperience. I have lived on from day to day without in the least comprehending the young creature beside me." She kissed the girl with infinite tenderness, put out the light, and left her alone, her burning face buried in the pillows and sobbing convulsively, a picture of despair. The next day Erika broke her engagement to Lord Langley. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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