CHAPTER XVI.
[ZALOW.]
It is a mild autumn afternoon; Stella, just returned from a visit to her sister, who has lately been blessed by the arrival of a little daughter, has taken a seat with some trifling piece of work in her mother's study to tell her about the pretty child and Franzi's household, but at her first word her mother calls out to her from her writing-table,--
"Not now,--not now, I beg; do not disturb me."
And the girl, silenced and mortified, bends over the tiny shirt which she has begun to crochet for her little niece, and keeps all that she had hoped to tell to herself.
The autumn sun shines in at the window, and its crimson light gleams upon a large tin box standing on the floor in a corner, the box in which the deceased colonel had kept all the letters he ever received from his wife. Tied up with ribbon, and methodically arranged according to their dates, they are packed away here just as they were sent to his wife from his old quarters at Enns. She has never looked at them, has not even taken the trouble to destroy them, but has simply pushed them aside as useless rubbish.
Stella had rummaged among them, with indescribable sensations in deciphering these yellow documents with their faint odour of lavender and decay, for here were letters full of ardour and passion, letters in which Lina Meineck wrote to her husband, for instance, when he was away during the Schleswig campaign,--
"The weather is fine to-day, and every one is praising the lovely spring; but it is always winter for me in your absence; with you away my thermometer always stands at ten degrees below zero!"
With a shudder Stella put back these relics of a dead love in their little coffin. It was as if she had heard a corpse speak.
Since then she has often wished to burn the letters, out of affectionate reverence for the dead who held them sacred, but she has never summoned up sufficient courage to ask her mother's permission.
The little shirt is finished; with a sigh Stella folds it together, and is just wondering what she shall do next to occupy the rest of the afternoon, when the Baroness says,--
"Have you nothing to do, Stella?"
"No, mamma."
"Well, then, you can run over to Schwarz's and buy me a couple of quires of paper; my supply is exhausted, and I will, meanwhile, have tea brought up."
Donning her hat and gloves, Stella sets forth. Herr Schwarz is the only shopkeeper in the village, and his shop contains a more heterogeneous collection of articles than the biggest shop in Paris. He often boasts that he has everything for sale, from poison for rats, and dynamite bombs, to paper collars and scented soap. His shop is at the other end of the village from the mill, and to reach it Stella must pass the most ornate of the villas.
Most of the summer residents have left Zalow; only a few special enthusiasts for country air have been induced by the exceptionally fine autumn weather to prolong their stay. In the garden of the tailor who built himself a hunting-lodge in the style of Francis the First a group of people are disputing around a croquet-hoop in the centre of a very small lawn, and in the Giroflé Villa some one is practising Schumann's 'Études symphoniques' with frantic ardour. Stella smiles; the last sound that fell upon her ears before she went to Erlach Court with her mother was the 'Études symphoniques,' the first that greeted her upon her return in the middle of August was the 'Études symphoniques.' She knows precisely who is so persistently given over to these rhapsodies,--an odd creature, a woman named Fuhrwesen, who has been a teacher of the piano for some years in Russia, and who, now over forty, still hopes for a career as an artist.
Stella's little commission is soon attended to. As she hands her mother the paper on her return, their only servant, a barefooted girl from the village, with a red-and-black checked kerchief tied about her head, brings the tea into the room.
"A letter has come for you," the Baroness says to her daughter,--"a letter from Grätz. I do not know the hand. Who can be writing to you from Grätz? Where did I put it?"
And while her mother is rummaging among her papers for the letter, Stella repeats, with a throbbing heart, "From Grätz. Who can be writing to me from Grätz?" and she covertly kisses the four-leaved clover on her bracelet which is to bring her good fortune, and proceeds instantly to build a charming castle in the air.
Her uncle has told her of Edgar's loss of property and his consequent inability to think of marriage at present. Perhaps Uncle Jack told her this to comfort her. That Edgar loves her she has, with the unerring instinct of total inexperience of the world, read, not once, but hundreds of times, in his eyes, and consequently she has spent many a long autumn evening in wondering whether he is looking for a position--some lucrative employment--to enable him to marry. He is not lacking in attainments; he could work if he would. "And he will for my sake," the heart of this foolish, fantastic young person exults in thinking.
From day to day she has been hoping that he would send her--perhaps through Jack or Katrine--some message, hitherto in vain. But now at last he has written himself; for from whom else could this letter from Grätz be? She knew no human being there save himself.
"Here is the letter," her mother says, at last.
Stella opens it hastily, and starts.
"Whom is it from?" asks the Baroness. She uses the hour for afternoon tea to rest from her literary labours; with her feet upon the round of a chair in front of her, a volume of Buckle in her lap, a pile of books beside her, a number of the 'Revue des deux Mondes' in her left hand, and her teacup in her right, she partakes alternately of the refreshing beverage and of an article upon Henry the Eighth. "Whom is the letter from?" she asks, absently, laying her cup aside to take up a volume of Froude.
"From Stasy," Stella replies.
"Ah! what does she want?"
"She asks me to send her from Rumberger's, in Prague, three hundred napkins or so, upon approbation, that she may oblige some friend of hers whom I do not know, and for whom I do not care."
"Positively insolent!" remarks the Baroness. "And does she say nothing else?"
"Nothing of any consequence," says Stella, reading on and suddenly changing colour.
"Ah!" The Baroness marks the Revue with her pencil. When she looks up again, Stella has left the room. Without wasting another thought upon her, the student goes on with her reading.
Stella, meanwhile, is lying on the bed in her little room, into which the moon shines marking the floor with the outlines of the window-panes. Her face is buried among the pillows, and she is crying as if her heart would break.
'Nothing of any consequence'! True enough, of no consequence for the Baroness, that second sheet of Stasy's, but for Stella of great, of immense consequence.
"Guess whom I encountered lately at Steinbach?" writes the Gurlichingen. "Edgar Rohritz. Of course we talked of our dear Erlach Court, and consequently of you. He spoke very kindly of you, only regretting that in consequence of your odd education, or of a certain exaggeration of temperament, you lacked reserve, tenue, a defect which might be unfortunate for you in life. Of course I defended you. They say everywhere that he is betrothed to Emmy Strahlenheim.
"Have you heard the news,--the very latest? Rohritz is a sly fellow indeed. All that loss of property of which we heard so much was only a fraud. The report originated in some trifling depreciation of certain bank-stock. He did not contradict the report, allowing himself to be thought impoverished that he might escape the persecutions of the mothers and daughters of Grätz. Max Steinbach let out the secret a while ago. Is it not the best joke in the world? I am glad no one can accuse me of ever making the slightest advances to him."