CHAPTER XVII.
[WINTER.]
The death-struggle of the year is over,--past are the treacherous gleams of sunlight among falling leaves and smiling flowers,--past, past! Cold and grave like a hired executioner, mute and secret like a midnight assassin, the first hard frost has fallen upon the earth in the previous night and completed its great work of destruction.
It is All Souls'; the Meinecks leave for Paris in the evening, and in the morning Stella goes to mass in the little church on the mountain-side at the foot of which is the churchyard,--the churchyard in which the colonel lies buried. The flames of the thick wax candles on the altar, the flames of the candles thick and thin lighted everywhere in memory of the dead, flicker dull and red in the gray daylight.
In one of the carved seats beside the altar sits the priest's sister, her prayer-book bound in red velvet, and a large yellow rose in her new winter hat. She nods kindly to Stella when she enters, and gathers her skirts aside to make room for her.
In the body of the long narrow church are cowering on the benches all kinds of dilapidated figures, men and women, almost all old, frail, and crippled,--those able to work have no time to pray. It is very cold; their breath comes as vapour from their lips; the outlines of their blue wrinkled faces show vaguely behind clouds of yellowish-gray smoke; the odour of damp stone and damp clothes mingles with the smell of incense and wax; the sputter of the candles, the dripping of the wax, the rattle of beads, mingle with the monotonous chant of the priest at the altar.
When mass is over, and she has taken leave of the priest's kindly sister, Stella goes out into the churchyard,--a miserable place, with neglected graves, scarcely elevated in mounds above the ground, with iron crosses upon which rust has eaten away the inscriptions, or wooden ones which the wind has blown down to lie rotting on the ground. The colonel's grave is beneath a weeping-willow at the extreme end of the churchyard, whence one can look directly down upon the broad shining stream. Tended like a garden-bed by Stella, cherished as the very apple of her eye, it yet looks dreary enough to-day: the leaves are hanging black and withered from the stalks of the chrysanthemums which Stella planted with her own hands only a few weeks ago, their pretty flowers, which but yesterday stood forth red and yellow against the blue of the sky, now colourless and faded beyond recognition. A wreath of fresh flowers lies among the chrysanthemums, but these too are beginning to fade. Stella kneels down on the gray rimy grass beside the grave and kisses fervently the hard frozen ground.
"Adieu, papa," she murmurs, and then adds, "But why say adieu to you? You are always with me everywhere I go; you are beside me, a loving guardian angel seeking for happiness for me. Do not grieve too much that you cannot find it: open your arms and take me to you; I am all ready."
Then the mill is closed; the keys are left with the pastor, and the Meinecks go to Prague, which on the same evening they leave by the train for the west. As far as Furth they are alone, but when they change coupés after the examination of their luggage they are unable, in spite of bribing the officials, to exclude strangers. At the last moment, just as the train is about to start, a lady with two handbags, a travelling-case, a shawl-strap, and a bandbox steps into their compartment and hopes she does not disturb them. Much vexed, Stella scans the lady, who wears a water-proof adorned with as many tassels as bedeck the trappings of an Andalusian mule, and with a red pompon in her hat, fastened in its place with a bird's claw four inches long. Stella instantly recognizes her as Fräulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, the same pianist who has been spending her holidays upon the 'Études symphoniques;' she recognizes Stella at the same moment, and, although until now she never has exchanged four words with her, hails her as an old acquaintance and enters into conversation; that is, without waiting for replies from the young girl she imparts to her the story of her entire life.
In the course of her experience as teacher of the piano in Russia, of which mention has already been made, she has learned much of the rude nature of Russian social life and the amiability of young Russian princes; at present she is on her way to Paris, whence she is to make a tour with an impresario through South America and Australia, by the way of Uruguay and Tasmania. Apart from the artistic laurels she expects to win, she anticipates furthering greatly the advance of civilization among the savage aborigines by her musical efforts.
She asks Stella several times why she is so silent, and when the girl excuses herself on the plea of a headache she says she had better eat something, and produces from her travelling-case, embroidered with red and white roses, and from between a flannel dressing-sacque and various toilet articles, a bulky brown package containing the remains of a cold capon.
Stella thanks her, and declines the tempting delicacy, saying that she will try to sleep.
Fräulein Fuhrwsen of course attributes Stella's reserve to the notorious arrogance of the Meinecks, who will have nothing to say to a poor pianist, and, mortally offended, she likewise takes refuge in silence.
Stella dozes.
The conductor opens the door to tell the ladies that the next station is Nuremberg, whereupon the artiste takes a comb and a tangled braid of false hair out of her travelling-case and begins to dress her hair.
The train puffs and whizzes through the grayish light of the late autumn morning and stops with a shrill whistle at Nuremberg.
Stella and her mother through the pillars of the railway-station catch a glimpse, among the picturesque gables and roofs of the old town, of ugly new houses pretentious in style, looking as if built of pasteboard; they partake of a miserable breakfast, buy a package of gingerbread and a volume of Tauchnitz, get into another train, and are whirled away, on--on--through yellow and brown harvest-fields, through small bristling forests of pines and barren meadows, past villages, churchyards, and little towns that look positively dead. Late in the afternoon the Rhine comes in sight: gray, shrouded in mist, not at all like itself, without sunshine, without merriment, without Englishmen, almost without steamers, it grumbles and groans as if vexed by some evil, melancholy dream, while a thousand sad sighs tremble through the red-and-yellow vineyards on its shores,--the shores where folly grows.
Away--on--on! More dead towns, with dreamy old names that fall upon the ear like echoes of ancient legends. Everything is drowsy; gray shadows cover the earth; the night falls; green and red lanterns gleam through the darkness.
Cologne!
Cologne, where one can sup, and dress, and at all events see the cathedral in the dark.