Lüdecke, the faithful, was sent to Bayreuth to arrange for lodgings and tickets, and a few days afterwards the old Countess, with Erika and her maid Marianne, left Franzensbad, with its waving white birches, its good bread and weak coffee, its symphony concerts, and its languishing, pale, consumptive beauties. The dew glistened on leaves and flowers as they drove to the station. After they had reached it, Marianne, the maid, was sent back to the hotel for a volume of 'Opera and Drama,' and a pamphlet upon 'the psychological significance of Kundry,' in the former of which the old Countess was absorbed during the journey to Bayreuth.
They were received with genial enthusiasm by the fair, fresh wife of the baker, in whose house Lüdecke had procured them lodgings, and they followed her up a bare damp staircase to the tile-paved landing upon which their rooms opened. They consisted of a spacious, low-ceilinged apartment, with a small island of carpet before the sofa in a sea of yellow varnished board floor, furnished with red plush chairs, two india-rubber trees, a bird in a painted cage, and a cupboard with glass doors, on either side of which were doors opening into the bedrooms,--everything comfortable, clean, and old-fashioned.
After some refreshment the two ladies drove about the town, and out into the trim open country through beautiful, shady avenues, avenues such as usually lead to princely residences, and into the quiet deserted park, where there were few strangers besides themselves to be seen. Returning, they dined at 'the Sun,' at the same table with Austrian aristocrats, Berlin councillors of commerce, and numerous pilgrims to the festival from known and unknown lands. Then they sauntered about the dear old town, with its many-gabled architecture, and visited the Master's grave and the old theatre. The old Countess lost herself in speculations as to what the Margravine would have thought of the great German show that now wakes the lethargic old capital from its repose at least every other year; and Erika, laughing, called her grandmother's attention to the 'Parsifal slippers' and the 'Nibelungen bonbons' in the unpretentious shop-windows.
The sun was very low, and the shadows were creeping across the broad squares and down the narrow streets, when the old Countess proposed to go back to their rooms to refresh herself with a cup of tea. Erika accompanied her to the door of their lodgings, and then said, "I should like to look about for a volume of Tauchnitz. May I not go alone? This seems little more than a village."
"If you choose," her grandmother, already halfway up the staircase, replied.
With no thought of ill, Erika turned the corner of the nearest street.
She walked slowly, gazing up at the antique house-fronts on either side of her. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her call "Rika! Rika!"
She turned, and started as if stunned by a flash of lightning. Before her, his whiskers brushed straight out from his cheeks, rather more florid than of yore, in a very dandified plaid suit, with an eye-glass stuck in his eye, stood--Strachinsky.
"Rika, my dear little Rika!" he cried, holding out his hand. "What a surprise, and what a pleasure, to find you here, and without the Cerberus who always has barred our meeting! Fate will yet avenge it upon her."
Erika trembled with indignation, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Try as she might, she could not reply. A senseless, childish panic mastered her, as terrible as it would have been had this man still had power over her and been able to snatch her from her present surroundings and carry her back to the dreary life at Luzano.