She immediately wrote a long letter to Goswyn,--eight pages of affectionate and sincere sympathy. Erika said very little about the matter, but she looked forward eagerly to Goswyn's reply.
When it came it was dry, almost formal,--the reply of a man crushed to the earth, who is not wont to discourse about his emotions and is shy of expressing himself with regard to them.
Thus the Countess Lenzdorff understood it. Her sympathy for the young officer increased after reading his brief note. Erika, on the other hand, after perusing the epistle, which her grandmother handed to her with a sigh, showed an unaccountable degree of irritability.
"Surely he might have written you more cordially!" she exclaimed. "Such a letter as this means nothing! It is simply a receipt for your sympathy,--nothing more."
Her grandmother shook her head, and tried to set her right. But Erika would not listen. She had greatly changed of late: her state of mind was growing more and more distressing. She ate and slept but little. Her sentiment was searching for a new stay; her life lacked a purpose. At any risk she would gladly have fled from the chill brilliance which characterized her grandmother's philosophy of life to take refuge in some inspiration of the heart, even although it might perhaps lead her astray. Religion had been taken from her, and even the sacred nimbus of morality had been frayed by her grandmother's cynicism. When her God had been taken from her she had at first wept hot, bitter tears, but she had aroused herself anew, and faith had been born within her in a transfigured form: it was no longer the conventional belief, expressed in worn-out formulas, with which the multitude satisfy themselves in view of the mysteries of creation, but an apprehension, however faulty, of an order of affairs, incomprehensible to her finite intellect, lifting her above that part of us which is of the earth, earthy,--a faith which may bring with it but little consolation, but which is certainly elevating. When her grandmother first attacked in her presence what she called the 'by God's grace principle' of morality, and coldly proved that all morals culminated in a number of laws not founded in nature,--nay, even at variance with nature,--which had been illogically framed by society for its preservation, she did not weep, but her whole being was poisoned by a discontent which she could not away with. If her grandmother had had the least idea of the effect upon the girl of her cold reasoning, she would have kept to herself the aphorisms which she was so fond of handing about like little delicately-prepared tidbits. Her nature, however, was a thoroughly sound and rather cold one, which took no pleasure in overwrought emotion, and which was absolutely free from the devouring thirst which glowed in Erika's soul. How could she understand the young creature, or know how to protect her from herself?
But if, on the one hand, the old Countess had but a poor opinion of mankind, on the other it was impossible for her to forego society. Although she had promised Erika to resist its temptations in Venice, she not only yielded to them herself, but did all that she could to induce the girl to accompany her. Her efforts were, however, of no avail, in view of Erika's misanthropic and unamiable mood; and thus it came to pass that society witnessed the unusual spectacle of a venerable matron of seventy appearing with indefatigable enjoyment at one afternoon tea after another, while her beautiful young grand-daughter at home confused her mind with the study of metaphysical works or visited the poor abroad. This last had of late been her favourite occupation: she had a long list of beneficiaries, whom she befriended with enthusiastic zeal, and of whom she had learned from the kindly hostess at the hotel and from the doctor when he came to visit his patients there.
It was on a cloudy afternoon towards the end of March, after her grandmother had parted from her with a sigh of compassion, that Erika set out on foot, as was her wont, to visit a poor music-teacher.
The way to the modest lodgings where Fräulein Horst resided led Erika far from the busy Riva by a narrow alley to the quiet Piazza San Zacharie, where grass was growing between the stones. Thence the road grew more difficult to find, and it was not without some pride that she threaded accurately the labyrinth of narrow streets and reached the small dwelling in question without having been obliged to inquire her way.
She found the poor woman in bed in a wretchedly-furnished room. A table beside her served to hold her various bottles of medicine, and a green screen before the window shut out the light. In the midst of this poverty the music-teacher lay reading "Consuelo," and--was happy.
A wave of compassion--a compassion that brought the tears to her eyes--overwhelmed Erika. She leaned over the invalid and kissed her throbbing temples. Then, with the graceful kindliness which characterized her in the presence of sickness or misery, she adorned the room with the flowers she had with her, cleared away the grim witnesses from the table, had a cup of tea made and brought, and set out various little dainties from her basket, talking the while so cheerfully that the invalid forgot her pain. The poor music-teacher followed her every movement in a kind of ecstasy; at last, taking the girl's hand and pressing her feverish lips upon it, she exclaimed, "How could I ever dream that the beautiful Countess Lenzdorff, whom I have admired at the theatre and at concerts, would ever come to drink a cup of tea with me! Ah, what a pleasure it is!"