She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying, "You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in time: people must open their eyes when they see you first."
Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! "Nobody must think of your dress when they see you," her grandmother had said: nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown.
"Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first appearance in the world," her grandmother now says. "People must find nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps, allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of tea, my child."
Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly. "Petrus is quite proud to assist at your début: at first I thought of sending to Paris for a dress for you," she adds, and then there is a silence.
The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in her chair at this hour.
Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupé has to-day turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city.
For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow still gleams white through the twilight.
The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost "a fortune," as her step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room, where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals, played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke, coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done? Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the window had been stuffed up with rags and straw.
Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association with Strachinsky.
One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath.