Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein.
For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of conquered technical difficulties.
Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his accompaniment to the representation of "Heather Blossom."
Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody "Ah, had I never left my moor!" rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people. How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument! they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic violin.
The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable, indescribable eyes.
The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish, with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by her side.
The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of some mysterious force of nature.
The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity; the wailing, sighing music sounded on.
The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had retired.
"Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who sat beside her.