Why had she never perceived it before? Why did she become conscious of it now? She asked herself this impatiently as the slight but bitter flavour of dissatisfaction touched her, and the days for once seemed—now and then—over long.
She loved her people and her forests and her mountains, and she had always thought that they would be sufficient for her, and she had honestly told the Princess that of solitude she was not afraid; and yet a certain sense that her life was cold and in a measure empty had of late crept upon her. She wondered angrily why a vague and intangible melancholy stole on her at times, which was different from the sorrow which still weighed on her for her brother's death. Now and then she looked at the old painted box of the spinet, and thought of the player who had awakened its dumb strings; but she did not suspect for a moment that it was in any sense his companionship which, now that it was lost, made the even familiar tenor of her time appear monotonous and without much interest. In the long evenings, whilst the Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone watching the twilight give way to the night over the broad and solemn landscape, she felt a lassitude which did not trouble her in the open air, in the daylight, or when she was busied indoors over the reports and requirements of her estates. Unacknowledged, indeed, unknown to her, she missed the coming of the little boat from the Holy Isle, and missed the prayer and praise of the great tone-poets rolling to her ear from the organ within. If anyone had told her that her late guest had possessed any such power to make her days look grey and pass tediously she would have denied it, and been quite sincere in her denial. But as he had called out the long mute music from the spinet, so he had touched, if only faintly, certain chords in her nature that until then had been dumb.
'I am not like you, my dear Olga,' she wrote to her relative, the Countess Brancka. 'I am not easily amused. That course effrénée of the great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, those perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any life outside its pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or Petersburg, at Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, are modelled on the same lines; you must have excitement as you have your cup of chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the excitement excites you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was seldom even diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a grave nature! I am as serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with ardour a whole morning and every whole morning of your life. You will think I am laughing at you; indeed I am not. I envy your faculty of sitting, as I am sure you are sitting now, in a straw chair on the shore, with a group of boulevardiers around you, and a crowd making a double hedge to look at you when it is your pleasure to pace the planks. My language is involved. I do not envy you the faculty of doing it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty of finding amusement in doing it, and finding flattery in the double hedge.'
A few days afterwards the Countess Brancka wrote back in reply:
'The world is like wine; ça se mousse et ça monte. There are heads it does not affect; there are palates that do not like it, yours amongst them. But there is so much too in habit. Living alone amidst your mountains you have lost all taste for the brouhaha of society, which grows noisier, it must be said, every year. Yes, we are noisy: we have lost our dignity. You alone keep yours, you are the châtelaine of the middle ages. Perceforest or Parsifal should come riding to your gates of granite. By the way, I hear you have been entertaining one of our boulevardiers. Réné de Sabran is charming, and the handsomest man in Paris; but he is not Parsifal or Perceforest. Between ourselves, he has an indifferent reputation, but perhaps he has repented on your Holy Isle, They say he is changed; that he has quarrelled with Cochonette, and that he is about to be made deputy for his department, whose representative has just died. Pardon me for naming Cochonette; it is part of our decadence that we laugh about all these naughty things and naughty people who are, after all, not so very much worse than we are ourselves. But you do not laugh, whether at these or at anything else. You are too good, my beautiful Wanda; it is your sole defect. You have even inoculated this poor Marquis, who, after a few weeks upon the Szalrassee, surrenders Cochonette for the Chamber! My term of service comes round next month: if you will have me I will take the Tauern on my road to Gödöllö. I long to embrace you.'
'Olga will take pity on our solitude,' said Wanda von Szalras to her aunt. 'I have not seen her for four years, but I imagine she is little changed.'
The Princess read the letter, frowning and pursing her lips together in pretty rebuke as she came to the name of Cochonette.
'They have indeed lost all dignity,' she said with a sigh; 'and something more than dignity also. Olga was always frivolous.'
'All her monde is; not she more than another.'
'You were very unjust, you see, to M. de Sabran; he pays you the compliment of following your counsels.'