"Good-night," replied the housekeeper sadly, delaying her departure for a moment to draw the curtains closely around Ernestine's bed, that they might exclude the first golden rays of sunlight.
That same night the countess spent tossing, like one scourged by the furies, upon her restless couch. She could hardly wait for the day that should take her to see her rival, and the same rising sun that filled Ernestine's sleep with friendly dreams,--for even in slumber the eye is conscious of light, and communicates it to the soul,--the same rising sun drove the tortured woman from her silken bed. She knew no weariness. Her healthy physical frame, hardened by exercise, withstood every attack of weakness. She owned no restraint, physically, morally, or mentally. She was talented, but she refused to think. Thought was in her view a fetter upon self-indulgence. Knowledge had limits which those who knew nothing were unconscious of. She would be free as the air, and therefore avoided everything that could disturb her superficial security. And she had sufficient intellect to feel that thought might lead to conclusions most dangerous to her theory of life.
"Man's destiny is labour, woman's enjoyment" This was her motto, and she lived up to it. She dazzled the world with the rare spectacle of beautiful power and powerful beauty carrying away like the hurricane in its mad career whatever lies in its path, stripping the leaves from every flower, uprooting every young tree, and bearing them on perhaps for one moment before casting them aside, crushed and dying. A glorious spectacle for exultant Valkyrias, but one at which the common herd cross themselves. Every destructive force of nature--and such was this woman--possesses a shuddering poetic attraction for the on-looker who is himself secure. He admires what he fears, he revels in the sight of what he knows to be destructive. This was the position held by the inhabitants of the little town of N---- towards the beautiful Russian since she had arrived there with her sick husband. With her wild manner of life, she was a wonderful apparition in their eyes, a constant source of interest, yet always provoking sternest disapproval. When the magnificent woman galloped through the streets upon her fiery Arabian, or held the reins behind her pair of horses with a skilful hand, like Victory in her triumphal car, no one could refrain from rushing to the window to enjoy a sight not to be forgotten. Strength, health, and beauty seemed to be her monopoly and the firm foundation of her joyous existence.
"The woman who desires to be emancipated," she was wont to say, "must have the true stuff in her. And as there are so few who possess it, there are but a few who are emancipated. If you cannot compete with a man, do not try to rival him. But she who has been baptized, as I have, in the ice-cold Neva, can afford to laugh at the whole tribe with their masculine arrogance."
In Russia, where she had played her part in a community far less strict, she had had an excellent field for displaying her grace and agility in all knightly exercises at the tilting-school which had been instituted by the Russian nobility. There she made her appearance usually in a steel helmet and closely-fitting coat of mail of woven silver that shone in the brilliant sunlight, enveloping her as it were in splendour. When she rode into the lists thus arrayed, a crooked scimitar by her side, pistols in her belt, and mounted upon her Arabian steed, nothing could restrain the loud applause of all present. She rivalled the most distinguished sons of the Russian nobility in the grace and skill with which she managed her horse, the precision of her aim in shooting, and the boldness of her leaps. She knew no fear and no fatigue.
She had the strength and vigour of a Northern divinity, with the glowing temperament of an Oriental. What wonder that, from Emperor to serf, all were her admiring slaves?
Her father, Alexei Fedorowitsch, was a poor and uneducated noble, who had distinguished himself by his bravery in the war with Napoleon, and, invalided at its close, retired to his small estate in the country, where he lived upon his pension. His wife, a sickly aristocrat, who had condescended to marry him for want of a more desirable parti, was the torment of his life. In despair at the trouble and annoyance caused by his wife's delicate health, sensibility, and affectation, he made a vow, when she bore him a daughter, to educate his child to be an utter contrast to her mother. Better that the child should die than live to be such an invalid as his wife. And he began by causing his little daughter to be baptized, like the children of the poorest Russians in that part of the country, in the icy waters of the Neva. The little Feodorowna outlived her icy bath, and her entire education corresponded with this beginning. Her mother died a few days after this cruel baptism; anxiety for her child put the finishing stroke to her invalid existence. And so her rude, uncultured father was her only guide and instructor. He loved her after his fashion, and made her his companion in all his amusements, riding, training horses, and the chase.
She was scarcely sixteen when he married her to a wealthy landed proprietor in the neighbourhood, ruder and more illiterate even than himself, and to the girl an object of aversion. As his wife, she lived on his lonely estate like a serf. Her husband was cruel and suspicious, and made her married life perfect torture. She was compelled to resign her free habits of life, which she loved better than all else in the world. Every extravagance, even the most harmless, was forbidden by her husband. The joyous girl who had been used to fly upon the back of her spirited steed over steppe and heath was not allowed to mount a horse, but was made to sit with her maid-servants and spin by the dim light of a train-oil lamp until her husband came home to compel, perhaps by the kantschu, her reluctant attention to his wishes. She bore this martyrdom for one year in silence. At last she made a confidant of a neighbouring nobleman, and implored his aid in her great need; but she found no sympathy,--no assistance. He called her a fool, who did not appreciate her good fortune,--told her that to think of a divorce was a crime, and that her husband was perfectly right. In her utter loneliness, longing for love, if it were only the love of her old father, a desire for freedom and hatred of her tormentor gained the victory, and she fled, without taking anything with her but the few clothes that she had possessed at her marriage. She travelled the greater part of the way on foot, and arrived at her father's in such a wretched condition that he was touched by compassion, received her kindly, and took her part against her husband. Her suit for divorce left her wholly without means, but free, and when shortly afterwards she came to know the old diplomat Count Worronska, and he laid his rank and his millions at her feet, offering a field for her beauty at court at St. Petersburg, she could not withstand the temptation. She became his wife, and was transplanted from the midst of half-savage serfs to one of the most magnificent courts in the world,--from the Russian forests and steppes to apartments gorgeous with every luxury of life. At first dazzled and confused, she won all hearts, even those of the women, by her innocent beauty and graceful diffidence. At last her unbridled nature broke forth all the more impetuously for the long restraint under which it had lain, and, with no guidance but that of her imbecile husband, who adored her, she rapidly degenerated in every way. Society always looks more leniently upon those errors that are gradually developed before its eyes and under its protection than upon those that it observes outside of its sphere, because it is cognizant of the excuse for the faults of those within it, and it was all the more willing to pardon the delinquent in this instance for the sake of the high rank of her husband. It therefore ignored escapades that the distinguished position held by the old count forbade it to punish, and the beautiful and enormously wealthy Countess Worronska, in spite of her dissipation, was and continued to be the centre of the most brilliant, if not the best, circle of society in St. Petersburg. All this she had resigned for the last six months, and she had lived like an outlaw, avoided by prudent "German Philisters," in the town of N----, for the sake of the only man whom she truly loved, and who--despised her.
Before the death of her husband she had always been surrounded by a brilliant crowd of gentlemen who had sought her society from the neighbouring famous baths,--acquaintances from St. Petersburg, distinguished Englishmen, Italians, Poles,--in short, the gay, wealthy idlers of every nation that invariably flock around a beautiful woman upon her travels. With these she smoked, rode, and drove,--proceedings that had excited no outcry in the gay world at St. Petersburg, but that called forth shrieks of horror from the women in the little German University-town and greatly excited the students, who were never weary of caricaturing her,--harnessing four horses, and, disguised as women, driving them wildly through the streets, mimicking her foreign admirers, making her bearded servants drunk, and playing many other madcap pranks in ridicule of her.
The universal horror culminated, however, when she did not dress in black after the count's death. People said with a shudder that she had declared that "it seemed to her despicable to play such a farce, and simulate a grief that she did not feel." How could any one so scorn conventionalities, and lay bare the secrets of the heart to the public gaze? Yes, it was even suggested that she had never been married, and they called her the "wild countess,"--much as we speak of wild fruit to distinguish them from those that are genuine. Although injustice was done her in this respect, she deserved the epithet "wild" in every other, and the name clave to her. Even Möllner, who was always ready to find some magnanimous excuse for feminine failings, thought that she ought to show more respect for her septuagenarian husband, and pronounced her conduct heartless ostentation. From that moment she lost all interest, if she had ever possessed any, in his eyes. He never noticed that for months no gentleman had been allowed to enter her doors, for he did not think it worth while to observe her actions. Whoever did observe it ascribed it to chance. The report of her improvement was drowned in the billows of scandal that had been lashed up by her previous conduct. No one believed in her reformation, least of all he for whom she made such sacrifices.