CHAPTER II.
FRAU VON TROCKENAU’S ‘GESELLSCHAFT.’
The Count and Countess of Trockenau were both young, rich, and what their countrymen call lebenslustig, a word for which we have no equivalent shorter than a well-rounded sentence of explanation.
Their estate was large, and as beautiful as heart could desire. It stood sloping up a rounded, richly-wooded hill in the neighbourhood of K——au; and from its great terrace, as well as from other less distinguished points of vantage, there was a broad and beautiful vista over the rich and many-coloured plain, to where in a silver line the Rhine might be seen winding his way towards Coblenz. Far distant, like blue clouds on the horizon, lay the soft outlines of the Rhine mountains; far over hill and dale shone the delicious sunshine, while the fair land spread her broad bosom, in the rich maturity of the latter July, to his fervent beams.
All the summer long, Frau von Trockenau loved to have her friends around her, and those friends were various. Coffee-parties and picnics—or rather the German equivalents of picnics in the shape of fêtes and Landparteien, suppers and dances, riding and driving, and, when it was late enough, shooting and die Jagd. An admirable cook, wines of a character not to disgrace the cuisine, a hearty welcome, and unlimited liberty to the guest to follow the bent of his own wishes—these were the attractions offered to their guests by the count and countess, and they proved so strong that Frau von Trockenau very rarely had an invitation refused. People refused or put off other visits in order to make one to Schloss Trockenau, and persons who were not spontaneously invited there schemed to get invitations.
To the initiated reader the remark will be almost superfluous that the practices at Schloss Trockenau must have been characterised by a certain unconventionality and laisser faire not always found in German or any other country houses, whether belonging to the nobility or to the Bürgerschaft. This was the case, and the guests of the countess were by no means confined to persons who were her equals in rank, many of whom, she was wont to say, might be excellent creatures, but were often old, and, when they lived in the country, were wont to be dull. And dulness was the bane of the countess’s existence. In their hatred of it she and her husband were sworn allies; they were never known to oppose one another’s schemes for killing time, though it often happened that in their zeal in that cause they would both have provided some entertainment for the same time. When this occurred, the rule was that each should give way in turn, and this plan was found to answer admirably, and to be productive of the greatest harmony, conjugal and social.
On the evening after that meeting in the Kurgarten, a large company, or Gesellschaft, was assembled in the rooms, or wandering about the gardens and terraces of the Schloss. It was a mixed and motley society. There were friends of the count, brother officers who were staying in the house, or who had come over from Coblenz for the occasion; young men from Berlin, fashionable or otherwise; some gay cousins of Countess Carla, very stylish young ladies indeed, who, with their pretty cousin as a chaperon, were creating havoc by their accomplishments, and by their airs and graces, in the hearts of all the shy young Junker in the vicinity, except in that of Hans von Lemde, who was irresistibly drawn in another direction. There were some young Englishmen from Bonn, fellow-students and friends of the count’s younger brother. There were two learned professors, and a poetess whose verses were fades, and who was rightly and universally voted a bore, but who was amongst the von-est of the vons, and who distinctly and unmistakably belonged to the genus irritabile, and apparently to no other.
There was Jerome Wellfield, who had just arrived, and who was talking to his hostess; there was Herr Rudolf Falkenberg, the great banker and picture-critic, who had arrived that morning. There was a knot of stout, oddly-dressed, gauche-looking ladies of a certain age, who clubbed together in a corner, and represented the local nobility and squirearchy.
‘No one knows who else may be coming,’ said one. ‘I think die Trockenau is much too careless. She does not consider the dignity of our position.’
‘Ach, lieber Himmel! Who is that?’ murmured another.
‘That’ was Sara Ford, who came sweeping down the room with her head in the air, followed by Herr Falkenberg, to whom she talked in her frank, audible, unconstrained English fashion, and who begged her to come with him to the terrace that he might show her a view which he said ought to be painted.
The pair were followed by the disapproving looks of the local Junkerthum before spoken of, and by the round eyes of a number of young German girls, just arrived at that stage in life which is known to their countrymen as the Backfisch. Now, a Backfisch is a kind of ingénue not often met amongst English girls; and Sara Ford could never, by any chance, have had anything of the genus about her. Consequently she was an object of wonder, and some disapproval to those who either were or had been Backfische themselves.
‘These English girls!’ sighed one of the native nobility, shaking her head portentously. ‘If I were to see my Paula monopolise a man in that way—but she is incapable of even speaking to a gentleman before he speaks to her. If a girl of mine were to be like that, I should die.’
‘Gott, yes!’ answered another, intently watching, while Herr Falkenberg held open the long glass-door, and Sara stepped through it and down the steps on to the terrace. The sun was setting as the young lady and the banker paced towards the point to which he wished to draw her attention. Sara was dressed in black, and there was nothing costly about her attire; for she was not rich, and her only jewellery consisted in certain old rings and a pearl-necklace, which had long ago belonged to her mother when, as the beautiful Marion Fanshawe, she had been married to Sara’s father. Plain though the dress was, it set her noble beauty off to great advantage; and one felt—at least Herr Falkenberg felt—the same conscientious delight in looking at her grand, simple loveliness, as results from the contemplation of some fine carved gem of ancient days, found perhaps by accident in the midst of a stock of gaudy modern jewellery.
Sara had never met Herr Falkenberg before. His name was well known to her and to other artists as a judge of almost unerring taste, and a patron of generous liberality. He was the last of a line of financiers and bankers of princely fortune and passionate devotion to ‘the noble pastime of art.’ She had felt highly flattered when Frau von Trockenau brought him to her, saying:
‘Liebe Sara, Herr Falkenberg wishes to be introduced,’ after which he had remained beside her chair, speaking of two of her pictures, and discussing them with an admiration, and at the same time a discrimination, which instantly showed her that report had not belied the keenness of his critical powers and the purity of his taste in such matters. ‘Perhaps,’ thought Sara to herself, repressing a smile of satisfaction, ‘if she were very amiable, and listened with attention to his criticisms, he might some day give her an order; and if she could say to friends and fellow-students, “I am painting this for Herr Falkenberg,” it would be as good, indeed much better, than fifty laudatory but unprofitable criticisms.’
‘See!’ said he, as they came to the end of the terrace—and he pointed to the round shoulder of a hill, round the foot of which a bend of the river flowed in a silver curve, while the setting sun gave the most mellow and warm tints to the stretch of the landscape in the background—‘that is almost perfect; there is a meaning in the scene—a poetry. Do you not see it?’
‘Indeed I do!’ she replied; the deep look settling in her eyes, which always visited them when she looked upon grand or beautiful things, and which alone would have made her face a rare one. ‘I see it!’ she continued; ‘and I have studied and sketched it often since I came here, and the result has been despair! I hate myself, and every attempt I make. I don’t think landscape is my forte.’
‘I don’t agree with you. I think you ought to study landscape. I believe, from the examination I have given to those two little pictures of yours, that you might attain high rank as a painter, both of landscape and genre; with hard study, of course.’
‘Oh, Herr Falkenberg, you are flattering! It is impossible. I often think how presumptuous it is in me to imagine that I shall ever do well in either. Why should I?’
‘Why should you not?’ he asked, smiling. ‘You are ambitious.’
He had seated himself on the arm of a bench at the end of the terrace, and Sara was leaning upon the parapet, her arms folded on the ledge of it; her glorious eyes gazing out upon the feast of colour, of rich calm beauty which lay below. As he uttered the last words, the deep musing look left those eyes; another fire flashed like lightning into them. Her lips parted, the delicate nostril quivered. She raised her head, and looked full at her companion.
‘Yes, I am. I am as ambitious as a man—the worse for me, I suppose.’
‘I do not say so. How old are you?’
The question was put with a grave, patronising directness which was free from the faintest trace of curiosity or impertinence. She answered it in the same spirit:
‘I am twenty-three.’
‘Ah! it will be many years, no doubt, before you do anything that will live. It is a toilsome ascent to the high peaks and pure snows of real lasting fame, but it may be accomplished by a single-hearted perseverance.’
He paused, looking at her. The girl felt herself strangely moved, half depressed at the calmness with which he adjudged to her years upon years of future toil, as if from that verdict there could be no appeal, half with a proud elation at the fact that so great a judge should hold it possible that she could ever do anything which would live. His eyes still dwelt upon her face, and hers upon his. He had a good, powerful, and attractive face; dark, massively cut, with keen, shrewd, sarcastic eyes under level dark eyebrows. The small moustache and short pointed brown beard gave great character to this visage, and were two or three shades lighter than the short-cropped hair. He was a man whose age it would be difficult to guess. Sara imagined him to be about forty; he might have been any age from thirty to five-and-forty. She had spoken to him, and listened to him entirely as a well-known judge and possible future patron of great power and influence—so she regarded him still. Of what he was or did, how he was regarded outside this, to her, most important capacity, she had not the least idea, and formed none to herself.
‘You have a sketch of that bit,’ he said at last; ‘would you mind letting me see it?’
‘Oh! well, if you will promise to regard it merely as a rough attempt, done more because my instinct compelled me to try to reproduce that scene—not as anything that was ever intended for anyone to see but myself,’ said Sara, very unwilling to submit so crude an attempt to such critical eyes, and yet not wishing to appear affected.
‘If you showed it me, I should judge it entirely on its own merits, of course,’ was the composed reply, and Sara felt suddenly, as many other persons often felt in exchanging ideas with Herr Falkenberg, that with him simplicity of nature and conduct reigned supreme, and that to make excuses and apologies to him was so much trouble lost. Sara wished she had not made that little speech about her sketch, and Falkenberg went on:
‘I am staying here a few days, so perhaps to-morrow, before we set off to Lahnburg——’
‘Are we going to Lahnburg?’
‘I believe so; the countess is, at any rate. I have a little country house there, which she was so kind as to say she very much wished to see, and I asked her if she would not make a party and go there with me to-morrow. She said she wanted you to go too, but I don’t suppose she will force you there against your will,’ he added, smiling.
‘It would be anything but against my will. It is a place I have often wished to see.’
‘Then I am glad you are going. There may be time for you to give me your sketch to-morrow morning, early, if you will be so kind; and, as I expect to be in Elberthal during the autumn, may I call at your atelier?’
‘I shall be honoured if you do,’ said Sara, her cheeks flushing with pleasure at this mark of favour. ‘I only fear that you will leave the said atelier a sadder and a wiser man.’
‘As how?’
‘As having discovered my attempts to be very poor, commonplace delusions after all.’
‘That remains to be seen; all I hope is that you will not be offended if one who, by some misfortune, has got such an inveterate habit of pointing out what appear to him the merits and demerits of any composition, should——’
‘That would be of the utmost advantage to me,’ said she, gaily, wondering how long the interview was to last, and wondering also, in strict privacy, whether critics—of that eminence—never relaxed into a laugh; whether a sedate smile were all their lips would condescend to.
How long the interview might have lasted it is impossible to say. At that moment it was interrupted. Frau von Trockenau, with a number of the ingenuous girls before alluded to—whose tender years and inexperience she seemed to find somewhat embarrassing during the ‘off season,’ before the dancing began—Emily Leigh, Jerome Wellfield, Hans Lemde, and others, came up.
‘Oh, Herr Falkenberg!’ cried the countess, seeing him, ‘a word with you.’
She paused, as did also Jerome Wellfield, and the others went on. Wellfield had not yet spoken to Sara, and while Frau von Trockenau discoursed with much animation to Falkenberg on some point connected with the morrow’s excursion, Jerome turned to Miss Ford.
The flush of exultation which her conversation with Falkenberg had aroused, died from her cheeks. She silently put her hand into that of Wellfield, while he, an expression of pleasure dawning in his face, asked her how she did.
After a few minutes, the countess put her hand within Falkenberg’s arm, and they went up the terrace, in earnest conversation. Jerome and Sara were left standing alone.
‘Herr Falkenberg is a friend of yours?’ asked Wellfield.
‘I don’t know. I hope he will be. He would be a very valuable friend to me.’
‘I can suppose so. Does he wish you to paint this scene?’
‘Yes. And it is very beautiful. Do you not think so?’
‘It is—lovely. I wish you could see the place my father will not live at—Wellfield Abbey and the country round about. As an artist, you would delight in it.’
‘But it is in Lancashire, isn’t it?’ asked Sara.
‘Yes. What then?’ inquired he.
‘I always fancy it such a black, hideous place. I have only once been in Lancashire, when I passed through Preston with my father on our way to Scotland, years ago.’
‘Then you passed not a hundred miles from Wellfield,’ he rejoined with some animation. ‘But I own, you could not be favourably impressed with what you saw there. It is not lovely. But Wellfield is.’
‘Perhaps I may see it some day—who knows?’ said Sara, musingly.
‘I am sure I hope you may,’ he answered quickly. ‘There is nothing I should so much——’
He paused abruptly. Sara felt her face flush, and said quickly:
‘Would not you like to come down this side-walk—this ilex walk? The countess has spent a great deal of care and attention upon it, in remembrance of the ilexes of Rome.’
‘Ah, the ilexes at Rome! I remember them,’ he said, as he followed her into the cool green gloom of the ilex walk, where daylight was dimmed by the intertwining boughs which formed a roof above.
Three quarters of an hour later they returned to the same spot, and found that it was almost dark. The windows of the Schloss blazed with lights, and the music which streamed out on the air said that the dancing had begun.
‘What a long time we must have been out!’ said Sara, in a dreamy voice. ‘They are dancing.’
‘So they are. Will you give me this waltz?—it is a waltz, I hear.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Sara, as they walked towards the house. ‘There is to be a cotillon,’ she added; ‘it is the great thing at these German dances, and Frau von Trockenau has made elaborate arrangements for it.’
‘What a pity I don’t know how to do it!’
‘You should learn,’ said Sara.
‘There is nothing I should like better if you are at liberty to——’ began Jerome, as they entered the room by the long glass-door, just within which stood Lemde, not dancing.
‘Mein Fräulein,’ said the poor youth, humbly coming forward, ‘will you honour me by dancing the cotillon with me?’
‘How fortunate for me that I secured your promise a moment ago,’ said Jerome, with imperturbable composure and a slight smile.
Hans’s face fell; that of Sara crimsoned as she said:
‘I am very sorry, Baron Lemde, but I have promised it to Mr. Wellfield.’
In another moment she was waltzing with Jerome Wellfield, and Junker Hans, after watching them for a few moments, turned aside.
‘She is too proud and too clever, I suppose, to have anything to do with me,’ he was saying to himself, as he struggled with a degrading and childish inclination to cry. ‘And those other fellows, Falkenberg, and that Wellfield, and the others, I’ve no chance against them. It’s odd,’ the youth continued moodily to reflect, ‘how little a lot of these English girls care for rank. Falkenberg is bürgerlich: Wellfield—it isn’t his rank she cares for; it’s his way, I suppose, of behaving as if he had a right to everything he sees—they don’t mind rank when a man has “go,” or when he pleases them; but then they are so hard to please.’
To Sara, the evening passed like a dream. This was the first, the very first and most delicate flavour and aroma of love, which with her could only be deep and earnest, full and profound, as her own nature. She knew that she was beautiful, without having ever thought much about it. She had seen admiration in men’s eyes before now; she had heard words of love and beseeching addressed to her once or twice, and all had lightly passed over her spirit, like a breath of air across a fair garden. But Wellfield’s eyes, with their eloquent homage, thrilled her; his mere presence aroused in her the feeling, never known before, of delight, mingled with apprehension; she shrank away from trying to guess, even in her own mind, how much his look meant—what the end of this episode would be. She questioned and doubted, for the first time, her own powers of pleasing, because for the first time she was desirous above all things to please. Advanced spirits may condemn such anxiety as servile and degrading. No opinion is offered upon those points, only the certainty expressed that such feelings of ‘servility’ are very common amongst women, and men too, who are in love. Instead of feeling confidence now, she absolutely trembled lest she should have mistaken the meaning of his glance, and of the few words he had now and then dropped, and which had seemed to her to have a deeper meaning than mere phrases of politeness or of compliment.
Such was her deprecatory and tremblingly uncertain state of mind—hers, who had laughed through life, free from tyrant love or care, undaunted by reverses, and holding her own against difficulties with a steadfastness born of innate, inbred courage of soul. Till now every higher thought and aspiration had been resolutely and singly directed towards her art, and her own advancement in it. Her heart’s desire had been faithfully, so far as she could, to act up to Goethe’s words, and—
The defeat had been rapid and complete, and, true to her woman’s nature, she rejoiced in it rather than otherwise. At least, this night, in Jerome’s presence, and surrounded by the subtle incense of admiration and flattery which he offered her, she rejoiced in it. There were other times, when he was absent, in which the rejoicing was not pure, and the sense of captivity was stronger than the thrill of love.
The evening thus passed on, and every time she met those dark and eloquent eyes she felt, with a throb of the heart, the half-welcome, half-dreaded conviction grow stronger—‘This that I see in his eyes is love!’
There ensued a pause in the dancing, organised by Frau von Trockenau, in order to have some music; for she was a woman who utilised all her resources, and never allowed the meanest tool to rust for want of use; and knowing that there were several admirable musicians, vocal and instrumental, in the company, she was firmly resolved that they should display their talents.
A certain young Englishwoman, married to one Count Eugen of Rothenfels, was the first to sing. The fair soprano was filling the room with a flood of melody, when the countess came up to the place where Sara Ford was seated, somewhat apart, with Jerome Wellfield leaning over the back of her chair, his eyes dreamily fixed on the face of the singer.
‘Mr. Wellfield,’ said his pretty little hostess, ‘I know I am asking a very great favour, and that you hate it; but won’t you sing to-night, to please me?’
‘Oh, will you?’ said Sara, involuntarily. She had heard wonderful rumours of Wellfield’s voice, and the wish to hear him was strong.
He bowed towards the countess.
‘To please you, gnädige Frau,’ he said, with a slight smile, ‘is a privilege, and I shall at once obey your order when I receive it.’
‘That is good! recht freundlich!’ exclaimed the lady, radiant with delight; for Wellfield’s reserve was generally as great as his talent was said to be, and she had had little hope of his consenting to sing before that large audience of perfect strangers. She confided her success to the ear of one of her cousins, Helene von Lehnberg, who said, with a sneer:
‘Another of your English amateurs, Carla? For my part, I don’t think much of a talent that is so haughty and reserved as almost to require one to go on one’s knees to it.’
‘Ah, my dear Helene! I doat upon proud, haughty people, when they are just the reverse to me, which is the case with Mr. Wellfield,’ rejoined Frau von Trockenau, not without malice.
‘I am glad you are going to sing,’ said Sara to Jerome, when they were alone again.
‘I am naturally of an obliging disposition, and could not refuse the Frau Gräfin.’
‘She is delighted,’ said Sara, with a smile.
‘When I have done,’ said Wellfield, in a low tone, ‘I shall come and ask if you were delighted—may I?’
‘May you?’ she stammered.
‘I mean, will you answer me if I do come?’
‘Do you expect me to tell you that I am not delighted?’
‘I expect nothing, therefore I am blessed; but I desire very much that you should tell me the truth.’
‘I will do so if you wish it.’
‘Thank you.... Yes, Frau Gräfin, I see and I obey,’ he added, as the countess was perceived making her way to him.
There was some little stir and sensation when Wellfield advanced to the piano. ‘An Englishman, an amateur—nun, wir werden ’mal sehen!’ said one or two sceptics, with a supercilious curl of the lip.
‘What does he sing? English songs—“The Last Rose of Summer”?’ asked one young lady, sarcastically.
‘No, no!’ whispered a dapper little lieutenant, who was paying her devoted attention; ‘he will sing a comic song, “What Jolly Dogs we are!” An Englishman told me last week that they sang nothing else in England now. He was at a party where nineteen of the company had brought their music——’
‘Gott! Herr Lieutenant, how horrible!’ tittered the young lady.
‘And sixteen out of the nineteen had brought “What Jolly Dogs we are!” Fact, I assure you, parole d’honneur! But hush! He is playing his own accompaniment. What! Rubinstein! “Asra!” Impossible!’
If so, the impossible was being performed in a masterly manner. Would-be sarcastic lieutenants, tittering young ladies, were bewitched into silence and admiration. Rubinstein’s weird and melodious legend of the youth whose race ‘die if they love,’ was sung to the end, as few of the audience had ever before heard it sung. The last notes, Die sterben wenn sie lieben, were followed at first by silence; and then some murmurs, not loud, but deep, of applause, greeted the singer.
The song that followed was, Es blinkt der Thau, and it made Sara’s heart beat. That finished, as if to give his audience a complete change, he struck a couple of deep chords, and began to sing that oft-quoted, hackneyed, but ever-beautiful Ich grolle nicht.
Sara felt a slight shiver run through her. Why did he choose that one weird song of Heine’s, set to Schumann’s equally weird music? She had heard it once at a concert, sung in a style which hardly rose above mediocrity, and yet even then it had impressed her; and she had pondered involuntarily over the gruesome, hinted mystery of the last lines. Jerome sang the strange song with a depth and a meaning all his own: her artist-nature thrilled to the strains, which are in very truth a song of death; it was ghostly—it was as if her spirit was enfeebled and chilled, and had to trail its drooping wings through a land full of vague and awful shadows.
There was a pause as he finished this song. Jerome half-rose from the piano, but a voice cried from the window:
‘We have not had the test yet, Mr. Wellfield. Give us a love-song. Give us Adeläida.’
Sara saw, even from her place in the background, the expression that flashed into the young man’s eyes, and over his face.
‘Good!’ was all he said, as he sat down again, and that melodious, significant single F was struck—that note which is the prelude to the sea of love and fire and passion which follows.
Sara sat pale and composed in her place, but feeling as if everyone in the room must see and observe that she was blushing furiously—so burningly hot were her cheeks. Each time that the notes ‘Adeläida’ rang out, she felt that she was apostrophised—the company, and the lighted room oppressed her—yet she looked, to one who was observing her from the other side of the room, grave, quiet, almost tired.
When the last notes had died away, Wellfield rose very decidedly, nor could he be prevailed upon to sing another note. The company clustered round him, thanked him, and congratulated him; asked to be introduced to him, and dispersed. Dancing began again, and still Sara sat as if spell-bound, in the place where he had left her.
‘I have come to know if you approved?’ murmured Jerome’s voice beside her.
She looked up, and met his eyes with an expression in them, before which her own in vain tried to remain calm and untroubled.
‘If I approved?’ she said, indistinctly. ‘How can you ask?’
Jerome was leaning against the wall, looking down at her—looking, too, as undisturbed as if he had been asking her whether she would have an ice. In the same manner, with the same tone, so low that none but she could hear it, he added:
‘And did you understand?’
‘I—I think so,’ said Sara, faintly.
‘Herr Wellfield, Miss Ford! the cotillon is about to begin. Here is your favour, Mr. Wellfield. Be good enough to let me pin it on, and then go and find your partner.’
It was Fräulein von Lehnberg, one of the countess’s Berlin cousins, who spoke, with some impatience in her voice; for she had twice addressed Jerome, and he had taken no notice of her. He stepped forward now, and held the basket of ribbons while she pinned on his favour, with an imperturbable severity of gravity which irritated the young lady exceedingly. Then he offered Sara his arm, and they advanced to meet the rest of the company.
In the discussions next day on the subject, it was universally decided that Mr. Wellfield might be a musical, Miss Ford an artistic prodigy; but that in the matter of dancing a cotillon they both displayed to the full that insular stiffness characteristic of their nation. That little Emily Leigh had ten times the spirit of her taller and handsomer country-woman. How gracefully she danced, and contrived to make even that maypole, Hans Lemde, look almost graceful too.
Beloved and candid discussions of the day after! How much does not society and the individual owe to you, in the matter of establishment of the facts, and an exhaustive analysis of the motives actuating the behaviour of those who come before your tribunal! May nothing ever occur to make you less vigorous or less rigorous than you are at this day!