Three years have passed since Linda left her father's house, and was no longer condemned to be called Harfink--three years and seven months.
The trees have only recently lost their snowy blossoms; all are wrapped in soft young green, the whole earth seems bathed in new hope. It is a day in which death and misfortune seem like ghost stories, invented by old women--no one believes them. The birds twitter joyously, and without all is fragrance, sunshine and flowers. Fragrance and sunshine fill the room where Elsa sits, her youngest child in her lap.
Elsa looks youthful and girlish, quite as much so as at the time when we first made her acquaintance. The same heavy brown hair, as if sprinkled with gold, clusters at her temples, and her eyes still shine with the old dreamy light of happiness, but her cheeks are thinner, her figure frail and thin.
The existence of the little creature in her lap has deprived her of so much health. She has not yet recovered since baby's birth, and has not had time to think of her health, for baby was a sickly child, and great skill was required to bind the little soul, which seemed so anxious to fly back to heaven, to this earth. Day and night, in spite of her own delicateness, Elsa has nursed and cared for the child, holding her tender mother-hand protectingly before the little light which every breath of air threatened to extinguish.
Erwin, who usually had such influence with her, this time could not induce her to spare her weakened strength.
Now the little girl is a year old, and laughs and smiles at her mother gayly, and the physician said recently, "You may be proud of the child, Baroness. How you have raised her, God only knows. All doctors can learn from a mother. But now think of yourself a little."
And the physician shook his head as he looked at the young woman.
Yes, the air is full of perfume and sunshine, but, in the midst of the charming spring life, Elsa looks like a frail white flower.
She has bathed baby, put on her little embroidered shirt, and wrapped her in a flannel slumber-robe, and now, with a fine towel, wipes the last drops from the tender pink little feet, and the little neck on which the water drops down from the small golden head. The nurse is meanwhile busy removing the bathing utensils, while Litzi, who is now a big girl, wearing long stockings, stands near her little sister and holding perfectly still, allows her long hair to be pulled.
"Fie, you wild little thing, you will hurt her!" cries Elsa at last, as baby pulls harder and harder, and winds her tiny fist in Litzi's hair.
Then baby throws her head back, shows her four teeth, laughs with all her little body, and finally leans her cheek sleepily against mamma's shoulder.
"Go down-stairs, my Litzi, go to Miss Sidney; baby wishes to go to sleep," whispers Elsa to her big daughter, whereupon Litzi goes away on tip-toes.
Dreamily humming a lullaby, Elsa cradles the child in her arms, and then lays it down in its pretty white bed. But when she thinks it asleep, it opens its blue eyes, and stretching out its arms, murmurs something which, with a vivid imagination, one can declare to be "Papa."
"Did you hear him come sooner than I, baby?" says Elsa, while Garzin, sitting on the edge of the bed, strokes the child's head until she closes her eyes. There she lies, her hair full of golden lights, the unusually long, black lashes resting on the round cheeks, lengthened by their own shadow, the full little mouth half open, like the calyx of a red flower, one fat little arm thrown up over its head.
"She is pretty, my little one, is she not?" says Elsa proudly, as she sees the quiet smile with which her husband watches the child. "And the doctor thinks I need have no more anxiety about her."
"Yes, the little rogue is healthy enough," says Erwin, sighing, as he softly leaves the nursery with Elsa. "I wish I could say the same of her mamma. Poor Elsa, how thin you are."
"Do I not please you any longer?" she replies, half laughing.
"You are not very sensible!"
"Probably not," replies she seriously. "With such old married people as we are, there can be no more talk of 'pleasing.'"
"Do you think so?"
"And if I should have small-pox, would it make any difference to you?" she asks him, looking at him curiously; the noblest woman is not ashamed to be loved a little because of her beauty.
"Certainly," he replies, "I should love you just as much as before, but I would be bitterly sorry for your pretty face." Jestingly he passes his finger over her cheeks.
They go into the garden; all is gay as if for a feast, the whole earth with her blooming mixture of white, blue and violet elder, golden rain and red acacias--a gay, shimmering picture under an endless blue sky. Everything lives and breathes. The birds twitter, the insects hum, every blade of grass seems to have a voice, and join in the great triumphal chorus of the newly-risen nature.
There is a rustling, a murmuring, a whispering, a nodding, a quiver of life and pleasure, and in the enchanting music suddenly mingles a soft crackling, the crackling of dead leaves, which play at the foot of the trees.
Garzin has led his wife to a bench, over which an elder tree bends its branches of bushy white blossoms. Elsa gazes before her at the lovely nature, the mixture of luxuriant green and gay blossoms, of short black shadows amid dazzling light.
"How young the earth looks," says she dreamily.
Erwin draws her to him. I do not know whether he loves her even more now when she is pale and ill; at any rate he is more conscious of his feeling for her, and treats her more tenderly, is more thoughtful of her, and she leans on him like a sick child. Her whole being has become softer, less independent.
"I received a letter from Felix to-day," says Garzin after a pause.
"Ah!" murmurs Elsa somewhat bitterly. "Does he write for money again?"
"Yes, I am to raise some money for him," says Erwin looking troubled.
"Ah!"
"He has a fine property, but that cannot last," he remarks thoughtfully.
"If it makes him happy," Elsa shrugs her shoulders, and her voice sounds harsh.
"Hm! To ruin one's self is at the time a very pleasant occupation, but to be ruined--a very unpleasant condition, especially with a wife like Linda. I do not believe that Felix will be willing to live on the income of his wealthy wife."
During this remark Elsa continues silent.
"Do you believe that Felix is happy?" Erwin continues; "his letters give a desperately depressed impression. Did you ever hear a really happy man assure one in every letter: 'I am very happy'--'Everything goes well with us'--'I am very contented.' Happy people are silent about their happiness."
Elsa lowers her head, and remembers that in the first years of her marriage she had never written anything to her brother but: "I cannot express how I feel!"
"As I know him," continues Erwin, "his present frequent contact with the world must be a continual torment."'
Elsa frowns and grows very pale. "I do not understand Linda!" she cries. "How can she under--under the circumstances rush into society? I no longer try to understand Felix. Hm!--he is weak--could never refuse a woman anything; if one had asked him for his hand, he would have let it be cut off for her. As far as I am concerned he can give her his hand--but--but----"
A strange fire glows in Elsa's eyes, her face takes on a rigid expression and she grows stiff and clutches both elbows convulsively.
"Poor devil!" murmurs Erwin.
"You pity him for my sake!" cries Elsa, bitterly. "It is not necessary. I know that you think his conduct unanswerable--that you must think so. He has forfeited all the sympathy which his blameless conduct for years had won. I will never forget the tone in which Marie Dey said to me last spring, when she returned from Rome: 'I have often met your sister-in-law; she goes a great deal into society--one sees her everywhere. Your brother does not seem to find as much pleasure in society as his wife!' And Marie was always a friend to Felix. I know that in Parisian society Felix is called 'le revenant,' for which name he has naturally to thank some kind Austrian. Evidently the whole story, which was forgotten, has been warmed up again."
"The world is very malicious," says Erwin, evasively.
"Certainly! But after one has passed sixteen years, one knows it, and guards one's self!" cries Elsa, and adds with a bitter smile: "I suppose he is a great philosopher and thinks nothing of it."
"Elsa! Elsa!" admonished Erwin.
She shook her head. "See!" said she, dully, "to spare Felix a humiliation, I would give my life, but now I cannot think of him without anger. Heavens, when I think of his return I tremble! I know he will be very badly received, and as his wife's whole existence turns upon being received----"
Erwin bites his lips. "Felix writes me that his wife plans to return in the latter part of June or the first of July. He will come to Traunberg with his little son somewhat sooner."
"He will return?" murmurs Elsa, slowly.
"Well, he must sooner or later."
"Certainly!" cries Elsa, with a shudder. "Erwin, what will strangers think of his return, if I myself am not able to rejoice?"
"Strangers do not take the situation so tragically," says Erwin, hastily and precipitately, looking away.
"Well, to be sure!" sighs Elsa. "It is of no consequence to strangers whether he has acted without any tact, yes, unresponsibly. To think evil of one who is far from one is a pleasure to malicious people, and to the best is simply indifferent. But to be forced to think evil of one whom one loves is the most painful thing in the world."
For a moment she is silent. "If Felix insists upon coming," she then continues, "I will do my utmost to make life endurable for him and his wife. I cannot persuade him to return."
About a week after the conversation between Erwin and Elsa, recorded in the last chapter, a bowed man appeared in Steinbach whom at first Elsa did not recognize, but into whose arms she fell with a cry when he stretched out two trembling hands to her with a sad smile. She had forgotten his unsuitable behavior; every bitter word which she had pronounced against him fell heavily on her heart; she no longer felt anything for him but boundless, compassionate love. The sight of him shocked her, his hair had grown gray, his voice hoarse. An anxious habit of raising his shoulders, and pressing his elbows against his ribs, that shy manner of poor tutors and other despised individuals, who seem to strive to make themselves as small as possible, to deprive others of as little room as they can--lent his figure a sickly, narrow-chested look. He spoke a great deal, with forced fluency, often repeating himself. He whom for so long Elsa had at most only heard laugh fondly at Litzi's little wise sayings, now laughed continually, loudly and harshly at the slightest provocation, whereupon the wrinkles grew deeper in his face, the shadows under his eyes darker. Often after such an outburst of nervous hilarity, his face suddenly grew flabby, as if wearied by too great exertion, and for a moment displayed the stony features, the rigid pain of one who has died a hard death.
He had travelled in advance of his wife, who was staying with friends at the Italian lakes, in order to prepare everything for her reception. He talked a great deal about his son, whom he could not bring to Elsa because the day was cold, and the little fellow was somewhat hoarse. All the little habits of the child, his manner of pronouncing words, he told his patiently listening sister.
His voice sounded sadder than ever when he spoke of the child, and from time to time he sighed, "Poor boy, poor boy!"
"What he must have suffered!" sobbed Elsa, when she was alone again with Erwin. "What he must have suffered!"
Yes, what he had suffered! Not even those who saw the evident traces of suffering in this thin, gray, feverish man, could imagine the greatness of his misery, could judge the darkness of his soul which his intercourse with the world had caused.
Immediately after the intoxication of the honeymoon, even during the wedding trip, which at Linda's wish they had made to Egypt, when he began to learn to know his wife, he came to the sad conviction that the most trivial acquaintance would have offered him as much distraction as this marriage. Pretty, coquettish, graceful, seductive. Linda was all these, but she had absolutely no mind. Like all narrow women without intelligence she became, after continued acquaintance, tiresome.
Incessantly occupied with the ambition to appear a true aristocrat, in whom one could not perceive theparvenue, she had no room for other thoughts. Her joy at being now a "Lanzberg" was fairly naïve. He really could not be angry with her when she displayed her little vanities to him. She wished to flatter him. He looked at her compassionately at such times and turned away his head.
From Cairo she had dragged him to Paris. There, at first, they had led an irregular, stranger life, with half-packed trunks in the Grand Hotel, went to the theatre and drove in the Bois de Boulogne. Linda for a while was satisfied with the acquaintances which she made in the hotel reading-room, at the skating-rink, etc. Felix always avoided atable a'hôte, which Linda, even if thetête-à-têtemeals were at times a bore to her, never opposed, as an elegant custom.
Then she was one day accidentally asked by one of her friends whether she should attend the lastsoiréeof the Austrian ambassador. A pang went through Linda's heart. She enveloped her denial of the simple question in a confusion of excuses and explanations--she had only recently married, she had not yet thought of paying visits. Scarcely was she alone with Felix when she asked him if he knew the ambassador.
Yes, Felix knew him, but had not seen him for years. Naturally Linda ascribed his evident objection to visiting His Excellency to the shyness which hismésalliancecaused in him. A scene followed, tears, cutting remarks--headache.
The next morning, Felix stood mournfully before one of Froment-Meurice's windows and asked himself whether he should not buy his wife a diamond cluster of wheat to calm her anger, when some one seized his arm and cried, "Why, how are you, Felix?"
Felix turned, discovered an old friend, who, many years younger, had served a degree lower in the same regiment with him at that time.
Now the friend was attaché at the embassy, and a favorite with the Parisian ladies, a gay, hot-blooded comrade for whom some one had found the nickname, "Scirocco." "How are you, Felix?" he cried a second time, offering his former comrade his hand.
Felix started. No one in all Austria knew his story better than this very Scirocco, and Scirocco offered him his hand.
"Thank you, Rudi," he murmured softly. "It is very good in you to still remember me."
Poor Scirocco grew very hot and uncomfortable. Lovable and impulsive, he had spoken to Felix without thinking for a moment how hard it is to associate with "such a man." Felix looked so miserable, so depressed that Scirocco would have told all the lies which might occur to him to talk him out of his sadness.
"I was going to run after you in the Bois the other day," he went on, "but you were walking with your wife, and I did not wish to intrude.Sapristi!How long have you been married? Here in foreign parts one loses all Austrian news. Your wife is a sensational beauty. Do not take it amiss that I do not even know who she is. I absolutely do not remember to have seen any one who could remind me of this fairy-like apparition a few years ago in short clothes."
"You certainly never knew her," replied Felix. "She is the daughter of a Viennese manufacturer--Harfink."
"Ah!" Somewhat robbed of his self-possession Scirocco, hastily leading the conversation from an unpleasant subject, stumbles upon yet more dangerous topics. "Do you live in jealous honeymoon solitude, do you not go out at all?"
Felix looks pleadingly at him. "You know that I cannot go out," he murmurs.
And Scirocco hurries over that--he will not understand. "Nonsense!" he cries. "People are wiser here than with us at home. Mind and beauty count for as much as nobility." Poor Scirocco, he was never guilty of a more trivial platitude. "You must take your wife to the X's," he continued.
X was the ambassador at that time. "Never!" said Felix, violently. They had reached the Grand Hotel now.
"When may I call upon your wife?" asked Scirocco.
Felix had averted his face from his former friend. "When you wish, Rudi," he murmured, then, suddenly turning towards him, "God reward you for your kindness, but do not force yourself."
Scirocco saw that tears rolled over the cheeks of the "certain Lanzberg."
Scirocco did not philosophize over the weakness of his former comrade, he was far too deeply shocked. The result of his great cordiality to Felix was an uneasy conscience, the feeling that with the best intentions he had acted with a want of tact, and the need of inflicting punishment upon some one for Felix's tears. "Poor Felix! such a splendid fellow!" he murmured to himself.
Scirocco, whom we must introduce to our readers by his name Count Sempaly, was noted for his good-natured precipitation and thoughtless generosity, by which he was often subsequently forced pitilessly to harshness which would be spared a less lovable but more prudent man.
For instance, at one time there was the American Smythe, who had been guilty of a breach of etiquette in a Parisian circle at cards, and whom society had avoided, without harshness, with the assurance that he had assuredly been only stupid. They bowed to him on the street, they invited him to large entertainments, but they hoped that he would not accept the invitations; they cut him dead when he accepted them.
Then there was the Marquis de Coup de Foudre, who was accused of cheating on the race-track, and who, from indignation--hm!--retired from the track. He was not wholly given up, but every one would only see him as far off as his neighbor did, in the beautiful bond of mutual responsibility which holds society together.
Then finally there was Lady Jane Nevermore, who had permitted herself several little irregularities with her husband, and who now, divorced, with a grown daughter, rendered Paris and Nice uneasy.
How he had defended these people, with what deep respect, with what sympathy he had spoken of them--showed himself with them on public occasions, made good all their lack of tact (people in an uncertain social position always develop a particular genius for this). He lent them more of his shadow than the devoted Bendel lent his master, Peter Schemil, procured the widest social credit for them.
He made a legion of enemies, but the clouds which rested on Lady Jane, Coup de Foudre and Smythe--their names here stand for many--rested on him. People said at last that he must have his reasons for defending these people. Weary, angry, he then suddenly withdrew from hisprotégés, whom by this he injured much more than he had benefited, and who now could, without opposition, proclaim their social bankruptcy.
Like many foolhardy heroes, at the last moment he was forced to beat a shameful retreat, when a perfectly respectable withdrawal would have been possible before.
But with however a wounded heart he might return from his campaign against public opinion, he always ventured into battle again.
After this philosophical interlude, we would perhaps do better to return to Scirocco, who is meanwhile breakfasting in the "Café Riche."
He was not hungry--he pondered. Lanzberg's fall did not in the least remind one of Smythe's, Coup de Foudre's, or Lady Jane's. In regard to these people, to a certain extent, prejudice had been justified, as if prejudice is not always to a certain extent justified!
Scirocco's pondering ended in the resolution to launch Lanzberg in Parisian society as one launches an unpopulardébutanteof the theatre.
The next day he called upon Linda, and the day after Count X---- paid his visit.
How high she held her head among her acquaintances of the reading-room and skating-rink: "X----, an old friend of my husband," etc., etc.
She took an apartment in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, an apartment with a large coldsalonwhich was distinguished by gilded mouldings and white walls, pink doors, conventional chairs, and sky-blue satin upholstering. Linda very soon understood that this dazzling elegance, which at first had blinded her inexperienced eyes, was intolerably "dentiste," as they say on the Boulevard.
She surrounded herself with old brocades, with modern bronzes, with Smyrna rugs--an irregular confusion of picturesque treasures whose unsuitableness justified the temporary look of the whole establishment.
Scirocco helped her in everything. He found out auction sales in the Hôtel Drouot for her, stood for half the afternoon on an old Flemish chair, to drive a nail with his own hands in the wall for her to hang a Diaz or a Corot upon--procured all the invitations for her which she wished--in short, was unweariedly obliging, and,nota bene, he only paid her enough attention to make her the fashion.
She was clever enough to take with him the good-natured, brusque tone of a woman who may permit herself little liberties because she is sure of her heart and of the respect of the man with whom she associates.
She lived in the seventh heaven. To drive every day, leave orders with Worth and Fanet, not to dine at home a single day, to attend two balls and three routs in one night, never to have a moment for reflection, to be always out of breath with pleasure, and besides this, to be surrounded by a crowd of young men with distinguished attractions and fine names, animated by the consciousness that for her sake an attaché, in despair over her virtuous harshness, had had himself transferred to Persia--oh! in her romantic boarding-school dreams she had never suspected such a lovely life.
And Felix.
Scirocco had proposed him in the most exclusive club. Felix had not resisted this, and came seldom to the club. He could not avoid playing little games ofécarté. He won. His opponent doubled, increased tenfold the stakes--Felix continued to win. The sweat stood on his brow; he was deathly pale. "Do not play with me--I always win--it is a curse!" he cried suddenly, throwing down the cards and completely losing his self-control.
Scirocco grew embarrassed and nervously bit his nails. "If he had anything to reproach himself with!" he thought to himself. "But that is absolutely not the case, absolutely not!"
The others who did not know Baron Lanzberg's history only laughingly called him "un drôle de corps!"
The story went that Felix Lanzberg had once lost his mind from an unfortunate love-affair, and had spent two years in an insane asylum. Scirocco had probably invented this rumor and set it in motion to take away room for other rumors.
Except Scirocco and Count X, none of the Austrians in Paris at that time knew the true state of affairs. A single one had a suspicion, wrote to Vienna to inform himself, and received for answer--this and that. But this one was aparvenu, and when he wished to spread his news the others listened to him with mocking smiles, shrugged their shoulders arrogantly, and condemned the communication so harshly that he never again referred to it. He noticed that it was considered the thing to believe in Lanzberg.
Felix grew daily more unsociable, and liked to go to places only where he was sure of meeting no one whom he knew, no people of society. He took long trips on the steamboats, passed the afternoon in the quiet peace of the gardens, sometimes stood for a quarter of an hour gloomily before a half-decomposed corpse in the morgue, or wandered through the quiet rooms of the Louvre, which are so persistently avoided by certain Parisians.
Formerly knowing as little of art as any other Austrian Uhlan officer, he now daily found greater pleasure in the pictures.
His natural taste for glaring coloring,décolletécigarette beauties, humorous or sentimentalgenrepictures disappeared. The soft harmonies of the old masterpieces had a strangely soothing effect upon his sick nerves.
With slow, dragging steps, his eyes dreamily wandering from one picture to another, he sauntered through the long rooms.
The gallery officials soon knew him, and with French talkativeness often spoke to him of the weather or politics.
He never became a critic, but he had his favorites. For instance, he felt a quite inexplicable preference for Greuze, the Guido Reni of the eighteenth century, of whom one might think that he had mixed his colors of tears, moonbeams, and the dust of withered flowers, and instead of Beatrice Cenci had painted a "Cruche Cassé." Every day he stood for a while before the "Cruche Cassé" and murmured "Poor child!"
In one of the galleries there was the gloomy portrait of a woman from the hand of the Jansenist, Philippe von Champaigne, pale with dark, mournful eyes; in the carriage of the emaciated frame the weary rigidity of vanquished pain. Everything in the appearance was so dead and ethereal that one almost fancied one could see the flesh dying around the soul. Felix stood before this picture every day.
He loved the Samaritan and the Christ on the road to Emmaus--masterpieces in which the sublime mystery of the Rembrandt colors glorifies the harsh reality. He could not gaze often enough at the mysterious eyes of the Christ, the eyes in which compassion is as large as the world, the eyes which pardon all, and yet ever sad, despairing, seek the means of salvation for sinful creation.
But the picture which beyond all attracted and repelled him, which he loved and which yet terrified him, was Watteau's Pierot, pale, ghost-like, with glassy eyes in a rigid face; it looks down from the wall of the Salle Lacaze. To-day he has gone to a mask-ball to distract himself, and his weary eyes ask in disappointment, "Is that all?" To-morrow he lies perhaps in the morgue, and his glassy eyes gaze with the same look at the solved riddle of eternity, as yesterday, at the hollow show--the same gaze which asks, "Is that all?"
Felix almost daily passed a couple of hours in the Louvre. "Bonjour!" a diligent little artist cried to him here and there, some little person whom perhaps he had given some small assistance, and who greeted him as an habitué. Except for this all was silence. No one speaks in the Louvre; one only whispers.
A hollow mutter and murmur woven of a thousand soft echoes pervade the old rooms in their vast monotony like the faint echo of the great tumult of the world, or like the murmur of the eternal stream of time.
A year later, in a pretty country-house in Ville d'Avray, where they had passed the summer, a little son was laid in Felix's arms. The tiny creature, wrapped in white lawn, grew indistinct before his eyes; he scarcely saw it, only felt something warm, living, between his hands, something the touch of which caused him a wholly new, tender sensation, and lightly and carefully he kissed his son's little rosy face.
Then remembrance smote his heart, a convulsive sob overcame him, and in a broken voice he murmured, "Poor child! poor child!"
From Ville d'Avray Linda dragged Felix to Biarritz, then to Rome, where they passed three winters. These were still worse than the winter in Paris. Rome is the city of social consideration, a kind of free city for dubious characters. Felix's martyr nimbus had vanished through his intercourse with society in Paris. Scirocco who had been removed to Rome, was vexed with Linda for following him. Her manner of chaining herself to his protection irritated him, but he still assisted her social advancement where he could.
The other Austrians were not exactly unfriendly to Felix, but cold and distant. On their faces could be read, "We are surprised that you show yourself," or even, "We will not turn our backs upon you--we are in Rome."
With the certain feeling of kinship which characterizes the Austrian nobility, they, to be sure, never spoke of his affairs with a stranger, but so much the more among each other.
At last Rome was tired of, and even London, where Linda spent a season and enjoyed her greatest triumph. But one place remained to try--Traunberg.
It was a cool, unpleasant evening when Felix returned to Traunberg from his short visit in Steinbach. Gray and white strangely scattered clouds rose along the horizon, the lindens shivered, and threw long pale shadows over the smoothly-shaven lawn and the yellow gravel. The sun hung on the horizon almost without light, behind a pale mist like a half-faded spot of blood.
Life had never been as hard to bear for a "certain Baron Lanzberg" as on this evening. Slowly he wandered through the large, gloomy rooms of the castle, in which the cold air was as close and mouldy as in a cloister, and where every step seemed to charm a remembrance from the floor.
He saw Elsa, tall, somewhat pale, with the charming awkwardness of her fourteen years, hurry to meet him, shy before her handsome, brilliant brother who, a week before, had won a race--her brother of whom she was so proud. He saw his father, as he smiled joyfully at him, and pulling his ear, cried: "Do you amuse yourself, my boy? Do you amuse yourself? Have you debts? Out with it--not many? Always tell me what you need; I no longer know what circumstances require. You are my golden boy, you are your old father's joy!" He remembered the expression with which the Freiherr had surveyed him, a glance in which a kind of exaggerated paternal pride was glorified by the deepest love, and the gesture with which he had merrily cried to the old family portraits, "Are you satisfied with my boy?"
His memory did not spare poor Felix a word.
He had passed through one after another of the large rooms. In some of them stood great piles of furniture which Linda had sent here.
Suddenly he found himself before a picture which hung in a dark corner, concealed by a curtain, in his father's former room. Hastily he drew back the curtain, then he clutched his temples and turned away from the painting with the short, dull groan of a dying animal. What had he seen? The portrait of an unusually handsome, merry, good-tempered young officer, who smiled at him through the twilight. Felix hurried away.
In the lofty, arched corridor, the echo doubled the sound of his footsteps. It seemed to him as if that gay comrade had stepped down from the frame, and now, relating old stories, wandered at his side. The sweat of terror was on his brow. He met a servant, and hastily commanded him to remove the picture from the green corner room. His voice was always sharp when he spoke to servants, and yet he was the best, most generous master in the world.
He entered his child's room. The Frenchbonnelaid her finger on her lips to signify to him that the child slept. He bent over the little creature, who, with one little arm under his cheek, with the other clasping a gay gilded doll to him, lay in the embroidered pillows.
Without, the lindens, sighing compassionately, shook their great black heads, the tower clock, indifferent as time which it serves, played its old piece in a flat tone, hesitating and pausing--a minuet to which the grandparents had courtesied and bowed.
Felix listened, listened, like an old man who suddenly hears once more the cradle song with which he used to be lulled to sleep.
It overcame him. He bent down deeper over his little son, and murmured softly, "Poor child, poor child!" And the words woke the child, he opened his large eyes and lisped, unabashed, "Why, poor child? Is Gery sick?"
"Elsa, dear Elsa, this is lovely in you! What an surprise! I only know you from my husband's accounts, and from my wedding-day, but I shall love you frightfully, that I feel already."
Crying out these words, Linda had jumped out of the carriage with which Felix had met her at the railway station, and greeted Elsa, who, at her brother's wish, had come to Traunberg to welcome the young wife to her new home. Then leaving Elsa, Linda let her eyes wander over the façade of the castle. "Charmant! magnifique!" she cried. "A portal like a church, gray walls, cracked window-sills, balconies and volutings, small-paned old cloister windows! I am charmed, Felix--charmed!C'est tout a fait seigneurial!If you knew, Elsa, how tired I am of modern villas, stucco and plate glass. Ah, you poor, little creature! I had half forgotten you;" with this Linda bends down to her son, who had first stamped his little feet with joy and excitement at his mother's arrival, but then, ever more and more abashed by the flow of words which had carelessly been uttered over his head, with his finger in his mouth, now seemed to take a mournful pleasure in crying.
"Have all children a habit of sticking their fingers in their mouths, or is it an invention of my young hopeful?" asks Linda, after she has hastily kissed and caressed the child. "He will be pretty, the little brat. It is a pity that his hair will not grow. When he had typhoid fever or measles--what was it, Felix?"
"Scarlet fever," he replied, tenderly raising the tiny man in his arms.
"Oh, yes, scarlet fever; we had to cut his hair, and since then it has never grown long."
"I think you can be satisfied with him as he is," says Elsa, looking approvingly at the handsome child.
"Yes, he is a nice little thing," admits Linda; "he has splendid eyes, the true Lanzberg eyes. Oh, I am so glad that he resembles Felix."
"Well, his beauty would not have suffered if he had resembled you," replies Elsa, with an admiring glance at her sister-in-law.
Linda's physique has developed splendidly. The discontented expression which formerly disfigured her face has vanished, has given place to a bewitching smile and brilliant glance. Negligence and grace are united in her carriage. She displays the gayety and cordiality of a person who is satisfied with herself. Laying her arm caressingly around Elsa's waist, she whispers: "So you really do not find me too homely for a Lanzberg; one would not guess from my looks where I come from, eh?"
"Where you come from?--from the world of society--that certainly," says Elsa.
"Bah! From an iron foundry!" cries Linda, laughing.
Elsa glances once more at the picturesque distinction of the slender figure near her.
"No," says she, decidedly.
Indeed Linda does not look like the daughter of a self-made manufacturer; rather like a Parisian actress with a talent for aristocratic rôles.
"And now you must show me everything in my new domain, Elsa, everything," cries the young woman, and Elsa says, "Are you not tired, will you not first have a cup of tea?" Then Linda says animatedly, "No, no, I must first see everything, everything!"
Felix has disappeared with his little darling. Elsa leads her sister-in-law through the rooms of the ground floor and first story, shows her the elegantly furnished rooms which Elsa has herself helped arrange for her.
"Oh, you poor Elsa, how you have tormented yourself for me!" cries Linda, and finds everything splendid and charming, with the affability of a newly married queen who, entering her kingdom, wishes to make herself popular.
"There! I will reserve the attic rooms. I begin to feel the dust of travel. It is now much too late to take tea; as soon as I have changed my clothes, I will join you in the drawing-room. I do not yet know the way to my room--oh, yes--that is the room for my maid---parfait, parfait--au revoir, my dear heart!" And before she leaves her, Linda presses another kiss upon Elsa's cheek.
On her way to the drawing-room, Elsa heard a little voice prattling and laughing behind one of the tall doors which open on the corridor. "May I come in?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she entered the room where Felix, his child on his knee, sat in an arm-chair and held a sugar-plum high in the air, while the child climbed up on him, half laughing, half vexed at his vain attempt to overcome his father's teasing resistance. Both were so absorbed in their occupation that they did not notice Elsa's entrance. She gazed at the pretty group with emotion--the gray-haired man, the blond child, until finally Felix surrendered the sugar-plum, and the child ate it with a very important air, smacking his lips, and with contortions of the face by which he seemed to show the ambitious desire of resembling as much as possible his little friend the monkey in the London Zoo.
Then Elsa laid her hand lovingly on her brother's shoulder. "Oh, how you play with the child," said she.
He raised his face to her, the pale face with the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, in which everything was old but pain, which appeared fresh and young every morning, and said hastily: "I must love him doubly now. Who knows whether later he will have anything to do with me?"
"I could not resolve to dress; to appear at dinner in apeignoiris a fault which is pardoned in convalescents, and after twenty-four hours of railway travel, I feel at least like a convalescent. Ah, how pretty it is here!"
So cried Linda, entering the drawing-room where Felix and Elsa awaited her, a half hour later.
What she called apeignoirwas a confusion of yellowish lace and India muslin with elbow sleeves and the unavoidable Watteau plait in the back.
Her soft hair hung loose over her shoulders.
"I have a headache, and cannot bear a comb, and as we areentre nous----" she excused herself smilingly at Elsa's astonished glance, as she pushed back the heavy waves from temples and neck. Her gestures were full of seductive grace, and her whole form was pervaded with a moist, sweet perfume which reminded one of a summer morning after a storm, and which exhales from a woman who has just taken a perfumed bath. In her whole appearance lay something which excited Elsa's nerves without her being able to explain it--which wounded her feelings of delicacy.
Linda suspected nothing of the impression which she made. "It is pretty here," she repeated, with a lazy glance of satisfaction around the room--"I thank you so much, Elsa! One sees everywhere that a woman's tact has superintended the furnishing--a workman never produces such an impression. Everything looks so cosey, so irregular. How happy I am to be home at last!" and Linda took her sister-in-law's slender, sallow hand in her white, rosy-tipped one, and kissed it with childish exaggeration.
"Who is already here besides the Deys?" she asked then. "Before next week I must really think of paying calls."
Elsa was spared an answer by the quick rolling of a carriage. Springing up she cried--whether her emotion betrayed merely a severe feeling of propriety, and did not also display an unconscious premonition of jealousy I cannot say--"Linda, it is Erwin who has come for me. Put up your hair; it would be unpleasant for you to meet a strange man so!"
With a peculiar expression in glance and smile, Linda fulfilled her sister-in-law's wish. Elsa quickly helped her to twist up her hair, and thereby breathed the peculiar perfume which Baroness Lanzberg used.
She will think of this perfume in many terrible hours which fate has in store for her.
With both hands at her neck, her beautiful figure clearly outlined, her white arms exposed to the elbow by the falling back sleeves, Linda is just fastening a pin in her improvisedcoiffure, when Erwin enters the drawing-room.
"I did not think that you would take the trouble to come over here," stammers Linda, childishly, shyly offering him her hand, "or else you should have found me in more correct toilet."
Elsa starts. Instead of answering, Erwin has kissed the warm white hand of his sister-in-law.
The Garzins remained to dinner in Traunberg. Linda would not hear of their return to Steinbach, she was so happy at last to have an opportunity of learning to know her relations better. She asked advice and indulgence so childishly, was so gay, so amusing, so charming, that Elsa's antipathy to her increased and Erwin's rapidly lessened. Soon he fell into the tone of indifferent gallantry with her which in society almost every man takes with every woman who does not inspire a direct repugnance in him.
But Elsa, inexperienced as she was, did not know this tone, did not know that one can listen with an expression of the most intense interest to a woman without having the slightest idea half an hour later of what she had said; that one pays her the little flatteries for which she hungers as one picks up her handkerchief--from polite habit; that for the time which one devotes to her, one is obliged, if not absolutely to forget the charms of all other women, still in no case to remind her of them.
Linda behaved very cleverly with her brother-in-law, displayed a naïve wish to please him--no forward coquetry. She knew that naturalness, lack of reserve in a really pretty woman is always the most dangerous charm--she was refinedly natural. She told the drollest Parisian stories, made the drollest faces without the slightest regard for her symmetrical features; she made use of a momentary absence of the servants to throw a bread-ball in Felix's face with all the skill of a full-blooded street-boy, and as Felix frowned and Erwin could not conceal a slight astonishment, she excused herself so penitently, told with so much emphasis of how Marie Antoinette in her time had bombarded Louis XVI. with bread balls in Trianon, that Erwin was the first to console her, while there was something in his conventional courtesy of the encouraging consideration which a mature man shows to a spoiled child.
After dinner Linda offered to sing something. "She had to be sure no voice, not even so much as a raven or Mlle. X----" she remarked smilingly, "but she relied upon her dramatic accent and----" as she remorsefully admitted--"she had taken such expensive lessons. Would not Elsa accompany her?"
Elsa refused gently, almost with embarrassment. She could scarcely read the notes, and Erwin? He could read notes and could play enough to strum his favorite operatic airs by ear in weak moments. He would try to accompany Linda if she would promise to be very patient.
"The worse you play, so much the more excuse will there be for my faulty singing," cried Linda gayly, and opened that charming, foolish cuckoo song from "Marbolaine."
A pretty confusion followed, a laughing, correcting, her little hands playing between his. "Can we begin?" she cried finally, and still half leaning over him with one finger pointing to the notes, she began to sing "Cuckoo!"
Her voice, in truth, did not remind one in the least of the gloomy organ of a raven, or the passionate hoarseness of the X----, rather of a child's laugh, it was so clear and boldly gay, even if somewhat thin and shrill.
Felix, who had meanwhile been telling Elsa of Gery's scarlet fever with most interesting explicitness, grew silent, not, perhaps, because the cuckoo song was even half as interesting to him as Gery's parched lips and little hands--no! But because he noticed that the usually so patient and sympathetic Elsa no longer listened to him. Her eyes were fixed on Linda; that thin, flippant voice painedher, could it please Erwin?
Then the last note ceased. "I am so sorry that I have hindered you by my miserable playing," he excused himself. "You sing so very charmingly! Another one, I beg you."
For the first time in her life Elsa was vexed that she was not musical.