"All for the sake of a Juanita!" That was the most biting remark Linda had made, was what made Felix feel most keenly his degradation.
He had heard of people who sinned for a good object, who had forged their fathers' names from generous precipitancy to save the honor of a friend, with the ideal conviction that the father himself must declare that he was satisfied with the wrong action on account of the unfortunate complications. But he? No false idea of sacrifice, no desire for martyrdom had confused him; as the cause of his action he found nothing but egoism and search for enjoyment, a brutal passion for an unworthy woman.
The explanation of his act lay in the hot-blooded temperament of a thoroughly spoiled and indulged man, whose first ungratified wish robs him of his senses--the excuse of his act lay nowhere. He also had never sought it, and had never for one instant forgiven himself, but all these years, wherever he went, had dragged about with him the consciousness of his degradation.
It had weighed so heavily upon him that this in itself had prevented every moral elevation in him.
Had his sense of honor not been by nature and education so fanatic, so morbidly sensitive, he would perhaps have learned in time to accustom himself to his situation, and become a commonplace, anxiously respectable man who contented himself with playing first fiddle in circles which were a step lower than his own.
But however he was situated, he never learned to reckon with his detracted honor. It could not satisfy him to represent an ordinary, respectable man.
"How was it possible; oh, God, how was it possible that I, Felix Lanzberg, could so forget myself?" he groaned.
He let his head fall upon his folded arms on his writing-desk.
Then through his weary mind, like a triumphal fanfare of temptation, rang the melody of a Spanish national dance, with its exciting, sharply accented rhythm and perfidious modulations. The portion of his past in which his present grief had root rose vividly and with the most minute particulars to his memory.
It dated back--oh, that beautiful unrecallable time--twenty-three years. Very wealthy, handsome, of good family, fond of gay life and without any serious aims, he liked to amuse himself, rendered homage to his colonel's wife, as is obligatory in every young officer, supported here a factory-girl, there a glove-maker, but at that time his great passion was really four-in-hand driving. On the whole, he was of too ideal temperament to find enjoyment in light-minded passions, and had no talent for such. In association with all other beings--his superiors, comrades, subordinates, tradespeople and proletaries--full of a certain good-nature, self-satisfied. In intercourse with women he was almost shy, stiff, grave, and well-bred to the finger-tips. He was everywhere considered sentimental and solid.
The last Easter he had raved over Countess Adelina L----, the sister of the same Count L---- whom he had encountered so unpleasantly at Mimi Dey's--had danced three cotillons with her, lost two philopenas to her, and passed much time at receptions, seated in a low arm-chair beside her, gazing at her with enraptured eyes, and accompanying his glances with a few anxious, very involved and equally unmeaning phrases. It only required some sharp elderly friend of the Countess to make matters plain to him--that is, to call his attention to the fact that he was really betrothed.
He seemed made to marry early, to adore his wife, and to bore his intimate friends with accounts of the wonderful peculiarities of his children. Then, on a mild, damp spring evening, after a good dinner, and not quite sober, he chanced to go with several comrades to the Orpheum, which later, owing to an American who walked a telegraph wire with much ease and grace, became a great attraction, but which then tried its fortune with Spanish dancers and a lion-tamer.
The dance production began with four Spaniards, two women, two men, all four old, homely, and so thin that they did not need castanets to rattle, danced with convulsive charm, smiled like painted death's heads, and on the whole reminded one strongly of certain repulsive pictures of Goya, which are usually voted exaggerated, so as to allay the horror which they cause.
The officers cried "Brava!" with biting irony, the audience hissed, several indignant voices grumbled at the director. Then the first bars of the madrilèna resounded through the atmosphere impregnated with tobacco smoke and the odor of eatables. A new apparition stepped upon the stage. A smile--a glance--the deepest indignation changed to the most breathless astonishment. With the voluptuous bowing and swaying of a Spanish dance, the most beautiful woman that was ever called Senorita floated over the stage. That was Juanita! The horrible background of the quartette heightened the luxuriant charm of her figure.
She was no practised dancer, none of our conventional ballerinas, whose perfect flexibility destroys all individual charm; her limbs had not been disfigured by year-long torture; they possessed neither the pitiful thinness nor the dazzling rapidity of a race-horse. She did not know how to execute with the lower extremities the most ambitious figures, while--as is considered essential--the upper body remained stiff; she did no gymnastics--she danced! And not only with her limbs--she danced with her whole body.
Oh, what an intoxicating bending and swaying! A proud drawing up of the body, and caressing sinking backward! Her dancing had nothing animated, challenging about it, but something subtly alluring, almost magically seductive. Her whole appearance suggested longing weariness, as when in a storm the flowers shudderingly bend their heads earthward. And she was beautiful! The short oval of her face, the low brow, the short, straight nose, the delicate, quivering nostrils, the high cheek-bones, the slightly sunken cheeks, the long, deep-set eyes, full of loving dreaminess and passion, the full, curved lips, turning upward with an expression of languishing weariness--all this reminded one not in the least of the ideal, gentle brunette Madonnas of Murillo. It reminded one of nothing holy, nothing classical--but it was the most seductive earthly beauty which one could imagine!
The audience raved; the officers screamed themselves hoarse with "Brava! Brava!" Some of them made poor jokes about the dancer, others hummed or whistled reminiscences of the Spanish music. Only Felix was silent. "You act like one to whom a ghost has announced death," jested Prince Hugo B----, and thereupon proposed that the officers should go upon the stage in a body and give Juanita an ovation.
How he remembers all that to-day! The large half-lighted room near the stage, the dusty old rafters, the ropes, the torn scenes, the dim gas-lights, the crowd of actors and actresses huddled together, the trapeze artist who wore a brown waterproof over his pink doublet and green tights, and in the midst of this unsavory crowd--Juanita. In a shabby gray dress, and green and blue checked shawl, she stood near an elderly very shabby woman, and smiled with her languishing lips most indifferently, while the men vied with each other in paying her the most effusive compliments in imaginary Spanish or bad French. When they withdrew Felix stumbled over something. It was the yellow flower which Juanita had worn in her hair, dusty, withered, trodden upon. Carefully he wiped the dust from it, and tried to revive the faded, crumpled petals.
"Deuce take it! We should invite her to supper," cried Prince B----, suddenly standing still.
"Why, Hugo?" stammered Felix.
The former laughed, turned on his heel, gave his invitation, and Juanita nodded perfectly contentedly. She had no objection to sup with the gentlemen. To be sure, she took her theatre mother with her.
How Felix recalled all this!
The glaring gas-light in the long narrow room of the restaurant; the sleepy, blinking waiter; Manuela--that was the name of the dancer's protecting angel--who, without removing hat or wrap, and also without saying a word, with the usual appetite of all theatre mothers, bent over her plate; the officers who, with faces flushed with wine, proposed clumsy toasts, and Juanita who, seated beside the Prince upon a red divan, again and again rubbed her large weary eyes with her little hands, like a sleepy child.
She ate without affectation and without greediness--only sipped the champagne, smiled good-naturedly at the boldest jokes, whether she understood them not, with the resignation of a being who was accustomed to earn her bread in this manner.
The old Manuela had long been snoring. Some the officers had grown melancholy, the others were noisy only by fits and starts--Juanita's eyes closed.
"Let her go, she is tired," remarked an elderly captain.
"Before we part, I beg one especial favor," cried Prince B----. "That the Senorita give us each a kiss."
The dancer made a few gestures of dissent, because that was a part of her trade, and then yielded.
Patiently she let one after the other of the young men press his mustache, smelling of wine and smoke, upon her beautiful mouth. At length Felix's turn came, but he avoided her lips, profaned by the kisses of his comrades, and only kissed her hand very softly. Misunderstanding the tenderness of his action, she believed that he despised her kiss.
A few minutes later the two sleepy Spaniards rolled away to their home in a carriage which Prince B---- had paid for.
"A beautiful creature, but a perfect goose," remarked B---- to Felix, as he strolled back to the barracks with him. The other officers drove. "Besides, she is at least twenty-five or six years old; that is old for a Spaniard," chatted the Prince.
Felix walked silently beside him, a hot, unsatisfied feeling in his heart, a withered flower in his hand.
He cherished it like a lover the rose-bud which his dear one had given him; yes, thus would Felix cherish the faded yellow flower which the dust in the wings of the stage had soiled--upon which an acrobat might have trodden. He placed it in a glass of water, and finally pressed it in a book of poems.
Explain it who will! In the moment when Felix had avoided her lips, the narrow-minded Spaniard had taken a decided dislike for him, a dislike which more intimate acquaintance with him did not overcome, but which increased to aversion. Neither his unusual, truly somewhat effeminate, beauty, nor his reserved, chivalrous manners, pleased her. B----, with his bold, condescending ways, had more success with her, but her deepest, tenderest feelings were for the trapeze artist of the Orpheum, a young man with strongly developed muscles and bushy hair, who apparently seldom washed his face and never his hands; but, on the other hand, used the strongest-smelling pomade, and always wore the most brilliant cravats. One met him often when one visited Juanita.
At that time Juanita lived in the Rossau, in a very plain locality, which continually smelt of mutton tallow and onions, because Manuela, in spite of the warm time of year, loved to cook unappetizing national dishes upon the drawing-room stove.
Manuela was never seen without her crumpled black satin hat and her green shawl adorned with red palms. Around the old woman's waist, on a worn-out cord hung a pocket from which protruded a gay paper fan, and which beside this lodged a pack of cards, a rosary and cigarettes.
Juanita lay from morning to night upon a divan, clad in a loose white wrapper, without corsets, without stockings, a rose behind her ear, and tiny black satin slippers upon her small bare feet. But how beautiful she was thus!
The soft white clinging garment outlined her form distinctly. One could think of nothing more charming than her little feet, scarcely as long as one's palm, so narrow, beautifully arched, with pink soles and dainty dimples, and with blue veins around her ankles as they peeped out of the satin slippers.
Except for a few fairly brutal bursts of rage, Juanita was uncommonly phlegmatic. She really loved nothing but cigarettes, sweet drinks mixed with ice, and a horrible Spanish national salad of garlic and cucumbers which she called agaspacho. The time which she did not devote to her dancing exercises and her lovers, she passed smoking, laying cards, and telling the beads of her rosary.
She tolerated Felix around her, like a poor actress who wishes to quarrel with no one and tolerates every one; she did not encourage him.
Her coldness excited his feeling to madness; his boundless submission increased her repugnance for him. In association with her, he had no self-respect, no pride, no will, but the low-spirited air of a shy student. He grovelled at her feet, and spent half the day pasting gold spangles on one of her old costumes which Manuela was freshening up. He had known her for weeks without daring to send her anything but bouquets and candy.
Then one evening he saw her in a box of a theatre. She wore her hair arranged in the Spanish manner, with a veil and high comb, and a black satin gown which fitted like a glove, adorned with a silver girdle. The whole audience was interested in the beautiful Spaniard. In the second act, Prince B---- appeared in her box. The people whispered, laughed. Felix was half dead with jealousy.
The next day there was a violent altercation between the Prince and him, at which the former good-naturedly declared that he would a hundred times rather break with Juanita than with Felix; he did not care anything about her, she bored him; he had only sent her to the theatre, dressed beautifully, to mystify the Viennese, etc.
Then Felix hired a charming entresol in K---- Street, and had it furnished in three days by the first upholsterer in Vienna. Juanita made no trouble about occupying it. She laughed and clapped her hands with joy over the magnificent furniture, gave up her loose wrappers, wore the clothes which Felix had made for her, and in honor of the beautiful apartment, played the great lady.
Surprise and thankfulness, or perhaps a suddenly awakened covetousness for a time killed in her every other feeling. Felix revelled in a few weeks of mad happiness.
To-day, however, his hair stood on end when he thought of this happiness.
Juanita gave herself up to mad extravagance. Her ideal of elegance and style was Mlle. X----, thepremière danseuseof the opera house. Juanita must have duplicates of everything: the toilets, the Newfoundland and the equipages. Finally she insisted upon dancing at the same theatre as the X----, and Felix succeeded in securing a performance for her.
And yet how badly she treated him in spite of everything. Often he rattled his frail chains, but lacked the strength to break them. He made scenes for Juanita almost every day--it was owing to his jealousy; he left her and swore he would never come again. For an entire week he remained away from her, but in what a condition of excitement, fever, and longing! He ate nothing, he slept no longer, he ran into passers-by in the street because he saw no one; the whole world was a dark chaos to him--the only spot of light was Juanita.
With bowed head, a bitter smile on his lips, the full consciousness of his degradation expressed by bearing and glance, he then dragged himself back to Juanita.
She did with him what she wished. All Vienna spoke about him and her; from the lips of young matrons mysterious phrases floated about the ears of innocent young girls--the pretty Countess L---- cried her blue eyes out.
And the summer passed. September arrived. The Spaniard had become more submissive--sometimes she was almost tender. The great moment of her début in the opera house approached, and made her timid. One more wish she expressed, a last one. Never before had she taken trouble to inform Felix of one of her expensive wishes with so many caressing digressions. With both arms round his neck, her lips close to his ear, she informed him that she would not appear at the opera house without a pair of diamond screws such as Mlle. X---- always wore in her ears when she danced.
When he begged her only to wait a very little while, she fell back into her old phlegmatic, yes, apathetic manner, pouting angrily.
He went to a jeweller whom he knew, of whom he had already purchased different ornaments for Juanita, but the man did not seem inclined to extend Felix's credit further. Too prudent to bluntly refuse such a distinguished customer he pretended that he had no stones of the size which the Baron required.
He could perhaps obtain them from a business friend "for cash."
Felix left the shop angrily, and now sought his old acquaintance, Ephraim Staub. But the latter shrugged his shoulders, said that he had already done a great deal for the Baron for the sake of his respectful devotion to him; he relied upon his honor, but still the notes of a minor were not legal, and all men were mortal, and if anything should happen to the young Baron who would answer to him, Ephraim Staub, that the young gentleman's papa would not throw him together with his notes, which in the eyes of the law were not legal, out of the door?
Felix chewed the knob of his riding-whip angrily. Then carefully feeling his way, the usurer ventured an infamous proposition.
"Certainly a note with your father's acceptance--that would be safe--the old gentleman would certainly redeem that--one could always apply the thumbscrews to one's papa." Ephraim could assure the Baron that young people of the best families--he must, alas, conceal the names--had given him this kind of guarantee.
For a long time the true signification of this speech was wholly dark to Felix, but at length he understood, then he did not even take the trouble to fall into a rage, only threw back his head arrogantly and raised his riding-whip to the usurer as one strikes a cur who has ventured too near.
How did it happen that three days later he returned to Ephraim Staub and made out the note in the shameful manner which the latter had desired of him? Yes; how did it happen? Felix no longer knows. If he knew, he could perhaps understand his crime to-day, but he does not understand it.
His memory is a blank concerning the three days in which he had slowly sunk to forgery; there is a dark spot, a chasm in his recollection; he can only take it up again in the moment when, exhausted as if after weeks of fever, bathed in cold sweat, and groping along the walls, he crept from Ephraim's shop to the jeweller's; how suddenly he was frightened at the gargoyle on the cornice of a house, frightened because the head laughed.
From this moment he was not happy for a second, not even with Juanita. Strangely enough, his passion for her now was completely in the background; it fled.
It seemed to him that a monster sat upon his back and buried two iron claws in his shoulders, and blew in his ears with his hot, terrible breath.
The evening on which Juanita was to show her splendid beauty and her empirical dancing to the audience of the opera house arrived.
A warm, September evening. There had been a hard shower; there was an odor of wet stone and marble as Felix went to the theatre. By turns he shook with cold and grew feverish, he suffered with a severe cold. The theatre was still only sparsely filled. When he took his seat in one of the front rows he noticed that people pointed him out to each other and whispered his name. He was a celebrity--Juanita's lover!
And all the soft voices pierced his ears, and yet no one could know that.
The ballet had been introduced into an opera, he could not have said into which one; he heard nothing, he saw nothing which took place upon the stage.
The triumphal fanfare of the madriléna roused him from his brooding.
How beautiful she was!
A cloud of black lace and satin floated about her. On her breast was a bunch of white roses, in her ears sparkled two great drops like frozen tears.
Felix saw nothing of the whole apparition but these great sparkling drops. He would have liked to scream out, "Hold her fast, she wears my honor in her ears!"
Poor Felix; he was delirious. The triumph which Juanita had experienced at the Orpheum was nothing to her present one at the opera house. A foreign prince, who chanced to be in the house, clapped his hands in approval; the X---- saw it in her box, and grew green with envy.
Then Juanita threw her last kiss and vanished. The opera proceeded. Felix sat in his place as if petrified.
At last, at the close of the act, he rose to go behind the scenes. That uneasy hum, which in the world follows a triumph or a fiasco, prevailed there. Juanita was nowhere to be seen. He knocked at her dressing-room door, her maid alone answered him. Juanita was gone, had just driven away. "His Highness Prince Arthur"--the girl was a born Viennese--"had arranged a supper in all haste in honor of the Senorita, and--she thought the Baron knew of it----"
Felix heard nothing more; in mad haste he rushed down the narrow stairs to the stage entrance, and out across the open square before the theatre. He saw a closed carriage turn a corner. Felix did not know whom the carriage contained--probably a perfect stranger--and still he rushed after it--rushed after it like an insane man for a long distance. The earth trembled beneath him; with a hoarse, breathless gasp, he sank to the ground.
When he was picked up, he was unconscious. For weeks he lay senseless, with a severe nervous fever. His father came to Vienna to care for him. After about eight weeks the physicians declared that for the present there was no danger--he could be transported to Traunberg, as was the urgent desire of his father.
At that time Felix was still so weak that he had to be carried; he slept almost continuously, spoke indistinctly, and had forgotten the immediate past.
Ephraim Staub hated Felix because of the manner in which, without removing his cap, with one finger on the visor, he would enter Ephraim's house, yawning, and say, "You, I want money!" and because of the manner in which he carelessly crumpled the bank-notes--which Ephraim never handled except reverently--and thrust them in his pockets, and because of the cut of the whip with which Felix had answered his perfidious proposition the first time.
He discounted the note. The old Baron's lawyer learned that a note with his name upon it was in circulation, and inquired by letter whether the Baron wished it redeemed for family considerations.
The Baron knew nothing of Juanita. Naturally, Felix had never written him of his relations with her, and a stranger would never have ventured to inform the violent old Lanzberg of anything discreditable to his son. Felix had of late asked his father for no great sums of money, and the father knew him to be always scrupulously honorable.
How could he look upon the scarcely veiled insinuation of the advocate as other than an insult? Enraged at the suspicion cast upon his son, he did not even take the trouble to think the matter over, but wrote at once, in his first indignation, a brusque letter to his advocate, in which he declared that he knew nothing of the matter--it could take its course. It did not even occur to him to excite the invalid Felix with this horrid story--he told him nothing of it.
Slowly Felix recovered his health, but his happy temper did not return, he remained always gloomy and monosyllabic--not rude but deeply sad. His father often gazed anxiously into his eyes, which then every time looked away from him, and he stroked his cheeks compassionately, which then always flushed beneath his touch. And once he took the convalescent's thin hand in his, and said, "Does anything worry you, my poor boy? It is surely some heart trouble which often comes to one of your age," and as Felix, who at the beginning of this speech had paled, now was silent, flushing more and more deeply, the Baron added, clapping him good-naturedly on the shoulder, "You need not worry about your secret. I will ask you no more about it if it annoys you; I only thought it might relieve you to unburden your heart."
Felix buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears. To this day he can hear in his ears the caressing consolation of his father, the soft, monotonous voice with which he murmured again and again, "Do not excite yourself, child; poor fellow, poor fellow!"
That Felix's melancholy could have anything in connection with the lawyer's communication, did not occur to the Baron.
The next day Felix confessed to his father. It was after breakfast; they sat alone, opposite each other, at a little round table.
For a moment the old man stared before him with fixed, dull gaze; then rising helplessly and slowly from his chair, stretching out his trembling hands, he fell upon his face, senseless.
What cut Felix most bitterly, most deeply to his heart was, that when the Baron recovered from his swoon he had not a word of reproof for his son--not a word. Oh, if he had raged, had cursed and execrated him, all this Felix could have borne more easily than the sight of the terrible, helpless sadness with which from time to time the Baron struck his hands together and murmured: "I was indiscreet; oh, furious old fool, I was indiscreet, indiscreet!"
The meaning of these words only later became clear to Felix.
The Baron telegraphed to the lawyer--he went to Vienna the same day.
It was too late!
All the steps which were taken to spare Felix the publication of his fault and the degrading punishment, were in vain.
The affair occurred in an unfavorable epoch for him, as the courts felt obliged shortly after anéclatto be doubly severe, as the consideration which had recently been shown in a similar case for a noble name had called forth the justest indignation from the liberal press.
Felix was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.
His father begged an audience of His Majesty. All that he attained was that the sentence should be diminished to one year.
An example must be made.
And the farewell. The last, long, trembling embrace of his father, the moment when the guards who were to conduct the convict away busied themselves with their sabres and compassionately withdrew while the father whispered imploringly to his son, "Promise me that you will do no harm to yourself!"
And the time in the prison. The fearful despair of the first weeks, when he longed for death, and the promise which he had given his father continually weighed upon and tormented him like a fetter; the brooding stupor into which this despair changed, and which in its turn gave place to a gradual reviving and accustoming himself to his circumstances. He remembered very well the day when he began to look around at his companions, began anxiously to seek manifestations of their good qualities; to search among them for young people of blameless lives who had sinned in a moment of madness. What did he find? A few convicts who by alternating imprisonment and crime had gradually become dull and stupid, others who had wholly degenerated to rough, terrible, malicious animals; besides these, two or three sons of good family, who confessed their sins with brutal cynicism, scornfully derided their relatives and procured through the jailer wine, cards and evil romances. The sight of these people caused Felix boundless misery. How he loathed them; how they astonished him; the importance which trifles had for them, and that they had the heart to rail at the poor food!
The doubt came to him whether the idea which he had of himself was not a mere illusion. He dissected his most secret impulses, criticised all his instincts--in short, tormented himself into a pitiable condition. The remnant of self-respect which he had taken into the prison shrunk away to nothing.
All who had anything to do with him showed him the warmest sympathy. He was so quiet, so obliging; he never asked for anything except more work. The degraded officers were at that time employed in the office work. Felix fulfilled the tasks allotted him with the most painful punctiliousness. At the prison he accustomed himself to that correct regular handwriting which differed so greatly from the careless writing of his gay youth.
The old baron had begged that some consideration might be shown Felix on account of his weakened health. They were perfectly willing to do so, but Felix would hear nothing of this. The money which his father sent him to procure little comforts, he gave to assistants.
At last the year was over.
Felix had received a letter from his father, in which the latter, too considerate to personally accompany his son from the prison, told him that he would meet him at this or that station, to take a long trip with him. But Felix could not resolve to meet his father immediately after this degrading imprisonment.
It was in the year 1866. War was expected. Felix enlisted in a regiment as a private soldier. He performed his duties with fanatic zeal. The soldiers, who knew nothing of his sad story, looked upon his serving in their ranks as the "whim of a great gentleman," such as is not unusual in excited times, and met him with defiant opposition. But he took such sincere trouble to win their liking, so willingly shared their whole life, that they soon became devoted to him. Their unfeigned liking was more pleasant to him than the sentimental humanity which he met with later in life. Often one of his present comrades pushed him away from some work which he considered unworthy of Felix, and murmured with good-natured embarrassment, "That you are not used to, sir." The officers, who at first had been very ill at ease with him, gradually understood how painful it was to him if any difference was made between him and his comrades, and gave up attempting to make an exception of him.
He never complained, ate the coarsest food without changing his expression in the slightest, conscientiously polished the buttons of his uniform, and always chose the worst place to bivouac.
The first cannon was fired.
Felix fought at Trautenau; fought without enthusiasm, without melodramatic heroism; he fought with the sober, unbounded bravery of a man who does not need the hurrahs to be spurred on by, whose life is wholly indifferent to him, and who hopes and wishes for no other reward for his self-sacrificing performance of his duty than--death.
The leaden rain of the Prussian vanguard--it was wholly unknown to the Austrians who did not fight in Schlesing--had a soothing effect upon his nerves. The breathless excitement of battle did him good. What pained him was the moment before the conflict, when old veterans passed each other their field-flasks, and expressed indifferent opinions about the weather; and the young soldiers, scarcely grown recruits, with shining eyes and pale cheeks, cried "Hurrah!" and inflated their chests, while the guns shook in their hands. What pained him was the moment after the battle, when the last smoke of powder, and a dull echo of the noise of battle filled the air, and the soldiers, confused and stunned, met in camp, and one or another, rousing from the stupor which followed the fearful excitement of battle, asked fearfully, "Where is F----? where is M----?" and then with a shudder remembered that he, himself, had seen F---- and M---- fall. What pained him was, when in the night the wounded cried and groaned, until their comrades' compassion changed to impatience, and they complained over the noise which prevented them from sleeping.
Then came the third of July, the day of Sadowa.
It was damp, cold weather, no sun in the heavens. On the earth trodden-down grain, soiled with dirt and blood; a confusion of blue and white soldiers, partly arranged in compact, geometrically exact figures, partly scattered in sheltered positions, partly crouching behind earthworks, so far separated that Prussians and Austrians mostly saw each other as points or masses. Hostile, without hostility, they stood opposite each other; perhaps not one among the thousands upon thousands here and yonder hated the other, and yet each one was ready to do his utmost to kill the unknown enemy.
Fog mixed with the powder-smoke. There was a wild confusion of screams, groans, rolling of wheels, rattling of sabres, and stamping of horses. In the distance chaos seemed to prevail; at the spot where Felix was stationed a kind of monotony, a kind of order ruled.
The ranks close over the fallen. "Fire!" commands the officer. There is a click of the gun hammers, the flames shine redly on the gun-barrels--sch--sch whistle the hostile balls around Felix; crashing, ear-splitting, like sharp hail, answer the riflemen.
Felix was at Swiepwald, with the regiment of riflemen of which the Austrians only speak with tears in their eyes, the Prussians with hands on their caps!
For a while the losses were slight. All went well. Then came a moment when the riflemen received the hostile balls indifferently. Many of them were weary and found time to say so, still more were hungry--few Austrian soldiers received anything to eat on that memorable day, the day of Sadowa. Felix had given his last rations to a young recruit who, as he thought, needed nourishment more than he; but Felix had overestimated his strength, an unusual faintness suddenly overcame him, he begged his neighbor for his flask, and crash!--a shell--and the neighbor lay on the ground with shattered feet.
From this moment the losses are immense. Man after man falls. Little brownish-red streams of blood trickle through the ruts of the ground, the pine-trees become bare, their needles fall unpleasantly, prickingly, upon the faces of the riflemen. With the whistling of the musket-balls mingles the groaning shots of the artillery like the deafening, reechoing thunder in a mountainous country. The atmosphere is unbearably impregnated with the peculiar odor of battle. With the smell of powder and heated iron mingles the odor of perspiration of an excited mass of men, and the repulsive, terrible, salt smell of their blood.
The fog becomes more and more thick. The riflemen see nothing near them but dead comrades, and before, a white wall behind which death lurks. They no longer know what is taking place at the other end of the field, do not know that the Prussian Crown Prince has arrived; but all feel that they are fighting for a lost cause, and that their resistance is nothing more than a heroic demonstration.
Always in the front rank, Felix fights on. Twice have the men at his right and left fallen, but all the balls whistle past him--from second to second he expects death, but it comes not.
There are not thirty men left of his battalion; orderlies fly to and fro, the officers are hoarse, then suddenly the cry, "Retreat!"
Retreat!
Felix stands as if rooted to the ground--Retreat! What, shall he flee? No! But captivity, in which, bound as he is by his promise, he would not have the right to take his life! And he retreats with the others, who now join the great mass. Their pace becomes more and more irregular and hurried.
The evening is dark, the enemy behind them, the few riflemen are among the last. A standard-bearer sinks down, wounded in the knee by a stray shot. No one troubles himself about him or the flag.
What is the flag? Nothing but a soiled, torn rag. Nothing but--the symbol of the regiment's honor.
Honor! The word has a mysterious, alluring sound for Felix, somewhat as the word water has for one perishing in the desert.
Honor! honor! He takes the flag from the standard-bearer's hand, who pleads piteously that he may at least be pushed into a ditch and not trodden upon like a worm. Felix performs this service for him, and remains far behind his comrades. At length he raises the flag and is about to proceed with it.
But, deathly wearied as he is, he can scarcely carry it, so he tears the flag from the pole, and breaking this over his knee he wishes to bury both pieces in the slime of the ditch, but before he has accomplished this a little band of Prussian cavalry approaches. He lays his hand on his gun, but if he defends himself, defends himself so that they must kill him, the flag is forfeited. He then stretches himself in the mire of the road, flat on his face over the flag, as to-day he has seen many of his comrades, shot through the heart.
The horses trot past him; one of them starts back from him, this rider looks before him, sees what he takes for a corpse and passes on.
The horse, who takes the leap required of him with the timidity which every human body inspires in his species, strikes Felix with his hoof. When the riders are out of sight, and all is still, Felix rises, a stinging pain in his left arm. At first he thought the arm was broken, but no, only a severe contusion causes the pain. He thrusts his hand into his coat, wraps the flag around it, and creeps wearily forward.
In his ears a single word rings: "Honor!"
He totters to the Elbe, which separates him from his comrades; there is no longer a bridge there; he does not trust his strength to swim across. Ah! and even if he does drown in the bottom of the river, the Prussians cannot find the flag, and he cares nothing for his life. He flings himself into the stream, the waves plash around his ears: "Honor!" The cold water strengthens him, and for the moment prevents the pain in his arm. He reaches the opposite shore, he himself never knew how.
He staggers on in his clothes, made heavy by the water. His mind is not clear, only grasps the idea that he must go on. He stumbles along--slowly--slowly; often he sinks down and lies still for a while, then he suddenly springs up again, feels for the flag and totters on. He does not know where he is, the Austrian camp lies before him--he does not see it--then something red shines through the gray morning light. Felix gathers up his strength; breathless, gasping, he drags himself up to what he soon recognizes as an Austrian Uhlan picket.
He reaches the picket, he can no longer speak, hands the flag to an officer, and falls to the ground.
The Uhlans--there were two or three officers among them--crowd around him. When they see his lamentable condition they speak with pride of the fidelity to his flag of this common soldier, and they say it aloud, and Felix hears it and it does him good; it seems to him that the blot upon his honor is washed away.
Then one of the officers bends over him, and suddenly starting, he cries to the others, "That is certainly Lanzberg!"
"What do you say? 'The certain Lanzberg?'" ask they, hastily. They thought Felix unconscious, but he was not.
The word, thoughtlessly spoken and not unkindly meant, goes to his heart. From that moment he knew that there was no regeneration for his honor.
He might level mountains and dam rivers, but the world in its astonishment, in its admiration, would yet find no other name for him than "the certain Lanzberg!"
He opened his large, mournful eyes. The officers were ill at ease, then they all stretched out their hands to him and cried, "We admire you; we envy you!"
But he only turned his head away from them with a groan.
His incomparable actions during the campaign had softened the harshest of his social judges toward him. The emperor, by a proclamation, had restored to him his forfeited social rights. His father awaited him longingly, and begged him by letters to telegraph his arrival in Traunberg, so that he could personally meet him at the railway station.
But Felix dreaded the idea of being received by his father, and unannounced, in civilian clothes, he one day alighted in T----, the nearest station to Traunberg, from a third-class compartment, which he had taken so as to meet none of his acquaintances. He went on foot to the castle. He felt a kind of shyness of every tree, every stone, which formerly returning home after long absence, he had greeted joyously. The quick trot of horses' hoofs smote his ear; looking up he saw Elsa coming galloping along the park driveway toward him, at the side of his old playmate, Sempaly. Anxiously he drew back among the trees, and the two rushed past, and thought no more of the man in the plain gray coat. Silently he crept up to the castle and to his father's room. No one met him. Softly he opened the door. A thin, bowed, gray-haired man sat reading in an arm-chair. Felix took a few hesitating steps forward, he trembled throughout his entire frame. "Papa!" he stammered. One moment more and the father had clasped him in his arms. Then the old man pushed him back from him to see him more plainly. "My hero!" he cried. Felix started nervously and gazed pleadingly at his father. "You have grown gray, papa," he cried, as if startled.
"People grow old, my boy," replied the Baron, hastily smoothing his whitened hair.
"Old at forty-nine?" murmured Felix.
A quarter of an hour later, as Felix sat beside his father, answering his questions, Elsa entered. She had grown tall and slender. But that was not the only change which Felix perceived in her: she had lost her light, springing girlish step, her merry smile. A reserved sadness had drawn harsh lines about her mouth, and a deep shade darkened her eyes.
At her entrance he had risen awkwardly, and she, not seeing him distinctly, and taking him for some bailiff discussing business with her father, bowed formally.
Her father glanced impatiently at her, then he cried, in irritation and anger, "It is Felix; do you not recognize him?"
Elsa grew pale with excitement. "God greet you," said she, going quickly up to him.
His trembling lips barely touched her forehead.
Now came a hard, hard time for Felix, made hardest of all by the touching kindness of his father, who overwhelmed him with tender attentions, had forgotten none of Felix's former fancies--surprised him now with a splendid horse, now with a gun of a new, improved kind, or a pointer dog with fabulous traits--in short, anticipated every wish which Felix had formerly expressed. But Felix no longer wished for anything but to hide himself, and this his father would not hear of.
He everywhere pushed his son forward; with the servants and overseer it was always, "I am growing old, go to the young master."
And poor Felix, humiliated by the striking submission of the people, confused and without an idea or opinion of his own, gave orders in a shy, weak voice as modestly and reservedly as he could.
However urgently he begged his father to leave him in the protecting shade of the background, the old man could not be induced to consent. He pressed the keys of his safe upon Felix, gave him free disposal of the largest sums of money. Painfully distrustful of all the rest of humanity, especially of his servants, since his misfortune, the Baron almost crushed his son by this ostentatious, conspicuous confidence.
One day he desired Felix to pay a visit with him in the neighborhood. But this Felix opposed. Elsa supported his opposition. The old Baron took that amiss in her. At that time Elsa was scarcely sixteen years old. She suffered with the Lanzberg arrogance, as Felix had suffered from it; she was hurt to the heart by Felix's deed. And yet she loved her brother, and did not wish to let him feel how heavily his disgrace weighed upon her. But she could find no natural tone in intercourse with him.
He had been a kind of idol for her, who good-naturedly descended from his pedestal to tease and caress his little sister. He had called her Liesel and Mietzel, pulled her ear or kissed her hand, mystified her with the strangest tales, gave her costly presents; then again, when his friends or important pleasures came between them, for days wholly ignored her insignificant existence.
But this time the idol had not descended from his pedestal; he had fallen down, and had become a broken man. His former teasing courtesy had changed into the shyest politeness. He never pulled her ears, and never kissed her hand, never called her Liesel or Mietzel--his manners had wholly lost their playful aplomb. He was now helpless and awkward, sat at table like a poor sinner, ate little, never spoke a word, and, rendered clumsy by embarrassment, soiled the table-cloth. He was so boundlessly obliging and considerate that it made Elsa embarrassed. He broke a refractory horse for her with the greatest patience, took care of all her favorite flowers, accompanied her on her visits to the poor, and never forgot to take with him a warm wrap for her.
He had really become a much better and lovable man than before, but the world had no use for this goodness and lovability. Even Elsa did not know how to value it. She was always constrained in intercourse with him, because she was always thinking of being kind to him. The old Baron gave her endless lectures concerning her behavior. Unweariedly attentive and tender to Felix, toward his other fellow men he was almost unbearably capricious, irritable and unjust, especially to Elsa.
Once he overwhelmed her for so long with imprudent reproaches for her heartlessness and lack of tact, that at last she cried out defiantly and refractorily, "Why was Felix so?"
Then her father struck her for the first and last time, and cried, "God punish you for your hard heart!"
When the Baron had left her, and she began to almost hate Felix, angry at the injustice done her, he emerged from a dark corner, from which he had been forced to witness the scene, softly went up to her, and said, with his gentle sad smile, stretching out his hand hesitatingly to her, "Forgive him--he has not his head; he does not know any longer what he does; only think how he must feel."
Then she threw herself with passionate violence into his arms. "He was right a hundred times," cried she, "only not in thinking that I do not love you, for I do love you, but I did not know how to show it to you."
From that day the relation between brother and sister was touchingly tender. Elsa was almost as anticipating and unendingly tender in her attentions to Felix as her father himself.
The first week after Felix's arrival, Sempaly discreetly remained away from Traunberg. He also had taken part in the campaign, but a very trifling part, and described the battle of Sadowa with charming flippancy, while he added, "Pity that it turned out so badly." For the first week, then, he remained away from Traunberg. But then he appeared there again, and, in fact, with the good-natured intention of paying Felix a special visit. But scarcely had the latter heard the voice of his former comrade, when with dog and gun he crept softly out of the castle.
From then Sempaly came no more to Traunberg. Felix knew that formerly he had come two or three times a week, and asked Elsa about it. "You have surely begged him to come no longer, poor Elsa," said he, gazing deep into her eyes.
Her embarrassment answered him.
He saw that for his sake Elsa must give up all society, and also noticed that she had caught his morbid shyness. Her future was at stake. Then, carefully concealing his reasons, he begged leave of his father to go to South America. With a heavy heart, and after much opposition, the old man let him go.
Felix did not return until he received the news of Elsa's marriage. After the death of his father he left Europe a second time, and had really only returned home for a visit, when he met Linda.