IX.
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 the parvenue, 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 a table a'hôte, which Linda, even if the tête-à-tête meals 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 last soirée of 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 his mésalliance caused 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 his protégés, 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 unpopular débutante of 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 cold salon which 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 of écarté. 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 a parvenu, 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, décolleté cigarette beauties, humorous or sentimental genre pictures 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 French bonne laid 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?"