CHAPTER VIII.
Yes, of a truth, Fritz had grown up with chimeras; they had been his playmates, born and bred and domesticated in Schneeburg.
To them it was due that Fritz had married a second-rate actress; that Fritz, under all the most distressing circumstances, had still suffered from homesickness, and had taken refuge 'at home;' that he had always possessed a character not merely respectable, but thoroughly noble; never forfeiting the esteem of his equals although stricken from their visiting lists; and that, when in fulness of time he should make ready for the final journey, he might boldly face these very chimeras and say: "Often have I sinned against myself, and my own best happiness, but never, never against you; come therefore and help me to die."
His father was a gentleman, a philosopher, a freethinker,--a visionary, if you will. He raved about the new gospel of 1789, as one raves about an exotic flower, because of its unparalleled oddity, and from the conviction that it never can endure our climate. He had all kinds of bourgeois intimates and the "Contrat social" was his favourite book. But when his son, not from blind passion, but to satisfy conscientious scruples, married an actress, he was beside himself. When Fritz, not without a hint as to the circumstances that had led him to the fatal step, announced his marriage, his letter was sent by the old Count to his lawyer to answer. He himself refused any further intercourse with his son.
Had Fritz's mother been living, all might perhaps have been different. His wife would have been personally more distasteful to her than to his father, the fact of the connection would have seemed to her more miserable than to the old Count; but compassion for her child would have triumphed finally over every other consideration, her heart might have bled, but she would have taken home the distasteful daughter-in-law, and have tried to educate her for her position. At all events she would have known that when a man has trifled away 'the world,' his own home is his true place of refuge.
To all this the old Count gave never a thought, although he was kind-hearted, and Fritz had always been avowedly his favourite. He saw nothing but the misery and degradation of it all; his heart was benumbed by anger. All that was bestowed upon Fritz when he married, was his father's curse, the property which he inherited from his mother, and his share of what had belonged to an elder brother who had died. Although he had from the outset belonged among the "forçats du mariage," he did not for some time feel the burden of his chain and of the enforced companionship. Of an intensely sanguine temperament he had a positive genius for looking on the bright side of life. What annoyed him most at first was being obliged, on account of his marriage, to quit the service. He was terribly bored by having to spend the entire day without his comrades or his horses. His yearly income at this time amounted to the modest sum of six thousand gulden. After he had made out a list of necessary expenses,--that is, added up certain figures upon a visiting card with a gold pencil, he came to the conclusion, with a shrug, that a married man could not possibly live upon six thousand gulden a year, and that therefore, under the circumstances, he might allow himself the privilege of contracting debts.
Of course he would have thought it niggardly to save up anything while in the army; yet he had never been extravagant, he had always at the end of the month had something left over with which to help out a comrade.
He hoped to be able to curtail his household expenses; but there were so many things that no respectable man 'could go without,' and still more, which his wife could not deny herself.--
When Fritz was quite a little boy, his father had often admonished him as to the serious nature of life, and had impressed him as a younger son with the necessity of restricting his needs as much as possible, and even of earning his own living. His narrow circumstances in the future, had occupied the boy's mind, and one day he opened his heart to his sister's governess, at that time his confidante. He said to her, "Madame! Papa yesterday told of a contractor who employed people for fifty kreutzers a day.--Is that fair?"
"Certainly, mon bijou. Why do you ask?"
The boy looked very important, and began to reckon on his small fingers, "Fifty kreutzers a day--hm--that makes five gulden for ten persons--if I marry, and my wife keeps a maid, and I a man--and if we have six children beside--five gulden a day--I can afford that at least."
At twenty-six years of age Fritz's ideas with regard to economy were not much more practical. A household with neither man-servant nor maid-servant did not come within his range of possibilities.
He spent a couple of weeks with his young wife at the Hotel Munsch; a hostelry now out of fashion, but having for generations enjoyed the patronage of the Malzin family, and after that he hired a pretty suite of second-story rooms in a retired street, and arranged it according to his taste, and as he honestly believed, as moderately as possible. He had none of the snobbishness of an impoverished parvenu, who is ashamed of being obliged suddenly to retrench, and hides his economies as a crime. On the contrary, he exulted boyishly when he had succeeded in procuring at a moderate price some pretty piece of furniture, an old oriental rug, or a carved chest, nor did he ever hesitate to lend a hand himself; he hammered and tacked with his slender fingers, as if he had been bred to such work all his life.
And it must be admitted that, with the exception of the drawing-room, which his wife in spite of his remonstrances persisted in disfiguring with green damask hangings, purchased at an auction with her savings, his little home was a masterpiece of tasteful comfort. His former comrades liked to drop in often for a game of cards with him. There was no high play, and the drinking was very moderate, but the supper, the style of the company, and the company itself, were always alike exquisite.
The only disturbing element at these unostentatious gatherings was the mistress of the household, who sat opposite her husband at supper, affected and peevish in manner, and really bored by the high-bred and respectful courtesy with which she was treated.
At first Fritz had indulged in ideal schemes of educating his wife, but they all came to grief. There was no trace in the wife of the docile devotion of the betrothed. A woman whose whole heart is her husband's never feels humiliated by his superiority. Her whole being aspires to him, her perceptions become all the more acute, and in a very short while she learns to divine, to avoid, whatever may offend him.
This was, however, by no means the case with Charlotte. Her love for Fritz was of a very humdrum kind, and comprehension of him she had none. She did not acknowledge his superiority. All his good-humoured little preachments upon manners, she listened to with stubborn irritability. She was characterized to an extreme degree by the obdurate narrow-mindedness which sneers conceitedly at everything unlike itself, and absolutely refuses to learn. Fine clothes and pedantic affectations awed her, but she had no appreciation for the simple good-breeding of a man whose manners are the natural outgrowth of the habits of his class. Genuine good-breeding is like a mother-tongue which is spoken from childhood unconsciously as to its source, and correctly, without a thought of conjugations and declensions.
This she neither knew nor understood; she was far better pleased with the artificial manners which are acquired when one is grown up, like a foreign tongue from the grammar, and which are continually seasoned with pretentious quotations, from modern dictionaries of etiquette. The difference between Count Fritz and a smugly-dressed bagman, lay in her eyes solely in the title.
Before long Fritz grew tired of trying to educate her, and confined himself merely to the most necessary admonitions.
Time passed--and there was a cradle hung with green silk in the Countess's room, and within it lay a boy of rare beauty. Charlotte petted and caressed her child with the instinct of tenderness shown by the lower animals towards their young, an instinct which fades out gradually, as soon as the offspring can forego its mother's physical care. Fritz rejoiced over the little fellow and had him christened Siegfried after the old Count his father, to whom he announced the birth of his grandson, hoping that it might help to bring about a reconciliation with the angry parent.
But the Count took no notice of the announcement.
At first Fritz's paternal sentiments were by no means enthusiastic, and if at times he caressed the little man, it was more out of kindness towards the mother than out of real interest in the child.
On one occasion, however, he happened to enter the nursery just before going out, his hat on his head. The little one was in his bath, an expression of absolute physical comfort in his half-closed eyes, and on his plump little body, every dimple of which could be seen distinctly beneath the clear water.
Fritz stopped, and playfully sprinkled a few drops of water upon the pretty baby-face. The child opened wide his eyes, and when his father repeated the play, the little one chuckled so merrily that it sounded like the cooing of doves, while throwing back his head and clinching his rosy fists upon his breast.
A few days afterward Fritz went again to the nursery; this time the boy was just out of his bath and was being dried in the nurse's lap. He recognised his father and stretched out his plump arms to him. Fritz could not help tickling him a little, touching his dimples with a forefinger, and catching hold of the wee hands; a strange sensation crept over him at the touch of the pure warm baby-flesh.
From that time he went into the nursery every day, if only for a moment. The child grew more and more lovely. His little pearly teeth appeared, and soft, golden hair hung over his forehead. He soon began in his short frocks to creep on all-fours over the carpet, and even to rise to his feet, holding by some article of furniture; and once, as Fritz was watching him with a languid smile, the boy suddenly left the chair against which he was leaning, and proudly and laboriously putting one foot before the other, advanced four steps towards his father, upon whose knee he was placed triumphantly quite out of breath with the mighty effort.
When a little girl appeared as a claimant for the green-draped cradle, a pretty diminutive bedstead was placed in Fritz Malzin's room.
What good comrades they were, Papa, and Siegi! Fritz talked to the little fellow of all sorts of things that he never mentioned to any one else, of his loved ones, of his home! And Siegi would look at him out of his large eyes, as earnestly as if he understood every word. Long before he could put words together, the boy learned to say "grandpapa," and when his father, pointing to the photograph of an old castle, that hung framed in the smoking-room, asked "Siegi, what is that?" the little fellow would reply "Neeburg."
The child was his father's friend, his companion, and was loved with an idolatry such as only those fathers can know who are estranged from their wives, and have no other interest in life.
Of course the child had a French bonne, but her post was almost a sinecure. Fritz scarcely lost sight of the child for a moment.
Shortly after his removal to Wiplinger street he had become convinced by certain calculations, that, in view of the high price demanded by hack-drivers, it was a great economy to keep horses.
The result of these calculations was attained after the fashion of the clever man who demonstrated clearly that it is far cheaper to live in a first-class Hotel than in one of the second class.
When Siegi was barely three years old, Fritz used to put him on the seat beside him in his dog-cart, and drive with him in the Prater. For greater security the child was tied fast to the back of the seat with a broad, silken scarf.
Count Malzin's dog-cart was soon one of the best-known turn-outs in the Prater; the picturesque, lovely child beside the handsome, distinguished man could not fail to attract notice. Siegi was always dressed in good taste, and his soft curls lay like gold upon his shoulders. From time to time his little face was turned up eagerly to his father with some childish question. Then Fritz would bend over him with a smile, and sometimes put his arm around him.
It was a positive delight to see them thus together. Many a lady who since Fritz's marriage had returned his bow but coldly, now nodded to him kindly as they gazed after the child.
Once on a lovely day in April, Fritz alighted from his dog-cart with his little son and took him to walk, as was customary in Vienna, in the Prater. He was surrounded in a few minutes by a group of ladies with whom he had formerly been acquainted. Siegi had a triumphant success, every one wanted a kiss or a pat from his little hand.
"Exquisite!" exclaimed one after another. "What a little angel! Malzin, you must bring the child to see us."
"Fritz, do bring him to see me to-morrow at five, my children take their dancing-lesson then. You will come, won't you? You know the way."
And Fritz, flattered, smiled and bowed.
Since his marriage he had not gone into society; but for his boy's sake he accepted these invitations; the little fellow must learn to associate with his equals. Fritz resolved that he himself should alone endure the consequences of his folly, his son should not suffer from it.
Although well-bred people of rank in their normal condition usually train their children to a conventional modesty of demeanour, Fritz, on the contrary, took pleasure in making his son almost haughty, he, whose own lack of all pretention had been a by-word!
When pride stands on the defensive, it always deteriorates somewhat.
In spite of the modest scale of his household expenses, Fritz found to his surprise that during the first year he had spent just double his income. "It is always so the first year," he consoled himself by thinking, but when the second year was no better but much worse, the matter began to annoy him.
At his card-parties, which were still kept up, although Charlotte but seldom appeared at them, (a relief usually purchased by Fritz with a box for her at the theatre,) one of the guests was a certain Baron Schneller, a good-natured, well-to-do fellow, who had no taste for earning money, and was in consequence rather in disgrace with his family, who showed great diligence in that direction. He squandered his income among antiquities and ballet-girls. His volunteer year he had served in Fritz's squadron.
In his embarrassment Fritz applied to Schneller, and asked whether he knew of any more profitable investment for money than Austrian government bonds? Whereupon the banker's indolent son replied that he himself always invested upon principle in mortgages, but if Fritz wanted to know, he would ask his brother, who was at the head of his father's banking-firm.
The next day he came, in his good-natured way, to see Fritz, bringing a list of 'safe stocks,' which were just then paying enormous dividends, and saying "My brother sends his regards, and begs you to consider him entirely at your service in any financial operation."
With characteristic carelessness, Fritz delivered over his property to the banker, and the banker protested that it was an honour to oblige the young gentleman.
After this Fritz felt free to spend three times as much as before. His property swelled and swelled without his comprehending the mysterious reasons for its increase. At last it began to assume the most unexpected dimensions. This lasted for some time.
One day the banker informed the young Count that he was a millionaire, and asked him at the same time if he did not wish to realize.
"Where is the use?" said Fritz, "there is no hurry,--er--I'll have a talk with you about it one of these days. I have no time just now."
He had promised the children to take them to the circus; of course he had no time for business.
He was dining with Schneller, when he suddenly heard a young government official, who did not belong exactly to financial circles, say. "A sorry prospect--the evening papers say that the Sternfeld-Lonsbergs are shaky."
Fritz was startled. Little as he troubled himself about business affairs, he knew that the greatest part of his property was invested in Sternfeld-Lonsbergs. He looked fixedly at his host, who, however, only shrugged his shoulders, and remarking, "merely an insignificant depression," scraped a piece of turbot from the half-denuded vertebrae of the fish which the servant was handing him.
Fritz continued to talk to his fair neighbour with the self-possession of a thoroughly well-bred man, while the Japanese dinner-service, with the cut glass, and flowers on the table danced wildly before his eyes.
After dinner, his eye-glass in his eye, and a pleasant smile on his lips, he took occasion to glance furtively at a paper, lying on a little table. His blood fairly ran cold; suddenly Baron Schneller stood beside him. "You are entirely wrong to be worried," he asserted, and Fritz laughed and shrugged his shoulders as if the affair in question were a mere bagatelle. But the next day he wrote a note to the banker begging him to dispose of his stock for him. The banker dissuaded him from selling, the market was unfavourable; for the present he insisted the only thing to do was to wait.
Fritz complied; shortly afterwards the banker advised him to take part in a complicated transaction which Fritz took no pains to understand, but which Schneller assured him positively would result in enormous profits.
It was simply a reckless piece of stock-gambling.
Fritz agreed to everything--what did he know about it? His financial affairs began to inconvenience him more and more. He wanted to be rich.
Just at this time he had to pay a couple of large bills, which had not been presented for three years. He thought of his father. Good Heavens! The old Count could not be angry still. But, after years of alienation he could not in a financial difficulty make up his mind to appeal to him without further preface.
"No, no, that will not do," he said to his small confidant, Siegi. "We must first see whether grandpapa cares for us, and if he does then we will make our confession; if not--vogue la galère."
He never guessed the terrible misery that menaced him. Poverty was a phantom of which he had heard, without believing in it--it was as incomprehensible to him as death to a perfectly healthy man.
And so Siegi's bonne had to dress the boy in his newest sailor suit, and his father took him to be photographed.
The picture was excellent. Fritz took a boyish delight in it, and showed it to all his acquaintances. He thought it impossible that the grandfather could resist that cherub face. He wrote the old Count a letter, every word of which came warm from his heart, telling him how he longed to see him, and then he guided Siegi's hand--the boy had just begun to write the alphabet large between pencilled lines--to write upon the back of the photograph: "Dear grandpapa, love me a little--I send you a kiss and I am your little grandson. Siegi."
He awaited an answer in feverish but almost unwavering hope. The fourth day brought a letter from Schneeburg. Fritz recognised his father's handwriting and hurriedly tore open the envelope. It contained nothing save Siegi's photograph, which the old Count had returned without a word.
Fritz clinched his fist and stamped his foot. Then he lifted his little son in his arms, kissing and caressing him as if to atone to the boy for the insult cast on him.
It was impossible to ask any favour of one who could act thus, even were he his father.
This was at the end of September, and shortly afterwards came ruin, utter inevitable ruin! Not modest poverty which privately plucks our sleeve and whispers, "retrench--economize!" no, but downright brutal poverty, that seizes us by the collar with a dirty hand and wrenching us out of the warm soft nest of our daily habits, casts us out into the cold barren street with "Starve! vagabond! freeze!"
The million had disappeared, and when the banker, Schneller, announced to Fritz his ruin, he added, "of course you cannot be forced to meet your obligations, Herr Count. The matter lies partly in your own hands."
Fritz stared at him! The worst of it all was that his property was not sufficient to cover his indebtedness!
A multitude of petty creditors suddenly flocked around, saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, upholsterers, whose bills mounted to thousands. Fritz was beside himself. Small tradesmen must not lose by him. He broke up his entire household, and disposed of everything, from the oriental rugs in his smoking-room, to Siegi's black velvet suit and Venetian lace collar.
But with all that he could do he could not pay every one. Some of the lesser creditors were coarse and pressing, but most of them only meekly twirled their caps about in their hands, murmuring, "We can wait, Herr Count; we rely entirely upon the Herr Count."
He lived through each day dully, almost apathetically. The dreariness and emptiness of his house made no impression upon him. When the time came for him to part with his horses--a member of the jeunesse dorée of Vienna bought them at a high price--he took Siegi and went down into the stable, where he fed the beautiful creatures with bread and sugar, and stroked their heads and patted their necks; and when he turned and left them neighing and snorting with delight--it seemed to him that a piece of his heart were being torn from out his breast!....
Every day his wife asked him when he was going to appeal to his father, but he made no reply. After the insult that the old Count had offered to his darling, nothing should ever induce him to make another appeal. Nothing? So he thought then. "My father must have heard of my unfortunate circumstances," he said to himself, "and if it does not occur to him to help me, there is nothing that I can do."
He determined to find a situation,--of course one befitting his name and station. If every ancient noble name to-day in Austria cannot lay claim, as in France in Louis the Fourteenth's time, to an office at court, or to a salary, there are at least a hundred kinds of sinecures that can afford the means of living suitably for their rank, to young scions of the nobility who have not sinned against the prejudices of their caste.
His fatal marriage aggravated the difficulties of Malzin's position. The horizon of his existence contracted and darkened more and more.
The dogged determination which, closing accounts with the past, resolutely clears away the débris of a ruined life from the path which is to lead to a new existence, Fritz did not possess. His was the passive endurance of pride, which calmly bows beneath the burden, and drags on with it to the end, simply because it scorns to complain or to appeal to compassion.
One feeling only was stronger within him than pride, and that was love for his children.
Were he alone concerned, he would rather have starved than prefer a second request after the first had been refused, but he could not bring himself to see his children slowly starve.
He applied to several individuals who had always been on terms of great intimacy with his family, but after some had refused to receive him, and others had ignored his request with a forced smile, he felt paralysed, and resigned himself for a while to melancholy, brooding inactivity. There must come a change sooner or later, he thought. In the meanwhile he lived upon--debt, and could not comprehend why professional usurers should need so much urging to induce them to lend him, the probable heir of Schneeburg, a paltry couple of hundred gulden.
Had he been more exactly informed of his father's circumstances, this would not have surprised him so much. But he had heard nothing of the old Count for years. A strange repugnance had prevented his speaking of him to strangers,--it would only expose his own unfortunate estrangement from his father to their indiscreet curiosity. Every day he had a secret hope, although he hardly admitted it to himself, that the old Count would take pity upon him, and suddenly appear providentially.
But his father did not appear, and thus it was that finally he, Fritz Malzin, with his wife and children occupied two dingy third-story rooms in Leopold street, rented from his mother-in-law, who kept a lodging-house for gentlemen.
Charlotte from morning until night bewailed her husband's unconscionable heedlessness, but in reality she was much happier than in Wipling street. To lounge about all the morning in a slatternly dishabille, to help prepare the breakfast for the lodgers, to gossip a little and flirt a little, and then in the evenings to array herself in the finery which she had contrived to smuggle into her present quarters, and to go to Ronacher's or some other beer-garden, where half a dozen second and third-rate coxcombs addressed her as 'Frau Countess,' and paid court to her,--such a life was bliss after the tedium of her former existence. She went out every evening, leaving Fritz at home with the children, revolving all kinds of improbable possibilities which might suddenly improve his condition, and devising schemes dependant upon lucky accidents that never happened.
Sometimes a little warm hand was thrust into his; and a soft voice whispered to him: "Papa, tell me a story!"
Then rousing himself from his sad reveries, he would try to make up some merry tale, but Siegi would shake his head, and nestling close to his father with his arms clinging about his neck and his head leaning against his father's cheek would beg, "Tell me about Schneeburg, Papa."
The winter with its long nights wore on in close rooms poisoned by coal-gas, and pervaded by the cramping sensation of wretched confinement. Spring came; Siegi had lost his rosy cheeks, and his merry laugh. Every afternoon towards sunset his father took him out to walk. The child coughed a little.
One warm day in April the clouds were hanging low, while ever and anon in the narrow street a swallow skimmed anxiously to and fro. Siegi was weary, and his little feet dragged one after the other, when suddenly he pulled his father's hand, joyously shouting: "Papa, papa--look--don't you see?--there is our Miesa!"
Fritz looked. It did not take an old 'cavalry man' an instant to recognize in an animal harnessed to a fiacre, one of his handsome horses of aforetime.
"Miesa! how are you, old girl?" he said caressingly.
The creature recognised him instantly, and whinnied her delight. Fritz patted her neck and lifted Siegi up that he might kiss the white star on the animal's forehead, as he used to do.
Then they resumed their walk. Without saying a word Fritz stroked his little son's cheek;--it was wet with tears. The poor little fellow was crying silently, for fear of grieving his father!
Fritz felt a strange, choking sensation. He took the boy to a confectioner's, but the child could eat nothing.
That night Siegi was taken ill. The physician pronounced it inflammation of the lungs. Lying in his father's arms for three days and nights, the boy suffered fearfully, and then the crisis was over. At the end of three weeks the little fellow could leave his bed, but he was paler and weaker than ever.
During Siegi's illness Fritz borrowed a hundred gulden from a former friend. Shortly afterwards he saw this friend in the street and was advancing to meet him when he saw him cross over the way with the evident intention of avoiding him. Fritz's blood was stirred at this, and blind, reckless rage seized him. The paltry hundred should be repaid at any cost. He sold his winter overcoat, and the golden chronometer which his father had given to him on his sixteenth birthday, and which was to have been an heirloom for Siegi.
He paid the hundred gulden--but ah, how often he repented it!