The next day Linda and Count Kamenz had disappeared!
The whole country round about was horrified and dismayed at the affair; only one laughed in his sleeve: Eugene von Rhoeden. The last obstacle to his plans had been removed. Countess Elli blushed crimson when he took leave of Iwanow. He found opportunity to press a kiss upon her hand. A white handkerchief waved after him from one of the castle windows, as he drove in an open phaeton from Iwanow to the railway station.
XXVII.
By her fantastic walk from Traunberg to Steinbach, Elsa had brought on inflammation of the lungs. She convalesced so slowly that the physician whom Erwin consulted advised a long sojourn in the south. At first she could not resolve to leave her unhappy brother, and only went after he had promised to follow her as soon as possible to San Remo, where she would pass the winter with Erwin and the children.
She left in the middle of September. Felix did not keep his promise. "As soon as possible" was capable of such varied conceptions.
September, with its variegated foliage, and the long, tender farewell of the sunbeams vanished, and October came. The leaves withered, blood-red or pale-yellow they fell from the branches sadly and submissively, like all hopeless ones, and November followed October, and came in with an important bluster, like a lackey sent on before to make room for his master. He tore the last leaves from the branches, and sometimes tore away the branches with them, and he kissed the last roses dead and annihilated the unblossomed buds, covered the heavens with mournful clouds, blew so chill and poisonously in the face of the sun that he also sickened, and looked almost as pale as the moon.
And at length all was desolate, all ready--the earth strewn with dead leaves and withered flowers for the solemn reception of the new-comer. Coldly and gravely winter entered his kingdom, the bare trees shivered a last time, and crackled one more sigh, and all is still--dead! The angels in heaven shook their wings, thicker and thicker fell the white down.
January was long past and Felix still in Traunberg. After the last fearful blow which had fallen upon him he never rallied. Since Linda's flight he never left the park, seldom the castle, often scarcely left his room.
There were days on which he would not even allow his little son admission, and other days on which he would allow no servant to wait upon him, because it was unbearable for him to even meet the eyes of a servant. On all faces he thought he could discover mocking, criticising expressions.
When his overseers came to him to desire his signature or to ask his wishes concerning important business, with his hot, nervous hands he fumbled over the papers which were placed before him, read two or three lines, murmured something, and signed his name. The questions which were put to him he always answered with the same, "As you will," and then drummed impatiently upon the top of his writing-desk and glanced irritably at the door.