Felix Lanzberg's Expiation Part 11

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 _ecarte_. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 drole 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, pa.s.sed 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, _decollete_ 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 Ca.s.se." Every day he stood for a while before the "Cruche Ca.s.se" 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 compa.s.sion 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 gla.s.sy 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 gla.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistance, and who greeted him as an habitue. 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sisted 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 n.o.bility, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sionately, 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?"

X.

"Elsa, dear Elsa, this is lovely in you! What an surprise! I only know you from my husband's accounts, and from my wedding-day, but I shall love you frightfully, that I feel already."

Crying out these words, Linda had jumped out of the carriage with which Felix had met her at the railway station, and greeted Elsa, who, at her brother's wish, had come to Traunberg to welcome the young wife to her new home. Then leaving Elsa, Linda let her eyes wander over the facade of the castle. "_Charmant! magnifique!_" she cried. "A portal like a church, gray walls, cracked window-sills, balconies and volutings, small-paned old cloister windows! I am charmed, Felix--charmed! _C'est tout a fait seigneurial!_ If you knew, Elsa, how tired I am of modern villas, stucco and plate gla.s.s. Ah, you poor, little creature! I had half forgotten you;" with this Linda bends down to her son, who had first stamped his little feet with joy and excitement at his mother's arrival, but then, ever more and more abashed by the flow of words which had carelessly been uttered over his head, with his finger in his mouth, now seemed to take a mournful pleasure in crying.

"Have all children a habit of sticking their fingers in their mouths, or is it an invention of my young hopeful?" asks Linda, after she has hastily kissed and caressed the child. "He will be pretty, the little brat. It is a pity that his hair will not grow. When he had typhoid fever or measles--what was it, Felix?"

"Scarlet fever," he replied, tenderly raising the tiny man in his arms.

"Oh, yes, scarlet fever; we had to cut his hair, and since then it has never grown long."

"I think you can be satisfied with him as he is," says Elsa, looking approvingly at the handsome child.

"Yes, he is a nice little thing," admits Linda; "he has splendid eyes, the true Lanzberg eyes. Oh, I am so glad that he resembles Felix."

"Well, his beauty would not have suffered if he had resembled you,"

replies Elsa, with an admiring glance at her sister-in-law.

Linda's physique has developed splendidly. The discontented expression which formerly disfigured her face has vanished, has given place to a bewitching smile and brilliant glance. Negligence and grace are united in her carriage. She displays the gayety and cordiality of a person who is satisfied with herself. Laying her arm caressingly around Elsa's waist, she whispers: "So you really do not find me too homely for a Lanzberg; one would not guess from my looks where I come from, eh?"

"Where you come from?--from the world of society--that certainly," says Elsa.

"Bah! From an iron foundry!" cries Linda, laughing.