Felix Lanzberg's Expiation Part 24

"Does Marienbad please you?" continues Linda, with the insolent condescension which she has studied from the best examples.

"Very pretty," murmurs the Spaniard, twisting her handkerchief between her hands. She speaks poor German. Linda is delighted with her p.r.o.nunciation, and does not take the trouble to speak French, for which cosmopolitan language the dancer had forgotten her mother-tongue.

"If I remember rightly, I once had the pleasure of seeing you dance--it was in '67, in Vienna--my first theatre evening."

"In Vienna?" said the dancer. "Oh! that was a small performance--that was at first--later, when I travelled with my husband, the Marchese Carini, _je n'ai jamais travaille_ except in St. Petersburg, Paris, London and Baden-Baden."

"Ah!" says Linda; the conversation pauses.

Papa Harfink, leaning somewhat forward, his heels under his chair, rests in a low arm-chair, and monotonously strokes his leg from the knee upwards and back again.

And Felix? Pressed tightly into a dark corner, where the hope of being forgotten and overlooked chains him, he stands motionless. As light perspiration which does not cool, but rather burns, moistens his whole body, the blood sings in his ears, his tongue cleaves to his teeth. He has not self-possession enough to hear her, he has not the courage to look at her; she floats before his mind, the most seductive siren, the most bewitching woman that ever, trifling and playing with a man, ruined his honor. He still dreads the disturbing might of her beauty.

Curiosity compels him to gaze at her; he looks and does not trust his eyes. Where is the Juanita? Near his wife he sees a yellow, bloated woman, prematurely old, tastelessly dressed, squeezed into a black _moire antique_ gown, with folds under her round eyes, little fan-shaped wrinkles on her temples, and black down about the corners of her mouth. Common, fat, awkward, she sits there, a double chin resting on her fat bosom, her hands clasped over a lace-edged handkerchief in her lap! Felix cannot believe his eyes. That must be a mistake--that cannot be Juanita! Then, beneath the hem of her gown, he sees a tiny foot in a black satin shoe, and now he knows that this is Juanita!

He notices a light brown mole on her neck--it disgusts him, but then he remembers how this mole had once pleased him, how often he had jokingly kissed it! His cheeks burn--he has lost his last illusion--the whole vulgarity of the temptress to whom he had yielded is pitilessly exposed to him. Involuntarily he makes a movement. Papa Harfink discovers him.

"Ah, Felix," he cries, already somewhat out of temper, "are you hiding from me? I should think," he adds, relying upon the power of his millions, "that such a father-in-law as I is not to be despised."

Slowly Felix advances.

"My husband," says Linda to the dancer. But the latter's face has taken on a prepossessing smile, and with the confidential expression which appeals to old times, she says, "I know him already, _tout a fait un ami_ from my _debutante_ period; is it not so?"

She gives him her hand.

The hand, only covered by a lace mitt, is flabby, and as Juanita, half rising, presses this hand against the lips of Felix, who is bowing to her, his face changes, plainly expresses disgust, and he lets the hand fall unkissed.

Juanita trembles with rage. "Let us go," screams she--"let us go! Oh, Sir Baron, you think that I am only a dancer--and--and----"

Speech fails her, she gasps for breath. "Let us go, let us go!" she pants.

"My Chuchu! My beloved wife!" cries Mr. von Harfink, and not honoring Felix and Linda with a word, he leads the Spaniard out of the room.

The carriage rolls away with the wedded pair. Scarcely has the door closed behind the Harfinks when Linda bursts into loud, happy laughter.

Her husband's stiff manner, his way of ignoring her father, which, under other circ.u.mstances, would another time have irritated her from pure capriciousness, have this time chanced to delight her. "You are unique, Felix, wholly unique!" she cries to him. "You were so deliciously arrogant! But what is the matter with you? Are you ill?

_Tiens!_ Juanita is your great secret! Poor boy!" She taps him on the shoulder, she laughs yet. "What a disappointment, eh! But what is the matter? No, listen; it is humiliating for me that the meeting with this comedian has so robbed you of your self-control, Felix!"

His secret still has a charm for her, surrounds his poor bent form with a romantic light. Something startling, shockingly horrible, she seeks behind this, but not something dishonorable! With a teasing tenderness, which she has never shown him since their honeymoon, she strokes his cheeks, and begs, "Tell me what distresses you."

Then Felix's conscience torments him; he feels as if he would rather die than keep his secret longer. For a moment he almost counts upon mercy from this soft childish creature who has seated herself beside him on the arm of his old-fashioned chair.

"Linda," he begins, "when I married you I did not know--that you--suspected nothing of--of this matter. Your mother a.s.sured me that she had told you of my past----" he hesitates.

"Oh, my mother spared my youth, and only made the vaguest allusions!"

He draws a deep breath. "A terrible story is connected with this Spaniard,"--he hesitates--she looks closely and curiously at him; a sudden idea occurs to her: "You shot a friend in a duel on her account?" she cries, and then, as she sees him start but shake his head, she says softly, with indistinct articulation and hollow voice, "Or--or not in a duel--from jealousy?"

He lowers his head--he cannot speak--then slowly rising he totters out of the room. She remains alone--staring before her--her heart beats loudly--then she was right! All his enigmatical behavior is explained; she now even understands her fellow men, and strangely enough, she almost pardons him.

Felix, beside himself with jealousy, thirsting for revenge, plunging a knife into the breast of his friend--the scene has something dazzling, something which compels her sympathy. She pictures the scene to herself; the luxurious apartment of the dancer--the two men, both deathly pale--she has seen something similar in the Porte St. Martin theatre. A peculiar excitement overpowers her corrupted nature, thirsting for strong stimulants. She loves Felix!

Two minutes later she knocks at his locked door. "Let me in, me, your wife, who wishes to console you!"

Felix does not open the door.

XXII.

It is already twilight. Eugene von Rhoeden sits with his cousin Raimund in the Harfinks' drawing-room. As Pistasch had ridden to Traunberg, where Rhoeden seldom accompanied him, the Countess Dey was in bed with a headache, and Scirocco had one of those fits of desperate melancholy which so often tormented him, and was wandering about the woods, Eugene had nothing to do in Iwanow. For a change he had ridden over to Marienbad. At the forest spring, where the guests were a.s.sembled around the music-stand, he had met Raimund, and had heard from him that "the old man" had driven over with his wife to see the arrogant Linda; he, Raimund, had spared them his society.

Eugene resolved to await the return of the pair; it interested him to learn something about the result of the visit.

The two cousins soon came to the conclusion that the music and the crowd around the pavilion were intolerable as well as the heat, and betook themselves to the _Muhl stra.s.se_, where Papa Harfink, more conservative than superst.i.tious, and besides wholly secure in his new happiness from indiscreet visits of Susanna's ghost, occupied the same apartments in which for long years he had "suffered" every summer with the deceased.

With a tinge of bitterness Eugene looked about him as he entered the bright room in which he had pa.s.sed so many sweet hours with Linda.

There stood the old-fashioned arm-chair yet, with the same covering, now, to be sure, worn at all the corners, the chair in which she used to lean back in the sultry summer afternoons, teasingly pulling to pieces his last gift of flowers with her delicate fingers, while Papa Harfink snored in the adjoining room; Mamma Harfink, in her maid's room, discussed the cut of her new toilet with the latter, but he, Eugene, crouching at the feet of the young girl, told her gay, trifling little stories, many times half-jokingly interspersing a tender word.

Then she threw a flower in his face; her hand remained imprisoned in his, and he kissed it for punishment. Thus it went on for hours, until Papa Harfink entered the room with scarcely opened eyes and hair tumbled by sleep, and asked, "Are we going to have coffee at home to-day?"

Eugene had never seen the room since he had rushed into it, now more than five years ago, the bunch of white gardenias in his hand, and had found his cousin Lanzberg's _fiancee_. At that time he had not changed his expression, had not by one word betrayed his pa.s.sion, knowing well that a man like him who wishes to rise in the world is condemned to perpetual agreeableness.

How he had felt at that time!

His was no sentimental nature, but he had a faithful memory, and remembered distinctly how he had murmured the most polite phrases of congratulation; had drawn a comparison between himself and the man of old family, and beside, Felix had seemed to himself like a handsome dry-goods clerk.

His love for Linda--it had been genuine of its kind--had long fled, but the wound which her vanity had inflicted in his still burned. The wish to repay Linda for her arrogance still animated him.

The hour was near.

Outside a carriage was heard, then loud, creaking steps on the wooden stairs; a hoa.r.s.e, croaking woman's voice gasped out from time to time furious and incomprehensible words; the door opened and Juanita entered. Crimson, with swollen veins and sparkling eyes, she threw her fan, broken in the middle, upon the table.

In vain did Papa Harfink again and again stretch his short arms out to her and cry, "Lovely angel, calm yourself!" She had no time for love.

"To insult me!--me--me!" she beat her breast; "me, Juanita, the Marchesa Carini--bah!" she clenched her fist, "he, a criminal--a----"

"Who has insulted you, who is a criminal?" asks Raimund.

"He--he--this Lanzberg!" she gasps. "Oh, I will revenge myself--they shall see--I will revenge myself--Caro, Caro!" screams the Spaniard.

Caroline is the maid, who enters at her mistress's loud cry.

"Bring me the little black casket with the golden bird!" commands Juanita.

The maid disappears; soon she returns with the casket, which she places upon the table before her mistress, whereupon she withdraws.

The blood throbs in Eugene's finger-tips, but, apparently perfectly indifferent, he stoops for the lace scarf which, with a quick gesture, Juanita has thrown from her upon the floor. Papa Harfink, who took the matter very phlegmatically, rang to order a flask of spring water and a lemon.

Juanita rummaged for a long time among old newspapers in which her triumphs were recorded. She turned them over more and more uneasily.