Felix Lanzberg's Expiation Part 27

Except for a few fairly brutal bursts of rage, Juanita was uncommonly phlegmatic. She really loved nothing but cigarettes, sweet drinks mixed with ice, and a horrible Spanish national salad of garlic and cuc.u.mbers which she called a _gas.p.a.cho_. The time which she did not devote to her dancing exercises and her lovers, she pa.s.sed smoking, laying cards, and telling the beads of her rosary.

She tolerated Felix around her, like a poor actress who wishes to quarrel with no one and tolerates every one; she did not encourage him.

Her coldness excited his feeling to madness; his boundless submission increased her repugnance for him. In a.s.sociation with her, he had no self-respect, no pride, no will, but the low-spirited air of a shy student. He grovelled at her feet, and spent half the day pasting gold spangles on one of her old costumes which Manuela was freshening up. He had known her for weeks without daring to send her anything but bouquets and candy.

Then one evening he saw her in a box of a theatre. She wore her hair arranged in the Spanish manner, with a veil and high comb, and a black satin gown which fitted like a glove, adorned with a silver girdle. The whole audience was interested in the beautiful Spaniard. In the second act, Prince B---- appeared in her box. The people whispered, laughed.

Felix was half dead with jealousy.

The next day there was a violent altercation between the Prince and him, at which the former good-naturedly declared that he would a hundred times rather break with Juanita than with Felix; he did not care anything about her, she bored him; he had only sent her to the theatre, dressed beautifully, to mystify the Viennese, etc.

Then Felix hired a charming entresol in K---- Street, and had it furnished in three days by the first upholsterer in Vienna. Juanita made no trouble about occupying it. She laughed and clapped her hands with joy over the magnificent furniture, gave up her loose wrappers, wore the clothes which Felix had made for her, and in honor of the beautiful apartment, played the great lady.

Surprise and thankfulness, or perhaps a suddenly awakened covetousness for a time killed in her every other feeling. Felix revelled in a few weeks of mad happiness.

To-day, however, his hair stood on end when he thought of this happiness.

Juanita gave herself up to mad extravagance. Her ideal of elegance and style was Mlle. X----, the _premiere danseuse_ of the opera house.

Juanita must have duplicates of everything: the toilets, the Newfoundland and the equipages. Finally she insisted upon dancing at the same theatre as the X----, and Felix succeeded in securing a performance for her.

And yet how badly she treated him in spite of everything. Often he rattled his frail chains, but lacked the strength to break them. He made scenes for Juanita almost every day--it was owing to his jealousy; he left her and swore he would never come again. For an entire week he remained away from her, but in what a condition of excitement, fever, and longing! He ate nothing, he slept no longer, he ran into pa.s.sers-by in the street because he saw no one; the whole world was a dark chaos to him--the only spot of light was Juanita.

With bowed head, a bitter smile on his lips, the full consciousness of his degradation expressed by bearing and glance, he then dragged himself back to Juanita.

She did with him what she wished. All Vienna spoke about him and her; from the lips of young matrons mysterious phrases floated about the ears of innocent young girls--the pretty Countess L---- cried her blue eyes out.

And the summer pa.s.sed. September arrived. The Spaniard had become more submissive--sometimes she was almost tender. The great moment of her debut in the opera house approached, and made her timid. One more wish she expressed, a last one. Never before had she taken trouble to inform Felix of one of her expensive wishes with so many caressing digressions. With both arms round his neck, her lips close to his ear, she informed him that she would not appear at the opera house without a pair of diamond screws such as Mlle. X---- always wore in her ears when she danced.

When he begged her only to wait a very little while, she fell back into her old phlegmatic, yes, apathetic manner, pouting angrily.

He went to a jeweller whom he knew, of whom he had already purchased different ornaments for Juanita, but the man did not seem inclined to extend Felix's credit further. Too prudent to bluntly refuse such a distinguished customer he pretended that he had no stones of the size which the Baron required.

He could perhaps obtain them from a business friend "for cash."

Felix left the shop angrily, and now sought his old acquaintance, Ephraim Staub. But the latter shrugged his shoulders, said that he had already done a great deal for the Baron for the sake of his respectful devotion to him; he relied upon his honor, but still the notes of a minor were not legal, and all men were mortal, and if anything should happen to the young Baron who would answer to him, Ephraim Staub, that the young gentleman's papa would not throw him together with his notes, which in the eyes of the law were not legal, out of the door?

Felix chewed the k.n.o.b of his riding-whip angrily. Then carefully feeling his way, the usurer ventured an infamous proposition.

"Certainly a note with your father's acceptance--that would be safe--the old gentleman would certainly redeem that--one could always apply the thumbscrews to one's papa." Ephraim could a.s.sure the Baron that young people of the best families--he must, alas, conceal the names--had given him this kind of guarantee.

For a long time the true signification of this speech was wholly dark to Felix, but at length he understood, then he did not even take the trouble to fall into a rage, only threw back his head arrogantly and raised his riding-whip to the usurer as one strikes a cur who has ventured too near.

How did it happen that three days later he returned to Ephraim Staub and made out the note in the shameful manner which the latter had desired of him? Yes; how did it happen? Felix no longer knows. If he knew, he could perhaps understand his crime to-day, but he does not understand it.

His memory is a blank concerning the three days in which he had slowly sunk to forgery; there is a dark spot, a chasm in his recollection; he can only take it up again in the moment when, exhausted as if after weeks of fever, bathed in cold sweat, and groping along the walls, he crept from Ephraim's shop to the jeweller's; how suddenly he was frightened at the gargoyle on the cornice of a house, frightened because the head laughed.

From this moment he was not happy for a second, not even with Juanita.

Strangely enough, his pa.s.sion for her now was completely in the background; it fled.

It seemed to him that a monster sat upon his back and buried two iron claws in his shoulders, and blew in his ears with his hot, terrible breath.

The evening on which Juanita was to show her splendid beauty and her empirical dancing to the audience of the opera house arrived.

A warm, September evening. There had been a hard shower; there was an odor of wet stone and marble as Felix went to the theatre. By turns he shook with cold and grew feverish, he suffered with a severe cold. The theatre was still only spa.r.s.ely filled. When he took his seat in one of the front rows he noticed that people pointed him out to each other and whispered his name. He was a celebrity--Juanita's lover!

And all the soft voices pierced his ears, and yet no one could know that.

The ballet had been introduced into an opera, he could not have said into which one; he heard nothing, he saw nothing which took place upon the stage.

The triumphal fanfare of the madrilena roused him from his brooding.

How beautiful she was!

A cloud of black lace and satin floated about her. On her breast was a bunch of white roses, in her ears sparkled two great drops like frozen tears.

Felix saw nothing of the whole apparition but these great sparkling drops. He would have liked to scream out, "Hold her fast, she wears my honor in her ears!"

Poor Felix; he was delirious. The triumph which Juanita had experienced at the Orpheum was nothing to her present one at the opera house. A foreign prince, who chanced to be in the house, clapped his hands in approval; the X---- saw it in her box, and grew green with envy.

Then Juanita threw her last kiss and vanished. The opera proceeded.

Felix sat in his place as if petrified.

At last, at the close of the act, he rose to go behind the scenes. That uneasy hum, which in the world follows a triumph or a fiasco, prevailed there. Juanita was nowhere to be seen. He knocked at her dressing-room door, her maid alone answered him. Juanita was gone, had just driven away. "His Highness Prince Arthur"--the girl was a born Viennese--"had arranged a supper in all haste in honor of the Senorita, and--she thought the Baron knew of it----"

Felix heard nothing more; in mad haste he rushed down the narrow stairs to the stage entrance, and out across the open square before the theatre. He saw a closed carriage turn a corner. Felix did not know whom the carriage contained--probably a perfect stranger--and still he rushed after it--rushed after it like an insane man for a long distance. The earth trembled beneath him; with a hoa.r.s.e, breathless gasp, he sank to the ground.

When he was picked up, he was unconscious. For weeks he lay senseless, with a severe nervous fever. His father came to Vienna to care for him.

After about eight weeks the physicians declared that for the present there was no danger--he could be transported to Traunberg, as was the urgent desire of his father.

At that time Felix was still so weak that he had to be carried; he slept almost continuously, spoke indistinctly, and had forgotten the immediate past.

Ephraim Staub hated Felix because of the manner in which, without removing his cap, with one finger on the visor, he would enter Ephraim's house, yawning, and say, "You, I want money!" and because of the manner in which he carelessly crumpled the bank-notes--which Ephraim never handled except reverently--and thrust them in his pockets, and because of the cut of the whip with which Felix had answered his perfidious proposition the first time.

He discounted the note. The old Baron's lawyer learned that a note with his name upon it was in circulation, and inquired by letter whether the Baron wished it redeemed for family considerations.

The Baron knew nothing of Juanita. Naturally, Felix had never written him of his relations with her, and a stranger would never have ventured to inform the violent old Lanzberg of anything discreditable to his son. Felix had of late asked his father for no great sums of money, and the father knew him to be always scrupulously honorable.

How could he look upon the scarcely veiled insinuation of the advocate as other than an insult? Enraged at the suspicion cast upon his son, he did not even take the trouble to think the matter over, but wrote at once, in his first indignation, a brusque letter to his advocate, in which he declared that he knew nothing of the matter--it could take its course. It did not even occur to him to excite the invalid Felix with this horrid story--he told him nothing of it.

Slowly Felix recovered his health, but his happy temper did not return, he remained always gloomy and monosyllabic--not rude but deeply sad.

His father often gazed anxiously into his eyes, which then every time looked away from him, and he stroked his cheeks compa.s.sionately, which then always flushed beneath his touch. And once he took the convalescent's thin hand in his, and said, "Does anything worry you, my poor boy? It is surely some heart trouble which often comes to one of your age," and as Felix, who at the beginning of this speech had paled, now was silent, flushing more and more deeply, the Baron added, clapping him good-naturedly on the shoulder, "You need not worry about your secret. I will ask you no more about it if it annoys you; I only thought it might relieve you to unburden your heart."

Felix buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears. To this day he can hear in his ears the caressing consolation of his father, the soft, monotonous voice with which he murmured again and again, "Do not excite yourself, child; poor fellow, poor fellow!"

That Felix's melancholy could have anything in connection with the lawyer's communication, did not occur to the Baron.

The next day Felix confessed to his father. It was after breakfast; they sat alone, opposite each other, at a little round table.