Felix Lanzberg's Expiation Part 6

Eugene Rhoeden immediately perceived that Linda had a knowledge of _bon ton_--evidently knew that all Austrian countesses are called Piffi, Pantschi, Nina, like _grisettes_ or little dogs. Her romantic name was odious to her, but in a circle where the women called each other Theresa and Rosalie, she must rejoice at being named Linda and not Rosalinda.

A superficial confidence arose between her and her n.o.ble cousin.

So stood matters when Felix "accidentally" made the acquaintance of the Harfinks while walking. This was the family into which fate and his weakness had thrown him.

VI.

Is Marienbad cheaper than Franzensbad because it is not so select, or is it less select because it is cheaper? I do not know. But certain it is that Marienbad does not possess the same stamp of distinction as Franzensbad, which latter, together with all the guests, seems about to slowly perish of its excessive distinction. The guests at Marienbad also lack that transparent thinness of the Franzensbad invalids, which so claims sympathy: they all look "not ill but only too healthy."

As the Marienbad invalids do not look like invalids, so Marienbad does not look like a water cure. It wholly lacks that fairylike appearance of a cure where invalidism is an elegant pastime. It is so severely commonplace, so ordinary that one is forced to believe in its reality.

Fortunately there is some compensation in the country round about, and when the guests look from the windows of the miserable hotel rooms, beyond the plainness of the dusty streets to the green beautiful woods, the most pretentious are satisfied. The Marienbad woods are so charming, not those barbaric gloomy woods like the Bohemian forests for example, which with their black branches grumblingly bar the way to the sunbeams, and groan so continually that the song birds from pure terror have all died or gone away.

In the woods near Marienbad, the trees sing the whole day in compet.i.tion with the birds, and the sunbeams fall between gay, dancing, quivering shadows, and the blue sky laughs through a thousand breaks in the lofty, floating leafy roof.

The Harfink family live in the Muhle stra.s.se, and have a view directly into the woods.

It is half past eight in the morning. Papa Harfink, who is taking the cure, and every morning at six o'clock stands beside the spring, has drunk his seven gla.s.ses, taken the prescribed walk, and afterwards breakfasted; now he has gone to be weighed. The student, his son, is amusing himself by following a young lady who travels with many diamonds but without a chaperon, and who is entered in the register as a "singer." Linda is still at her toilet. Mamma Harfink is busy in the drawing-room with a medical pamphlet. Then the maid brings her a note.

"A messenger from Traunberg brought it; he is waiting for an answer,"

declared the maid.

Before Mrs. Harfink had opened the letter Linda enters and asks: "We need expect no visitor before twelve o'clock, mamma? If the Baron chances to come, you know where I am--in the Kursaal. At twelve o'clock I take my Turkish bath. Adieu! I shall be back at one o'clock." With that she vanished.

Mrs. Harfink had concealed the letter from her daughter. She secretly suspects that it contains matters of which Linda need know nothing.

Scarcely has her daughter vanished when she hastily opens it. In an uncharacteristic handwriting, occupying a great deal of paper:

"My Dear Madam: You have surely already learned from your daughter what has occurred between us. That I ventured, under the circ.u.mstances which you, madam, certainly know, to offer her my hand, seems to me now, upon calm consideration, incomprehensible and unpardonable."

Mamma Harfink starts. Will the Baron take back his word? What can he mean by "under the circ.u.mstances"? Linda's unprotectedness in the great lonely woods? Or does he, perhaps, refer to his fatal past? She resolves to read further.

"Your daughter's manner proves to me plainly that she has no suspicion of the stain upon my honor. I have not the courage to make my confession to her myself; do it for me, my dear madam, and kindly write me whether Miss Linda, after she has learned all, will yet hear anything of me, or will turn away from me. In the latter case I will go away for some time.

"With the deepest respect, your submissive

"Lanzberg."

"Absurd, eccentric man! He will yet spoil everything with his foolish scruples!" cries she, then, looking at the letter once more: "Horribly blunt, awkward style; no practised pen, but undeniably the sentiments of a refined gentleman."

Mrs. Harfink folded her hands and thought. Should she read this letter to Linda? She had been so pleased at the prospect of Linda's advantageous match. But the strange girl was capable of giving up this brilliant _parti_ for the sake of a trifle like this spot in Lanzberg's past.

Mrs. Harfink, in intercourse with the world very sensitive and wholly implacable, possessed theoretically that far-reaching consideration for any individuals attacked by scandal which has become so fashionable among the philanthropists of the present time. She always treated all city officials as calumniators and all accused as martyrs.

"Oh, if I were only in Linda's place, I would be angry that I had so little to pardon in him," cried she dramatically; "but Linda is so narrow, so petty. Her intellect does not reach to the comprehension of the eternal divine morality; she understands merely the narrow prejudiced morality of good society, which divides sins as well as men into 'admissible and not admissible;' to-day calmly overlooks a crime, to-morrow screams itself hoa.r.s.e over a fault which offends against its customs."

While the Harfink satisfied her philanthropic heart with this subtle, humane eloquence, the girl stood waiting at the door. "The messenger begs an answer," she remarked shyly. Mrs. Harfink bit her lips impatiently. She was not capable of a decided deception, she must twist and turn it before her conscience until it took on a quite different aspect from the original one. Must, in a word, carry it out in such a highly virtuous manner that she could later deny it to her conscience.

"The messenger begs an answer!"

Mrs. Harfink seated herself at her writing-table and wrote:

"My Dear Lanzberg: Come, if possible, at once--in any case before twelve. Linda expects you.

"With cordial greeting, yours sincerely,

"S. Harfink."

Two, almost three hours pa.s.sed. Susanna's excitement became painful.

What should she tell Felix? The best would be to tell him that Linda knew all. And did she not indeed know all? She had conscientiously told her daughter of a _liaison_ which had formerly been the unhappiness of the Baron. The _liaison_ was, on the whole, the princ.i.p.al thing, everything else only a detail. Only chance, which did not in the slightest accord with the whole life of the Baron before and since, and of which respectable people hesitate to speak, and which one should not exhume from the past in which it lay buried.

She was in duty bound to conceal the affair from Linda, as one must conceal certain things in themselves wholly innocent from children, because their intellect, not yet matured by experience, is not capable of rightly comprehending them.

In all her circle of acquaintances, Mrs. Harfink was the only one who knew anything definite of Lanzberg's disgrace. By chance, and through the acquaintance of a high official of the law, she had learned the sad facts. She thought of the envious glances with which all her friends had followed Lanzberg's attentions to Linda. Linda had somewhat forced the acquaintance with him. The good friends were horrified at her boldness--at her triumph. Mrs. Harfink remembered her sister, Rhoeden; what had she not done to marry her daughter to a coughing, bald-headed, Wurtemburg count, a gambler, whose debts they had been forced to pay before the marriage.

Quarter of twelve struck--was Lanzberg not coming, then? In a short time Linda would be back.

Then a carriage stopped before the "Emperor of China."

A minute later there was a knock at the door, and Felix Lanzberg entered the room, pale, worn, with great uneasy, shy eyes.

Mamma Harfink reached him both hands, and merely said, "My dear Lanzberg!" then she let him sit down.

He was silent. Many times he tried to speak, but the words would not come, and he lowered his eyes helplessly to his hat, which he held on his knees.

At last Mamma Harfink took his hat from his hand and put it away.

"You will stay to dinner with us?"

"If you will permit me, madam," said he, scarcely audibly.

"Oh, you over-sensitive man!" cried she, with her loud, indelicate sympathy. How she pained him!

"Does Linda think that I am an over-sensitive man?" said he, almost bitterly, and without looking at his future mother-in-law.

Mamma Harfink pondered for a last time. "I do not understand how you could doubt Linda for a moment," replied she.

He scarcely heard her, and only cried hastily "Was she surprised?"

"My dear Lanzberg!" Mrs. Harfink called the Baron as often as possible "her dear Lanzberg," in order to show him that she already included him in her family--"a man who can oppose to his fault a counter-balance such as your whole subsequent life is, has not only expiated his fault but he has obliterated it." Madame Harfink very often spoke of her husband's views, and liked to allow him to partic.i.p.ate before the world in her wealth of thought. If she herself could no longer cherish any illusions about him, she nevertheless carefully concealed his nullity from friends as well as she could in a sacred obscurity.