Gloria Victis! Part 19

After this Fritz felt free to spend three times as much as before. His property swelled and swelled without his comprehending the mysterious reasons for its increase. At last it began to a.s.sume the most unexpected dimensions. This lasted for some time.

One day the banker informed the young Count that he was a millionaire, and asked him at the same time if he did not wish to realize.

"Where is the use?" said Fritz, "there is no hurry,--er--I'll have a talk with you about it one of these days. I have no time just now."

He had promised the children to take them to the circus; of course he had no time for business.

He was dining with Schneller, when he suddenly heard a young government official, who did not belong exactly to financial circles, say. "A sorry prospect--the evening papers say that the Sternfeld-Lonsbergs are shaky."

Fritz was startled. Little as he troubled himself about business affairs, he knew that the greatest part of his property was invested in Sternfeld-Lonsbergs. He looked fixedly at his host, who, however, only shrugged his shoulders, and remarking, "merely an insignificant depression," sc.r.a.ped a piece of turbot from the half-denuded vertebrae of the fish which the servant was handing him.

Fritz continued to talk to his fair neighbour with the self-possession of a thoroughly well-bred man, while the j.a.panese dinner-service, with the cut gla.s.s, and flowers on the table danced wildly before his eyes.

After dinner, his eye-gla.s.s in his eye, and a pleasant smile on his lips, he took occasion to glance furtively at a paper, lying on a little table. His blood fairly ran cold; suddenly Baron Schneller stood beside him. "You are entirely wrong to be worried," he a.s.serted, and Fritz laughed and shrugged his shoulders as if the affair in question were a mere bagatelle. But the next day he wrote a note to the banker begging him to dispose of his stock for him. The banker dissuaded him from selling, the market was unfavourable; for the present he insisted the only thing to do was to wait.

Fritz complied; shortly afterwards the banker advised him to take part in a complicated transaction which Fritz took no pains to understand, but which Schneller a.s.sured him positively would result in enormous profits.

It was simply a reckless piece of stock-gambling.

Fritz agreed to everything--what did he know about it? His financial affairs began to inconvenience him more and more. He wanted to be rich.

Just at this time he had to pay a couple of large bills, which had not been presented for three years. He thought of his father. Good Heavens!

The old Count could not be angry still. But, after years of alienation he could not in a financial difficulty make up his mind to appeal to him without further preface.

"No, no, that will not do," he said to his small confidant, Siegi. "We must first see whether grandpapa cares for us, and if he does then we will make our confession; if not--_vogue la galere_."

He never guessed the terrible misery that menaced him. Poverty was a phantom of which he had heard, without believing in it--it was as incomprehensible to him as death to a perfectly healthy man.

And so Siegi's bonne had to dress the boy in his newest sailor suit, and his father took him to be photographed.

The picture was excellent. Fritz took a boyish delight in it, and showed it to all his acquaintances. He thought it impossible that the grandfather could resist that cherub face. He wrote the old Count a letter, every word of which came warm from his heart, telling him how he longed to see him, and then he guided Siegi's hand--the boy had just begun to write the alphabet large between pencilled lines--to write upon the back of the photograph: "Dear grandpapa, love me a little--I send you a kiss and I am your little grandson. Siegi."

He awaited an answer in feverish but almost unwavering hope. The fourth day brought a letter from Schneeburg. Fritz recognised his father's handwriting and hurriedly tore open the envelope. It contained nothing save Siegi's photograph, which the old Count had returned without a word.

Fritz clinched his fist and stamped his foot. Then he lifted his little son in his arms, kissing and caressing him as if to atone to the boy for the insult cast on him.

It was impossible to ask any favour of one who could act thus, even were he his father.

This was at the end of September, and shortly afterwards came ruin, utter inevitable ruin! Not modest poverty which privately plucks our sleeve and whispers, "retrench--economize!" no, but downright brutal poverty, that seizes us by the collar with a dirty hand and wrenching us out of the warm soft nest of our daily habits, casts us out into the cold barren street with "Starve! vagabond! freeze!"

The million had disappeared, and when the banker, Schneller, announced to Fritz his ruin, he added, "of course you cannot be forced to meet your obligations, Herr Count. The matter lies partly in your own hands."

Fritz stared at him! The worst of it all was that his property was not sufficient to cover his indebtedness!

A mult.i.tude of petty creditors suddenly flocked around, saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, upholsterers, whose bills mounted to thousands.

Fritz was beside himself. Small tradesmen must not lose by him. He broke up his entire household, and disposed of everything, from the oriental rugs in his smoking-room, to Siegi's black velvet suit and Venetian lace collar.

But with all that he could do he could not pay every one. Some of the lesser creditors were coa.r.s.e and pressing, but most of them only meekly twirled their caps about in their hands, murmuring, "We can wait, Herr Count; we rely entirely upon the Herr Count."

He lived through each day dully, almost apathetically. The dreariness and emptiness of his house made no impression upon him. When the time came for him to part with his horses--a member of the _jeunesse doree_ of Vienna bought them at a high price--he took Siegi and went down into the stable, where he fed the beautiful creatures with bread and sugar, and stroked their heads and patted their necks; and when he turned and left them neighing and snorting with delight--it seemed to him that a piece of his heart were being torn from out his breast!....

Every day his wife asked him when he was going to appeal to his father, but he made no reply. After the insult that the old Count had offered to his darling, nothing should ever induce him to make another appeal.

Nothing? So he thought then. "My father must have heard of my unfortunate circ.u.mstances," he said to himself, "and if it does not occur to him to help me, there is nothing that I can do."

He determined to find a situation,--of course one befitting his name and station. If every ancient n.o.ble name to-day in Austria cannot lay claim, as in France in Louis the Fourteenth's time, to an office at court, or to a salary, there are at least a hundred kinds of sinecures that can afford the means of living suitably for their rank, to young scions of the n.o.bility who have not sinned against the prejudices of their caste.

His fatal marriage aggravated the difficulties of Malzin's position.

The horizon of his existence contracted and darkened more and more.

The dogged determination which, closing accounts with the past, resolutely clears away the debris of a ruined life from the path which is to lead to a new existence, Fritz did not possess. His was the pa.s.sive endurance of pride, which calmly bows beneath the burden, and drags on with it to the end, simply because it scorns to complain or to appeal to compa.s.sion.

_One_ feeling only was stronger within him than pride, and that was love for his children.

Were he alone concerned, he would rather have starved than prefer a second request after the first had been refused, but he could not bring himself to see his children slowly starve.

He applied to several individuals who had always been on terms of great intimacy with his family, but after some had refused to receive him, and others had ignored his request with a forced smile, he felt paralysed, and resigned himself for a while to melancholy, brooding inactivity. There must come a change sooner or later, he thought. In the meanwhile he lived upon--debt, and could not comprehend why professional usurers should need so much urging to induce them to lend him, the probable heir of Schneeburg, a paltry couple of hundred gulden.

Had he been more exactly informed of his father's circ.u.mstances, this would not have surprised him so much. But he had heard nothing of the old Count for years. A strange repugnance had prevented his speaking of him to strangers,--it would only expose his own unfortunate estrangement from his father to their indiscreet curiosity. Every day he had a secret hope, although he hardly admitted it to himself, that the old Count would take pity upon him, and suddenly appear providentially.

But his father did not appear, and thus it was that finally he, Fritz Malzin, with his wife and children occupied two dingy third-story rooms in Leopold street, rented from his mother-in-law, who kept a lodging-house for gentlemen.

Charlotte from morning until night bewailed her husband's unconscionable heedlessness, but in reality she was much happier than in Wipling street. To lounge about all the morning in a slatternly dishabille, to help prepare the breakfast for the lodgers, to gossip a little and flirt a little, and then in the evenings to array herself in the finery which she had contrived to smuggle into her present quarters, and to go to Ronacher's or some other beer-garden, where half a dozen second and third-rate c.o.xcombs addressed her as 'Frau Countess,' and paid court to her,--such a life was bliss after the tedium of her former existence. She went out every evening, leaving Fritz at home with the children, revolving all kinds of improbable possibilities which might suddenly improve his condition, and devising schemes dependant upon lucky accidents that never happened.

Sometimes a little warm hand was thrust into his; and a soft voice whispered to him: "Papa, tell me a story!"

Then rousing himself from his sad reveries, he would try to make up some merry tale, but Siegi would shake his head, and nestling close to his father with his arms clinging about his neck and his head leaning against his father's cheek would beg, "Tell me about Schneeburg, Papa."

The winter with its long nights wore on in close rooms poisoned by coal-gas, and pervaded by the cramping sensation of wretched confinement. Spring came; Siegi had lost his rosy cheeks, and his merry laugh. Every afternoon towards sunset his father took him out to walk.

The child coughed a little.

One warm day in April the clouds were hanging low, while ever and anon in the narrow street a swallow skimmed anxiously to and fro.

Siegi was weary, and his little feet dragged one after the other, when suddenly he pulled his father's hand, joyously shouting: "Papa, papa--look--don't you see?--there is our Miesa!"

Fritz looked. It did not take an old 'cavalry man' an instant to recognize in an animal harnessed to a fiacre, one of his handsome horses of aforetime.

"Miesa! how are you, old girl?" he said caressingly.

The creature recognised him instantly, and whinnied her delight. Fritz patted her neck and lifted Siegi up that he might kiss the white star on the animal's forehead, as he used to do.

Then they resumed their walk. Without saying a word Fritz stroked his little son's cheek;--it was wet with tears. The poor little fellow was crying silently, for fear of grieving his father!

Fritz felt a strange, choking sensation. He took the boy to a confectioner's, but the child could eat nothing.

That night Siegi was taken ill. The physician p.r.o.nounced it inflammation of the lungs. Lying in his father's arms for three days and nights, the boy suffered fearfully, and then the crisis was over.

At the end of three weeks the little fellow could leave his bed, but he was paler and weaker than ever.