Felix Lanzberg's Expiation Part 29

Then one of the officers bends over him, and suddenly starting, he cries to the others, "That is certainly Lanzberg!"

"What do you say? 'The certain Lanzberg?'" ask they, hastily. They thought Felix unconscious, but he was not.

The word, thoughtlessly spoken and not unkindly meant, goes to his heart. From that moment he knew that there was no regeneration for his honor.

He might level mountains and dam rivers, but the world in its astonishment, in its admiration, would yet find no other name for him than "the certain Lanzberg!"

He opened his large, mournful eyes. The officers were ill at ease, then they all stretched out their hands to him and cried, "We admire you; we envy you!"

But he only turned his head away from them with a groan.

His incomparable actions during the campaign had softened the harshest of his social judges toward him. The emperor, by a proclamation, had restored to him his forfeited social rights. His father awaited him longingly, and begged him by letters to telegraph his arrival in Traunberg, so that he could personally meet him at the railway station.

But Felix dreaded the idea of being received by his father, and unannounced, in civilian clothes, he one day alighted in T----, the nearest station to Traunberg, from a third-cla.s.s compartment, which he had taken so as to meet none of his acquaintances. He went on foot to the castle. He felt a kind of shyness of every tree, every stone, which formerly returning home after long absence, he had greeted joyously.

The quick trot of horses' hoofs smote his ear; looking up he saw Elsa coming galloping along the park driveway toward him, at the side of his old playmate, Sempaly. Anxiously he drew back among the trees, and the two rushed past, and thought no more of the man in the plain gray coat.

Silently he crept up to the castle and to his father's room. No one met him. Softly he opened the door. A thin, bowed, gray-haired man sat reading in an arm-chair. Felix took a few hesitating steps forward, he trembled throughout his entire frame. "Papa!" he stammered. One moment more and the father had clasped him in his arms. Then the old man pushed him back from him to see him more plainly. "My hero!" he cried.

Felix started nervously and gazed pleadingly at his father. "You have grown gray, papa," he cried, as if startled.

"People grow old, my boy," replied the Baron, hastily smoothing his whitened hair.

"Old at forty-nine?" murmured Felix.

A quarter of an hour later, as Felix sat beside his father, answering his questions, Elsa entered. She had grown tall and slender. But that was not the only change which Felix perceived in her: she had lost her light, springing girlish step, her merry smile. A reserved sadness had drawn harsh lines about her mouth, and a deep shade darkened her eyes.

At her entrance he had risen awkwardly, and she, not seeing him distinctly, and taking him for some bailiff discussing business with her father, bowed formally.

Her father glanced impatiently at her, then he cried, in irritation and anger, "It is Felix; do you not recognize him?"

Elsa grew pale with excitement. "G.o.d greet you," said she, going quickly up to him.

His trembling lips barely touched her forehead.

Now came a hard, hard time for Felix, made hardest of all by the touching kindness of his father, who overwhelmed him with tender attentions, had forgotten none of Felix's former fancies--surprised him now with a splendid horse, now with a gun of a new, improved kind, or a pointer dog with fabulous traits--in short, antic.i.p.ated every wish which Felix had formerly expressed. But Felix no longer wished for anything but to hide himself, and this his father would not hear of.

He everywhere pushed his son forward; with the servants and overseer it was always, "I am growing old, go to the young master."

And poor Felix, humiliated by the striking submission of the people, confused and without an idea or opinion of his own, gave orders in a shy, weak voice as modestly and reservedly as he could.

However urgently he begged his father to leave him in the protecting shade of the background, the old man could not be induced to consent.

He pressed the keys of his safe upon Felix, gave him free disposal of the largest sums of money. Painfully distrustful of all the rest of humanity, especially of his servants, since his misfortune, the Baron almost crushed his son by this ostentatious, conspicuous confidence.

One day he desired Felix to pay a visit with him in the neighborhood.

But this Felix opposed. Elsa supported his opposition. The old Baron took that amiss in her. At that time Elsa was scarcely sixteen years old. She suffered with the Lanzberg arrogance, as Felix had suffered from it; she was hurt to the heart by Felix's deed. And yet she loved her brother, and did not wish to let him feel how heavily his disgrace weighed upon her. But she could find no natural tone in intercourse with him.

He had been a kind of idol for her, who good-naturedly descended from his pedestal to tease and caress his little sister. He had called her Liesel and Mietzel, pulled her ear or kissed her hand, mystified her with the strangest tales, gave her costly presents; then again, when his friends or important pleasures came between them, for days wholly ignored her insignificant existence.

But this time the idol had not descended from his pedestal; he had fallen down, and had become a broken man. His former teasing courtesy had changed into the shyest politeness. He never pulled her ears, and never kissed her hand, never called her Liesel or Mietzel--his manners had wholly lost their playful aplomb. He was now helpless and awkward, sat at table like a poor sinner, ate little, never spoke a word, and, rendered clumsy by embarra.s.sment, soiled the table-cloth. He was so boundlessly obliging and considerate that it made Elsa embarra.s.sed. He broke a refractory horse for her with the greatest patience, took care of all her favorite flowers, accompanied her on her visits to the poor, and never forgot to take with him a warm wrap for her.

He had really become a much better and lovable man than before, but the world had no use for this goodness and lovability. Even Elsa did not know how to value it. She was always constrained in intercourse with him, because she was always thinking of being kind to him. The old Baron gave her endless lectures concerning her behavior. Unweariedly attentive and tender to Felix, toward his other fellow men he was almost unbearably capricious, irritable and unjust, especially to Elsa.

Once he overwhelmed her for so long with imprudent reproaches for her heartlessness and lack of tact, that at last she cried out defiantly and refractorily, "Why was Felix so?"

Then her father struck her for the first and last time, and cried, "G.o.d punish you for your hard heart!"

When the Baron had left her, and she began to almost hate Felix, angry at the injustice done her, he emerged from a dark corner, from which he had been forced to witness the scene, softly went up to her, and said, with his gentle sad smile, stretching out his hand hesitatingly to her, "Forgive him--he has not his head; he does not know any longer what he does; only think how he must feel."

Then she threw herself with pa.s.sionate violence into his arms. "He was right a hundred times," cried she, "only not in thinking that I do not love you, for I do love you, but I did not know how to show it to you."

From that day the relation between brother and sister was touchingly tender. Elsa was almost as antic.i.p.ating and unendingly tender in her attentions to Felix as her father himself.

The first week after Felix's arrival, Sempaly discreetly remained away from Traunberg. He also had taken part in the campaign, but a very trifling part, and described the battle of Sadowa with charming flippancy, while he added, "Pity that it turned out so badly." For the first week, then, he remained away from Traunberg. But then he appeared there again, and, in fact, with the good-natured intention of paying Felix a special visit. But scarcely had the latter heard the voice of his former comrade, when with dog and gun he crept softly out of the castle.

From then Sempaly came no more to Traunberg. Felix knew that formerly he had come two or three times a week, and asked Elsa about it. "You have surely begged him to come no longer, poor Elsa," said he, gazing deep into her eyes.

Her embarra.s.sment answered him.

He saw that for his sake Elsa must give up all society, and also noticed that she had caught his morbid shyness. Her future was at stake. Then, carefully concealing his reasons, he begged leave of his father to go to South America. With a heavy heart, and after much opposition, the old man let him go.

Felix did not return until he received the news of Elsa's marriage.

After the death of his father he left Europe a second time, and had really only returned home for a visit, when he met Linda.

Poor Felix! There he sat, his head resting on the table, all his thoughts in the past, when suddenly a little voice roused him from his dull brooding. Gery, whose little hand could not reach the doork.n.o.b, banged at the door outside, and screamed, "Papa! papa!" Felix rose and admitted him.

The child was crying, and his left cheek was red and swollen.

"Papa, mamma slapped me, and said she could not bear me," complained the little fellow.

"She struck you because you are the son of 'the certain Lanzberg,'"

murmured Felix with fearful bitterness. "Perhaps others will also make you do penance for that yet!"

XXV.

The gulf which malicious fortune and Elsa's overwrought nerves had opened between the two married people had not lessened, but on the contrary had daily become deeper, colder, and broader.

Erwin found no explanation for his wife's changed manner; after some time he ceased to seek one. His was no brooding nature, and had no time to become one. That Elsa could be jealous of Linda any more than of a pretty work of art or an amusing book which unsuitably claimed a great deal of his attention, Erwin had never understood.

"Poor Elsa, she is worried about Felix," he said to himself; "she will come to her senses again," and for several days he kept away from her, to give her time to calm herself. But three, four days pa.s.sed, and she still had the same pale face and stiff manner. Then he tried a different plan, and once when they chanced to be alone together--it happened very seldom--he laid his hand under her chin and began: "Well, mouse----"

But she did not lean her cheek against his hand as formerly when she was remorseful, neither did she resist his caress, as when she was refractory, but simply tolerated him as if she were a statue of stone or bronze. And she looked at him so coldly that all the loving words which he had in readiness faded from his memory and his hand sank down from her chin.

He turned away from her with impatience and irritation. It was not the first time that she had been unjust and capricious to him. Her only fault was an easily awakened irritability; but formerly her vexation had been of short duration, and her bad mood had soon dissolved into the most remorseful tenderness.

She had never begged his forgiveness after she had made a scene. Her proud obstinacy was not capable of that; she was not one of those sympathetic, dependent women who like to make little blunders so as to be able to coquet with their charming penitence. No! But an anxious, half-suppressed smile hesitated on her lips, when he returned to her several hours after the vexatious scene, and he could see by the book which she was reading, by the gown which she had put on, by the dinner which was ordered, how she had thought of him during his absence.