Part 15

How good he had formerly been, how loving! The loveliest moments of her married life came to her mind with the sad charm of the irrevocably lost. On she tottered, in her wide-open eyes the wild look which seeks nothing more, which looks away from everything, the look of a being who has seen happiness die. "I was happy," she murmured to herself with unspeakable bitterness.

But soon the poisonous breath of doubt tainted the happiness which had been also. How did she know how false it might have been, whether she had not merely been "considerately deceived"?

Then it seems as if a frost falls upon her loveliest recollections, even upon those which until now she has treasured in the most secret corner of her heart. The past is desecrated--she has nothing more.

She does not think of her children--in this moments he has forgotten that she has children.

Slowly she drags herself through the wood, the same path which she had taken with Erwin before. Over her head the trees sing in melancholy peace their old song. Elsa can scarcely proceed; now the wood lies behind her, before her the dew on the meadow sparkles in the gray twilight, the colors are all dead--she shudders--here is the spot where he had carried her over that evening when for the first time she had been apprehensive for her happiness. Here he had put his arms round her and clasped her tightly to him and called her his treasure. She trembles in her whole body, then she gives a short gasping cry and sinks to the ground. She sobs, she has forgotten everything, she exists only in the feeling of weeping, of wishing convulsively to throw off a weight which oppresses her chest, and behind her the primeval forest still sings its melancholy peaceful song.

How long she lies there she does not know; she does not notice either that the gray evening darkens to black night, does not notice that the dew falls heavier and heavier, that its cool dampness steals through her light gown to her weakened frame.

XXVI.

While Elsa lay so despairingly at the edge of the forest, two riders came slowly towards Steinbach--Sempaly and Erwin. They returned from a farm at some distance from, but belonging to Steinbach, which together with a part of the adjacent village had been burned this afternoon.

Before them the castle of Steinbach, with its windows shining peacefully in the moonlight, between the shady trees; around them sweet fragrance and peaceful stillness; behind them a village, for the greater part in ashes, deserted ruins blackened with soot, as if clad in deepest mourning, animated by a few bent figures which could no longer speak from pain and fright, yes, could scarcely even complain more, and anxiously, with trembling hands, sought in the soaked heaps of ashes, in which fire still smouldered, for some pitiful remnant of their annihilated possessions. They rode through the park gate, their clothes were drenched and smelled of smoke and soot.

When Sempaly heard of the breaking out of the fire, he had ridden from Iwanow to Billwitz, and had then joined Erwin honestly in the wildest confusion of the fire, and now accompanied him home.

They only seldom exchanged a word. They were both weary from the help they had rendered, and saddened by the thought of how little they had been able to help. When they reached the castle, Sempaly was about to turn off towards Iwanow, but Erwin held him back. "Take tea with us, Rudi," said he.

"In these clothes?" replied Sempaly, glancing at his soiled clothes; then he added, "Well, Snowdrop will be considerate," and dismounted.

He had really from the first intended to remain at Steinbach, and looked forward to relating to Elsa, while fresh, all the little heroic deeds by which Erwin had distinguished himself during the fire. He felt a kind of indebtedness to Erwin on account of the hateful suspicion which for a moment he had cherished against him, and which to-day, when he once more thoroughly recognized Erwin's nobility, seemed to him foolish and inexcusable.

Erwin asked for his wife; the servant informed him that she was not yet back from Traunberg.

"Has a second message come from Traunberg?" asked Erwin, surprised.

The valet glanced at the servant. "No!" It was certain that no second messenger came from Traunberg.

Erwin and Sempaly went out again in the black shadows of the mild August moonlight night. "What does she seek in Traunberg?" murmured Erwin, aloud, ponderingly.

"Did she know that you were at the fire?" asked Sempaly, with sudden inspiration.

"I think not. I expressly requested the servants not to tell her where I went," replied Erwin. "What in all the world did she go to Traunberg for?"

Then Scirocco looked at him peculiarly. "You," said he.

"Me?" Erwin did not yet comprehend the situation.

But Sempaly stamped his foot impatiently. "Are you stupid, Garzin?" cried he. "Do you not see what everybody sees, that your wife is consumed with jealousy of her sister-in-law?"

"My wife jealous of my sister-in-law? Sempaly--you----" Erwin had burst out very violently at first, now he was suddenly silent. He called to mind Elsa's strange manner of late, much that was enigmatical was explained. He did not understand that he had been so obtuse.

They had walked somewhat further into the park; then a low cry of pain vibrated through the painful stillness of the night. Erwin listened with beating heart. Once more it penetrated to him, somewhat louder. A cold shudder ran over him. He hurried toward the meadow from which the sound came. With sight sharpened by excitement he surveyed the gray dewy field. There at the edge of the wood he saw something white gleaming in the twilight, a misty spot which in the gloom he had almost taken for a thick cluster of immortelles. His anxiety drove him a few steps further. "Elsa!" cried he, and stretched his arms out to her.

Then she raised her head, and rested her large, feverish, shining eyes upon him. "I forgive you," cried she with failing voice, and starting back from him. "I forgive you, but go--go--leave me."

His eyes met hers.

"You have nothing to forgive me," said he gravely, almost sternly. "But if you promise solemnly, very solemnly, to be very much ashamed of yourself I will forgive you."

She stared at him without understanding, confused, stupefied; then he took hold of her dress; he was frightened to feel how cold and wet it was.

"For God's sake!" cried he, violently, and with efficacious inconsiderateness, "before everything else see that you take off these wet things; there is time enough to speak of your mad freak later." With that he picked her up and carried her across, as he had done on the day of Linda's arrival.

She did not resist him. At first she did not even know what had happened to her; then, when near the castle, she suddenly heard a gentle voice, kindly and reprovingly, as one speaks to an imprudent child, "Why, Snowdrop!" she looked around; this sudden exclamation recalled her to reality, which had been far from her confused mind. "How comes Sempaly here?" she asked, hastily.

"We were at the fire in Billwitz together," said Erwin, without standing still. "He returned with me."

"Fire--Billwitz----" murmured Elsa, then she trembled violently and burst into a flood of tears of relief.

A little later Elsa lay in her pretty white bed feverish and hoarse, but with a light heart, and her soul full of a sweet mixture of remorse, happiness and shame. Erwin sat near her, and tried to be angry with her, and yet was only worried. But Scirocco had found that this was not the evening to take tea in Steinbach, and had gone away.

And while Elsa with touching conscientiousness now confessed all the particulars of her hideous mistrust and her obstinate jealousy, and upon Erwin's lips, at first closed sternly, a smile had become more and more plain, Linda sat in her boudoir with scornfully curved lips and angry, staring eyes, which thirsted for spite. She wore a white gown, whose hem was slightly soiled, only as if it had perhaps brushed the dew from a flowerbed. On her breast rested a bunch of dark red roses. Some of them were withered, and others began to fade, others still to fall, and the red petals strewed her gown. To her excited gaze they seemed like drops of blood. She shuddered at sight of them; she shuddered to-day at everything, even at herself. Her whole being rose against the huge wrong which had been done her--the wrong which forced her to be wicked. That there was another outlet for her she did not acknowledge; that it was beautiful to forgive, she did not understand; that one has duties even toward those who have sinned against one, she did not believe.

She railed against the system of the world, and her affairs in particular. The only man whom she had ever loved, so at least it seemed to her in her dramatic, gloomy excitement, this man had despised her.

After she had been enlightened as to Felix's past, she had immediately written that letter to Erwin which had caused so much painful confusion in Steinbach.

She had wished to sink into his compassionate arms, and had relied upon the demoniac charm of her beauty. She fancied that after the disgrace which she had suffered from, she had a right to sin. As answer to her note, she had received the following lines:

Dear Linda:

I am very sorry that, on account of urgent business, I cannot come to-day. I hope it is a question of nothing important.

E. Garzin.

She loved him, and he wrote to her in this tone! She grew crimson for perhaps the first time in her life when she read the lines--but not with shame, with anger.

Pistach came during her wildest excitement. He had won the game.

Now he had gone; she was alone again!

She buried her face in her hands; she sobbed convulsively. The roses on her breast fell one after the other, and the blood-red petals slid down to the soiled hem of her white gown.

The next day Linda and Count Kamenz had disappeared!

The whole country round about was horrified and dismayed at the affair; only one laughed in his sleeve: Eugene von Rhoeden. The last obstacle to his plans had been removed. Countess Elli blushed crimson when he took leave of Iwanow. He found opportunity to press a kiss upon her hand. A white handkerchief waved after him from one of the castle windows, as he drove in an open phaeton from Iwanow to the railway station.

XXVII.

By her fantastic walk from Traunberg to Steinbach, Elsa had brought on inflammation of the lungs. She convalesced so slowly that the physician whom Erwin consulted advised a long sojourn in the south. At first she could not resolve to leave her unhappy brother, and only went after he had promised to follow her as soon as possible to San Remo, where she would pass the winter with Erwin and the children.

She left in the middle of September. Felix did not keep his promise. "As soon as possible" was capable of such varied conceptions.

September, with its variegated foliage, and the long, tender farewell of the sunbeams vanished, and October came. The leaves withered, blood-red or pale-yellow they fell from the branches sadly and submissively, like all hopeless ones, and November followed October, and came in with an important bluster, like a lackey sent on before to make room for his master. He tore the last leaves from the branches, and sometimes tore away the branches with them, and he kissed the last roses dead and annihilated the unblossomed buds, covered the heavens with mournful clouds, blew so chill and poisonously in the face of the sun that he also sickened, and looked almost as pale as the moon.

And at length all was desolate, all ready--the earth strewn with dead leaves and withered flowers for the solemn reception of the new-comer. Coldly and gravely winter entered his kingdom, the bare trees shivered a last time, and crackled one more sigh, and all is still--dead! The angels in heaven shook their wings, thicker and thicker fell the white down.

January was long past and Felix still in Traunberg. After the last fearful blow which had fallen upon him he never rallied. Since Linda's flight he never left the park, seldom the castle, often scarcely left his room.

There were days on which he would not even allow his little son admission, and other days on which he would allow no servant to wait upon him, because it was unbearable for him to even meet the eyes of a servant. On all faces he thought he could discover mocking, criticising expressions.

When his overseers came to him to desire his signature or to ask his wishes concerning important business, with his hot, nervous hands he fumbled over the papers which were placed before him, read two or three lines, murmured something, and signed his name. The questions which were put to him he always answered with the same, "As you will," and then drummed impatiently upon the top of his writing-desk and glanced irritably at the door.

He neglected his attire, his beard grew long; he did not even care for cleanliness. Often for days he ate nothing, always very little; but, on the other hand, he was always thirsty, and--drank. But the strongest spirits had ceased to procure relief for him. He no longer forgot; never more!

He had a piano brought to his room, although he had almost never played before, and now strummed on it continually. Strange modulations sprang from beneath his stiff, unpractised fingers. He purposely sought the shrillest dissonances, which seemed to do him good. Again and again he struck the same piercing chord and never found a resolution for it.

He always began to play so as to drown the madrilena, which rang in his ears so often and so unbearably distinctly, and every time he ended by groping over the keys for the melody of this same madrilena. Each tone went through his heart like the stab of a dagger, his forehead was covered with sweat, and with a long sigh he closed the piano.

Intercourse with his child became of a strange nature. He indeed frequently overwhelmed the little one with passionate tenderness, but the games, the caressing teasing, which had formerly occupied them when together, and which had so delighted the boy, had ceased. Gery grew shy, pale and nervous. More and more often the fear of injuring the child by his presence crept over Felix.

Erwin, who came from San Remo once during the winter, in order, as he said, to look after the house, was frightened at the confusion which, as he soon noticed, existed in Felix's business matters, as well as the terrible change in his whole appearance.

Compassionately and kindly he urged his brother-in-law to accompany him to Italy, in order, as he had promised, to spend some time, together with Gery, with his sister.

But Felix trembled visibly when it was a question of his leaving Traunberg, and going to a place where he must meet other people, were it only in the most passing way. Erwin promised him perfect quiet and seclusion from all intercourse with strangers--in vain.

"Leave me," Felix repeated again and again; "leave me, I must be alone."

Erwin ceased his pleadings, discouraged. Elsa's health did not permit her stay in the south to be shortened, so that her presence might alleviate her brother's painful condition.

For one moment Erwin suspected a positive mental derangement in his brother-in-law, but soon convinced himself of the falsity of this opinion.

The balance of his accounts was correct; as soon as his attention was excited he decided correctly, never made a mistake in a reckoning, and made no disconnected remarks. Only, exhausted as he was, everything concerning present affairs irritated him indescribably. The train of his thought flowed always backward. His mind rested continually upon that spot in the past where his happiness lay buried with his honor.

He passed almost the whole of his time in living over again his life from the first meeting with Juanita to the signing of the fatal note. His memory, strangely faithful, and sharpened by practice, revived again and again new particulars of the Juanita period, with the distinctness of hallucinations.

On a mild, sunny April day Elsa appeared in Traunberg, restored to health, more beautiful than ever, and with eyes radiant with happiness. She was shocked when she perceived her brother; what she saw was so much worse than what Erwin had considerately prepared her for. But Felix's misery only increased the tenderness of her sympathy. She spoke of the tender, intimate intercourse which should now exist between the two families, and said that Baby was now large enough for a playmate for her cousin; and Baby who, chubby-cheeked and gay, with great laughing eyes and tiny mouth with a drolly serious expression, sat on her mamma's knee, stretched out her fat little arms and said, "Where Gery?"

Then the nurse--Gery's French _bonne_ had not been able to endure the winter solitude of Traunberg, and had long since left--brought the child. She had smoothed down his curly hair with a horrible, strong-smelling pomade, and had hidden his pretty little form in a heavy cloth costume, suitable for much older children. He looked pale, was awkward, and clung anxiously to his father. When he gradually lost his shyness through Elsa's soft voice and caressing manner, and approached her and answered her questions, she noticed that he had adopted the common broad accent of the nurse.

It did not escape Felix's morbidly sharpened glance, that behind the pleasant smile with which Elsa met the child, surprise and compassion were hidden.

"You probably find that he has changed for the worse?" he asked suddenly, gazing sharply at her. "What will you? Everything about me goes to ruin."

When Elsa, after urgently and most tenderly begging Felix and his boy to come soon to Steinbach, had driven away, Felix took his boy on his knees, and kissed him passionately, murmuring again and again, "Poor child, poor branded child!"

An unpleasant habit, common to most human beings living very much alone, he had adopted of late, that of talking to himself. The words which most frequently escaped him, which he probably repeated a dozen times, were, "The certain Lanzberg," and while he said that, his voice and his face expressed all the shades of bitterness, mockery and despair.

And one evening, three or four days after Elsa's visit, Gery crept shyly up to him, and laying his little hand anxiously upon his father's arm, he asked in his gentle, somewhat sad little voice, "What is that, 'the certain Lanzberg'?"

Felix started; he gave a long-piercing gaze into the innocent eyes of the child, then he pushed him violently away and hurried out of the room.

The same night Felix heard sobs outside his door, and as he opened it and looked out into the corridor, he discovered Gery, who stood there clad only in his little embroidered night-shirt, and barefoot.

"Papa, you did not say good-night to me. Papa, was I naughty?" sobbed the child, with the morbid nervous excitement which proved his solitary life.

Then Felix took him in his arms. It was a fresh spring night, and the child, who had stood for a long time outside, clad only in the thin night-shirt, shivered. Felix rubbed his little hands and feet warm. Then the nurse knocked at the door, seeking the child in anxious excitement.

But Gery would not hear of returning to the nursery. He clung to his father and pleaded, "Let me stay with you, papa." Then Felix sent the nurse away, and took him into his bed. The child fell asleep nestled tenderly against him, slept soundly and unbrokenly. Felix lay awake.

The opal-colored glow of the spring morning tinged the heavens, and Felix still was awake. He thought of old times, times which lay far back of the Juanita period; some jest over which he had laughed some twenty years ago occurred to him and pained him--he groaned; the child awoke; throwing his little arms around Felix's neck, he begged, coaxingly, "Dear papa, I sleep so well with you, let me always sleep with you." Then suddenly it flashed through Felix's mind, "Ah, if I could only die while he still loves me!" and suddenly the storm within him ceased--all became quiet within his heart, quiet as the grave.

XXVIII.

They passed the day happily together, Felix and his son. Felix bathed and dressed the child himself, with a thousand jests and little teasing ways. Gery had not seen his papa so gay for a long time, and rubbed against him again and again, like a young dog or kitten.

The sky was blue, the earth white with blossoms, the first butterflies floated around the bushes. After lunch Felix drove with the child to Steinbach for the first time, in spite of Elsa's warm invitation.

How warm and bright everything was in Steinbach. It almost seemed to him that there was a different sun there from Traunberg. Litzi received a holiday, so she could play with her little cousin to her heart's delight. Baby gave the little fellow her greatest treasure, a pot of ripe strawberries, which she had to clasp with both little arms when she carried it to him.

Felix remained to dinner; they overwhelmed him with attentions, but still at heart he felt that Erwin and Elsa would have been happier and less constrained without him, which they would not, indeed, have admitted.

As they did not wish to separate Felix from his boy during the meal, as a great exception they installed Baby in her high-chair at the table also, between Erwin and Litzi, an honor of which she proved herself wholly worthy, as she watched the others eating with great seriousness without desiring anything for herself. Only toward the end a little misfortune befell her: in a moment of extravagant tenderness, she tried to embrace her mother across the table, overturned a beer-glass, and showed herself so surprised and ashamed at this accident, that Erwin had to take her on his knee and console her. Felix felt plainly that Erwin's calm, playful good-nature to the child did not in the least remind one of the stormy immoderate caresses with which he overwhelmed his own son sometimes.

After dessert, while the children played in the garden under Miss Sidney's care, and Felix sat somewhat apart with Elsa on a garden bench and watched them, Felix started suddenly.

"What is the matter, Felix?" asked his sister, anxiously.

He could not explain himself; he had heard the child laugh, and it had occurred to him how seldom the little one laughed at home--almost never.

"Elsa," he asked after a while, "the child is growing very nervous and timid with me; will you do me the kindness to keep him with you for a while?"

"Certainly, I will gladly keep the child," replied Elsa, "only you must promise me to visit him every day."

Then Felix said, with a strange gaze, lost in the distance, and which she often later remembered, "Yes, I will visit him every day if I can."

A short time after he took leave of Gery, who at first would not remain without his father, but grew quiet when Felix promised to visit him the next morning.

The next morning!

The carriage rolled away, and several minutes later Felix returned once more.

"Have you forgotten something, Felix?" asked Erwin, who stood before the portal of the castle, talking in a low voice.

"Yes, my revolver," replied Felix, uneasily and absently.

When Erwin wished to go into the castle to help his brother-in-law find it, the latter held him back. "Oh, it is of no importance," he stammered. "I will get it--to-morrow. Where are the children?"

"There," said Elsa, and in the distance, between the feathery green foliage, he saw the children at their play. They flew about and shouted like little gnomes, Gery the merriest of them all.

"I will not disturb him," murmured Felix, after he had watched the children for a long time, without approaching them.

He went.

XXIX.