Part 3

Ten minutes later, before the ambitious singer, Raimund, reaches home, Linda was in the house.

She stood on the balcony of the "Emperor of China," between dead-looking oleander trees which exhale a tiresome odor of bitter almonds: she stands there, her arms resting on the balustrade when Raimund and his donkey emerge from the shadows of the street. His red cap pushed back, his face shining as if freshly shaven, with glance directed upward in terror he comes along, the picture of bankrupt responsibility on a donkey.

A gay laugh greets him.

"Linda, where are you?"

"Here."

"Here! I have been looking for you for an hour," says he, scarcely believing his eyes.

"Where? In the sky apparently--I have not been there, and have no wish to go. Do not stare at me so, please, as if I were my own ghost. Come up here, I have such a lovely secret."

With that she withdraws from the balcony, but the secret with which she has enticed him she does not tell him when he comes up.

"To-morrow, to-morrow," says she, clapping her hands, leaning far back in an old-fashioned arm-chair.

Raimund cannot get a word from his pretty, capricious sister.

"Who brought you home then?" he asks finally.

"Ah! That is just it, ha-ha-ha!" answered she.

"Linda! You have met Lanzberg--he has declared himself!" cries Raimund, excitedly.

"Will you be silent?" replies she, laughing--triumphant.

Meanwhile her parents, who have been to the farewell performance of a famous Vienna artiste at the theatre, enter.

"Hush!" cries she with a decided gesture to her brother. "Good evening, papa and mamma!" without leaving her arm-chair. "I am frightfully fond of you, for, if you only knew of it, I am to-day, for the first time, glad to be in the world."

Papa Harfink smiles delightedly, Mamma Harfink asks, "What is it?" and all her cameos and mosaic bracelets rattle with excitement.

"She----" begins Raimund.

"Hush, I tell you!" cries Linda, then laying her arms on the old-fashioned arms of the easy-chair, her head thrown teasingly back, she asks: "Is Baron Lanzberg a good _partie_?"

"His affairs are very well arranged. I saw in the country register. He has scarcely any debts," says Papa Harfink.

"And he is of the good old nobility, is he not?" asks Linda.

"Did not his father receive a tip in the form of an iron crown from some tottering ministry?"

"The Lanzbergs descend from the twelfth century," says mamma. "They are the younger line of the Counts Lanzberg, who are now known as the Counts Dey."

"Oh! and what was his mother's maiden name?" Linda continues her examination.

"She was a Countess Boehl."

"Why does he associate so little with people, and is so sad?--because of his past?"

Linda's eyes sparkle and shine, and capricious little dimples play about the corners of her mouth.

"What do you know of his past?" bursts out mamma.

"Oh, nothing; but I should so like to know something about it--it is not proper, eh?"

"He had at one time a _liaison_, hm--hm--was deceived"--murmurs Mrs. Harfink--"never got over it."

"Ah!--but it seems so--for--in a word, if all does not deceive me, he will come to-morrow to ask for my hand."

Without leaving her arm-chair, her little feet dance a merry polka of triumph on the floor.

"And do you love him?"

"I?"--Linda opens her eyes wide--"naturally; he is the first man with a faultless profile and good manners whom I have met--since Laure de Lonsigny's father!"

Old Harfink, wholly absorbed in gazing at his tongue in a hand-glass, has not heard the bold malice of his daughter. Raimund, on the contrary, says emphatically, "I find your delight at marrying a nobleman highly repulsive," and leaves the room.

And Felix? He does not undress that night. Motionless his face buried in the pillows, he lies on his bed and still fights a long-lost battle.

The air is heavy with the fragrance of linden blossoms and the approaching thunder-storm. A massive wall of clouds towers above the horizon like a barrier between heaven and earth.

V.

Susanna Blecheisen, now Mrs. Harfink, usually called Madame von Harfink, was a famous blue-stocking. As a young girl she was interested in natural sciences, studied medicine, complained of the oppression of the female sex, and wrote articles on the emancipation of woman, in which with great boldness she described marriage as an antiquated and immoral institution.

In spite of the energetic independence of her character, in her twenty-eighth year she succumbed to the magnetic attraction of a red-cheeked clerk in her father's office, and generously sacrificed for him her scorn of manly prejudice and ecclesiastical sacraments--she married him.

Hereupon she moved with her husband to Vienna, and soon enjoyed a certain fame there on account of her fine German, and because she subscribed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and had once sat beside Humboldt at a dinner, perhaps also because her husband was a very wealthy manufacturer.

Soon convinced of the inferior intellect of this man, she did not give herself up to cowardly despair at this discovery, but did her best to educate him. She patiently read to him works on capital, during which he incessantly rattled the money in his pockets, as if he would say, How does the theoretical analysis of capital concern a practical man, as long as he relies solely upon the actual substance? This rubbish furnished occupation for poor wretches, he thought to himself, which opinion he finally announced to his wife. But when she told him that Carl Marx and Lassalle were both very wealthy men, he listened to her dissertations with considerably heightened respect. From political economy, which she treated as a light recreation, fitted to his case, she led him into the gloomy regions of German metaphysics, and plunged him confusedly into the most dangerous abysses of misused logic.

He listened calmly, without astonishment, without complaining, with the lofty conviction that to cultivate one's self, as every kind of tasty idleness, was a very noble occupation, and, like many more clever people, he made a rule of despising everything which he did not understand. Instead of any other comment, during his wife's readings he merely rubbed his hands pleasantly, and murmured as long as he was not asleep, titteringly, "This confusion, this confusion."

Yet, however Mrs. Susanna strove, his mental wings did not strengthen, and his digestion remained the most absorbing interest of his life. He always fell back again into his insignificant commonness, like a dog whom one wishes to train to walk upon two legs, but who always falls back upon four again. At an aesthetic tea, for which his wife had most conscientiously prepared him, most generously lent him her intelligence, she heard him, in the midst of a conversation upon Schopenhauer and Leopardi, say to his neighbor: "Have you a weakness for pickles, ma'am? I have a great weakness for pickles, but--he-he-he!--I--it is really very unusual--I always feel such a disagreeable prickling in my nose when I eat anything sour."

With years, Susanna somewhat neglected the difficult education of this hopeless specimen, and transferred her pedagogic capabilities to the bringing up of her son, of whom she tried to make a genius.

She designed him for jurisprudence. He, however, devoted himself to song. Instead of poring over law books in consideration of his examination, he passed two-thirds of his time at the piano, diligently trying to attain the summit of his ambition, high C, while he did not fail to twist himself into the original contortions which on such occasions all particularly ambitious but faulty voices find so effectual.

With Linda, mamma Harfink from the first could do nothing, and in consequence she sent her to a Swiss pension. There she learned, besides a little French and piano thumping, to carry her head very high, learned to go into nervous spasms over creaking boots--in a word, she acquired the refined delicacy of feeling of the "princess with the pea."

What torture when upon her return home she lay upon not a single pea, alleviated by comfortable mattresses, but upon a whole sack of undisguised peas! Her home was frightful to her. The unrestrained, coarse admiration which the young men of her circle offered her seemed unbearable to her. Discontented, weary of life, without an aim that was not bound up in vanity, she vegetated from one day to another; in desperate moments thought of going on the stage, or perpetrating some outrageous act to make herself notorious.

The only consolation of this desolate time was the intercourse with her cousin, Eugene von Rhoeden, who had been educated in the Theresanium, had learned to turn up his nose more frequently and with more fine distinction than she herself, but to her misery, had his brand new title of Freiherr, and a couple of intimate friends of very old family beside. A passionate enemy of his relatives, he had greeted her enthusiastically with the words, "_Sapperment_, you are wholly different from your family, Linda!"

"Do not call me Linda, that sounds so operatic," she had answered him. "My friends always called me Linn!"

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 noble 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 competition 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 Muehle strasse, 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 glasses, 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 circumstances 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 circumstances"? 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 hoarse 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 passed. 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 principal 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 participate 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.

"That may all be true," cried Felix, almost violently, "but nevertheless I cannot expect this philosophical consideration from a young girl. Oh, my dear madam, do you not deceive yourself?"

From without sounded the gay click of high heels. Linda had returned sooner than her mamma had expected. The blood rushed to her face, she trembled so with excitement that, thanks to her cameos, she rattled like a rickety weather-vane in a storm. "Linda pardons you everything," cried she, hastily. "Linda loves you, she only begs you one thing, that you will never speak to her of your past. That would be too painful for her!"

The door opened. Linda entered, her hair in charming disorder, and her large straw hat carelessly pushed back from her forehead. When she perceived Felix she started slightly and joyously, then she rested her large eyes, radiant with happiness, upon him.

"_A tantot_, you dear people," cried Mrs. Harfink, and, gracefully waving her hand, this courageous and philanthropic liar left the room.

For a few seconds there was utter silence. Linda gazed in astonishment at Felix, who stood there deathly pale and motionless, his hand resting on the corner of the table. That the charm of her person so confused him flattered her, it seemed to her interesting and romantic to cause such deep heart wounds, still his manner remained enigmatical to her. She tapped her foot in pretty impatience and coughed slightly.

Then he looked up, his eyes full of pleading tenderness and dread. "Linda, will you really consecrate your young, blooming life to me?--me--a broken man who----" He paused.

The situation became more dramatic, and pleased her better and better. She came close up to him.

"If you ever permit yourself, in the presence of your betrothed, to remember your past, and look so sad, I will run away, do you hear, and will never know anything more of you." Her voice sounded so gentle, so sweet, her warm little hand lay so coaxingly and confidingly on his arm.

"Poor Felix!" murmured she, looking up at him tenderly. He closed his eyes, blinded with tears and happiness, then he took her violently in his arms, and kissed her. Her hat slipped from her head and fell to the floor. She laughed at it very charmingly. He released her in order to look at her better. He was happy--he had forgotten. He drew a ring from his finger. "It was my mother's engagement ring," he whispered, and placed it on her finger. Then it proved that the ring was almost too small for her. "What slender fingers you must have!" cried she, and gazed with pride at his slender, aristocratic hand.

Then there was a knock at the door. "Ah!" cried Linda, with a displeasure which her _fiance_ found bewitching.

Eugene von Rhoeden entered, a bouquet of white flowers in his hand. "Gardenias, Lin! Gardenias!" he cried, triumphantly. "What do you say to this progress of Marienbad civilization? Ah, Baron--excuse me--I really had not----" He glances from one to the other, sees the diamond ring sparkling on Linda's hand. "What a magnificent ring you have, Lin!"

"A present," replies Linda, with a pretty gesture toward Felix. "May one accept gardenias from a relative?" she asks him, coaxingly--and takes one from the bouquet to place in his buttonhole.

"Ah!" cries Eugene, suddenly changing an acid expression into a polite smile. "May I congratulate you, or will my congratulations not be received?"

Felix gives him his hand with emotion. "Congratulate me, congratulate me," he murmurs.

"I do not know which of you is more to be congratulated," says Eugene, with tact and feeling.

In the adjoining room is heard a selection from the Huguenots, which breaks off in the middle, then a great, terrible howl, whereupon the improvised Rarol, red as his cravat, bursts in and cries, "Did you hear, Linda? That was C."

"Unfortunately," says she, laughing.

Raimund starts back. As he notices guests, he cries, "I will not disturb----" and vanishes.

"And I also will not disturb you," says Rhoeden, with indescribably loving accent. "Adieu!" and kissing Linda's hand, whereupon he says to Felix, "Your betrothed, my cousin," he disappears.

VII.

The music-stand in Franzensbad is torn down, the whining potpourries have ceased, the park is deserted, legions of dry leaves whirl on the sand, and exchange cutting remarks with the autumn wind upon the perpetual change of every earthly thing, which short-sighted humanity calls transitoriness.

It is the 18th of October, the "certain Baron Lanzberg's" wedding-day. The week of torture in which he could not resolve to tell the severe Elsa of his betrothal is past, and when he at length resolved upon it, he received only a sad glance and a silent shrug of the shoulders as answer from her--past are the happy hours of the betrothal time--almost past.