Read Ebook: Felix Lanzberg's Expiation by Schubin Ossip Lathrop Elise Translator

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Ebook has 672 lines and 36102 words, and 14 pages

"Sunday?" repeats Linda, letting her fingers wander absently in dreamy preluding over the keys.

"Have you planned anything else?" asked Erwin, who had meanwhile taken a very comfortable chair.

"What should I have planned?" asked she, shrugging her pretty shoulders. "No, no, I will come gladly. You are very good to me, Erwin, and I am inexpressibly thankful to you."

A strangely exaggerated feeling was in her accent, in her moist glance, and the quick gesture with which she stretched out both hands to him.

"Where is Felix?" he asked, turning the conversation.

"Felix is, I believe, over in Lanzberg," she answered. "He has 'something to attend to.' He always has 'something to attend to' when I expect people," she added, bitterly. "It makes my position so uncommonly easy, Erwin! Can you account for his behavior? Would you, if you had once resolved to choose a wife of unequal birth, afterward be so passionately ashamed of her as Felix is?"

"How can you talk so foolishly, Linda?" Erwin interrupted the young wife, uneasily.

"Foolishly!" Linda shook her head with discouragement. "If you only saw him! Lately he made a scene before I could be permitted to accept the Deys' invitation; then, at the last moment, he had a headache, and expressed the wish that I should join Elsa and go without him."

"Strange idea to hang this monster in your pretty rococo nest!" cried Erwin, growing more and more embarrassed, and abruptly changing the conversation from Felix to the Rembrandt negress.

"You expect Pistasch and Sempaly, do you not?"

"They wished to come this evening--alas--I could renounce their society; to-day I should like greatly to confide in you, Erwin. You are the only person who is sorry for me."

There was a pause in the conversation of the two. Without, a murmur like a sigh of love sounds through the trees, and a few withered rose-leaves are blown into the room. Erwin's glance rests dreamily upon the young woman. She pleases him in somewhat the same manner as the Greuze head on the wall; no, differently--there is always something dead about a picture. A picture is either a recollection preserved in colors or a dream, and has the charm of a recollection, of a dream; while Linda has the charm of a foreboding, of a riddle, and above all things, the charm of life, of full young life.

Then a carriage approaches. "Pistasch and Sempaly," cries Erwin, looking out of the window and seizing his hat. "On Sunday, eh, Linda?" says he in a tone of farewell.

"Now you run away from me just like Felix," cries she, pouting. "Please stay; it is so unpleasant for me to receive young people without a protector."

And he stays.

"You have come late; we have scarcely three-quarters of an hour of daylight left."

With these words, spoken in a very indifferent tone, Linda receives the young men. "Shall we set about it at once?" she continues.

The lawn-tennis court is in a broad flat meadow in the park. The ground is not yet dry from yesterday's rain, still the players are unwearied, Erwin, after a short time, as animated as the others. He competes vigorously with Pistasch, whose skill he soon surpasses, and enjoys the society of the two agreeable and to-day good-tempered young men, who are both old acquaintances of his.

Pistasch in old times he has pulled by the ear, paid his youthful debts, and on holidays taken him away from the Theresanium; with Scirocco, who is but little younger than Erwin himself, he has taken an Oriental trip, they were both overturned in the same drag, both raved over the same dancer, etc.

Merry reminiscences pass between the players almost as quickly as the tennis balls, and Linda encourages all these reminiscences most charmingly; her smile lends a new spice to the play and the conversation.

Erwin is of a much too lovable nature, is far too much occupied with the happiness of others and too little with his own, to think of what might have been if he had not, for love of Elsa, renounced the world.

He possesses a decided disinclination for the "if," always looks straight before him, never behind him. It does not even occur to him to-day, when he is vexed with Elsa, to complain of the serious monotony of his life, to philosophize, but he feels well, likes to amuse himself again, laughs frequently, and is not unsusceptible to the evident wish to please him which Linda shows. No objection can be found to her behavior to-day--it is animated without being loud, cordial without being coquettish.

The three-quarters of an hour are over, the daylight has become first pale, then gray, the balls have flown aimlessly, like plump night birds through the air; they have laughed, ridiculed the opposite side for their faults, finally lost several balls, and come to the conclusion that for the present nothing more can be done.

The players have now assembled for a light supper in the somewhat gloomy dining-room, from whose walls a few old portraits, gentlemen with huge wigs and large flowered brocade vests, ladies with wasp waists and immoderately high powdered coiffures, look down upon them. The light of the lamps is reflected in the crystal decanters, in which red and white wine sparkles; the flowers, a mixture of transparent ribbon-grass and wild roses, move softly in their vases in the middle of the table, trembling in the night air which streams in through the open windows. Beautiful fruit shines fresh and inviting, in silver dishes, and Linda presides, somewhat flushed, cordial and wonderfully pretty. No annoying servants disturb the pleasant little repast.

Pistasch behaves like the perfect gentleman which he is when he does not consider it his duty to be a perfect boor, or does not take pleasure in representing a perfect street Arab. He entertains the little circle by gay anecdotes, is attentive without impertinence to the hostess.

Scirocco, more serious in manner, nevertheless laughs at his cousin's jokes, and often interposes a witty little remark.

Erwin is as gay as the two others, but from time to time, however, his conscience reminds him that this is not the place for him, and that it is time for him to return home. "But can I leave my young sister-in-law alone with the two men?" he calms his inconvenient conscience. "Impossible!" He must wait for Felix to return.

That Kamenz and Sempaly, well-bred as both are, and with no cause for importunity, would both leave as soon as he should start, he does not tell himself.

Then a carriage rolls up to the castle. Linda rises to go to the window. "Felix!" she cries in her clear, childish voice. No answer follows. Her eyes become gloomy, she listens, evidently listens to see whether he will go to his room without appearing to his guests. Then a dragging, stumbling step is heard in the corridor. "Felix!" cries Linda, excitedly and imperiously.

The door opens, Felix enters, he stumbles into the dining-room, his face is red and swollen, his eyes have a watery look, his knees bend at every step, and a repulsive flabbiness is betrayed in his whole form.

"You have guests?" he says, thickly.

"Sit down, you are not well," cries Erwin, seizing the staggering man by the arm, and forcing him into a chair.

A pause ensues. The little company seem paralyzed with alarm and disgust. Then Sempaly rises. "We thank you for a very pleasant evening, Baroness," he turns politely to Linda, and he and his cousin withdraw.

Linda is as white as the table-cloth. "Come, Felix, lie down," says Erwin to his brother-in-law, whose condition he does not wish to expose to the impertinent curiosity of servile lackeys.

"A cigar," murmurs Felix, excusing himself like all drunkards.

"Come;" Erwin urges him more sharply. Felix is about to make some reply, when he discovers his wife, turns his head away, and trembling throughout his entire frame, lets himself be taken to his room without resistance.

When Erwin returns to the dining-room to bid farewell to Linda, he finds her still deathly pale, with gloomy eyes, sitting in the same place.

At his first kind word she has burst into tears. "It is not the first time," she replies, with difficulty restraining her tears. "Ah! if it--if it was only because the wine went to his head or--but no--a year ago he was the most temperate man in the world--it began in London. It cannot all be my fault. What is the matter with him? My God! What is concealed from me?"

A new light dawns upon Erwin's mind; Linda's lack of tact is excused; a boundless pity overcomes him.

At a violent motion of her pretty head her hair has become loosened and now hangs in silken splendor over her shoulders.

"Calm yourself, fasten up your hair, be prudent, my poor little sister-in-law!" says Erwin. Softly and involuntarily, as one would do to a child, he strokes the hair back from her temples.

She tries to fasten it up, but suddenly she lets her arms sink, and looking directly at Erwin out of moist but not disfigured eyes, she whispers, "I cannot reach so high, and do not wish to be seen thus by my maid--it would be strange."

"Can I help you?"

She nods. Simply, but without undue haste or uneasiness, he twists the beautiful hair, fastens it firmly as one who is accustomed to perform such services. She keeps her head covered, breathes regularly, deeply, audibly--accidentally he touches her little glowing ear, then she starts. A clock strikes. "Half past ten!" cries Erwin, startled. "Good night, Baroness; poor Elsa will not know how to explain my absence," and he rushes out.

"Your horse must be saddled," says Linda, but he does not return--a few minutes later she hears him galloping rapidly away. "When he thinks of his wife he always calls me Baroness," she murmurs to herself with a peculiar smile.

An hour later Erwin knocks at his wife's door. "Who is it?" an indifferent, sleepy voice asks from within.

"Ah, you, Erwin!" Elsa unlocks the door, and comes out in the corridor, where only a single lamp breaks the darkness.

"Have you anything particular to ask me?" says she, and her feverish sparkling eyes contradict the indifferent voice.

"Nothing," he whispers, softly. "I merely could not resolve to retire without having bid you good night; I felt that you must be still awake. Do you insist upon receiving me in the corridor?" he asks, smilingly, as she has closed the door behind her.

"The baby is asleep," replies Elsa, coldly, rubbing her eyes with ostentation.

"My voice will not wake her," he says, softly, taking Elsa's hand. "Elsa, my dear pouting Elsa, forgive me," he whispers. "I had no right to be angry and run away, merely because you were intolerable. It has been a horrid day, let it at least have a good ending!"

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