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.