"Elsa, dear Elsa, this is lovely in you! What an surprise! I only know
you from my husband's accounts, and from my wedding-day, but I shall
love you frightfully, that I feel already."
Crying out these words, Linda had jumped out of the carriage with which
Felix had met her at the railway station, and greeted Elsa, who, at her
brother's wish, had come to Traunberg to welcome the young wife to her
new home. Then leaving Elsa, Linda let her eyes wander over the facade
of the castle. "_Charmant! magnifique!_" she cried. "A portal like a
church, gray walls, cracked window-sills, balconies and volutings,
small-paned old cloister windows! I am charmed, Felix--charmed! _C'est
tout a fait seigneurial!_ If you knew, Elsa, how tired I am of modern
villas, stucco and plate glass. Ah, you poor, little creature! I had
half forgotten you;" with this Linda bends down to her son, who had
first stamped his little feet with joy and excitement at his mother's
arrival, but then, ever more and more abashed by the flow of words
which had carelessly been uttered over his head, with his finger in his
mouth, now seemed to take a mournful pleasure in crying.
"Have all children a habit of sticking their fingers in their mouths,
or is it an invention of my young hopeful?" asks Linda, after she has
hastily kissed and caressed the child. "He will be pretty, the little
brat. It is a pity that his hair will not grow. When he had typhoid
fever or measles--what was it, Felix?"
"Scarlet fever," he replied, tenderly raising the tiny man in his arms.
"Oh, yes, scarlet fever; we had to cut his hair, and since then it has
never grown long."
"I think you can be satisfied with him as he is," says Elsa, looking
approvingly at the handsome child.
"Yes, he is a nice little thing," admits Linda; "he has splendid eyes,
the true Lanzberg eyes. Oh, I am so glad that he resembles Felix."
"Well, his beauty would not have suffered if he had resembled you,"
replies Elsa, with an admiring glance at her sister-in-law.
Linda's physique has developed splendidly. The discontented expression
which formerly disfigured her face has vanished, has given place to a
bewitching smile and brilliant glance. Negligence and grace are united
in her carriage. She displays the gayety and cordiality of a person who
is satisfied with herself. Laying her arm caressingly around Elsa's
waist, she whispers: "So you really do not find me too homely for a
Lanzberg; one would not guess from my looks where I come from, eh?"
"Where you come from?--from the world of society--that certainly," says
Elsa.
"Bah! From an iron foundry!" cries Linda, laughing.
Elsa glances once more at the picturesque distinction of the slender
figure near her.
"No," says she, decidedly.
Indeed Linda does not look like the daughter of a self-made
manufacturer; rather like a Parisian actress with a talent for
aristocratic roles.
"And now you must show me everything in my new domain, Elsa,
everything," cries the young woman, and Elsa says, "Are you not tired,
will you not first have a cup of tea?" Then Linda says animatedly, "No,
no, I must first see everything, everything!"
Felix has disappeared with his little darling. Elsa leads her
sister-in-law through the rooms of the ground floor and first story,
shows her the elegantly furnished rooms which Elsa has herself helped
arrange for her.
"Oh, you poor Elsa, how you have tormented yourself for me!" cries
Linda, and finds everything splendid and charming, with the affability
of a newly married queen who, entering her kingdom, wishes to make
herself popular.
"There! I will reserve the attic rooms. I begin to feel the dust of
travel. It is now much too late to take tea; as soon as I have changed
my clothes, I will join you in the drawing-room. I do not yet know the
way to my room--oh, yes--that is the room for my maid---_parfait,
parfait--au revoir_, my dear heart!" And before she leaves her, Linda
presses another kiss upon Elsa's cheek.
On her way to the drawing-room, Elsa heard a little voice prattling and
laughing behind one of the tall doors which open on the corridor. "May
I come in?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she entered
the room where Felix, his child on his knee, sat in an arm-chair and
held a sugar-plum high in the air, while the child climbed up on him,
half laughing, half vexed at his vain attempt to overcome his father's
teasing resistance. Both were so absorbed in their occupation that they
did not notice Elsa's entrance. She gazed at the pretty group with
emotion--the gray-haired man, the blond child, until finally Felix
surrendered the sugar-plum, and the child ate it with a very important
air, smacking his lips, and with contortions of the face by which he
seemed to show the ambitious desire of resembling as much as possible
his little friend the monkey in the London Zoo.
Then Elsa laid her hand lovingly on her brother's shoulder. "Oh, how
you play with the child," said she.
He raised his face to her, the pale face with the sunken eyes and
hollow cheeks, in which everything was old but pain, which appeared
fresh and young every morning, and said hastily: "I must love him
doubly now. Who knows whether later he will have anything to do with
me?"