At this time life was for poor Felix only a heavy, oppressing burden.
He knew that Juanita was staying in Marienbad; knew that she had
married his father-in-law. He felt neither horror nor astonishment at
this step; nothing which she did would have astonished him, but he felt
oppressed by the sense of her nearness; a true superstitious fear of
the magic charm which her beauty had for him weighed upon him. His
recollections, his imagination, had been busy with the picture of her
which he still possessed--had invested it with the most refined charms.
For Felix, the only excuse for his inexcusable conduct, by which he had
ruined his life, lay in the demoniac fascination of the dancer.
Linda had written her father, before his marriage, an annihilating
letter, to which she had received no answer. She believed her father
angry, and therefore expected nothing less than a visit from him.
Felix, who thought her opinion sensible, nevertheless showed from time
to time a certain fear, and thereby excited the spirit of contradiction
in Linda.
"One can be glad that papa has done nothing worse," she remarked
once, indifferently. "It is not to be supposed that they will have
children--_et pour le reste_, such a marriage with a dancer has a
certain _cachet_. I shall make no advances to her, but if she comes I
must receive her!"
Felix shuddered and was silent.
Bitterly ashamed of himself, for a time he had tried to restrain his
thirst for liquor. But he could control himself no longer. When the old
remembrance began to burn in his heart like eating poison, he at first
tried hard to occupy himself. He read, but, unaccustomed to all mental
activity, a book scarcely chained his attention. He took long walks, he
was too uneasy to become tired; he rode, he was too good a horseman to
have any trouble with his horse.
His heart grew more and more heavy, and he drank--drank privately in
his room so as not to be surprised in an unreliable condition. He was
always temperate at table. No one saw him now with flabby lips and
tottering knees, and his friends did not notice that he was really
never quite sober now. His hands shook perpetually, there was a watery
look in his staring, hollow eyes. A slight bluish flush colored his
nostrils, and his voice was quavering.
Meanwhile Linda, careless and indifferent, fluttered around him,
bitterness in her heart, on her lips a charming smile and malicious
jests. A butterfly with a wasp's sting, Scirocco had called her, and
Pistasch repeated it to her. It had greatly pleased her.
At this time Pistasch came to Traunberg almost daily. Linda coquetted
with him, but her coquetry was vague and cold, and was neither
challenging nor encouraging. He made no progress, as he expressed
himself to Scirocco. "She has no temperament and no heart," he
grumbled, and once he added, "Perhaps I am not the right one----"
"What do you mean?" replied Scirocco, impatiently, remembering the
suspicion which had been cast upon him. But Pistasch only answered
crossly, "Garzin!"
"Impossible!" replied Scirocco, unwillingly. Pistasch only shrugged his
shoulders, and when Sempaly began to consider the matter, he must admit
that Garzin went oftener than was necessary to Traunberg, that Linda
had quite a different glance and voice when she was with him from what
she had for others, that she made concessions to him which she granted
no one else, never wore again the most becoming toilets if he had once
condemned them, and did not sing the most piquant couplets if he
shrugged his shoulders over them, and, once on the slippery path of
distrust, Scirocco told himself also that the charming sisterly
confidence which Linda permitted herself with her brother-in-law was
scarcely in place in such a beautiful woman with such a young man.
He was angry with Garzin.
"He really does not think of wrong, but he should be careful--for----"
Like all people of his stamp, Scirocco, in affairs of passion, did not
believe in free will, but so much the more in the compelling influence
of opportunity.
"You have a new bracelet, Linda," said Felix one day, after dinner, to
his wife as she smoked a cigarette with him in the drawing-room.
"Do you like it?" said she, and held out her white arm to him. The
bracelet consisted of a thick gold chain to which a little coin was
fastened.
"Charming!" answered Felix, apparently indifferently. "Did you buy it
in Marienbad?"
"No; Kamenz gave it to me to-day--he owed me a philopena," replied
Linda.
"Hm!" Felix looked gloomy, but did not know exactly how to put his
vexation into words. He asked himself, "Have I the right to reprove my
wife?"
"Ah, the bracelet seems to please you less since you know where it
comes from," said Linda, smiling maliciously. "Poor Felix! Are you,
perhaps, jealous of this handsome, silly Pistasch? He is about as
dangerous to me as that dandy there," and she pointed to a dainty
Meissner figure in knee breeches and flowered vest, who with cocked hat
under his arm, smiled down from a bracket.
"Well, I certainly do not wish to disturb your little amusement,"
stammered Felix, "but you do not know how much gossip arises from
intercourse between a woman like you and a man like Pistasch, and if he
is really so indifferent to you--why--then--perhaps you might receive
him somewhat less frequently."
"Hm!" said Linda, thoughtfully. "However indifferent that porcelain
dandy yonder is to me, I have not the slightest inclination to throw
him out of the window." She blew a few whiffs of smoke up to the
ceiling.
"But there is no question of that," replied Felix, "only see him less
often----"
Linda would not let him finish.
"But do you not see, my dear Felix," said she, knocking the ashes from
her cigarette, "to the house of a woman like me, who--let us speak
plainly--really does not belong to his set, a man like Pistasch either
comes not at all or every day. I am of a sociable nature--I must
associate with some one, or else I should die of _ennui_. If no ladies
will come, then I will receive men."
"I cannot understand why you do not get on better with Elsa," remarked
Felix, uneasily.
"I was there recently; she has not returned my visit," said Linda. "I
cannot force her to come. I believe she is vexed with me because Erwin
amuses himself with me. Heaven knows our intercourse is of wholly an
innocent nature!"
The young woman rocked softly back and forth in her chair and laughed
to herself, striking the finger-tips of her loosely clasped hands
together.
"I do not doubt that for a moment, but you should have some
consideration for Elsa--she is nervous and sensitive."
"Ah! and I am to suit my behavior to her interesting nervous
condition," laughed Linda. "That is to say, I am to be intolerable to
Erwin. _Eh bien, non merci!_ He is the only man of my present
acquaintance of whom I think anything."
Felix was silent. Then without was heard a rustling and puffing as of a
heavy silk gown and an asthmatic person. A foreboding distressed Felix.
Linda half rose. "That is surely not----?" she murmured, but already
the servant had opened the door. "Baron and Baroness Harfink!" he
announced.
Very red-faced, even fatter than formerly, with confident bearing,
shining with happiness and perspiration, and with the air of a youthful
dandy, Linda's father approached his daughter.
Although she had thought that she remembered him very well, she is
still somewhat abashed at his astonishing appearance. Nevertheless she
makes the best of a bad game, and condescendingly offers him her cheek
to kiss. He kisses her loudly on the mouth.
"Ah, you look splendidly--no matter, you wrote me a foolish letter, but
the past shall be forgotten. Here I bring your new mamma to you. She
was good-hearted enough to pay you the first visit. You have certainly
heard of the Marchesa Carini."
"Also of Juanita," says Linda, giving the tips of her fingers to her
step-mother. "I am indescribably pleased to make the acquaintance of
such a great _coryphee_. I have never yet had the pleasure of seeing a
dancer except on the stage." The colossal insolence of her words is
lost upon Juanita, owing to her stupidity and deficient knowledge of
German, but the depreciation in tone and glance is perceptible to the
dancer. She feels helpless and irritated.
"Does Marienbad please you?" continues Linda, with the insolent
condescension which she has studied from the best examples.
"Very pretty," murmurs the Spaniard, twisting her handkerchief between
her hands. She speaks poor German. Linda is delighted with her
pronunciation, and does not take the trouble to speak French, for which
cosmopolitan language the dancer had forgotten her mother-tongue.
"If I remember rightly, I once had the pleasure of seeing you dance--it
was in '67, in Vienna--my first theatre evening."
"In Vienna?" said the dancer. "Oh! that was a small performance--that
was at first--later, when I travelled with my husband, the Marchese
Carini, _je n'ai jamais travaille_ except in St. Petersburg, Paris,
London and Baden-Baden."
"Ah!" says Linda; the conversation pauses.
Papa Harfink, leaning somewhat forward, his heels under his chair,
rests in a low arm-chair, and monotonously strokes his leg from the
knee upwards and back again.
And Felix? Pressed tightly into a dark corner, where the hope of being
forgotten and overlooked chains him, he stands motionless. As light
perspiration which does not cool, but rather burns, moistens his whole
body, the blood sings in his ears, his tongue cleaves to his teeth. He
has not self-possession enough to hear her, he has not the courage to
look at her; she floats before his mind, the most seductive siren, the
most bewitching woman that ever, trifling and playing with a man,
ruined his honor. He still dreads the disturbing might of her beauty.
Curiosity compels him to gaze at her; he looks and does not trust his
eyes. Where is the Juanita? Near his wife he sees a yellow, bloated
woman, prematurely old, tastelessly dressed, squeezed into a black
_moire antique_ gown, with folds under her round eyes, little
fan-shaped wrinkles on her temples, and black down about the corners of
her mouth. Common, fat, awkward, she sits there, a double chin resting
on her fat bosom, her hands clasped over a lace-edged handkerchief in
her lap! Felix cannot believe his eyes. That must be a mistake--that
cannot be Juanita! Then, beneath the hem of her gown, he sees a tiny
foot in a black satin shoe, and now he knows that this is Juanita!
He notices a light brown mole on her neck--it disgusts him, but then he
remembers how this mole had once pleased him, how often he had jokingly
kissed it! His cheeks burn--he has lost his last illusion--the whole
vulgarity of the temptress to whom he had yielded is pitilessly exposed
to him. Involuntarily he makes a movement. Papa Harfink discovers him.
"Ah, Felix," he cries, already somewhat out of temper, "are you hiding
from me? I should think," he adds, relying upon the power of his
millions, "that such a father-in-law as I is not to be despised."
Slowly Felix advances.
"My husband," says Linda to the dancer. But the latter's face has taken
on a prepossessing smile, and with the confidential expression which
appeals to old times, she says, "I know him already, _tout a fait un
ami_ from my _debutante_ period; is it not so?"
She gives him her hand.
The hand, only covered by a lace mitt, is flabby, and as Juanita, half
rising, presses this hand against the lips of Felix, who is bowing to
her, his face changes, plainly expresses disgust, and he lets the hand
fall unkissed.
Juanita trembles with rage. "Let us go," screams she--"let us go! Oh,
Sir Baron, you think that I am only a dancer--and--and----"
Speech fails her, she gasps for breath. "Let us go, let us go!" she
pants.
"My Chuchu! My beloved wife!" cries Mr. von Harfink, and not honoring
Felix and Linda with a word, he leads the Spaniard out of the room.
The carriage rolls away with the wedded pair. Scarcely has the door
closed behind the Harfinks when Linda bursts into loud, happy laughter.
Her husband's stiff manner, his way of ignoring her father, which,
under other circumstances, would another time have irritated her from
pure capriciousness, have this time chanced to delight her. "You are
unique, Felix, wholly unique!" she cries to him. "You were so
deliciously arrogant! But what is the matter with you? Are you ill?
_Tiens!_ Juanita is your great secret! Poor boy!" She taps him on the
shoulder, she laughs yet. "What a disappointment, eh! But what is the
matter? No, listen; it is humiliating for me that the meeting with this
comedian has so robbed you of your self-control, Felix!"
His secret still has a charm for her, surrounds his poor bent form with
a romantic light. Something startling, shockingly horrible, she seeks
behind this, but not something dishonorable! With a teasing tenderness,
which she has never shown him since their honeymoon, she strokes his
cheeks, and begs, "Tell me what distresses you."
Then Felix's conscience torments him; he feels as if he would rather
die than keep his secret longer. For a moment he almost counts upon
mercy from this soft childish creature who has seated herself beside
him on the arm of his old-fashioned chair.
"Linda," he begins, "when I married you I did not know--that
you--suspected nothing of--of this matter. Your mother assured me that
she had told you of my past----" he hesitates.
"Oh, my mother spared my youth, and only made the vaguest allusions!"
He draws a deep breath. "A terrible story is connected with this
Spaniard,"--he hesitates--she looks closely and curiously at him; a
sudden idea occurs to her: "You shot a friend in a duel on her
account?" she cries, and then, as she sees him start but shake his
head, she says softly, with indistinct articulation and hollow voice,
"Or--or not in a duel--from jealousy?"
He lowers his head--he cannot speak--then slowly rising he totters out
of the room. She remains alone--staring before her--her heart beats
loudly--then she was right! All his enigmatical behavior is explained;
she now even understands her fellow men, and strangely enough, she
almost pardons him.
Felix, beside himself with jealousy, thirsting for revenge, plunging a
knife into the breast of his friend--the scene has something dazzling,
something which compels her sympathy. She pictures the scene to
herself; the luxurious apartment of the dancer--the two men, both
deathly pale--she has seen something similar in the Porte St. Martin
theatre. A peculiar excitement overpowers her corrupted nature,
thirsting for strong stimulants. She loves Felix!
Two minutes later she knocks at his locked door. "Let me in, me, your
wife, who wishes to console you!"
Felix does not open the door.