He totters to the Elbe, which separates him from his comrades; there is
no longer a bridge there; he does not trust his strength to swim
across. Ah! and even if he does drown in the bottom of the river, the
Prussians cannot find the flag, and he cares nothing for his life. He
flings himself into the stream, the waves plash around his ears:
"Honor!" The cold water strengthens him, and for the moment prevents
the pain in his arm. He reaches the opposite shore, he himself never
knew how.
He staggers on in his clothes, made heavy by the water. His mind
is not clear, only grasps the idea that he must go on. He stumbles
along--slowly--slowly; often he sinks down and lies still for a while,
then he suddenly springs up again, feels for the flag and totters on.
He does not know where he is, the Austrian camp lies before him--he
does not see it--then something red shines through the gray morning
light. Felix gathers up his strength; breathless, gasping, he drags
himself up to what he soon recognizes as an Austrian Uhlan picket.
He reaches the picket, he can no longer speak, hands the flag to an
officer, and falls to the ground.
The Uhlans--there were two or three officers among them--crowd around
him. When they see his lamentable condition they speak with pride of
the fidelity to his flag of this common soldier, and they say it aloud,
and Felix hears it and it does him good; it seems to him that the blot
upon his honor is washed away.
Then one of the officers bends over him, and suddenly starting, he
cries to the others, "That is certainly Lanzberg!"
"What do you say? 'The certain Lanzberg?'" ask they, hastily. They
thought Felix unconscious, but he was not.
The word, thoughtlessly spoken and not unkindly meant, goes to his
heart. From that moment he knew that there was no regeneration for his
honor.
He might level mountains and dam rivers, but the world in its
astonishment, in its admiration, would yet find no other name for him
than "the certain Lanzberg!"
He opened his large, mournful eyes. The officers were ill at ease, then
they all stretched out their hands to him and cried, "We admire you; we
envy you!"
But he only turned his head away from them with a groan.
His incomparable actions during the campaign had softened the harshest
of his social judges toward him. The emperor, by a proclamation, had
restored to him his forfeited social rights. His father awaited him
longingly, and begged him by letters to telegraph his arrival in
Traunberg, so that he could personally meet him at the railway station.
But Felix dreaded the idea of being received by his father, and
unannounced, in civilian clothes, he one day alighted in T----, the
nearest station to Traunberg, from a third-class compartment, which he
had taken so as to meet none of his acquaintances. He went on foot to
the castle. He felt a kind of shyness of every tree, every stone, which
formerly returning home after long absence, he had greeted joyously.
The quick trot of horses' hoofs smote his ear; looking up he saw Elsa
coming galloping along the park driveway toward him, at the side of his
old playmate, Sempaly. Anxiously he drew back among the trees, and the
two rushed past, and thought no more of the man in the plain gray coat.
Silently he crept up to the castle and to his father's room. No one met
him. Softly he opened the door. A thin, bowed, gray-haired man sat
reading in an arm-chair. Felix took a few hesitating steps forward, he
trembled throughout his entire frame. "Papa!" he stammered. One moment
more and the father had clasped him in his arms. Then the old man
pushed him back from him to see him more plainly. "My hero!" he cried.
Felix started nervously and gazed pleadingly at his father. "You have
grown gray, papa," he cried, as if startled.
"People grow old, my boy," replied the Baron, hastily smoothing his
whitened hair.
"Old at forty-nine?" murmured Felix.
A quarter of an hour later, as Felix sat beside his father, answering
his questions, Elsa entered. She had grown tall and slender. But that
was not the only change which Felix perceived in her: she had lost her
light, springing girlish step, her merry smile. A reserved sadness had
drawn harsh lines about her mouth, and a deep shade darkened her eyes.
At her entrance he had risen awkwardly, and she, not seeing him
distinctly, and taking him for some bailiff discussing business with
her father, bowed formally.
Her father glanced impatiently at her, then he cried, in irritation and
anger, "It is Felix; do you not recognize him?"
Elsa grew pale with excitement. "God greet you," said she, going
quickly up to him.
His trembling lips barely touched her forehead.
Now came a hard, hard time for Felix, made hardest of all by the
touching kindness of his father, who overwhelmed him with tender
attentions, had forgotten none of Felix's former fancies--surprised him
now with a splendid horse, now with a gun of a new, improved kind, or a
pointer dog with fabulous traits--in short, anticipated every wish
which Felix had formerly expressed. But Felix no longer wished for
anything but to hide himself, and this his father would not hear of.
He everywhere pushed his son forward; with the servants and overseer it
was always, "I am growing old, go to the young master."
And poor Felix, humiliated by the striking submission of the people,
confused and without an idea or opinion of his own, gave orders in a
shy, weak voice as modestly and reservedly as he could.
However urgently he begged his father to leave him in the protecting
shade of the background, the old man could not be induced to consent.
He pressed the keys of his safe upon Felix, gave him free disposal of
the largest sums of money. Painfully distrustful of all the rest of
humanity, especially of his servants, since his misfortune, the Baron
almost crushed his son by this ostentatious, conspicuous confidence.
One day he desired Felix to pay a visit with him in the neighborhood.
But this Felix opposed. Elsa supported his opposition. The old Baron
took that amiss in her. At that time Elsa was scarcely sixteen years
old. She suffered with the Lanzberg arrogance, as Felix had suffered
from it; she was hurt to the heart by Felix's deed. And yet she loved
her brother, and did not wish to let him feel how heavily his disgrace
weighed upon her. But she could find no natural tone in intercourse
with him.
He had been a kind of idol for her, who good-naturedly descended from
his pedestal to tease and caress his little sister. He had called her
Liesel and Mietzel, pulled her ear or kissed her hand, mystified her
with the strangest tales, gave her costly presents; then again, when
his friends or important pleasures came between them, for days wholly
ignored her insignificant existence.
But this time the idol had not descended from his pedestal; he had
fallen down, and had become a broken man. His former teasing courtesy
had changed into the shyest politeness. He never pulled her ears, and
never kissed her hand, never called her Liesel or Mietzel--his manners
had wholly lost their playful aplomb. He was now helpless and awkward,
sat at table like a poor sinner, ate little, never spoke a word, and,
rendered clumsy by embarrassment, soiled the table-cloth. He was so
boundlessly obliging and considerate that it made Elsa embarrassed. He
broke a refractory horse for her with the greatest patience, took care
of all her favorite flowers, accompanied her on her visits to the poor,
and never forgot to take with him a warm wrap for her.
He had really become a much better and lovable man than before, but the
world had no use for this goodness and lovability. Even Elsa did not
know how to value it. She was always constrained in intercourse with
him, because she was always thinking of being kind to him. The old
Baron gave her endless lectures concerning her behavior. Unweariedly
attentive and tender to Felix, toward his other fellow men he was
almost unbearably capricious, irritable and unjust, especially to Elsa.
Once he overwhelmed her for so long with imprudent reproaches for her
heartlessness and lack of tact, that at last she cried out defiantly
and refractorily, "Why was Felix so?"
Then her father struck her for the first and last time, and cried, "God
punish you for your hard heart!"
When the Baron had left her, and she began to almost hate Felix, angry
at the injustice done her, he emerged from a dark corner, from which he
had been forced to witness the scene, softly went up to her, and said,
with his gentle sad smile, stretching out his hand hesitatingly to her,
"Forgive him--he has not his head; he does not know any longer what he
does; only think how he must feel."
Then she threw herself with passionate violence into his arms. "He was
right a hundred times," cried she, "only not in thinking that I do not
love you, for I do love you, but I did not know how to show it to you."
From that day the relation between brother and sister was touchingly
tender. Elsa was almost as anticipating and unendingly tender in her
attentions to Felix as her father himself.
The first week after Felix's arrival, Sempaly discreetly remained away
from Traunberg. He also had taken part in the campaign, but a very
trifling part, and described the battle of Sadowa with charming
flippancy, while he added, "Pity that it turned out so badly." For the
first week, then, he remained away from Traunberg. But then he appeared
there again, and, in fact, with the good-natured intention of paying
Felix a special visit. But scarcely had the latter heard the voice of
his former comrade, when with dog and gun he crept softly out of the
castle.
From then Sempaly came no more to Traunberg. Felix knew that formerly
he had come two or three times a week, and asked Elsa about it. "You
have surely begged him to come no longer, poor Elsa," said he, gazing
deep into her eyes.
Her embarrassment answered him.
He saw that for his sake Elsa must give up all society, and also
noticed that she had caught his morbid shyness. Her future was at
stake. Then, carefully concealing his reasons, he begged leave of his
father to go to South America. With a heavy heart, and after much
opposition, the old man let him go.
Felix did not return until he received the news of Elsa's marriage.
After the death of his father he left Europe a second time, and had
really only returned home for a visit, when he met Linda.
Poor Felix! There he sat, his head resting on the table, all his
thoughts in the past, when suddenly a little voice roused him from his
dull brooding. Gery, whose little hand could not reach the doorknob,
banged at the door outside, and screamed, "Papa! papa!" Felix rose and
admitted him.
The child was crying, and his left cheek was red and swollen.
"Papa, mamma slapped me, and said she could not bear me," complained
the little fellow.
"She struck you because you are the son of 'the certain Lanzberg,'"
murmured Felix with fearful bitterness. "Perhaps others will also make
you do penance for that yet!"