Felix Lanzberg"s Expiation.
by Ossip Schubin.
I.
"My dear Falk, do not tear past me so unheedingly, I beg you! Do you, then, not recognize me?"
Thus a stout old lady cries in a deep rough voice to a gentleman whose arm she has energetically grasped with both hands.
The gentleman--his carriage betokens a retired officer; his wrinkles betray him to be a contemporary of the lady--starts back.
"Oh! it is you, Baroness!" cries he, and half recalls that forty years or so ago he was an admirer of hers, and remembers very distinctly that last winter he had quarrelled with her at whist on account of a revoke.
"I am indescribably pleased," he adds, with well-bred resignation, and at the same time glances after a pa.s.sing blonde chignon whose coquettish curls float to and fro as if they said "catch me!"
"Ah, ah! age does not protect you from folly!" laughs the old woman.
"She interests you, the person with the yellow hair, eh? Dyed, my dear man, dyed, I a.s.sure you. It is not worth the trouble to run after her.
Her back is pretty, _mais pour le reste!_ Hm! Sit down and talk to me for a little!"
The yellow chignon has vanished round a corner and the energetic old woman has drawn her ex-adorer down on a bench in the meagre shade of a watering-place promenade, upon a gra.s.s-green bench under gray-brown trees.
It is in Franzensbad in July; afternoon; around them the sleepy stillness of a place where there is nothing to do and one cannot amuse one"s self.
Some ladies, pale, sickly, dressed with the grotesque elegance which is permissible in a watering-place, pa.s.s, some with arms bare to the elbow, others with pearls round their necks, still others with floating hair.
"How glad I am, my dear Colonel!" cries the old Baroness to her captive, for at least the tenth time. "But how are you, pray tell me?
No! Where do you get your elixir of life? You remain so fabulously young!"
In fact the Colonel, closely shaven and dressed in the latest fashion, slender and active as he is, at a hundred paces looks like a young dandy; at twenty paces, at least like the mummy of one. Still he parries the old lady"s compliments, while he shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders disparagingly.
"Positively--positively!" croaks the old woman. "And now tell me what is the news with you people in Marienbad? It is not in vain that they call you "Le Figaro de Marienbad.""
Marienbad, a few hours distant from Franzensbad, is the present stopping place of the Colonel.
"News? News?" grumbles the Colonel. "A mill burned down yesterday, three head of cattle and two men with it."
"Oh, cease such ordinary, horrible stories. What does society?"
"Rejoices that it has opportunity of diversion through a fair for charity."
"So? Ah!--and what else?"
"Last night Princess Barenburg"s groom hung himself. Perhaps that interests you?"
"Ah, very agreeable that! Poor Clemence is unfortunate!" says the Baroness, compa.s.sionately.
"Yes, the Pancini also!" remarks the Colonel, and looks down indifferently at the flower in his b.u.t.tonhole.
"Why she?"
"What? you do not know!" cries the Colonel in astonishment. "Her last admirer, the Polish prince with the unp.r.o.nounceable name, has turned out to be a circus rider."
"The handsome blond with the mysterious political past."
"It seems to have been merely a politic silence," jokes the Colonel.
"_Tiens, tiens!_--how delightful--how delightful! But do you know it positively?" she asks with anxious excitement.
"Positively! Nicki Arenhain, two years ago in Madrid, saw him dressed in a green satin jacket and white tights springing through hoops--she identified him at once. Famous story, quite famous." The Colonel rubs his hands with satisfaction--the old Baroness knocks enthusiastically on the ground with her umbrella, like an animated amateur who applauds her favorite virtuoso.
"Excellent!" croaks she. "It serves her right, that Pancini, who permits herself to be as arrogant as a born lady. It serves her right, the soap-boiler"s daughter."
"Pardon! her father was a p.a.w.n-broker--or was in some banking business--I really do not remember----"
"It is all the same--she will have to step down now. Bravo! Bravo!"
"I know something else, Baroness," says the Colonel proudly, and smiling slyly. "A decided bit of news, _pour la bonne bouche_!"
"Well?"
"Felix Lanzberg is to be married."
The Baroness is speechless; she opens her mouth, stares at the Colonel, clutches his arm, and only after several seconds she stammers softly: "The--the--certain--Lanzberg?"
"Yes--it is considered certain."
"Whom?"
"Look around."
The Baroness looks around. In the back seat of a carriage just rolling past them sit two ladies, one of whom, a woman in the fifties, tastelessly dressed, loaded with cameos and Florentine mosaics, has the piercing eyes, the excessive thinness as well as the aimless, twitching movements of a very uneasy temperament, while her neighbor at the left, beautiful and young, lazily crumpling her striking toilet, leans back among the cushions, the embodiment of dissatisfied indolence. A student with a bright red cap occupies the small seat opposite. On the box, usurping the coachman"s raised seat, is a short individual with a crimson cravat between a blue shirt and purple face, a short, bright yellow foulard coat and large Panama hat. He smacks his lips incessantly at the horses, in driving holds his elbows far out from his sides so that one could easily place a travelling bag under each arm, and groans and puffs from exertion and attention. Near him, faultlessly erect, arms solemnly crossed on his chest, sits a majestic coachman, every feature expressing the despair of a distinguished servant who, in a weak hour, had let himself be persuaded to enter the service of an ordinary millionnaire.
"Who is this elegant gentleman?" asked the Baroness, raising her lorgnon, still wholly absorbed in contemplating the interesting foulard back.
"Felix Lanzberg"s future father-in-law, Mr. Harfink."
"He?" sighs the Baroness, emphatically. "Poor Felix! He does not deserve such punishment."
The Colonel shrugs his shoulders. "What punishment? He is not marrying the father, and the daughter is charming--a refined beauty, a truly aristocratic girl, and I do not believe that she will ever worry Lanzberg by especial clinging to her parental house. Now I must part from you, _nolens volens_, Baroness--regret it deeply--I have a letter to deliver to the Countess Dey."
"I will go with you, I will go with you," cries the old lady, animatedly. "Give me your arm and imagine it was forty years ago."
And he, in his quality of man of the world condemned to perpetual politeness, gives her his arm and walks on laughing and chatting, at the side of the colossally stout woman with the servile, nodding little head--a martyr of _bon ton_.
The Colonel and his friend were both fond of gossip--with the difference that the Colonel, an independent man, related scandal for his own pleasure, while the Baroness very often did so to please others. Her name was Baroness Klettenstein, but usually she was simply called _Klette_ (burr) because she could never be shaken off. She also had a second equally pretty nickname. In consequence of her indestructible life at the cost of others--she was remarkably robust for her sixty-six years--she had been christened the "immortal Cantharide." Hungrily she crept from one house to another, gained admission by a budget of malicious news, which, as we have seen, she collected indefatigably, at times even invented. She always rendered homage to the rising, never remembered even to have known the setting sun. And when, weary of her tiring parasitism, she rested in her tiny room at Prague, which was the only home she possessed, she swore that she would have been just as unselfish, just as truth-loving and discreet as others, if only her income had sufficed for her needs.