[1]A special way of wearing a coat affected in Viennese artistic circles.
[1]A special way of wearing a coat affected in Viennese artistic circles.
[2]A company celebrated for its risqué plays.
[2]A company celebrated for its risqué plays.
Frau Ehrenberg sat with her knitting on the green velvet sofa in the raised bow-window. Opposite her Else was reading a book. The white head of the marble Isis gleamed from out the far dark part of the room behind the piano, while a streak of light from the next room played through the open door over the grey carpet. Else looked up from her book through the window to the high tops of the trees in the Schwarzenberg Park which were waving in the autumn wind and said casually: "We might perhaps ring up George Wergenthin, to know if he's coming this evening."
Frau Ehrenberg let her knitting fall on her lap. "I don't know," she said. "You remember what a really charming condolence letter I wrote him and what a pressing invitation I gave him to come to Auhof. He didn't come and the coldness of his answer was quite marked. I wouldn't ring him up."
"One shouldn't treat him like other people," answered Else. "He belongs to the people whom one has occasionally to remind that one is still alive. When he has been reminded he is extremely glad."
Frau Ehrenberg went on with her knitting. "It really won't come to anything," she said quietly.
"It's not meant to come to anything," retorted Else. "I thought you knew that by this time, mamma. We're good friends, nothing more—and even that only at intervals; or do you really think that I'm in love with him, mamma? Yes, when I was a little girl I was, in Nice, when we played tennis together, but that is long past."
"Well—and Florence?"
"In Florence—I was more in love with Felician."
"And now?" asked Frau Ehrenberg slowly.
"Now ... you're probably thinking of Heinrich Bermann ... but you're making a mistake, mother."
"I prefer to be making a mistake. But this summer I really quite had the impression that——"
"I tell you," interrupted Else a little impatiently, "it isn't anything and never was anything. On one solitary occasion, when we went out boating on a sultry afternoon, you saw us from your balcony with your opera-glasses, no doubt—it was only then that it became a little dangerous. And even supposing we had fallen on each other's neck—which as a matter of fact we never did—it wouldn't have meant anything. It was simply a summer flirtation."
"And besides, he's supposed to be involved in a very serious love-affair," said Frau Ehrenberg.
"You mean ... with that actress, mamma?"
Frau Ehrenberg looked up. "Did he tell you anything about her?"
"Tell...? Not in so many words, but when we went for walks together in the park or went out in the evening on the lake, why, he practically spoke of nothing but her—of course without mentioning her name ... and the better he liked me—men really are such awfully funny people—the more jealous he became about the other woman.... But if it were only that? What young man isn't involved in a serious love affair? Do you think by any chance, mamma, that George Wergenthin is not?"
"In a serious one ... no, that will never happen to him. He's too cold, too superior for that ... he hasn't got enough temperament."
"That's exactly why," explained Else, airing her knowledge of human nature. "He'll slip into some whirlpool or other and get taken out of his depth without his having noticed it, and some fine day he'll get married ... out of sheer indolence ... to some person or other who'll probably be absolutely indifferent to him."
"You must have a definite suspicion," said Frau Ehrenberg.
"I have."
"Marianne?"
"Marianne! but that's been over a long time, mamma. And that was never anything particularly serious, either."
"Well, who is it then?"
"Well whom do you think, mamma?"
"I have no idea."
"It's Anna," said Else curtly.
"Which Anna?"
"Anna Rosner, of course."
"But...."
"You can say 'but' as much as you like—it's a fact."
"Else, you don't seriously think that Anna with her reserved character could so far forget herself as to——"
"So far forget herself...? Really, mamma, the number of expressions you keep on using—anyway, I don't think that's quite a case of one's forgetting oneself."
Frau Ehrenberg smiled, not without a certain pride.
The bell rang outside.
"It's he at last," said Else.
"It might quite as well be Demeter Stanzides," observed Frau Ehrenberg.
"Stanzides was to bring the Prince along sometime," said Else casually.
"Do you think that will come off?" inquired Frau Ehrenberg, letting her knitting fall into her lap.
"Why shouldn't it come off?" said Else. "They are so intimate."
The door opened. As a matter of fact it was none of the expected visitors who came in, but Edmund Nürnberger. He was dressed, as always, with the greatest care, though not after the latest fashion. His tail coat was a little too short and an emerald pin was stuck in his voluminous satin tie. He bowed as soon as he had got to the door, though his demeanour expressed at the same time a certain irony at his own politeness. "Am I the first?" he inquired. "No one here yet? Not a Hofrat—nor a count—nor an author—nor a diabolical female?"
"Only a woman who never was one, I'm sorry to say," answered Frau Ehrenberg as she shook hands with him.
"And one ... who will perhaps become one sometime."
"Oh, I am convinced," said Nürnberger, "that if she only takes it seriously, Fräulein Else will succeed in that." He stroked his smooth black somewhat glossy hair slowly with his left hand.
Frau Ehrenberg expressed her regret that their expectation of his coming to Auhof had not been realised. Had he really spent the whole summer in Vienna?
"Why do you wonder so much, my dear madam? Whether I am walking up and down among mountain scenery or by the shore of the sea or in my own room, it doesn't really matter much in the end."
"But you must have felt quite lonely," said Frau Ehrenberg.
"You certainly realise solitude more clearly when there's no one in the neighbourhood who shows any desire of talking to you.... But let's talk of more interesting and promising men than I am. How are all the numerous friends of your popular family?"
"Friends!" repeated Else. "I should like first to know what you mean by the word?"
"Well, all the people who say something agreeable to you from whatever motive, and whom you believe in when they say it."
The door of the bedroom opened, Herr Ehrenberg appeared and greeted Nürnberger.
"Are you ready packed?" asked Else.
"Packed and ready," answered Ehrenberg, who had on a grey suit that was far too loose and was biting a fat cigar between his teeth. He turned to Nürnberger to explain.... "I'm off to-day, just as I am, to Corfu ... for the time being; the season is beginning and the Ehrenberg 'at homes' make me feel sick."
"No one asks you," replied Frau Ehrenberg gently, "to honour them with your presence."
"Cute answer, eh," said Ehrenberg, puffing at his cigar. "I don't mind, of course, staying away from your real 'at homes.' But when I'd like to dine quietly at home on a Thursday and there's an attaché sitting in one corner and a hussar in the other, and some one over there is playing his own compositions and some one else on the sofa is being funny, while by the window Frau Oberberger is fixing up an assignation with any one who happens to come along ... well, it really gets on my nerves. One can stand it once, but not a second time."
"Do you think you'll remain away all the winter?" asked Nürnberger.
"It's possible. I intend, you know, to go further, to Egypt, to Syria, probably to Palestine as well. Yes, it's perhaps only because one's getting older, perhaps because one reads so much about Zionism and so forth, but I can't help it, I should like to see Jerusalem before I die."
Frau Ehrenberg shrugged her shoulders.
"Those are matters," said Ehrenberg, "which my wife don't understand—and my children even less so. What do you know about it, Else? no, you don't know anything either. But when one reads what's going on in the world it often makes one inclined to think that there's no other way out for us."
"For us?" repeated Nürnberger. "I've not observed up to the present that Anti-Semitism has done you any particular harm."
"You mean because I've grown a rich man? Well if I were to tell you that I don't give any shakes for money, you would, of course, not believe me, and quite right too. But as sure as you see me here, I swear to you that I would give half my fortune to see the worst of our enemies on the gallows."
"I'm only afraid," remarked Nürnberger, "that you would have the wrong ones hanged."
"There's not much danger," replied Ehrenberg. "Even if you don't catch the man you're after, the man you do catch is bound to be one of them, too, right enough."
"This is not the first time, my dear Herr Ehrenberg, that I observe that your standpoint towards this question is not ideally objective."
Ehrenberg suddenly bit through his cigar and with fingers shaking with rage put it on the ash-tray. "If any one here's to tell me ... and even ... excuse me ... or perhaps you're baptised...? One can really never tell nowadays."
"I'm not baptised," replied Nürnberger quietly. "But on the other hand I am certainly not a Jew either. I've ceased to belong to the congregation for a long time, for the simple reason that I never felt myself to be a Jew."
"If some one were to bash in your top hat in the Ringstrasse because, if you will allow me to say so, you have a somewhat Jewish nose, you'd realise pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a Yiddisher fellow. You take my word for it."
"But, papa, how excited you are getting," said Else, and stroked him on his bald reddish shiny head.
Old Ehrenberg took her hand, stroked it and asked, apparently without any connection with what he had been saying before: "By-the-bye, shall I have the pleasure of seeing my son and heir before I leave?"
Frau Ehrenberg answered: "Oskar's bound to be home soon."
Ehrenberg turned to Nürnberger. "You will doubtless be glad to know that my son Oskar is an Anti-Semite as well."
Frau Ehrenberg sighed gently. "It's a fixed idea of his," she said to Nürnberger. "He sees Anti-Semites everywhere, even in his own family."
"That is the latest Jewish national disease," said Nürnberger. "I myself have only succeeded up to the present in making the acquaintance of one genuine Anti-Semite. I'm afraid I am bound to admit, dear Herr Ehrenberg, that it was a well-known Zionist leader."
Ehrenberg could only make an eloquent gesture.
Demeter Stanzides and Willy Eissler came in and immediately spread an atmosphere of vivid brilliancy around them. Demeter wore his uniform lightly and magnificently, as though it were a fancy costume rather than a military dress; Willy stood there in a dinner jacket looking tall and pale and as if he had been keeping late hours, and then immediately gathered up the reins of the conversation, while his pleasantly hoarse voice rasped through the air with amiable imperiousness.
He gave an account of the preparations for an aristocratic theatrical performance in which he was adviser, producer and actor, just as he had been last year, and described a meeting of the young lords, where, if his account was to be believed, every one had behaved as though they were in a lunatic asylum, and then went on to treat them to a humorous dialogue between two countesses whose mannerisms he managed to take off in a most delightful way. Ehrenberg was always very amused by Willy Eissler. The vague feeling that this Hungarian Jew managed somehow or other to outwit and make a fool of that whole feudal set, whom personally he hated so much, filled him with respect for the young man.
Else sat at the little table in the corner with Demeter and made him tell her about theIsle of Wight. "You were there with your friend?" she inquired, "weren't you, Prince Karl Friedrich?"
"My friend the Prince?... that's not quite right, Fräulein Else. The Prince has no friends, nor have I. We're neither of us the type to have friends."
"He must be an interesting man according to all one hears."
"Interesting—I don't know about that. At any rate he's thought over a lot of things which people in his position are not usually accustomed to bother their heads about very much. Perhaps he'd have managed to do all kinds of things too, if he'd been left to himself. Well, who knows, it was perhaps better for him that they kept a tight hold on him, for him and for the country too in the long run. One man alone can do nothing—never in this life. That's why it's best to let matters slide and get out of things, as he did."
Else looked at him somewhat coldly. "You're so philosophical to-day, what is it? It seems to me that Willy Eissler has spoilt you."
"Willy spoilt me?"
"Yes, you know you shouldn't associate with such clever people."
"Why not?"
"You should simply be young, shine, live, and then when there's nothing more to do, do whatever you like ... but without bothering about yourself and the world."
"You should have told me that before, Fräulein Else; once a man's started getting clever...."
Else shook her head. "But perhaps in your case it might have been avoided," she said quite seriously. And then they both had to laugh.
The chandelier was lighted up. George Wergenthin and Heinrich Bermann had come in. Invited by a smile George sat down by Else's side.
"I knew that you would come," she said disingenuously but warmly as she pressed his hand; she was more glad than she thought she would have been that he should sit opposite to her after so long an interval, that she could see again his proud gracious face and hear again his somewhat gentle yet warm voice.
Frau Wyner appeared, a little woman with a high colour, jolly and awkward. Her daughter Sissy was with her. The groups got broken up in the "general post" of mutual greetings.
"Well, have you composed that song for me yet?" Sissy asked George with laughing eyes and laughing lips, as she played with one of her gloves and moved about like a snake in her dark-green shimmering dress.
"A song?" asked George. He really didn't remember.
"Or waltz or something. But you promised me to dedicate something to me." While she spoke her looks were wandering round. They glowed into the eyes of Willy, passed caressingly by Demeter and addressed a sphinx-like question to Heinrich Bermann. It seemed as though will-o'-the-wisps were dancing through the drawing-room.
Frau Wyner suddenly came up to her daughter. She flushed deeply. "Sissy is really so silly.... What are you thinking of, Sissy? Baron George has had more important things to do this year than to compose things for you."
"Oh not at all," said George politely.
"You buried your father, that's no trifle."
George looked straight in front of him.
But Frau Wyner went on speaking quite unperturbed. "And your father wasn't old, was he? And such a handsome man.... Is it true that he was a chemist?"
"No," answered George calmly. "He was President of the Botanical Society." Heinrich with one arm on the shut piano-top was speaking to Else.
"So you've been in Germany?" she asked.
"Yes," replied Heinrich. "I've been back a fairly long time, four or five weeks."
"And when are you going back again?"
"I don't know, perhaps never."
"Come, you don't believe that yourself—what are you working at?" she added quickly.
"All kinds of things," he answered. "I'm going through a rather restless time. I sketch out a lot but I finish nothing. I'm very rarely keen on completing things, obviously I lose all my interest in things too quickly."
"And people too," added Else.
"Possibly. Only unhappily one's emotions remain attached to people after one's reason has long ago decided to have nothing more to do with them. A poet—if you will allow me to use the expression—must go away from every one who no longer presents any riddle to him ... particularly from any one whom he loves."
"They say," suggested Else, "that it is just those whom we know least that we love."
"That's what Nürnberger makes out, but it's not quite right. If it were really so, my dear Else, then life would probably be much more beautiful than it is. No, we know those whom we love much better than we do other people—but we know them with a feeling of shame, bitterness and with the fear that others may know them as well as we do. Love means this—being afraid that the faults which we have discovered in the person we love may be revealed to others. Love means this—being able to look into the future and curse this very gift.... Love means this—knowing some one so that it smashes one."
Else leant on the piano in her childish lady-like way and listened to him curiously. How much she liked him in moments like this! She would have liked to have stroked his hair again consolingly, as she had done before on the lake when he had been torn by his love for that other woman, but when he suddenly retired into his shell, coldly and drily, and looked as though all his fire had been extinguished she felt that she could never live with him, and she would be bound to run away after a few weeks ... with a Spanish officer or a violinvirtuoso. "It is a good thing," she said somewhat condescendingly, "that you see something of George Wergenthin. He'll have a sound influence on you. He is quieter than you are. I don't think that he is so gifted as you are, and I am sure that he is not so clever."
"What do you know about his gifts?" interrupted Heinrich almost rudely.
George came up and asked Else if they couldn't have the pleasure to-night of hearing one of her songs. She didn't want to. Besides she was principally studying opera parts nowadays. That interested her more. As a matter of fact she was far from having a lyrical temperament. George asked her jokingly if she didn't have perhaps the secret intention of going on the stage?
"With my little bit of a voice!" said Else.
Nürnberger was standing near them. "That wouldn't be an obstacle," he observed. "Why, I feel quite positive that a modern critic would soon turn up who would boom you as an important singer for the very reason that you have no voice, but who would discover some other gift in you by way of compensation, as, for instance, your gift for characterisation, just as we have to-day certain painters who have no sense of colour but only intellect; and celebrated authors who never have the vaguest ideas but who succeed in discovering the most unsuitable epithets for every noun they use."
Else noticed that Nürnberger's manner of speaking got on George's nerves. She turned to him. "I should like to show you something," she said, and took a few steps towards the music-case.
George followed her.
"Here is a collection of old Italian folksongs. I should like you to show me the best. I myself don't know enough about it."
"I can't understand," said George gently, "how you can stand any one like that man Nürnberger near you. He spreads around him an absolute atmosphere of distrust and malice."
"As I've often told you, George, you're no judge of character. After all, what do you know about him? He's different from what you think he is; just ask your friend Heinrich Bermann."
"Oh, I know well enough that he raves about him, too," replied George.
"You're speaking about Nürnberger?" asked Frau Ehrenberg, who had just joined them.
"George can't stand him," said Else in her casual way.
"Well, you're doing him a great injustice, if that's the case. Have you ever read anything of his?"
George shook his head.
"Not even his novel which made so great a sensation fifteen or sixteen years ago? That is really a shame. We've just lent it to Hofrat Wilt. I tell you he was quite flabbergasted at the way in which the whole of present-day Austria is anticipated in that book, written all that time ago."
"Really, is that so?" said George, without conviction.
"You have no idea," continued Frau Ehrenberg, "of the applause with which Nürnberger was then hailed; one could go so far as to say that all doors sprang open before him."
"Perhaps he found that enough," observed Else, with an air of meditative wisdom.
Heinrich was standing by the piano engaged in conversation with Nürnberger, and was making an effort, as he frequently did, to persuade him to undertake a new work or to bring out an edition of previous writings.
Nürnberger would not agree. He was filled with positive horror at the thought of seeing his name a prey to publicity again, of plunging again into a literary vortex which seemed to him as repulsive as it was fatuous. He had no desire to enter the competition. What was the point? Intriguing cliques that no longer made any attempt at concealment were at work everywhere. Did there remain a single man of sound talent and honest aspirations who did not have to face every minute the prospect of being dragged down into the dirt? Was there a blockhead in the country who could not boast of having been hailed as a genius in some rag or other? Had celebrity in these days anything at all to do with honour, and was being ignored and forgotten worth even a single shrug of regret? And who could know after all what verdicts would pass as the correct ones in the future? Were not the fools really the geniuses and the geniuses really the fools? It would be ridiculous to allow himself to be tempted to stake his peace of mind and even his self-respect on a game where even the greatest possible win held out no promise of any satisfaction.
"None at all?" queried Heinrich. "I'll grant you as much as you like about fame, wealth, world-wide influence—but for a man, simply because all these things are of dubious advantage, to relinquish something so absolutely indubitable as the moments of inner consciousness of one's own power——"
"Inner consciousness of power? Why don't you say straight away the happiness of creating?"
"It does exist, Nürnberger."
"It may be so; why, I even think I remember that I felt something like that myself now and then, a very long time ago ... only, as you no doubt know, as the years went by I completely lost the faculty of deceiving myself."
"Perhaps you only think so," replied Heinrich. "Who knows if it is not that very faculty of self-deception which you have developed more strongly than any other as the years went by?"
Nürnberger laughed. "Do you know how I feel when I hear you talk like that? just like a fencing-master feels who gets a thrust in the heart from one of his own pupils."
"And not even one of his best," said Heinrich.
Herr Ehrenberg suddenly appeared in the doorway, to the astonishment of his wife, who had presumed that he would be by now on his way to the station. He led a young lady by the hand. She was dressed simply in black, and had her hair done extraordinarily high after a fashion that was now out of date. Her lips were full and red, the eyes in the pale vivid face had a clear hard gaze.
"Come along," said Ehrenberg with some malice in his small eyes, and led the visitor straight up to Else, who was chatting with Stanzides. "I've brought a visitor for you."
Else held out her hand. "But this is nice." She introduced them—"Herr Demeter Stanzides—Fräulein Therese Golowski."
Therese bowed slightly and let her gaze rest on him for a while with a little embarrassment as though she were scrutinising a beautiful beast, then she turned to Else: "If I had known that you had such a lot of visitors."
"Do you know what she looks like?" said Stanzides softly to George. "Like a Russian student, don't you think?"
George nodded. "That's about it. I know her. She is a school-friend of Fräulein Else's, and now she's playing a leading part among the Socialists. Just think of it! she's just been in prison forlèse-majesté, I believe."
"Yes, I think I've read something about it," replied Demeter. "One should really get to know a person of that type more intimately. She's pretty. Her face might be made of ivory."
"And her features show a lot of energy," added George. "Her brother too is an extraordinary fellow, a pianist and a mathematician, and the father's supposed to be a ruined Jewish skin-dealer."
"It's really a strange race," observed Demeter.
In the meanwhile Frau Ehrenberg had come up to Therese. She considered it correct not to show any surprise. "Sit down, Therese," she said. "And how have you been getting on all this time? Since you've devoted yourself to political life you don't bother about your old friends any more."
"Yes, I'm afraid my work gives me very little time to pay private visits," replied Therese, thrusting out her chin, in a way that made her face look masculine and almost ugly.
Frau Ehrenberg vacillated as to whether she should or should not make any reference to the term of imprisonment which Therese had just served. It was certainly to be borne in mind there was scarcely another house in Vienna where ladies who had been locked up a short time ago, were allowed to call.
"And how is your brother?" asked Else.
"He's doing his service this year," answered Therese. "You can imagine pretty well how he's getting on." And she looked ironically at Demeter's hussar uniform.
"I suppose he doesn't get much opportunity there for playing the piano," said Frau Ehrenberg.
"Oh, he's given up all thoughts of being a pianist," replied Therese. "He's all for politics now." And turning with a smile to Demeter she added: "Of course you won't give him away, Herr Oberlieutenant?"
Stanzides laughed somewhat awkwardly.
"What do you mean by politics?" asked Herr Ehrenberg. "Does he want to get into the Cabinet?"
"Not in Austria at any rate," replied Therese. "He is a Zionist, you know."
"What?" exclaimed Ehrenberg, and his visage beamed.
"That's certainly a subject on which we don't quite agree," added Therese.
"My dear Therese ..." began Ehrenberg.
"You'll miss your train, my dear," interrupted his wife.
"I'm not going to miss my train, and anyway, another one goes to-morrow. My dear Therese, this is the only thing I want to say—each person should find happiness in his own way. But in this case your brother and not you is the cleverer of you two. Excuse me, I'm perhaps a layman in politics, but I assure you, Therese, exactly the same thing will happen to you Jewish Social Democrats as happened to the Jewish Liberals and German Nationalists."
"How do you mean?" asked Therese haughtily. "In what way will the same thing happen to us?"
"In what way...? I'll tell you soon enough. Who created the Liberal movement in Austria?... the Jews. By whom have the Jews been betrayed and deserted? By the Liberals. Who created the National-German movement in Austria? the Jews. By whom were the Jews left in the lurch?... what—left in the lurch!... Spat upon like dogs!... By the National-Germans, and precisely the same thing will happen in the case of Socialism and Communism. As soon as you've drawn the chestnuts out of the fire they'll start driving you away from the table. It always has been so and always will be so."
"We will wait and see," Therese replied quietly.
George and Demeter looked at each other like two friends marooned together on a desert island.
Oskar, who had come in during the middle of his father's speech, compressed his lips and was very embarrassed. But they all felt a kind of deliverance when Ehrenberg suddenly looked at his watch and took his leave.
"We certainly shan't agree to-day," he said to Therese.
Therese smiled. "Scarcely. Hope you will enjoy your journey and I want once more to ... to thank you in the name of...."
"Hush!" said Ehrenberg and vanished.
"What are you thanking papa for?" said Else.
"For a gift of money for which I came to ask him in the most shameless manner. Apart from him there is not a single rich man in the circle of my acquaintances. I am not in a position to speak of the purpose for which it is wanted."
Frau Ehrenberg came up to Bermann and Nürnberger, who were continuing their conversation over the top of the piano, and said softly: "Of course you know that she"—then she looked at Therese—"has just been released from prison."
"I read about it," said Heinrich.
Nürnberger half shut his eyes and cast a glance at the group in the corner where the three girls were talking to Stanzides and Willy Eissler and shook his head.
"What cynicism are you suppressing?" said Frau Ehrenberg.
"I was just thinking how easily it might have come about for Fräulein Else to have languished two months in prison and for Fräulein Therese to have held receptions in a stylish drawing-room as daughter of the house."
"Easily come about?"
"Herr Ehrenberg has had good luck, Herr Golowski bad luck.... Perhaps that is the only difference."
"Look here, now, Nürnberger," said Heinrich, "you're not going to deny that such a thing as individuality exists in the world.... Else and Therese are rather different characters you know."
"I think so too," observed Frau Ehrenberg.
Nürnberger shrugged his shoulders. "They are both young girls, quite gifted, quite pretty ... everything else is more or less of an accidental appanage, just as it is with most young women—most people, in fact."
Heinrich shook his head energetically. "No, no," he said, "life is really not as simple as all that."
"That doesn't make it simpler, my dear Heinrich."
Frau Ehrenberg turned her eyes towards the door and beamed.
Felician had just come in. With all the sureness of a sleep-walker he walked up to the hostess and kissed her hand. "I have just had the pleasure of meeting Herr Ehrenberg on the steps; he told me he was going off to Corfu. It must be awfully beautiful out there."
"You know Corfu?"
"Yes, a memory of my childhood." He greeted Nürnberger and Bermann, and they all talked about the South for which Bermann longed and in which Nürnberger did not believe.
George gave his brother a hand-shake which meant a salutation and a goodbye at the same time. As he unobtrusively disappeared through the open door of the dining-room he looked round again, noticed Marianne sitting in the furthest corner of the drawing-room and looking at him ironically through her lorgnette. This woman had always had the mysterious gift of suddenly being present without one realising where she came from. And then a veiled lady came up to him on the steps. "Don't be in such a hurry, you can surely wait another moment," she said. "One really shouldn't spoil women so.... I wonder if you'd be in such a hurry, you know, if you were going to keep an appointment with me...? But you prefer to be non-committal. Probably because you're afraid that my husband will shoot you when he comes back from Stockholm. I mean he's probably got as far as Copenhagen to-day. But he places absolute confidence in me. And he's quite right too. For I'm able to swear to you that no one has managed to get any further than a kiss on my hand.... No, to tell the full truth, on my neck, here. Of course, you believe, too, that I have had an affair with Stanzides? No, he wouldn't be at all in my line! I positively loathe handsome men. I couldn't find anything in your brother Felician either...."
One could form no idea when the veiled lady would leave off speaking, for it was Frau Oberberger. Similar conduct in other women would have betokened a specific overture, but that was not so in her case. In spite of the dubious impression created by her whole manner the world had never been able to fix her so far with a single lover. She lived in a strange, but apparently happy, childless marriage. Her brilliant handsome husband, a geologist by profession, had undertaken scientific expeditions in days gone by, when, so Hofrat Wilt used to assert, he had set more store by the good travelling and facilities and unimpeachable cooking of the districts in question than on their being actually unexplored. But for some years past he had given up travelling in favour of lecturing and ladykilling. When he was at home he lived with his wife in the bestcamaraderie. George had frequently, though never seriously, considered the possibility of a liaison with Frau Oberberger. He was even one of those who had kissed her neck, a fact which she probably did not remember herself. And as she threw back her veil now George again surrendered himself with pleasure to the fascination of this face, which though no longer in its first flush of youth was yet both charming and animated. He wanted to take up the conversation, but she went on speaking. "Do you know you're very pale? a nice life you must be leading. What kind of a woman is it who is responsible for taking you away from me this time?"
Hofrat Wilt, with his usual silent step, suddenly stood by them. With a casual air of gallantry and superiority he threw them a "Good-day, beauteous lady, Hullo, Baron," and started to go on.
But Frau Oberberger thought it fitting to inform him first that Baron George was just going to one of his usual orgies—she then followed Hofrat up to the second story at the risk, as she remarked, of his being taken for her ninety-fifth lover if he presented himself at Ehrenberg's at the same time as she did.
It was seven o'clock before George could settle himself in a fly and drive to Mariahilf. He felt quite exhausted by the two hours at Ehrenberg's and he was even more than usually glad at the meeting with Anna which was before him. Since that morning at the miniature exhibition they had seen each other nearly every day; in parks, picture-galleries, at her house. They usually talked about the little incidents of their life or gossiped about books or music. They did not often talk of the past, but when they did it was without doubts or misgivings. For so far as Anna was concerned the adventures from which George had just come were far from being surrounded with the uncanny atmosphere of mystery; while George gathered from her own jesting allusions that she herself had already experienced more than one infatuation, though that did not cause him to lose the serenity of his good spirits or even to ask her any further questions.
He had kissed her for the first time eight days ago, in an empty room in the Liechtentein Gallery, and from that moment Anna had employed the familiar 'du,' as though a less intimate appellation would have rung somewhat false. The fly stopped at a street corner. George got out, lit a cigarette and walked up and down opposite the house out of which Anna was due to come.
After a few minutes she came out of the door, he rushed across the street to meet her and kissed her hand ecstatically. Following her habit, for she was in the habit of reading on her journeys, she carried a book with her in a pressed leather cover.
"It is quite cool, Anna," said George, took the book out of her hand and helped her into the jacket which she had been carrying over her arm.
"I was a little bit late you see," she said, "and I was very impatient to see you. Yes," she added with a smile, "one's temperament will break out now and again. What do you think of my new dress?" she added as they walked on.
"It suits you very well."
"They thought at my lesson that I looked like a lady-in-waiting."
"Who thought so?"
"Frau Bittner herself and her two daughters whom I am teaching."
"I should rather say, like an Arch-Duchess."
Anna nodded with satisfaction.
"And now tell me, Anna, all that's happened to you since yesterday."
She began quite seriously: "Twelve o'clock, after I left you at the door of our house, dinner in the family circle. Rested a little in the afternoon, and thought about you. Pupils from four to six-thirty, then read 'Grüner Heinrich,' and the evening paper. Too lazy to go out again, messed about at home. Supper. The usual domestic scene."
"Your brother?" queried George.
She answered with a "Yes" that ruled out all further questions. "A little music after supper.... Even tried to sing."
"Were you satisfied?"
"It was quite good enough for me, anyway," she said, and George thought he detected a slight note of melancholy in her tone. She quickly went on with her report. "Went to bed at half-past ten, slept well, got up early at eight ... one can't lie in bed any longer in our house ... dressed till half-past nine, was about the house till eleven...."
"... Messing about," added George.
"Right. Then went on to Weils, gave the boy a lesson."
"How old is he?" asked George.
"Thirteen," replied Anna.
"Well, after all that is not so young."
"Quite so," said Anna. "But you can set your mind at rest when I inform you that he loves his Aunt Adele, a sentimental blonde of thirty-three, and is not thinking for the time being of breaking his troth to her.... Well, to continue the record. Got home at one-thirty, had my meal alone, thank Heaven! Father already at the office, mamma in a state of sleep. Rested again from three to four, thought even more about you, and more seriously too, than yesterday, then went shopping in town, gloves, safety pins and something for mamma, and then drove on the tram, reading all the way to Mariahilf, to the two Bittner kiddies.... So now you know all. Satisfied?"
"Except for the boy of thirteen."
"Well, I agree that that might be a bit upsetting. But now we should like to know if you haven't got even more sinister confessions to make to me."
They were in a narrow silent street, which seemed quite strange to George, and Anna took his arm.
"I have just come from Ehrenbergs'," he began.
"Well?" queried Anna. "Did they try very much to inveigle you?"
"No, I can't go so far as that. Of course they seemed a little hurt that I did not go to Auhof this summer," he added.
"Did dear little Else perform?" Anna asked.
"No; of course I don't know what happened after I left."
"It won't be worth the trouble now," said Anna with exuberant mirth.
"You are wrong, Anna. There are people there for whom it is quite worth while singing."
"Who?"
"Heinrich Bermann, Willy Eissler, Demeter Stanzides...."
"Oh, Stanzides!" exclaimed Anna. "Now I am really sorry that I wasn't there too."
"It seems to me," said George, "that that is a true word spoken in jest."
"Quite so," replied Anna. "I think Demeter is really desperately handsome."
George was silent for a few seconds and suddenly asked, with more emotion than he usually manifested: "Is it he then...?"
"What 'he' do you mean?"
"The one you ... loved more than me."
She smiled, nestled closer up to him and answered simply, though a little ironically: "Am I really supposed to have been fonder of any one else than of you?"
"You confessed it to me yourself," replied George.
"But I also confess to you that I should love you in time more than I have loved or ever could love any one else."
"Are you quite sure about that, Anna?"
"Yes, George, I am quite certain of it."
They had now come again into a more lively street and reluctantly let go of each other's arms.
They remained standing in front of various shops. They discovered a photographer's show-case by a house-door and were very much amused by the laboriously-natural poses in which golden and silver wedding couples, cadets, cooks in their Sunday best and ladies in masked fancy dress were taken.
George asked again in a lighter tone: "So it was Stanzides?"
"What an idea! I have never spoken a hundred words to him in my life."
They went on walking.
"Leo Golowski, then?" asked George.
She shook her head and smiled. "That was calf-love," she replied. "That really doesn't count. I should like to know the girl of sixteen who wouldn't have fallen in love in the country with a handsome youth who fights a duel with a real Count and then goes about for eight days with his arm in a sling."
"But he didn't do it on your account, but for his sister's honour, as it were."
"For Therese's honour? What makes you think that?"
"You told me that the young man had spoken to Therese in the forest while she was studying 'Emilia Galotti.'"
"Yes, that is quite true. Anyway, she was quite glad to be spoken to. The only thing Leo objected to was that the young Count belonged to a club of young men who really behaved rather cheekily, and I think showed a touch of Anti-Semitism. So when Therese once went with her brother for a walk by the lake, and the Count came up and spoke to Therese as though he had known her for ages, while he mumbled his name off-handedly, for the benefit of Leo, Leo made a bow and introduced himself like this: 'Leo Golowski, Cracow Jew.' I don't know exactly what happened further; there was an exchange of words and the duel took place next day in the cavalry barracks at Klagenfurt."
"So I am quite right," persisted George humorously. "He did fight for his sister's honour."
"No, I tell you. I was there when he once discussed the matter with Therese, and said to her: 'So far as I am concerned you can do whatever amuses you. You can flirt with any one you like'...."
"Only it's got to be a Jew, I suppose...." added George.
Anna shook her head. "He's really not like that."
"I know," replied George gently. "We have become quite good friends lately, your Leo and I.
"Why, only yesterday evening we met at the café again and he was really quite condescending to me. I think he really forgives me my lineage. Besides, I haven't told you that Therese was at Ehrenbergs', too." And he described the appearance of the young girl in the Ehrenberg drawing-room and the impression she had made on Demeter.
Anna smiled with pleasure.
Later on, when they were again walking arm-in-arm in a quieter street, George began again. "But I still don't know who your great passion was."
Anna was silent and looked straight in front of her.
"Come, Anna, you promised me, didn't you?"
Without looking at him she replied: "If you only had an idea how strange the whole thing seems to me to-day."
"Why strange?"
"Because the man you're trying to find out was quite an old man."
"Thirty-five," said George jestingly; "isn't that so?"
She shook her head seriously. "He was fifty-eight or sixty."
"And you?" asked George slowly.
"It is two years ago last summer. I was then twenty-one."
George suddenly stood still. "I know now, it was your singing-master. Wasn't it?"
Anna did not answer.
"So it was he, then?" said George, without being really surprised, for he was aware that all the celebrated master's pupils fell in love with him in spite of his grey hairs.
"And did you love him most," asked George, "of all the men you had come across?"
"Strange, isn't it? but it's a fact all the same."
"Did he know it?"
"I think so."
They had arrived at an open space with a small garden ... that was only scantily lighted. At the back there towered a church with a reddish glow. As though drawn to a quieter place they wandered on under dark softly-waving branches.
"And what actually was there between you, if it is not a rude question?"
Anna was silent, and that moment George felt that everything was possible—even that Anna should have been that man's mistress. But underneath the disquiet which he felt at that thought the desire arose gently and unconsciously to hear his fear confirmed. For if Anna had already belonged to some one else before she became his, the adventure could proceed as lightly and irresponsibly as possible.
"I will tell you the whole story," said Anna at last. "It is really not so awful."
"Well?" asked George, strangely excited.
"Once, after the lesson," Anna began hesitatingly, "he gallantly helped me into my jacket. And then suddenly he drew me to him, took me in his arms and kissed me."
"And you...?"
"I ... I was quite intoxicated."
"Intoxicated?..."
"Yes, it was something indescribable. He kissed me on the forehead and the hair, and then he took my hand and murmured all sorts of things that I didn't hear properly...."
"And...."
"And then ... then voices came near, he let go my hand and it was all over."
"All over?"
"Yes, over ... of course it was all over."
"I certainly don't think it such a matter of course. You saw him again, no doubt."
"Of course, I still went on learning with him."
"And...?"
"I tell you it was over ... absolutely ... as though it had never happened."
George was surprised that he should feel reassured. "And he never tried again?" he asked.
"Never. It would have been so ridiculous, and as he was very clever he knew that quite well himself. It is quite true that up to then I had been very much in love with him, but after this episode he was nothing more to me than my old teacher. In some way he seemed even older than he really was. I don't know if you can really understand what I mean. It was as though he had spent all the remains of his youth in that moment."
"I quite understand," said George. He believed her and loved her more than before. They went into the church. It was almost dark within the large building. There were only some dim candles burning in front of a side altar, and opposite, behind the small statue of a saint, there shone a feeble light. A broad stream of incense flowed between the dome and the flagstones. The verger was walking, jangling his keys softly. Motionless figures appeared vaguely on the seats at the back. George slowly walked forward with Anna and felt like a young husband on his honeymoon going sight-seeing in a church with his young wife. He said so to Anna. She only nodded.
"But it would be very much nicer," whispered George, as they stood nestling close together in front of the chancel, "if we really were together somewhere abroad...."
She looked at him ecstatically and yet interrogatively: and he was frightened at his own words. Supposing Anna had taken it as a serious declaration or as a kind of wooing? Was he not obliged to enlighten her that he had not meant it in that way?... He remembered the conversation which they had had a short time ago, when they had gone out hanging on to one umbrella on a rainy windy day in the direction of Schönbrunn. He had suggested to her she should drive into the town with him and dine with him in a private room in some restaurant; she had answered with that iciness in which her whole being was sometimes frozen: "I don't do that kind of thing." He had not pressed her further.
And yet a quarter of an hour later she had said to him, apropos no doubt of a conversation about George's mode of life, but yet with a smile of many possibilities: "You have no initiative, George." And he had suddenly felt at that moment as though depths in her soul were revealing themselves, undreamt-of and dangerous depths, which it would be a good thing to beware of. He could not help now thinking of this again. What was passing within her mind?... What did she want and what was she ready for?... And what did he desire, what did he feel himself?
Life was so incalculable. Was it not perfectly possible that he should go travelling about the world with her, live with her a period of happiness and finally part from her just as he had parted from many another?... Yet when he thought of the end that was inevitably bound to come, whether death brought it or life itself, he felt a gentle grief in his heart.... She still remained silent. Did she think again that he was lacking in initiative?... Or did she think perhaps "I am really going to succeed, I shall be his wife?..."
He then felt her hand stroke his very gently, with a kind of new tenderness that did him great good.
"George," she said.
"What is it?" he asked.
"If I were religious," she replied, "I should like to pray for something now."
"What for?" said George, feeling almost nervous.
"For you to do something, George—something that really counted. For you to become a genuine artist, a great artist."
He could not help looking at the floor, as though for very shame that her thoughts had travelled on paths that were so much cleaner than his own.
A beggar held open the thick green curtain. George gave the man a coin; they were in the open air. The street lights shone up, the noise of vehicles and closing shutters suddenly grew near. George felt as if a fine veil which the twilight of the church had woven around him and her had now been torn, and in a tone of relief he suggested a little ride. Anna agreed with alacrity. They got into an open fiacre, had the top pulled down over them, drove through the streets, then drove round the Ring, without seeing much of the buildings and gardens, spoke not a word and nestled closer and closer to each other. They were both conscious of each other's impatience and their own, and they knew it was no longer possible to go back.
When they were near Anna's home George said: "What a pity that you have got to go home now."
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled strangely. The depths, thought George again, but without fear and almost gaily. Before the vehicle stopped at the corner they arranged an appointment for the following morning in the Schwarzenberggarten and then got out. Anna rushed home and George slowly strolled towards the town.
He considered whether he should go into the café. He did not really feel keen on it. Bermann would probably stay to supper at the Ehrenbergs' to-day, one could rarely count on Leo Golowski coming: and George was not much attracted by the other young people, most of them Jewish writers, with whom he had recently struck up a casual acquaintance, even though he had thought many of them not at all uninteresting. Speaking broadly, he found their tone to each other now too familiar, now too formal, now too facetious, now too sentimental: not one of them seemed really free and unembarrassed with the others, scarcely indeed with himself.
Heinrich too had declared only the other day that he didn't want to have anything more to do with the whole set, who had become thoroughly antagonistic to him since his successes. George regarded it as perfectly possible that Heinrich, with his characteristic vanity and hypochondria, was scenting enmity and persecution where it was perhaps merely a case of indifference or antipathy. He for his part knew that it was not so much friendship that attracted him to the young author, as the curiosity to get to know a strange man more intimately. Perhaps also the interest of looking into a world which up to the present had been more or less foreign to him. For while he himself had remained somewhat reserved and had specially avoided any reference to his own relations with women, Heinrich had not only told him of his distant mistress, for whom he asserted he suffered pangs of jealousy, but also of a blonde and pretty young person with whom he had recently got into the habit of spending his evenings—merely to deaden his feelings as he ironically added; he not only told him of his life as a student and journalist in Vienna, which did not lie so far back, but also of his childhood and boyhood in that little provincial town in Bohemia where he had come into the world thirty years ago. The half-affectionate and half-disgusted tone, with its mixture of attachment and detachment, in which Heinrich spoke of his family and especially of his suffering father, who had been an advocate in that little town and a member of Parliament for a considerable period, struck George as strange and at times as almost painful. Why, he seemed to be even a little proud of the fact that when he was only twenty years old he had prophesied his blissfully confident parent's fate to the old man himself, exactly as it had subsequently fulfilled itself. After a short period of popularity and success the growth of the Anti-Semitic movement had driven him out of the German Liberal party, most of his friends had deserted and betrayed him, and a dissipated 'corps' student, who described at public meetings the Tschechs and Jews as the most dangerous enemies of Germanism, propriety and morality, while at home he thrashed his wife and had children by his servants, was his successor in the confidence of the electors and in Parliament. Heinrich, who had always felt a certain amount of irritation at his father's phrases, honest though they were, about Pan-Germanism, liberty and progress, had at first gloated over the spectacle of the old man's downfall. And it was only when the lawyer who had once been so much in demand began to lose his practice into the bargain, and the financial position of the family got worse from day to day, that the son began to experience a somewhat belated sympathy. He had given up his legal studies early enough, and had been compelled to come to the help of his family with his daily journalistic work. His first literary successes raised no echo in the melancholy household. There were sinister signs that madness was looming over his father, while now that the latter was falling into mental darkness his mother, for whom state and fatherland had ceased to exist, when her husband was not elected to Parliament, lost her grip of life and of the world. Heinrich's only sister, once a buxom clever girl, had developed melancholia after an unhappy passion for a kind of provincial Don Juan, and with morbid perverseness she put the blame for the family misfortune on the shoulders of her brother, though she had always got on with him perfectly well in her youth. Heinrich also told George about other relations whom he remembered in his early days, and a half-grotesque, half-pathetic series of strict bigoted old-fashioned Jews and Jewesses swept by George like shadows from another world. He eventually realised that Heinrich did not feel himself any homesickness for that small town with its miserable petty squabbles, or any call to return to the gloomy narrowness of his almost ruined family, and saw that Heinrich's egoism was at once his salvation and his deliverance.
It was striking nine from the tower of the Church of St. Michael when George stood in front of the café. He saw Rapp the critic sitting by a window not completely covered by the curtain, with a pile of papers in front of him on the table. He had just taken his glasses off his nose and was polishing them, and the dull eyes brought a look of absolute deadness into a face that was usually so alive with clever malice. Opposite him with gestures that swept over vacancy sat Gleissner the poet in all the brilliancy of his false elegance, with a colossal black cravat in which a red stone scintillated. When George, without hearing their voices, saw the lips of these two men move, while their glances wandered to and fro, he could scarcely understand how they could stand sitting opposite each other for a quarter of an hour in that cloud of hate. It flashed across him at once that this was the atmosphere in which the life of the whole set played its comedy, and through which there darted many a redeeming flash of wit and self-analysis.
What had he in common with these people? A kind of horror seized on him, he turned away and decided to look up his club once again instead of going into the café, the rooms of which he had not been in for months past. It was only a few steps away. George was soon walking up the broad marble staircase, went into the little dining-room with the light green curtain and was greeted as a long-lost friend by Ralph Skelton, the attaché of the English Embassy, and Doctor von Breitner. They talked about the tournament which was going to take place and about the banquet that was going to be organised in honour of the foreign fencing-masters; they gossiped about the new operetta at the Wiedner Theatre where Fräulein Lovan as a bayadère had come on to the stage almost naked, and about the duel between the manufacturer Heidenfeld and Lieutenant Novotny, in which the injured husband had fallen. George had a game of billiards with Skelton after the meal and won. He felt in better spirits and resolved henceforth to pay more frequent visits to these airy prettily-furnished rooms frequented by pleasant well-bred young men with whom one could converse lightly and pleasantly.
Felician appeared, told his brother that it had been very amusing at the Ehrenbergs' and that Frau Marianne sent her regards. Breitner, with one of his celebrated huge cigars in his mouth, joined the brothers, and began to speak about the hanging of the portraits of some of those members of the club who had conferred services on it, mentioning particularly the one of young Labinski who had ended all by suicide in the previous year. And George could not help thinking of Grace, of that strange hot-and-cold conversation with her in the cemetery in the melting February snow and of that wonderful night on the moonlit deck of the steamer that had brought them both from Palermo to Naples. He scarcely knew which woman he longed for the most at this particular moment: for Marianne whom he had deserted, for Grace who had vanished, or for the fair young creature with whom he had walked about in a dusky church a few hours ago like a honeymoon couple in a foreign town, and who had wanted to pray to heaven for him to become a great artist. The memory stirred a gentler emotion. Was it not almost as though she set more store by his artistic future than by him himself?... No.... Not more. She had only just spoken out what had lain slumbering all the time at the bottom of her soul. It was simply that he forgot as it were only too frequently that he was an artist. But all that must be changed. He had begun and prepared so much. Just a little industry and success was assured. And next year he would go out into the world. He would soon get a post as conductor and with a sudden leap he would find himself launched in a profession that brought both money and prestige. He would get to know new people, a different sky would shine above him and white unknown arms stretched towards him mysteriously as though from distant clouds. And while the young people at his side were weighing very seriously the chances of the champions at the approaching tournament, George went on dreaming in his corner of a future full of work, fame and love.
At the same time Anna was lying in her dark room. She was not asleep and her wide-open eyes were turned towards the ceiling. She had for the first time in her life the infallible feeling that there was a man in the world who could do anything he liked with her. Her mind was firmly made up to take all the happiness or all the sorrow that might lie in front of her, and she had a gentle hope, more beautiful than all her dreams of the past, of a serene and abiding happiness.
George and Heinrich dismounted from their cycles. The last villas lay behind them and the broad road with its gradual upward incline led into the forest. The foliage still hung fairly thickly on the trees, but every slight puff of wind brought away some leaves which slowly fluttered down. The shimmer of autumn floated over the yellow-reddish hills. The road ascended higher past an imposing restaurant garden approached by a flight of stone steps. Only a few people sat in the open air, most of them were in the glass verandah, as though they did not quite trust themselves to the faltering warmth of this late October day, through which a dangerous and chilly draught kept on penetrating.
George thought of the melancholy memory of the winter evening on which he and Frau Marianne had paid a visit here, and had had the place to themselves. He had been bored as he had sat by her side and listened impatiently to her prattle about yesterday's concert in which Fräulein Bellini had sung songs; and when he had been obliged to get out of the carriage in a suburban street on his way back on account of Marianne's nervousness, he had taken a deep breath of deliverance. A similar feeling of release, of course, almost invariably came over him whenever he left a mistress, even after some more or less beautiful hours. Even when he had left Anna on her doorstep a few days ago, after the first evening of complete happiness, the first emotion of which he was conscious was the joy of being alone again. And immediately in its train, even before the feeling of gratitude and the dim realisation of a genuine affinity with this gentle creature who enveloped his whole being with such intimate tenderness had managed to penetrate his soul, there fluttered through it a wistful dream of voyages over a shimmering sea, of coasts which approached seductively, of walks along shores which would vanish again on the next day, of blue distances, freedom from responsibility and solitude.
The next morning, when the atmosphere of the previous evening, pregnant as it was with memory and with presage, enveloped him as he woke up, the journey was of course put off to a later but not so distant though of course more convenient time. For George knew at this very hour, though without any touch of horror, that this adventure was predestined to have an end however sincerely and picturesquely it had begun. Anna had given herself to him without indicating by a word, a look or gesture that so far as she was concerned, what was practically a new chapter in her life was now beginning. And in the same way George felt quite convinced that the farewell to her, too, would be devoid of melancholy or of difficulty; a pressure of the hand, a smile and a quiet "it was very beautiful"; and he felt still easier in his mind when she came to him at their next meeting with a simple intimate greeting, quite free from that uneasy tone of nestling sorrow or accomplished fate which he had heard thrilling in the voice of many another woman, who had woken up to such a morning, though not for the first time in her life.
A faintly-defined line of mountains appeared in the distance and then vanished again as the road mounted through thick-wooded country up to the heights. Pine-wood and leaf-bearing wood grew peacefully next to each other, and the foliage of beeches and birch-trees shimmered with its autumn tints through the quieter tints of the firs. Ramblers could be seen, some with knapsack, alpine-stock and nailed shoes, as though equipped for serious mountaineering; now and again cyclists would come whizzing down the road in a feverish rush. Heinrich told his companion of a cycle-tour which he had made along the Rhine at the beginning of September.
"Isn't it strange," said George, "I have knocked about the world a fair bit, but I do not yet know the district where my ancestors' home was."
"Really?" queried Heinrich, "and you feel no emotion when you hear the word Rhine spoken?"
George smiled. "After all it is nearly a hundred years since my great-grandparents left Biebrich."
"Why do you smile, George? It's a much longer time since my ancestors wandered out of Palestine, and yet many otherwise quite rational people insist on my heart throbbing with homesickness for that country."
George shook his head irritably. "Why do you always keep bothering about those people? It will really soon become a positive obsession with you."
"Oh, you think I mean the Anti-Semites? Not a bit of it. I am not touchy any more about them, not usually, at any rate. But you just go and ask our friend Leo what his views are on this question."
"Oh, you mean him, do you? Well, he doesn't take it so literally but more or less symbolically ... or from the political standpoint," he added uncertainly.
Heinrich nodded. "Both these ideas are very intimately connected in brains of that character." He sank into meditation for a while, thrust his cycle forward with slight impatient spurts and was soon a few paces in front again. He then began to talk again about his September tour. He thought of it again with what was almost emotion. Solitude, change of scene, movement: had he not enjoyed a threefold happiness? "I can scarcely describe to you," he said, "the feeling of inner freedom which thrilled through me. Do you know those moods in which all one's memories near or distant lose, as it were, their oppressive reality? all the people who have meant anything in one's life, whether it be grief, care or tenderness, seem to sweep by more like shadows, or, to put it more precisely, like forms which one has imagined oneself? And the creations of one's own imagination also come on the scene, of course, and are certainly quite as vivid as the people whom one remembers as having been real; and then one gets the most extraordinary complications between the figures of reality and of one's imagination. I could describe to you a conversation which took place between my great-uncle who is a rabbi and the Duke Heliodorus, the character you know who is the centre of my opera plot—a conversation which was amusing and profound to a degree which, speaking generally, neither life nor any opera libretto scarcely ever reaches.... Yes, such journeys are really wonderful, and so one goes on through towns which one has never seen before, and perhaps will never see again, past absolutely unknown faces which speedily vanish again for all eternity.... Then one whizzes again into the street between the rivers and the vineyards. Such moods really cleanse the soul. A pity that they are so rarely vouchsafed to one."
George always felt a certain embarrassment whenever Heinrich became tragic. "Perhaps we might go on a bit," he said, and they jumped on to their machines.
A narrow bumpy byroad between the forest and fields soon led them to a bare unimpressive two-storied house, which they recognised to be an inn by its brown surly signboard. On the green, which was separated from the house by the street, stood a large number of tables, many covered with cloths which had once been white, others with cloths which were embroidered. Ten or twelve young men who were members of a cycling club sat at some pushed-back tables. Several of them had taken off their coats, others with an affectation of smartness wore them with their sleeves hanging down. Designs in magnificent red and green knitting blazed on the sky-blue sweaters with their yellow edges.
A chorus rang out to the sky with more power than purity: "Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess, der wollte keine Knechte."
Heinrich surveyed the company with a quick glance, half shut his eyes and said to George with clenched teeth and vehement emphasis: "I don't know if these youths are staunch, true and courageous, which they certainly think they are; but there is no doubt that they smell of wool and perspiration, and so I am all for our sitting down at a reasonable distance from them."
Whatdoeshe want? thought George. Would he find it more congenial if a party of Polish Jews were to sit here and sing psalms?
Both pushed their machines to a distant table and sat down. A waiter appeared in black evening dress sprinkled with the relics of grease and vegetables, cleared the table energetically with a dirty napkin, took their orders and went off.
"Isn't it lamentable," said Heinrich, "that in the immediate outskirts of Vienna nearly all the inns should be in such a state of neglect? It makes one positively depressed."